Friday, November 21, 2025
INNIT is Catherine Tate funny. Colette Forde introduces us to Kelly Roberts, a ballsy Manchester teenager that is visiting a psychologist for the first time. I laughed like an unblocking drain and then totally choked up as we got to know this broken bird with foul tongue and fragile heart. INNIT is having its American debut after a sold out run at the the Limerick Fringe Festival. It’s an intense ride through working class, teenage trauma set in the 90’s. Kelly Roberts is a character you are not likely to forget. She is an undiluted truthsayer that does not shy away
Reviews
The Opera is Always on the Table at ICE Factory, New Ohio Theatre
The Opera is Always on the Table places us into a dystopian environment where the effects of war have infiltrated the kitchen table. Missives of “fallen cities” come to us via texts on “Mom’s” cellphone while she tries to set boundaries for her teenage “Daughter” as if its a normal day. It’s a bleak look at the fallout of soldiers returning home riddled with PTSD and the consequences of neglecting this veteran’s precarious mental health. The piece has been written by Hanna Lea Novak who is adept at writing complex dialogue to reveal plot. The text evolved out of a response
Dance: The Joyce Ballet Festival
The annual Joyce Ballet Festival showcases the incredibly high level and high-energy of American ballet. This is a time of reflection, renewal and reconfiguration in ballet, and the two companies described here are conduits of that positive change. Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami (June 26-27) Ballet may never rate as high as Disneyland, but Miami now has two major dance companies Dimensions Dance Theatre, founded in 2016 by former Miami City Ballet married principles Carlos Guerra and Jennifer Kronenberg, opened The Festival on June 26. Founded in 2016, the company's gifted, personable dancers have already mastered an eclectic repertory. Guerra and Kronenberg themselves
One Small Step at ICE Factory, New Ohio Theatre
One Small Step…is a giant star jump through the sixth dimension and into an alternative reality where history is reworded. It’s an ode to otherness, to our desire to expand beyond the confines of our three dimensional universe and sniff at the possibility of realms beyond the known. Einstein’s theory of special relativity tickles our imaginations with the probability of higher dimensions and so the Saint Fortune company takes us on a space-time trial run. While there is doubt that our brains would be able to recognize 4D if it sat on our laps, One Small Step is all that
Prototypes at The Downstairs, La MaMa
Prototypes - a dozen divine dances. Susan Marshall & Company present a collection of short form works that are mini explosions of intense creativity. Each piece is a stand alone expression of human straining for connection, yet the 12 pieces seem to be talking to one another creating an entangled vine of cross pollinated conversation fragments. It is incredibly satisfying to watch as your brain makes its own connections between storylines, intentions and investigations of behavioral systems. Susan Marshall’s creative vision for the show ensures a seamless melding of the pieces so that you aren’t sure where one ends and
Sidra Bell Dance New York at New York Live Arts
If your idea of dance is the Rockettes or a big Broadway show-stopper, Sidra Bell Dance New York is probably not for you. The choreographer, composer and company seem comfortable just on the other side of the cutting edge. The performances at New York Live Arts of “Friction” and “garment” (lower case in the title) illustrated this nicely. To begin with, the company is diversity itself. Sebastaian Abarbanell is a former Berliner, Tushrik Fredricks is from Johannesburg, Drew Lewis learned to dance in Chicago, Misa Kinno Lucyshyn is from Eugene, Oregon by way of Vancouver, Madison Wada is a Californian, and
Dance: Sarah Lane’s debuts her Kitri in ABT’s ‘Don Quixote’ at the Metropolitan Opera House
One way of defining a performance is that it is an experience of shared hopes between artists and their audience. Sometimes the final result exceeds the good wishes and anticipation. That's what happened during the Saturday, June 30 matinee of Don Quixote when American Ballet Theatre Principal Sarah Lane resoundingly danced her first Kitri, one of ballet's most difficult and fun roles. What made Lane's debut memorable has a great deal to do with Marius Petipa's boisterous 1869 ballet and Alexander Gorsky's 1902 dance-as-drama re-staging of it (ABT Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie and Ballet Mistress Susan Jones based their 1995 production
Theatre: HERE’s Dream Music Puppertry Program presents ‘American Weather’
A steel hula hoop spins. When if falls it becomes a container. Then the container's soft outer lining forms, depending on one's point of view, a bed, boat or coffin. Deliberate randomness forms the strong visual story told by Chris Green's American Weather at HERE's Dorothy B.Williams Theatre. Thanks to Green and his collaborator's masterful multidisciplinary combination of puppetry, video, song, verse and live action, American Weather's barometer reads division. This self-contained stage storm is played out across a picket fence with sharp edges. Katie Melby is the slow-moving soul in front of the fence/screen and a puppet costumed as a fencer in back of it. The
Desperate Measures at New World Stages
It’s a rare thing when all of the elements come together perfectly to create true theatrical magic. One of the most recent examples of that kind of kismet is a delightfully riotous romp called Desperate Measures, now playing Off-Broadway at New World Stages after its multi-award winning (Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle and Off Broadway Alliance) and numerously extended run at the York Theater last year. The plot, which examines how justice is served and manipulated, is loosely based on Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure. The setting is the Wild West where Johnny Blood (Conor Ryan) waits in jail with a drunken,
Othello at the Delacorte Theater, Shakespeare in the Park
The story of Othello has always bothered me. Simply put, Othello has to be country-bumpkin gullible to fall victim to Iago's plotting – smitten and jealous or not. Chukwudi Iwuji, in the title role in the Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park, turned in such a performance that I could almost believe Othello is that naïve. I have seen Othello more times than I can honestly remember. This production, though, is beyond memorable, especially but not exclusively because of Iwuji's performance. Much of the play hinges on the performance of Iago, and Corey Stoll delivers the goods. He is both