Tuesday, May 20, 2025The play's title is a reference to one of the most important nights in Irish soccer (football), the night in 1993 when Ireland and Northern Ireland played to a 1-1 draw. That was good enough to send Ireland through to the World Cup in the USA in 1994. This play is not about football, though. It is about tribes and tribalism, making it a contemporary subject not a historical one. Kenneth Normal McAllister (Allan Smyth) is a dole clerk at the Department of Health and Social Security in Belfast. He is a Protestant and rather proud of it. His position gives
Tag: Off-Off Broadway
Tom Moran is a Big, Fat, Filthy, Disgusting Liar – Irish Repertory Theatre
Tom Moran has brought his one-man show to New York as part of the Origin First Irish Festival, and it is the kind of production that makes this sort of festival so wonderful. Moran is a charming, thoughtful and quite funny fellow, who believes if the audience got to really know him, they would hate him. Even so, quite the opposite is true. Moran is a self-described people-pleaser, and he has spent most of his 31 years on this planet trying to make sure everyone is always OK. Aiding him (for want of a better verb) are his parents who seem
Backstage at the International Fringe Encore Series at the Soho Playhouse
Stagebiz.com got a chance to chat with Britt Lafield, the managing director of the Soho Playhouse, and we talked about the International Fringe Encore Festival. The festival opened the first week of January and will run through March 2. Stagebiz: What exactly is the international fringe encore festival? BL: The IFES is a "best of" the theater "fringe" circuit from around the world. Myself and our Artistic Director, Darren Lee Cole, go to the biggest theater festivals around the world and see dozens and dozens of shows at each one. Then pick the best of each festival and invite them to perform
Push Party –- TheaterLab
Push Party is the story of five black women who have gathered to celebrate one of them giving birth. Set in a community room of a Harlem apartment building, the piece is not for the faint of heart. In the lobby, there is a sign that warns the audience about the content, which includes: drugs, sexual assault- a miscarriage. fibroids, violence, graphic references, STIs and Interracial relationships. While it may sound like heavy going, the show flies by thanks to witty writing, a great set and a cast that performs as a true ensemble. It is not a laugh fest, but
Quinn’s Quixotic, Quagmire & Laughs At The Lucille Lortel Theater
PHOTOS BY: MONIQUE CARBON Colin Quinn has been a New York City mainstay for over 35 years. He’s remembered as far back as the mid-nineties when he was the co-host and announcer for MTV’s trivia show, “Remote Control”. I can still hear Colin’s voice in my head right now introducing the show's host, the late Ken Ober, “The Quiz Master of ’72 Whooping Cough Lane”. Many will also remember his iconic “I’m Going Back To Brooklyn” parody. There is also, of course, his very memorable stint as SNL’s News Correspondent in the early 2000s. He’s been at the forefront of comedy
What Kind of Woman — the cell theatre
Every actor, writer or musician starts out with a side hustle to make ends meet. In the case of actor and playwright Abbe Tanenbaum, it was organizing people's apartments. While working with one client, she found twenty letters from women in the pre-Roe era seeking abortion services from her client. These letters and her client's past inspired this show. With that as a foundation, this could have been less pleasant than watching a 1950s Soviet propaganda film about periodontal disease. The ease with which it could have turned preachy, maudlin or just plain tedious is obvious. Tanenbaum skillfully avoided these dangers
Now Playing — A “Playhouse 90” for the 21st Century
The Pandemic has shuttered New York Theatre, and London is operating with limited capacity. Live entertainment is on hold. Yet the desire for story-telling, the urge to see something new is greater because we are all in various stages of lockdown. Artists are a bit like nature in that they abhor a vacuum, and where there is a theatrical void, artists will try to fill it. That brings us to a new venture by Jay Michaels and Mary Elizabeth Micari -- “Now Playing” will be a new theatre streaming service on “CHANNEL I”. StageBiz: First off, tell us about CHANNEL
The New Stage Theatre Company’s ‘Near to the Wild Heart’
2020 marks the centennial of Clarice Lispector's birth. The Ukrainian-Jewish refugee who settled in Brazil has long been acclaimed as a feminist trailblazer in male dominated South American literature. Fortunately, her canon is newly translated into English. The New Stage Theatre Company celebrates Lispector with an evocatively uncompromising adaptation of Near to the Wild Heart. Artistic director Ildiko Nemeth's production is both an English-language premiere and first-ever North American stage adaptation of Lispector's 1943 debut novel. Lispector's writing is semi-autobiographical and surreal - the artistically experimental, not the hashtag kind. The "Wild Heart" belongs to Joana (Sarah Lemp), who is smart, bored and unhappily married to Otavio
Even If It Gets Us Nowhere at Access Theater
This production from The Social Club Theatre is Brechtian in its approach. We truly don't ever get to know the characters, what their jobs are, why they are sharing an apartment – and we don't need to. In yet another season of juke-box musicals on Broadway, the script and the staging are swimming against the stream. This is a piece of theatre that makes one think, not just during the production but the next day and thereafter. Bartholomew (Matthew Zimmerman) and Milo (Justin P. Armstrong) are friends who share a common problem – they're single and don't want to be. In
The Loneliest Number Amios Theatre
The Loneliest Number by Lizzie Vieh is one of the best written plays I’ve seen in years. It is about a couple who decide to invite a different third party to their bedroom every month. They take turns, one month she chooses, one month he chooses. At first it seems like the main reason is to add some spice to their long term relationship, but as the play unfolds we see there is a far deeper reason. Within two minutes I knew I was going to love this play. I love when that happens! It’s just amazing to me that