Past reviews, recommendations, profiles, and posts about arts and culture in New York City.
Our Maxamoo contributors and friends are a witty, loquacious bunch. They say the darndest things! By popular demand, we’ve committed some of our favorite Maxamooisms on the joys and challenges of theater to products you can buy. We’ve got mugs, totes bags, and stickers proclaiming “My views are my own,”[…]
The Maxamoo Theater & Performance Podcast is the premier podcast covering the diverse world of theater and performance beyond Broadway. Weekly an alternating cast of contributors host interviews and roundtable discussions on the latest Off Broadway, indie theater, comedy, performance art, and multi-disciplinary theater in New York City. Subscribe to[…]
In the December preview episode, I highlighted Broken Bone Bathtub, a show performed in a private home in the bathroom in the bathtub. David and Shavanna, the co-hosts of the episode, had a lot of questions (recounted below) and I had zero answers. With only a modicum of information about[…]
Mining the Moon is a play written and directed by Matt Thurber based on his comic of the same name. It is part of the Comic Book Theater Festival, a month long exploration of the intersection of graphic novels and art with theater at The Brick in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It[…]
Blink is not your typical boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl live happily ever after love story, although it is a story about a boy who, eventually, meets a girl and they do fall in love. Thomas Pickles (Jonah) and Lizzy Watts (Sophie) star[…]
Deepest Man is a play written by James Scruggs and directed by Mark Rayment. It uses visual projections to submerge the audience under water and in the mind of Dr. Hazzardville Sommers, a doctor whose wife died by drowning. Dr. Sommers finds solace in the words of an Oprah-style talk show[…]
In 2012, the Vineyard Theatre achieved theatrical nirvana for an Off-Broadway theater, a transfer to Broadway with The Lyons, a play written by Nicky Silver, directed by Mark Brokaw, and starring Linda Lavin. No doubt hoping for a similar outcome, the Vineyard got the gang back together and produced Too[…]
A Fable, a new play by David Van Asselt, the artistic director at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, is celebrating a world premiere at Cherry Lane Theatre. A Fable is a joint production of Rattlestick, piece by piece productions, and Rising Phoenix Repertory. It is directed by Daniel Talbott, the literary manager at Rattlestick.[…]
Sam Hunter’s plays explore the existential crisis thoughtful people live through every day. His plays are quiet until they’re loud, devastating until they’re sneakily joyful, and simple until they’re suddenly complicated. The Few, a new play by Hunter at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in the West Village, is set in the office[…]
The glitterati of New York’s Off and Off-Off-Broadway theater worlds gathered Monday night to celebrate The Village Voice 59th Annual Obie Awards. In a traditionally styled awards ceremony at Webster Hall, The Village Voice awarded Obies for performance, playwrighting, design, and direction for productions in New York’s medium (100-499 seats)[…]
The Pearl Theatre Company revives The Rivals, a 1775 comedy of manners by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, directed by The Pearl’s new artistic director Hal Brooks. Carol Schultz reprises the role of Mrs. Malaprop, an elderly woman who prides herself on having advanced language skills, but continuously butchers idioms. It’s a[…]
Flux Theatre presents the world premiere of August Schulenburg’s Jane the Plain, a supernatural comedy that utilizes familiar high school archetypes to tell an uplifting tale of self-discovery and social conflict. Jane the Plain yearns for Scotty the Hottie, the popular but oblivious Quarterback of Plainview High School. The two hookup and[…]
Playwright and performer Edgar Oliver (Helen & Edgar at this year’s Under the Radar Festival) and director Randy Sharp join forces for In The Park, a new solo show performed at Axis Theatre in the West Village. Axis Theatre previously presented East 10th Street also by Oliver and Sharp. It won an Edinburgh Fringe First[…]
The Few is a quiet three-character play by Samuel D. Hunter (The Whale, A Bright New Boise) making its East Coast premier at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. The story of a newspaper written for long-haul truck drivers passing through a lonely Idaho stretch of I-80, whose founder returns after mysteriously disappearing for[…]
The Drama League Awards are presented by The Drama League. The winners will be announced at a luncheon hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson on May 16. For background about the Drama League Awards and other theater awards, click here. Outstanding Production of a Broadway or Off-Broadway Play All That Fall 59[…]
Woody Allen’s 1994 comedy about hapless artists and menacing mobsters coming together to put on a show has been adapted into a splashy Broadway musical. With direction and peppy choreography by Susan Stroman and a score of early jazz numbers, Bullets Over Broadway is Allen’s first stab at a stage musical.[…]
The Drama Desk Awards are presented by the Drama Desk, an organization of critics, editors, reporters, and freelance writers. The winners will be announced on June 1 at a ceremony hosted by Laura Benanti at Town Hall. For background on the Drama Desk Awards and other theater awards, click here. Outstanding[…]
CollaborationTown’s Family Play (1979 to Present) is the result of a two-year residency at IRT and the New Ohio Theater. Family Play is composed of micro-scenes, lasting between 30 seconds and two minutes, in which a cast of six alternates between numerable nameless roles and relationships – parents and children, partners[…]
59E59 Theaters present the U.S. premiere of David Rudkin’s The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock, a stage version of Rudkin’s award-winning radio play for the BBC. This production is part of the Brits Off Broadway Festival. The Lovesong of Alfred J. Hitchcock explores the famous filmmaker’s dreams, desires, and frustrations. It introduces Hitchcock as a man “imprisoned[…]
It’s easy to get distracted by the plot summary of Your Mother’s Copy of the Kama Sutra and miss the brilliance of its commentary on relationships, questions that linger long after the performance: Can you ever truly know another person and what responsibility comes with knowing another’s secrets? The plot: a couple[…]