Past reviews, recommendations, profiles, and posts about arts and culture in New York City.
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella doesn’t go by the book. Literally. A contemporary take on a tale by the Brothers Grimm and popularized by Disney, the musical stays (mostly) true to the beloved story’s roots. This version, however, adds a bit of a twist: Cinderella doesn’t lose a glass slipper, at least not[…]
The Incubator Arts Project presents Other Forces, an annual festival of independent theater. In its fifth edition, it presents five productions: a performance for three in a taxi; a modern collection of arias and recitatives; a multimedia reenactment of interviews with Billie Jean King; a musical fantasia with wizards; and an improvisational dance performance.
Founded in 1995, Rude Mechanicals (or Rude Mechs) is an innovative theater collective based in Austin, Texas. LCT3, the wing of Lincoln Center Theater committed to producing work by new artists, commissioned Rude Mechs to create a new work premiering in New York City in January 2014. That production, Stop Hitting[…]
American Realness is an annual festival of experimental dance and category-defying performances that explore the theme of realness. Thomas Benjamin Snapp Pryor, in partnership with Abrons Arts Center, created and curates the festival. American Realness is celebrating its fifth anniversary and this year offers a feast of performing arts over 11[…]
Better known as a successful 1995 film with Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood and originally a best-selling novel, The Bridges of Madison County is premiering on the New York stage this winter in a musical adaptation. It’s the maudlin story of a love affair between a lonely married woman and a charming[…]
SQUIRTS: New Voices in Queer Performance is an annual series of performances in January curated by Dan Fishback, a writer and performer and the director of the Helix Queer Performance Network. Each evening includes performances by multiple artists and features one emerging queer performer and one guest star veteran of[…]
Orietta Crispino Actor, Director, Writer
Following a successful run this past summer on Governor’s Island, Jody Oberfelder’s 4CHAMBERS finds a new home in Brooklyn for eight weeks this winter. 4CHAMBERS is an immersive performance of dance, theater, film, and music in which a limited audience of 12 ventures through a space transformed to represent the human heart.[…]
Most of the attention surrounding Daniel Kitson’s latest show, Analog.Ue, at St Ann’s Warehouse focused on the method of storytelling (prerecorded on tapes), rather than the story itself. Now that the shock and disappointment of not hearing Kitson perform live and/or the awe and enthusiasm for Kitson’s proficiency with old-school tape[…]
Outside Mullingar, a romantic comedy by Pulitzer, Oscar, and Tony winning playwright John Patrick Shanley, will have its world premiere at the Manhattan Theatre Club in January 2014. Starring Emmy-winner Debra Messing and Tony-winner Brian F. O’Byrne, Outside Mullingar is the story of Rosemary and Anthony, two eccentric, introverted, going-on-40 neighbors living on[…]
La Divina Caricatura (part 1: The Shaggy Dog), co-presented by St. Ann’s Warehouse and La MaMa, is probably not for everyone (as evidenced by the dozen or so people who left at intermission). It’s 3 hours long, full of profanities and puppet sex and nudity, and the themes are largely metaphorical[…]
Before Squonk’s Mayhem and Majesty begins a representative from 59E59 admonishes the audience to silence their phones and, he adds, “don’t look for a story in the performance.” Indeed, Mayhem and Majesty, a multi-media, multi-sensory concert, combines music, lights, video projections, and various visual effects to create an abstract, dream-like[…]
Following a successful run earlier this year, Fraser Grace’s intense play Breakfast with Mugabe returns to the New York stage with its original cast for an 8-week run on Theatre Row. In the early 2000s, reports emerged that Robert Mugabe, the powerful, tyrannical president of conflict-torn Zimbabwe, was undergoing treatment[…]
Prototype is an annual festival of opera-theater and music-theater works in New York City. It is curated by Kristin Marting and Kim Whitener of HERE Art Center and Beth Morrison of Beth Morrison Projects. It launched in January 2013 and is one of the newer festivals on New York’s busy January festival calendar. This year Prototype[…]
COIL, produced by Performance Space 122 (PS 122), is an annual theater festival in New York City featuring contemporary performance artists. Celebrating its 9th anniversary, this year COIL is focused on New York-based artists with nine theatrical productions at venues across the City, plus a “Red + White Party” curated by Elevator[…]
Founded by Italy-to-New York transplant Orietta Crispino, Theaterlab is an artistic laboratory dedicated to studying the nature of live performance. It is both a venue for new and experimental works including theater, music, and visual art and a producing organization. Theaterlab sublets space for the development of various projects, such[…]
Based on Jacques Rivette’s 1961 black-and-white film of the same name, Paris Belongs to Us is a multimedia theater production directed by Doris Mirescu. This production uses a wall to block the actors and main set from the audience and, instead, viewers watch the live work unfold on three side-by-side digital projections[…]
Under The Radar is an annual festival in New York City that showcases innovative and experimental theatrical performances by cutting edge artists from the U.S. and around the world. It is celebrating its 10th anniversary in 2014. Curated by Mark Russell and Meiyin Wang, this year Under The Radar will have events at five venues[…]
From Medium: About a year ago I completed a White House Fellowship at the Office of Management and Budget. I returned to New York City, but rather than return to my job as a mergers and acquisitions attorney, I founded Maxamoo, a company bridging the divide between New York City’s amazing[…]
The Night Alive is a new play by Conor McPherson transposed to the Atlantic Theater Company’s stage from London’s Donmar Warehouse. McPherson is the Irish playwright behind such haunting masterpieces as The Weir (which just had a celebrated revival at Irish Rep) and The Seafarer. McPherson fans may find The Night Alive to be[…]