Past reviews, recommendations, profiles, and posts about arts and culture in New York City.
Performed by Gotham City Improv’s house team, Off The Top Of Our Heads is a short form, game-based improvisational comedy show that has been around for 11 years. The team currently consists of 6 veteran performers. They rotate in and out of scenes under host Marc Adam Smith’s instruction, who provides basic structure to the games[…]
Peter Michael Marino Writer, director, and actor
“A h*t show about a sh*t show” is potentially the greatest tagline for a show ever. It belongs to Peter Michael Marino and his one-man show Desperately Seeking The Exit, about Marino’s experience writing a musical based on the film “Desperately Seeking Susan” with music from Blondie. It cost $6 million, launched[…]
Navigating New York City’s theater scene can be difficult. We estimate 30 and 50 new productions open every week. To help you figure out what to prioritize we gathered every Fall theater preview article we could find and tallied the shows and the number of times each is mentioned. The resulting list[…]
We circulated a survey via Maxamoo Mail, Facebook, and Twitter to solicit input on what Fall theater productions people are most excited about. Here are the results of that survey, ordered from most to least popular. The results are expressed as a percentage of the number of people who voted.[…]
Official Opening Update The Jacksonian, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Beth Henley, is now debuting in New York for a limited run through December 22 at Theatre Row. Although it has been one of the most anticipated shows among critics and theater lovers, the play has received divided reviews. TheaterMania said “you’ll[…]
The first lady of performance art, Marina Abramović, and the forefather of contemporary Avant Garde theater, Robert Wilson, come to New York this Fall with a production that is a little bit of both and unlike anything else we are likely to see this season. The Life and Death of[…]
Although highly anticipated (it made both the critics’ and the public’s HOT lists for new shows in the Fall of 2013), Little Miss Sunshine turns out to be a disappointment. There are many problems. To begin with, the set, from New York Magazine: “[The road trip] is all done with yellow vinyl kitchen chairs on[…]
If there is a theatrical equivalent to a movie blockbuster, Betrayal is it. It has: Hollywood stars (Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz); a Nobel Prize winning playwright (Harold Pinter); and a ten times Tony Award winning director (Mike Nichols). This dream team joins forces in one of Pinter’s most famous plays, Betrayal, a[…]
Aaron and Iskinder (Izzy), the protagonists of The Recommendation, come from strikingly different backgrounds. Aaron is wealthy and white. Izzy is middle class, his father an Ethopian immigrant and his mother a white American. We see Aaron and Izzy establish their friendship in college and then we see, many years later, the[…]
New York Theater Workshop presents Fetch Clay, Make Man from award-winning playwright Will Power and two-time Tony Award-winning director Des McAnuff through October 13, 2013. This play is a fictionalized account of the true, yet unlikely, friendship between world-renowned prize fighter Muhammad Ali and controversial movie star Stepin Fetchit, a man 40 years older than Ali[…]
Founded by Robert Moss in 1971, Playwrights Horizons is dedicated to promoting new work by American theater artists. Some of the most notable plays to come out of New York City in the last 40 years premiered at Playwrights Horizons, including Pulitzer, Tony, and Obie award winners. As an institution it[…]
Part of Origin’s 1st Irish festival, The Life and Sort of Death of Eric Argyle from award-winning Irish theatre company 15th Oak tells the story of Eric Argyle, a recently deceased man who kept a secret for 30 years. Shortly after Eric’s death, he finds himself the subject of a trial. Events from[…]
What New York City theater productions are you most excited to see this Fall? Take the survey below. Tell us what shows on Broadway, off Broadway, and everywhere else in New York you are most excited about and enter to win two tickets to the Off-Broadway show that gets the[…]
The Gallery Players’ new comedy is a revival of Noël Coward’s 1940s classic Blithe Spirit, directed by Sue Glausen. The farce begins as Charles, a self-absorbed socialite-novelist, invites an eccentric psychic, Madame Arcati, to perform a séance as research for his next book. When the séance conjures the ghost of Charles’ late first wife, Elvira, the situation deteriorates,[…]
La MaMa is often credited as the birthplace of “Off Off Broadway” theater. Its founder, Ellen Stewart, opened the La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, or La MaMa E.T.C, or, just, La MaMa, in a tiny Lower East Side basement in New York City in 1961. Stewart dedicated the space to[…]
The Machine is a multimedia, theatrical spectacle that dramatizes the 1997 man versus machine chess competition between Gary Kasparov and IBM’s Deep Blue computer. Written by Matt Charman and helmed by Donmar Warehouse Artistic Director Josie Rourke, it is staged in the round at New York’s vast Park Avenue Armory. Dominating the stage are[…]
Monologist Mike Daisey performs 29 monologues on 29 consecutive nights at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater. The monologues are a mix of first and third person storytelling, sometimes drifting into the fantasy genre. Daisey describes the monologues as each a stand alone piece but also connected to the others by[…]
Photos by Russ Rowland The Cheaters Club refers to three siblings who go on an annual vacation for the purpose of cheating on their spouses. This year, with a new recruit, they travel to Savannah, Georgia, also known as “the most haunted city in America.” Although they are eager to add[…]
Vienna was the cultural and intellectual center of the world at the dawn of the 20th century, it also gestated many seeds of evil that plagued this era. This is the premise behind Final Analysis, which depicts a series of encounters among prominent figures from the days before the first[…]