Past reviews, recommendations, profiles, and posts about arts and culture in New York City.
This spring Drama Desk nominee Ed Sylvanus Iskandar directs The Flea Theater’s The Mysteries, a radical interpretation of the Bible. The six-hour long epic is a collaboration among 48 writers commissioned by artistic director Jim Simpson and producing director Carol Ostrow. The playwrights include Tony Award and Academy Award winners and nominees David Henry[…]
Looking for a romantic show that’s not too expensive? Three excellent options: We’re not going to say a single mean thing about Mark Rylance’s Twelfe Night on Broadway. It’s wonderful. But if you don’t already have tickets, you’re not getting them now, unless you’re willing to pay big bucks on the secondary[…]
Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company returns to New York with a loud, raucous, exuberantly fun production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The oft-revived story of love, mistaken identities, and trickery is given new life here with hipster beards, pratfalls, an on-stage slide, and one hell of a brass band. Though decidedly contemporary,[…]
Written by John Cariani, Almost, Maine is the most staggeringly popular play you’ve never heard of (or maybe you have, we’re split 50/50 on the issue). It is currently the most produced play in North American high-schools. That fact notwithstanding, the show did not fare well at its New York premiere[…]
In The Unlikely Ascent of Sybil Stevens, a flight attendant, the eponymous Sybil, survives a devastating commercial plane crash. She is the sole survivor. Sybil is pulled from the wreckage by a friendly Wyoming emergency medical technician (EMT), who helps her recover until she is well-enough to return home to[…]
UPDATE, February 12, 2014 Naked in Alaska announced an extension of its run through March 1, 2014 Original post, January 22, 2014 Naked in Alaska is a one-person show created and performed by Valerie Hager about her 10-year career as an exotic dancer, which followed a serious drug addiction and eating[…]
The Who and the What is a Lincoln Center Theater production by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar. It will have its New York debut in June, following its world premiere last spring at La Jolla Playhouse in California. The Who and the What explores the rift between traditional values and contemporary life[…]
It’s Valentine’s Day. AGAIN. If you’re not a fan, may we suggest a few productions distinctly not in the hearts and roses spirit: If all you want for Valentine’s Day is to stare at some finely toned abs, you can’t do better than the Signature Theater’s Kung Fu, the story of[…]
Playwright and performer Charles Busch (The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife) wrote and stars in The Tribute Artist, a new comedy presented by Primary Stages. Jimmy (Busch) is an aging, out-of-work female celebrity tribute artist, late of Las Vegas now in Greenwich Village. His misanthropic and solitary landlady, Adriana, dies in[…]
Many excellent shows wrap up their performance schedules this week, including Maxamoo recommendations: Women, a modern comedy, at The Kraine Theater; My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer, psychological drama, at The Flea; and The Woodsman, the Tin Man’s romantic backstory, and Beertown, an interactive town hall meeting, at 59E59 Theaters. [metaslider id=8298]
Written by Swedish playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri, author of the critically acclaimed Invasion! (2011), I Call My Brothers makes its U.S. debut with The Play Company at New Ohio Theatre this month. Khemiri developed I Call My Brothers, first a novel then the play, after a bombing in Stockholm in 2010. It is based, in part, on his experience in[…]
Chiara Atik’s Women imagines the characters of the literary classic “Little Women” through the contemporary lens of the hit HBO series “Girls.” It turns out, it’s, like, SOOO hard to be a girl in the 1860s. Nobody understands you, you can’t get your career off the ground and, like, your mom keeps[…]
Real-life wife and husband, Megan Mullally (TV: Will and Grace) and Nick Offerman (TV: Parks and Recreation) are set to take the stage together in The New Group’s Annapurna, written by Sharr White and directed by Bart DeLorenzo. Mullally, an Emmy winner and New York stage regular, and Offerman play a couple separated for[…]
Based on the writings of L. Frank Baum (author of The Wonderful of Wizard of Oz), James Ortiz’s The Woodsman is the tale of Oz’s beloved Tin Man. The story takes place in “Munchkin country,” in the eastern portion of Oz. It centers on Nick, a charming woodsman. Nick falls in[…]
Better, cheaper theater recommendations for this weekend in New York City. [metaslider id=8228]
The Secret Theatre presents Kari Bentley-Quinn’s The Unlikely Ascent of Sybil Stevens, directed by Christopher Diercksen. Sybil, a flight attendant, is the sole survivor of a devastating plane crash. In The Unlikely Ascent of Sybil Stevens she struggles with that life-changing trauma, aggravated by unwanted fame. The Unlikely Ascent of Sybil Stevens is scheduled[…]
Sandy Yaklin Set Designer
Playwright and provocateur Thomas Bradshaw, who’s known for creating shocking and taboo-shattering plays, showcases his latest work, Intimacy with The New Group at Acorn Theatre on Theatre Row. It is full of profanity, nudity, simulated sex, bodily fluids, and racism and attempts to expose the hypocrisy that resides in America’s suburbs towards sex, pornography,[…]
Following a world premiere at the Humana Festival of New American Plays last spring, and successful runs at both the Victory Garden Theater in Chicago and the Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington D.C., the comic drama Appropriate is coming to New York City this February. Written by Residency Five member Branden Jacobs-Jenkins,[…]
FRIGID New York, a winter theater festival presented by Horse Trade Theater Group, will be held for the eighth year this February. Founded in 2007, FRIGID prides itself for being an “open and uncensored” festival that gives participating artists the utmost creative freedom. Unique to the FRIGID amongst theater festivals, 100%[…]