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Alicia Chesser
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Feb 29, 2024 12:55 pm
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ALICIA CHESSER PHOTO
Obum Ukabam and Ibrahim Buyckes after "Topdog/Underdog"
Theatre North “Topdog/Underdog“ Tulsa Performing Arts Center Feb. 25, 2024
There’s no winning in the game explored in Topdog/Underdog, Suzan-Lori Parks’ 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which Theatre North recently presented in an excellent production directed by Robert S. Walters. That forward slash in the title tells it all: every reality has two faces, and guessing which one’s going to end up on top is as thrilling and futile as trying to follow the hands of three-card monte that scatter throughout this play.
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Jose Davila IV
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Feb 27, 2024 11:12 am
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SHARAH MESERVY PHOTO
Bellario (Jason Bowcutt) listens to Portia (Lily Hye Soo Dixon) during a scene in Balthazar.
Balthazar Plan‑B Theatre at the Studio Theatre in the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center Salt Lake City Feb. 22, 2024
I couldn’t have gotten a better first taste of Utah theater than a performance of Plan‑B Theatre’s new play Balthazar. Intimate, smart, and innovative, the production asked good questions and played with language in ways I hadn’t encountered before.
The show, running through next weekend, adapts William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by placing a closeted Bellario, played by Jason Bowcutt, and a genderfluid Portia/Balthazar, played by Lily Hye Soo Dixon, at its center. It’s a small, two-person production set almost exclusively in Bellario’s stately law office in Padua. It’s a short show, but that doesn’t stop the characters from changing right before our eyes.
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Brook Metayer
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Feb 23, 2024 10:33 am
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MATTHEWBOURNE’S ROMEOANDJULIET Ahmanson Theater Los Angeles Feb. 4, 2024
The Ahmanson Theater in Downtown Los Angeles, twinkling with warm light and towering like a 20th-century castle, looked particularly dramatic on this stormy February night — fitting, for the occasion, as the theater was in the middle of a month-long run of British choreographer Matthew Bourne’s Romeo and Juliet.Bourne is known for his interpretations and revivals of classics like Edward Scissorhands, My Fair Lady, and Sleeping Beauty; his new ballet was advertised as a modern reimagining of the Shakespearean tragedy.
Assemble the stage. Hang the soft goods. Focus the lights. Focus the projector. Coffee break.
Usually, when I write down these words, it’s for my work in production management, where I’m responsible for creating the schedule for “load-in”, the period of time when design and technical elements are installed and prepared in a venue ahead of a given production or performance. Load-in usually begins and ends hours, days, or even weeks before an audience ever enters the space. And usually, if these activities are being performed in front of a sizeable paying audience, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
Not so during Performance Space New York’s third annual Arts Workers Are Artists Too event, where the opening act, a mini load-in of sorts, was but the first of many unusual and exciting pieces created and performed entirely by members of Performance Space’s crew.
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Donald Brown
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Feb 20, 2024 11:27 am
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Curtis Brown Photography
Long Wharf Theatre’s current offering of A View from the Bridge takes audiences to the Canal Dock Boathouse on Long Wharf Drive, to let its sweeping view of the Q bridge and the waters of New Haven Harbor act as scenic backdrop to the play. The play’s setting among Italian longshoremen in Brooklyn is well served by the location, and the theater has thoughtfully provided a shuttle that runs from the nearby IKEA parking lot to the Boathouse.
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RS Benedict
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Feb 19, 2024 4:45 pm
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David Quinones Jr.
The Minutes Albany Civic Theater Albany, N.Y. 2/15/24
While attending a production of Tracy Letts’ The Minutes in New York City, capital region theater director Brian Sheldon noticed the crowd becoming “extremely uncomfortable.” That, he said, is when he knew he had to tell the story. And so he brought the stage play about small town politics to the political and surprisingly small town of Albany (or, as local residents often call it, “Smallbany”). Over the course of one solid act, The Minutes depicts a local government assembly meeting which goes awry — humorously at first, and then horrifically by the end.
The Ruckus Revival, now 25 years old, has had several names and many homes during its existence, but has remained a stalwart of the underground arts scene of the Bay. Its fan base includes attendees who have been showing up for more than 15 years and slogged through Pandemic era parking lot shows.
I had attended once several years back for a March 4th Star Wars version, and knew I was in for a wild ride. This month’s event was Fuck Valentine’s‑themed, and was as raunchy, goofy, and professionally performed as most could possibly hope for.
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Rebecca Salzhauer
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Feb 9, 2024 11:03 am
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Joan Marcus Photo
Ben Levi Ross and Hannah Cruz in The Connector
The Connector MCC Theater 511 W. 52nd St. New York Runs through March 4
Just under halfway through The Connector, we see Ethan Dobson, a wunderkind magazine writer, on a Jersey City street at 3 a.m. interviewing Willis Taylor, a Black man who may have a videotape of the city’s corrupt mayor smoking crack with a teenager. Ostensibly in response to a question from Ethan, Willis lays out work as an “unelected, off-the-books political operative.” He struts around the stage, boasting about being impenetrable in densely rhymed hip hop.
As the song goes on, it becomes clear that we’re not seeing Ethan’s interview. We’re seeing his story. Everything we know about Willis and the tape and the Jersey City street is filtered through Ethan’s subjective lens – and the free-wheeling journalistic liberties he takes.
The Garbologists is a two-person play that tells the story of Danny (played by Jeff Brooks) and Marlowe (played by Bebe Nicole Simpson), two sanitation workers in New York City who have been paired together for the first time. They’re the classic odd couple: Danny is a tall, talkative, salt-of-the-earth white man, while Marlowe is an Ivy League-educated Black woman wrapped tighter than a mummy. Their two styles clash in the beginning of the play, until they start getting to know each other.
THESEVENDEADLYSINS Near Los Globos Through April 14, 2024
I have asked immersive audiences many times what they felt just before an immersive experience begins. There are only two answers I have ever received: leaving the comfortable safety of traditional theater provokes either excitement or anxiety for the possibilities ahead. Standing outside Los Globos in Silver Lake, I felt the tingling that identifies me as a member of the first group. For the next hour, almost anything could happen. As I waited, I became a detective, searching for a way into this new, strange world. The quiet and reserved individual who suddenly appeared beside me and asked my name caught me by surprise. As he led me forward to a secret location nearby, I awaited the moment that brings me back time and again to immersive experiences: when what is possible becomes real.
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Rebecca Giordano
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Feb 4, 2024 10:42 am
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KATE Pasadena Playhouse Pasadena, Cal. Through Feb. 11, 2024
Kate is for everyone. Comedian Kate Berlant’s one-woman show is a rousing send-up of contemporary theater that has united industry insiders, millennial fans, and Pasadena Playhouse’s aging subscribers who doze through a play every other month. We all laughed, snorted, and cheered. Despite Berlant’s frequently ironic tone and bits about media’s traffic in authenticity, at heart, it’s savvy and, dare I say, sincere.
SImona’s Search, a new play by Martín Zimmerman, had a premise that instantly drew me in. Simona (played by Alejandra Escalante) is obsessed with her father, Papi’s (Al Rodrigo), past. She starts to have nightmares about his life. As she learns more about her father’s trauma, she begins to learn more about herself as well.
Escalante and Rodrigo give great performances, and both were fun to watch as they moved through the emotions of the two characters. Christopher Bannow, who plays Simona’s boyfriend Jake, is also strong in the play. There are some genuinely funny moments in the performance, and all three actors are game for whatever pathos or silliness the script asks for.
Unfortunately, some key decisions in how the story in Simona’s Search is delivered hamper their work.
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Rebecca Salzhauer
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Jan 10, 2024 11:20 am
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Maria Baranova Photo
Josefina Scaro, Lucas Salvagno, Ana B. Gabriel and Ben Becher.
The Whole of Time Torn Page 435 W 22nd St. New York City Through Jan. 27, 2024
There’s something about a living room play. You know the kind: An ostensibly ordinary family sits at home, usually in the same room, talking for hours until they’re faced with the staggering reality of how dysfunctional they truly are. It’s gritty and claustrophobic and also bleakly funny. There’s a three-sided interior set and a fourth wall that doesn’t get broken. The realism of it all is the appeal. In The Whole of Time at the Torn Page, a three-story townhouse in Chelsea with a parlor-turned-performance space, the living room becomes the stage.
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Jamil Ragland
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Dec 13, 2023 3:29 pm
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Courtesy Photo
Jen Cody as The Woman.
Christmas on the Rocks ‘23 Theaterworks Hartford Through Dec. 23, 2023
Sitting in the big Santa chair that welcomed visitors into TheaterWorks made me feel like a kid again, excited for the presents that awaited under the tree for me. It was the perfect way to prepare me for an evening of childhood memories, served on the rocks.
