Manahatta Written by Mary Kathryn Nagle Directed by Laurie Woolery Public Theatre November 30, 2023 Production website 💉💉 out of 5.
Manahatta written by Mary Kathryn Nagle takes place in present day Oklahoma as well as present day Manhatta known today as Manhattan. The show follows Jane Snake as she rises to the top ranks of Wall Street, while her family back in Oklahoma struggles to keep their home. The family struggles as they are paying for a mortgage with an ARM – a loan repayment feature that brought down so many families during the housing crash of the 1980s. The show tries to draw a connection between what was happening for this Indian family in the 17th century Manhatta and the current time. The play depicts the arrival of the Dutch settlers representing the Dutch East India Company, who subsequently take the land of and massacre the Delaware Lenape people, driving them out of Manahatta and Lenapehoking.
Life and Times of Michael K Adapted & Directed by Lara Foot In collaboration with Handspring Puppet Company St. Ann’s Warehouse November 29, 2023 Production website 💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
This was simply a magnificent and near perfect production. The first half of the show was particularly very moving. I knew that I was going to be in a for a real treat when I read that the show was going to use puppets as designed by Handspring Puppet Company, who is known for their puppets used in Warhorse. This production of Life and Times of Michael K used dance, film, music and breathtaking puppetry, to tell the story of JM Coetzee’s Booker prize-winning novel from 1983, which gives dignity to a humble man. Born with a cleft lip, institutionalized and treated with contempt throughout his life, Michael gets swept up in a dystopian civil war in South Africa as he attempts to bring his ailing mother back to her childhood home on a farm.
Gutenberg! the Musical! Book, Music, and Lyrics by Scott Brown & Anthony King Directed by Alex Timbers James Earl Jones Theatre September 20, 2023 Production website 💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
In the style of Laurel and Hardy, Burns and Allen, Abbott and Costello – even Beavis and Butt-Head – comedy runs better with pairs. Guttenberg is no exception. Josh Gad and Andrew Rannells proved their comic chops in Book of Mormon – in my opinion – it was the marriage of their comic strengths that launched the decade + run of The Book of Morman. Josh and Andrew would be funny if you just charged them with reading the phone book.
Saw the Musical: The Unauthorized Parody of Saw Written by Zoe Ann Jordon Music and Lyrics by Patrick Spencer & Anthony De Angelis Directed by Stephanie Rosenberg AMT Theatre September 17, 2023 Production website NO 💉 out of 5. ☠ TOTAL POISON
This was, without question, THE VERY WORST PLAY/MUSICAL that I have EVER seen in NYC. It was a torture unlike any torture that the Saw movie franchise could have ever devised. Here are just 10 of the reasons sitting in this musical made me want to “saw” my arm off and run to the streets of NYC shouting, “Free at last! Thank God; Free at last.”
20 Seconds – a play with music Written and Performed by Thomas Sweater Directed and Developed by Jeremy Scott Blaustein The Pershing Square Signature Center September 14, 2023 Production website 💉💉 out of 5.
This is a really tough play to review because the heart of the play is so true, so heartfelt and so important but the stage mechanics of it were so clunky. Clearly this work of love, resilience, and the undeniable “power of music to make real change in a persons’ life” belongs on the stage, but it could have used some better dramaturgy. Tomas Sweater’s autobiographical work leads us from his trouble childhood where music provided companionship to a career as a music therapist.
