Caroline, or Change
Book and Lyrics by Tony Kushner
Music by Jeanine Tesori
Choreographed by Ann Yee
Directed by Michael Longhurst
Roundabout Theatre Company Studios 54
October 13, 2021
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

Admittedly, I am not trained or pretend to be a qualified musical theatre practitioner but I do love the art form. I write this as an audience member totally mystified at the art of musicals.  The first thing I noticed was how this musical spoke for this very unique time in Broadway history when almost every venue was working on plays exploring Black Americans and struggles they face every day.  The statue of the Confederate soldier that holds fort in the center of the stage and the center of the story of Caroline or Change became the perfect lightning rod for this “change” in how post-COVID theatre is being practiced.  Artists are certainly exploring change in all arenas.

Pass Over
Written by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu
Directed by Dana Taymor
August Wilson Theatre
October 10, 2021
Production website
💉💉💉💉💉 out of 5

This play was perfection.  There was not a single word or gesture that was extraneous.  Visually the play made sense on the bare stage to a stage full of smoke and affects.  Very seldom have been so moved by a play.

In many ways Pass Over uses the play, Waiting for Godot and applies this story and its absurdist rules to an urban black culture.  Gogo and Didi have been replaced with Moses and Kitch.  The bare stage with a single tree has been replaced with a concrete median with a single imposing streetlight.  Even the classic bowler hats of the hobos Gogo and Didi are replaced by baseball caps that become treasured props to them.  I could go on and on with the comparisons and revaluations made in seeing Godot through this new lense – it was brilliant.  

The Minutes
Written by Tracy Letts
Directed by Anna D. Shapiro
Cort Theatre
March 11, 2020
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5

All of the advertising says that you are going to get a big surprise and twist at the end of this production – and granted you do, and, obviously, I am not going to spill the beans here.  The problem I have with this big moment is that it was rather predictable 40 minutes into the show.  You weren’t able to predict how visual this surprise was going to be – but you knew how the tables were going to get changed and the absent councilman was going to figure into the mix. Continue reading The Minutes →

Grand Horizons
Written by Bess Wohl
Directed by Leigh Silverman
Second Stage Theatre – Helen Hayes Theatre
December 29, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.

This is going to be a gold mine for community theatre everywhere in just a few years.  That I am sure.  Grand Horizons offers roles for  actors in their twenties and seventies and beyond.  It is a simple unit set (apart from a U-Haul truck that you must see to believe).  It is funny and the humor is only mildly adult.  Only would the most conservative of communities find this offensive.  

The plot centers around Bill and Nancy that have spent 50 years together as a couple totally in sync.  But then, in the first moments of the play, the unthinkable happens and Nancy wants out.  This sudden move to divorce after so many years is unimaginble  to their grown children, and they work to unweave their parents predicament.  The play is full of two and three person scenes that are true gems.  Nothing is radically new here – it becomes the very best of TV scripts. Continue reading Grand Horizons →

The Sound Inside
Written by Adam Rappelled
Directed by David Cromer
Studio 54
January 29, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

Wow!   This is the most unexpected play of the entire trip and one of the most beautiful.  I had no idea what to expect – I had read notihng in advance of the show.  I knew that it was at Studio 54 and I expected it to be big and bold.  It was, but in a totally unexpended way!  It was my first surprise in an afternoon full of surprises.  

The play is a two-hander featuring the REMARKABLE Mary-Louise Parker coming to the story with 30+ years of remarkable stage work – she is an entire theatrical event in herself.   The plot revolves around a  writing professor at Yale who has just received a diagnosis of stage 2 cancer. In much of the play, she addresses the audience directly as if reading a novel-in-progress aloud.  The story then eventually includes Christopher Dunn, a freshman in a course of hers called Reading Fiction for Craft.  She is a mysterious teacher with surprises up her sleeve and he is a misfit of Yale that just doesn’t seem to fit in anywhere. Continue reading The Sound Inside →