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 →

The Inheritance
Written by Matthew Lopez
Directed by Stephen Daldry
Ethel Barrymore Theatare
December 26, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

Nothing is more wonderful then curling up with a good book – a good thick book that will take you though the lives of many people and occupy many hours of page turning –  and when the book is a good one the time just cannot be beat!  In Matthew Lopez’s beautifully sculpted play, The Inheritance you in in for a full day’s read in the best possible sense – it is being read live right in front of you.  The seven plus hours of production occupies your day from 2:00 to 10:00pm and gives you four intermissions and a dinner break.  It is theatre heaven!    The staging even provides 28 men sitting around the giant coffee table of a stage – all in bare feet – ready to take us through the journey. Continue reading The Inheritance →

Ink
Written by James Graham
Directed by Rupert Goold
Manhattan Theatre Club
June 21, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

Ink is an explosion and of far more than just ink.  I have never found a play that winds up so hard and so fast.  The punch that it delivers at the end of Act 1 truly hit me viscerally and left me limping back to the lounge for the men’s room. It is one fast furious roller coaster.  I had thought that I was going to see one of those comparatively gentle, sentimental plays such as “The Front Page” that explores the backstory of what it takes to put out a daily newspaper in the American 40’s.  Well, this is London and this is nothing but brutal.  Continue reading Ink →

Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus
Written by Taylor Mac
Directed by George C. Wolfe
Booth Theatre
June 12, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.

I love this short gross, over-the-top mess of a play.  The idea of tacking on a coda to Titus Andronicus, one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest plays is really novel and compelling.  When the curtain comes up and you see a pile of life-size puppet bodies piled up to the top of the proscenium arch, you know that you are not going to be in for a subtle evening at the theatre!   Continue reading Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus →

Oklahoma
Music by Richard Rogers
Book and Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Directed by Daniel Fish
Circle in the Square
June 12, 2019
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

I have never seen a golden age musical go down this plywood covered path before!  Wow!  When I first entered the stage I thought that Oklahoma was going to be more gimmick than art.  The thrust stage was all boarded up in raw plywood – the floor and all the walls.  Crockpots of chili were cooking away on long picnic tables where front row audience members were seated.  Audience lights were going to be kept up for the majority of the production.  I thought this was going to be a long night. Continue reading Oklahoma! →