Fiercely Independent
Written and Directed by Kathleen K. Johnson
Soho Playhouse
March 10, 2019 Production website
☠ out of 5.
This is total crap! God help you if you find yourself sitting here for 80 too long minutes. I did think the premise had promise. Take a married couple that is having trouble and put them in a hotel and go completely off the grid, off the booze and off the insults for 24 hours and see why comes of it. A day without technology – totally loving it from just this idea.
BUT, this couple had so little to say above the cliche’s that you “don’t hear me” and “I need your attention” and “where did we go wrong” and “I think it went bad long ago” and and and and. Continue reading Fiercely Independent→
Blue Ridge
Written by Abby Rosebrock
Directed by Taibi Magar
Atlantic Theatre Company – Linda Gross Theatre
January 4, 2019 Production website
💉💉 out of 5.
Tell me this isn’t a provocative blurb offered about the play – – “A progressive high-school teacher with a rage problem retaliates against her unscrupulous boss and is sentenced to six months at a church-sponsored halfway house, where she attends to everyone’s recovery but her own.”
I love to see new work and Atlantic Theater is a home to some of the best in the city.Blue Ridge is one of those new plays written by Abby Rosebrock and nurtured by the Atlantic Theatre Company.I am not the biggest fan of realism on stage.Sometimes I feel like I am watching a television show on stage. Continue reading Blue Ridge→
Nassim
Written and performed by Nassim Soleimanpour
with guest actor Thom Sesma
Directed by Omar Elerian
New York City Center Stage II
January 2, 2019 Production website
💉💉 out of 5
Man did I want to like this play – because I adore Performance Art.A week at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Scotland is my idea of theatre heaven!But tonight it was Nassim at NY City Center Theatre.Nassim Soleimanpour is an actual playwright from Iran known here in the US for his big hit White Rabbit Red Rabbit – a play that Nassim, himself was never able to see in America as he was having trouble leaving his country and coming to the US. Continue reading Nassim→
The Slave Play
Written by Jeremy O. Harris
Directed by Robert O’Hara
New York Theatre Workshop
December 26, 2018 Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
“White people still have the whip” claims Jeremy O’Harris in his crazy, rollarcoaster of a work, Slave Play. It is perhaps the kinkiest and most unapologetic play I have seen in years. The crux of the play is a montage of three interracial couples (1. a young slave girl and her master; 2. An older plantation mistress with a biracial house slave; and 3. A white indentured laborer and the black male slave who oversees his work. At the beginning of the play, these three couples are caught in the throughs of their erotic fantasy of domination and submission. Continue reading The Slave Play→
Thom Pain (based on nothing)
Starring Michael C. Hall
Written by Will Eno
Directed by Oliver Butler
Signature Theatre
November 24, 2018 Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
Watching Thom Paine (based on nothing), with Michael C. Hall is a 70 minute romp round the existential racetrack that feels very much like Beckett brought back to life.In fact, as I was sitting there, I began to see this play and imagining what it would be like to have seen Waiting for Godot– now told in the 21st century and now played out after the death of Estragon.What would Godot be like after the death of one member of its infamous couple?How would Vladimire hold forth on a world when there was no one to verbally spar with him?Can you imagine the pain of all those jokes and pondering landing on ears that were no longer there to answer.Existential on steroids for sure . . . Continue reading Thom Pain (based on nothing)→
Fiercely Independent
