The Pattern at Pendarvis
Written by Dean Gray
Directed by Joseph Megel
New Dog Theatre Company
August 3, 2018
Production website
💉💉 out of 5.

New York is full of gay theatre!  That’s for sure.  Gay men of the city love to hear themselves talk and talk!  These stories are mainly set in Greenwich Village or Castro Street, in Fire Island or Provincetown.  They are set in Boys Town in Chicago or on the beaches of Miami – but were there any gay folk outside of major cities?  Were there any gay people in Rust Belt, Corn Belt, middle of America?  Pattern at Pendarvis answers that question with a resounding or, perhaps, more quiet, “yes.” Continue reading The Pattern at Pendarvis →

Skintight
Written by Joshua Harmon
Directed by Daniel Aukin
Roundabout: Laura Pels Theatre
June 12, 2018
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

What could ever draw Idina Menzel to the stages of NYC without giving her single song to sing?  Skintight was the show that did it!  I worried that the show was going to somehow ride off of her notoriety with Rent, Wicket or even Frozen, but blessedly I was wrong.  This show was rough, crude and certainly a puzzle.  Idina’s character has a father who is massively successful in the fashion industry and has recently taken in a 20 year old man as his partner – as she calls him his “boy toy”.  This is even more disturbing in that she has a son the same age.  And to make it even more, more disturbing she is recently divorced from a husband who decided himself to marry a woman in her twenties.  Everyone in the show wants someone in their twenties!  Everyone wants someone hot! Continue reading Skintight →

The Secret Life of Humans
Written and Directed by
David Byrne and Kate Stanley
59E59 Theatre
June 10, 2018
Production website
💉 out of 5.

Where are we going as a human race?  Are things getting better, or are we walking to our own destruction?  It sort of depends on the day and what section of the news you open first.  The Secret Life of Humans is a transplant from the Edinburgh Festival last summer.  The play covers a huge range of topics from a very collegiate lecture on the origin of man and the weary steps he has taken forward to the nonsense of a Tinder date that leads into a scavenger hunt over the “undisclosed work of un-named scientist working for the British government during World War 2.”
Continue reading The Secret Life of Humans →

Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street
Music and Lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by Hugh Wheeler
Directed by Bill Buckhurst
Barrow Street Theatre
June 9, 2018
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.

And I will take a pie with that!  Tonight I brought my group to the immersive production of Sweeney Todd, Demon Barber of Fleet Street at the Barrow Street Theatre.  I love the perspective of environmental theatre that puts the audience in the center of the equation; it is just to nice to be PART of the story.  We began with the quite good but quite small portioned pies that were served as a pre-show event to get you in the mood for the “real meat” pies that are served in the course of the story. It was fun.  It got you into the environment. Continue reading Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street →

Cyprus Avenue
Written by David Ireland
Directed by Vicky Featherstone
The Public Theatre
June 9, 2018
Production website
💉💉💉 out of 5.

The baby is going to die.  Don’t treat this as a spoiler to the play.  From the very first moment when the baby is handled a bit too objectively – –  you KNOW it doesn’t stand a chance – – – and for ninety terrible – beautiful and outrageously acted moments – we play out the inevitable tragedy.  What made this play a bit brutal from the start was how close it plays through mental illness, depression and even suicide.  Just days ago we lost Kate Spade and Andrew Bourdain.  The world has just become too dangerous, too private, and too painful to take personal tragedy this casually!  Continue reading Cyprus Avenue →