Choir Boy
Written by Tarell Alvin McCraney
Directed by Trip Cullman
Manhattan Theatre Club
Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
January 1, 2019 Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
I loved this play, and I NEVER realized the power of gospel music in igniting passion and brining an audience in.Choir Boy centers on the tensions in a prestigious prep school for African American boys when a flamboyantly gay youth is named leader of their celebrated gospel choir.Essentially is a coming-of-age story for a gay student surviving and thriving in a mostly straight prep school with the strongest and most stringent of values to create “ethical black men.”Continue reading Choir Boy→
I would like to offer my list of the TOP TEN BEST PLAYS and the TOP FIVE WORST PLAYS that I saw in 2018.. This year I was able to take in 33 plays – and I assure you that my list is totally unlike ANY of the various people that review NYC theatre. Please do click on the title of the following plays to read the full review:
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→
Mike Birbiglia’s The New One
Written and performed by Mike Birbiglia
Directed by Seth Barrish
Cort Theatre
December 23, 2018 Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
How does a successful stand-up comedian who has spent a life traveling through the midwest in town’s where “everything centers on the action at the local Applebees” translate to the Great White Way?How can one man fill he stage when he is used to filling a few square yards of staging shoved in the corner of some bar pushing a two drink minimum? Mike Birbiglia is how you do it!
Kinsey Sicks in Things You Shouldn’t Say
Soho Playhouse
December 22, 2018 Production website
💉💉 out of 5.
The Kinsey Sicks is an institution in the gay community, and I never knew it!Thinking this was going to be just another drag show to fill a chilly New York winter, I came to the theatre with little expectations.I imagined that they were going to either 1.) be doing some off-color re-wordings of Christmas tunes or 2,) going to go down the “we are Jews revolting against Christmas, or 3.) Trump commentary. We got some of this – but, thankfully much more.
Choir Boy
