Wow! For a funny man like Larry David on stage – – nobody and I repeat nobody in the audience coughed up more than a laugh or two for the entire two hours. My row-mates and I thought that the opening scrim with the giant fish that actually winks at you was so cute – but then the curtain opened and we were in the land of TV sitcoms. Fish in the Dark focused on how bad family can behave around the relatives – especially the ones that have just kicked up the bucket. This is always ripe for comedy – but how many times have we seen it and how much better have we seen it! Continue reading Fish in the Dark→
Something Rotten!
book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John O’Farrell
music and lyrics by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick
directed by Casey Nicholaw
St. James Theatre
June 20, 2015
Two massive things collide in this completely and way over the top musical: Shakespeare and Musical Theatre. And collide they do as the story takes us to a second rate Elizabethan acting company as it seeks to outdo Shakespeare fame by coming up with an entire new genre: Musical Theatre. Admittedly, I am not the biggest fan of musical theatre – – but I just found this one way to over the top – – to the point that it became ultimately tedious. It is one show-stopper after another, milking the audience for more and more attention – – begging to be loved.
Gloria
written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
directed by Evan Cabnet
The Vineyard Theatre
June 20, 2015
Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
Talk to any wanna-be actor and they will tell you that his/her number one fear is to spend out their youth in the confines of a cubicle, answering the phone, shuffling paper and dreaming of their next concoction at Starbucks! Gloria gives us such a cruel and competitive cubicle where twenty-somethings fight for the attention of their boss to get better jobs that they will equally disdain!
Office humor can be quite caddy and funny and then, of course, it can become quite crude, as lines are drawn and a feeding frenzy begins on all of the weak and disconnected employees. To avoid going out for drinks with the gang on Friday after work is to risk being the butt of the joke for a long, long time. Continue reading Gloria→
A Human Being Died that Night
by Nicholas Wright, based on the book b y Pula Gobodo-Madikizela
directed by Jonathan Munby
Brooklyn Academy of Music – Fishman Space
June 19, 2015
On a Sunday afternoon after spending ten days with high school students and seeing thirteen shows in ten days, I don’t think my mind was ready to deal with police brutality in aparteid South Africa. Not really the best choice for exhausted teenagers before a flight home. Me bad. This two-hander in a jail cell; some very clinical dramaturgy and acting; and we were off and running. A Human Being Died that Night is adapted from the book by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist hired by the South African government to hold all the of the perpetrates of apartheid responsible for their enormous violence and human rights violations. Continue reading A Human Being That Night→
David Mamet without the yelling and foul language? What has happened? Both one acts give the audience a taste of radio theatre where little is happening on stage but much is happening in the quite story-telling.s “Prairie du Chien”, the first of the stories, is a quite murder mystery that is primarily told as a way of passing time on a moving train. One man telling the story and another listening. At first I wandered what was the function of the other less important characters playing cards, serving pages, and tapping their fingers.. Then I closed my eyes and found out how much they were contributing to the rhythm and mood of the story. They became the musical background for the Ghost Story. Continue reading Ghost Stories: The Shawl and Prairie du Chien→
ish in the Dark
loria
A Human Being Died that Night