Truth’s a Dog Must to Kennel Written and performed by Tim Crouch Fringe Encore Series by the Soho Playhouse January 5, 2023 Production website 💉💉 out of 5.
This was a weird one – even for the land of Fringe Theatre. The heart of the play was one man, Tim Crouch wearing a virtual reality set of goggles. With the goggles on he places himself in the role of the Fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear. He describes being in the actual role during a live performance of Lear where actors and scenes are playing around him as he describes what he is experiencing. Perhaps even more interesting was his X-ray like vision of the audience.
Leopoldstadt Written by Tom Stoppard Directed by Patrick Barber Longacre Theatre January 4, 2023 Production website 💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
This was one tough tough chew. This was one play that I wished I could have read or, ideally, seen twice. There were just so many story lines; so many years covered; so many characters, with such rich; so many mathematic illusions, Zionist history, and commentary on modern art , AND poetic language that I was treading water trying to gather as much as I could. Leopoldstadt is a late career masterpiece likely Tom Stoppard’s plays as he is well in his 80’s ,and he spends so much time in making his plays. But this is one great exit play! The play is much like a kaleidoscope – taking us through a boisterous Christmas party in 1899, a Passover in 1990, and a farcical circumcision in 1924.
I would like to offer my list of the TOP TEN BEST PLAYS and the TOP FIVE WORST PLAYS that I saw in 2022. This year I was able to take in 17 plays – (that damn virus finally over!) 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:
Becky Nurse of Salem Written by Sarah Ruhl Directed by Rebecca Taichman Lincoln Center Theater at the Mitzi E. Newhouse December 31, 2022 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
Sarah Ruhl’s latest play is about a descendant of a tried and convicted American witch. The play was inspired by the rage that the playwright Ms. Ruhl felt after seeing a production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and how it distorted the motivation of the Salem Withc Trials to make them about young women’s desire for an older man. – ie – – Abigail was 17 in the play but in real life she was 11. That changes everything.
Ohio State Murders Written by Adrienne Kennedy Directed by Jenny Leon James Earl Jones Theatre December 29, 2022 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
I could watch Audra McDonald read the phone book and likely be moved by the whole experience. Everything she touches is full of humanity and such care. There is no wonder that she has racked up so many Tony awards. She really is that good. This play is tailored for emotional depth and vocal powers. The story is fictional and placed on the segregated campus of Ohio State University in the late 1940s. Adrienne Kennedy, the gifted playwright attended the school then, and her use of detail, from campus geography, the dorm-life racism, the day-in-day-out bias and outright hate experience makes this play one of the richest explorations of racism that Broadway has seen for awhile.
