Krapp’s Last Tape Written by Samuel Beckett Directed by Vicky Featherstone NYU Skirball October 8, 2025 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
I made a huge mistake with seeing Krapp’s Last Tape and I really should have learned my lesson by now. I forgot somehow that when you see Beckett, you really need to sit right up close – no matter what the cost. Whether it is Godot or Endgame or Happy Days you are going to see little movement and most of the play is going to happen on the actor’s face and body. It is NOT the time to scrimp on ticket cost. What made it worse this time, the theatre, Skirball at NYU, is built like a roadhouse where the back rows are really far back. And this man spent most of the time at his desk with his tape recorder AND he had a big mop of hair that shadowed much of his face.
Nothing Can Take You From the Hand of God Written by Jen Tullock and Frank Winters Performed by Jen Tullock Directed by Jared Mezzocchi Peter Jay Sharp Theater October 7, 2025 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
Nothing Can Take You from the Hand of God is a one woman show written and featuring Jen Tullock (known for her work on television’s Perry Mason and Severance). The play which is loosely based on her life follows a popular essayist, known for her biting condemnations of modern Christianity, who releases a book detailing her upbringing as a gay kid in the evangelical south. She is soon confronted by the subject of one of her stories, the woman she fell in love with on a Christian mission trip to Poland eighteen years earlier, who claims the stories are false. We, the audience, are then left the dilemma of how much of the trauma that she is sharing from the book that she is sharing is actual truth and how much is simply false memory trying to fill in the gaps in her past. A central theme in the play is the effect of trauma on memory – can you – or should you believe everything coming out of the victim’s mouth. Does trauma and pain create “false memories”?
Caroline Written by Preston Max Allen Directed by David Cromer MCC Theatre October 5, 2025 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5
Caroline is a story of three generations of women as they navigate intense and complex mother-daughter bonds. At the center of the drama is the doting and determined, single mother Maddie who is taking her 9-year-old-daughter Caroline out of an obviously dangerous home situation (Caroline’s broken arm in a cast is our clue). Mom and daughter are working their way through greasy spoons and car rides to arrive at Maddie’s parents’ home in Illinois. Grandma welcomes the pair, but with bountiful caution. Her last interaction with her daughter Maddie was 10 years and $70,000 ago – – long before Maddie was a mom or even sober.
The Day I Accidentally Went to War Written and performed by Bill Posley Soho Playhouse August 16, 2025 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5
My final one-person show of this visit to NYC was The Day I Accidentally Went to War. Written and performed by Bill Posley, the play confronts his experience as a soldier in Iraq during the War on Terror. The audience follows a deeply personal journey from his childhood through basic training, his unexpected deployment, and eventual homecoming. Apart from his personal story, he is trying to bridge the anti-military with the pro-military.
Ta-Da! Written by Josh Sharp Directed by Sam Pinkerton Greenwich House Theater August 11, 2025 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
Sam Pinkleton has been very busy this giving a career boost to three burgeoning gay actors. He began with Cole Escola and won a Tony for directing him in Oh, Mary! And – tonight I watched his next collaboration with Josh Sharp and his Off-Broadway solo show, Ta-Da. The title makes you feel like you are going to be watching a magic show but there is no rabbit to be pulled out of a hat. Instead, we get a bit of a TED Talk-like personal monologue lasting some 80 minutes that is driven and defined by exactly 2,000 rapid fire projects – for the most part displaying his script or a few clever asides to the script. It felt like a standup comedy routine where every moment was scripted – and that was the very source of its humor. 2,000 slides – – in 80 minutes he had to hit the PowerPoint button every 2.4 seconds to get us to the finish line!
