Created by 600 Highwaymen for Talking Band Featuring Ellen Maddox & Paul Zimit Perelman Performing Arts Center February 16, 2024 Production website 💉💉💉💉💉 out of 5.
The Following Evening was a piece of theatre history and theatre magic. Theatre legends were working alongside the cutting edge of theatre present. The production was created by 600 Highwaymen – one of perhaps the most exciting experimental theatre companies in the world stage today. Highwaymen (Abigail Browde & Michael Silverstone) have been making performances since 2009. Their work – which blends theater, dance, contemporary performance, and civic encounters – illuminates the magic and potential of people coming together.
Appropriate by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins Directed by Lila Neugebauer 2nd Stage Theatre at Helen Hayes Theater February 15, 2024 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
Appropriate was a very difficult play to sit through- particularly the first act. I cannot remember the last play that I have seen in which there was so much yelling and non-stop, unrelenting anger. From the first moment to the Act 1 curtain, every single character was raging about something. And the problem when everything is yelled out – nothing is angry – and where do you go from there. We, the audience, take yelling as the norm so when you really DO want to yell or highlight and attack we don’t even notice it – you have already used that ammunition. Granted, Sara Paulson is a truly gifted actress and a powerhouse on stage. She has a charisma on stage that is very rare – but even she became a leader in the anger campaign and spent Act 1, and, unfortunately, most of Act 2 angry and yelling away.
The White Chip by Sean Daniels Directed by Sheryl Kaller MCC Theatre Space February 14, 2024 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
Addiction plays are very popular these days. Broadway is very busy with the musical Days of Wine and Roses (which I saw and didn’t like for all its preachiness and datedness) and Off-Broadway has The White Chip. As The White Chip started with its minimal set in a sort of AA meeting space with 3 actors taking on a multitude of roles, I thought it was going to be a corny comedic take on the whole drinking thing – but I was happily surprised. The White Chip was really a rather remarkable ride taking an alcoholic from those early days of Mormon Church challenges and teen drinking to full blown, toxic drunk, to recovering alcoholic.
Prayer for the French Republic written by Joshua Harmon Directed by David Cromer Manhattan Theatre Club February 13, 2024 Production website 💉💉💉 out of 5.
In 1791 France became the FIRST European country to fully free its Jewish population, and for the for more than 200 years, French rabbis spoke a special sabbath benediction: “may France enjoy lasting peace, and preserve her glorious rank among the nations”. For centuries, Jewish identity in France, despite periodic waves of hate crimes, has been tightly linked to the state but in Prayers for the French Republic that contract shows signs of strain. In the first moment of the play, the son who insists on wearing a yarmulke to his school, enters the home, badly beating, having been accosted by an anti-Semitic group of men on his way home.
The Apiary by Kate Douglas Directed by Kate Whoriskey 2nd Stage/Tony Kiser Theater February 11, 2024 Production website 💉💉 out of 5.
The Apiary just didn’t do it for me. I am glad that it didn’t take more than 80 minutes to explore its one note look into science vs. morality. For me, the play harkened to theme and variation of Little Shop of Horrors – – here, in a laboratory charged with keeping bees alive – bees are found to have a taste for dead humans and if you want to keep the bees alive and multiplying, then you need to supply them with bodies – lots and lots of bodies. So, just like Little Shop, the task is easy at the start, but soon becomes grizzly and overwhelming at the end. Worse than overwhelming, it just got predicable.
