Off-Broadway Reviews

'Intimate Apparel' review — Lynn Nottage's 'resplendent' opera stirs the soul

<span style="color:#000000"Intimate Apparel<span style="color:#000000", Lynn Nottage's heartbreaking chamber play, returns to New York as a resplendent opera that magnifies the scale of the original without losing its razor-sharp critique of the toll that women pay for unequal relationships. <span style="color:#000000"What is most remarkable about the new production, which is presented at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, is that it continues to function as a play. There is no...

'SHHHH' review — a quietly affecting meditation on trauma

The sleek, bright lobby of Atlantic Theater Company's Atlantic Stage 2 and its scrappy, dimly-lit stage may as well be entirely different worlds. The intimate space has become a convincing studio apartment (Arnulfo Maldonado designed the set), and cushions in lieu of front-row seats make houseguests of the audience. The coziness borders on voyeuristic: There's a plainly visible toilet at the front of the stage, a bare mattress on the floor nearby, and candles and string lights casting their bits...

'Alex Edelman: Just for Us' review — fighting the haters with comedy and gusto

Logging onto social media these days is like opening a potentially poisonous box of chocolates: You never know what bad takes, misinformation, and hatred you're going to get amid the good stuff. But that's why we use social media, comedian Alex Edelman suggests: to see bad opinions from safely behind our own screens, where we can feel self-righteous for disagreeing without ever having to truly face most of the people spewing their venom. Unless, of course, you're Edelman, in which case you're...

'Long Day’s Journey into Night' Off-Broadway review — welcome to lockdown's journey into night

In a bright stroke in director Robert O'Hara's intriguing but not always persuasive take on Long Day's Journey into Night set in Covid-era 2020, Mary Tyrone spends the opening moments silently practicing yoga. Dressed in leggings and a long-sleeve hoodie, the morphine-addicted matriarch motors through poses — downward dog, cat-cow, pigeon. Welcome to Lockdown's Journey into Night.Yoga actually turns out to be an apt activity for Mary in Eugene O'Neill's 1957 Tony winner. She is always posing....

'The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe' review — Cecily Strong delivers an out-of-this-world performance

If alien life-forms ever come to Earth and require a human representative, take them immediately to Cecily Strong.She's already had the practice, after all, playing Trudy, who is explaining Earth to aliens in Jane Wagner's The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe at The Shed. I'd just as soon nominate Wagner (whose cosmic insights, about life's great importance being found in the small moments, are still captivating 30 years after the play premiered) or Tomlin (who made the play...

'The Streets of New York' review — a 'decadent' holiday musical that's full of joy

Holiday musicals are often cheery but don't quite leave an imprint. So when one does, it sticks like a wet candy cane. The Streets of New York, a musical revival adapted from Dion Boucicault's 1857 play The Poor of New York, is a festive production full of melodramatic storytelling and poppy tunes delivered with merriment by an unforgettable cast.The award-winning musical, previously staged in 2001 at Irish Repertory Theatre, has returned to the Off-Broadway house this winter. The classic...

'Kimberly Akimbo' review — a bittersweet musical packed with surprises

In the opening moment of Kimberly Akimbo, a misfit New Jersey teenager waiting for a ride home stretches her candy choker into her mouth and chomps down on it. Such a kid thing to do.It's a perfect start to this funny-sad musical treat by composer Jeanine Tesori and writer and lyricist David Lindsay-Abaire, based on his play. Like the nibbled necklace, the show gives you something to chew on as it looks at life, death, and what comes in-between."Dad? Are you okay to drive?" Kim asks her father...

‘Is There Still Sex In the City’ review — Candace Bushnell still has tales of the city

On a chilly New York evening in November, two best girlfriends grabbed their $60 coats and tapped their $800 iPhones to pay for a $2.75 ride downtown to the Daryl Roth Theatre to see the latest from Candace Bushnell, a New Yorker as classic as Lady Liberty, a Rockette, and Carrie Bradshaw herself. As they rode the subway, they couldn't help but wonder: how long will we crave glamorized stories from wealthy, fabulous women whose lives we'll never have? Turns out, at least 90 minutes more.The...

'Selling Kabul' review — unrelenting tension muddies the play's 'compelling' emotional core

What happened to the citizens of Afghanistan after the United States military withdrew its forces in 2013 ― especially those who assisted the former occupiers? In Selling Kabul, which just opened at Playwrights Horizons in Manhattan, Sylvia Khoury answers that question and many others by focusing on how the Taliban swooped into the empty power void to claim control and eradicate anyone who aided the enemy. Khoury accomplishes this by presenting the struggle between two small families as a proxy...

'Love Actually? The Unauthorized Musical Parody' review — a brainless good time

The Theater Center is a strange, intimate beast — home to both the longest-running play in New York and a house named in honor of stage legend Jerry Orbach, yet somehow totally nonexistent for anyone but confused tourists lured through its doors. The venue's operators are also among the co-defendants in a recent suit seeking to block the city's vaccination mandate for theaters — though, you'd never guess it from attending Love Actually? The Unauthorized Musical Parody, where a sole usher...