Off-Broadway Reviews

'The Last of the Love Letters' review - a haunting meditation on isolation

A woman languishes in her room. One moment she's sprawled across the bed, burrowing beneath the covers, the next she bolts upright and pulls the sheets tight, trying to align her inner and outer worlds. When she opens her mouth to speak ("It's important that you know..."), it's as though an overstuffed hallway closet has tumbled open in her mind, demanding she make sense of its unwieldy mess.We've all been there, perhaps more often in the recent past than ever before: Alone with our thoughts,...

‘Semblance’ at New York Theatre Workshop raises more questions than it answers

Black women are not a monolith. Our skin tones range from coffee, light and sweet, to dark rich licorice. We enjoy different genres of music, eat a variety of cuisines, journey down a host of career paths, and have original styles of dress. And still, the world constantly lumps us all together as if we are one, all living the same experience. Whitney White, writer and director of the new filmed theatrical experience, Semblance, attempts to initiate an examination of how the New York Theatre...

Bioh and the Bard make an imperfect marriage in 'Merry Wives' at Shakespeare in the Park

In one scene in The Merry Wives of Windsor at Shakespeare in the Park, Falstaff (played by Jacob Ming-Trent in top form) declares his intentions to dishonor the wealthy Mister Ford by seducing Ford's wife: "I shall hang like Lebron James on his cuckold's horns!" The fact that the line, a mash-up of contemporary lingo and Shakespearean verse, works so well is a testament to Trent's committed performance.Playwright Jocelyn Bioh has adapted Shakespeare's Merry Wives into a modern play. She does so...

‘Seven Deadly Sins’ rouses downtown NYC back to life with shocking, powerful theatre

It's strange to experience a show like Seven Deadly Sins in New York City right now. Performed in multiple storefronts to a guided audience using headsets, the production is a slick, seamlessly stage managed affair. Yet buzzing all around it is, well, chaos — the joy, mayhem and noise of a city returning to tumultuous life. On a Friday evening heading into Pride weekend, the Meatpacking District, where the show makes its home, was teeming with exultant activity. Many of the partiers maneuvering...

Enjoy a bawdy, boozy night of revelry at 'Speakeasy'

It's a snap to embrace a show that knows itself. Speakeasy, a bawdy and boozy burlesque, goes down easy in the lower level lounge of the newly reopened Bond 45 restaurant in the Theatre District. From the get-go the risque revue acknowledges what it's got up its sleeve — and elsewhere.Miss Lulu (a persuasive Jada Temple), the mistress of ceremonies, opens the evening by likening what's about to unfold in the 75-minute entertainment to its storied Times Square location. "It's a little rough," she...

Review of Roundabout Theatre Company's 72 Miles to Go... at Laura Pels Theatre

In the chaos of what is laughingly termed 'political discourse' in the U.S., words like 'Dream Act,' and 'we did it the right way' fly through the air in various tones of self-righteousness. But how many of us know how these words play out in real life. In 72 Miles to Go..., now playing Roundabout Theatre Company's Laura Pels Theatre, playwright Hilary Bettis introduces us to a Mexican family caught in the mangle of hypocrisy and red tape that is America's 'path to citizenship.' This family...

Review of Endlings at New York Theatre Workshop

Three elderly haenyeos (female deep sea divers), on a small island in the Korean Peninsula, make a living by diving daily into the sea to harvest seafood and shellfish. They chat in a well-honed rapport about their absent families, their impossible dreams, and hassle of aging. They are endlings: The last of a dying breed of independent, iron-willed matriarchs that has long since fallen to industrialization. But Han Sol, Go Min, and Sook-Ja carry on, rather swimming than crawling unburthened...

Review of Unknown Soldier at Playwrights Horizons

When the composer/lyricist Michael Friedman died, in 2017, at age 41, he left behind a trove of musicals, some more finished than others. His biggest hit, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, brought a blazing emo rock intensity to the Battle of New Orleans. Conversely, Playwrights Horizons' new staging of Unknown Soldier brings recitative and forlorn ballads to World War One. With the book and additional lyrics by Daniel Goldstein, and haphazardly directed by Trip Cullman, this production of a work...

Review of Manhattan Theatre Club's The Perplexed at New York City Center

The Perplexed, a new American play commissioned by Manhattan Theatre Club and performed on Stage 1 at New York City Center, can be described as quite... perplexing.The tragi-comedy, written by Richard Greenberg and directed by Lynne Meadow, focuses on two very wealthy New York, Upper East Side families, the Stahls and the Resniks, who gather for the first time in many years to celebrate the wedding of their children. In addition to the long feud between the families, each individual is fighting...

Review of Coal Country at the Public Theater

Twenty-nine small lights hang above the Public Theater's Anspacher stage, one for each victim of the 2010 Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster. The absence of these sons, fathers and brothers brought heartbreak to the town of Montcoal, West Virginia and that grief is palpable in the beautifully rendered, impeccably cast production of Coal Country, a documentary-style chronicle of the worst U.S. mine explosion in 50 years, and its aftermath, made up primarily of interviews from family members as well...