Off-Broadway Reviews

'Corsicana' review — in heartfelt new play, 'a song is a family'

In the program note for his new play, Corsicana, playwright Will Arbery writes that he wanted to only write, "Corsicana is a small city in Texas. This play is about four people who live there." In that spirit, I'll summarize his show just as simply: An adult brother and sister have lost their mother. Through a family friend, the brother connects his sister with a local artist/songwriter, hoping them writing a song together will help her cope.The minimal plot leaves room for a delicate character...

'soft' review — in moving new play, Black boys struggle to bloom

One of the most well-known songs in the 1967 tribal love-rock musical Hair is a ballad called "Easy to Be Hard" whose lyrics are, "How can people be so heartless? / How can people be so cruel? / Easy to be hard / Easy to be cold." That song, sung by a woman to a man, points to how when it comes to masculinity, being hard and unfeeling is the default. And as dramatized by Donja R. Love's moving new play soft, the pressure to be hypermasculine is even more pronounced among Black boys, where...

'The Bedwetter' review — Sarah Silverman's memoir becomes a darkly comedic musical

Sarah Silverman's pungently irreverent and profane brand of comedy makes the leap into musical theatre with her funny but uneven new show, The Bedwetter.If a fifth grader belting about pee and impersonating Oscar winner Sally Field cutting the cheese makes you LOL, then you may really, really like this Atlantic Theater Company production. There's more bathroom humor on tap — considering the title, of course there is. Drawn from Silverman's 2010 memoir, the taboo-toppling star is all over the...

'Snow in Midsummer' review — classic Chinese drama becomes a modern murder mystery

Complain as we might about the rapidly rising New York heat, getting snow in midsummer would be a nightmare. So, too, is it in New Harmony, China in Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig's play of the same name at Classic Stage Company, albeit for much graver reasons than needing to dig out your extra layers. Snow in Midsummer backloads and occasionally overextends its drama, but it's a mostly suspenseful watch based on a time-honored story.Cowhig's show is an adaptation of The Injustice to Dou E that Touched...

'...what the end will be' review — generational family drama has good bones, but little nuance

In ...what the end will be, an always earnest but seldom subtle play about three generations of gay, Black men living together in Atlanta, a recurring image nods to the power of scent to trigger memories. To recall the late love of his life, the elderly patriarch Bartholomew Kennedy (Keith Randolph Smith) holds the deceased man's boxers to his nose. It's a startling stage picture.That said, audience members seeking a whiff of nuance or insight in this Roundabout Theatre Company production will...

'Dreaming Zenzile' review — a simple yet stunning tribute to a singer's legacy

There's a line at the beginning of Dreaming Zenzile, the new musical about South African singer Miriam Makeba, that goes, "Your voice will continue the fight for freedom long after you're gone." Writer/performer Somi Kakoma proves this to be true. Her poetic retelling of the music pioneer's life is simple without being underwritten, hopeful without being kitschy, and celebratory of Makeba's music as well as her activism, leaving the audience inspired to continue her fight for justice and...

'Fat Ham' review — comedic 'Hamlet' adaptation serves revenge with a side of ribs

Count on a play winning a Pulitzer Prize days before beginning New York performances to ramp up not just anticipation but also, let's face it, expectations.So it goes for Fat Ham, a broad and rollicking riff on Hamlet at The Public Theater. Running 90 unbroken minutes, it is by turns hilarious, chaotic and weirdly lovely — like when a young man touches another and tells him: "You feel like a fabric that cost too much." In the end, the play isn't all that deep, but it bursts with so much heart...

'Exception to the Rule' review — an eye-opening stint in detention

With Exception to the Rule, provocative playwright Dave Harris takes audiences into the broken carceral system that exists within predominantly Black high schools across the nation. The only problem with this Roundabout Theatre Company production is that it gilds the lily by presenting the action as if it were a thriller, when the play is actually documentary theatre.The show opens with a group of rowdy kids reporting to detention. There is Mikayla (Amandla Jahava, a total spitfire) whose...

'Golden Shield' review — compelling yet busy play gets lost in translation

In Act II of Golden Shield, the ambitious new drama by Anchuli Felicia King, the narrator takes us through the English proverb "too many cooks in the kitchen." What that proverb means, says the narrator (played with energetic charm by Fang Du), is "misguided benevolence. Too many people trying to help at once." It's a popular adage, and it can also be used to describe King's play: compelling but overstuffed with ideas.Golden Shield is named after the firewall in China that enables the country to...

'The Vagrant Trilogy' review — a heartbreaking story of Palestinian displacement

During a heated exchange in Part 2 of Mona Mansour's The Vagrant Trilogy, the Palestinian scholar Adham, while living in London, says of his brother stuck in the Middle East, "He only knows how to be a refugee and wait." His ex-wife, who wants Adham to help him get his brother out of there, snaps back, "It's so easy to say when he's just an abstraction to you." From over here in New York, it's easy for us to see the plight of refugees as an abstraction, be they Palestinians, Ukrainians, or any...