by Lisa Reitman-Dobi   Torben Betts’s devastating comedy is a glorious reminder that sharp theater is alive and kicking. Directed by Stephen Darcy, Invincible will make you laugh, break your heart and leave you gobsmacked.   Wickedly au courant, Invincible takes...

  Or, plus ça change, plus c’est le même chose by Beatrice Williams Rude Angel & Echoes are two plays with the same theme: the oppression of women. It spans time, geography, ethnicity, race, and religion. Sometimes the oppressor is an outside invader, sometimes home grown. Women have...

      By Sandi Durell     Playwright Bruce Graham has tackled the kind of topics many prefer to sweep under the rug, more so, since we’ve become so politically correct as a nation and given the nature of the not unexpected backlash.   When we meet Ray (Robert...

By Beatrice Williams-Rude Quick! Don’t dally!! Race to get tickets for Kunstler, the splendid play by Jeffrey Sweet featuring a dazzling, the-sky’s-the-limit performance by Jeff McCarthy as the larger-than-life lawyer seen by many as the defender of the faith–faith in the Constitution....

    By Eric J. Grimm     Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, gets an expansion in Matthew Spangler and Benjamin Evett’s Albatross, a one-man show performed by Evett that currently runs at 59e59 Theaters. Coleridge’s macabre tale of a mariner...

  by Carole Di Tosti   Once again the LaBute New Theater Festival proves to be a rollicking evening of marvelous mayhem with surprising sardonic twists you won’t see coming until they are upon you. The evening of four one-act plays slips by quickly because of the faultless...

    Terms of Endearment, written by Dan Gordon, opened at 59e59 Theaters on Wed. November 16 and Theater Pizzazz’ Mark Ryan Anderson was there to greet the cast and some of the attendees. The play, based on Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry’s book and Oscar winner...

      By Sandi Durell     Don’t compare this stage adaptation by Dan Gordon to the highly celebrated Academy Award winning movie of 1983, written by James L. Brooks, both based on the book by Pulitzer Prize winner Larry McMurtry, as it is limited, due to constraints...

    by Marilyn Lester   High marks go to Theater 808 for tackling Helen Edmundson’s 1993 play The Clearing, a drama pulling no punches in its themes of conquest, genocide, military oppression, civil liberties, loyalty, and personal fear and sacrifice. It’s set in one of the...

  by Carol Rocamora   Watching Maestro, Hershey Felder’s inspiring one-man show about the life of Leonard Bernstein, I wondered who to admire more – the subject of this bio-play or the remarkable artist who wrote and performed it.   Felder, a Canadian born actor, pianist,...

    By Sandi Durell     Pity the poor puppet bears – a scraggly polar bear and a more scraggly koala – and their little female Captain bear Lazara (ill and still frozen after 700 years in a little box), and other, all in their space ship SS Quickfast now out of energy and...

      By Beatrice Williams-Rude   Touch, written by Toni-Press Coffman, is a play about transcendent love, soul-searing loss, and the many modes of mourning.   The work opens with, Kyle, the protagonist, telling his life story, holding forth alone on stage for easily an...

  A female photographer gets her due in a historical drama       By Joel Benjamin   Alice Austen (1866-1952) was a rarity, a female photographer who recorded the everyday life of Staten Island and New York City from the end of the nineteenth until the middle of the...

    By Myra Chanin   I am a big-time, longtime Alan Aychbourn fan. I particularly love the plays he brings every other year to 59e59’s annual Spring Series Brits Off Broadway, not only because he writes and directs them, but because he brings along a cast of British actors who,...

  by Carole Di Tosti     The pursuit of happiness and a couple’s dreams of a lifetime often involve the idea of purchasing a new house to raise a family. This social folkway has been venerated for generations. Truly, none of us desires to be homeless, without status, struggling...

  An imaginative, if awkwardly constructed, rethinking of the themes of sexual exploitation in Madama Butterfly.         By Joel Benjamin   The Brits Off-Broadway series, now in full swing, is notable for its range of styles and subject matter. Butterfly, created,...

      By Sandi Durell     “It’s complicated” – the perfect statement to open Aaron Davidman’s one-man journey through and about the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. Is it the Israelis, the Arabs, Iran, the wars in 1929, 1982, 1984, 2004 or maybe it’s about the...

  The Random Loneliness of Social Media Connection   by Carole di Tosti   Do you have a more intimate relationship with your hand held devices than you do with your friends, family and significant other? If so, then Lia Romeo’s sardonic, “LOL” Connected, insightfully directed by...

    by JK Clarke   Sometimes theater should make you uncomfortable. And it’s usually those uncomfortable plays that have the deepest impact and make you think most seriously the issues at hand. Barry Malawer’s Dead Dog Park, playing through this weekend at 59E59 Theaters is one...

      The Good Girl: A Futuristic Time Warp Into The Present   by Carole Di Tosti   The Good Girl, written by Emilie Collyer, directed by Adam Fitzgerald and presented by Joyseekers Theatre, slyly, ineluctably moves toward an inevitable conclusion after manifesting...

        By Eric J. Grimm       Acclaimed saxophonists Peter and Will Anderson take on the music of Count Basie and Duke Ellington in their new show The Count Meets the Duke, now playing at 59E59 Theaters. The polished evening of jazz classics from the form’s...

        by: Susan Hasho         The play H2O by Jane Martin opens: A young woman, Deborah, enters onto an open stage and says she is a Christian and an actress, (“Actually, Jesus doesn’t have much to say about actresses.”) and moves off. Barefoot guy,...

    By Samuel L. Leiter   Just in case your stomach is saying no, don’t go, be assured that, despite its title, Gluten! is actually gluten-free although it might be even more digestible if there were less of it. The only time you hear the eponymous word is in a comical song...

          by Eric J. Grimm   Mark Thomas, the UK comedian whose one-man show, Cuckooed, is currently playing at 59E59, puts us all to shame. As a tireless activist, he has taken on big corporations guilty of human rights violations for decades. As if his record...

      By: Sandi Durell               This is a very contemporary telling of an old tale – bored math teacher makes advances to young 15 year old student resulting in an affair – but in the mix are attached appendages called cell phones....