by Cathy Hammer   The world premiere of Education began performances last Friday at 59E59 and its arrival couldn’t be more welcome or timely. The story is centered around two high school students, Mick and Bekka, who use their art to express strong views. When Mick’s art...

    By Samuel L. Leiter   Did dinosaurs and humans coexist? I always thought not but an online search suggests alternative opinions. At any rate, they certainly do in Alexander V. Thompson’s bizarre comedy, Pete Rex, performed by the Dreamscape Theatre. Actually, for all the...

  by Hazen Cuyler   It’s not surprising that The Civilians was the first theatre company to earn a residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Their remounted production of The Undertaking, now playing at 59E59 Theaters, blurs the line between theatre and fine art installation....

    by Carole Di Tosti   A dance of love and antagonistic struggle by Young Woman and Pony William opens the intriguing U.S. Premiere of Knives in Hens by David Harrower, concisely directed by Paul Takacs. The characters’ movements which are embracing and forceful as they make...

  by Susan Hasho   Occupied Territories is a memory play strung together with grit and realism. Two daughters have gathered in their father’s house after his funeral. Jude has been let out of rehab to attend, her sister Helena has been taking care of her daughter Alex and we find...

    by: Carole Di Tosti     How do two artistic geniuses mute their hefty egos and collaborate? How does such teamwork create a kaleidoscopic, visual masterpiece which spins out stunning music in intuitive, glorious symmetry? In the excellent Small World written by...

    By Sandi Durell     Dan McCormick has written a far reaching tale involving a 1710 Stradavarius violin to illuminate relationships between the old world tailor, Gio, and two unfortunate brothers, Bobby and Terry, who spend more time in his shop than anywhere else;...

Songbook Summit, Charolais, Van Gogh’s Ear, and Prince of Broadway       By Barbara & Scott Siegel     In a new season that is, so far, more noteworthy for what is closing rather than for what is opening, we look to the mostly rare and unusual shows that have...

  by Alix Cohen   The Charolais breed of cattle is used quite often in Ireland, bred commonly amongst farmers and often reported as the leading terminal sire for suckler cow herds.   Whatever you’re assuming based on publicity, it’s likely to be inadequate to Charolais. The play is...

    by Carole Di Tosti     Peter and Will Anderson, identical twin jazz saxophonists, are not only consummate musicians, they are fine musicologists. In celebrating the American songbook of our nation’s great composers, since second of August, they have highlighted the...

          by Alix Cohen   Fanfare. Four business-suited men in an elevator erupt with staccato impressions of ongoing commerce as if finishing each other’s sentences as Brian Parks’ Enterprise (playing one final time tonight at 59E59 Theaters as part of the East to...

      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,...