A roundup look at three plays that opened recently Off-Broadway. I highly recommend the Vineyard Theatre's striking "The Amateurs" and Signature Theatre's superb "At Home at the Zoo", but suggest skipping MCC Theater's "Relevance".
All in Play
REVIEW: "America is Hard to See"
“America is Hard to See” by Life Jacket Theatre Company is a new documentary play with music that explores the lives of a community of child sex offenders in Florida, testing the limits of our capacity for empathy and forgiveness. Deeply unsettling, surprisingly humane, and ultimately uplifting, it is a powerful play that provokes more questions than answers, and is guaranteed to leave you changed.
REVIEW: Eve Ensler’s “In the Body of the World”
Eve Ensler’s “In the Body of the World” is an exquisite poem of a solo performance that connects one woman’s journey with uterine cancer to the plight of women worldwide and the very devastation of our earth. Crisp, funny, devastating, and transcendent, this play is a must see.
REVIEW: Martin McDonagh’s menacingly funny “Hangmen”
“Hangmen”, a hilarious dark comedy about vengeance, packs the top-notch twists, violence, and laughs we’ve come to expect from Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. Superbly acted and directed, this sold out limited run will likely end up on Broadway, and for good reason. See it if you can.
REVIEW: “He Brought Her Heart Back In A Box”
Trailblazing experimental African American playwright Adrienne Kennedy’s powerful new play, “He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box”, pieces together an anatomy of interracial young love amidst 1940s Georgia, stewing in the horrific inescapability of history, the tragedy of racism, and contradictions of life in the Jim Crow South. Dense, quick, sentimental, angry, and mysterious, this is one new work from a legend worth checking out.
REVIEW: “Cardinal”
Greg Pierce’s new play “Cardinal” is bland and platitudinous, offering a superficial patina of hot-button discussion about economic and social change with little resolution or ideological point of view; too comfortable and vague, it falls back on easy tropes and says little that is new. Skip this one.
REVIEW: Grappling with buried trauma in “The Homecoming Queen”
“The Homecoming Queen” by Ngozi Anyanwu is a mysterious and reconciliatory meditation on buried trauma, family history, and liberation into one’s true self through the story of a novelist returning to her native Nigeria to visit with her ailing father and confront ghosts from her past. Thematically taut but frustrating in its opacity, the play is a confident offering from an emerging playwright worth watching.
REVIEW: A Woman-less Future in “Mankind”
“Mankind” is a new satire from playwright Robert O’Hara (“Bootycandy”) that tackles gender, reproduction, fascism, and organized religion, but its intriguing and brilliant premise—a future in which women are extinct and men procreate—becomes too diffuse with too many targets.
REVIEW: John Lithgow’s “Stories By Heart”
“John Lithgow: Stories By Heart” is actor John Lithgow’s love letter to storytelling in which he performs two short stories by Ring Lardner and P.G. Wodehouse and shares a few of his own. Mr. Lithgow is charming as ever, and gives an impressive performance, but the show itself is disappointing and long-winded. I wanted more Lithgow, and less Lardner and Wodehouse.
REVIEW: Under the Radar Festival – Dickie Beau’s “Re-Member Me”
British artist, actor, and lip-sync master Dickie Beau's "Re-member Me" is a hilarious and heartfelt ode to the very notion of acting and the gift of performance as he remembers and re-members the ghost of Ian Charleson's iconic performance as Hamlet using his signature style of drag-inspired human puppetry.
REVIEW: Under the Radar Festival – Andrew Schneider’s “After”
"After" is theatrical technician and creator Andrew Schneider's meditation on the mundanity of life, certainty of death, and the balance between; dangerous, dream-like, darkly comical, and deeply observational, it features stunning and inventive stagecraft worthy of putting Mr. Schneider on your radar.
REVIEW: Under the Radar Festival – Adam Gopnik’s “The Gates”
In "The Gates", celebrated New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik brings to life stories about New York, writing, marriage, and parenting from his collected essays, weaving a delightful evening that is unexpectedly and refreshingly entertaining, witty, and poignant.