All in Critic's Pick
Following a hit run Off-Broadway last year, Harvey Fierstein’s landmark gay play “Torch Song” is back on Broadway with an abridged text and title, but its heart and humanity intact. On second viewing, this production feels more muted and a bit too comfortable, but the performances are richer and better, and the subject matter as timely as ever. An uproarious comedy with a suite of characters you come to love, “Torch Song” is a must-see of the fall (or any) season.
“The Prom”, a sweet and subversive original new musical, is a delicious gift from the musical comedy gods. This tale of four Broadway performers descending on rural Indiana to help a lesbian teenager take her girlfriend to the prom packs non-stop laughs and high energy dance numbers alongside an important message of inclusion. A good, old-fashioned musical, you can’t go wrong with a visit to “The Prom”.
Ming Peiffer’s shattering new play, “Usual Girls”, presented in a world premiere through Roundabout’s Underground series, offers a blistering dramatization of rape culture through the lens of one Korean-American woman’s journey from girlhood to adulthood. Raw, explicit, and joltingly explosive, this is a bold and important new play.
Two world premiere productions of new plays opened Off-Broadway last night, each offering their characters a reflection on their younger selves and their emotional development, conceptions of love, and visions for the future. This is a roundup look at Second Stage’s “Days of Rage” and the Vineyard Theatre’s “Good Grief” (Critic’s Pick!).
Jez Butterworth’s “The Ferryman” is an ecstatic and richly thrillingly new play about the intimate, domestic effects of “The Troubles” on one large, Irish family; a sprawling epic with a 22 person cast and running time over three hours, “The Ferryman” is a titanic dramatic achievement, and a must-see event of the season. In short: a masterpiece without present peer on Broadway.
Two new plays opened Off-Broadway last week that are “teaching plays” meant to instruct the audience and broaden horizons on subject matter otherwise unknown or unexplored by most. Here’s a look at “India Pale Ale” at MTC and Critic’s Pick “Plot Points in Our Sexual Development” at LCT3.
Keen Company’s revival of Adam Gwon’s delightful chamber musical “Ordinary Days” cleanses the soul, lifts the spirit, and reminds you what you love about New York. All four performers in this almost entirely sung show are outstanding as they tell a simple, beautiful, and original story about how small acts and interactions can change lives. This sweet and quietly extraordinary musical is a must-see.
“Midnight at the Never Get” is a cabaret concert mediation on impossible love, revolution, music, and memory; easily the best new musical I have seen this season so far, Sam Bolen gives a knockout performance as a gay cabaret singer recalling his romance in the smoky backroom haze of New York’s 1960s underground nightclub scene. This gorgeous show is not to be missed.
Jocelyn Bioh’s brilliant play “School Girls; or, the African Mean Girls Play” is back at the Lucille Lortel Theatre for an encore engagement by MCC Theater; every bit as funny and devastating as it was when I saw it last fall, the play seems to pop and sizzle even more on a second viewing. Check out my review and get tickets now.
Director Daniel Fish delivers a glorious and terrifying production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s groundbreaking 1943 musical “Oklahoma!” at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn, completely deconstructing this canonical and totemic masterpiece of American musical theatre by stripping it of its corn and highlighting the darker themes of violence and injustice that have always been simmering underneath. Sexually charged and presented with a striking naturalism, this masterful new production is a revelation.
Part civics lesson, part memoir—at once bittersweet and beautiful— Heidi Schreck’s mostly one-woman play “What the Constitution Means to Me” at New York Theatre Workshop recounts her formative experience of wrestling with the constitution’s meaning as a teenager through the lens of her adult self, the women in her family, and the bitterly divided nation it serves. Heartbreaking, humorous, brilliant, and profoundly important, this is a must-see event of the fall season.
Manhattan Theatre Club presents Richard Bean’s hilarious new comedy, “The Nap”, a high-stakes, low-rent farce set in the world of Snooker (British pool). A superbly comical, poised, and perfectly cast ensemble of kooky characters make this off-beat crime thriller comedy the kind of delightfully droll escape that only theatre can provide. Silly, yes, but that’s never been more needed than right now.
