Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

 

Neil LaBute (Broadway, Reasons to Be Pretty) leads an impressive lineup of writers for Mile Square Theatre’s 2013 7^th Inning Stretch, with his newest work Squeeze Play. LaBute is joined by some of America’s finest playwrights in this annual event that has thrilled theatre fans for over 10 years. Contributing new plays this year are Brooke Berman (Helen Merrill Award Winner), Eric Conger (Walnut Street Theatre), Edith Freni (Steppenwolf Theatre), Jay Koepke (O’Neill National Playwrights Finalist), Jon Marans (Pulitzer Finalist), and Mat Smart (McKnight Advancement Grant). Chris O’Connor, MST Founder and Artistic Director, says of this year’s event, “Once again, we’re fortunate to have a stellar group of writers contributing to this unique evening.

Retro Productions (18-time New York Innovative Theatre Awards nominee) presents Peter Nichols' play.

A Day in the Death of Joe Egg follows Bri and Sheila, a British couple dealing with the severe challenges of parenthood; their only daughter Josephine is wheelchair-bound with cerebral palsy and cannot communicate. With their marriage on the line due to the stress of raising Joe, Bri and Sheila must also contend with their friends Pam and Freddy’s pleas to put Joe in a proper facility and live their lives. The piece’s dark humor is rooted in life’s difficulties as well as the fantasy world that Bri experiences to cope with his family’s hardship.

After a successful run on London’s West End, A Day in the Death of Joe Egg premiered on Broadway in 1968.

 

A MERMAIDS' TALE COME ASHORE TO OFF-BROADWAY & THE TRIAD THEATRE

This is more than an entertaining and engaging family-friendly show with memorable music---children & parents alike will also find the story cleverly woven with strong values and many positive and educational messages about tolerance, the help of friends, overcoming adversity, courage, and bullying.

Adapted from the L. Frank Baum novel, "The Sea Fairies" penned the year following his success with "The Wizard of Oz"., it is set on a School Auditorium stage. The students of Mr. Cutler gather to give their book reports on their favorite character from the Baum novel.

 Horse Trade Theater Group and Spookfish Theatre Company will present the World Premiere of ADVANCE GUARD by Ming Peiffer, May 8-19 at The Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street). The production will be directed by Kat Yen (Pornography for the People; The ABC’s Guide to Getting Famous) and will feature David M. Farrington, Ben Kaufman, Alesandra Nahodil, Eamon O’Rourke, Matt Stillo, and Mari Yamamoto. The creative team will include Lighting Design by Porsche McGovern and Set Design by Norihito Moriya.

Art school dropouts, Willy and Milo, find themselves struggling to make ends meet let alone make art.

 On May 19, 2013 at 4:00p.m., the lower east side-based theater company, Alacrity Project, will present, The Dinner Party, an original short play at the popular venue, Arlene’s Grocery. A Monologue Jam comprised of various actors performing monologues and songs, will follow directly afterwards. A marriage gone stale. A fantasy gone wild. How long can they co-exist? An elegant dinner party hosted by husband and wife team, Jane and John, goes awry when the guest of honor may be unwelcomed for many reasons. The Dinner Party is an exploration of relationships, desires and the human psyche.

About the Company: Alacrity Project

 Alacrity Project provides performance opportunities for self-initiated artists.

We're cock rocking the NPR crowd with the best underground comedy, storytelling, burlesque and sideshow acts. This whole thing (and all of everything) is about getting together and getting EXCITED – just turn your phones off and shout it out loud.

About the Company: Horse Trade Theater Group

HORSE TRADE THEATER GROUP is a self-sustaining theater development group; with a focus on new work that has produced a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater. Horse Trade’s Resident Artist Program offers a home to a select group of Independent theater artists, pooling together a great deal of talent and energy. It is also the home of FRIGID New York – the first and only festival of its kind in New York City.

When a world-renowned origami artist opens her studio to a teenage prodigy and his school teacher, she discovers that life and love can't be arranged neatly in this drama about finding the perfect fold.

About the Company: Puffy Shirt Productions

no frills theatre.

When Czar and April buy a home in a black neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, they find community with Hoody and Dee, who live next door. But can these two these families stay connected without destroying themselves and each other?  It’s crazy, it’s whack. And everybody’s in it, from the skittish best friends from the suburbs, to the militant brother/a barista at Starbucks, and the wild child street kid who can’t keep his pants up or his stash on the DL.  It’s a banging new world…of $7 coffee and $6 cheese snacks.   Cardio Boot Camps and hand-me-downs.  Jacked up taxes and gang tags. It’s the last stand of neighborhood, turf, tradition. It’s Broken Fences, a hilarious, scorching new play about friendship, fear…and all the other possibilities.

 

Do you have what it takes to be a cabaret champion? Contestants compete for the chance to star in their own show or cabaret. Come out and join the fun! Whether you are a contestant or in the audience you are guaranteed to have a blast. 

About the Company: Horse Trade Theater Group

HORSE TRADE THEATER GROUP is a self-sustaining theater development group; with a focus on new work that has produced a massive quantity of stimulating downtown theater. Horse Trade’s Resident Artist Program offers a home to a select group of Independent theater artists, pooling together a great deal of talent and energy. It is also the home of FRIGID New York – the first and only festival of its kind in New York City.

Crossing Verrazano, a drama, written & directed by Anthony Fusco is a play based on a true story that took place in Greenwich Village, October 2010. Bryan, Casey & Trevor, three young men from LA plan a visit to New York to celebrate Caseys 25th birthday. Their first stop was the legendary Stonewall Bar on Christopher St. They encounter some new friends Bruno & Mario on the dance floor, that turned their dream into a night to remember. The play received a best director nomination at the Strawberry One Act festival summer 2011, and was selected to perform in the encore series at the Strawberry One Act festival winter of 2012.

Featuring: Michael Greehan, Mary Sprague, Loring Griggs, Ron Tsur, Peter Evangelista, Sean Hefferon, Miles Folley, Phillip Burke, Vincenzo Fiorito, Adin Lenahan, Kevin Necciai

Lighting Design: Bethany Briggs

Only the very best of  the  Great American Songbook will be featured at NYC’s “Stage Left Studio” as Evans Zelnik Entertainment proudly announces that beginning this October , Closter,  NJ’s husband/wife team Francine Evans and Joel Zelnik will co-star in a new theatrical-cabaret revue: DESTINATION: Las Vegas – your musical journey.

 

Stage Left Studio is located at 214 W. 30 St./7 Ave., NYC. Group packages available. Tickets are $20 each:  www.stageleftstudio.net. Contact:  201-784-7430.

“Destination: Las Vegas – your  musical journey”celebrates the great musical headliners and unforgettable songs of  Las Vegas.

   "Eeek! A Mousical" is a 21st Century update of the Aesop Fable, 'A City Mouse & A Country Mouse' starring  ASHELY ARAN as Bara, the City Mom and KIMBERLY CUELLAR as Clarisa, the Country Mom. When the City Mom only wants a little peace and quiet at the dinner table away from the screeching traffic, cell phones and texting, she accepts an invitation for she and her family to visit her sister in the country. Her family is not too keen on sewing circles, crawdad fishing and Hard Red Spring Wheat Pageants and Hilarity ensues!!!

  But, to make it up to her sister, Bara welcomes her Country relatives to the city.

Yesterday it was a parade, today a slaughter. They've been waiting for revenge for 10,00 years...

Burlesque"

DUE TO GREAT REVIEWS THE PLAY IS EXTENDED THROUGH MAY! http://www.JELENAP.com

“Jelena is quite extraordinary. She showed Frida and made you suffer along with her. She was very impressive and totally had her attention. She was really quite amazing. The sets were simple but artistic. The acting work was excellent. She ‘held you’”

FRIDA KAHLO, one of world’s most daring women painters. It is impossible to separate the life and work of Frida Kahlo as her paintings are her biography.

As the wife of one of world’s most celebrated muralists, Diego Rivera, Frida became a painter in her own right. The play explores her struggles with her husband’s infidelity, her confrontation of her physical injuries, and facing her own mortality. 

Forbidden Broadway, the fall-down funny musical roast of Broadway that has picked up 9 Drama Desk Awards, a Special Tony®, an Obie, a Lucille Lortel and Drama League Award, is back at last with a blast, and not a moment too soon.

This New York sensation is returning with an all-new, fresh view of the highs and lows of recent seasons including Porgy and Bess, Anything Goes, Follies, Spiderman, Book of Mormon, Nice Work If You Can Get It, Once, and Death of a Salesman, and features outrageous costumes, hilarious rewrites of the songs you know, and dead-on impressions by an stellar cast!

Whether you're a seasoned theatre-goer or new to Broadway, Forbidden Broadway is your one-stop ticket to non-stop laughs.

Gotham City Improv presents Off the Top of Our Heads, a short form, 10-year running improvisational show. Winners of the 6^th Annual Big Apple Improv Awards, the cast of seasoned Improvisers leave no stone unturned as they look for your funny bone. Every Friday night, the cast of veteran Improvisers performs the show literally off the top of their heads, as the entire script is developed live and with suggestions from the audience. Presented in short form, a style of improvised theater in which unrelated game-based scenes take place, Off the Top of Our Heads is fast-paced and audience members are guaranteed an evening of out-of-the-box and fun comedy.

About the Company: Gotham City Improv

Gym Shorts: The Show is made up of 5 hilarious short vignettes, that examine the triumphs and tragedies of life set against the world's most explosive backdrop: The Gym!

At its core, Gym Shorts: The Show is about relationships. The kind of relationships we’ve all experienced in our own lives, and can all identify with. The agony of betrayal. The ecstasy of true companionship. The struggle to be accepted for who you are. All the great dramas and comedies of the ages have hinged on these profound human experiences. So, what is it that makes this rendition new and unique? And, of course, hilarious? The one place that can hold this amount of human triumph and tragedy, the blood, sweat and tears that make up the human experience (particularly the sweat): THE GYM!!! Come see the strength and resilience of these flawed

What Dreams May Co. Theatre presents
Hamlet

By William Shakespeare

Directed By Nicole Schalmo

Stage Manager Laura Mckellar
 

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”

 

From the producers of last season’s smash hit Othello, What Dreams May Co. Theatre Company explodes into the 2013 Season with a dark and gritty modern reimagining of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

 Inspired by true events and based on the acclaimed 1997 documentary of the same name that was created by S.R. Bindler and produced by Bindler and Kevin Morris, the musical features a book by Doug Wright More Information »

Are you happy? That’s the question contemplated in this National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere comedy by Robert Caisley at the New Jersey Repertory Company, 179 Broadway, Long Branch, from May 30 – June 30, 2013.

Alfred is happy with his life, happy with his job, happy with his 14-year marriage to Melinda. But when his best friend Eduardo invites him to dinner to meet the new woman in his life, Eva, a sexy 22-year old artist with a dark soul, it becomes clear that misery loves company as truths get twisted, secrets get revealed and what starts out as a sophisticated dinner party among friends, becomes an evening that spins wildly out of control. This is a dinner party not to be missed!

NJ Rep Artistic Director, SuzAnne Barabas, directs this sleek production that explores the quintessential question - are we truly happy?

La Muse Venale Acting Troupe presents a musical tale of dreams, possibilities and heartbreak with Robert L. Hecker’s Honestly Abe, shining a bright light on the early, little-known life of President Abraham Lincoln. Set in Indiana in the 1800s and based on historical facts, Honestly Abe uncovers young Abe Lincoln as a lanky prankster who loved to read and who can spin a yarn with the best of them. Abe was close to his mother and sister but his relationship with his father was strained at best. Abe Lincoln dreams of the day he can quit the family farm, leave rail-splitting behind, and become a riverboat captain. But family tragedies, a yearning for revenge by Abe, and the advice of a close friend cause Abe to change his plans.

Being a New Yorker is not just about a city; it’s a badge of honor, so come earn yours! Take a laugh filled tour around the greatest city in the world with actors, comedians and licensed tour guides Margaret Copeland and Kevin James Doyle as they play over 60 characters. Under the direction of OBIE Award winner Robert Ross Parker, this “Saturday Night Live” style comedy features a hilarious look at NYC's 400 year history. Immigrants, construction workers, muggers, Wall Street bankers, panhandlers, MTA workers, and Mayor Bloomberg all get a solid lampooning! It doesn't matter if you were born on the Upper West Side or just took your first terrifying cab ride, you will love learning How to Be a New Yorker.

 

You too can experience the privilege, respect and air of superiority enjoyed by millions who call themselves New Yorkers. But it requires training, even if you were born here. Let us show you how to develop the instincts for disdainful glances, peevish muttering and innate rudeness that distinguish true New Yorkers. Under the direction of OBIE Award winner Robert Ross Parker, the hilarious new comedyHOW TO BE A NEW YORKER shows audiences everything they ever needed to know about what it takes to be a real New Yorker, or at least not stand out as a tourist. Actors/Comedians and licensed NYC tour guides, Margaret Copeland and Kevin James Doyle, take you on a whirlwind comedic romp filled with stories from the world’s largest landfill in Staten Island to the home of the Bronx Bombers. All this, and lunch too, for only $45 at Sofia’s Downstairs.