Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

Tired of the Bar Scene? Looking for something Fun to do this weekend? A Hip pre-cursor to your evening? You're invited to The Best Party Ever, a satirical Two Act Play about a Keg Party followed by an Office Party consisting of vignettes, sketches, and monologues. This show ignites onstage with a Congo Line in the first act and a Bunny Hop in the second act with a brief intermission where audience members drink up. You're sure to walk away smiling and maybe even dancing if you'd like. And...the night doesn't stop when the actors take their bows. Stick around for the after-party as the house lights dim, the disco ball spins, and audience members mingle, continue to drink, and dance the night away. Performance Dates: Saturdays @ 5:00 pm (No Shows In April. We resume May 3rd.

ComedySportz New York City is an interactive competition between two teams of professional comedians who perform a series of scenes and songs based on suggestions from the audience. After running for more than ten years in LA and Chicago, the hit show returns to New York City for an open run. Performances are every Saturday at 6pm at The Broadway Comedy Club, 318 W. 53rd Street at 8th Avenue, NYC. Tickets are $10 (with a two drink minimum) at www.smarttix.com or 212-868-4444.

A ComedySportz New York City match features two teams of comedy performers competing for laughs and points, with a referee to keep things moving along. Every show is different, with different players and games, and with audiences supplying new suggestions. Unlike many other forms of performance comedy, ComedySportz is appropriate for all ages.

FREUD’S LAST SESSION, a new play by Mark St. Germain, will have its Off-Broadway premiere at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater.  Performances will begin July 9th, following a second return engagement at Barrington Stage Company (MA), where the play had its world premiere in June 2009.  FREUD’S LAST SESSION stars Mark H. Dold as C.S. Lewis and Martin Rayner as Sigmund Freud, under the direction of Tyler Marchant.  The official opening night is set for Thursday, July 22nd.

"Over 5,000 patrons have attended Freud's Last Session, making it the most popular play in BSC history," said Barrington Stage Artistic Director Julianne Boyd.

Theater for the New City's award-winning Street Theater Company opens its 34th annual tour July 31 with GONE FISSION, OR ALTERNATIVE POWER, an Operatta for the Street.  The rip-roaring production will tour City streets, parks and playgrounds throughout the five boroughs through September 12. The production, free to all New Yorkers, will have book, lyrics and direction by Crystal Field and musical score composed by Joseph Vernon Banks.

When an out-of-work Account Executive takes a survival job as a Census Taker, he visits a fish restaurant.  A hurricane transforms the place to a Louisiana Bayou, where Father Neptune is conducting a summit with the creatures of the sea.  Our hero's job is to count, but he also listens.

KRAMER’S REALITY TOUR

FOR SEINFELD FANS

 Kenny "The Real" Kramer, invites you to join him as he takes you on a theatrical stage, bus and video tour of New York City to the sites made famous by the world's most popular sitcom. Lots of photo ops including that famous restaurant. Every tour hosted by Kenny Kramer who will answer your questions, share backstage information and reveal how many story lines and characters' names came right from real life. This hilarious three-hour tour is offered only on Saturdays at noon. Sunday tours added on holiday weekends.  Kramer also does private tour as well as corporate events.    

LMAO is an interactive show that delivers high-energy non-stop hilarity as it navigates todays hot topics. Experienced stage artists, leaving no stone unturned, make the shows ridiculously hilarious for ALL ages. Now, what the audience will actually get to see can’t be told now because the subject matter changes every day. The improvised skits and musicals, based on today’s burning issues, are completely unique and can range from totally silly to witty humor. No politician, author or celebrity would be able to escape the notoriety of the performers who are known to provoke uncontrollable laughter from the audience. Recent shows have included spoofs- of Dexter, ICarly, Family Guy, Glee, Twilight, Jersey Shore, Harry Potter, LOST and a lot more. Music combined with humor can be a deadly combination so enter at your own risk.
 

Love, Loss, and What I Wore opened in October 2009 and has been playing to sold-out houses at the Westside Theatre (407 W 43rd Street) since then. Directed by Karen Carpenter, this collection of stories is based on the best-selling book by Ilene Beckerman, as well as on the recollections of the Ephrons’ friends.  Like the popular book, Love, Loss, and What I Wore uses clothing and accessories and the memories they trigger to tell funny and often poignant stories that all women can relate to.  The production, which was recently honored with a 2010 Drama Desk Award, is performed by a rotating cast of five all-star actors, who perform in four-week cycles:

Join Mel & El as they ride the crimson wave! Finally, an affordable regular monthly show that mixes hilarious comedy with original songs in a clean, swanky venue that offers delicious food and creative cocktails. Voted "Best of NYC" by the Village Voice, join funny femmes Mel & El for Mel & El: Our Time of the Month every first Thursday of the month at COMIX.

Created and performed by award-winning funny femmes Melanie Adelman and Ellie Dvorkin with composer Patrick Spencer Bodd, MEL & EL: OUR TIME OF THE MONTH is like a modern-day Laverne & Shirley full of dirty songs, delightful banter and devilish dish. Hailed as “outrageous” by The New York Times and “hilariously squirm inducing” by the Village Voice, MEL & EL will

Similar in style to "Whose Line Is It Anyway", National Comedy Theatre is the Off-Bway, high octane improv comedy hit show all based on suggestions from the audience. Each show is different, with different games, different players and different audiences supplying new suggestions. As a twist, NCT plays its improvisational comedy played just like a competitive sport. Two uniformed teams go head-to-head on stage in a battle for laughs. A referee oversees the action and calls "fouls" such as the "groaner" (if a person tells a pun that makes the audience groan) and the dreaded "brown bag foul," called if a player says anything not suitable for a family audience, in which case a brown paper bag is placed over the offenders' head. "Rapidly becoming an addiction for New Yorkers...a sure fire crowd pleaser", quotes a recent review from New York theatre Buying Guide.

The New York production of Our Town began performances on February 17, 2009 (officially opening night was February 26, 2009) and went on to win the Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Direction and Obie Award for Outstanding Director. This current staging of Our Town entered its second year on February 26th and became the longest-running production of the play in its 72-year history with its record-breaking 337th performance on December 16, 2009. 

Academy Award-winning actress Helen Hunt will join the cast of David Cromer’s acclaimed production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, for four weeks only (Tuesday, July 6th to Sunday, August 1st), at the Barrow Street Theatre, succeeding Michael McKean, who will give his final performance on Sunday

Based on the classic novel by Gaston Leroux, this heart-racing musical unravels the mystery of a passionate man living deep beneath the grand Paris Opera House.  Was he a madman?  A musical genius?  Or just a lonely soul yearning to be loved?  The answer carefully unfolds in a beautiful and intimate production filled with intrigue, romance, danger and desire. This is a beautiful new version by Michael Sgouros and Brenda Bell.  A romantic love story with provocative music performed by a live chamber ensemble in the intimate setting of the Players Theatre.

Some of the greatest rock anthems of the 70's, 80's and 90's take centerstage in the wicked new rock cabaret musical POWER BALLADZ, debuting Off-Broadway at the Midtown Theatre. POWER BALLADZ is a 90-minute rock tribute that gives audiences the chance to unleash their inner rock star: part comedy, part interactive game show, and a genuine joy ride through the music and legend of rock songs by powerhouse bands such as Guns 'N' Roses, Journey, Heart, Queens, Bon Jovi, Styx and more.  POWER BALLADZ is created by Mike Todaro, Dan Nycklemoe with Peter Rothstein, and written by Mr. Todaro and Mr. Nycklemoe.

At POWER BALLADZ you can celebrate the best music of the 70's 80's and 90's and liberate the rock star inside of you.

THE BRICK THEATER, INC.  IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE PLASTIC FLAMINGO THEATRE CO. PRESENTS RIP JD: A CELEBRATION OF DEATH AS PART OF THE TOO SOON FESTIVAL JUNE 4-27 @ THE BRICK!

RIP JD: A Celebration of Death is a timely exploration of cult figure and author JD Salinger. This fast paced ensemble driven comedy probes the mystery associated with the man and his art. Through homage, meditation, and mockery, this provocative collage asks who really owns art - its creator or its audience?

Joey Nova Presents brings you SEXTACULAR! SEXTACULAR!, a re-imagining of the cabaret shows from turn-of-the-century France, but with a modern New York City rock n roll edge. Charmingly egocentric host Joey Nova (Cutie Patooties, Precious) is joined by co-host Erika Smith (Dracula, Screen Sirens) as his absinthe-conjured sidekick, “The Green Fairy”, as they try to petition the government for a new holiday celebrating SEX! When prudish-but-provocative government liaison Prudence Rottoncrotch (played by Miss Pin Up Coney Island 2008, Kristen Lee from Cherry Pop!) is sent in to hear their proposal, Joey and The Green Fairy argue their case by seducing her with twenty titillating acts by some of the hottest performers in theatre, burlesque, and cabaret.

New York’s longest running Bar Mitzvah, The Boychick Affair – The Bar Mitzvah of Harry Boychick returns to NYC at the celebrated COMIX (353 West 14 Street) beginning Sunday, May 9, 2010.

At The Boychick Affair, audience members  mingle, eat, sing, and dance with the rest of the “guests,”  and enjoy a delicious Bar Mitzvah meal – including dessert – at the ‘reception’ for  Harry Boychick’s unique Bar Mitzvah ceremony to the raucous reception following. This hilarious interactive event follows a young  rap wannabe as he becomes a man in front of his wacky, but loving family. You’ll laugh. You’ll dance. You’ll eat. Spend a little time at the Bar Mitzvah that puts the ‘funk’ in ‘dysfunctional.

At the very top of his one-man-theatrical-circus-of-full-disclosure, author/star Andrew Goffman offers the evening’s warning bell in the form of an alarmingly candid disclosure: “Ya know, none of us starts out to be a pervert.” The evening picks up speed from there.

“THE ACCIDENTAL PERVERT” is the true accounting of one boy’s odyssey to manhoodvia a childhood dominated by pornography, an addiction accumulated after the boy happens upon his father’s collection of XXX-Rated video tapes in a bedroom closet, just to the right of his golf clubs, above the cowboy boots, behind the sweatshirts, all the way up in the top left hand corner.   Andrew Goffman takes his audience on a hilarious and self-deprecating journey into a world of video vixens, X-Rated fantasies, and really DIRTY movies with no redeeming value whatsoever.

THREE IRISH WIDOWS versus THE REST OF THE WORLD will never play in Cork City, County Cork, Ireland.  NEVER.  That’s where Mrs. Malone, author/performer Ed Malone’s mother lives.  This is a play about Mrs. Malone, her sister and her sister-in-law, three Irish widows, the men that got them that way and what the widows did with their newfound freedom.  Of the thirty-four (34) characters Mr. Malone plays at hyper-space-break-neck speed, the three widows are the triangle of hypnotic focus throughout the evening.  Not that his Michael Jackson isn’t stunning.  He is.  Or the tree he portrays isn’t convincing.  It is.  
 
But it is the three widows declaration of independence that shakes the world and kidnaps an audience.

The multimedia event will feature progressive rock band Sineparade and video artist Alex Itin.  The show is a New York story told through live music, narration and video/animation in a small theater with three massive projections and state of the art sound system.