Manwatching is a one-man show written by a woman. That’s all I know about the author going in to see the show, because she remains anonymous. And each night a different male comedian sees her script for the first time, as he performs it. This was such a weird premise for a show that I […]
Inspired by the true story of an opera singer and a French diplomat, Mr. Shi and His Lover is a semi-operatic play currently on Tarragon’s mainstage. The narrative traces a story in which the two fall in love, and proceed to have a twenty year relationship, during which time Mr. Shi believed his lover to […]
Poison, currently on at The Coal Mine Theatre, is a story about two people. Actually, it’s a story about three people. We open on a man (Ted Dykstra) waiting in a lobby. Eventually, a woman (Fiona Highet) enters. There is immediate tension. What follows is a simple but heartbreaking story about grief. Originally written by […]
Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? is currently on at Soulpepper, directed by Alan Dilworth. I love this play for so many reasons, not least of which is that I think it’s a great example of a man actually writing an amazing and complex female lead character, who essentially carries the entire show. […]
Adam Lazarus’s play Daughter is about masculinity. Or rather: it is a play about toxic masculinity. Or, even more accurately: it is a play about the ways in which the patriarchy molds men into defective moral agents. This is a very intellectual description for a theatre review, and of a very visceral experience. So let me […]
Grimly Handsome is a relatively new play by New York playwright Julia Jarcho. Directed by Jay Turvey, this three hander stars Julia Course, Jeff Irving and Ben Sanders as a series of characters throughout New York City traversing romance, marriage, loneliness, betrayal, and violence. We open with what seems to be isolated farmland, though we […]
Rouvan Silogix is angry about the state of the world, and very understandably so. And what better way to channel that anger than to create a farce about the contemporary political landscape? Silogix’s answer to that question is to create a surrealist vaudeville farce, gloriously entitled Grab ‘Em By the Pussy: Or How To Stop […]
Daniel Pagett’s new play Cloud is about connections both human and technological. The narrative traces two sets of people…