Alice in Wonderland in all of its iterations has primarily focused on Wonderland being a mental representation of Alice and her current situations. Whether it was from the original story about Alice embracing the nonsensical and learning to question, or the American McGee games that took Wonderland and Alice to more mature/darker realms of living […]
If you believe a hair salon an unlikely place to find community, you’d be wrong. In fact, in Trey Anthony’s iconic play ‘da Kink in my Hair, directed by Weyni Mengesha, it’s even more than that: it’s a place of healing, a forum where the vulnerable or voiceless step into the spotlight for a moment. […]
The expansion of the Shaw Festival season to include a duo of holiday shows every December has proven to be a truly winning innovation. The mini-season in the winter forms a welcome bridge between the festival’s regularly scheduled April-October season and makes the company feel like a full year player rather than a summer getaway. […]
On stage until December 18th in a well-cast and capable production at Crow’s Theatre, Lolita Chakrabarti’s Red Velvet tells a fictionalized account of the life of Ira Aldridge, one of the first Black actors to become a prominent Shakespeare performer. The production is a testament to Crow’s heads up approach to casting within the […]
The success of Hannah Moscovitch’s new play Post Democracy largely comes down to wether or not Jesse LaVercombe manages to make you think he’s generally a somewhat okay guy. The rest of the production is strong in less crucial ways. Teresa Przybylski’s stylish set has a cleverly critical total lack of character and is […]
There is a joke once seen on tumblr that describes different nationalities’ approaches to death in stories. American writers write I WILL DIE FOR LOVE! British writers write I WILL DIE FOR COUNTRY! And Russian writers write I WILL JUST DIE! An overly simplistic take but this critic’s first thought when seeing that joke was […]
John Patrick Shanley’s difficult drama Doubt has aged oddly. First produced in 2004, one year after the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team won a Pulitzer for its reporting on abuses in the Catholic Church, the play twists itself into knots attempting to keep as much, ahem, doubt as possible alive in the audience’s mind, presumably as […]
Running through Saturday at the Chain Theater in Manhattan (312 W 36th street), Maiden Productions’ take on Connor McPherson’s The Night Alive is phenomenal. Boasting a lights-out cast, visionary design, and accomplished direction, Maiden delivers an outstanding inaugural production and solidifies itself as a company to keep tabs on. The Night Alive centers on […]