be more chill
It is difficult to separate “Be More Chill,” currently running at the Lyceum Theatre, from the hype surrounding what has become a teenage cult musical since its 2015 run at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey and its recent off-Broadway run at The Irene Diamond Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center in 2018. This hype has…
Outer Critics Circle, the organization of writers and commentators covering New York theater for out-of-town newspapers, national publications and other media beyond Broadway, announced today (April 23, 2019) its nominees for the 2018-19 season. Broadway’s “Tootsie” star Julie Halston along with “Torch Song” sensation Michael Urie presided over the (11AM) announcement ceremony in the Oak Room at New York’s renowned…
After greeting the audience at New York Theatre Workshop, playwright Heidi Schreck introduces her play “What the Constitution Means to Me” as follows: “When I was 15 years old, I travelled the country giving speeches about the Constitution at American Legion halls for prize money. This was a scheme invented by my mom, who was a debate coach, to help…
It is difficult to separate “Be More Chill,” currently running The Irene Diamond Stage at The Pershing Square Signature Center, from the hype surrounding what has become a teenage cult musical since its 2015 run at the Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey. This hype has been heightened by a cast recording and an extensive marketing campaign. What…
David Ireland’s “Cyprus Avenue” currently running at The Public’s LuEsther Hall sneaks up on the audience like a cat burglar armed with an AK-15 assault rifle. What one assumes will be lost is far less than the devastation left behind by the action in Ireland’s disquieting play. The detritus remaining after Eric Miller’s (Stephen Rea) violation of his wife Bernie…
In an October 17, 2015 “New York Post” article, Michael Goodwin raises the rich, albeit uncomfortable, proposition of James Piereson in his July 2015 book “Shattered Consensus: The Rise and Decline of America’s Postwar Political Order;” namely, “America is due for a revolution.” In the “Post” article, Mr. Goodwin summarizes Mr. Pierson’s argument thusly: “there is an inevitable “revolution” coming…
One of the territories occupied in Nancy Bannon and Mollye Maxner’s “Occupied Territories,” currently running at 59E59 Theaters, is the Jungle of Vietnam in 1967 during what seemed at the time to be an interminable and unpopular war. In the revival of the Theater Alliance’s 2015 play, that war appears as a haunting memory for Jude (Nancy Bannon) and her…
“A Clockwork Orange” – a fair gloopy title. Who ever heard of A Clockwork Orange? ‘The attempt to impose upon man the laws and conditions appropriate only to a mechanical creation – against this I raise my Sword-Pen?’” – Alex Alexandra Spencer-Jones’s staging of Anthony Burgess’s “A Clockwork Orange” at New World Stages slices deeply into the human psyche where…
Upon entering Pershing Square Signature Center’s Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre to view a new musical adaptation of Edgar Lee Masters’ 1915 “Spoon River Anthology,” we became a bit leery about the execution of this undertaking (no pun intended) as we walked down a dark hallway past Bertie Hume lying at rest in a casket. Continuing in the dark, we turned…
Now, we don’t want to say, “Where do we come in?” or, “Where do we go out?” Because we would like, I think not to leave, but to stay here, now that we’re here. – He There is nothing like watching theatre directed by SITI Company’s Anne Bogart. Her attention to detail is unparalleled and her signature staging that includes…