Once upon a time there was a couple who, while vacationing in Vegas, decide to get married in the Little White Wedding Chapel. When they return home to Manhattan, Michael (played with a powerful vulnerability by Johnny Wu) assumes he will be able to move in to his new wife Sonya’s (played with the charming mix of feisty aggressiveness with…
“Communism, like General Motors, is people.” The above is an important reminder shared by a psychology professor to this reviewer many years ago. A reminder that people should always be more important than politics or social, political, and economic ideologies. Unfortunately, that truth seems difficult for humankind to grasp or achieve globally. After the Holocaust, humanity vowed to never let…
“Tuesdays that’s that. I spend the day there doing this and that dusting and all sorts. I shake out the tablecloth. I change the sheets. I empty the bin.” Pauline in “Tuesdays at Tesco’s” The only thing that interrupts the samsara of Pauline’s (Simon Callow) hum-drum life is the string of dream ballets that spontaneously burst forth from the piano…
Transgender themed movies far outnumber transgender themed plays: “In a Year of 13 Moons” (1978); “Paris Is Burning” (1990); “Ma vie en rose” (1997); “Boys Don’t Cry” (1999); and “Transamerica” (2005) all have raised the consciousness about transgender women and men who not only struggle with the important issue of sexual status and gender reassignment surgery but also battle fear,…
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1 It seems everything in Cori Thomas’s “When January Feels Like Summer” is out of synch, out of time, somehow oddly akilter and often akimbo. The weather is not seasonal. Relationships are not functioning within desired limits. Gender shakes itself out of traditional…
Laryssa Husiak’s “She is King,” currently running at Incubator Arts Project at St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery, is a heartfelt and emotionally compelling tribute to the life and spirit of tennis superstar and innovator Billie Jean King. Ms. Husiak, who also portrays Billie Jean King, provides a sensitive and authentic depiction of the tennis star’s passion for gender equality, the importance of…
It is ironic that by refusing to go to New York City, his last opportunity to escape into freedom, protagonist Tiago (Josue Gutierrez Guerra) is murdered then pushed off a thirty-nine foot sail boat wrapped in sailcloth. He begins his descent into death’s memory vault and launches into his role as unreliable narrator extraordinaire. Tiago’s remarkable and mind-splitting postmortem narrative…
“Luke Nicholas” is the quintessential example of what should be found at the ongoing NY International Fringe Festival. It is good theater, refreshing, new, innovative and well written, always keeping the audience engaged with surprising twists and turns. It examines the parameters of an open gay relationship testing boundaries only to realize what is required to survive the sometimes ugly,…
Friends from childhood, Adam (Topher Rasmussen) and Steve (Logan Tarantino) each need validation from the other as they move forward from graduation and decide where to spend their college years together. Adam needs to know his friend affirms his strong commitment to Mormon values and, after coming out to Adam, Steve needs to know his friend truly understands his sexual…
Cal and Grey (“with an ‘e’”) are two teenage boys considered to be expendable. They were warehoused in their post-infancy by the revolutionary regime whose takeover eliminated “all men and women” and placed all children in orphanages until they were twenty-one. With many other institutionalized children, Cal and Grey survive by adhering to a diet of strict obedience to a…