The new musical “Cloned” at The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre, presented as part of NYMF, will hopefully find a future in the effervescent New York theatre scene where it belongs. It has pop theatre music, comedy, parody, farce, a puppet and a sincere silly story combined with a cast of imaginative characters. It has a wonderful enthusiastic ensemble that…
“The Mapmakers Opera,” currently presented at The PTC Performance Space as part of the ongoing NYMF, is a solid effort to adapt the profound and beautiful novel of the same title by Bea Gonzalez for the stage. The results are commendable but as with any new musical project pitfalls are numerous and the need exists to focus a bit more…
With the sweetness of “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” the caustic humor of “South Park,” and the vitriol of “Hairspray,” the new musical “Academia Nuts” chronicles the quiz kid competition between the McCutter Clan of Weiner, Arkansas and the Walla Walla Walruses from the Pacific Northwest. The musical celebrates the strength of the human spirit and the importance…
“Searching for Romeo,” currently being presented as part of NYMF at the PTC Performance Space, is a pleasant parody. This new musical is entertaining and clever, however not without fault, offering nothing innovative as far as concept, theme or musical development. It would be unfair to critique the cast and their devoted effort, since the production was afflicted with an…
“Somewhere with You,” currently running as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival, touts itself to be “THE country-rock musical of a new generation.” If by ‘new generation’ the creators mean (in their own words) “Southerners growing up in the early 2000s confronted by the methamphetamine epidemic, the war in Iraq, and other post-9/11 challenges in the rural South,”…
A new song cycle entitled “Coming of Age” is being presented as part of NYMF at The Ford Foundation Studio Theatre and proves to be a good addition to the roster of the Festival’s developing musicals. It deals with the awkward transitional experience when one becomes aware of a problematic situation that affects his or her life; simply put, growing…
Anyone who enjoys good old fashioned musical theater should certainly find comfort in a new endeavor titled “Marry Harry” which completed a successful run as part of NYMF at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre. This is a full two-hour production which tackles the impetuous plot of boy meets girl, boy loses girl, and boy gets girl with a slightly…
“Bend in the Road” is a delightful character-driven musical lifted from the framework of the classic 1908 novel “Anne of the Green Gables” by Lucy Maud Montgomery. The musical – like those before it – closely follows the plot of the novel and includes all of the significant moments in Montgomery’s delightful story of Anne Shirley’s coming of age at…
Billed as an ‘Out-rageous Musical Revue,’ “Boys Will Be Boys” presented at the Studio Theater as part of the ongoing NYMF certainly lives up to its claim. Almost everything from concept, lyrics, characters, parodies and innuendos are completely over the top and as gay as one can possibly imagine. It is a fun romp very reminiscent in style to the…
Things are not always what they seem on the high seas or in the competitive world of finance. The high-flying team of Veley and Sullivan deliver a delicious convoluted plot in Charles Veley’s “The Pirates of Finance” currently running at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre as part of the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Charles Veley’s lyrics neatly complement…