David Roberts

Off-Broadway Review: The Public Theater and National Black Theatre (NBT) Production of “Fat Ham” at the Public’s Anspacher Theater (Closed Sunday, July 31, 2022)

Things are going as well as they can as Juicy (a pensive, smart, and gay Marcel Spears who is thicc, beautiful, and lonely) and his cousin and oldest friend Tio (a relaxed and clever Chris Herbie Holland who is a stoner) set up for what appears to be his mother’s wedding reception at her house in North Carolina. Earlier in…

Read More Buy Tickets

Off-Broadway Review: “Exception to the Rule” at the Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center (Closed Sunday, June 26, 2022)

In “Exception to the Rule,” currently playing at the Black Box Theatre in the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center, is playwright Dave Harris more concerned about what might be the exception to the rule in his play’s inner-city high school classroom or what is the rule that looms over classroom one eleven’s detainees on the last day of the week…

Read More Buy Tickets

Broadway Review: “A Strange Loop” at the Lyceum Theatre (Currently On)

Two deeply significant plays by Jeremy O. Harris – “Daddy” (Off-Broadway 2019) and “Slave Play” (Broadway 2021) – highlighted significant issues about the self-identity of young black gay and queer men and raised rich and enduring questions about the role of family, friends, culture, and “indifferent yet fetishizing white gays” in that process of discovery. This season, Michael R. Jackson’s…

Read More Buy Tickets

Broadway Review: “Hangmen” at the Golden Theatre” (Closed on Saturday, June 18, 2022)

“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft a-gley.” – “To A Mouse” by Robert Burns Despite his claim to be “quite content to keep [his] own counsel, as [he] sees fit, and leave the jibber-jabber to the riff-raff, the riff-raff,” former hangman Harry Wade (played with a menacing panache by David Threlfall) seems quite content to…

Read More Buy Tickets

Broadway Review: “for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf” at the Booth Theatre (Closed on Sunday, June 5, 2022)

“Since its premiere at The Public in 1976 and its subsequent transfer to Broadway later that year, much has happened to continue to impact the lives of the women of color celebrated by Ntozake Shange in her choreopoem “for colored girls who have considered suicide/ when the rainbow is enuf” currently running at the Booth Theatre for the second time…

Read More Buy Tickets

Off-Broadway Review: Vineyard Theatre and WP Theater’s “sandblasted” at the Vineyard Theatre (Closed Sunday, March 13, 2022)

As Stacey Derosier’s lighting comes up on the stage of Charly Evon Simpson’s “sandblasted,” which is currently being co-presented by Vineyard Theatre and Women’s Project Theater at the Vineyard, Angela (a willful yet vulnerable Brittany Bellizeare) and Odessa (a confident and temperamental Marinda Anderson) slowly emerge from behind beach umbrellas (“where the sand is”). Both complain about the omnipresence of sand…

Read More Buy Tickets

News: Outer Critics Circle Announces New Members of Executive/Nominating Committee

Outer Critics Circle, the organization of writers and commentators covering New York theatre for out-of-town newspapers, national publications and other media beyond Broadway, announced on Friday September 14, 2018 Cynthia Allen, Richard Ridge, David Roberts and Janice Simpson will serve as new members of the OCC Executive/Nominating Committee.  “The Outer Critics Circle found itself in a period of transition during the springtime, as we…

Read More Buy Tickets

Off-Broadway Review: “The Roundabout” at 59E59 Theaters

Traffic flows continuously around the “island” which is the roundabout better known as the Drawing Room of Lord Kettlewell’s (Brian Protheroe) British country estate. Things are not going well for the financier who has summoned his Etonian secretary Farrington Gurney (Charlie Field) to a rare Saturday business meeting to attempt to stop his Lordship’s substantial business losses. Nor are things…

Read More Buy Tickets