The full title of “The Antiquities” currently running at Playwrights Horizons is “A Tour of the Permanent Collection in the Museum of the Late Human Antiquities.” The title contains two important pairs of words: “Permanent Collection” and “Late Human.” The play begins at some point in the far distant future with two museum docents W1 (Aria Shahghasemi) and W2 (Amelia…
Soho Rep (Directors Cynthia Flowers, Caleb Hammons, Eric Ting) and Playwrights Horizons (Artistic Director Adam Greenfield, Managing Director Casey York), two of New York’s most influential champions of new theatrical work, announce a historic partnership meant to leverage the strengths of both organizations. Soho Rep will depart its longtime space at 46 Walker Street this January after more than 30…
Playwright Mia Chung intends to raise a rich and enduring question in her play “Catch as Catch Can” currently running at Playwrights Horizons Peter Jay Sharp Theater: “What is inherent in our inheritance? What is universal?” Unfortunately, this question is not addressed nor answered in her character-driven play featuring Cindy Cheung, Jon Norman Schneider, and Rob Yang as Irish American…
In “Tambo & Bones,” currently running at Playwrights Horizons, playwright Dave Harris (“Summertime,” “Patricide”) gives the audience a minstrel show with three variety acts whose timeframes span more than two centuries. Endmen Tambo (W. Tré Davis) and Bones (Tyler Fauntleroy) appear as humans in olios one and two performing for white audiences, and they appear as robots, themselves, and their…
Three Gen Y Conservative Christians gather at Justin’s (a thoughtful and broken Jeb Kraeger) backyard in Lander, Wyoming to celebrate Generation X Gina’s (a confident and willful Michelle Pawk) inauguration as president of Transfiguration College of Wyoming. These “heroes” are preparing for a battle of Armageddon-like proportions. They do not simply disagree with those infidels on the left: they despise…
Once upon a time, in a not so very long time ago there was a beautiful young Nigerian woman named Akim (a self-absorbed yet fragile Níkẹ Uche Kadri) whose Ma (a stern but loving Maechi Aharanwa) and Dad (a somewhat subservient Jason Bowen) project their own flawed conception of what real beauty is (a thoroughly Eurocentric standard of beauty) upon…
Present, past, and several possible futures collide with the biblical story of Job in Craig Lucas’s “I Was Most Alive with You” currently playing at Playwrights Horizons Mainstage. And within each time frame and tale exist a multitude of layers of complexity and contingency about the human condition, particularly its vulnerability and resilience in the face of elucidated and unexplained…
Clare Barron’s “Dance Nation” Explores the Angst of Adolescence with Cathartic Wit. Separation-individuation is one of life’s most difficult passages: it is completed successfully by most; however, more than might be suspected remain in the mire of adolescence all their lives. Prepubescence is supposed to erupt in adulthood – adults emerging where clingy parent-dependent pre-teens once held sway. It is…
Max Posner’s “The Treasurer,” currently running at Playwrights Horizons’ Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, is a play about Ida Armstrong’s (played with a fragile irascibility by Deanna Dunagan) youngest son (played with an equally fragile ego strength by Peter Friedman) whose siblings have placed him in charge of their mother’s bank account, her spending, her assets and her liabilities. This role of…
The new musical “Play Like a Winner” is based on the stage play “It’s All About the Kids” by Caytha Jentis which comically explores the dark side of competitive soccer moms vying for social status in upscale suburbia. The opening musical number “Sacrifice” is sung by the company surrounding the body of the coach lying dead, center stage impaled with…