THE EXECUTRIX & WAITING FOR LEFTY – Review Roundup

Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods was a very funny and refreshingly sex-forward hit at HERE Arts Center last year, written by and starring real-life partners Bailey Williams and Emma Horwitz. (Williams’ The Family Dog, which will play New York Theatre Workshop next after a successful SummerWorks premiere, and Horwitz’s Mary Gets Hers were similarly irreverent and nimble with genre.)

Their first work under the banner of Two Sisters, their new company, is The Executrix, an inventive and slippery one-act by Horwitz, which Sarah Blush directs. (Williams sells cuttings from their home’s plants by the entrance.) They describe it as a “style-lush tale,” which is a better way to express how ravishing and intoxicated by its own style the experience is than I can come up with.

Standing far from the back of the Target Margin Theater’s huge garage space, we catch famous artist Susan (Jennifer Ikeda) as she recounts what has led to her current situation: plummeting to her death from a high-above window. (It involves confusing the terms masturbation and defenestration.) Splat! and we’re allowed to take our seats alongside a long gingham table that extends into the ceiling. (Krit Robinson designed the sets and props; Karen Boyer the costumes.) 

Seated there, in a Park Avenue pantsuit, is Louise (Kelly McAndrew), Susan’s now-former lover, waiting for her dinner party to start. She’s seemingly unfazed by her situation until the headscarf and gloved arrival of Ida (Jennifer Ikeda), a mysterious guest who pushes her about the merits of art versus commerce, and whether the expensive meatball shop from which Louise sourced the meal is still hip. The two appear to be flirting.

Horwitz is in the realm of the ridiculous and Blush matches her blush. This is a production where McAndrew turns on a bordello-red lamp in order to climb up a cherry-picker ladder and answer a phone; where the garage doors dramatically open so that Molly Bernard can storm in, deliver a frenzied screed and throw a McGuffin of a suitcase against the floor. (T. Ryder Smith plays a late addition to the proceedings.)

With its blue velvet curtains, rockabilly soundtrack and general oddness, there’s more than a touch of David Lynch here, with some hearty helpings of Fassbinder’s Petra von Kant as well, like when Louise and Ida cozy up lesbionically on a white fur rug. 

The plot admittedly escaped me for a moment, but on that rug takes place a brief interlude about Amelia Earhart, first ridiculous then suddenly haunting. It presages an idea, later explored, that we should not focus too much on the characters’ identities; that these are beings whose entire existence revolves around chasing each other across time and space. With style like this, and in such good company—good enough for me!

Another seemingly eternal specter, capitalism, is getting a downtown whacking courtesy of Classic Stage Company’s revival of Waiting for Lefty. Clifford Odets’ episodic, pro-union drama from 1935 still has plenty of potency even if Steven Pasquale’s staging struggles to maintain momentum. It’s hardly his fault: each vignette amounts to “The Man = bad” and, true as that is, it grows tedious even with a top-notch cast that includes Tala Ashe, Raffi Barsoumian and Adam Kantor.

They play cab drivers meeting to debate an impending strike, with scenes dramatizing how they’ve arrived at the end of their respective financial ropes: food insecurity, dwindling wages, encouraged snitching and compromised ethics. The most chilling line is delivered by Henry Stram’s middle manager to Austin Durant’s underling: “Orders from above. I don't have to tell you from where. New type poison gas for modern warfare.”

Luckily, folk duo Yeller Tooth has created a handful of original songs to liven things up with music worthy of its Woody Guthrie direct-action ambitions. Its members, Sahar Milani and Cameron Scoggins, are on-hand to perform alongside Doireann Mac Mahon and Zach McNally, and Susan Misner choreographs some poignant beats for the ensemble, including a slo-mo tableaux that suggests the sluggish pace of liberation. (A comedic highlight is Greg Hildreth parodying the moment in Victrola-era ditties where a bowtie-sounding crooner slows down to talk matters of the heart.)

Pasquale proves himself a gifted actor’s director, and does his part to engage the audience by having them distribute pamphlets calling out the obscenity of our trillionaire era. Waiting for Lefty can drag, even at 75 minutes, but hopefully we’re not waiting for his next directorial project much longer.

The Executrix is scheduled through November 14, 2026 at Target Margin Theatre on 52nd Street in Brooklyn. For tickets and more information, visit here.

Waiting for Lefty is scheduled through November 29, 2026 at Classic Stage Company on East 13th Street in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.