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More than 17 months after COVID-19 forced theatres around the country to cancel performances, Papermill Playhouse is back and rocking it to the rafters with a vibrant revival of Jason Robert Brown’s Songs for a New World. “Songs for a Thousand Cabarets” could be the alternative title for this revue-like collection of ardent musical theatre-pop-soliloquies given its popularity with soloists and cabaret artists. Those artists include stars as varied as Karen Akers, Betty Buckley, Audra McDonald, and Shoshana Bean―not to mention hundreds of thousands of aspirants around the world. Having grown up belting the original cast recording with my musical theatre friends as we skipped to rehearsal, I have always loved the show. But going into this Mark S. Hoebee directed production, I found myself wondering, “How does the full show of stand-alone solos, duets, and quartets stack up 26 years after its premiere?” As led by the sensational Carolee Carmello, as brilliantly as it did back in 1995.
You have to feel bad for the sole character in The Fever, Wallace Shawn’s 1990 monologue which just opened in a new production starring Lili Taylor at the Audible Theatre at Minetta Lane Theatre. The only thing worse than spending a night with your head in a porcelain bowl is doing so with a troubled mind, terminally regretful of every single thing you did to wind up here. Maybe you even start thinking about the state of the world, paralleling your own face-down demise to larger, global themes. The difference between such nights and this one-act performance, though, is that one is usually content to grab the toothpaste and move on.
The astonishing new thriller Dana H. opened tonight at the Lyceum Theatre on Broadway, our review.
A Broadway review of Thoughts of a Colored Man, a new play by Keenan Scott II and directed by Steve H. Broadnax III and is now in performance at the John Golden Theatre on West 45th Street in New York City.
When I walked into the Tony Kiser Theatre on Sunday, I was greeted by a bluish-grey set with a desk downstage and a bench upstage, muted colored mountains traced the wings. Over the next 90 minutes, an intricate play about long distance companionship, and origami, glowingly unfolded itself. This new play, Letters of Suresh, by Rajiv Joseph opened tonight at Second Stage Theatre. The play starts with Melody, a Japanese-Korean woman who’s great-uncle (who she never met) recently passed away. Melody recently returned to Seattle from his funeral in Nagasaki with her great-uncle's only possessions: A box of letters from a man named Suresh. Melody writes a letter to Suresh informing him of her great-uncle's passing and to ask him if he would like his letters back. As the play continues, we learn more about the author of these letters and the relationship between Suresh and Melody’s great-uncle, Father Mitsuo Hashimoto.
