This production of Michael R. Jackson's A Strange Loop Woolly Mammoth comes after the show’s much-lauded off-Broadway production in the summer of 2019, produced by Playwrights Horizons and Page 73 Productions. The D.C. production of A Strange Loop was announced in March of 2020, right before the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered theatre across America, and right before Jackson’s won 2020’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the show. Woolly Mammoth isn’t known for producing musicals, yet it makes sense for A Strange Loop to be staged here. The musical has more in common with Woolly Mammoth’s past productions of experimental Black plays (like Fairview or An Octoroon) than the reworkings of classic musicals typically seen in D.C. theatre.

It appears that one of the major vibes, if you will, of post-quarantine theatre is tension, in particular claustrophobic, interpersonal tension that builds between people stuck in a small space or a single room. This mood permeates recent plays including Pass Over, Dana H, Is This A Room, Last of the Love Letters, The Fever, and now, Sylvia Khoury’s Selling Kabul at Playwrights Horizons. Of course, these plays all or mostly pre-date the pandemic, and yet after so much time being stuck inside, they feel different, more intense and real than ever before. The notion of a single-room play is nothing new, but now, after many of us have been living single-room lives, they have a newfound relevancy and relatability. They haunt us in ways that feel familiar. 

Where the show truly shines is with the fantastic company that director Jerry Zaks has assembled. Rob McClure is a theatrical force to be reckoned with. Seamlessly transitioning back and forth between Daniel and Doubtfire, McClure is giving a career defining performance that would surely make Robin Williams proud. The lovely Jenn Gambatese as Miranda and their on-stage children Analise Scarpaci as Lydia (terrific), Jake Ryan Flynn as Christopher (enthusiastic), and Avery Sell as Natalie (adorable) make up the Hillard clan. A Broadway review of Mrs. Doubtfire.

Lauren Yee’s The Great Leap, now at Bethesda’s Round House Theatre and streaming online, offers one potent exploration of these questions. Yee’s answer—which is vividly brought to life in this production—is to reconfigure Chinese history into a story between parents and children, mapping painful histories of nations onto the painful histories of family. In this so-called “socio-political fable,” allegory and memory are intertwined to both delightful and calamitous effect.

Clyde's is now in performance at the Hayes Theatre on 44th Street in New York City. A Broadway review of Lynn Nottage's latest play at Second Stage Theater.

Alice Childress had a lot to say about being a Black woman working in theatre in 1955, and channeled those righteously indignant observations into Trouble in Mind, which finally opened Broadway earlier tonight. The work had been scheduled to transfer from its successful original off-Broadway run, but Childress would not make the cuts producers felt would smooth out the play’s open-faced callout of systemic racism, and the production was canceled. The story of how the play finally made it to the Great White Way is a bittersweet triumph that says more about our culture than about the work itself, and Roundabout Theatre Company is ensuring that we know it, announcing it before performances and noting it in all of its advertisements. The play’s insights, and the fact they remain as relevant now as they were over 60 years ago, are equally more about the context than the material. Directed by Charles Randolph-Wright without the red-blooded urgency it calls for, it is more of a respectful replica of a time capsule than an authentic relic itself. A review of Trouble in Mind on Broadway.

Paradise Square represents many firsts in the theater industry’s recovery from the pandemic shutdown. It’s the first production to reopen the Nederlander Theatre — a pillar of the Loop theater district — and the first pre-Broadway run of a major new work in Chicago. When it transfers to New York City’s Barrymore Theatre, where it’s slated to begin previews in February of next year, it will be among one of the first new musicals to open on Broadway. A review of the new pre-broadway tryout.

Erika Dickerson-Despenza, the writer of Cullud Wattah, a magnificent new play which just opened at the Public Theater, calls herself a ‘cultural-memory worker.’ I’d usually bristle at the self-proclaimed title, so vague in its implications, but anyone who can follow the stunning shadow/land—the first installment in her epic 10-play “Katrina cycle,” released as an audio production by the Public earlier this year—with a work of such breathtaking beauty can do just about anything, including convincing me of their title. Because, while Dickerson-Despenza is a playwright of the once-in-a-generation kind, these two works assert her mastery at combining the intimate family histories of classic memory plays with the political sharpness of an agile social worker. A review of cullud wattah at the Public Theater.

Diana, The Musical opened tonight at the Longacre Theatre on West 48th Street here in New York City. Our Chief Critic Juan A. Ramirez went and reviewed the new production starring Jeanna de Waal.

Assassins is now in performance at Classic Stage Company in New York City. A review by Joey Sims.

Nollywood Dreams is a simple, delightful play in which a young woman wishes to break into Nigeria’s film industry (known as Nollywood) as it booms in the ‘90s. Written by Jocelyn Bioh with wit and well-observed attention to characterization, it is not much more than that. In its premiere production at MCC Theater, though, performed by a lovable cast, it doesn’t have to be. A review by Juan A. Ramirez.

In that same spirit, Trevor, an agreeable new musical about a gay teen’s 1981 life, which just had its New York premiere at Stage 42, goes through the motions of the typical teen dramedy, likely inspiring younger audience members without risking anything in the process. With Dan Collins’ charming, if trite, book and lyrics, and Julianne Wick Davis’ forgettable music, it is much like the Instagram infographics which have recently taken the place of genuine activism: a telegraphed signal of virtue without much commitment.

We first see Walter reprimanding his students for being distracted in class. Soon enough, however, he realizes he is just as distracted with his own life. Walter, played admirably by David Hyde Pierce, is a widowed economic professor whose spark is in danger of going out. In The Visitor, a new musical based on the 2007 film of the same name which premiered at the Public Theater, he rekindles that flame thanks to the discovery of two strangers who have set up camp in his unused Manhattan apartment. With music and lyrics by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey, and a book by Yorkey and Kwame Kwei-Armah, it is a story which attempts to bridge the gap between an established American and the two undocumented immigrants he finds. Whether it closes that same divide between its intentions and its results is a question the work seems to have left answered back during the film’s premiere. The Visitor is now in performance at the Public Theater through December 5, 2021.

Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord is an exuberant release of a show, a total joy to behold. Wong unfolds her tale of a ragtag group of quarantined volunteers who sewed thousands of masks with boundless, chaotic energy. But the show, which opened tonight at New York Theatre Workshop, also never loses sight of an essential fact: none of this should have been necessary. 

Winnie the Pooh is now in performance at the newly renamed Hundred Acre Wood Theatre at Theatre Row in New York City.

Morning Sun starring Blair Brown, Edie Falco, and Marin Ireland is now in performance at Manhattan Theatre Club at New York City Center through December 19, 2021.

Birds of North America is now in performance at the Mosaic Theater Company through November 21, 2021.

A review of the Broadway production of Caroline, or Change starring Sharon D Clarke which is in performance at Studio 54 on West 54th Street in New York City.

There is a whopping cast of twelve in Fairycakes, Douglas Carter Beane’s new sendup of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other assorted fairy tales, which just opened at the Greenwich House Theater. Its stage is of a large enough size, but it buckles under the weight of Beane’s bloated design: twelve performers, some playing multiple roles, struggling to find a spare minute with which to make an impression, and tools to help them.

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 review of The Lehman Trilogy on Broadway, by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Power, which is now in performance at the Nederlander Theatre on West 41st Street in New York City.

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.

Our Chief Critic Juan A. Ramirez reviews Is This A Room on Broadway, which is now in performances at the Lyceum Theatre on West 45th Street in New York City, conceived and directed by Tina Satter.

A review of the new Broadway comedy Chicken & Biscuits which is now in performance at the Circle in the Square Theatre on West 50th Street in New York City.