BY CHARLES BATTERSBY | Over the last decade the “Sick Lit” genre of young adult fiction has grown in popularity. Tragic tales of teenagers with terminal illnesses have filled stages, pages, and movie screens, but Kimberly Akimbo has a clever twist: Its teenage heroine has a rare aging disease, and she looks like a woman […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | In The Collaboration—written by the quadruple Oscar-nominated Anthony McCarten—Andy Warhol’s real-life, 1984 creative partnership with Jean-Michel Basquiat is played out as a battle (and sort of ultimate romance) between two polar opposites of the art world. Warhol (played by Paul Bettany) is calculated and surfacy, but feels his star has somewhat faded […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | It’s a case of Local Boy born and raised in NYC who moves away, gets some schooling academic and otherwise, garners raves for his stage work in Boston and London, has his heart broken into tiny pieces, and scours the carpeting for the shards with which to commence its reconstruction—oh yeah, […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Debuting as part of New York Theater Festival’s Winterfest, Chelsea resident David Allard’s Pañuelos brings, he says, “a queer narrative” to the history of Argentina’s “Dirty War” (aka Process of National Reorganization, or El Proceso). This it does by devoting a great deal of its upfront time to Daniel Romero, a […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | There are two varieties of jukebox shows, and I’m getting weary of the first kind: The type where they pick a Boomer-beloved musical group or icon (Carole King, Cher, the Four Seasons) and tell their story, spanning their success despite the challenges, followed by more challenges, then—surprise—more success. And in the […]
BY CHARLI BATTERSBY | Company XIV, the nimble burlesque troupe behind the recently reviewed Seven Sins and the annual destination holiday event Nutcracker Rouge, has a new venue with a new show and a clever plan to draw audiences. Cocktail Magique is a cocktail-themed magic/burlesque extravaganza, and it’s certainly a crowd pleaser, given that the […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Like rocking out to the sweet riffs of a Bob Seeger song after years of irony-only listening, writer/performer Bruce McCulloch’s autumnal residency at Soho Playhouse reveals heretofore hidden depths to the stellar ensemble comedian, whose work with The Kids in the Hall is peppered with mission-focused loners and sweet searchers yearning […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Superachiever Judy Garland isn’t wasting one second of precious, pumpkin spice-infused time when the final day of September gives way to a month-long celebration of ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. And in honor of that, the woman who once singlehandedly killed a wicked witch by […]
BY BONNIE ROSENSTOCK| Some minutes before Burn began, there was an epic river of a rainstorm, pelting leftward, seen on the back screen. Booming claps of thunder were heard, and lightning illuminated the sky, which gave just a hint of a mountainous backdrop. After it subsided, Alan Cumming appeared onstage dressed in black, dark eyeliner […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Worlds collide, sending fiction crashing into fate and creating a new reality so meta, it makes the Marvel Cinematic Universe seem utterly unambitious. That’s the sense you get when reading the timeline that accounts for this weekend’s stage presentation of David and Kate Get Re-Married. Written and performed by David Carl […]