BY CHARLI BATTERSBY | The subway ride home from New York Comic Con (NYCC) is always an adventure. The 7 train leaves from Hudson Yards, half a block from the Javits Center. Most of the people who board the train there are coming straight from the con. I sat down on the subway bench in […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | Like an embarrassing itch, Broadway jukebox musicals just won’t seem to go away. Whether they tell the life story of the musical artist whose hits they use (like The Cher Showand Tina) or they string those songs together to construct a fictional, unrelated narrative (like Mamma Mia! or The Heart of […]
Theamatically tied to—and indeed, inspired by—November 17-20’s New York Comic Con (NYCC), the new show from singer, adult content creator, perpetually perceptive writer, continuously compelling live presence, and RuPaul’s Drag Race legend Honey Davenport has its world premiere performance at 9:30pm, Saturday, November 19, at West 42nd Street’s legend-in-its-own-right Laurie Beechman Theatre. Billed as “a […]
BY MICHAEL MUSTO | I vividly remember seeing films with my parents when I was a kid and becoming confused when a harsh word was said by an actor and the entire audience reacted by shrieking in horror. I’d turn to my mother and whisper, “What did that word mean?” and she’d weirdly refuse to […]
Actor, writer, comedian, and consistently hilarious gay wit Alec Mapa (as seen on Ugly Betty, Frasier, and RuPaul’s Drag Race) is returning to West 42nd Street’s legendary Laurie Beechman Theatre with the debut of his solo performance Ha! Penis! It’s a fitting setting for the show’s world premiere, with the Beechman (currently scheduled to shutter […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Laurels from countless luminaries began pouring in this summer, after word came down that Laurie Beechman Theatre (407 W. 42nd St.) would close for good come the end of August. Thankfully, the legendary downstairs performance space got a reprieve through October, as has the ground-level West Bank Cafe that sits above […]
BY CHARLI BATTERSBY | In years past, New York’s anime conventions had to tiptoe around the behemoth of New York Comic Con (NYCC). Anime NYC usually arrived in November, scavenging the nerd carcasses after NYCC had eaten the lion’s share of geeky wallets. But this year, Anime NYC dared to take the first bite from […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | With only 12 episodes in the rearview mirror, Season 3 of The Sherry Vine Variety Show (airing now on OUTtv) finds its titular star with plenty of genre tropes left to explore in the profane manner one might expect from the drag queen who turned Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah into How I […]
BY SCOTT STIFFLER | Actress, singer, writer, and educator Bianca Leigh, a transgender woman, is currently collecting oodles of accolades for educating Broadway audiences—not about pronouns, mind you. The thing that has capacity crowds swooning is the way Bianca—as Louise, first lady Mary Todd Lincoln’s personal assistant and steadfast supporter—navigates the Lyceum Theatre stage with […]
“Drag, whether we like it or not, is inherently political, and our presence alone, before we even open our mouths to sing, is a threat to some people. Thankfully, the unholy blend of music and outrageous antics while addressing injustice, ignorance, and bigotry almost always wins over an audience and has powered us through these […]