Two shows are opening on Broadway this coming week, and four Off-Broadway, to finish off this busy month of October
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
My review of Futurity
In “Futurity,” a genre-bending show created by César Alvarez and his indie band The Lisps, a soldier during the Civil War contacts the daughter of a famous 19th century British poet to help him build “a machine that creates peace.” ….The characters sing about and stew over technology and morality, time and terror, artificial intelligence and the power of imagination..
My review of First Daughter Suite
First Daughter Suite, Michael LaChiusa’s musical focusing as much on the First Ladies Nixon, Carter, Ford, Reagan, and Bush as on their daughters, can be considered a sequel of sorts to Michael LaChiusa’s 1993 breakthrough musical First Lady Suite. The four scenes in the new musical take liberties with the subjects, and each ends with a surprise twist, some of which are outrageous. Still, for all its lapses, First Daughter Suite offers great satisfactions, the most prominent being a wonderful all-female cast.
My review Empanada Loca
Daphne Rubin-Vega, the original Mimi in the original Rent, is so good portraying the initially endearing Dolores and eight other characters in “Empanada Loca, “which has now opened at Labyrinth Theater, that I didn’t realize the play written and directed by Aaron Mark was supposed to be “horror theater” until it was too late
Labyrinth offers a FREE 10 pm performance of Empanada Loca on Halloween
My review of Dames at Sea
Fun and funny, full of rousing melodies and exciting bouts of tap dancing performed by six true talents, the revival at the Helen Hayes is, according to the show’s website, “reimagined for the bright lights of Broadway and taken to glamorous and spectacular new heights.” To the extent that it delivers on its marketing hype, Dames at Sea largely loses what made it distinctive in the first place.,,the biggest change on Broadway is that the show somehow no longer feels like an ironic if loving send-up of a 30’s extravaganza, but something closer to an imitation of one
My review of The Humans
Playwright Stephen Karam nails the dynamics of an ordinary family over the course of the few hours of the Thanksgiving get-together — teasing, taunting, cutting, spiteful, resentful, judgmental, nagging, effortlessly loving. But he goes further, offering a glimpse at nothing less than the strains and stresses of American middle class life while never straying from credibly and affectionately presenting the lives of six individual humans.
The Week in New York Theater News
Eclipsed with Lupita Nyongo is transferring to Broadway in February
David Oyelowo as Othello, Daniel Craig as Iago, directed by Sam Gold,New York Theater Workshop Fall 2016
Ugly Lies The Bone extended to December 6
Bright Star by Steve Martin and Edie Brickell, starts 3/07/16, opens 3/31. (Broadway theater TBA)
New digital streaming service ‘BroadwayHD’ to bring Broadway shows to computer screens…
Andrew Lloyd Webber pledged $150,000 for musical instruments in 20 NYC public middle schools in a new “Rock the Schools” program.
Attend live video shoot of “Circle of Life” from The Lion King at Minskoff FREE October 30 at 12:30 pm RSVP–
Wow #Groffsauce @AndrewRannells & @briandarcyjames #Ham4Ham pic.twitter.com/JmK6qOX1HB
— Jonathan Mandell (@NewYorkTheater) October 25, 2015
