Summer means outdoor entertainment, much of it free– like the Broadway in Bryant Park lunchtime concerts…
Watch Groundhog Day at Bryant Park – three songs
…and Broadway Barks, the annual pet adoption event at Shubert Alley:
Acting with Animals: Celebrities dish on their furry co-stars.
It also means theater festivals
Watch songs from @NYMF musicals @FourthMessenger @GoreeMusical @M_MC_V_D @CAMPWANATACHI @NYReptheatre etchttps://t.co/5KqKhhtZpz pic.twitter.com/jLYoi6mNiO
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 2, 2017
June Quiz
July openings
New York Theater Reviews
Marvin’s Room
So much is so sad in the lives of Bessie (Lily Taylor) and Lee (Janeane Garofalo, in her Broadway debut) as to make the audience fully justified in wondering: Should we be laughing at this?
Yet laugh we do, thanks to the playwright’s subversive worldview, and a production directed with unflashy effectiveness by Anne Kauffman (The Nether, A Life, etc. etc), who is, remarkably, making her Broadway debut.
Seeing You
“Seeing You” [is] a dance and theater piece about World War II written and co-directed by Randy Weiner (a producer of both Sleep No More and Queen of the Night ), … Let’s [test “Seeing You” by applying] the six essential elements in any good immersive theater to this show, which may not be the top of the line in the genre, but that fans of immersive theater would surely find worthwhile.
Ghost Light
Third Rail Projects, the dazzling experimental and self-described “experiential” company that has created engaging site-specific theater in an old mental institution in Williamsburg (“Then She Fell,” about Lewis Carroll and Alice in Wonderland) and an old warehouse in Bushwick (“The Grand Paradise,” about a tropical vacation), now sites “Ghost Light” in a unique location for an immersive work of theater – a theater at Lincoln Center…we view from above (a balcony, catwalk, or staircase landing) the sort of wordless scenes that Third Rail does so well, vivid and eerie moments of movement
Kim’s Convenience
Before the start of “Kim’s Convenience,” Soulpepper artistic director Arthur Schultz introduced it to the New York audience as “the most successful new Canadian play of the last decade.” The show, a funny but glib comedy about a Korean immigrant family that runs a grocery store in Toronto, has gone on tour throughout Canada, and has been turned into a television series on the Canadian network CBC .
It is now the first show to open in the month-long festival of Canadian theater being marketed as“Soulpepper on 42nd Street.”
Cost of Living
In “Cost of Living,” an eye-opening play featuring a quartet of extraordinary performances, playwright Martyna Majok offers a tart retort to that sappy Barbra Streisand song about the luck of people who need people, and smashes more than one stereotype along the way. …[W]hat’s most wonderful about the MTC production, superbly directed by Jo Bonney, are a series of unforgettable scenes between the couples that thrust us into an intimacy that is rare in the theater.
To T or Not To T
D’Lo is a transgender Tamil Sri Lankan-American artist, and he explores each of those identities in “To T or Not to T” (the T in the title referring to the taking of testosterone) in the 70-minute show at Dixon Place that opens the 26th annual Hot Festival , “the world’s longest-running LGBT festival.”
New York Theater News
New cast for @DollsHousePart2 starts July 25: Julie White, Stephen McKinley Henderson @Erin_Wilhelmi.
Jayne Houdyshell stays on. pic.twitter.com/B4tJcE8Rbr— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 5, 2017
More than 60 artists have called for Lincoln Center to cancel a play backed by the Israeli government. Lincoln Center refused. Anti-Israel signatories include Annie Baker, Caryl Churchill, Sam Gold, Samuel D Hunter, Wallace Shawn, Tracey Letts, Andre Gregory
.@HarlemRep_ plans to revive 5 Yip Harburg musicals over next 4 years.
1st: #Jamaica. w/ music by Harold Arlen!
July 29-March 24 pic.twitter.com/q4PmkN6g5s— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) June 29, 2017
A Clockwork Orange (based on Anthony Burgess novel) is coming to New World Stages in September, the latest stage adaptation of a dystopian novel/
Now, @Groundhogdaybwy I liked. But fellas, this is New York, not London. #untruthinadvertising pic.twitter.com/PxSmNf7Prt
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 1, 2017
Dominique Morisseau’s Playwright’s Rules of Engagement, inserted in program for her play Pipeline
Smart take by @ChrisJonesTrib on recent spate of attacks on critics as part of larger cultural shifthttps://t.co/DlPoVrW3Ci pic.twitter.com/HMMpmQftoK
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) June 30, 2017
Harvard Prof Stephen Greenblatt analyzes Merchant of Venice to score subtle points about current attitudeshttps://t.co/PehsE3Jlhu pic.twitter.com/PubPyD9SKG
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 6, 2017
.@TheRSC to hook audiences to heart rate monitors at Bard play to test emotional responseshttps://t.co/XYvP0m4ty2
— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) July 6, 2017
New American cast members Carolee Carmello and Norm Lewis perform “A Little Priest”from Sweeney Todd on the Today Show.
