Here are shows you can still see either on stage, or online, or both, during Labor Day weekend, with links to my reviews.
Of course, there are now four shows running on Broadway — Springsteen on Broadway, Pass Over, Waitress and Hadestown.
There are two free outdoor plays:
“Critical Care, or Rehearsals for a Nurse,” Theater for the New City’s musical that has been touring all five boroughs, comes to the street outside their theater at East 10th Street in the East Village on September 4th at 2 p.m (and then next weekend on Staten Island and Tompkins Square Park): a tuneful eclectic score; an entertaining and anarchic mix of dance, song, social consciousness, silliness and satire; and a huge energetic cast crowding the makeshift stage who actually look like New Yorkers….The plot is a frame to hang the picture of life in the city and in the nation – a life that includes many problems in need of solutions
“Merry Wives,” Jocelyn Bioh’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, continues at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park through September 16: Bioh turns the Bard’s revenge comedy into something warmer (and, at 110 minutes without an intermission, shorter), though keeping the main plots, subplots and convoluted comic busy-ness
Online, Dominique Morisseau’s drama “Detroit ’67,” continues through September 16 and Wicked in Concert, is streaming via PBS
It is reason enough to see “Detroit ‘67” that it is the earliest play in Morisseau’s trilogy about her hometown, and that it weaves in snippets from a whole catalogue of Temptations and other Motown hits, songs the playwright employs symbolically, sometimes poignantly. There are other reasons too: The play offers a thought-provoking perspective on the Detroit riots of 1967, and their impact on a small group of friends and family
Separately, both Alma Baya and Ni Mi Madre are both live in person and live-streamed. through September 19th.
Alma Baya: A familiar science fiction set up, right down to the unisex silver lame uniforms…But the production also feels smartly tailor-made for the specific moment in which we are living.
Ni Mi Madre: The hour-long monologue is more complex than just a comic portrait, although it’s certainly funny. It’s threaded through with subtly poignant stories illustrating issues of race, class, nationality and gender. It’s also something of an autobiography, the story of a queer boy’s coming of age, seen through the eyes of his mother, who is not always sympathetic.
