Sean Hayes’ final performances in ‘The Unknown” on stage this weekend are also available on screen, via The League of Live Stream Theater. The play is one of several recent or current theatrical productions, including two by Sondheim, that are available this weekend on screens, whether as live digital theater or a “pro-shot recording” on one of the main streaming services. Below are six, with links to my reviews of the stage productions, when available.
Live from Studio Seaview
The Unknown, $89 at The League of Live Stream Theater.
My review
In “The Unknown,” Sean Hayes portrays a gay writer stalked by a mysterious stranger in a one-man thriller by David Cale on stage at Studio Seaview that (like many thrillers) doesn’t make much sense logically but plays masterfully from moment to moment with audience expectation, as Hayes portrays eleven distinctly different characters. This weekend, the play is being presented simultaneously on stage Off-Broadway and on home computer screens.
From Wilma Theater
The Most Spectacularly Lamentable Trial of Miz Martha Washington, $20 – $125 through Wilma
Written by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames (Fat Ham), the play just ended its stage run, a recording of which is being streamed now through May 3. “Behold the feverish Martha Washington, our first First Lady, on her deathbed, surrounded by the enslaved people poised to claim freedom the moment she dies.”
On HBO Max
Color Theories
My review
Julio Torres made his Off-Broadway debut with this show, but his gently surreal take on the world is familiar to viewers of HBOMax thanks to shows he’s done for them — a special, a movie, and a TV series. Here, he tells us he’s going to go color by color. Initially, there is no evident logic to his theories about color; he tells us “the sound of rain is green. A child flying a kite is yellow.” Barbra Streisand cloning her dog, he says, is purple. But eventually, they do start to make a loopy kind of sense. The primary colors, red, blue and yellow, embody passion, logic and joy respectively. If you combine yellow and blue you get green. “Green is when something is orderly but joyful, like a family of ducks swimming”
On Netflix
Merrily We Roll Along
My Merrily We Roll Along Broadway Review
Thi is a recording of the live 2024 Tony-winning Broadway production that turned the Stephen Sondheim and George Furth musical from a notorious 40-year-old flop into an acclaimed hit, the stuff of Broadway legend. The recording was originally shown in cinemas. In Merrily We Roll Along movie vs. stage musical, I wrote: “There is something worthwhile in offering a chance at experiencing such a show to theater lovers who didn’t make it to New York or couldn’t afford Broadway prices. Still, the film offers a different experience from the stage musical, in part because of the inherent qualities and expectations of the medium, but also because of directorial choices – some for the better, some for the worse — by Maria Friedman, director of both the Broadway production and the film.”
Jeff Ross: Take a Banana for the Ride,
My review
Ross, who’s best known as an insult comedian, made his Broadway debut with what’s clearly not a live version of one of his comedy roasts. The awkward title is something his grandfather used to say to him, and both Grandpa and bananas wind up surprisingly prominent during what turns out to be an odd hybrid of a show. “Take A Banana For The Ride” is more memoir than standup; it’s as sad as it is funny, and ricochets between schmaltzy and offensive – all in the name of uplift.
On Digital Theatre
Into The Woods, rent for £7.99 or subscribe for a month for £9.99, on the British streaming platform Digital Theatre
“critically acclaimed production was captured by Digital Theatre live at London’s Regent’s Park Open Air theatre and was directed by Timothy Sheader. It won the Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival and features Hannah Waddingham as the Witch and Jenna Russell as the Baker’s Wife”
This production is new to me, but here is my review of the 2022 Broadway Into the Woods
