New York Theater

Mike Birbiglia’s The New One Review: Hating Kids, Having A Kid

When Mike Birbiglia announced that his fourth one-man show would be playing at the Cherry Lane, he wouldn’t say what it would be about; he simply called it “The New One.” (“I hate it when people tell me what anything is about or really any details at all,” he explained in a press release.)

How arrogant, I thought. Who does he think he is?
He’s someone who can sell out the entire run of a show at the Cherry Lane in a matter of hours.
Read more of this post

The House That Will Not Stand Review: Free women of color face female slavery in 1813 New Orleans

In “The House That Will Not Stand,” Marcus Gardley’s historically fascinating, lyrical and surprisingly funny play, nobody much cares for Beartrice Albans – not her three beautiful daughters, not her mad sister, not her slave, and certainly not her rival, Madame La Veuve, who accuses her of murder.

“You may be the wealthiest colored woman in New Orleans,” La Veuve says to Beartrice, “but you built this house on sand, lies and dead bodies.”

Beartrice’s slave Makeda tries to defend her: “I’d think I’d know if the Madame was a murderer,” Makeda says. “She may be crass, calculating, cunning and unkind, but the woman is still a Christian.”

Beartrice, a free woman of color, will need all her cunning in order to face what is about to befall the Albans household. Read more of this post

This Ain’t No Disco Review: Studio 54 Where are You?

For all its high-energy hedonism featuring handsome half-clad bodies, “This Ain’t No Disco,” the rock opera at the Atlantic Theater set in the New York City club scene of the 1970s, doesn’t elicit desire or delight or nostalgia so much as it does confusion.

The confusion starts with the title, which is a line taken from a 1979 Talking Heads song entitled “Life During Wartime,” about a post-apocalyptic landscape, that includes the verse:

This ain’t no party, this ain’t no disco,
This ain’t no fooling around
This ain’t no Mudd Club, or C. B. G. B.,
I ain’t got time for that now

But “This Ain’t No Disco” mostly takes place in a disco, the notorious Studio 54, and one of its characters is named Steve Rubell, after the actual co-owner of Studio 54 (portrayed as a fun-loving, coke-snorting sleaze by Theo Stockman.)  A few scenes are set in the downtown Mudd Club, where the Mudd Clubbers sing “we party all night long.”So life for the characters in this sing-through musical IS a disco; it IS a party; they DO fool around; and that’s what they mostly spend their time doing – even while they dream of stardom.

Read more of this post