VIEWPOINTS – BAM’s Next Wave Festival, Week 12: The final week dazzles with Andrew Schneider’s NERVOUS/SYSTEM & the return of Mark Morris’s THE HARD NUT

The time has come for the 2018 edition of BAM’s Next Wave Festival, the final one curated by outgoing BAM Executive Director and influential festival founder Joseph V. Melillo, to come to a … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Lynn Nottage’s early-career satire FABULATION is raucously revived by the Signature Theatre Company

Currently running at the Signature Theatre Company is the Off-Broadway revival of Lynn Nottage’s early-career 2004 satire Fabulation, or the Re-Education of Undine. As those of you who follow theater may know, … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Theater legends Brook and Estienne austerely mull crime/punishment, right/wrong in the elegiac, confounding, but quietly spellbinding THE PRISONER

Over the last few weeks or so, I caught Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord’s production of legendary theater artists Peter Brook and Marie-Hélène Estienne’s elegiac The Prisoner. After having played Paris, Yale Rep, the National … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Ming Peiffer’s uncompromising USUAL GIRLS is a raw, aggressive dissection of female sexuality (and racism), and it’s shattering theater

Luckily, before heading out of the country for the holidays, I was able to catch one of the final performances of Roundabout Underground’s production of Usual Girls, playwright Ming Peiffer’s aggressively written and … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The new musical CHRISTMAS IN HELL works as a series of amusing, sophomoric comedic sketches, but not as a coherent musical

I recently had a chance to see Christmas in Hell, a new Off-Broadway musical by Gary Apple presented by York Theatre Company. The musical, which was previously seen at the New … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – William Kentridge’s monumental, sprawling spectacle THE HEAD AND THE LOAD at the Park Avenue Armory was an unsettling, poetic epic

Earlier this month, I caught South African artist William Kentridge’s monumental The Head and the Load at the appropriately massive Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory. His visceral, collage-like aesthetic … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The dynamically-staged musical adaptation of CLUELESS is simply breezy entertainment

This winter at the Pershing Square Signature Center, Clueless – that iconic high school flick from the 1990s – has been turned into a stage musical by Amy Heckerling for The New Group. Clueless, an update … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – The scrappy new musical THE APPLE BOYS is completely and unexpectedly charming and disarming

This past weekend, I had the great pleasure of catching Jonothon Lyons and Ben Bonnema’s The Apple Boys: A Barbershop Quartet Musical. If the title fails to excite, trust me, the scrappy, completely … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Aaron Sorkin’s highly anticipated new stage adaptation of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD is solid but not revelatory

Last week, Aaron Sorkin’s highly anticipated – and controversial – world premiere stage adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee’s seminal American novel about race relations in this country, … Continue Reading →

THE HANGOVER REPORT – On Broadway, RUBEN & CLAY’S Christmas modestly-scaled show is a surprisingly sweet, endearing affair

This week, Ruben & Clay’s First Annual Christmas Carol Family Fun Pageant Spectacular Reunion Show opened its holiday run at Broadway’s Imperial Theatre. As far as this type of entertainment goes, this one’s … Continue Reading →