Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Money can’t buy everything, hope the Off-Broadway satires DILARIA and POLISHING SHAKESPEARE

• By drediman
• July 22, 2025
• No Comments

Currently Off-Broadway, you’ll find a pair of satires critiquing the extent to which money shapes and influences our lives — both culturally and socially — in today’s world. As always, read on for my thoughts.

POLISHING SHAKESPEARE
59E59 Theaters
Through August 10

First up at 59E59 Theaters is Twilight Theatre Co. and Kitchen Theatre Company’s co-presentation of Polishing Shakespeare (RECOMMENDED), Brian Dykstra’s new satire portraying the conflicts of interest that persist in making theater in a capitalist society. The play features a trio of archetypal characters — the artistic director of a relatively well-known nonprofit theater company, a rich donor with suspect ideas, and a playwright with ideals to fight for. Together, they weave a portrait of how major monetary gifts can impact the integrity of even the most artistically-inclined institutions. In the play, the donor hopes to fund a project that involves commissioning a playwright to adapt Shakespeare’s entire theatrical canon into more digestible verse (Shakespeare for dummies, if you will). Cleverly, Polishing Shakespeare is written completely in verse, as if in retaliation to the fictitious project. Although this decision could have ended up seriously missing the mark, I’m happy to report that the work is by and large delightful and even illuminating at times. Unlike Taylor Mac’s recent play Prosperous Fools at Theatre for a New Audience — which this piece strongly calls to mind — Dykstra’s play is consistently entertaining with nary a lull in its 90-minute running time. Ironically, the play registers far more like Molière than the Bard, particularly in its witty and slicing social commentary, which is deliciously delivered the trio of Kate Levy, Brian Dykstra, and Kate Siahaan-Rigg under the keen direction of Margarett Perry.

DILARIA
DR2 Theatre
Through August 8

Then down at the DR2 Theatre just off of Union Square is Julia Randall’s Dilaria (SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED), a dark comedy about a volatile, attention-addicted rich girl living in New York — the titular Diliaria — and how she wreaks havoc in whatever situation she finds herself in. Indeed, she’s a mean girl through and through, and the unstable, toxic core of this fascinating if ultimately flawed play. Make no mistake, Randall’s writing is often times spot-on, particularly with respect to how young adults these days communicate with each other. As a time capsule of the rhythms, jargon, and content of these verbal interactions, the play is a really interesting specimen. However, when one pulls out to take a more panoramic look at the play, the larger structure reveals its flimsiness as a satisfying work of theater, despite the efforts of director Alex Keegan to sustain dramatic tension throughout. Indeed, from a narrative standpoint, Diliaria becomes, as it unfolds, increasingly less convincing when it comes to effective plotting vis-à-vis character motivations, thereby undermining the outrageousness and unsettling impact that the playwright was surely aiming for (no spoilers here). That being said, the play achieves success as a satirical character study on “attention whoring” — particularly as it relates to how wealth and social (media) status can feed the black hole of the ego when left unchecked — in which case the work is often pointed and observant. Like Polishing Shakespeare, the production features just three actors, each of whom deliver lively, caustic performances — Ella Stiller as Dilaria, Tessa Albertson (who recently replaced Chiara Aurelia in the role) as her ill-treated best friend, and Christopher Briney as her equally ill-treated semi love interest.