I like this audience -- good people here tonight," says performer Jonny Donahoe as he warms up a Friday-night crowd at Every Brilliant Thing. Generating goodwill is essential: Audience members don't just watch this play -- they perform it, too. The ...
A banner proclaiming "Famiglia Week" hangs over diners' heads in the chain Italian restaurant where Pocatello takes place. When you're here, it seems to promise, family comes together. It's all about the breadsticks and visions of communal dining. ...
Let's not pretend there's any reason to revive The Elephant Man, Bernard Pomerance's 1977 play about the short, difficult life of Joseph Merrick -- now playing at the Booth, smoothly directed by Scott Ellis -- except to provide a star part for a sta...
Every once in a while we need a big sea change," declares a performer in Nella Tempesta, a ruminative and resonant production by Italy's Motus Theatre Company. Motus has previously reflected on people-power and utopian change: Its 2012 La MaMa prese...
From Victor Hugo's righteous rage of yore to dystopian futures that look less like science fiction and more like tomorrow's Twitter feed, comics put the real in surreal in 2014. Writer David Hine and artist Mark Stafford's adaption of Victor Hugo...
What's the difference between a banker and a terrorist? Ayad Akhtar's new play attempts to fathom this once unfathomable question as it sounds the depths of global events, relating market "corrections" to the logic of jihad. But The Invisible Hand c...
You've probably heard of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Italian-American anarchists who became international martyrs when they were sloppily tried and summarily executed for murder in the 1920s. Who'd have figured that Vanzetti is best represented onsta...
The Information Age has something it won't say/Climate change kills the poor every day." Thus begins one of the bluesy hymns in Monsanto Is the Devil, a musical revue now at Joe's Pub, led by the singular Reverend Billy (Bill Talen). Boosted by the ...
Can artists stay out of the limelight and make art that matters? Ask that question in art schools across the nation, and nine out of 10 times the answer will come back, "Not ever." How, then, is it possible to explain the five-decade-old, publicity-...
It might come as a surprise that Rubens Ghenov's arresting compositions -- hard edges adulterated by voluptuous pours and gossamer gradations -- are inspired by the unpublished poetry of Angelico Moranda (born in 1940 in Spain; death date unknown), ...
Theater's forbidden love affairs often leave wreckage in their wake: bodies on the streets of Verona, plague in Thebes. But we rarely hear much from the onlookers to these combustible scenes. They're lucky to be spared the pain, and unlucky to miss ...
Back in 1965, with Warhol's Factory on the rise and downtown Manhattan awash in avant-garde experimentation, a campy subgenre called the Theater of the Ridiculous was born. "We have passed beyond the absurd; our position is absolutely preposterous,"...
If you have kids, don't bring them to see Swamp Juice. Or, rather, do, definitely, take them to this whole-family pleaser -- just know in advance that they'll almost certainly want to try some of what they see at home. Jeff Achtem, founder of Mel...
Artists & Fleas Holiday Edition Market Weekends through the end of the year Artists & Fleas' emporium of eclectic designer and vintage goodies is a year-round staple in Williamsburg and Chelsea Market. But this year, A&F;'s Williamsburg location ...
Oedipus Rex might be the only play in Western drama that doesn't need a spoiler alert. Sophocles' ancient tragedy makes a slow and inevitable political prophecy, forecasting how we'll sow the seeds of our own destruction. Oedipus, the Theban king wi...
Some small towns are famous for their scenery, others for rare handicrafts. But in the Appalachian hamlet of Keith Josef Adkins's new play, Pitbulls, the local attraction is pit bull fighting -- and things don't go well for anyone who messes with th...
Rodgers & Hammerstein's Allegro is the rare musical cut from whole cloth rather than derived from an existing play or story. Its closest theatrical relative might be Thornton Wilder's Our Town (1938), which shares its austerity of means and moral fi...
Winter can really put a stranglehold on the Hudson Valley and its residents. The landscape is hungover from the psychedelic autumn leaf hues that draw a snappy tourist trade right up until Thanksgiving. By the time December rolls around, the tour bu...
Asked a few years back about what new music she listens to, Patti Smith replied that "the new people are the unknown people," casting her vote with rock 'n' roll not yet created. For this critic, that's what makes winter the most exciting time in Ne...
One upon a time in New York City -- circa 2006, or so -- all of the city's best consignment shops were clustered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Beacon's Closet and Buffalo Exchange were the must-visit thrift stores for cool kids looking to build their h...
