Entries Tagged 'NYTheatre.com' ↓

Inspired by a daring rescue of six Irish prisoners in 1875, Catalpa is a sensational sea-faring, epic one-man saga conceived and performed by Donal O’Kelly with live music by Trevor Knight. Following its premier in Dublin and world tour through Melbourne, London, Chicago, Toronto, Paris, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Geneva, Catalpa has anchored in New York at the Donaghy Theatre at the Irish Arts Center for a limited engagement through the end of November.

It is not only refreshing, but intellectually challenging to experience new work from different cultures. For that reason alone I applaud 59E59 for hosting Made in Poland: A Festival of New Polish Plays, presented by the Polish Cultural Institute. In Sandbox/The First Time, two one-act plays by Michal Walczak, there are additional reasons for applause—specifically, talented casts, bold use of repetition, smart sets, and keen directing.

Site-specific look at eulogies and the people who deliver them conceived & performed by Stacy Mayer—Save 20%

In Thomas Bradshaw’s aptly titled Dawn, we are confronted with this dilemma: If you live your life in the dark, will you like what you see when you let a little light in? More reminiscent of Days of Wine and Roses than Cleansed, this may arguably be Bradshaw’s best play.

Stacy Mayer loves a good funeral. She has been obsessed with death for most of her life. She’s more concerned with having the perfect funeral than the perfect wedding. Her logic to that struck me as…well, logical. She says, “…at this rate I don’t even know if I’ll get married and I don’t want to waste time setting away money or making plans for something that may never happen.” Death is inevitable and in the case of The Funeralogues it’s also quite funny.

While the current version of Confessions of an Irish Publican feels very much like a workshop and in need of further revision to the text, it is a pleasure to watch an actor of Des Keogh’s experience at work.

For Flow, written by Kesav M. Wable and directed by Jonathan Solari, is the contemporary descendant of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. Here, instead of two tramps in an empty locationless void, we meet Dee and Kane, two young aspiring rappers waiting for a producer named Flow in the urban void of a deserted street corner in the Bronx. When the play adheres to the structure of Godot, it is brilliant.

“We choose our friends by those who best understand our suffering,” asserts Blair Singer in his very funny and touching new play The Most Damaging Wound. Singer’s take on friendships and coming to grips with manhood offers nothing that is particularly new but it is so well written and performed that it’s like watching one of your favorite movies that never fails to make you feel pleasantly nostalgic.

A daring new play dealing with sensitive sexual and mental health issues makes its US premiere at The Wild Project. The casual, frank exploration of sex is often jarring and darkly funny.

A note from the Workshop Theater Company’s artistic director in the program for Moonlight & Love Songs tells us: “We’re watching the story of a couple in love, and like Bogey and Bergman in Casablanca, they’re a couple whose circumstances continue to force them apart. The journey of the play takes place over many years, but the events are concentrated on the beginnings of their romance and the tragic consequences of a simple deception.” I’m not sure that I agree with the foregoing assessment of this new play by Scott C. Sickles.