In this provocative one-woman show, Markell inhabits the controversial filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl with such fierce intelligence and nuanced complexity that she transforms what could have been a simple biographical sketch into a deeply unsettling meditation on art, complicity, and survival.
Manhattan Repertory Theatre has struck theatrical gold with Tim Mulligan’s wickedly entertaining “Point Loma,” a gleefully campy horror spoof that channels the best of 1950s B-movie schlock while delivering genuine scares and belly laughs in equal measure. Under Ken Wolf’s spirited direction, this off-Broadway gem transforms the intimate black box space of the Chain Theatre into a haunted playground where paranormal podcasters meet their match in a sinister San Diego hospice house.
Hold Me In The Water is a master class in turning a story into magic. A sense of precision runs through this production from the tippity-top where Haddad emerges from out of nowhere to the final graceful denouement where he returns whence he came. In between, Haddad holds us in the palm of his hand. He is a gentle guide, beginning with his description of a “Relaxed Performance.”
The time is the early 1950s. The place is Harlem, specifically 126th Street between Lenox and Seventh. We are in the barbershop of one Russell Parker (Norm Lewis), who, when we meet him, has not been doing much barbering for the past few years. Since his dancing legs gave out, he is a man without a purpose or a desire to find one. He occupies his time sitting in his throne of a barber chair, reading the paper or playing checkers with his best friend William Jenkins (James Foster, Jr.), who has beaten Parker every single time they play.
Healing Mined is about loss and grief. Loss of a wife, a mother, a friend. What the play does is teach us to mine our pain. Going down into the labyrinth of grief, where it is dark, deep, and so all-encompassing that life no longer feels manageable. Sleep is the only way to hide from it. But even in sleep, there are haunting images of a tsunami approaching, crashing over you, and washing you away from existence. The tsunami is the dark deep pain, because like a tsunami, pain looms in the distance and then with little warning, suddenly there it is crashing over you, drowning you, carrying you away, tumbling you in all directions. Meneses’ beautiful, heart-endearing poetic prose is the story of this tsunami pain, the deepest pain humans experience, and how we manage it, or don’t. It is a poetic fable of human resilience and beauty, and the stories we tell ourselves, the realities we create to live by.
Fear stops us from doing our art and from being the whole person we can be, but what if we were faced with an unbelievable life-threatening moment that wakes us up to our true selves? That life-threatening moment comes to life in this remarkable true story about the World Airways Flight 30 accident on January 23, 1982. The plane skidded off the end of the icy runway and into the frigid waters of Boston Harbor.
Well, not his comeback so much as his actual fight. Circumstances beyond his control kept him from his battle five years ago. The fight that would have made father and family proud. This is the opening to the gripping Fight Night, now playing at 59E59 Theaters.
This is a refreshing piece of true theater that cannot exist anywhere but on stage. Mona Pirnot pushes us with her words, and Greenspan is her muse with his indescribable performance style, stage presence, and pure self-expression that considers the audience. In any Greenspan production, we, the audience, are his co-creators. We are part of the movement, part of the process. We are co-conspirators who need to make our way through the quagmire of decisions and choices. Greenspan’s existence on stage is the magical musical movement of a dancer, a comedian, and a character actor capable of creating vastly different individuals.
All The Beauty In The World” is a more of a TED Talk. And it is a lovely one. It is lovely because it is a reflection of Patrick Bringley who is kind, intelligent and insightful.
In the intimate confines of The Chain Theatre, EXES The Musical concluded its brief but incendiary New York City run with a performance that left audiences both stunned and exhilarated. This one-woman punk rock opera, created and performed by Anne DiGiovanni (performing as deegie), transforms profoundly personal journal entries into a searing examination of modern romance. With unflinching candor and disarming humor, DiGiovanni guides us through a decade of romantic misadventures that ultimately become a powerful meditation on female identity.
