Different stages. Different voices. An ongoing conversation.
52 reviews
We went upstairs at IATI Theater but felt we had entered a basement laundry in 1917. Benevolent brings a tough story vividly to life through real washing, clever design and four girls whose growing friendship gives us plenty to care about. Sad, funny and thoroughly absorbing.
ISLA brings together an impressive mix of storytelling styles. Shadow puppetry, broomstick puppets, acting, singing, live music, recorded voices and family history all combine to tell the story of three Cuban sisters, their lives in Cuba and their eventual journey to the United States.
Seeing Les Misérables at Radio City Music Hall already felt like it was going to be a pretty special night. What we did not realize until afterwards was that we had also happened to catch Alfie Boe’s final performance as Jean Valjean, bringing to an end around 16 years of playing a role that has become so closely associated with him. That made an already spectacular production feel like we had witnessed a little piece of Les Mis history.
Going into ¡Violencia!, we were expecting something quite different based on the title. What we found instead was a funny, energetic and playful contemporary tragicomedy about heartbreak, mental health, family and all the different versions of ourselves that can end up fighting for control inside our heads.
There are still plenty of subjects that theatre rarely talks about openly, and perimenopause is certainly one of them. Perimenoparty tackles it head on with clowning, music, multimedia and plenty of humour, creating an hour that is as entertaining as it is thought provoking. Following an earlier run at the Hollywood Fringe, this latest work in progress continues to evolve, and after seeing it in its current form, we’re excited to see where it goes next.
Honor Shmonor began with swords, shouting and two medieval heroes charging into a witch hunt with absolute confidence that they were doing the right thing. It was a very funny setup, but Atticus Orsborn’s dark comedy soon started poking holes in that confidence, turning a playful fantasy adventure into a smart look at power, prejudice and the excuses people use to justify cruelty.
There is never a point during What a World! What a World! where it feels content to do just one thing. Eric Marlin’s play, directed by Ilana Khanin at The Tank, mixes classic Hollywood, rehearsal room drama, experimental movement, drag, and social commentary into a production that is constantly changing direction. The result is an ambitious show that kept us interested throughout, even if it was occasionally a little confusing.
It takes confidence to build a comedy show around a topic that many people still struggle to talk about. It takes even more confidence to invite the audience to become part of it. Presented as a one-night-only premiere performance at Dixon Place Lounge, Brooke Ferris's My Orgasm and Me uses her experience of once being part of a cult as the starting point for a funny, thoughtful and unexpectedly insightful exploration of consent, communication, pleasure and self-discovery. Blending clowning, s
Carolina Gaitán is magnetic in VIDA, a lively journey from rural Colombia to international stardom at Repertorio Español. Music, comedy and drama come together with live accompaniment from Nicolás Raimont and plenty of theatrical flair. Funny, moving and thoroughly entertaining, the fast-paced story is easy to follow thanks to clear English supertitles.
A mind “closed for the holiday” should probably be quiet. In Matteo Porru’s Closed for the Holiday, it is anything but. Instead, the audience is thrown into a fast moving stream of characters, unfinished thoughts, absurd conversations, and emotional detours as Porru explores the chaos of creativity through a whirlwind solo performance.
At La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, the audience enters The Life and Times of Daisy Forbes as though stepping into the middle of someone else’s memory. Scout Davis is already sitting beneath the glow of a bus stop light before the performance officially begins, quietly holding the space while distant sound cues and passing announcements slowly bring the world of the show to life. It creates an immediate sense of intimacy and curiosity, making the audience feel less like spectators and more l
At this year’s In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, the idea of putting on La Traviata becomes the show itself. Before the opera properly begins, three performers walk onstage carrying suitcases and questioning whether they are actually capable of taking on something as huge and iconic as Verdi’s masterpiece. What follows in Traviata: A Free Prose Opera is a playful mix of spoken theatre, opera, physical comedy, and meta-theatrical chaos that often works best when it fully embraces the fun o
Egyptian mythology and musical theatre are not two worlds that usually collide, which immediately made Panthe-ON! 2.0 a fun and intriguing idea. Presented by Needs More Work Productions at The Green Room 42, the cabaret-style evening reimagined the Egyptian pantheon through songs pulled from across the musical theatre world, with each performer stepping into the role of a different god and helping tell parts of the larger mythological story through music.
At this year’s In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, White Noise: Confessions of an Unsuspected Serial Killer With a Background Hiss arrived at WOW Café Theater with the kind of unsettling atmosphere that starts before the play even begins. The venue itself felt fitting for the experience. A fourth floor black box hidden away in Soho, reached by elevator, a welcome relief for us after weeks of climbing endless theatre staircases across the city.
As part of this year’s In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, Patria: The Town of Cain and Abel arrived with energy, confidence, and an incredibly impressive central performance. Performed entirely in Italian with English subtitles, this one man show grabbed the audience from the very beginning and barely slowed down for a second.
Canciones doesn’t feel like a piece of theatre so much as a memory you somehow stepped inside.
At the In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY, tucked inside Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò at New York University, Tale of a Potato proved that great theatre can come from the simplest ingredients. The production originally premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it received an Edinburgh Fringe Theatre Award (EFFTA), before making its way to New York as part of the festival. One table, a sack of potatoes, a few handcrafted lights, and a performer with complete command of her technique
It’s not often that we get the chance to see a show where we can truly see the evolution of the play over time. Lipstick is one of those occasions. Having first seen the piece in workshop form at El Barrio’s Artspace, and now again as part of the 2026 NYC Fringe at The Chain Theatre, it’s remarkable to see how much the production has sharpened, tightened, and fully come into itself over the past few months.
Our first visit to The Players Theatre, tucked away on McDougal Street in the East Village, immediately set the tone for the evening. From the outside, it feels modest and almost hidden, but step inside and you find an intimate black box space of around fifty seats that draws you straight into the work. It is exactly the kind of venue where a piece like Mercury can thrive.
There’s a particular kind of electricity that comes from a show that knows exactly why it exists, and The Menopause Monologues at HERE Arts Center has it in abundance. What could easily have been a worthy but heavy evening instead unfolds as something vibrant, surprising, and consistently engaging, a production that blends urgency with genuine entertainment.
There is something about a night at The Tank when it is completely full that immediately changes the temperature of a show. Love Story opened to that kind of room. A Thursday night that somehow felt like a weekend. Loud, warm, expectant. The house team deserve real credit here because they do not just welcome you, they actively build momentum. Their opening spiel is not filler. It is part rally, part mission statement, part celebration of artists, and it genuinely prepares the audience to meet
Dreams rarely explain themselves. They come in fragments, in strange shifting images, in moments that feel deeply personal but hard to pin down. Cumulo, seen at the Mitu580 Theatre, works in exactly that way, building a world that follows the loose, unpredictable logic of a dream.
White As Snow* is a deeply personal solo piece that blends singing, spoken word, storytelling and moments of character work to explore identity, religion and self-acceptance. Set within the experience of a Black Haitian immigrant family in Northern Canada, the title works on multiple levels. It references the physical environment of the Great White North, while also pointing to the reality of living in an overwhelmingly white world. It is a smart and quietly effective framing device that underpi
At Under St. Mark’s Theater as part of the NYC Fringe Festival, Watch Me Sleep is an intense, close-up look at a relationship that feels both deeply real and quietly unsettling. In a small black box space where everything is visible from the moment you walk in, it’s easy to start searching for meaning in the set. But as the piece unfolds, it becomes clear that the real focus is entirely on the two people at the centre of it.
There is something quietly disarming about walking into a theatre and realizing the play has already begun.
Theatre is political. At its best, it creates space for voices that have historically been sidelined, giving them power, agency, and the chance to reshape the narrative. How To Become A Saint While Wearing Pants, part of the New York Fringe Festival at The Wild Project, leans fully into that idea, offering a loud, playful, and distinctly queer take on sainthood.
Another excellent night of theater at HERE Arts Center in Lower Manhattan, a venue that continues to champion bold, intimate, and deeply human storytelling.
This was our first visit to The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture, tucked away in NoHo, and it immediately felt like a venue with a clear point of view. It seems like it is somewhere more interested in putting work on stage that makes you sit with uncomfortable ideas or themes, rather than chasing spectacle or easy entertainment. You go there to think as much as to watch.
What if the most ordinary place imaginable turned out to be the center of something inexplicably strange? Not a laboratory or a government facility, but a roadside gas station where the coffee is lukewarm, the fluorescent lights buzz overhead, and the bathroom might occasionally bend the rules of time and space. Entangled: 12 Scenes in a Circle K Off the I-40 in New Mexico, now playing at HERE Arts Center, explores exactly that possibility in a production that blends humor, mystery, and a touc
Some shows tell a story. Others ask questions.
Those who do not know their history tend to repeat it. Yet history also repeats itself when we know it and still feel compelled to follow the same path. We sin by omission. Society teaches us to preserve tradition and to reproduce the lives of those who came before us. Marry young, remain in the hometown, live as our parents lived. To question these expectations can feel like rebelling against the family itself. Fear of judgment, fear of standing apart, fear of the unknown keeps us obedient to t
For American teenagers in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s, the shopping mall was a social universe. Food court gossip, wandering endless indoor promenades, and awkward first dates at the multiplex were defining rituals of adolescence, immortalized in countless teen films and television shows.
To love and be loved, to be in a couple or to have a partner?
Fresh water is no longer something we can take for granted. Rivers run dry with alarming regularity and the reservoirs that supply the world’s largest cities continue to recede, leaving behind pale “bathtub rings” as stark reminders of our collective thirst. It is often predicted that future wars will be fought not over oil or gas, but over access to safe, clean drinking water. Scarcity is no longer a distant threat. It is a present reality.
Sometimes our acts are misunderstood and misinterpreted, generating an erroneous reading of what can arise from a confusion, a reaction, or a priority. Not all acts are premeditated; on some occasions, it is the circumstances that generate chaos.
New York City’s speakeasy culture dates back to the Prohibition era of the 1920s, when hidden bars flourished behind unmarked doors, down shadowy staircases, and through secret alleyways. What began as an act of quiet rebellion has since become part of the city’s theatrical DNA: mystery, exclusivity, and a touch of danger woven into the nightlife experience.
Art created with passion is worthy of great admiration. We might begin by asking ourselves: what is the formula? Is there a formula when it comes to making theater? And yes, of course there is. Proof of this can be found in the countless academies dedicated to studying acting, directing, and their many parallels. But does studying the formula make me a great artist? Here lies the crossroads. There are highly trained individuals who fail to resonate with audiences, while others, self-taught or de
A dark and mysterious forest scene, accompanied by gentle guitar music, awaited us as we entered “The Downstairs” at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club for the second night of the premiere run of Kirk Lynn’s new play The First Line of Dante’s Inferno. It was a full house, with a palpable buzz as the audience settled in and waited for the show to begin.
As Arthur Miller once said: “The theater cannot disappear because it is the only art in which humanity confronts itself”.
Stepping off the subway at 125th Street in Harlem and walking past the iconic Apollo Theatre, we were reminded of the greats from the worlds of music and comedy who have stood on that stage. Artists such as James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Ella Fitzgerald, Richard Pryor, Whoopi Goldberg, and Chris Rock are only a few among the many whose work has shaped its enduring legacy.
Fighting for what we want, persisting, and never forgetting our origin, our past, and our lineage are what shape us and make us who we are. We can try to hide parts of ourselves or reinvent our image, but our true nature always finds a way to shine through. As the proverb reminds us, even when the monkey dresses in silk, it remains a monkey. Not as a judgment, but as a quiet truth about identity. No matter how much Aladdin changed his name, became a prince, or tried to leave his origins behind,
Queen Catherine de Medici is one of the characters in the work-in-progress Petrus, which our dear Edu Díaz has intelligently embodied and presented to the festive audience of PhysFest in a segment titled Early Draft, as part of his strategy to promote the upcoming premiere.
Last Friday marked our first visit to Theater for the New City, a historic theatre complex located in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Founded more than 54 years ago, the venue houses five performance spaces and continues to function as a vital hub for experimental and community-based theatre. Despite the outside temperature of 18 degrees Fahrenheit, the building was full and vibrant, with audiences of all ages eager to gather and witness live art. The atmosphere was festive and served as a reminder
As we took our seats in the dimly lit theatre, set up in the round with a striking centerpiece of metallic columns and lights suspended above a large circular table, we genuinely did not know what to expect from Dream Feed by The HawtPlates. Various musical instruments were carefully placed around the stage and throughout the audience, hinting at something immersive yet undefined.
Some might argue that Michael Jackson’s story has already been told countless times, and that yet another jukebox musical risks being a predictable, box-ticking addition to the Broadway lineup (and they might not be wrong). Yet thanks to a remarkably strong cast and a musical score that all but guarantees a rush of personal nostalgia for every audience member, MJ the Musical proves itself to be a solid and highly entertaining extravaganza.
A picture is worth a thousand words, and there are some that never leave your mind, that circle and circle like rodents searching for a way out and leaving marks behind.
We are situated in the living room and study of a country house with rustic finishes, from where we can see an exit that leads to the kitchen, another with stairs leading to the bedrooms, and a final one that reveals part of the lawn and the outdoors, through which all the characters in this story will enter and exit. In the study is the central character of this story, Benjamin Braxton, played by the magnificent Hamish Linklater, who through his gestures, the constant trembling of his hands, hi
After a fascinating introduction from Founding Artistic Director, José Cheo Oliveras telling the story of how Teatro Círculo was established with the incredible support of Councilmember Margarita López (who happened to be in the audience) we were ready for the opening night performance of their latest show.
Tasks are exercises, usually simple instructions to carry out an activity and the task must be fulfilled; you have to do your duty and do it well.
Maria de los Guardias is a visual artist and filmmaker from Bogota, Colombia who brought her intriguing and fascinating performance Oda Al Cuerpe Humano (Ode To The Human Body) and virtual reality experience Del Páramo El Mar (From The Moor to the Sea) to El Armario in Brooklyn.
Through comedy, mime and music Edu Diaz tackles complex themes of personal doubt and hiding your real self in a society where you often feel you have to act like everyone else to fit in.
At this cozy, black box style venue through an unconventional use of the space we were transported back 90 years to the Spanish civil war. Walking under the barricade to take our seats on what would usually be the stage.