newyorktheater

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An American Soldier Review

Near the start of “An American Soldier,” Danny Chen (Brian Vu) stumbles distraught through the crowd gathered in a military courtroom. For much of my life, I felt invisibleDo you know why I enlisted?Do you know why I went to war?Will you hear my voice? His voice rings out, but nobody on stage hears it, because Private Chen is dead – a ghost at the trial of his sergeant, who is being accused of…

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Theatre World Awards 2024

 Below are the dozen honorees bestowed with Theatre World Awards for outstanding Broadway or Off-Broadway debut performances during the 2023-2024 theatrical season, as well as three special awards, including Len Cariou for lifetime achievement. The 78th annual Theatre World Award ceremony will be held June 10 at the Marquis Theater Confused during theater award season? Check out my New York…

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2024 New York Drama Critics Circle: Stereophonic, Dead Outlaw best play and musical. Merrily We Roll Along, Purlie Victorious, etc.

The New York Drama Critics’ Circle has named David Adjmi’s Stereophonic best play of the 2023-24 season. The award for best musical went to Dead Outlaw, music and lyrics by David Yazbek and Erik Della Penna, book by Itamar Moses. The selections were made at the organization’s 88th annual voting meeting. For more information on the Drama Critics’ Circle Awards and its place in the theater awards…

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Robert Downey Jr Debuts. Eboni Booth Prized. Billy Porter, Nathan Lane etc Honored. OCC Awards. Stageworthy News of the Week

 A slew of honors for Broadway mainstays were announced this past week, as well as the Outer Critics Circle Awards this morning (see News below.)  Meanwhile, new theater is still happening Off and Off-Off Broadway, much of it …different: a detective story about a Nazi photo album, a combination opera-play-Passover seder, a wordless biodrama, an avant-garde riff on fashion, a sexy romp on…

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2024 Outer Critics Circle Awards: Stereophonic, Suffs, Dead Outlaw, Primary Trust

“Stereophonic”won outstanding new Broadway play and three other awards, “Suffs” outstanding new Broadway musical and two other awards at the 73rd annual Outer Critics Circle Awards. Dead Outlaw ad Primary Trust won outstanding new Off-Broadway musical and Off-Broadway play respectively. Full list of winners below. Outer Critics Circle Award 2024 Nominations Check out my New York Theater Awards…

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Mothers on Broadway 2024

Mothers took center stage in the Broadway season just ended, getting star treatment for characters who range from vile to virtuous. Today, on Mothers Day, Jessica Lange in the title role of Paula Vogel’s “Mother Play” is giving an unforgiving portrait of a woman who coldly rejects her two children, while Rachel McAdams in the title role of Amy Herzog’s “Mary Jane” is depicting the intensely…

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Shimmer and Herringbone Theater Review

At first, “Shimmer and Herringbone,” the third and final absurdist play in the avant-garde theater company Talking Band’s fiftieth anniversary season, promises to be a series of random riffs on shopping for clothes. The play, after all, was commissioned to showcase Olivera Gajic’s costumes; and its title is the name of the clothing store where one of the seven characters works and the other six…

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Scarlett Dreams Theater Review

 “Scarlett Dreams” is a play that imagines a near-future dominated by Artificial Intelligence, so I asked ChatGPT how it would review the play. It instantly produced a 303-word review, which begins: “’Scarlett Dreams’ is an evocative journey that weaves together themes of love, loss, and redemption with breathtaking artistry.” Hmm. I hadn’t thought of it that way. But the AI-generated review…

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Exagoge Review. The oldest Jewish play, PLUS.

“Exagoge,” inspired by the oldest known Jewish play, is a wildly ambitious, complicated but largely accessible new work of immersive theater: a play, opera, and Passover seder all in one – and all in just 100 minutes, which (if you know seders) is itself an achievement. There is much else besides its comparative brevity to recommend this latest work by the reliably erudite Edward Einhorn and his…

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2024 Off Broadway Alliance Award Nominations

Below are the nominations for the 12th annual Off Broadway Alliance Awards. The awards ceremony will take place June 18th, at Sardi’s. The Alliance has also announced special awards, including Legend of Off Broadway Awards, Friend of Off Broadway, and three posthumous Off Broadway Hall of Fame inductees: playwright Christopher Durang, theater critic Michael Feingold and producer Edgar…

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Small Acts of Daring Invention Theater Review

The children’s book author Dare Wright is billed as the inspiration for this unusual theater piece, although her name is never mentioned on stage. Actually, nothing is mentioned on stage. “Small Acts of Daring Invention” is completely wordless. For all its wordy title, it’s also hard to put into words exactly what it is. It’s sort of mime, although without Marcel Marceau’s clown makeup or…

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Here There Are Blueberries Theater Review. The Holocaust through a different lens

“Here There Are Blueberries” turns the real-life discovery of an ordinary-looking photo album into a riveting detective story, with the characters gathering clues to unravel a series of mysteries, including one of the greatest unsolvable mysteries in history: the Holocaust. It’s the latest extraordinary documentary theater from Moises Kaufman and his Tectonic Theater Project, running at New York…

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"Primary Trust" Awarded 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama

Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust” has won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. “Here There Are Blueberries” and “Public Obscenities” were the Pulitzer Drama finalists. Vinson Cunningham, theater critic of the New Yorker Magazine, was also a finalist in the Pulitzer for Criticism. Continue reading “Primary Trust” Awarded 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama

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Awards Up the Wazoo. Stageworthy News of the Week.

Nominations for the Tony Awards and for the Drama Desk Awards were among the theater awards announced last week; winners of the Lucille Lortel Awards were announced and feted last night; winners of the Pulitzer Prizes, including for drama,  will be announced this afternoon. Over the next six weeks, we’ll learn the winners of the half dozen or so major New York theater awards, culminating in the…

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Lucille Lortel Award Winners 2024: The Comeuppance, (pray)

 Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “The Comeuppance” won Outstanding Play and nicHi douglas‘ “(pray)” won Outstanding Musical at the 39th Annual Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway, tonight. (Check out my New York Theater Awards 2024: Calendar and Guide) Click here for full list of 2024 Lucille Lortel Award Nominations.  Full list of award winners: Continue reading Lucille…

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Grenfell Theater Review

“Grenfell” is documentary theater about an infamous 2017 fire in a 24-story public housing project in London called Grenfell Tower that killed 72 people. Subtitled “In the words of survivors,” the show uses verbatim accounts by survivors and from an official public inquiry to make the ironclad case that the catastrophe was a direct result of greed, neglect, incompetence and British Conservative…

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Catching Silhouettes. Chinatown as Theater

Theater in Chinatown used to mean gangland shoot-outs – both on the screen and in the balcony of the neighborhood’s many movie theaters, which had names like Sun Sing and Pagoda, and were hangouts for the local gangs starting in the 1960s. None of those theaters still exist. “Music Palace was the last one standing,” closing on June 30th, 2000, explains a storyteller and performer named Mandarin…

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