BLOODY BLOODY ANDREW JACKSON

Fair warning: “Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson” isn’t your typical stage bio. In fact, with its macho, beefcake lead, rockin’ score, and broad, burlesque-y style, it’s anything but.
It is, however, lots of fun.
Benjamin Walker plays Jackson–the seventh President of the United States–as a strutting, hip-swinging statesman, a real cock-of-the-walk. (If Elvis ever went to [...]

Three American Women

Personal Dreams Clash with Family Responsibility and Racial Prejudice in Three American Women: A Trilogy
A Taut Trio of One-Acts Presented by Vincent Scott and Lori Marra
Beginning July 13 at the June Havoc Theatre
In Association with The Midtown International Theatre Festival
A hard-charging lawyer from New England struggles with demands made by her Indian heritage while forever [...]

IRON MAN II

One of the reasons I preferred “Iron Man I” to “The Dark Knight”–that other superhero blockbuster from 2008–was that it was lighter, brighter, more fun. Sure, the Batman flick was a fine piece of filmmaking, but it was too dark, too complicated, too–well, as the Joker himself might have noted, too SERIOUS.
Now, “Iron Man [...]

PARENTS’ EVENING

In “Parents’ Evening”–the ninety-minute trifle currently premiering at the Flea Theatre–Judy (Julianne Nicholson) and Michael (James Waterston) are a young, upper-middle class couple (she’s a lawyer, he’s a struggling novelist) gearing up to meet with their ten-year-old daughter Jessica’s teacher on parent-teachers night. Well, Michael is gearing up–mentally, anyway–while Judy is anchored to their [...]

ENRON

Proving once again that a talented writer can fashion a play out of just about anything, here comes “Enron”, British scribe Lucy Prebble’s look at the rise and fall of “America’s Most Innovative Company” which, in the 1990s, became the poster child for corporate greed and corruption.
Stage vet Norbert Leo Butz plays Jeffrey Skilling, the [...]

INTERVIEW WITH STAND-UP COMIC MATT ALSPAUGH

That laughter you hear from the basement of the Drama Bookshop on Monday nights isn’t the ghost of French playwright Moliere chuckling anew over one of his seventeenth-century farces. No, it’s coming from the Arthur Seelen Theatre, where every week the shop hosts Late Night Open Mic, a chance for stand-ups, old and new, [...]

SHUTTER ISLAND

In Martin Scorcese’s latest, “Shutter Island”, Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Teddy Daniels, a federal agent sent to an offshore asylum to investigate the disappearance of an inmate, a young woman who was put away after drowning her three young children. Before you can say, “Don’t visit Ward C!”–which happens to be where the dank [...]

THE STRIKING VIKING STORY PIRATES

One floor below the thousands of titles at the world famous Drama Book Shop–in the basement level performance space known as the Arthur Seelen Theatre–the laughter of children can be heard every Saturday afternoon (along with a few whoops and screams) as the shop’s resident theatre company, the Striking Viking Story Pirates, takes the stage.
The [...]

THE MIRACLE WORKER

Now we can add Abigail Breslin and Alison Pill to the list of actresses who have tackled the roles of Helen Keller and her teacher, Annie Sullivan, in the 1950s classic, “The Miracle Worker”, currently running at the Circle in the Square theatre.
The story is a familiar one: born normal, but turned deaf [...]

GOD OF CARNAGE

Michael and Veronica have invited Alan and Annette over for a little chat. It seems their boys have had a bit of an altercation at the playground, and Michael and Veronica want to find out what caused it.
That’s the wafer-thin plot of French playwright Yasmina Reza’s 2009 Tony-winning comedy, “God of Carnage” and, by [...]

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