By SCOTTY BENNETT There are times in a person’s life when the only rational response to the pressures of daily living is to escape into a different reality. Drugs and alcohol are often the doorways to the alternate realm. Still, sometimes, the mind of the escapee creates, in whole cloth, a new place within the […]
By SCOTTY BENNETT In the moments between daylight and evening, there is a time when it is neither day nor night. It is a time of transition, a liminal state between now and then, a twilight zone between what is here and nowhere. Welcome to Nowhere, a town somewhere in the Great Smoky Mountains of […]
By SCOTTY BENNETT One of the fascinating things about humans is how easily they mask intense feelings in a cloak of smiles and good humor. Pain, both physical and emotional, can be disguised but not completely hidden from the discerning eye. It sometimes emerges as an edgy joke or sarcastic observation. Regardless of how glimpses […]
By LOU HARRY, Special to Theatrecriticism.com Yes, “Henry IV” is the complete title. Sans the “part 1” and “part 2” that traditionally complete the title of William Shakespeare’s historical take, this adaptation fuses the two plays into a three-act, approximately four-hour one-nighter. At Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn, the result is a crisp, […]
By LOU HARRY, Special to Theatrecriticism.com It’s made clear from the first moments of “The Antiquities” that the human race is history. Jordan Harrison’s play, a co-production of Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theatre and Goodman Theatre, opens with a pair of humanoid “inorganic” hosts introducing us to a museum that gives long lost humanity the treatment […]
By SCOTTY BENNETT Consider, if you will, a blizzardlike night, a cozy inn on the brink of closing forever, suddenly brought back to life by the arrival of two very different groups of travelers who crashed into one another. One was a group of men dressed as women, flamboyant in their actions and dress, and […]
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By SCOTTY BENNETT Woman on a Ledge is an adaptation by Hershey Felder of harpist Rita Costanzi’s writings about her life. Ms. Costanzi is a world-renowned harpist whose life experiences have been woven into a fascinating and highly engaging theater piece. As directed by Lissa Moira, this one-woman production beautifully integrates Ms. Costanzi’s superlative playing […]
By SCOTTY BENNETT Okuni: The Woman Who Created Kabuki by Ako Dachs is a limited, fictionalized account of the woman who is thought to have created kabuki. It is generally accepted that the dance and theater form called kabuki developed in late 17th Century Japan, but its exact details lack solid evidence. This production is […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) After several decades in development and through various iterations, Empire, the musical that tells the story of the construction of the Empire State Building during the early days of the Great Depression and the men and women who literally bolted it into place, has finally bowed in […]
By ALAN SMASON, WYES-TV Theatre Critic (“Steppin’ Out“) With the rapid rise of blatant antisemitism in the world today, there is probably no better time than now for the presentation of Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich’s Here There Are Blueberries. A finalist for this year’s Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the play is a modern, scientific […]