USA Reviews

Writer: RADIOHOLE Director: RADIOHOLE Reviewer: Carrie Lee O’Dell  The performance collective RADIOHOLE serves a full meal onstage in their new work Now Serving: A Guide to Aesthetic Etiquette in Four Courses. Reminiscent of both Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party and Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros’s 2003 play Omnium Gatherum, this “irreverent exploration of the American Dinner Party featuring Haute Vaginal Cuisine” ...

Writer: Sarah Elizabeth Grace        Director: Andi Villa Stover  Reviewer: Adrienne Sowers  Badass Lady Productions’ new play, The Regime is Female, begins by imagining the worst fears about America’s current sociopolitical situation coming to pass.  A ten -ear dictatorship, crumbling infrastructure, and abuse of anyone that is not a wealthy, white, cis-het Christian man being sanctioned.  It is a lot to ...

Writer: Liza Birkenmeier Director: Katie Brook Reviewer: Alithea Howes Dr. Ride’s American Beach House is a rare jewel of a play, one that this reviewer is very glad that Ars Nova managed to find. In lesser hands, this play could seem boring or pointless because so much of its pathos, tension, and story arc lie in the things that the ...

Writer & Director: Cat Miller Reviewer: Adrienne Sowers The nightmare circumstances surrounding America’s immigration policies is an undeniably hot-button issue right now.  Uncertainty, fear, and desperation seem to constantly underlie every decision those who came to this country after their birth must face.  Nobody can control where they are born, or even events from their pasts that led them to ...

Writer: Gerard Alessandrini Director: Gerard Alessandrini Reviewer: Alithea Howes Forbidden Broadway is as delightfully brutal as it’s always been. For the uninitiated: Forbidden Broadway is a theatrical roast, which rewrites hit songs to lovingly lampoon the current shows on Broadway. It was created in 1982 and has been updated countless times since then. One might expect that premise to wear thin after ...

Writer: Richard Curtis Director: Marcus Gualberto Reviewer: Alithea Howes Reading the synopsis of Quiet Enjoyment, one wonders how something so dry as a co-op closing could be the subject of an entertaining play. After seeing this production of Quiet Enjoyment, the mystery remains. With awkward pacing and unlikeable characters, Quiet Enjoyment is only somewhat less boring than an actual co-op ...

Writer: Paul David Young Director: Evan Yionoulis Reviewer: Carrie Lee O’Dell Watching a parent age is difficult, especially if their memories are unreliable. Add a contentious past to the mix and it’s hard not to let frustration boil over into anger. An aging mother unloading a decades-old secret that challenges all that her adult son knows to be true about ...

Writer: Jaymes Jorsling Director: Christopher McElroen Reviewer: Carrie Lee O’Dell In 1957, American photographer W. Eugene Smith moved to a loft building in Manhattan’s flower district, where he conducted his Jazz Loft project. Though the neighborhood was dicey, his building was frequented by a number of jazz greats— Charles Mingus, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonius Monk among them—who came to play ...