Pete Rex Everything
Imagine the pandemonium: Dinosaurs have woken from 65 million years of slumber in the small town of New Kensington and are, understandably, in need of a snack. While the mighty lizards smash and grab their way through town, three thirty-something friends take cover at slacker Pete’s place and wait for it all to blow over. […]
With Plenty of Turns, Molly’s Game Plays A Winning Hand
Molly’s Game, the newest from screenwriter Aaron Sorkin—and also his directorial debut—is full of colorful characters and fast moving, predictably clever dialogue. It’s also so entertainingly laid out that it’s almost possible to forgive the absolutely terrible people who populate the story for the lives they ruined and the amount of needless suffering that came […]
AMP Electrifies
“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness.” In AMP, now playing at HERE Theater, playwright performer Jody Christopherson forges a curious and vital bond between two women separated by 100 years. The first is Mary Shelley, she whose imagination birthed Frankenstein, the classic science fiction horror, on a […]
The Shape of Water Is A Dreamy Escape
“Time is but a river flowing from our past.” There are princesses and monsters in The Shape of Water, a sumptuous, scary, and spellbinding new fairy tale film from Guillermo del Toro. It’s “Beauty and the Beast” for a time when happy endings can seem too few and far between, with political underpinnings that are […]
Remembering and Forgetting: Two Plays Go East to Edinburgh
As part of their annual East to Edinburgh series, 59E59 Theaters have given a temporary home to several small acts before they head to Auld Reeky for August. There is always a wide assortment of plays and one-person shows of varying levels of completeness. This year is no exception. Here are two: Tales of life […]
We Can Be Happy Underground
The London Underground can be devilishly tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing. For a start, the map you’d use to navigate the city bears very little resemblance to what exists in reality. It isn’t unheard of for a passenger to hop on a line and transfer three times over the course of 40 […]
Invincible – A Master Class in Vulnerability
“I don’t care about being happy anymore. I just want to be at peace.” Tolstoy wrote that “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Timeless, that. In the newest play by the very talented playwright Torben Betts, Invincible, two couples—Oliver and Emily, Dawn and Alan—meet not-very-cute as new neighbors in a small North […]
Rotterdam – Intimate, But Large As Life
“You’re not supposed to stay in Rotterdam. It’s a port. Everything’s moving on, it’s just passing through, nothing’s standing still. It’s all on its way somewhere…else.” There are more melodiously named cities in Europe. Rotterdam almost sounds like a curse muttered under the breath. Fortunately for all, and very unlike its namesake, the play named […]