Make Room in Your Heart for Bears in Space
The year of its telling is unknown, but the story takes place in the 300,000th year of its calendar. As advertised, the play Bears In Space is about bears in space, specifically a pair of recently defrosted pals, Volyova and Bhourghash, and their still-frozen captain, Lazara. They wake in orbit of the city planet Metrotopia, […]
Don’t Think Twice – Go See It
It takes a special kind of person to stand before a crowd of strangers, risking emotional immolation and the searing pain of a silent room, and just…be. Let yourself be known. And among those people it’s an even odder type who lays it all out for laughs, a prize as ephemeral and fleeting — and […]
Interacting with History in Patriot Act
Mike Schlitt’s one man show, Patriot Act, is pretty much what you would expect to hear if you asked for the first of a three-part series in “how we got to here, politically.” From the Founding Fathers — specifically Adams and Jefferson, presented as somewhat foul-mouthed and deranged-looking hand puppets — through Jim Crow and […]
HELD Captivated
Sometimes it’s really hard to hold your applause until the end. Such is the case with HELD: A Musical Fantasy, now playing at Drom as part of the New York International Fringe Festival. Kelly Maxwell (book and lyrics) and Meghan Rose (composer) have worked their own kind of magic, crafting a lovely fairy tale filled […]
Bringing to Light That Which Isn’t
“Don’t cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.” Everything that has a beginning has an end. In today’s terms, when it comes to love and marriage, odds are nearly even that the end will come sooner than later. In Matthew Freeman’s play That Which Is, we meet two […]
Mexikosher Takes Manhattan
Chef Katsuji Tanabe is a character, and the food he’s serving up at his new location in New York is every bit as bright, colorful and authentic as he is. The much-beloved Top Chef alum worked in a number of top kitchens in and around Los Angeles before he opened his Pico-Robertson taco shop. After […]
Goldilocks Is Musical Fun, Not Yet Just Right
You know the traditional story: A girl wanders through the woods, finds a house and makes herself at home. Then the owners, a family of bears, arrive home to find their chairs sat in, their food eaten, and their beds tried and occupied by the simple interloper. Erin J. Reifler’s Goldilocks: A New Musical takes […]
Harmon Leon’s Big Fat Racist Show
Harmon Leon has lived an interesting life. His surprisingly happy-go-lucky production, Harmon Leon’s Big Fat Racist Show, invites listeners to follow along as he wanders the country in search of some of the more extreme members of American society. Leon is a semi-professional — or at least habitual — infiltrator. Using assumed names and assorted […]