Nov
10
2018
125 posts categorized "THEATRE REVIEW"
Nov
08
2018
Dmitry, a schoolteacher stripped of everything — played by John DiMino(All images by Ashley Garrett via LuredThePlay.com)
If you are a member of the LGBTQ community, chances are you've heard of the unimaginable persecution of gay men in Russia in recent years. Most shockingly, several years ago, neo-Nazi groups began attracting men with promises of sex via hookup apps, only to brutalize them on video to destroy their lives and teach them the lesson that homosexuality is a diabolical western plague.
In Frank J. Avella's revelatory play Lured, playing now through November 25 at Theater for the New City (155 First Ave., NYC), this grotesque violation of humanity is dramatized in an ingenius way that contextualizes the trend while never flinching from portraying the depravity.
Oct
27
2018
Sticking together: Reid, Sinoway, Lake & Edwin
I just laughed my ass off at a performance of Adam Minus Josh, a potent original comedy about gay dating by Dan Fingerman (of the equally fresh Boys of a Certain Age) that's like evolved Neil Simon through a Mean Girls prism.
(Image via La MaMa)
UPDATE: Extended through October 14!
Gunnar Montana's throbbing Kink Haüs, currently playing at La MaMa (66 E. 4th St., NYC) through October 6, is billed as fringe, but I came away thinking it was more mainstream than it realizes — and I think the patron who brought her 12-year-old daughter would agree with me.
Regardless of how out-there or in-here the show actually is, it's an attention-grabbing, joyful gender-romp that is athletically choreographed and a visual smorgasbord ...
Aug
28
2018
He wrote the book on it. (Images by Matthew Rettenmund)
Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall fame closed a three-night stand at Joe's Pub in NYC Sunday night with Aprés le Déluge: The Buddy Cole Monologues, an interesting, aggressive set that rounded up pieces from the acerbic, terminally flamboyant character's entire existence.
Some of the older monologues retained their humor in spite of feeling dated, including once-savage quips about HIV (“First, they said it was from poppers, so I didn't worry because I never used them. Then they said it was in semen. That gave me pause.”), but others felt more relevant than ever, and his newer pieces soared and scored.
Kathy Griffin, who forget to give a fuck (Images by Matthew Rettenmund)
Kathy Griffin's triumphant return to stand-up continued the night after her Radio City Music Hall debut with a drop-dead funny set at Carnegie Hall in NYC Tuesday night.
Fitting, since the petite firebrand was opportunistically smeared as being a potential killer by her — our — political enemies, who didn't care that the trickle-down effect would be the lunkheaded Republican rank-and-file treating her like an actual murderer, not to mention a traitor and terrorist.
Griffin, whose set felt like a two-and-a-half gab session with your wittiest, most politically engaged fag hag (she rejects “fruit fly,” as will the poltically correct kids who already hate “fag hag” in a few years — wait for it), seems to have recovered nicely from the public shaming to which she was subjected by Trump and his flying-monkey minions, all over an image of Griffin holding a Trump mask covered in ketchup.
Jun
26
2018
Thank you to Mike Summers for the invite! (Image by Mike Summers)
The indomitable — to put it nicely — Larry Kramer had a great deal of influence on a generation of gay men. For me, a person barely touched by the AIDS crisis on a one-on-one level, I was nonetheless in his thrall as I read the bitterly funny Faggots, which certainly informed Boy Culture.
So it was a thrill to share air with him again, this time on the occasion of a reading of his 1992 play The Destiny of Me by Eric Bogosian, Ellen Barkin, Gideon Glick, Josh Hamilton, Lee Pace (on his night off from Angels in America), Mark Ruffalo and Edie Falco at the Lucille Lortel.
Scintillating play! So well-observed and such a classic story of growing up gay.
Jun
24
2018
