Off-Broadway Reviews

'Merrily We Roll Along' review — Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, Lindsay Mendez show a friendship torn apart

Does anyone still pinky swear? While watching the often stirring Merrily We Roll Along led by Jonathan Groff, Daniel Radcliffe, and Lindsay Mendez, that question keeps popping up. It has each time I’ve seen the show on stage – and this version makes four since 1994. In 1981, this Stephen Sondheim musical started out as a dud, but it also introduced some of the composer/lyricist’s most enduring songs — “Not a Day Goes By” and “Good Thing Going” among them. The three stars' repeated interlocking...

'Your Own Personal Exegesis' review — facing the sacred and the profane in this coming-of-age play

A Christian church, however progressive, is perhaps one of the most antithetical places to have a sexual awakening. That, or to have a fall from grace. But in Julia May Jonas's Your Own Personal Exegesis, both happen on a collision course at Redacted] Church in [Redacted], New Jersey. A lot of things are redacted in Exegesis besides the church's name — the last names of every character, for one, in the church bulletin we're provided alongside the show's regular program. It's the first indication...

'The Far Country' review — found-family drama sheds light on a dark slice of American history

As you settle in at Lloyd Suh’s The Far Country, you’ll see a figure seated on stage. Facing away from the audience and still as a statue, he’s been perched there since the audience was allowed in. He sits. And sits. And sits. This staging suggests detention and waiting figure prominently in this intriguing yet sometimes elusive drama about people from Taishan, China, whose lives intertwine to form a family. In 1909 San Francisco, stone-faced officials grill Gee (Jinn S. Kim, the pre-show...

'Becky Nurse of Salem' review — Deirdre O'Connell bewitches in Sarah Ruhl's new play

I, for one, would love all classic plays to be irreverently recapped by Deirdre O'Connell as Becky Nurse, the heroine of Sarah Ruhl's latest play at Lincoln Center Theater. Becky, a guide at a Salem, Massachusetts witch museum, might not like that quite as much. After regaling a high school tour group (read: the audience) with her take on The Crucible in Becky Nurse of Salem's spellbinding opening scene, she's seen lamenting to the bartender Bob (Bernard White) that she hates her job. As luck...

'Sandra' review — one-woman thriller sails calmly through dangerous territory

David Cale's new one-woman thriller, Sandra, promises a globetrotting (well, from the U.S. to Mexico) mystery that lures its title character into ever-increasing danger. On paper, that's true. But this Vineyard Theatre production, while it might make an absorbing novel, doesn't quite thrill as theatre, feeling less like a journey through choppy waters and more like a steady cruise. The play opens with Sandra (Marjan Neshat) relaying a conversation with Ethan, her best friend, in which he says:...

'the bandaged place' review — moving new play captures the messiness of trauma and healing

To get right to the point: Harrison David Rivers's the bandaged place has no cuts or holes that need bandaging up. Every plot point, every character, every moment in this nearly perfect new play, presented by Roundabout Underground, has been stitched together perfectly. It will make your heart bleed in many different ways; it is a thoughtful and excellent meditation on the long and winding road to healing. The story centers on a dancer named Jonah, who just got out of a physically and...

'Downstate' review — a provocative yet thoughtful meditation on punishment

Downstate, the thoughtful and thorny drama by Bruce Norris, author of the Tony- and Pulitzer-winning Clybourne Park, is built on a plot structure as conventional as can be. A knock on the door and the arrival of an outsider turns the delicately, if not precariously, balanced world on the other side of the threshold upside down. But who comes knocking and who’s inside the door is anything but run-of-the-mill in this skillfully acted Playwrights Horizons presentation directed by Pam MacKinnon....

'Camp Siegfried' review — a summer-camp fling with a sinister twist

I'll admit I had some preconceived skepticism walking into Second Stage Theater's production of Camp Siegfried. About a summer-camp fling between two teenagers being gradually indoctrinated into Nazism, it reminded me of This Beautiful Future, another Off-Broadway "love story" involving a young Nazi from earlier this season. That show dangerously romanticized its characters in the name of nostalgia for young love and innocence, and I feared this show would do the same. My fears, luckily, proved...

'Where We Belong' review — theatrical memoir is a masterclass in storytelling and education

Hao Bai's gorgeous set design for Madeline Sayet's Where We Belong transcends time and space. We're simultaneously on a bygone earth without borders and today's earth after people insisted on drawing them. We're simultaneously by the modern-day River Thames and the Massapequotuck River, as it was once called. Physically, Sayet also points out, we're watching her show just off Broadway, a street that used to be a key Lenape trading trail. Visually and audibly, Sayet's expertly written and...

'Catch as Catch Can' review — expertly acted play turns the family drama on its head

Unhappy families are unhappy in their own way, so it’s long been said. In her conceptually ambitious and expertly acted play, Catch as Catch Can, Mia Chung takes that time-honored trope and puts her own theatrical stamp on it. Bottom line, she doubles down. Three actors play six characters – each an adult child and one of their parents — jumping genders and generations while they’re at it. In director Daniel Aukin’s staging at Playwrights Horizons, a trio of Asian actors play the characters who,...