Today in the Fringe Festival 89 of the 200+ shows for 2006 are on view. There is most assuredly something for everyone – just have a look at the listings. And here are five more reviews (see also seven from last weekend and four from yesterday), of Suicide, the Musical, Fatboy Romeo, The Yellow Wallpaper, Their Wings Were Blue, and Armageddon Dance Party, the last of which is going straight to the top tier of... [continue]

The productions covered in this installment of reviews from the 2006 New York Fringe Festival http://www.fringenyc.org are pretty far removed from those in last week’s dispatch -- which is just as it should be, since the Fringe is all about the new, the different, the craziness from every direction of the compass and layer of the mind. Plus, in today’s selection there are two can’t-misses: Big Doolie, by Richard Thompson, and David Isaacson’s Letter Purloined.... [continue]

It's hard to believe if you've already taken in numerous performances, but the Fringe Festival is just picking up steam. Some productions haven’t even started their 5- or 6-night runs yet, including The Burning Cities Project from Dreamscape Theatre (a multimedia collage about the experiences of people who have seen their cities burn – a touch of comedy is promised); The Goods are Odd, by Julie Sharbutt and Liz Wisan (about two Alaskans looking for... [continue]

Reviewing shows in the very first days of the Fringe Festival is always a little hazardous, what with so many kinks that need to be worked out (if not in the show itself, in the Fringe management). But we wanted to report to you early on about what to see and what not to see, overlooking glitches as best we could, at least as far as they appeared to be early-run problems rather than real... [continue]

In case you haven’t been counting down, today marks the beginning of the New York International Fringe Festival, the country’s largest theatre festival! Though ten years is typically the amount of time people say one needs to be in New York before being a “New Yorker,” the Fringe Festival has had such an impact on the downtown Broadway theatre scene that, were it a human, it probably would have attained resident status without anything near... [continue]

HERE’s American Living Room Festival kicked off in fine form on Friday, with free food, free colorful paper fans, and cushy sofas to sink down into. Granted, the main reason to be excited about the fans is that the noisy a/c was turned off during the performance, and there weren’t all that many sofas (regular chairs supplemented), and – let’s be honest – the place did start to smell a little bit of feet. But... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. There’s no getting around it: Dan Lauria plays the crankiest of cranks in William Mastrosimone’s A Stone Carver (directed by Robert Kalfin). No cute grumpy old man business – Lauria seethes with a grouchiness that more than lives up to his character’s last name, Malatesta. But... [continue]

The Midtown International Theatre Festival, which opened this week and runs through August 6, is at only 2 venues and has a far smaller number of shows in its lineup than does the Fringe Festival, but that makes it more manageable, a great warm-up, if you will, to the upcoming binge that will sprawl out over most of lower Manhattan and eat every good theatre lover’s schedule alive. This weekend, Gothamist brings you mini reviews... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. Christopher Boal’s play Crazy for the Dog is a sharp, bleak but also sometimes darkly funny look at some tough human relationships; it’s a good production, but one wonders if perhaps the real reason Jean Cocteau Rep has had enough success with it that it’s now... [continue]

In theater, as in television, summer is an opportunity for producers and creative teams to try ideas that may be a little wackier than main-season fare – off- and off-off Broadway, that’s what all the play festivals that are currently on and coming up are about. But the theater world also has its version of summer TV’s ubiquitous reruns, only there we like to think the phenomenon of show extensions and brief revivals is weighted... [continue]

Exactly one month from today, the New York Fringe Festival opens -- consider yourself warned! But the week before, the granddaddy of indie theater festivals, Edinburgh's Fringe, roars to life; as usual, a number of American shows are making their way over there, and eight of them are warming up in front of the home crowd one more time, in the "East to Edinburgh" festival that starts today. Shows include Godlight's spectacular staging of Fahrenheit... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. It’s easy enough for everyone to condemn slavery as it existed in the past, on a large scale with whole tribes shipped across the Atlantic to perish on New World plantations, or when it involves children in sweatshops or women lured away from home and forced... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. Over the past centuries, people have adapted Shakespeare’s plays in countless ways, often to put them in a contemporary setting. With Clean, by contrast, Bob Epstein has taken an already contemporary story and setting and written it in the manner of a good Shakespearean comedy mixed... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. If I tried just to describe moment by moment the dynamic of the two characters’ interaction in Nerve , you might well get the impression that it’s basically an off-off-Broadway equivalent of a date movie, and that the main point is to see which of the... [continue]

Plenty of people go through painful break-ups, but it takes a special talent to turn the experience into a career. Brooklyn-bred Anita Liberty, whose boyfriend Mitchell left her for another woman shortly after he and Anita moved in together, has that talent: rather than sitting around moping, she wrote a book, called "How to Heal the Hurt by Hating," filled with poems, diary entries, and diatribes against Mitchell and the new girlfriend, and developed a... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. It’s hard to imagine the Iranian leadership, or many non-exile Iranians, being riveted by or even comprehending of pretty much any show on or off-Broadway, as a general rule. Egads, the sexy dancing in The Pajama Game, the AIDS in Rent, the audience’s unabashed collective fun... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. With a piece of art that’s been inspired by another piece of art that was inspired by yet another, you can be excused for wondering if those degrees of separation will mean a product that’s not inspired at all. Fortunately this is not the case with... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. I tried to find a less clichéd way to put it, but it really is apt to describe Julia Jordan’s new play Dark Yellow as an emotional rollercoaster – both for the audience and, clearly, for the actors. As with any rollercoaster, there are a few... [continue]

Here at Gothamist theater, we tend to let the weather affect our views on shows to see more than is perhaps logical, though when there’s so much to see, at least it gives us some way of deciding. Anyway, this being the case, naturally outdoor shows have a special place in our heart, and this week one of (if not the absolute) the first outdoor shows is on: the Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre’s The Bass Saxophone,... [continue]

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author. Sitting in the audience of cagelove it can be hard to keep yourself from yelling out to the stage, talking back to the actors in a way more usually associated with watching TV shows. Christopher Denham’s play has some flaws in both writing and execution, but... [continue]