NEW YORK — Why would a charismatic young playwright, with a critical hit playing to 800 people a night in Midtown, debut a new work, in which he also stars, at a 72-seat theatrical incubator so far off Broadway it’s in Brooklyn? And why would he do so under a pseudonym that sounds like the name of a bot?
NEW YORK — Here’s an idea for a Broadway musical: An awkward boy with an absent father and an overwhelmed mother gets involved with friends in a dubious scheme that spins out of control and almost undoes him.
NEW YORK — Surely you know that telltale moment, at the start of many great Golden Age musicals, when the curtain rustles, the lights glow warmer and the violins start churning out the schmaltz. Whatever sadness the story has in store, the sound from the pit tells you all will be well.
NEW YORK — “If you have faith, then it must be true,” says the man who has just extracted slimy gobbets of flesh from a woman’s abdomen with his bare hands and no incision. The gobbets, he says, are disease-causing “negativities,” though we know they are actually chicken guts marinated in fake blood.
NEW YORK — Annie Golden, beloved by musical theater nerds for her work in shows including “Assassins” and “The Full Monty,” keeps her classic rock belt under wraps in a woebegone vibe, as if Lillian Gish ate Tina Turner. When she lets it out, it’s doubly exciting for the fact of her voice and the surprise of it.
NEW YORK — It’s a sure sign that you’ve entered the playwriting pantheon when your plots, characters and overall outlook are still being rubbed like relics and scavenged for scraps decades after your death.
NEW YORK — All your favorite Greeks are heading somewhere in “Hadestown,” the sumptuous, hypnotic and somewhat hyperactive musical that opened Wednesday night after its own twisty 13-year road to Broadway.
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