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Picture this: It’s 1527. You’re Henry VIII. Your wife, Katherine is just not cutting it anymore. You’re bored and you want the “D” word. You also want your mistress, Anne Boleyn. So, you ask the Cardinal if he’ll divorce you and Katherine so you can live happily ever after with Boleyn.  He says (paraphrasing), “Are you barmy?!?! That totally goes against the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church!” But you sally forth with your plans and enlist the help of your chief confidante, Thomas Cromwell. After all, Cromwell used to be the Cardinal’s secretary. He might have some leverage, right? Answer: Nope. Not really. (Sigh) Oh well!  Eventually, you decide that shaking up the court, the church, and your country is well worth the price of marrying someone who you will end up leaving for yet another woman. She’s not gonna be a dandy, either. Geesh Henry! You’re really  a rebel-rousing whore, aren’t you?

This is primarily the plot of Wolf Hall, the astonishing  two part drama currently playing at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theatre. The production comes to New York after a sold out, hugely successful run in London where it recently nabbed a couple of Olivier awards.  It is likely to garner several Tony nominations as well. If justice is served, it will not not walk home empty handed.

Mike Poulton has effectively adapted Hilary Mantel’s works of historical fiction into dual parts. Part One (Wolf Hall) lays the groundwork for all the political machinations that will ensue,  but Part Two (Bring Up the Bodies)  moves at an even swifter pace, drawing the audience into its  fold and keeping them on the edge of their seats. The entire saga clocks in at 5 hours (2 hrs. and 30 minutes for each part) and yet it never feels like a chore, thanks to the superb acting from The Royal Shakespeare Company. There is no finer acting ensemble treading the boards in New York City right now.

Christopher Oram has been charged with the task of conceiving both the set design and the costumes. On both counts, he succeeds with kingly admiration. A sparse, cold, gray  brick and cement interior strikes  remarkable polarity against his bedazzling ornate costumes.  Lighting designers Paule Constable (Part 1)  and David Plater (Part 2) also add a thrilling brilliance to an already flawless stage production.

I confess that  I am not a history fiend and knew very little about the trials and tribulations of King Henry VIII or his court, so it is with much admiration that I give to director Jeremy Herrin and his team of consummate professionals and producers  who have quenched the thirst of historians and simpletons like myself by presenting a captivating, accessible, surprisingly humorous, and hugely entertaining political tale that is worth selling your only child for seats. Weigh the options: You can always find another kid, but Wolf Hall will only be here until July.

Wolf Hall Parts One and Two. Now playing at Broadway’s Winter Garden Theater on Broadway between 50th and 51st. Tickets are available for both parts or can be purchased individually.  For more information, visit http://wolfhallbroadway.com/

It has often been noted by people of faith that “the good Lord works in mysterious ways.” For all intents and purposes, He may well be taking a vacation or turning a blind eye to the mischievous antics that are unfolding at Broadway’s Booth theater, where the marquee darkly exclaims that “Broadway is going to hell in a hand puppet.”

Hell is both a figurative place and a frame of mind in Robert Askin’s outrageous play Hand To God.  Set in a fundamental christian church in a nondescript town in Texas, Hand to God  introduces us to Jason (Steven Boyer), the shy and reserved Mama’s boy to Margery (Geneva Carr), a deeply repressed widow who is leading the church’s puppet ministry. Nerdy Jessica (Sarah Stiles) and bad boy Timothy (Michael Oberholtzer) round out the “puppeteers” as Pastor Greg (Marc Kudisch) watches over his flock–and a close, seductive eye on Margery.

No one seems terribly enthused about the idea of performing in front of the church and suddenly, rehearsals only get worse once Jason’s puppet, Tyrone, springs to life on his hand. This devil incarnate  quickly sets out to terrorize anything and anyone in his path and soon,  the entire church is victimized by an uncontrollable, foul-mouthed, sock puppet.

One might quickly  dismiss Hand to God as a crude, sacrilegious work of simple comedy. But Askins morality tale delves  deeper, inviting us to explore the direction of our moral compass.  Do we choose to do wrong or does wrongdoing control us? Furthermore, how long can we repress natural inclinations before they push us past the precipice of confinement?

Let’s not overlook the comedy factor here, though. Hand to God is laugh out loud funny, thanks mostly to this finely tuned cast. Boyer seems to effortlessly toggle between Jason and Tyrone but his contrasting personalities are as deliriously different as night and day. Carr is wonderful as a mother desperately trying to hold it all together–and failing miserably. Oberholtzer’s punkish behavior adds even more devilish fun to the mix, and Stiles delivers a first-rate, understated performance as the brainiac who is fed up with everything and everyone. Stage veteran Kudisch offers a solid and stoic portrayal of an opportunistic spiritual leader.

On the surface, Hand to God is a bawdy, adult rated stage comedy but like human nature itself, it is layered by nuance, complications, and empathy. As a new American play, it delivers a jolt of freshness and originality to the genre.

Hand to God plays at the Booth Theater, 222 West 45th Street (between 8th and Broadway). For tickets and information, visit the box office, or http://handtogodbroadway.com/

Earlier this year, Rebel Theater Company mounted a massive production entitled Black Footnotes which chronicled the lives of African-American women doctors who made great contributions, but whose names were erased from the history books. Read the review here: https://www.manhattandigest.com/2015/02/14/theater-review-black-footnotes/

The play consisted of a cast of 28 members, quite a large feat  for such a small space. It ran at Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe. Rebel theater has returned to the famed performance space, where a current, large scale re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is afoot

Writers Adam Mace and Kaitlyn Schirard have now enlisted 30 actors, and have placed the famous tale of young romance during the height of the Civil War in 1863 Kentucky.  Juliet (Julia Boyes) hails  from the wealthy Capulet family while Romeo (Jordane Christie) is from the former slave house of Montague. Once, he and his family had worked for the Capulets, but they were sold to an abolitionist who set them free.  In true lover’s fashion, love binds them together, much to the dismay of both families.

To set the piece  during the most challenging time of our nation’s history is both thoughtful and appropriate.In the program notes, director Adam Mace tips his hat to Abraham Lincoln (also timely, given the fact that we commemorate his assassination this month).  After Romeo murders one of the Capulets in a brawl, his mentor, Reverend Laurence (Christian Lee Branch) unleashes a fiery sermon to parishioners. “I don’t understand is how the Lord can allow such hate to be in our world today. To allow our brothers and sisters to be beaten, sold, tortured, and killed!”, he says.  Sadly, the words could be delivered from a contemporary pulpit. Mace  expresses the fact that the story far exceeds the confines of romance, but rather, reflects the state of a nation.

Christie and Boyes create fiery passion and Adiagha Faizah is particularly touching as Mama Opal, Juliet’s slave. The supporting ensemble are in top form.

Occasionally, Mace’s script is a bit heavy handed and wrought with too many histrionics. Once the scale is tipped towards the highest level of dramatics, there is little room to build tension. Still, he should be commended for the fine work that he and his assistant director, Najah Muhammad create. It is a joy to watch this theater company evolve, develop, and generate crucial conversations with their provocative works.

R&J:  An Uncivil Tale, runs through April 26th at the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe, 236 E. 3rd street (between Ave B and C).  For tickets and information, visit http://www.rebeltheater.com/#!r–j/c131s

“If any of us had our lives and welfare completely strangled and lived with children in a shrinking place where we know that soldiers and tanks and bulldozers could come for us at any moment, with no means of economic survival and our houses demolished; if they came and destroyed all the greenhouses that we’d been cultivating for the last however long do you not think, in a similar situation, most people would defend themselves as best they could?” 

This is but one of the numerous diary and email writings by a young, peace seeking activist Rachel Corrie. Corrie was a 24-year-old from Olympia, Washington who devoted her life to help the prevention of bullying from the fourth largest super power in the world (Israel), to a mostly unarmed people (Palestine). In 2003, in the midst of a peace movement, she was struck and killed by an Israeli bulldozer driver. Her story is currently onstage in a gut wrenching production at The Lynn Redgrave Theatre at Culture Project, which runs through April 12th.

Originally staged in 2005 at London’s Royal Court Theatre, the production was well received and pointed its sights towards the New York Theater Workshop. Here, the idea of mounting such a politically charged work was met with too much disagreement and dissension so the  transfer was scrapped. Instead, it found a commercial run at the Minetta Lane theater in 2006, where it opened to mixed reviews.

Under Jonathan Kane’s insightful direction, it is now back on the boards where Charlotte Hemmings faces the daunting challenge of recreating Corrie’s activism and understanding of a continually heated, complex, and aggravating situation. At the performance I reviewed, Hemming met and far exceeded the demands, as evidenced by the stunning silence and tears which were wiped away by the end of the 90 minute show (including my own). Hemmings brings a vital urgency to a girl who “still really wants to dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for my co-workers” but also just wants the injustices to stop.

It is simple to take absolute stands on what we think is the truth, but in the hands of  Katherine Viner and British actor Alan Rickman, who have masterfully edited Corrie’s prose, we are forced to look at this ongoing conflict through a different lens.  When Corrie offers to pay for her housing to her Palestinian family, they refuse stating, “We are not a hotel. We help you because we think maybe you will go and tell people that you lived with Muslims. We think they will know that we are good people. We are quiet people. We just want peace.”

After the tragically sobering ending, a video is shown of a 10-year-old Rachel Corrie presenting at her school’s fifth grade press conference on World Hunger. The young, wide-eyed idealist offers a compassionate plea: “We have got to understand that people in Third World countries think and care and smile and cry just like us. We have got to understand that they dream our dreams and we dream theirs.” Corrie is no longer with us, but her enduring words remind us of the possibility for change and that those who seek it with passion and sincerity will have not lived their lives-whatever the length- in vain.

My Name is Rachel Corrie plays through April 12th at the Culture Project’s Lynn Redgrave Theater. 45 Bleecker Street. For tickets and information, visit http://cultureproject.org/current/rachel-corrie/

He’s got polish. He’s got charm. He’s got a pleasing personality. The only thing he’s missing is a calendar and an updated sensibility. Someone needs to tell Robert Dubac, the star and writer  of The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron that it is no longer the 1980s. We’re now living in 2015 where cordless house phones are nearly obsolete. In addition, jokes that paint women as shrews and an age where homosexual tendencies are to be feared are ..what’s the oxymoron I’m looking for? Oh yes- Pretty disgusting!

Dubac’s “story” begins as his girlfriend dumps him. He then spends the remaining 90 barely endurable minutes contemplating what went wrong as he reads dated hardback books and seeks the advice of his other male friends, all of which are played by Dubac himself. These include an elderly man, a french man, a “cool man”, and a drill instructor. The jokes are hackneyed and cliched and do virtually nothing to bridge an understanding between the sexes.

With a Los Angeles style and an eighties demeanor, it is obvious that Dubac has been trucking his show around for quite some time. One look at his website indicates that future cities will soon be victimized by his brand of comedy. For now, New York will be stuck with him until April 26th, where he will perform his other solo piece, The Book of Moron, in repertory at Urban Stages.  I had planned to see that as well, but decided instead to stay home and sniff rubber cement, an act that is likely as entertaining. 

To be fair, the audience  feasted on his material at a recent performance, so clearly it is amusing to a particular demographic– a crowd which laughs out loud at a man who wiggles cigarettes in his ears– A knee slapper, huh?  Perhaps he should book a venue in Indiana? Adding to the injurious nature is Dubac’s post theater talkback, where he shamelessly hawks his own videos of the show.

Urban Stages typically brings thoughtful  and innovative works to their roster, but somehow this one slipped passed  the radar.  Dubac’s stage presence is solid, but he would fare much better with fresher material and a modern sense of humor.

The Book Of Moron and The Male Intellect: An Oxymoron?  Tickets may be purchased at SmartTix.com or by phone at 212/868-4444.For more information about Urban Stages, please visit UrbanStages.org or call 212-421-1380.

British actor Johnny Donahoe has a knack for the uncommon: This creative storyteller has been able to take a somber and depressing subject and turn it into a night of lively, breezy entertainment in his one man show, Every Brilliant Thing . The subject is that of bi-polar disorder and Donahoe’s self-assigned task of creating a list of every brilliant thing he can think of in order to keep his depressed mother from taking her own life.

The charming Brit penned this 60 minute, award winning piece with playwright Duncan Macmillan. The two had known each other, but never worked together. “One day Duncan rang  me and told me he wanted to work on a project  about suicide and depression, but he wanted to make it uplifting and funny, ” recalls Donahoe. “We both thought that it would run about two weeks and be done with it. Two years later, I am still doing it.”

The two wanted the play to be democratic and turn it into interactive theatre. Before the curtain, Donahoe scours the audience in order to find individuals who are keen on participation. He then hands them a variety of objects with brilliant things listed on them Throughout the show, he will call on his chosen “cast”. “The show is about learning through talking and sharing , so we wanted it to be democratic.”

While the show has  a perceived auto-biographical feel, it is not particularly Donahoe’s story, although both of its writers have experienced depression within each of their families. “It’s based collectively on true and untrue stories,” Donahoe says, “but the themes of this show are relatively universal. We wanted to figure out how to talk topics that are so awful. The answer we came up with is by laughing and sharing that laughter.”

Donahoe has been moving New York audiences with his “brilliance” since the end of last year.  The show has received countless critical  praise, including The New York Times’ critic’s pick. “It’s been lovely being here for the last 4 or 5 months,” Donates says. “I would have preferred to come during a time when you didn’t have the worst winter on record because I come from a wintery country. I was hoping to escape that,” he laughs.  “But I’ll still take it, because it’s just lovely here.”

Next, The stand-up comedian will head back to the UK, where he will tour with  Johnny and The Baptists, his  politically charged satire troupe.

Every Brilliant Thing runs through March 29th at the Barrow Street Theatre. For tickets and information visit http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=EVE165.

For information on Jonny Donahoe, visit his website http://www.jonnydonahoe.co.uk