Inaugural GALECA Dorian Theater Awards Announcement

My Critics Group has created a theater award. Excited to be a part of this new chapter of the Dorian Awards. 

GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics Announces Inaugural Dorian Theater Awards

Theater Wing’s 31 Members Will Honor Productions from Mainstream to Niche 

GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics today announced it is expanding its mission to honor Broadway and Off-Broadway productions, across a variety of inaugural categories, beginning with the current 2022-2023 theater season. 

Like GALECA’s Dorian film and TV honors, the Dorian Theater Awards will celebrate both mainstream and LGBTQ+-themed productions. While GALECA counts over 460 members in all, the organization’s new theater wing includes 31 stage critics and/or journalists who regularly cover NYC theater for notable media outlets. The wing’s charter voting members are listed below. 

Reviews: Enjoyably Offbeat “Regretfully, So the Birds Are” Play Premieres at Playwrights Horizons, While in Arthouse Cinemas, Pakistani Trans-Positive “Joyland” and Kelly Reichardt’s Gentle “Showing Up” With Michelle Williams Are Worth Catching

Regretfully, So the Bird Are (c) Chelcie Perry

Theater: Regretfully, So the Birds Are 
At Playwrights Horizons (Co-Production with WP Theater) 

It’s very hard to successfully convey an absurdist world on stage, unless it’s a severe post-apocalyptic world like that of Beckett. And it’s even harder to pull off if it’s a comedy. My favorite contemporary play of this ilk is “The Pillowman” by Martin McDonough, although its comedy is more black than not. Even Playwrights Horizons has made the attempt with varying levels of success, with plays like “Mr. Burns” and “Mankind.” For the audience, it’s a delicate balance between believing a play’s allegorical world and rejecting it and its more far-reaching imagery. Somehow, “Regretfully, So the Birds Are,” Julia Izumi’s enjoyable, very funny and surprisingly poignant new play keeps everything afloat thanks to a ridiculously talented cast and inventive direction by Jenny Koons. The play centers on the Whistler family of New Jersey, who are at a crossroads as they try to recover from their mentally unstable matriarch Elinore (the invaluable Kristine Nielsen) setting her husband on fire. Her children, all adopted from Asian countries, have different ways of coping: eldest daughter Mora (Shannon Tyo) is finally old enough to try to find her birth mother, while younger sister Illy (Sasha Diamond) and brother Neel (Sky Smith) decide to have an affair (that term is contested throughout the play). So, in-between the incest and the murder, Izumi peppers in a talking snowman, a flock of birds banding together to stop their extinction, many journeys (accompanied by Journey songs) as well as a cowman (don’t call him a cowboy) and a mysterious woman at an airport. All this is conveyed with more sincerity than absurdism by the cast who are all wonderful. Tyo, who has worked seemingly nonstop since her Theater World Award-winning performance in “The Chinese Lady,” is poignant as Mora, while Diamond and Smith are nice discoveries as the young lovers who insist their relationship isn’t incestuous because they’re not blood related. Gibson Frazier and Pearl Sun are also effective in supporting roles, but it’s Nielsen who is the MVP here, utilizing her unique comic delivery to the play’s benefit. See how she milks every last laugh out of a seemingly innocuous line like “I could have sworn this couch had more cushions.” Despite its unwieldly title, Izumi’s script is wonderfully wacky and heartfelt in equal measure and has found a kinship with collaborator Koons that the production never falters even when veering into some outlandish flights of fancy. By the end of this quirky play’s journey, I was surprised by how moved I was. 

2023 Lucille Lortel Award Nominations Announced

Titaníque (c) Emilio Madrid

The nominations for the 2023 Lucille Lortel Awards for Outstanding Achievement Off-Broadway were announced today with Wolf Play receiving the most nominations with six and then four productions with five nominations each: A Case for the Existence of God, Endgame, Epiphany and Titaníque. Ryan J. Haddad received the most individual nominations for Lead Performance and writing Dark Disabled Stories as well as a Featured Performance for american (tele)visions. 

The Interested Bystander's 2022-23 Tony Award Nomination Predictions - Early April 2022

Some Like It Hot (c) Marc J. Franklin

It is way too early to talk Tony Predictions. I know. But award shows are my sporting events, and I’m sure baseball fans are already talking about which teams will make it to the world series already and yet the season is only a week old. There are a lot of shows which haven’t even opened yet to make the cutoff date of April 27. But let’s see where we’re at based on reactions: on- off- and regionally. 

Theater Review: An Enjoyable Metaphysical Trip on “The Coast Starlight,” Judy Gold Hilariously Gets Things Off Her Chest in “Yes I Can Say That!” and A Dazzling Donna Murphy Highlights “Dear World”

 

The Coast Starlight (c) T. Charles Erickson

Theater: The Coast Starlight 
At Lincoln Center Theater 

The iconic premise in the otherwise forgettable Gwyneth Paltrow movie, “Sliding Doors,” is that we follow Paltrow’s character down two paths, one in which she makes the train home and the other where the titled doors close in front of her and she has to take the next train. In our new “Everything Everywhere All at Once” multiverse reality, six strangers, who find themselves on The Coast Starlight train at different points in its itinerary from Los Angeles to Seattle, bond in a “what if we actually connected” way. The two people who take the entire trip are T.J. (a solidly jittery Will Harrison), a navy medic who is about to be deployed back to Afghanistan, and Jane (Camila Canó-Flaviá), an inspiring artist going to visit her long-distance boyfriend. They notice and are attracted to each other right away but they barely talk. In fact, if we add up the dialogue that is actually spoken in real life between these two and the other four passengers we will soon meet, the play would be no longer than fifteen minutes. Keith Bunin’s conceit is that these six people are on the same train but meet on a metaphysical plane in which we the audience are the only ones who witness their interactions and how they would advise each other’s current predicaments. As twee as this sounds, director Tyne Rafaeli invests the production with enough surreal touches to keep us on our toes. Entering the train at various times along the 36-hour ride are Noah (Rhys Coiro), Ed (Jon Norman Schneider), Anna (Michelle Wilson) and Liz (Mia Barron) bringing different energies to the dynamics, with Barron coming in like a tsunami and Wilson as a healing presence. The play’s ending feels right even if the real-world interaction between these characters couldn’t match the “what if” scenario that preceded it.