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The middle goes astray...there's a song "hands" about "hands." But Pinto never met a doldrum he couldn't blow past, and, when he's deep in his performance trance, he points toward bardic ecstasy. The musicians around the room, playing sighing sax-drones and pounding metal drums, did the rest. HWAET!

A man with a beard looks up at a light bulb

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The 1st song is my favorite: a motormouth splatter-chronicle of pre-Mod British history, acted out with toys (I thought of the old Micro Machines ads) including driveby references to Lud & (I think?) Edmund Ironside. Pinto chants faster than I can process; I heard him say "Lud" an hour past the show

A man with a grey beard stands in a theatrical space, pointing

And no, Beowulf's lore doesn't coincide with Camelot's. But very similar dragons do lurk in the subterranean spaces of English & Angle-ish & Scandinavian myth. Pinto thus decides his two warrior-bros, so distant in literature, can team up to fight a DREAD WYRM, rock-opera style (screaming into mics)

A man in a white tshirt runs across a stage, holding (brandishing?) a microphone stand like it's a double-handed axe

The audience sits at a huge round table (Kristin Marting directs), which Pinto races around on top of, sometimes chatting personably with us about "The 13th Warrior," sometimes plunging into Tuvan throat-singing. The song-cycle is strongest when Beowulf or Gawain, his two "hero" avatars, face off...

a man with black hair and a grey beard, wearing a white tshirt and long green gloves, drags on a rope

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"Mano a Mano" at La Mama is what happens when too much knowledge about Middle English poetry achieves hyperdensity — then explodes out of composer/performer Paul Pinto's head as a one-man(o) opera. It's deranged (complimentary)...imagine King Arthur's court trapped in the Hellraiser dimension 🧵

A man with a grey beard and goat horns sings what is obviously some very heavy metal

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Breeze writes about sisters & FOR sisters (her sister Masha Breeze is the show-stealing Mary), & you can see how well it's working when other things break. When I saw it, a sound cue for the final dance number went *404*. These gals couldn't have cared less—they were dancing for one another anyway.

Masha Breeze as Mary, with sad bangs and a green dress, looking down a staircase full of concern. Is it possible that you might miss this show?

Masha Breeze, in the same green dress, but now smiling and lit with a deep rosy pink. Even the bangs are working! That optimism might be because you can still go to the show, for a few more days.

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(This one the gorgeous "Henry IV" down at TFANA. Pistol and Hotspur were double-cast with James Udom, and at one point we watched him stride across the tiny stage as the princely Hotspur and then transform into the common rogue just by changing his step and letting us see his gold tooth wink) (6/7)

A moody picture of James Udom wearing a leather gorget and golden vambraces, one hand on his sword

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Benzoni's ability to toggle between characters just with a sneer & a different shrug is both the warning (#yesallmen) and chief delight of the show. It reminded me of other showboat performances (e.g., Andrew Scott) & my favorite single gesture this year, ALSO in a play directed by Eric Tucker (5/7)

Edoardo Benzoni as Darcy, looking earnestly at someone he loves, wearing fluffy white sleeves and a golden waistcoat that look like they've been spattered with claret. IT'S NOT CLARET.

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It's a valuable reading of prim, narcissist Jane, of Lizzie (her choice to marry reflects maturity, not just romance) & it's also a whopper of a farce, driven primarily by Edoardo Benzoni, who plays all the men. His Wickham's a f-boi menace, and he sort of almost seduces the whole family (4/7)

Shayvawn Webster in full expository mode as Jane Bennet, wearing a gold dress, elbow length gloves, and a gold diadem...as in the book, she's a still pool with depths

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And the amazing Szadkowski—Meryl Streep's profile & Martin Short's comic timing—aces that. But Breeze goes further: economic fear has made Mrs. B monstrous in other, secret ways. Jane (Shayvawn Webster) & Lizzie (Elyse Steingold) realize the mum they've been mocking is also a danger...and 🤯 (3/7)

A woman in a spotlight, wearing black lace gloves and a red dress, eats cheese and delivers a hilarious, loquacious monologue. It's the kind of monologue that, in a just world, would catapult Zuzanna Szadkowski to the stardom that she deserves

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Execution is everything. Breeze first makes the expected choice—to deepen Austen's silly Mrs. Bennet (Zuzanna Szadkowski), the book's shrill embarrassment. Breeze explains and explores the way Mrs. B pushes her girls to marriage because only she can see their terrible precarity (2/7)

Mrs. Bennet looks into her wineglass at a table draped in a white cloth; she looks like she's getting a headache or a presentiment of feminism

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Much to my regret I only saw Emily Breeze's "Are the Bennet Girls OK" at Bedlam last night--they close on Sunday, and so the tickets are now TIGHT and also, lbr, pricy. But it's gorgeous! I had clocked it was an Austen-in-modern-idiom project and thought, oh, we've seen those already...(1/7)

Lizzie (Elyse Steingold), wearing blue, and Kitty Bennet (Violeta Picayo), in mauve, sit by a staircase reading a letter that is about to disappoint them, perhaps because it says the remaining tickets to their show are one hundred and eighty nine dollars.

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Townsend writes in rare registers: heightened melodrama, yes, but also densely written jeremiad about personal, political anguish. How much is "real" here wavers, except for the rock-solid sense we're in the presence of real talent—both onstage (Weinstein is amazing) & behind it. www.jewishplot.com

Weinstein, a woman in a dark dress and apron, prepares to stab a person lying down on the floor in front of her.

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But Townsend dug this thing up (the word "plot" has certain graveyard implications, no?) to explore even darker matters than antisemitism in Dickens's London. The games-within-games that Townsend and director Sarah Hughes play instill a sick dread in us. I found it thrilling but nauseating (3/4)

Madeline Weinstein and Neil D'Astolfo are clearly making Cockney noises while staring, shocked, from behind a curtain. They could be lit by candlelight.

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When Madeline Weinstein welcomes us, she introduces Eddie Kaye Thomas, playing the lead in Townsend's reconstruction of a "lost" nineteenth-century play subtitled "The Semite of Mayfair." The melodrama wends along; it's almost too bad to be true. "Oh," you'll think, "how far theatre has come" (2/4)

Tess Frazer and Eddie Kaye Thomas, wearing vaguely nineteenth-century garb, duel with tiny blades in front of a row of footlights

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Torrey Townsend's "Jewish Plot" has two more nights: tonight (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday). It's the rare show where anything I say could undermine it; the tonal and structural switchbacks here are genuinely exhilarating & I don't want to ruin it for anyone who can get to Theatre 154 in time. (1/4)

a poster for the play Jewish Plot; a woman in a high-necked nineteenth century dress sits on a stool in front of a red curtain

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"Kyoto"'s point is that Pearlman invented the anti-progress rulebook: delay negotiations on procedural grounds, exaggerate scientific uncertainty, attack the scientist rather than the science, exploit your enemies' inner divisions, etc. In this important way, "Kyoto" is good, because it's useful 4/5

Stephen Kunken in a tan overcoat stands on a circular stage; behind him is a group of menacing characters in black coats, holding papers

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Like other such shows, Kyoto builds tension with cinematic music, bustling movement to create a sense of drama (some of us still remember the way Jennifer Ehle vigorously slid a coffee table onstage for J.T. Rogers's Process Drama "Oslo"), and a climactic Storm of Papers. This stuff kinda works 3/5

an image from "Oslo," in which three men sit at a table, while another addresses them. In the background, Jennifer Ehle, a woman in a grey dress and a worried expression, observes

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It's another Process Drama from overseas: we've recently had "Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors," brought over from the National, which re-enacted the inquiry after a hellish fire, and "Agreement," from Belfast's Lyric, which dramatized the down-to-the-wire peace process in Northern Ireland 2/5

an image from the play "Grenfell": a group of four people sit around a pile of cardboard boxes filling out forms on the box-lid; a woman in a headscarf stands behind them

an image from the play "Agreement": a group of people at a table shuffle papers as papers seem to blow around them in a storm

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Helen Shaw @helenshaw.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

In Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson's "Kyoto" at Lincoln Center Theater, the real-life oil lobbyist Donald H. Pearlman (played by Stephen Kunken) tries to derail the UN's Kyoto Accords by sabotaging a decade of negotiations aimed at preventing the climate disaster. His story's compressed but true. 1/5

An actor stands on top of a huge circular table; audience members and cast members playing climate delegates sit at the table looking up at him

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The first section, when Move and the two former Graham dancers Catherine Cabeen and PeiJu Chien-Pott enter silently, moving in elegant and sorrowful hieroglyphics, was stirring; the section when Graham/Move is explaining the company exercises, demonstrated by the two dancers, was illuminating

In the foreground, a dancer in a deep purple bodysuit reaches up with one hand; in the faraway background, we can see an interview set up, with two people in chairs. Martha Graham is on the right, and her arm is up in the same gesture

Helen Shaw @helenshaw.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Move and Lisa Kron (as Walter Terry) reenact the pair's 92nd Street Y interview from 1963. Martha Graham never knowingly under-dramatized. Asked about how to deal with repetition, she says, graciously, head bowing like a lily, "Don't get bored—think of yourself as dancing towards your death." Right.

Two seated figures with a standing dancer between them—on the left, Lisa Kron as the dance critic Walter Terry, on the right, Richard Move as Martha Graham holding out her hand in what looks like a warding or stopping gesture. Between them, the dancer Catherine Cabeen, recreates a moment from "Clytemnestra"

Helen Shaw @helenshaw.bsky.social · 29/10/2025

Richard Move's bewitching "Martha@BAM—the 1963 Interview" continues Move's long history of "becoming" Martha Graham—what started at a nightclub (Martha@Mother) in 1996 arrives on the BAM Fishman stage at last. Of course the eye makeup is TIGER, the hair is ARCHITECTURE, the torso is CANTILEVERED 🧵

Richard Move in character as Martha Graham: a black and white photo of a regal figure, wearing a silk cape and golden moons in their hair.

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Helen Shaw @helenshaw.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

I've been thinking about Keanu Reeves & double-acts, and I got overwhelmed all over again at the loss of River Phoenix. My Own Private Idaho is so similar to Godot, though there Reeves plays the knowing Didi-type and Phoenix's narcoleptic ingenue is Gogo...I can see their version in my mind's eye

In a void, two tiny figures, both wearing bowler hats, sit on the edge of a giant tube, made from varied shades of plywood that looks like marble

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Helen Shaw @helenshaw.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

The tremendous Morgan Bassichis show "Can I Be Frank?" at Soho Playhouse has added a show tomorrow at 9pm! Everything else is sold out out OUT Bassichis is the funniest and most entrancing comic performer out there; if you don't take that last ticket, I'm gonna www.sohoplayhouse.com/see-a-show/m...

A tall, dark haired performer in a black tshirt gestures magnificently while speaking into a microphone.

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Helen Shaw @helenshaw.bsky.social · 16/07/2025

Crystal Skillman's monologue "Open," starring the great Megan Hill, is a magic act with no magic in it--a woman, the Magician, boasts about the illusions she's doing in front of us (bird, rings, flowers, PRESTO!) but nothing actually appears on the empty stage (1/4)

A woman dressed as a magician in a sparkly frock coat gestures magnificently

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After a killer 1st act, they appear less in the 2nd, which costs the show some circus energy—it's hard to dramatize eroding confidence. Still, designer Alexander Shishkin creates impressive low-budget spectacles, as does Molochnikov, a serious talent, knocked back by circumstance, but not down. 5/5

A red stage curtain and two men chatting—one popping his head through the curtain, the other looking apologetic, with papers in his hand. The text below it reads "Seagull: True Story —May 16-June 1"

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The show has 2 driving forces: Elan Zafir's Anton, a sidekick and sad-eyed joker, & the hilarious MC (Andrey Burkovskiy), part Bulgakovian devil, part NY producer ("Fantastic!" he shouts, never committing a penny), part Trigorin, part what happens if you hire Russian Ed Grimley as your narrator. 4/5

Zafir, wearing a sports coat and beige trousers, swings in on a rope while people in black try to do serious theatre behind him

Actors lined up at a curtain call, including, center, Andrey Burkovskiy, a tall man in a black bowtie and red jacket

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Amid fairground nightmarishness—half Blok, half Lynch—Kon struggles with censorious actors & a producer in love with his Nina. The visuals are hilarious (Putin pops by) & horrifying (A subway platform materializes around Kon and we remember how Chekhov's Konstantin acts after he feels forgotten) 3/5

A man startles awake on his inflatable mattress, as a nightmare vision of Putin (Andrey Burkovskiy, with his shirt off, riding a "horse" made out of four actors) points a finger-gun at him

A red curtain closes on a red-painted stage. In the gap between the curtains, there's a green column from the subway, with its sign for "Broadway-Lafayette", and a man in a red jacket in waving to (or pushing?) someone, but the curtain prevents us from seeing which

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The plot combines "Seagull" and Molochnikov's own exile: successful director (Kon), a LGBTQ-friendly avant-gardist, flees Moscow when Putin's crackdown stops him from working freely. In New York, though, all his fame evaporates. Can he even put on a show? A rich city assures him it has no money 2/5

Kon (Eric Tabach) and his friend Anton (Elan Zafir), wear big furry Russian hats, gossip and laugh in Red Square, which is represented by three actors wearing huge models of Kremlin towers