Reviews

I saw DATA at the Lucille Lortel Theatre on February 4, 2026 for the matinee, and I was pulled in almost immediately. This is smart, unsettling theater that trusts its audience to keep up and asks questions that feel uncomfortably close to our daily lives. It never feels like science fiction. It feels like tomorrow morning.

At the center of the play is Maneesh, a young programmer who takes a job in the tech world believing he is stepping into the future he has worked toward. What he slowly comes to understand is that the academic work he once created in isolation might be used for more than just predicting baseball statistics. The conflict is not about invention, but ownership and intent. Maneesh is forced to confront how his ideas will be used once they are no longer his, and what responsibility he bears when his work becomes part of a system that operates far beyond individual control.

Karan Brar is excellent as Maneesh, capturing that internal fracture between ambition and dread. His performance is deeply human. You can see the calculation happening in real time as he weighs safety, success, familial obligation, and conscience against one another. He never plays the character as naive or heroic. Instead, Brar makes Maneesh feel like someone many people would recognize, talented, hopeful, and suddenly aware that the cost of participation may be higher than expected.

The supporting cast is equally strong. Brandon Flynn is sharply effective as Jonah, embodying the confident tech bro worldview that normalizes moral compromise through language of efficiency and progress. Justin H. Min brings depth to Alex, a data analytics supervisor whose own choices suggest that survival within these systems often requires selective blindness. Making her New York theater debut, Sophia Lillis is terrific as Riley, a young analyst trying to reconcile her work with her conscience. She brings urgency and emotional clarity to the play, grounding the ethical questions in lived anxiety rather than abstraction.

Matthew Libby’s script is clear eyed and unnervingly plausible. It explores hidden data mining, public data scraping, and AI driven judgments that occur without transparency or human accountability. The play never feels speculative for speculation’s sake. One line drew laughter from the audience when a particular form of surveillance was framed as hypothetical. The laugh landed awkwardly because many people now know that this practice has since been publicly confirmed. That moment alone says a great deal about how fast reality is moving.

The staging is deceptively simple and highly effective. The large, mostly empty stage creates a sense of exposure, as if the characters are always being watched. Scene changes happen silently in darkness, punctuated by pulsating animated light around the proscenium that flows seamlessly from moment to moment. The transitions feel mechanical and impersonal, reinforcing the sense that the system is always running, regardless of who is inside it.

What DATA ultimately asks is not whether these systems exist, but how easily people are absorbed into them. It raises questions about consent, complicity, and the illusion of choice in environments designed to reward compliance. There are no easy villains here, only people navigating structures that benefit from moral distance.

Oh, and Brar and Flynn's ping pong skills are impressive.

I thoroughly enjoyed this production. It is tense, thoughtful, and disturbingly grounded in the present moment. The performances are strong across the board, and the play trusts its audience to sit with discomfort rather than offering reassurance. DATA is currently scheduled to run through March 29, 2026, and I highly recommend seeing it while you can. If they had magnets, I would have bought one.

I rarely do stage doors, but with the small ensemble, and very short line outside when I left the theatre, I decided to stick around for a few minutes and was able to meet and briefly chat with the entire cast.

I saw The Disappear at the Audible Minetta Lane Theatre on January 31, 2026, shortly after it was extended through February 22. I walked out conflicted. There is a lot to admire here, especially the performances and the design, but the play itself never quite coheres. I would still recommend it, with caveats, if you are willing to sit with a show that is more about moments than meaning.

This is not a mystery in the traditional sense, despite the title. It plays more like a comedy of mishaps and timing, rooted in people misunderstanding one another, talking past each other, and trying to keep their personal worlds from collapsing. It is observational rather than plot driven. When it works, it feels like watching human messiness unfold in real time. When it doesn’t, it feels directionless.

The cast is uniformly excellent, which is the main reason the evening holds together at all. Hamish Linklater embodies Benjamin Braxton so completely that it feels as if the role was written around his cadence and physicality. He grounds the play with a lived in, deeply human presence. Miriam Silverman is equally strong as Mira Blair, sharp and emotionally precise, delivering even the most pedestrian lines with clarity and purpose. Dylan Baker brings warmth and credibility to Michael Bloom, while Madeline Brewer gives Julie Wells a restless, searching energy that keeps her scenes alive. Kelvin Harrison Jr. is compelling as Raf Night, committed and specific even when the writing does not fully support him. Anna Mirodin rounds out the ensemble beautifully as Dolly Blair Braxton, adding texture and tension to the family dynamics. There is not a weak performance among them.

What ultimately holds the play back is the writing. The six characters feel as though they exist in entirely different worlds, with no clear reason they should intersect or even coexist within the same reality. It is never clear what time period we are in, where exactly we are, or why these particular people are sharing space. The dialogue often feels frustratingly pedestrian, circling familiar reflections on love, parenting, anxiety, and climate change without pushing any of those ideas to a deeper or more revealing place.

The design elements are, ironically, the clearest and most confident aspect of the production. Brett J. Banakis’s scenic design is striking and thoughtful, easily the most memorable part of the show. The set does an enormous amount of narrative work, even as the script refuses to anchor us in time or place. Costume design by Jennifer Moeller and Miriam Kelleher, lighting by Cha See, and sound by Palmer Hefferan all support the atmosphere beautifully. The world onstage looks and feels intentional, even if the story does not.

I left appreciating the craft and the acting more than the play itself. There is something here about trying to hold life together when everything feels like it is slipping, but that idea never fully crystallizes. The disjointed structure and lack of connection between characters made it hard for me to emotionally invest in the whole. Still, the performances are strong enough that I am glad I went. The Disappear is a frustrating but often watchable evening of theater, elevated by exceptional actors doing their best work inside a script that never quite finds its footing.

I saw Mars at The Chain Theatre and found it thoughtful, somber, and quietly unsettling. The premise is simple and heavy. Two men may be the last humans alive, stranded in an Arctic research station after some undefined global collapse. From the start, the play leans into isolation and finality, asking what remains of humanity when progress has failed and there is no one left to impress or convince.

The performances carry the piece. Dima Koan plays Kovalenko, a Russian American glaciologist who feels anchored to history, language, and culture. Fernando Zermeño Garavito plays Valdez, a Mexican American climatologist whose past mission to Mars looms over everything. Both actors handle the material with seriousness and restraint. There is no melodrama here. Their work feels grounded and human, which is essential given how abstract the circumstances are.

Valdez’s experience on Mars becomes the emotional spine of the play. His mission failed, and the play strongly suggests that this failure may have sealed humanity’s fate. That weight sits heavily on him. His regret is not loud or theatrical. It is quiet and corrosive. The idea that one man’s mistake could ripple outward and end everything is devastating, and the play allows that guilt to linger without resolving it.

Daniel Mesta’s writing explores big ideas about legacy, responsibility, and meaning at the end of the world. Conversations drift between science, memory, politics, and poetry. There is talk of Pushkin and progress, of what humanity tried to build and where it went wrong. The tone feels deliberately spare, almost austere, which fits the frozen setting and the emotional distance between the characters.

That said, the play’s biggest weakness for me is its refusal to give clearer answers. We never fully understand what caused the apocalypse or why help never came. Some information appears briefly on computer screens, but it is minimal and fleeting. I wanted more direct conversation between the two men about what actually happened and what they believe is still happening outside the station. Ambiguity can be powerful, but here it sometimes felt like withholding rather than tension. I tend to want facts, especially when the stakes are this large.

Still, Mars succeeds as a mood piece and a character study. Miranda Kelly Macbeth’s direction keeps the focus tight, and the design elements support the atmosphere without overwhelming it. Xenia Clement’s sound design, drawing on Holst’s The Planets, one of my favorites since childhood, adds a cosmic sense of scale that contrasts sharply with the smallness of the human story onstage. Wendy Triana’s costumes reinforce the practicality and bleakness of survival. While I left wishing for more clarity, I also left thinking about the questions the play raises. What do we owe each other. What do we leave behind. And what would we say if we knew we were truly the last ones left.

I saw The Opening on Thursday, January 22 at 7pm at Players Theatre, and it turned out to be a smart, genuinely funny surprise. Billed as “the second most famous musical about chess,” the show knows exactly what it is and leans into that with confidence. This is a sharp, raunchy, high-energy musical comedy that takes a real-world chess scandal and spins it into something absurd, entertaining, and consistently engaging. If you walked in thinking chess was a dry subject, this show happily proves you wrong.

The story centers on Newton Anderson, a 17-year-old chess prodigy on the brink of competing against world champion Carson Marlsen for a massive cash prize and the title itself. Newton is awkward, earnest, and deeply invested in doing things the right way, which makes the temptation to cheat all the more uncomfortable when his best friend Jim proposes a truly unhinged solution. Newton only agrees under strict conditions, but once that line is crossed, everything spirals quickly. Add a sudden boost in high school popularity, a long-held crush, and the mysterious arrival of a masked challenger known as El Trasero, and the stakes become increasingly ridiculous in the best way.

Brooke Di Spirito’s book is unapologetically bawdy and knowingly juvenile, but it is also very clever. The humor lands because it understands its audience and never pretends to be something more elevated than it is. Mateo Chavez Lewis’ music is tuneful, propulsive, and well-suited to the show’s irreverent tone. The score moves easily between comedy, patter, and pastiche, and the orchestrations feel bright and buoyant without ever overpowering the performers. A few songs hit harder than others, but even the weaker numbers serve the story cleanly and keep the momentum going. One song comprised almost entirely of innuendos had the audience in stitches.

Ryan Jacobs is immediately likable as Newton, bringing a wide-eyed sincerity that makes his internal conflict believable even as the plot grows increasingly absurd. Jake Faragalli plays Jim with an easy confidence that contrasts nicely with Newton’s anxiety, and their dynamic is one of the show’s strongest anchors. Harrison O’Callaghan is a standout as Carson Marlsen, radiating smug confidence and delivering his musical numbers with pitch-perfect comic control. Rylee Carpenter does solid work as Jenny, even if the role itself is somewhat thinly drawn.

The supporting cast fills out the world effectively. Mitch Bruce is a particular highlight in multiple roles, especially as a commentator who adds to the show’s self-awareness and sense of fun. Gordon Rothman brings warmth to Newton’s grandfather, grounding the story emotionally even though that relationship is not deeply explored. The cast as a whole commits fully to the tone, which is crucial for a show like this to work.

This is the second show of director Nick Flatto’s that I’ve seen, the first being Stranger Sings!, which I had the humble opportunity to direct on Long Island with a junior- and senior-high cast. Nick's directing is always spot-on, telling stories in unique ways through movement, and here he keeps everything moving briskly. I especially appreciated how the chess games were presented. Unlike the other famous chess musical currently in revival on Broadway, which presents the matches as boring, unmoving announcements of moves, this production renders them fast-paced, move-accurate, and genuinely entertaining. Di Spirito’s choreography supports the storytelling without drawing unnecessary attention to itself. The production is smart about its limitations. With only basic furniture onstage, the show relies on performance, lighting, and pacing to build its world, and it succeeds. Zach Dulny’s lighting does a lot of heavy lifting, helping distinguish locations and heighten key moments.

What ultimately makes The Opening work is its willingness to be silly while still telling a coherent story. The twists are fun, the humor is unapologetically crude at times, and the show never loses sight of its central question about ambition, integrity, and the ridiculous pressure we put on winning. It is not trying to reinvent musical theater. It is trying to entertain you for a tight ninety minutes, and it does exactly that.

This is a confident, enjoyable new musical from writers who clearly understand tone and structure. I had a great time watching it and left impressed by how much ground it covers with such a lean production. If you are in the mood for something funny, surprising, and smarter than it initially lets on, The Opening is well worth your time.

It is a limited engagement and running through February 8, 2026. I acquired my ticket through the Theatr app the day of the performance for less than $20.

I saw Dreamscape on January 20, 2026 at 7:30pm at 59E59 Theaters as part of SoHo Playhouse’s International Fringe Encore Series, and I left completely wrecked. This is one of those shows that does not ask for your attention. It takes it. Quietly at first, then all at once.

Written and directed by Rickerby Hinds, with choreography by Carrie Mykuls, Dreamscape is inspired by the true story of Tyisha Miller, a nineteen year old Black girl killed by police while she lay unconscious in her car in Riverside, California, in 1998. The show does not reenact the violence in a sensational way. Instead, it does something far more devastating. It imagines her inner life. Her humor. Her boredom. Her dreams. The ordinary sweetness of being nineteen and thinking you have time.

Structurally, the show is framed around the autopsy report, specifically the twelve bullet wounds that ended Tyisha Miller’s life. Each section corresponds to one of those wounds. That sounds clinical on paper, but onstage it becomes something else. Each bullet “count” takes something away. A possibility. A future. A version of a life that never gets to happen. The contrast between the cold language of the report and the warmth of the imagined inner world is where the show hits hardest.

The piece is performed by Natali Micciche and Josiah Alpher, and the contrast between their roles is where the show truly takes hold. Alpher delivers the autopsy language with chilling precision, while also providing the interstitial beatboxing and voicing statements from the police officers involved. His performance is steady, controlled, and clinical, anchoring the audience in the cold, official reality of what happened. Against that rigidity, Micciche feels almost unbearably alive. She is deeply moving, with emotions visibly rising to the surface as tears well in her eyes at key moments. When she dances, there is a sense of freedom and release, as if her body is trying to outrun the facts being spoken aloud. Her movement feels joyful, defiant, and young, full of the life that should have stretched far beyond nineteen. Then, just as she seems to escape into that freedom, the next wound is announced, and it feels as though an invisible hand grabs her and yanks her back into reality. Each return is brutal. The shift from motion and breath back into the language of damage is devastating, and Micciche makes you feel that loss in her body as much as in the words. The storytelling, built through spoken word, beatboxing, and hip hop movement, gives the show a pulse that feels immediate and human. That vitality is exactly what makes the tragedy so difficult to sit with.

What broke me was how gentle the piece is. This is not a show driven by rage, though rage would be justified. It is driven by grief, by tenderness, and by an aching sense of loss. It asks you to sit with the fact that this was a child. A teenager with jokes, crushes, boredom, hope. Another young Black life ended before it ever really began. Another name. Another story that should not be over.

By the end, I was in pieces. Not sobbing loudly, but hollowed out. Tired in a deep way. I am so weary of watching these stories repeat themselves. So tired of lives snuffed out and then explained away by systems that refuse accountability. The show does not tell you what to think, but it leaves you with the weight of knowing that doing nothing is not neutral. Silence is not neutral.

Dreamscape is devastating and necessary. It is art that refuses to let statistics replace humanity. It honors a life by imagining it fully, then forces you to confront how casually it was taken. I did not leave with answers. I left with grief, anger, and a quiet, heavy sadness that stayed with me long after I walked out of the theater. This is a show that matters, even when it hurts.

I saw the 5pm performance of and her Children presented by The Attic Collective at SoHo Playhouse earlier today as part of their 2026 Fringe Encore Series, and it left me shaken, in the best possible way. This one hour and twenty two minute reimagining of Mother Courage and Her Children is riveting, heart crushing, and deeply thought provoking. It is one of those shows that grabs you quickly and refuses to let go.

Written by Rosie Glen-Lambert and Hailey McAfee, and her Children takes Brecht’s Mother Courage and drops it squarely into modern America by reimagining Anna Fierling as a public facing NRA spokesperson. The show places her in a suspended, almost purgatorial space where time stops and there is nowhere left to hide behind talking points or rehearsed rhetoric. The audience becomes the stand in for her own conscience as she is forced to confront the cost of the role she has chosen to play. This is not a literal retelling of Brecht’s story, but a psychological and moral reckoning that asks what happens when belief, career, and survival collide. The central tension is brutally simple and deeply unsettling: has she already given up everything that truly matters, and if so, will she continue anyway?

The entire piece rests on the shoulders of Hailey McAfee, and she is extraordinary. This is a demanding solo performance, emotionally and physically, and she meets it head on. She moves between public persona and private reckoning with precision, showing us a woman who is articulate, defensive, terrified, and deeply fractured. At no point does the play let her off the hook, and McAfee does not soften the character to make her easier to like.

What makes the show so powerful is that it refuses easy answers. It asks how much a person is willing to give to the cause they represent publicly. How far does loyalty go when it starts to cost lives. How much self betrayal can be justified by ideology, career, or belief. And ultimately, how much is a woman willing to sacrifice. Her values? Her humanity? Her children?

The Brechtian roots are clear, not just in the source material but in the way the play constantly reminds you that you are watching a constructed argument. And yet it never feels cold. The emotional weight lands hard. The questions linger. I left the theater gutted, thoughtful, and grateful that work like this is being made.

and her Children is not comfortable theater. It is urgent theater. It demands engagement and moral reflection, and it earns both. This is the kind of work that reminds me why small, daring theatre companies matter so much.

I saw the opening night performance of Puttana (whore) on January 15, 2026 at SoHo Playhouse as part of their Fringe Encore series, and it was one of the more challenging and provocative pieces I have seen in a while. This is not a comfortable show, and it is not trying to be. It asks the audience to sit inside moral ambiguity and make up their own minds.

From the moment you enter, the experience is immersive. You are handed a pair of headphones, the silent rave kind, and told the sound design will replicate being surrounded by an orchestra using 3D spatial audio. In practice, the music itself is less important than how sound is used to manipulate the performer’s voice. The effect is disorienting in a deliberate way. Voices echo, distort, multiply. It felt less like being wrapped in music and more like being trapped inside someone’s head, which worked for me.

The entire show rests on the shoulders of a single performer, Beatrice Elena Festi, and she is excellent. She shifts between five characters using only body language, lighting, and live microphone modulation. One moment she is a daughter, the next a prostitute, a wife, a mother, or a man. The transitions are clean and confident, and she never loses control of the narrative even as it fractures into fragments of lives and encounters.

The content itself is confrontational. The show is essentially a series of sexual transactions, most of them involving degradation and power imbalance. What makes it unsettling is that the encounters are presented as consensual. There is no clear villain. No obvious victim. The question the show keeps returning to is whether consent alone is enough to erase harm, and who gets to decide where morality begins and ends. As the audience, you are not given answers. You are asked to judge, or at least to notice how quickly you start doing so.

The use of technology reinforces that discomfort. Hearing Festi’s voice shift in your ears while watching her body change in front of you creates a sense of distance and intimacy at the same time. It blurs the line between performer and character, between observer and participant. At times it felt almost invasive, which I suspect is entirely the point.

This production was discovered at Fringe Italy, and it makes sense. It feels firmly rooted in experimental European theater traditions: avant garde, fragmented, unapologetic. It will not be for everyone. Some people will find it repetitive or emotionally exhausting. Others will find it gripping.

I left the theater unsettled, thinking about the questions it raised rather than the plot itself. Puttana (whore) is less about telling a story and more about forcing a confrontation with ideas around bodies, labor, desire, and judgment. It is ambitious, uncomfortable, and often effective. I am glad I saw it, even if it never once tried to make me feel good.

I saw Anna Christie at St. Ann’s Warehouse on January 13, 2026 at the 7:30pm performance, and it was deeply moving. Starring Michelle Williams, Tom Sturridge, and Brian D’Arcy James, this production delivered a raw and emotionally honest take on one of Eugene O’Neill’s most important plays. I came primarily to see Brian D’Arcy James, and I left grateful I did.

Originally premiering in 1921 and earning O’Neill the Pulitzer Prize, Anna Christie was groundbreaking for its time. It centered a woman with a sexual past and treated her with empathy rather than punishment. O’Neill was deeply interested in realism, moral complexity, and the ways people are shaped by regret, guilt, and circumstance. Those ideas remain central here.

The story follows Anna Christopherson, a young woman reconnecting with her estranged father Chris, a coal barge captain who abandoned her years earlier. When Anna falls in love with Mat Burke, a sailor rescued from a shipwreck, the fragile family unit begins to crack. A bet and a test of class are not the engine here. Shame, secrecy, and the fear of being truly seen are.

One of the central questions of the play is whether Anna can escape her past. Another is whether the men in her life can see her as a full human being rather than an idea. O’Neill never offers easy answers. The play lives in moral ambiguity, asking whether redemption comes from forgiveness, truth, or simply survival.

The staging supported those ideas beautifully. The set was spare and functional, made of wooden pallets, a few tables and chairs, and a looming I-beam that moved effortlessly between scenes. It felt abstract and psychological rather than realistic, keeping the focus on the emotional weight of the story rather than period detail. The space constantly shifted, mirroring how unstable these relationships are.

Michelle Williams was extraordinary as Anna. Her performance during the moment when Anna reveals her past to her father and Mat was devastating. Williams acted her butt off. The confession landed with raw force, filled with anger, shame, and defiance all at once. She made Anna’s demand for dignity feel urgent and earned.

Brian D’Arcy James was the emotional anchor of the production. His Chris Christopherson was a man crushed by regret, trying to bury his failures in superstition and drink. Watching him grapple with the realization that his absence helped destroy his daughter’s life was heartbreaking. James brought depth and humanity to a character who could easily slip into caricature.

Tom Sturridge gave Mat Burke a volatile edge that worked well. His Mat felt dangerous, passionate, and emotionally immature. When Anna’s secret comes out, his reaction is ugly and explosive, but Sturridge also let us see the fear and confusion underneath. It made Mat’s eventual reckoning feel painful rather than convenient.

At its core, this production argued that class divisions are artificial, but emotional damage is not. Language, gender, and power shape how people are treated, but the real struggle is whether love can survive honesty. Anna changes, but not into what the men expect. She gains self-respect and demands agency over her life.

This was not a modernization of the text, but a modern presentation of timeless truths. It reminded me why O’Neill still matters and why this play continues to resonate.

I had the joy of revisiting The Bee once more on December 11, 2025. Still fantastic. Still fun as hell.

Here's your juicebox.

I saw this absurdist, high concept piece at SoHo Playhouse on December 10, 2025 at 7pm, and I was locked in almost immediately. I went with a friend who walked out more lukewarm, but for me, the show had its hooks in from the first few minutes. It made it clear right away what kind of experience it was offering, and I was more than happy to meet it where it lived.

This is a surreal show, and confusion is not a bug. It is the operating system. The piece demands attention and curiosity, and if you give it that, it rewards you with a tightly constructed, strange, and often very funny ride. I never felt lost in a frustrating way. I felt guided through something deliberately off kilter.

The two leads in this show were phenomenal. Xhloe Rice and Natasha Roland, who also wrote and directed the piece, brought total commitment to every shift in tone and mode. Their physical comedy was sharp and intricately timed, and their acting was precise. They navigated the abstract world of the show with complete confidence. When the show leaned into surreal or absurd territory, it never felt sloppy or half-formed. Their command of pace and emotion kept me engaged the whole time.

Rice and Roland are supported by an excellent creative team whose work deserves praise. The direction and staging made the transitions between physical theatre, text, and movement feel seamless rather than disjointed. The lighting and sound design worked with the script’s rhythms to build momentum and create atmosphere. Costumes and props were playful, specific, and part of the language of the piece rather than just decoration. All of these elements gave the performers the space to stretch and communicate without losing focus.

This is not a show for everyone, and it is not trying to be. If you need a clean plot, clear answers, and a story that holds your hand, this is probably not your night out. If you love small theater, high concept work, queer sensibilities, and surrealism that trusts the audience to keep up, this will likely hit for you. I left energized and already thinking about seeing it again, and I do not expect my feelings to change on a second visit.