Bill Ratner

Stella Valente-Wilkins is a Hollywood hyphenate: comedienne-dancer-yogini-writer-actress-raconteur. And all these Stellas meld into a delicious solo performance of coming-of-age stories, at turns both wonderfully funny and sad, told in her well-modulated Queens NY accent as girl-from-the-'hood. She riffs on family, romance, fate, slackers & goombahs. This lithe Italian-American beauty moves about the stage effortlessly on a lovely pair of dancer's legs (she taught at Arthur Murray) and pushes ply... full review

Before the show tonight I was with friends having a discussion about how adult children have to escape, move far away from the radar/judgment/control/x-ray vision of their parents before they can ever truly "come into" themselves. This play validated so much of what was true about our conversation - Ben's total rejection of all that the world had put before him and tried to teach him before being taken on his journey. This is a talented, likable cast, fleet of foot and nimble of tongue with a sc... full review

For me the evening at Nostalgium was about the truly lovely acting by Tracy Dillon as Sandra. Director/Producer Alex Scott coaxed a riveting performance out of Dillon. Reminding me of a young and very pretty Ellen Barkin, Dillon, with her acute sadness and yearning, takes us deep into an actual and not-well-known world - a sadly real subculture of people who wish to live as amputees - some of whom succeed through mortifyingly horrific means. Matthew Benyo's play goes a number of places, but the m... full review

Uncle Jermy (Jeremy Guskin) should be ashamed of himself making us cackle like that at all those crazy, un-PC, often hysterically funny, whacked-out comedy bits that he crammed into the blender that is his creator-head and served up for his late-night audience (which was plentiful and enviable in its size, proportions and volume on the laugh-meter.) From a funny rubber-legged Conor Lane as Mr. Birthday, to the drolly deadpan cleaning lady - Mala Madson, to the Nazified Paul Eiding, from a child ... full review

If Rush Limbaugh is a big fat liar, then Craig Shaynak is a wide bowl full of funny. For 45 minutes Shaynak struts, frets, sweats, and makes delicious fun of the naive, wrong-headed pomposity of today's super-cyber-brands that run our lives. He is Google in absurdist slo-mo, manically answering old-fashioned dial phones, rifling through trivia books, calling his barely-reliable pal Wikipedia on the sly - all in an attempt to process the billion searches that he processes every day, and all the wh... full review

Owen Thomas' play, RICHARD PARKER, is a subtle, absurdist delight, obsessed with coincidence, taking us on a rather spooky series of whirligigs weaving actual historical coincidence with the fiction of the play, like a rich theatrical magic trick. At base two very different characters are pitted against one another in an almost Beckett-like way, yet Thomas' language is at once more traditional and less minimal than Beckett, providing lingual and sonic ammunition for the two actors' rich Welsh voi... full review