Gregory Nussen's QFWFQ takes the trappings of a one person show and then expands, exploits, and explodes it into something wholly unique, and deeply satisfying. Their premise is an examination of the format itself, and the artifice, tropes, and audience expectations that come with it. Nussen's script seems to be asking, time and again, what is story, and ultimately, whose is it to tell? In one particularly powerful sequence, the mere fact of their American Jewishness and all of the expectations t...
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STUCK is a tightly paced two-hander about two strangers both literally and metaphorically stuck - in their lives, in their jobs (or lack of,) in their family dynamics - as well as in an old pre-war elevator in NYC. Ingeniously conceived by scribe Brandon Ciavarella, the acting lifts this simple situation to emotional pathos with plenty of laughter along the way. Sam Ciavarella and Jonah Weiland make for a dynamo duo as two lonely people navigating disappointments both familial and of their own ma...
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I'll Be With You In A Minute has restored my belief in the visceral necessity of live performance. The self-effacement with which Grove delivers what is otherwise a heartbreaking tale of that most sacred of bonds - parent & child, being stolen cruelly by an unrelenting, incurable disease, had me both laughing uncontrollably and sobbing quietly, biting my hand so that I didn't dare disrupt from the breathtaking performance I was witnessing. Elegantly and simply directed, with a minimum of stage bu...
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Take something personal and make it universal. That's a credo most writers strive for (ones that hope for connection, anyway.) Jaime Andrews' COOKIE & THE MONSTER does just that, taking the specific hell of her adolescence during the late 80's and early 90's (a guesstimate going on the Jesus and Mary Chain tee one character wears and the strains of Depeche Mode's Violator eking out) and making it infinitely relatable to anyone who ever wanted out. Out of town, out of the house, out of their own s...
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