Tag Archives: Merry Jo Cortada

Empire’s Aunt Jack Challenges Pigeonholeing Sexualities

Aunt Jack, S.P. Monahan’s world premiere play at Empire Stage, rejects pigeonholing sexuality with a single label or category. Sexual identity is what you choose it to be and Monahan champions paradigms that cannot be categorized by initials.

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Despite Snazzy Tech Design, Political Satire Angry Fags Wanders Off-Message

Immersive technology goes a long way in elevating Topher Payne’s Angry Fags at Island City Stage, but the play still suffers from elephantine pacing and a sense of crippling logorrhea. Yet there is a modicum of brilliance awaiting patient audiences.

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Broward Stage Door’s Brighton Beach Memoirs Stumbles A Bit, But Is Genuinely Touching

Acknowledge that Broward Stage Door’s revival of Neil Simon’s thirty-year-old warhorse Brighton Beach Memories is uneven and stumbles. Then acknowledge, at least this critic will, that Stage Door’s edition frequently reaches into that moldy storehouse of decades-old memories of family relationships — and makes the throat close up, the eyes mist and starts a sudden epidemic of sniffling around the auditorium.

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Funny But Baffling Body Awareness Bows At Island City/Empire Stages

This observer had trouble sussing out the cerebral depths that playwright Annie Baker intended in her quite funny meditation Body Awareness at the Island City Stage/Empire Stage production. Fortunately, witty dialogue, intriguing performances and insightful guidance from director Michael Leeds make for an entertaining evening if not a completely comprehensible or cohesive one.

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