Tag Archives: Michael Gioia

Can It Happen Here? Mad Cat’s Surreal Take on Vaclav Havel Plays Will Unnerve Patrons

Mad Cat Theatre’s production of Vaclav Havel’s one acts Protest and Audience draw uncomfortably relevant visions of repressive totalitarian society.

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Mixed Nuts Is Mixed Bag Of New Spoofs On The Holiday Season

Like the requisite ballet’s presentation of The Nutcracker, theater troupes have been turning over their Decembers as of late to holiday-themed plays: David Sedaris’s Santaland Diaries comes to mind. Unlike the wholesome Nutcracker many modern Christmas offerings are aimed at an adult crowd, taking the Ho, Ho, Ho of the holiday to a more mature level.

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Parade Productions’ Undo Charts Divorce By Replaying Wedding In Reverse

Undo’s premise – a Jewish divorce ceremony that rewinds a couple’s wedding day — sounds so much like a sitcom episode that you keep expecting it to slide into shallow farce. But it doesn’t. The script is shot through with mordant gallows humor, but Parade Productions’ edition keeps excavating the marrow of marital and familial relationships.

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Parade Productions’ Brooklyn Boy Is Mildly Funny, Mildly Moving But Flawed Evening

Avi Hoffman’s performance as a troubled writer, struggling to deal with success but escape his past, is one of the virtues in the promising but flawed inaugural offering from Parade Productions, a professional company performing in Mizner Park. There’s a lot of talent here working very hard, but not a lot of electricity emanating from the elegiac, mildly funny, mildly moving tale.

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