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Review: "Anti-Gone" Rogue

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Anti-Gone Created by Sivan Raz Presented by Needs More Work Productions at FRIGID New York 's 5th Annual Little Shakespeare Festival at UNDER St Marks 94 St Marks Pl, Manhattan, NYC August 14-17, 2025 L to R: Elizabeth Fox, Emily Phelps, and Penelope Rose Deen, and Photo by Noah Simon Jampol Anti-Gone , created by Needs More Work Productions, is something like a reimagining of Sophocles’ Antigone , one of the most enduring tragedies of the Greek stage. Rather than retell the story in straightforward fashion, the company makes the audience a collaborator, placing us inside the questions of justice, memory, and communal responsibility that have haunted this text for centuries. Staged in the intimate confines of UNDER St. Marks as part of the Little Shakespeare Festival, the production opens with a bag at center stage, the body of Polynices within; players come and go; there is a bit of very fine crowd work, and the sound of a cello plucking and bowing. From the first moment, we are ...
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Review: "Retrospective" Asks an Artist to See Himself

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Retrospective Written by T.J. Elliott Directed by Gifford Elliott Presented by Knowledge Workings Theater at AMT Theater 354 W 45th St., Manhattan, NYC August 13-16, 2025 Clint consoling Rory.  L to R: Jeremiah Alexander, Mark Thomas McKenna, Adara Totino, Jasmine Dorothy Haefner. Photo by Marjorie Phillips Elliott Thinking about the afterlife of art is not so unusual, but Retrospective , written and directed by father and son team T.J. Elliott and Gifford Elliott, respectively, instead focuses on the afterlife of the artist. For the play's Rory McGrory ( Mark Thomas McKenna ), the titular retrospective involves taking a new look at his relationship not only to his work as a painter but also to significant others (in both senses of the term) from his past and to his sense of self–and ultimately, to reconsider what really matters. Retrospective is making its New York debut along with four new musicals and seven other original plays as part of Broadway Bound Theatre Festival's...
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Review: Enter, Ghost: Love, Loss, and the Perils of Undead Dramaturgy in "Overlap"

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Overlap Written by Erin Proctor Directed by Dante Piro Presented by Rogue Theater Festival  at The Siggy at The Flea Theatre in association with Abingdon Theatre Company 20 Thomas St, Manhattan, NYC August 7, 2025 Julia Fink. Photo courtesy of Alton PR It is all a matter of understanding after a crash in Overlap , the excellent new play by Erin Proctor, directed by Dante Piro. Presented as part of the 2025 Rogue Theatre Festival (August 4–10) at The Flea NYC and streaming on CUR8, the production blends heartbreak and humor, tragedy and rom com in equal measure. It is a romance, a ghost story, and a meditation on both finishing the staging of a play and sustaining a relationship. The play opens in familiar enough territory: Maya (Julia Fink), a twenty-six-year-old playwright/barista, and Daniel (Ryan Pangracs), a twenty-five-year-old dramaturg/shift manager, meet while working the same Starbucks shift. Their banter turns into creative partnership, and their early romance moves ...
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Review: "UNSEX'd" Asks If Shakespeare's Boy Players Are More than Just Pretty Faces

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UNSEX'd Written by Jay Whitehead and Daniel Judes Directed by Josh Bradley Presented by JB Theatricals at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC August 10-17, 2025 The playful use of bardcore covers of contemporary songs in scene transitions encapsulates both the era-bending sense of humor in Jay Whitehead and Daniel Judes's Renaissance-set UNSEX'd and the continuities in the issues that the play raises between the early modern period and our own. In commercial theater in Shakespearean England, public self-exhibition onstage was frowned upon for women, so female roles were played by boys or young men, and UNSEX'd , with psychological acuity and enough bawdy humor to make the Bard proud, irresistibly draws us into the friendship and rivalry between two such specialists in female characters in Shakespeare's own company. In its run at UNDER St. Marks, UNSEX'd is making its U.S. premiere as part of the FRIGID New York 's 5th annual Little Shakespe...
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Review: "The Mousetrap" Gives an Actor's-Eye View of Performing for Hamlet

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The Mousetrap, or Prince Hamlet wrote a dumb play and now we have to do it… Written by Margaret Rose Caterisano Directed by Jackson Paul Walker Presented by Broomstick Theatre Co. at UNDER St. Marks 94 St. Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC August 2-14, 2025 If in William Shakespeare's England, plays were required to be approved by the Master of the Revels and playwrights would take care not to openly criticize the current monarchy, in today's United States, a major network has curried favor for a merger by canceling a show critical of the government, while the government itself takes time out to attack episodes of South Park that satirize its officials. In this environment of governmental attacks on the arts, The Mousetrap, or Prince Hamlet wrote a dumb play and now we have to do it… , from playwright and professor Margaret Rose Caterisano, takes up the question of the place of art in calling out those in power through a return to Hamlet and its play-within-a-play that dramatizes t...
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Review: Shakespeare the Comic in FRIGID New York’s Little Shakespeare Festival’s “As You Will” and “As You Wish It”

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As You Will Created by Conor Mullen, David Brummer, and George Hider August 3-16, 2025 As You Wish It...or The Bride Princess....or What You Will Written by Michael Hagins Directed by Kat Santomoreno and Michael Hagins Presented by Fork the Odds Productions July 31-August 9, 2025 Part of the Little Shakespeare Festival 2025 presented by FRIGID New York at Under St. Marks, 94 St Marks Place, Manhattan, NYC, July 31-August 17, 2025 For most American high school students, their experience with Shakespeare is with the tragedies, and surely this contributes to the sense of Shakespeare as the Bard, writer of elevated, high culture entertainment. Of course, in reality, in his own time, Shakespeare was anything but, which is beautifully captured in this year’s Little Shakespeare Festival, “Not Your English Teacher’s Shakespeare.” The unscripted, improvisational As You Will and the Shakespearean  Princess Bride  parody  As You Wish It are both poignant reminders that Shakespeare ...
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Review: "The Animals Speak" Has the Last Word in Thirdwing's Disney Trilogy

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A Venomous Color, Part Three: The Animals Speak By Cameron Darwin Bossert Presented by Thirdwing at the wild project 195 E 3rd St., Manhattan, NYC August 5-17, 2025 Ginger Kearns, Adam Griffith, Cameron Darwin Bossert, & Cian Genaro. Photo by Hunter Canning The Animals Speak , the final installment in Cameron Darwin Bossert's outstanding Disney-centered trilogy A Venomous Color , which began with The Fairest in 2021, followed by Burbank the next year, is the first play of the trilogy to be set outside the workplace. The Animals Speak , making its world premiere at the wild project, takes place on a 1941 trip to Brazil, Argentina, and Chile sponsored by the U.S. government, which sent Walt Disney, his wife, Lillian, and a group of Disney artists on a goodwill tour intended to counter fascist and Nazi influence. It quickly emerges in Bossert's play, though, that leaving the workplace several thousand miles behind does not mean that Walt (Cameron Darwin Bossert) can leave w...
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