Review: "Twisted" Fills the Exploitation-Comedy-with-Music Need You May Not Have Known You Had
Twisted Written by Joel Greenhouse Directed by Joe John Battista Music by Peter W. Dizzoza and Joe John Battista Lyrics by Joel Greenhouse Presented by Theater for the New City Executive Director Crystal Field at Theater for the New City 115 1st Ave., Manhattan, NYC September 28-October 15, 2023 Andrew Ryan Perry, Xue Yun Zhang, Tony Del Bono, Christine Weiss Beidel, Brian Belovitch, Robert Z Grant, Penny Balfour, Larry Fleischman, Evan Laurence, Maude Lardner Burke, Sevin Ceviker, JC Augustine. Photo: Hillary Wyatt. In a fog-drenched opening scene featuring sex workers in peril, Twisted , a new play with songs, wastes no time in establishing the existence of an ancient cult that worships a pre-Christian reptilian god. Prior to this beginning, the show projects film-style opening credits full of thunder and lightning and atmospheric bayous, further evoking the exploitation movies to which it pays comedic homage–particularly those of the 1960s, although one might equally be put in mind