Believe it or not, there’s a theater ticket that is as hard to get as Hamilton.  And it’s for a play you may have never heard of.   Dear Evan Hansen is taking the theater subculture by storm.  A look at the website reveals that there’s no hope and the production is too small for a significant aftermarket.  We were lucky to jump on a fundraising extra performance, excited to see what all the buzz was about.  The good news is this production is moving to Broadway and will be available to all. It is likely to remain a smash.

Someone once sent me a card that said, “friends are the family you choose." This is the theme of our very enjoyable experience in seeing Southern Comfort in its final week at The Public Theater - so I’ll write quickly.

The story takes place in a tiny town in rural Georgia, not exactly a haven for this small community of transgender characters and their various relations. Southern Comfort is based on a 2001 documentary of the same name. The documentary Grey Gardens, the story of Jackie O’s relations living on the fringes of life and society, was unexpectedly brought to life in a Broadway musical. Similarly, this is a true, documentary based story that has been put to music and thus given life.

When has a show left you speechless? If the answer is never, then you have not been to the right places. Company XIV is one of those right places. 

I will spare you all the praise that will likely fall short of doing this show justice, and simply tell you that Company XIV’s “baroque burlesque” Cinderella is the apogee of contemporary artistic achievement. Imagine a Juilliard-trained choreographer freed from the fetters of conventional theater; the plot, the character development, the nuanced back-and-forths—they all felt secondary to pure, unrestrained, creative expression. The sexy little-dressed performers were at once, singers, acrobats, dancers, and actors, all with that remarkable sprezzatura that knocks skill up to the level of art.