Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

I had the pleasure of seeing Joshua Harmon 's Significant Other in summer 2015 , when it premiered off-Broadway. I loved it. I had never laughed and cried so much in a single show. Just like in his breakout play, Bad Jews , Harmon beautifully fused humor with pathos, making for a thoroughly entertaining and moving work. It has lost nothing in its transfer to Broadway, and, in fact, gained the terrific Rebecca Naomi Jones ( American Idiot , Marie and Rosetta ) as a cast member. Significant Other deals with how relationships change over time, as seen through the eyes of Jordan (an affecting Gideon Glick ( Spring Awakening , Speech and Debate )), a 29-year-old single gay man whose three best girlfriends are beginning to marry off and develop their own lives. (Jordan also has regular visits with his grandmother ( Barbara Barrie ), whose age, of course, comes with wisdom.) We begin at Kiki's bachelorette party. Kiki (a hilarious Sas Goldberg ) is the first of the crew to w...

Early in Joshua Harmon 's fantastic new play, Significant Other , our protagonist, Jordan ( Gideon Glick ), says to his friend, Laura ( Lindsay Mendez ), that the point of life is finding someone to go through it with. Laura replies that that seems easy. Jordan is adamant: No, it's not easy. It's the hardest thing ever to know  that's the point and then spend you life trying to find that significant other. Preach, Jordan. Jordan, a gay man in his late twenties, is close with his friends, Laura, Kiki ( Sas Goldberg ) and Vanessa ( Carra Patterson ). At rise, the four are celebrating at Kiki's bachelorette party. One by one, we watch as Jordan's friends—his significant others—couple up. ( John Behlmann and Luke Smith also appear as multiple characters, some significant some not.) Throughout, he fulfills his grandson duties by visiting his grandmother (usually played by Barbara Barrie; played by Alice Cannon when I saw the play), who's lived long enough ...

The best musical in New York isn’t on Broadway; it’s off-Broadway at the venerable Second Stage Theatre, the same company that helped develop Next to Normal . While Dogfight might not be as revelatory as that Pulitzer Prize and Tony winning masterpiece, it is very, very good.  As in the obscure early 90s movie of the same name, Dogfight tells the story of three Marines on the night before they ship out for Vietnam. The world is a different place; it’s November 21, 1963, the day before President Kennedy was shot, and these Jarheads are looking for a little fun. They decide to have a dogfight, but it’s not the kind that got Michael Vick into trouble. In Marine parlance, a dogfight is a battle to see which Marine can score the ugliest date. In his search for a dog to bring to the fight, the leader of the pack Eddie Birdlace (Derek Klena) meets Rose Fenny (Lindsay Mendez), and discovers  that true connection and love is more than just what meets the eyes.  With a boo...