A CLASSIC THAT STILL DELIGHTS Strong performances and lively staging carry the day Small Boat and kotto Productions bring Shakespeare’s romantic comedy The Taming of the Shrew to life in La MaMa‘s downstairs Club Space. An onstage bar before curtain sets the tone for the evening, and by the end of the night, you may have…

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS FIVE GAYS Paul Kubicki’s wildly inventive cycle of short plays finds humor, heartbreak, and humanity in unexpected places If Tennessee Williams and Cole Escola had an artistic progeny, the result might look something like Paul Kubicki’s Portraits of Gays in Despair: A Cycle of 5 Plays. Beginning with a vignette…

NOT WAITING FOR GODOT… WAITING FOR THE DINOSAUR This delightfully confounding absurdist comedy won’t convert skeptics, but devotees of the genre may find much to admire Halfway through What a World! What a World!, a pink dinosaur toy interrupts the action and powers onstage. The actors stop and stare. The toy stops and turns upstage…

SAD BOYS, WILD PLAYS Where Peter Thiel, Judy Garland, and anal warts somehow make perfect sense Theatrical experiences often move us with realism. Other times we end up with a musical number featuring an actor in drag portraying Judy Garland seeking treatment for anal warts. That’s the kind of outlandish novelty inside Portraits of Gays…

A TOAST TO TOXIC JUSTICE A visually ravishing musical transforms vengeance into exhilarating theater Thanks to director Mary Zimmerman, scenic designer Daniel Ostling, and lighting designer T.J. Gerckens, there is remarkable artistry on display at PAC NYC, where the thrilling new musical Giulia: The Poison Queen of Palermo opened tonight. Topping off this impressive creative…