Michael Dale

A while back. I was in an audience of theatre fans watching an onstage conversation between Frank Rich and Stephen Sondheim and the subject of unauthorized changes made in regional and amateur productions came up. The composer/lyricist mentioned that he had heard of a production of Company that ended with Bobby committing suicide by shooting himself.

Like many theatre fans, I'd been reading the raves she's been getting as Beanie Feldstein's standby, and since I doubted press would be offered comps during her run, I sprung for a ticket to see for myself.

A popular stage actor best known for being quirkily funny in musicals (Off-Broadway in March Of The Falsettos, on Broadway in Romance, Romance, The Secret Garden and Gypsy), Fraser reinvents a classic character and turns in a performance that thrills with its gutsy power masked by her character's well-rehearsed elegance.

A collaboration of two of Off-Off-Broadway's favorite historically subversive companies, the HERE production of Cannabis! A Viper Vaudeville, presented at La Mama is an entrancingly fun and educational two-hour festival of song, dance and spoken word, beginning as a relaxing communal experience and evolving into a call for activism.

Irondale is arranging for Ukrainian solider Oleg Onechchak's ensemble of child actors to give two performances in Brooklyn of Mom On Skype, which was originally performed in a warehouse-turned-bomb-shelter in the city of Lviv.

With a name lending new urgency to a rhyming couplet from the African-American spiritual 'Mary, Don't You Weep' ('God gave Noah the rainbow sign / No more water, the fire next time') the annual Fire This Time Festival has produced dozens of ten-minutes plays in its mission to 'provide a platform for early-career playwrights from the African diaspora to explore new directions for 21st century theater'.

The title refers to the 53% of white women who voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but that's just the starting point.

The Mint brings back another forgotten gem by Elizabeth Baker and Martha Clarke explores the Biblical playboy who tossed it all.

We're told that numbers don't lie, but when the numbers conflict with what we see in front of us, are they really telling the truth?

Billy Aberle and Chris Sabol's Straight Forward is an original musical inspired by an article by Mike Iamele that went viral on social media in 2014, explaining how he began developing romantic and sexual feelings for his male best friend Garrett Lech, despite them both identifying as straight.

Count Christine Carmela Herrero and Samora La Perdida as early favorites for Stage Pair of The Season, as they crackle with chemistry in Mara Vélez Meléndez's playfully packaged political outrage.

Musical theatre fandom and body image issues in Ana Nogueira's hilarious and touching Which Way To The Stage. Also, Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks commences with Trish Harnetiaux's fun and offbeat California and jazz favorite Nancy Harrow scores a pair of Russian classics.

When portraying a comedian in a play, sometimes getting the laugh is not the point.

Three plays where what seems like the truth might be a subjective point of view.

This week I saw a Broadway farce, an Off-Broadway history play and an Off-Off Broadway adaptation all written and directed by women.

Seven Sins returns to Brooklyn, plus thoughts on Funny Girl and 'for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf'

Immersive All The Mournful Voices takes audience members to a time that tore the country apart just as it was beginning to heal and Citizen Wong celebrates a 19th Century activist for Chinese American rights.

Notes on David Greenspan in The Patsy, a Mets memory from Take Me Out and keeping track of New York theatre's Lenape Land Land Acknowledgements.

Broken Box Mime Tackles Contemporary Issues, I get emotional at Suffs and Dominique Morisseau encourages laughter at Confederates.

And Toto Too is riotously funny and remarkably true, Balkan Bordello arrives at La MaMa from Kosovo, and Gong Lum's Legacy combines romantic comedy with a controversial Supreme Court case.