Home The Stage Exeunt Magazine Travel Writing Opinion Writing Variety K-Drama Reviews

Exeunt Magazine

Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Stereophonic at Golden Theatre

David Adjmi’s epic play reminds us art is not easy and it is the blood, sweat, and tears of people who make it happen. Nicole Serratore reviews.

David Adjmi’s extraordinary new play, Stereophonic, does not take the obvious path and that is what makes it one of the best plays of the decade. Art is not easy and this play painstakingly reveals how so much time, labor, love, loss, and literal tape it can take to make that art happen.

Set in a recording studio between 1976 and 1977, a band on the c
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

An Enemy of the People at Circle in the Square

Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People always feels timely, if blunt. It is a play about community pressure, capitalism, and politically inconvenient truths. It can hold a mirror up to society and reflect our times because individualism, self-interest, and mob mentality never go out of style. With strong performances, Amy Herzog’s adaptation and Sam Gold’s production make this a more vibrant offering than past ones but ultimately the play’s plot machinations have their limits.

Dr. Thomas Stockmann (Jer
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Munich Medea: Happy Family at WP Theater

A chilling story of childhood sexual assault is given a retrospective gloss by two women and suffers from some structural detachment. Nicole Serratore reviews.

Watching a man pick at his toes on stage is a bit disgusting. But it is not the worst thing this man has done, by a long shot.

In Corinne Jaber’s play, Father (Kurt Rhoads) is a pontificating ass of an actor in Munich. He is starring as Jason in Medea. He is preening, narcissistic, always quoting German plays and poets, and putting on h
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Monty Python's Spamalot at St. James Theatre

It should not be surprising that at some point in the middle of Monty Python’s Spamalot an audience member shouted out the next line while the actor took a pause.

Monty Python aficionados love to recite these famous routines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail (with a Life of Brian song thrown in for good measure). It underlines that the musical is built on a lot of audience familiarity and pre-existing goodwill. But this projection heavy production from director-choreographer Josh Rhodes show
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: To the Ends of the Earth 땅끝까지 at JACK

Exeunt sent two critics–Nicole Serratore, who has some expertise in the Korean language and culture, and Loren Noveck, does not–to review the bilingual play To the Ends of the Earth / 땅끝까지 at Brooklyn’s JACK. Here’s what they thought:

Loren: Sometimes I really enjoy a piece of theater that challenges my position as an informed audience member. (For example, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding, where the laugh lines clearly fell quite differently for anyone in the audience who’d spent time in a braidin
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Salesman 之死 at Connelly Theater

Cross-cultural confusion abounds in this funny but introspective look at a unique moment in theater history and in the lives of a group of Chinese artists. Nicole Serratore reviews.

Knowing a language can put you on the road to understanding a culture, but it is not automatic or instant. Culture is such a tricky and complex thing. It is so tantalizing to get glimpses of it. For me, it is what drives me to travel.

Conveniently, you only have to go as far as the East Village for a taste of this.
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch

Light and weather stream through the gaps in the slats of the shack where Purlie Victorious Judson was born.

Late in Ossie Davis’s play Purlie Victorious: A Non-Confederate Romp Through the Cotton Patch, Derek McLane’s set transforms from this forlorn shack into the community church, Big Bethel. Purlie has been fighting the whole play to buy back this barn where generations have worshipped together.

When the literal roof rises on Big Bethal on stage, you will not notice the shabby walls any lo
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Doppelganger at Park Avenue Armory

Many years ago, I visited the Park Avenue Armory to do an interview with a company of actors and artists who were using a space upstairs to rehearse. In my memory (which could be faulty) it was a locker room of sorts for the former soldiers. Some did not return from the wars they fought.

The Armory cannot be separated from this military past. For this commission, Doppelganger, German opera director, Claus Guth, uses that history as his starting place–turning the massive drill hall into a site-s
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Here Lies Love at Broadway Theatre

There are two things I must say upfront about the Broadway production of Here Lies Love.

First, the staging of the assassination of Ninoy Aquino remains one of the most gut-wrenching moments of theater I have ever seen. Even knowing it is coming makes it no less powerful. Second, it was nearly impossible for me to see most of this show from the dance floor because of the high number of audience members being packed into that area now. So, this review is based on what I could see between people’
Exeunt NYC •

Review: The Half-God of Rainfall at NYTW

Playwright-poet Inua Ellams’ epic poem, The Half-God of Rainfall, is set to movement and speech in a visually arresting, but sometimes inconsistent production by director Taibi Magar at New York Theatre Workshop.

Expanded from a two-person show to a cast of seven and enhanced with movement, the work still feels like its evolving toward its final form. Inspired by Greek and Yoruba mythology, the storytelling is narrated by mortals and gods. The piece blends evocative folk tale-mythology with a c
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Work Hard Have Fun Make History at Clubbed Thumb Summerworks

Work Hard Have Fun Make History is a play about prophets and profits, humans and machines. Some writers try too hard to be clever, but playwright ruth tang ‘s efforts to reframe, unsettle, and toy with us through language, image, and setting look effortless in this frantic and funny offering from Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks series.

With a cast of three non-binary performers playing myriad roles in rapid-fire scenes, we leap from chaperoned phone sex to phone customer service (someone received t
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Prometheus Firebringer at The Chocolate Factory Theater

Annie Dorsen returns with a new piece of algorithmic theater which asks the audience to focus on language and what power we are handing over to AI. Nicole Serratore reviews.

“I chose these words carefully.” That’s what Annie Dorsen says in her new piece of algorithmic theater, Prometheus Firebringer. But they are not her words exactly.

She performs an essay cobbled together from the quotes of others including Roland Barthes, The Twilight Zone, Susan Sontag, and government hearings. She address
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Ain't No Mo' at the Belasco Theatre

The business of Broadway has never not been brutal. But in this late-pandemic moment it seems even harder to keep a show running. Early closing notices have been flying including for the Broadway transfer of Ain’t No Mo’, but now there has been a brief reprieve. I was at the show when they announced a one-week extension.

This new play deserves to find its audience as the material is without question funny, provocative, smart, ribald, and heartbreaking. It is packed with so many ideas, images, a
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Ye Bear & Ye Cubb at 59E59

Ye Bare and Ye Cubb was the title of the first new English language play performed in the American colonies in 1665. This devised production, Ye Bear and Ye Cubb, imagines what that play contained (as no script exists) and follows the subsequent real-life lawsuit brought by a person who did not like the play.

As actor Steven Conroy says to us, stepping out of his colonial character, “We only know about these people because someone didn’t like the play.” In 1665, Edward Martin made out a crimina
Exeunt NYC •

Review: Company on Broadway

In 1970, when Stephen Sondheim’s musical Company premiered, it was built around a particular gendered cliché: the bachelor who avoids marriage. More than 50 years later, a new production on Broadway has changed the gender: the commitment-phobe male Bobby is now the female Bobbie. While this version of Company attempts to shift the pre-existing material to accommodate this new perspective, all I could hear was dissonance.

Marianne Elliott’s over-articulated production hammers at the same damn na
Exeunt NYC •

Review: Speak Softly, Go Far: Hannah Mamalis at Dublin Fringe Festival

As part of a series commissioned by the Dublin Fringe and the Abbey Theatre called Speak Softly, Go Far, three artists designed audio shows for the festival including Irish comedian and storyteller, Hannah Mamalis. Three years ago, I reviewed a show by Mamalis at the Edinburgh Fringe. Calling her work “reminiscent of the storytelling of Daniel Kitson,” I have been eager to get a second look.

Like Kitson, Mamalis’s work centers around ordinary people who might otherwise go unnoticed. But her wri
Load More

Let's get social