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Nicole Serratore

I write about K-dramas, US and UK theater and my travels to and fro.

Nicole Serratore (she/her) is a New York City-based freelance journalist and critic.

She has written opinion pieces, reviews, and features for outlets such as the New York Times, American Theatre magazine, Variety, BAMbill, The Stage (UK), Time Out New York, the Village Voice, Exeunt magazine, TDF Stages, TheaterJones.com, Flavorpill, and The Craptacular.

She is the former Managing Editor of Exeunt NYC Inc., a longform theater criticism website. She is a current member of the Drama Desk and the Outer Critics Circle.

She was a co-host and co-producer of the Maxamoo theater podcast. She was a Fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Critics Institute in 2015.

She has written about travel and world adventures for Shermans Travel and Frommers.com.

She has a B.F.A. in Film and Television from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She has a J.D. from Fordham University. She is a former film executive and producer. She once had a prize-winning cow.

Mildly Bitter's Musings •

June 2025: Suffering Alone, Stalkers, Borrowed Eyes

All seven members of BTS returned from the military this month. We finally got to peep Min Yoongi at J-Hope's concert and then see his full FACE upon the first OT7 live announcing they will work on an album and a world tour for next spring. My savings account is ready. I also saw Stray Kids during their world tour in NY. We had some adverse weather conditions but after the nightmare of Ateez's NY show last summer we were ready for this one. A good time was had by all. One of my closest friends m...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Out of Order at East Village Basement - Exeunt Magazine NYC

Carl Holder’s show Out of Order leaves its structure to the fates.
Dubbed “an interactive parlor game,” Holder writes a series of prompts on index cards.  They fall from the ceiling scattering. He opens them up in whatever order he finds them and performs the tasks as he comes to them.
He says this was his approach to turning 40 and dealing with writer’s block. He couldn’t write a play, so he’s created this performance-by-lotto instead.
The instructions on the cards range from character prompts...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Cold War Choir Practice at Clubbed Thumb - Exeunt Magazine NYC

Ro Reddick’s Cold War Choir Practice is a Reagan-era time capsule of 1980s nuclear threats, self-actualization cults, spies and toy fads (Pound Puppies!). Between eccentric songs about Christmas and Armageddon, this spirited play with music, is also about power, resilience, and Black community. With a winning performance from Alana Raquel Bowers, it is also a pathway into the mind of a young Black girl managing anxiety, family, and disappointment.
Set in Syracuse in 1987, 10-year-old Meek (Alana...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Bus Stop at Classic Stage Company - Exeunt Magazine NYC

Midori Francis gives a layered, glittering performance in William Inge’s Bus Stop, in a co-production from NAATCO, Classic Stage Company, and Transport Group. While it may not be a complete heartstopper of a play, there are flickering moments of human frailty in this dramedy of lonely, lost folks stuck at a roadside diner for a night in a snow storm. Director Jack Cummings III’s production offers some subtle performances even if Inge’s material is more on-the-nose.
It is 1955 in Kansas. Still-ma...
M •

February-March 2025: Comic Book Violence, Inner Children, and Bad Princes

Life got away from me with concerts, surgery, and a busy work project. Saw J-Hope's solo show, Hwasa's world tour, and got very buried in my job. But there were a few dramas I wanted to talk about from February and March.Study GroupHappy to see Hwang Min-hyun in a more playful, action-comedy role in this high octane high school drama that feels a bit like Muppet Babies Fight Club.Everything in this show plays delightfully against type. It is centered around a nerdy high school student, Yoon Ga-m...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: The Picture of Dorian Gray at The Music Box - Exeunt Magazine NYC

In a swirl of sweat, wigs, and live projections, Sarah Snook plays a flurry of Oscar Wilde’s characters—26 to be exact—in the campy take on hedonism, vanity, morality, and sin that is The Picture of Dorian Gray.
This tech-centric production is full of anachronisms, self-awareness, and excess. Adaptor and director Kip Williams wants to put the idea of the performance of life at the center of the piece. Though with a celebrity on stage, it shifts the focus. It becomes less about our performative s...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Good Night and Good Luck at Winter Garden Theatre - Exeunt Magazine NYC

The screen-to-stage adaptation of Good Night and Good Luck ends up being a good fit for theater. The play is snappy while still a bit lecturing, frustrating and yet fascinating. Director David Cromer captures the movement and verve of live television on stage and layers the stage in a way that mimics edits in cinema seamlessly. The ensemble piece about this moment in history provides a solid dose of drama, though the play strains when it tries to connect to our present moment.
The play, written...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Ghosts at Lincoln Center Theater - Exeunt Magazine NYC

Playwright Henrik Ibsen is known for writing some remarkable women for the stage including Nora Helmer and Hedda Gabler. While his play Ghosts might be less well-known, it boasts of another unique creature faced with terrible choices in a world stacked against women. Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe’s new adaptation of Ghosts distills Ibsen’s vision further along with Lily Rabe’s resilient and caustic performance.
O’Rowe’s version of the play is more minimalist in language than Ibsen’s so the tragic...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: Redwood at Nederlander Theatre - Exeunt Magazine NYC

With the massive projection screens being used in the new musical Redwood, I had an unexpected flashback to my childhood. I remember seeing a 360-degree immersive documentary in Walt Disney World.  As I recall, it was some sort of travelogue (was it about Canada? America?). It was a little dizzying and confusing because you did not know which way to look and with no narrative (or none I can remember) I recall tiring of it after a bit.  The coolness of the experience wore off.
I may have left Red...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: My Man Kono at ART/NY Theater - Exeunt Magazine NYC

From the silent age of cinema to the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Philip W. Chung’s play, My Man Kono, about real life figure Toraichi Kono, gives a unique perspective on Kono’s experiences being Japanese in America in the first half of the twentieth century.  It’s a fascinating slice of history from a volatile era—but the play’s narrow lens on Kono and Charlie Chaplin’s working relationship and a limiting retrospective structure pushes some rich cultural history to the backend of th...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: English at Todd Haimes Theatre - Exeunt Magazine NYC

The process of learning a new language can be an act of invasion. Shaping your mouth, tongue, and brain for this new form of expression starts to change who you are behind the voice speaking. And learning English in this global economy is becoming less of a choice and sometimes it is a political necessity.
In Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, English, about students in an English class in Iran, it is hard not feel a profound loss at the end of the play knowing how language creates gaps...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) at Pregones PRTT - Exeunt Magazine NYC

In Matthew Barbot’s play about Puerto Rican history, the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo), at some point West Side Story’s Maria is singing and crying over the body of Christopher Columbus surrounded by a whole lot of rolls of paper towels.
As you can imagine, this sets a certain satirical tone within this sincere and funny play that looks at political activism, Puerto Rican independence, and what generations of repeated colonization and oppression fosters. Director José Zaya...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Review: This is My Favorite Song at Playwrights Horizons - Exeunt Magazine NYC

Comedian Francesa D’Uva’s father died in June 2020 from COVID. He was in a coma in a hospital on a ventilator where his family could not visit him.
It is not the easiest starting place for the autobiographical show, This is My Song.  Frankly, D’Uva knows this.
She sings at one point “I don’t want to do this show.”  But her “talent representatives” have pushed her to do so. Part of the show is about getting back on the creativity horse after her loss and trying to figure out how to be funny or do...
Exeunt Magazine NYC •

Shit. Meet. Fan. at MCC Theater - Exeunt Magazine NYC

At some point in Robert O’Hara’s new play Shit. Meet. Fan. the audience is so riled up, laughing and gasping at every reveal, it feels like the heyday of the Jerry Springer show.  O’Hara wants to set a trap to unconsciously lure the audience into a pleasurable wallowing in other people’s shit but then turn the spotlight back on the audience.
He says the play is “a blistering vulgar satire on Male Toxicity and White Privilege.”  Those intentions are clear but he does not successfully skewer his s...
The Stage •

Maybe Happy Ending review at the Belasco Theatre, New York

Nicole Serratore is a freelance journalist, theatre critic, and attorney from New York City. She has written for the New York Times, Variety, the Village Voice, American Theatre magazine, TDF Stages, Flavorpill, and The Craptacular. She is Managing Editor of Exeunt NYC

Nicole Serratore is a freelance journalist, theatre critic, and attorney from New York City. She has written for the New York Times, Variety, the Village Voice, American Theatre magazine, TDF Stages, Flavorpill, and The Craptacul...
The Stage •

Left on Tenth review at the James Earl Jones Theatre, New York, by Delia Ephron, directed by Susan Stroman

Screenwriter, playwright and novelist Delia Ephron made her name writing romantic comedies such as You’ve Got Mail alongside her sister, writer-director Nora Ephron. Her new play is based on her memoir of the same name, and her own unexpected late-in-life romance. Ephron discovers love in the aftermath of grief, and joy to lift her out of the grey – but the audience of Susan Stroman’s production doesn’t vicariously share the same thrill.
Mildly Bitter's Musings •

September 2024: Meh Romance

I feel like my drama slump kind of continues. SIGH. There have a been a slew of recent romance dramas but they all started to blur together. Love Next DoorI could not help but see some parallels between Love Next Door and the recent series, Doctor Slump. Here, childhood neighbors Bae Seok-ryu (Jung So-min) and Choi Seung-hyo (Jung Hae-in) haven’t seen each other in a long time. Seok-ryu has been working for a prestigious tech company in the US and is engaged. But she shows up unexpectedly back i...
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