The Amoralists present the world premiere of Bring Us The Head Of Your Daughter, now through April 24 at Performance Space 122’s 9th Space theater. Jackie and Contessa are far from the typical American family. One black, one Jewish, and both women, they have overcome years of alcoholism and self-doubt to remain loving partners. But when their absent daughter, Garance, is accused of cannibalism, their Gramercy Park apartment becomes a center of chaos. The phone rings relentlessly with bigoted threats, Contessa’s long-lost brother mysteriously reappears, and to top it all off, the alleged cannibal makes a grand entrance. Bring Us The Head Of Your Daughter is a biting examination of an unconventional family and the outermost limits of familial love.
Gay Plays for Straight People (and also gay people), at The Paradise Factory April 9–30, is Purple Rep’s inaugural project. The series features the world premiere of Larry Kunofsky’s marriage equality play, The Un-Marrying Project, running in rep with the revival of Mariah MacCarthy’s sexual revolution piece, The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret. The Un-Marrying Project is a documentary film in which legally and happily married couples divorce in the name of gay marriage and will not re-marry until marriage is legal for everyone. In The All-American Genderf*ck Cabaret, witness the clashing of eight gender stereotypes, countless dance breaks, one intimately outrageous cabaret, and one androgynous omnipotent emcee to guide them all.
In the summer of 2007, Gus Marcantonio, a retired longshoreman and cousin of the late New York Congressman Vito Marcantonio, summons his three adult children to the family’s Brooklyn brownstone to vote on the question of his committing suicide. Tony Kushner’s new play, The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide To Capitalism And Socialism With A Key To The Scriptures, explores revolution, radicalism, marriage, sex, prostitution, politics, real estate, unions of all kinds, and debts both unpaid and unpayable. Don’t miss this highly anticipated work by the playwright behind Angels in America, May 5–June 12 at The Public Theater.
Ellen Barkin, Patrick Breen, John Benjamin Hickey, Joe Mantello, Luke MacFarlane, Lee Pace and Jim Parsons head the all-star cast in the Broadway premiere of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart, April 19–July 3 at the John Golden Theatre. The story of a city in denial, The Normal Heart unfolds like a real-life political thriller—as a tight-knit group of friends refuses to let doctors, politicians and the press bury the truth of an unspoken epidemic behind a wall of silence. Be sure to check out The Normal Heart on Facebook: If the play gets 10,000 “Likes” by its opening day, it will donate $10,000 to Freedom to Marry.
Featuring all-star rotating casts, Love, Loss and What I Wore—in an open-ended run at the Westside Theatre—uses clothing and accessories and the memories they trigger to tell funny and often poignant stories that all women can relate to. A starry cast of five women enrobed in chic black sit on stools and tell funny, wistful and universal memories about their families and loved ones through the prism of their closets. Don’t miss your chance to take in this Broadway hit by Nora Ephron and Delia Ephron, based on the book by Ilene Beckerman.
Kathleen Turner returns to Broadway this spring as “Sister Jamison Connelly” in HIGH, a new play written by Matthew Lombardo and directed by Rob Ruggiero, opening April 19 at the Booth Theatre. When Sister Jamison Connelly (Turner) agrees to sponsor a 19 year-old drug user in an effort to help him combat his addiction, her own faith is ultimately tested. Struggling between the knowledge she possesses as a rehabilitation counselor and a woman of religious conviction, she begins to question her belief in miracles and whether people can find the courage to change.
Welcome to Nashville—a town full of colorful characters all chasing after the very same dream: a smash hit record. To beat the odds and strike gold (or, better yet, platinum), it takes one great song, serious talent, or lots of luck—and preferably all three. The new musical Lucky Guy employs an array of musical styles, including country, Broadway, vaudeville, bluegrass, pop and even Hawaiian, to weave a tale of down-home dreamers and low-down schemers all willing to do whatever it takes to come out on top in the cut-throat world of Music City, USA. Lucky Guy plays now through July at the Little Shubert Theatre.
What Do You Think?