Joey Sims

1 week ago | theatrely.com | Joey Sims

“Is y’all ready…” asks a demon-clown named Lemon Pepper Wings, freshly spawned in anime cosplayer-garb from an empty swimming pool, “...for a mutha fuckin SHOW?” At this point in the script for Bowl EP, a wild, near-unclassifiable new work debuting at Vineyard Theatre (co-producing with National Black Theater, in association with The New Group), writer/director Nazareth Hassan predicts that an off-Broadway crowd likely won’t give Lemon Pepper Wings the enthusiastic reply she/he/they are...

3 weeks ago | theatrely.com | Joey Sims

Senior Critic Joey Sims has been busy catching up on theatre around town. His latest roundup of productions:LOBSTERAmong the sharpest and wittiest plays I’ve seen all year, Kallan Dana’s Lobster is an exhilarating treat. The premise is wonderful: self-serious high school student Nora (Cricket Brown, severe funny), in mourning following a break-up, recruits three unsuspecting students for a guerrilla production of Sam Shepard & Patti Smith’s coke-fueled absurdist work Cowboy Mouth.

1 month ago | americantheatre.org | Joey Sims

Hello. Thank you for calling the Utopian Hotline. We are collecting anonymous responses to help us build a better tomorrow. At the tone, please leave a message answering the question: How do you imagine a more perfect future? The journey of Utopian Hotline began with a simple prompt, spread via flyers posted across several major U.S. cities: Call in and share, anonymously, your imaginings for a utopian future. There was no show art, no logo, no explanation.

1 month ago | theatrely.com | Joey Sims

How do you prefer your Gilbert and Sullivan? Traditionalists may balk at Roundabout Theatre Company’s lightly reinvented Pirates! The Penzance Musical, a jazzy, Caribbean-infused take that relocates the enduring G&S classic to New Orleans. This new adaptation by Rupert Holmes (The Mystery of Edwin Drood) mostly tinkers with the original, adding some inconsequential French Quarter trappings and a metatheatrical framing device that proves needless—if, also, harmless.

1 month ago | tdf.org | Joey Sims

How four eclectic shows Off Broadway are expanding the possibilities of musical theatre---On four small Manhattan stages divorced from the spotlight of Broadway, a quartet of new musicals are bucking the form's conventions with fresh sounds. Yet ask the shows' creators about their storytelling influences and they all name-check the old masters. When it comes to building a musical narrative, the classic ways still work.