In a rare treat of African theater in New York, director Awoye Timpo stages the pitch-perfect off-Broadway debut of Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka’s 1958 play, The Swamp Dwellers at the Theatre for a New Audience. It’s a production sharply attuned to the work’s mysterious rhythms, built, like its stilt house set, atop a delicate and inevitable flow of deliberately paced revelations.

The 70-minute piece begins with a rural barber, Makuri (Leon Addison Brown), and his wife, Alu (Jenny Jules), awaiting the return of one of their twin sons, Igwezu, who followed his unseen brother to the big city but has returned to check on some nearby crops he owns during the flooding season. As they wait, a blind man (Joshua Echebiri) born to a nearby “village of beggars” appears. Through their welcoming interactions, details about each of their beliefs, and how they apply or not to the region’s ruling systems, are revealed; he is Muslim, they follow the Yoruba faith. Eventually Igwezu (Ato Blankson-Wood) appears, though he is preceded by Kadiye (Chiké Okonkwo), a local, powerful holy man, and two attendants (Jason Maina and Olawale Oyenola). The politician-priest boasts of his power and demands a shave, completely at odds with an Igwezu who has seen life beyond the township and knows of devastation to come.

Jason Ardizzone-West’s set renders the skeleton of the couple’s house just above the audience, whose feet touch a lacquered black floor which evokes moving water, as does Rena Anakwe’s sound design. Qween Jean’s costumes are typically excellent, especially for Jules. Though Brown and Jules’ amiable banter provides a recognizable human backbone to the proceedings, it becomes clear Alu was not written to be a leading player in this otherwise all-male world, and it is to Jules and Timpo’s credit that her housewife feels like a matriarch.

The work, and this production, are haunting: the type of theatre that washes over you with the smooth surf of uneventfulness but leaves a memorable psychic dent in its wake. Each character begins as a stand-in for something – the stranger’s blindness conjures clairvoyance, and the son’s standoffishness hints at modernity –  although for just what is never simplified, and is only complicated by their actions. Small details, such as when the beggar chooses to open, or keep closed, his clouded eyes, or the way the central couple react in slightly skewed synchronicity, are tough to parse but even harder to forget. Timpo ties their enigmatic power to the play’s own cryptic disquietude for an unshakeable, if at times puzzling, effect.

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As for what played across the street at BAM’s Opera House for a few dates earlier this month, what could I possibly add to the heaps of praise already lavished on Barry Kosky’s staging of The Threepenny Opera? Somehow the Berliner Ensemble current director’s first New York premiere, it arrived with maxed-out anticipation (I’d never seen the lobby abuzz like that) and managed to exceed expectations. The cast was uniformly but distinctly perfect, though I’ll shout out Laura Balzar’s Lucy, who emerged as the story's emotional backbone in a way that neither disrupted its distancing effect nor called attention to itself, despite her gorgeous renditions of “Pirate Jenny” and “Barbara Song.” And that was essentially the production’s overall tone: a taught tightrope between enjoyable talent and social excoriation that fit an era where everyone performs luxury. Set on a jungle gym-like scaffolding set on which the characters reconfigured themselves, in ways inventive in their inevitability, it presented the 1928 story (by Bertolt Brecht, from the original John Gay, with music by Kurt Weill) with a showbiz panache both Vegas sleazy and top-of-the-line. Perhaps the sparkly curtains that sometimes covered it are Kosky’s nod to Chicago’s “Hot Honey Rag,” whose cynical razzle-dazzle was itself a throwback to Brecht’s ‘20s, and which he staged in 2023. Whatever the case, he’s welcome back anytime.

The Swamp Dwellers is in performance through April 27, 2025 at Theatre for a New Audience on Ashland Place in Brooklyn, New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

One of America’s most beloved films is coming to New York…kinda. Today, producers announced that Ginger Twinsies, a hilarious send-up of the beloved 1998 film The Parent Trap, will play a limited engagement at the downtown Orpheum Theatre beginning July 10, 2025. Directed and written by Kevin Zak, an official opening is set for July 10 for a 16-week run through October 26.

You want the 411? In the summer of 1998, a pair of long lost, red-headed twin girls unexpectedly meet at sleep-away camp and hatch a plan to reunite their estranged parents. Sound familiar? Shut up, no it doesn't! Welcome to Ginger Twinsies – a loving, outlandish, and wildly inappropriate send up of the Lindsay Lohan/Nancy Meyers classic that made us all believe that Oreos go great with peanut butter, wedding gowns deserve top hats, and being young and beautiful is not a crime. So, pack your bags! Kevin Zak (no credits) invites you to enjoy this 80-minute Parent Trap parody stacked with nostalgia, camp (literally, they go camping), and some unexpected twists.

Casting and creative team members will be announced at a later date. 

In the vein of the lesbian theatre makers in the downtown New York tradition that came before them, Bailey Williams and Emma Horwitz have written a delirious and joyful performance piece that mines, among a dizzying array of other things, lesbian erotica to explore everything from the surprisingly titillating dynamics of a library visit to alien abduction. 

Billed as a “burlesque of fiction and reality,” Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods, a Rattlestick Theater and New Georges co-production, defies easy summarizing or description. While it’s driven by its own sort of zany dream logic, any attempt to encapsulate what the show is about will ultimately fall short. At the risk of generalizing, it’s about so many things. 

In a series of madcap vignettes and quick sketches, Williams and Horwitz inhabit characters at breakneck speed—at once a babysitter and a yearning lesbian widow, then a set of psychic sisters. It’s clear from their facility with the bonkers text and the ease with which they embody each character that no one could master these performances quite like Williams and Horwitz. As real life partners, they are in tune with each other in rare ways, which creates a space for impeccable comedy.  Throughout the show’s 69 (wink, wink) minutes, their energy levels never flag. With sly, devilish grins, Williams and Horwitz, along with director Tara Elliot, invite the audience to participate in this hilarious and heartfelt fantasia of erotic, queer joy.

Williams and Horwitz are surrounded by cheekily-labeled bankers boxers (examples: “Butch Heiresses”, “Titty Titty Bang Bang”, “Microplastics made me gay?”), which contain an awe-inspiring amount of props and surprises. (Normandy Sherwood is credited with set, costume, and props design). Combined with Josiah Davis’ lighting and Johnny Gasper’s sound design, the result is a never-ending playground of theatrical delight. Two Sisters…’ DIY ethos provides a space for play and the kind of clever, unbridled creativity that has been missing from the more traditional theatrical programming in this city. 

‍Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods is at the HERE Arts Center through April 26th. Ticket information here.