★★★★☆ Rodreguez King-Dorset writes, performs, directs tough drama about 2018 deportation scandal
Off-Broadway
Staff Meal: Chef’s Kiss for a Kooky Pastiche
★★★☆☆ Absurdism triumphs in this crazy combo meal of modern dating mores plus culinary pretention.
Jordans: Important Racism Drama Awkwardly Handled
★★★☆☆ Ife Olujobi takes on national Black-white dilemma, Whitney White directing highly adept cast
Still: Love in the Age of Polarization
★★★★☆ Tim Daly and Jayne Atkinson play former lovers whose reunion after many years soon turns fraught in Lia Romeo’s intimate comedy-drama.
Sally & Tom: The Oddest, Most Emblematic Couple in U.S. History
★★★★★ There’s no way to sugarcoat Thomas Jefferson’s abuse of Sally Hemings, but Suzan-Lori Parks whips up an entertaining gloss.
Sally & Tom: Follies of a Founding Father
★★★★☆ Suzan-Lori Parks melds the Thomas Jefferson/Sally Hemings mystery with the struggle for freedom in our own day
Macbeth (an undoing): The Shakespeare Classic Undone to a Fare-Thee-Well
★★☆☆☆ Zinnie Harris is the problematic playwright as well as the much more adept director of this ill-advised project
Stalker: A Magical New Import From Sweden
★★★★☆ The Swedish magicians who stumped Penn & Teller arrive in New York
Grief Hotel: Misery Loves Company
★★★★★ Liza Birkenmeier’s Obie Award–winning play paints a gorgeously impressionistic picture of a group of acquaintances in loneliness, contemplation, and despair
Grief Hotel: A Bizarre Business Plan That Doubles as a Clever Leitmotif
★★★★☆ “Loss is fast, and grief is slow…. At the grief hotel, you get to stop time.”