★★☆☆☆ Eli Bauman’s musical mistakes vulgarity for actual entertainment, with a hard-working cast vainly trying
Off-Broadway
Queens: The American Dream Does Not Live Here
★★★☆☆ Marin Ireland stars in Martyna Majok’s timely play about the cost of being a stranger in a strange land.
Kyoto: Climate Negotiations Made Fun
★★★★★ Stephen Kunken superbly plays the lead role in this thrilling drama about the negotiations behind an historic climate accord
Kyoto: Greenhouse Gassing
★★★☆☆ Stephen Kunken is good as a bad guy in a new Royal Shakespeare drama about special interests and global warming
Messy White Gays: Boys Being Boys, Badly
★★☆☆☆ Expect trashy doings, nonstop name drops, insults, and murder done for fun
Pygmalion: Shaw’s Classic Greek Myth Update Is Classily Resculptured
★★★★☆ David Staller’s Gingold Theatrical Group plays GBS fast, loose, and well, and the strong cast plays along
Bat Boy: Musical: Bloodsucker Tale Is Way Too Batty
★★☆☆☆ At City Center, this allegedly true story, musicalized a nearly decade ago, tells a too-dull tale
Beau the Musical: Queer as Folk Music
★★★☆☆ Jeb Brown and Matt Rodin head a sweet show done in honky-tonk environs
Endgame: Urgent Samuel Beckett Thoughts on Death, Gamely Played
★★★★☆ The master playwright has his abandoned figures facing their usual hypnotic concerns in this Druid production at the Irish Arts Center
Did You Eat?: Meet Zoë Kim, Storyteller Extraordinaire
★★★★☆ One woman travels through two continents and multiple decades in this autobiographical solo show