Motto’s best of Off-Broadway theater report this month includes Sex and the City creator’s one-woman show, and the latest offerings from York and Audible Theaters.
Candace Bushnell’s “Is There Still Sex in the City?”
Candace Bushnell is super quirky. She’s also honest, sharp and hilarious. The real-life Carrie Bradshaw – now on her post-divorce Hamptons journey, complete with tending to the garden vegetables and dating octogenarians pretending to be septuagenarians – still has bucket loads of the charm and iconic attitude that defined the Sex in the City phenomenon. Back in 1994, what started as a breezy column about dating and shoes, has turned into an undeniable movement, a cornerstone of pop-culture that played a formative part in the lives of so many women coming to age in the late 90’s. Bushnell herself certainly seemed to have lived up to the Sex in the City lifestyle – as audiences easily glean from saucy stories detailing her times as a punk It girl turned NYTimes bestselling author. Drugs, sex and disco tales, fabulously funky stage design and a Vodka-only cocktail bar add to the party atmosphere, but hard as Bushnell might try, an underlining thread of female empowerment and unapologetic independence still breaks through the veneer of Coke nostalgia and Manolo Blahnik fetish.
York Theater’s “Cheek to Cheek: Irving Berlin in Hollywood”
York Theater is a veritable treasure trove of original production at the heart of midtown Manhattan. They have been staging new plays, concerts and revivals since 1969, and for the past 25 years, under the direction of James Morgan, have been devoted exclusively to creating new, innovative works and renditions of long-forgotten gems from the past cannon of the oh-so-American artform of musical theater. In ‘Cheek to Cheek,’ loyal York audiences, already buzzing with excitement to be back in the seats after a forced hiatus, welcome the six performers who charmingly tell Irving Berlin stories, sing, dance and tap their way through the songwriter’s most iconic works, created for the screen. Conceived, choreographed and directed by Randy Skinner, the show utilizes snippets from Berlin’s notebooks, autobiographical references, projections and an elegant stage design to bring to life the contagious tunes and amalgam of cultures that is Berlin’s legacy.
Audible Theater’s “Approval Junkie” at Minetta Lane Theater
Since closing the doors to their Greenwich Village venue at the start of the pandemic, the audio entertainment giant Audible’s theater arm has continued commissioning works from over 25 playwrights, producing audio theater formats from one-person shows, memoirs as theater and multicast performances by the likes of Adam Rapp, Dan Rather and Joan Didion. Now that NYC live performances are back in play, NPR regular Faith Salie brings her intensely personal one-woman memoir to the stage at Minetta Lane. A biographical journey exploring the sources of her creative ambition, relationship tensions and life-long craving of the limelight, the performance is raw, minimal and intriguing. Salie leaves it all on the stage, in what is less of a cautionary tale and more of an intimate examination of one performer’s instinctual pursuit of affirmation, on and off the stage. In a broader sense, the personal anecdotes Salie shares shed much needed light on sexism in an industry much-battered for its attitude towards women – where female artists are asked to alter their weight, general appearance and personality to satisfy antiquated gender expectations.
