Mayank Keshaviah

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Lebensraum

Mayank Keshaviah
The concept of reparations for historical genocides and atrocities has been long debated, but Israel Horovitz dramatizes such a proposal in Lebensraum, his powerful play about a present-day German chancellor asking 6 million Jews to "please come home" to Germany and live there as citizens with "full benefits." Director Don......
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A Christmas Carol: Twist Your Dickens!

Mayank Keshaviah
Like the Ghost of Christmas Past, the Second City's twist on the Dickensian classic is back to remind you that you've been naughty. Very naughty, in fact, judging by the responses from audience members, who are (anonymously) asked to write down "the worst thing you've ever done." Some of those......
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Wild in Wichita

Mayank Keshaviah
Like the recent film Enough Said, Lina Gallegos' award-winning play explores courtship and love from a mature perspective: that of two septuagenarians in a Kansas nursing home. Carmela (Denise Blasor) and Joaquin (Sal Lopez) have been put in this home "temporarily" by their respective children, Raul (Alberto de Diego) and......
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The Taming of the Shrew

Mayank Keshaviah
The slapstick, or batacchio, which originated in the commedia dell'arte of 16th-century Italy, is a wooden device used to create a loud, smacking sound. So it seems fitting that in staging Shakespeare's contemporaneous tale of a headstrong woman who finally meets her match, director Ellen Geer plays its physical comedy......
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Sister Act

Mayank Keshaviah
Sister Act's story of a murder witness hiding out in a convent is similar to a summer blockbuster in that it viscerally excites despite a flimsy premise and plot points advanced through coincidences of convenience. Transposed from the 1992 movie to 1970s Philadelphia, this tuner features songs from legendary composer......
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Shirley Valentine

Mayank Keshaviah
The omnipresent glass of white wine rarely out of reach for DeeDee Rescher's English matron is a perfect metaphor for the title character in Willy Russell's solo piece, which premiered in 1988. Stuck in a drab kitchen in Liverpool, Shirley Valentine, like her favorite libation, sparkles amidst her unremarkable surroundings:......
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Absolutely Filthy

Mayank Keshaviah
Just 'cause I have a ton of dirt on me doesn't make me a monster," says The Mess (playwright Brendan Hunt), the adult incarnation of Pig Pen from the Peanuts comics, who is now a homeless man, in Absolutely Filthy. His desire to be more than an "accumulation of sins"......