Derek McCracken - Page 3

Wake up! Bill Posley has a stunner of a story to tell, and although comedy may not resolve his existential crisis, it's a trip well worth taking with him at Soho Playhouse. Witty, fearless and 'woke as f***,' Posley describes (and often reenacts) parts of his lived experience as a biracial man in search of his identity: too black for white people, not black enough for black people. His anecdotes, amusing in their own right, are also the kind of antidote that our racially fractured country needs right now.

Sincerely, Oscar is a meandering mindbender where two's company, three's a crowd, and thirty songs take us on jazzed-up journey through Show Boat, Oklahoma!, Carousel, State Fair, Allegro, South Pacific, The King and I, and The Sound of Music. Intriguing conceptually but lopsided musically, the clunky show presents an awkwardly-staged, amped-up glow-and-tell cabaret with a technological twist.

This love story is lit. The play's title, which unfortunately sounds like a cheeky riff on a similarly named sexually charged book and movie franchise, bravely attempts to quantify an impossible sexual sum. With a running time of 70 minutes, this brisk burlesque-infused play tracks the progress and problems of a male gay couple. Adriano (Bujar Ahmeti) and Merlin (Tristan Halilaj) apply for a marriage license in Tashanik, a homophobic town in the Balkans. Equal parts peep show and politics, the play burns hot (fuchsia) unapologetically.