Tag Archives: DR2 Theatre

DA

Ciarán O’Reilly and Paul O’Brien star as a son and father looking back at the past in DA (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Repertory Theatre
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. between Irving Pl. & Park Ave.
Tuesday – Sunday through April 5, $70
212-727-2737
www.irishrep.org

During renovation of its permanent home on West Twenty-Second St., the Irish Repertory Theatre has moved into the cozy DR2 Theatre in Union Square, presenting a cozy revival of Hugh Leonard’s cozy Tony-winning 1978 play, Da. It’s May 1968, and Charlie (Irish Rep producing director Ciarán O’Reilly) has returned to the cluttered family home in Dublin following the death of his father, who he called Da (Paul O’Brien). While cleaning up the house, he is visited by his childhood friend Oliver (the curiously coiffed John Keating), who starts dredging up memories for Charlie. As soon as Oliver leaves, Charlie, a playwright, is then visited by his late father, a gardener who seems not quite ready for the afterlife, instead hanging around, sitting in his chair, and preparing for tea. “I’ve a cupful,” Charlie says. “It’s empty,” Da responds. “It’s full,” the son declares, setting the stage for the two to confront disagreements they had as father and son. As the memories flood forth, Charlie watches his younger self (Adam Petherbridge) flirt with local girl Mary Tate (Nicola Murphy) and get a job with the strict, straightforward Drumm (Sean Gormley); his beloved mother, Maggie Tynan (Fiana Toibin), is back as well. “I’d forgotten what she looked like,” the older Charlie says wistfully. He watches scenes from his and his family’s life play out right in front of him but can’t do anything about it, wondering if he made the right choices. But at the center of it all is Charlie’s relationship with Da, who often embarrassed him, particularly when it came to girls, Hitler, and his mother. “Say nothing. Ignore him,” Charlie tells his younger self at the beginning of the second act as his father is relating an old story. But it’s too late to change things now.

Revival of Hugh Leonards Tony-winning play is at the Irish Reps temporary home in Union Square (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Revival of Hugh Leonard’s Tony-winning play is at Irish Rep’s temporary home in Union Square (photo by Carol Rosegg)

Irish Rep artistic director Charlotte Moore guides the production with a gentle hand as the characters move between the past and the present on James Morgan’s comfy living room/kitchen set. It takes a while to warm to O’Brien and O’Reilly as father and son, because they appear to be too close in age, but once things get going, the characters all fall into step. O’Reilly is pensive and reflective as Charlie, who does not want to look back at what was and what could have been. O’Brien is somewhat rough at first but soon settles down in a role made famous by Barnard Hughes in the original Tony-winning Broadway production in 1978, which featured Brian Murray as Charlie, Sylvia O’Brien as Charlie’s mother, and Mia Dillon as Mary Tate. (Matt Clark’s 1988 film starred Hughes as Da, Martin Sheen as Charlie, and William Hickey as Drumm.) Da is a lovely little play, a tenderhearted story of the ties that bind family together — and that can lead to a painful loss of innocence.

NEW YORK COMEDY FESTIVAL — THE JUDY SHOW: MY LIFE AS A SITCOM

Judy Gold examines her life through her favorite sitcoms in new one-woman show (photo by T Charles Erickson)

DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. at 20 Union Sq. East
Extended through November 27, $65-$75
www.judygold.com

Newark-born comedian Judy Gold was raised on sitcoms, and there’s nothing she’d like more than getting a sitcom of her own. She’s tried over the years, without success, as detailed in her charming, entertaining one-woman production, The Judy Show: My Life as a Sitcom. On a stage that mimics a sitcom set — with the addition of hundreds of images from famous sitcoms lining the walls and ceiling — Gold enters through a door like so many sitcom characters do, then directly addresses the audience for the next eighty minutes, taking occasional interludes to play snippets of famous sitcom theme songs on the piano. Gold tells the very funny story of her life from her early days in Clark, New Jersey, raised by an overbearing, Nazi-obsessed mother and a calmer father, through her college days, the emergence of her sexual orientation, her relationship with Schwendy (Gold’s first long-term girlfriend refused to give her permission to use her real name in the show), and her current home life, living with Sharon Callahan, a Jewish therapist from Rochester whom she met in a magazine singles column, and Gold’s two children with Schwendy. While Gold thinks a sitcom about a six-foot-three Jewish lesbian mother of two boys is, well, comic gold, she has yet to convince any network, represented here by a disembodied male voice. Gold talks about many of her favorite shows, including The Brady Brunch, Room 222, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and The Facts of Life, as she shares the facts of her life and elicits continued audience response, becoming playfully angry if they don’t get a particular joke or reference. She supplements her tale with family photographs as well as images from the sitcoms she’s talking about and an endless supply of tsouris. Written by Gold and Kate Moira Ryan and directed by Amanda Charlton, The Judy Show, which has been extended several times during its successful run at the DR2 Theatre in Union Square and will hold eight performances as part of the New York Comedy Festival, is a whimsical, wonderfully self-effacing evening of theater, filled with good times and happy days, just taking life as it comes, one day at a time, with no commercial breaks. And maybe, just maybe, she’s gonna make it after all. (The New York Comedy Festival runs November 9-13, with a lineup that includes Louis C.K., Tracy Morgan, Russell Peters, Wanda Sykes, Michael Ian Black, Sarah Silverman, Bill Maher, and many others.)

THE JUDY SHOW: MY LIFE AS A SITCOM

Judy Gold examines her life through her favorite sitcoms in new one-woman show (photo by T Charles Erickson)

DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. at 20 Union Sq. East
Extended through October 22, $65
www.judygold.com

Newark-born comedian Judy Gold was raised on sitcoms, and there’s nothing she’d like more than getting a sitcom of her own. She’s tried over the years, without success, as detailed in her charming, entertaining one-woman production, The Judy Show: My Life as a Sitcom. On a stage that mimics a sitcom set — with the addition of hundreds of images from famous sitcoms lining the walls and ceiling — Gold enters through a door like so many sitcom characters do, then directly addresses the audience for the next eighty minutes, taking occasional interludes to play snippets of famous sitcom theme songs on the piano. Gold tells the very funny story of her life from her early days in Clark, New Jersey, raised by an overbearing, Nazi-obsessed mother and a calmer father, through her college days, the emergence of her sexual orientation, her relationship with Schwendy (Gold’s first long-term girlfriend refused to give her permission to use her real name in the show), and her current home life, living with Sharon Callahan, a Jewish therapist from Rochester whom she met in a magazine singles column, and Gold’s two children with Schwendy. While Gold thinks a sitcom about a six-foot-three Jewish lesbian mother of two boys is, well, comic gold, she has yet to convince any network, represented here by a disembodied male voice. Gold talks about many of her favorite shows, including The Brady Brunch, Room 222, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All in the Family, and The Facts of Life, as she shares the facts of her life and elicits continued audience response, becoming playfully angry if they don’t get a particular joke or reference. She supplements her tale with family photographs as well as images from the sitcoms she’s talking about and an endless supply of tsouris. Written by Gold and Kate Moira Ryan and directed by Amanda Charlton, The Judy Show, which has just been extended through October 22 at the DR2 Theatre in Union Square, is a whimsical, wonderfully self-effacing evening of theater, filled with good times and happy days, just taking life as it comes, one day at a time, with no commercial breaks. And maybe, just maybe, she’s gonna make it after all.

TWI-NY TICKET GIVEAWAY: THE JUDY SHOW

Judy Gold examines her life through her favorite sitcoms in new one-woman show (photo by T Charles Erickson)

MY LIFE AS A SITCOM
DR2 Theatre
103 East 15th St. at 20 Union Sq. East
Through September 1, $65
www.judygold.com

With all of the stand-up comics who have had their own sitcoms over the last several decades, it seems like Judy Gold’s life would make for one great show. The six-foot-three Jewish lesbian mother of two boys, who met her current girlfriend, a Jewish therapist from Rochester, in a magazine singles column, has won two Daytime Emmys for writing and producing The Rosie O’Donnell Show, staged her own one-woman success, 25 Questions for a Jewish Mother, and recently appeared on Broadway in Love, Loss, and What I Wore. But still no sitcom. So she’s taken matters into her own hands with her solo play, The Judy Show: My Life as a Sitcom. Running through September 10 at the DR2 Theatre in Union Square, the eighty-minute production examines Gold’s life through the lens of her obsession with the sitcoms of the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: We have four pairs of tickets to The Judy Show to give away for free. To be eligible to win, just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite sitcom to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, July 20, at 5:00 pm. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; four winners will be selected at random. Enter now to see if you will strike gold!