Through July 26, PS 122, 150 1st Ave. (at E. 9th St.), for a full schedule visit www.ps122.org. What’s less than zero, other than a really good Elvis Costello song? This experimental theater fes Read more

Summer can be a trying time for theatergoers. If you’ve been vigilant about staying up-to-date with Broadway’s latest, there’s very little to tempt you as actors and producers take a much needed break before the start of the new season. Luckily, summer is also the season of festivals. And before the Fringe Fest returns to downtown Manhattan in August for the 12th year, fans of up-and-coming writers and performers have more choices than they can handle thanks to the undergroundzero festival and the 10th annual Midtown International Theatre Festival (MITF). Read more

Shakespeare by the water. For Free. I once saw Cat Power at Castle Clinton. She talked to a squirrel for 10 minutes.This must. Read more Read it in print

Reeling from the death of a loved one, a tough daughter must also grapple with her pill-popping shrew of a mother, who seems intent on destroying both herself and her family. No, I’m not writing about the recently closed August: Osage County. Carole Gaunt’s new play Dance of the Seven Headed Mouse just bears an overwhelming resemblance to that instant classic. And she has done herself no favors by conjuring up comparisons to Tracy Letts’s sprawling American tragedy. Read more

It turns out The Princess Diaries may not be such horrible preparation for Shakespeare. Anne Hathaway, starring in the Shakespeare in the Park’s rendition of Twelfth Night (Anne Hathaway was also the name of Shakespeare’s wife, for those interested in cosmic coincidences), was the show’s biggest draw—and greatest potential liability, but she gives an impressive performance as Viola, a shipwrecked aristocrat posing as a male servant. Read more

Broadway performer Anika Larsen (All Shook Up, Xanadu) has written a musical valentine to her multi-cultural family in Shafrika, The White Girl, but good intentions aren’t enough to prevent Shafrika from feeling overblown and overwritten. Read more

Imagine actually sitting in the audience of the door-slamming show within the show in Noises Off!, the one in which everything that can go wrong does. That’s pretty much what happens when you buy a ticket to see machines machines machines machines machines machines machines. The key to the show is right there in the title: Why repeat something once or even three times when you can do it seven? Read more

The hippies are long gone, but you’d never know it from The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side, now playing at P.S. 122. A painfully prolonged look at four young activists living rent-free in exchange for running a vegan café, the entire show is a mass of contradictions and implausible characters. Read more

Can someone please send copies of the film Network to playwright Theresa Rebeck and everyone at Playwrights Horizons? If anyone involved with Rebeck’s new satire, Our House, had bothered to watch the Paddy Chayefsky classic, they would have had second thoughts about putting on Rebeck’s latest potshot at the entertainment world—this time focusing on network news and reality TV. Read more

After a season crowded with overblown musicals, dead-on-arrival revivals and inert comedies (and that’s only counting Broadway shows), Next Fall and its charismatic cast comes as a breath of refreshing air. Read more