BROADWAY & ME QUICKIES

The Play: An entertaining psychological thriller about a playwright who finds the lines between his life and his art blurring after he hooks up with a mysterious guy in a bar who starts popping up in unsettling ways   Written by: David Cale        Directed by: Leigh Silverman One good thing: Caroline Eng’s eerie sound design helps to keep everything deliciously off-kilter   One not-so-great thing: The plot is overly convoluted but Sean Hayes is so charmingly adept as he portrays a dozen or so characters in this 75-minute solo show that he makes a slightly bumpy ride totally worth the trip    

The Play: The Dinosaurs, an earnest but ultimately disappointing play about the importance of 12-step programs like AA, filtered through the time-jumping experiences of a group of women who meet weekly to support one another as they share their stories and their struggles to maintain sobriety   Written by: Jacob Perkins        Directed by: Les Waters One good thing: Any chance to see master actors like  April Matthis,  Elizabeth Marvel and  Kathleen Chalfant  is a treat One not-so-great thing: The play doesn’t really say anything new about the challenges of recovery that hasn’t been said in scores of other plays and movies      

The Play: The Other Place; a disappointing modern-day riff on the Antigone story that flirts with themes of grief, incest, infidelity and mental illness but without saying anything meaningful about any of them Written and directed by: Alexander Zeldin         One good thing: Tobias Menzies brings his usual leonine intensity to the role of the uncle who clashes with the play’s version of Antigone over how best to honor—or dishonor—the dead One not-so-great thing: The sound design— little chirps to signal scene changes and ominous clangs to announce “important” moments—was annoying and the visuals didn’t make much sense either, particularly a large and seemingly expensive screen that hovered over the stage at certain points but disappeared during others    

The Play: Making a Show of Myself; a surprisingly moving one-woman show about the importance of the stories we tell one another, and ourselves  Written by: Mary Kate O Flanagan        Directed by: Will O’Connell One good thing:  The Irish-born Flanagan delivers each of the six beautifully crafted monologues about her life in an unusually soothing and totally captivating voice  One not-so-great thing: There’s no set, no costume changes and no major traumas revealed, which may disappoint theatergoers who require heavy helpings of razzle-dazzle