All stories by Maya Phillips on BroadwayStars

Monday, June 21, 2021

'In the Heights' and Colorism: What Is Lost When Afro-Latinos Are Erased by Maira Garcia, Sandra E. Garcia, Isabelia Herrera, Concepción De León, Maya Phillips and A.O. Scott

The film, set in a New York neighborhood known as the Little Dominican Republic, didn't cast dark-skinned Latinos in lead roles. Our writers discuss how that absence reverberates.

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Sunday, June 20, 2021

Raja Feather Kelly and 'The Kill One Race': TV and Theater by Maya Phillips

Raja Feather Kelly's "The Kill One Race" and "This American Wife" exist in a realm between, changing our relationship with what we witness.

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Friday, June 18, 2021

'Liminality' Is Theater of the Mind That Explores the In-Between by Maya Phillips

A new virtual reality experience in Williamsburg marries wondrous production values with banal narratives.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:32PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, June 15, 2021

'Revolution Rent' Review: Taking the Show South by Maya Phillips

This HBO documentary follows Andy Señor Jr. as he directs a production of "Rent" in Cuba.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:18PM[SHARE]
Sunday, May 23, 2021

'This American Wife' Review: Wives Out, Knives Out by Maya Phillips

The play is a wild genre-bending parody of, and homage to, "The Real Housewives" franchise.

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Thursday, May 20, 2021

'A Dozen Dreams' Review: Eerie Memories Bring Magic to the Mall by Maya Phillips

Twelve exquisitely designed installations capture the fears, hopes and reveries shared on audio by 12 women playwrights.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 09:06PM[SHARE]
Monday, May 17, 2021

'Lilies' Review: A Queer Romantic Drama That Wilts Quickly by Maya Phillips

Michel Marc Bouchard's melodrama, about an illicit gay love affair in 1912, displays a lot of kookiness and little self-awareness.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 07:48PM[SHARE]
Sunday, May 9, 2021

'Mary Stuart' Review: A Battle Royal in a Brooklyn Apartment by Maya Phillips

With four actors and a contemporary setting, Bedlam offers an audacious, if half-baked, take on the Schiller play about the fate of Mary, Queen of Scots.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:54PM[SHARE]
Thursday, May 6, 2021

'Zoetrope' Review: And You Thought Your Apartment Was Small? by Maya Phillips

Exquisite Corpse Company's clever choose-your-own-adventure play has a handful of viewers peek in on a Brooklyn couple in really close quarters.

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Friday, April 30, 2021

'Black Feminist Video Game' Review: Pixels and Polemics by Maya Phillips

Live performances via Zoom mix with actual game footage in this well-intentioned but preachy play by the poet Darrel Alejandro Holnes.

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'Romeo and Juliet' Meets the Hot Vax Summer by Maya Phillips

A lusty new production is both an enticement and a warning as we tentatively explore intimacy after a year of forced solitude.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:42PM[SHARE]
Sunday, April 25, 2021

'Block Association' Review: Yes, in Your Backyard by Maya Phillips

In this clever show, audience members join a "neighborhood" and lobby for how its discordant residents should to spend a chunk of community money.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:42PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Review: Close Quarters and Distant Love in 'The Last Five Years' by Maya Phillips

Casting Black actors and filming in a claustrophobic New York apartment revitalizes Jason Robert Brown's popular two-character musical.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:03PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Jeremy O. Harris's Grad School Reunion by Maya Phillips

At the Yale School of Drama, the playwright Jeremy O. Harris found the kind of classmates that you can trust with your first drafts.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:03AM[SHARE]
Thursday, April 8, 2021

'Only Child' Review: A Magnetic Performer Without a Story to Match by Maya Phillips

The autobiographical solo show from Daniel J. Watts shows off his skill with spoken word and dance, but doesn't add up to more than the sum of its parts.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 12:32PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, April 6, 2021

'Blindness' Review: Listening to the Sound of Theater Again by Maya Phillips

Stimulating and immersive " yet actor-free " this audio adaptation of the Saramago novel brings the terror of an epidemic into your ears.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:42PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, March 30, 2021

When Tragedy Strikes, What Does Criticism Have to Offer? by Maya Phillips

It's easier to find meaning in fiction than in the senseless mass killings of our reality, which seem to render the critical perspective pointless, even silly, at times.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 10:03AM[SHARE]
Monday, March 29, 2021

Review: In 'Crowns, Kinks and Curls,' Getting to the Roots of Black Hair by Maya Phillips

Keli Goff's series of vignettes feature Black women recounting how their hair affected their school lives, relationships or careers.

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Thursday, March 18, 2021

Review: A Selfie's in the Picture for This 'Dorian Gray' by Maya Phillips

Oscar Wilde meets Instagram in a slick, shrewd and screen-filled update, the filmed collaboration by five British theaters.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:36PM[SHARE]
Thursday, March 4, 2021

'The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run' Review: Still Square by Maya Phillips

This new franchise installment, "Sponge on the Run," wants to be clever in nodding toward genre conventions. But its execution is poor.

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Wednesday, March 3, 2021

A 'Rent' Reunion Measures 25 Years of Love and Loss by Maya Phillips

A fund-raiser, a tribute, a documentary " and a reminder that Jonathan Larson's musical remains especially inspiring in hard times.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:54PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, February 17, 2021

'Live From Mount Olympus' Review: Oh My Godsss, Who Am I? by Maya Phillips

This audio series translates the Greek myth of Perseus for teens, making its hero a young man still figuring out his destiny.

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Thursday, February 11, 2021

Review: Shakespeare's Baddies Convene in 'All the Devils Are Here' by Maya Phillips

Patrick Page writes and stars in a meditation on the Bard's villains, moving swiftly through a catalog of characters as if he were a chameleon.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:24PM[SHARE]
Friday, January 29, 2021

'The Poltergeist' Review: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Madman by Maya Phillips

A breakneck performance by Joseph Potter as an embittered former prodigy carries this unnerving monologue from Philip Ridley.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2021

Review: Road Tripping with Frankenstein's Monster in 'Maery S.' by Maya Phillips

Sibyl Kempson's unruly audio play takes Mary Shelley and her famed creation from old England to contemporary America. Bigfoot shows up, too.

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Monday, January 18, 2021

Paging Through Broadway While the Stages Are Dark by Maya Phillips

As she packs her things to make a move, a critic lingers over her memories, many slickly packaged, some not.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 01:24PM[SHARE]
Sunday, January 17, 2021

A Trip Into the Otherworldly With Adrienne Kennedy as Guide by Maya Phillips

A digital four-play retrospective, capped by a world premiere, illuminates this writer's fascination with doubling, violence and Black identity.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:32PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, January 12, 2021

My Ears Have Been Opened by the Audio Play Explosion by Maya Phillips

Short, sharp and often funny, the work featured in the "Playing on Air" series can even make vacuuming a pleasure.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 04:03PM[SHARE]
Wednesday, December 30, 2020

In Four Audio Plays, No Stages but Lots of New Voices by Maya Phillips, Jesse Green and Laura Collins-Hughes

A big-box store, a hotel for transgender women and a dinner party gone awry are some of the places your ears will take you to.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 05:48PM[SHARE]
Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Lost in 2020: Epic Shakespeare, and the Theater That Planned It by Maya Phillips

Brave Spirits Theater expected to mount an ambitious cycle of eight history plays. Instead it became yet another victim of the pandemic.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 03:32PM[SHARE]
Friday, December 18, 2020

'Christmas Carol' Review: Brooding Scrooge Gets Ghosted by Maya Phillips

An elaborate production streamed live from London makes a miser out of Andrew Lincoln and the rest of us rich with holiday cheer.

SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 06:48PM[SHARE]

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