For someone who does not officially live in New York City, I see a lot of theater. I click on all sorts of Broadway-related headlines on social media to follow upcoming shows. I regularly listen to theater podcasts to find out about indie productions that might not otherwise cross my radar. I maintain an on-going list of all the shows I need to see. And then I write recaps to tell you all about everything I saw! Granted, if you’ve clicked on this, you probably have more than a passing interest in theater and have already heard of (if not seen) at least half of these shows. But offering my thoughts is one way I continue to engage with my theatrical experiences, as well as record them for posterity. So here are my thoughts on the 10 plays, musicals, Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway shows I’ve seen since August.

The Fantasticks by Tom Jones & Harvey Schmidt (off-Broadway)

Despite the fact that The Fantasticks is the longest running musical ever (off-Broadway from 1960-2002!), I’d somehow never seen it until just recently. It’s sort of a whimsical Romeo and Juliet story set to Tom Jones music… and I can’t say that ever held any appeal for me. But for the purpose of rounding out my knowledge of the musical theater canon, I dutifully added it to my list of shows to see in New York. That was years ago, but there’s always been something more interesting to catch my attention, so I kept pushing it off. And then in August — height of the doldrums for the New York City theater scene — I found myself with tickets to a Wednesday evening show that I was really excited about (Small Mouth Sounds) and no other show to pair it with for a matinee. Okay… finally time to check out The Fantasticks. Here’s how it went down: I arrive at the Jerry Orbach Theater (named after one of the show’s original stars) just off of Times Square. It looks to be a 99 seat theater and it’s about 30% full at this performance. I’m in the second row. I check out my Playbill; three of eight characters will be played by understudies today — must be typical in a long-running show like this. Two minutes before curtain, a woman in front of me unwraps her Subway sandwich and begins to eat it. Thankfully, a horrified usher intercedes and takes it away from her until intermission, where she is welcome to consume it in the lobby. The show begins. Whimsy is indeed how I’d describe it — the set is homespun and simple; a lot of it is left to our imaginations. There is a pianist and harpist — no other musicians. The Narrator starts us off with “Try To Remember”, the only well-known song which bookends the show. Funny side note: a few weeks after I saw the show, I saw a headline that Peter Reckell (longtime Bo Brady on Days of Our Lives) was taking over the part of Narrator for a short stint; apparently he played a smaller role in this show many decades ago, so it was a homecoming of sorts. Small world. Anyways… I made it through the show. Now I know what it’s about if it ever comes up in conversation during a theater discussion. And I got a glimpse into a tourist-trodden off-Broadway show that has really worn down over the years. Story-wise, it’s fluffy and I don’t understand why it’s endured for so long. But the same could be said of CATS.

Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl (off-Broadway)

This is the show I was most looking forward to — I missed its original production at Ars Nova early last year, and was grateful for this second chance to see it. The premise is so intriguing: Small Mouth Sounds takes place at a silent mediation retreat. What a challenge for a playwright, to build a world in which most of the characters do not speak. My only regret is that I read a handful of reviews before seeing this show and wish that I had gone in totally blind. So I won’t give you much information here. Because even tiny morsels of detail — such as how guests are connected, or a one-sentence summary of each person’s backstory — is unfair to know in advance, when part of the fun is piecing these clues together via short dialogue exchanges, facial reactions, wardrobe choices, and props. This is such a subtle play and the discovery process hinges on not knowing too much beforehand. The characters are not fully fleshed out, but you get enough facts to see the outline of their lives. Director Rachel Chavkin has staged the action in such a way that Small Mouth Sounds almost feels immersive — the audience is seated tennis court style, and you can pick where to focus your attention during most scenes because so much is going on. My only gripe about this staging / seating is that much of the action takes place on a platform at one end, and you have to lean forwards or backwards to see it clearly — at various points, I overheard people asking others not to lean back so far, etc. because they were blocking their view. I was aware of my own position, not wanting to block others at the risk of occasionally missing a visual of what was going on. I think it’s weird when the audience has to police themselves, instead of the show unfolding in a way that most of the audience can clearly see it. And yet… if I were the director, I’m not sure I’d do it any differently. It’s sort of a large space and they want to make it was intimate as possible, and this was a way to achieve that. I suspect this will be popular among region theaters over the next year or two; it’s budget-friendly (small cast, very little set) yet very engrossing.

The Layover by Leslye Headland (off-Broadway)

This is a sexy play (as Second Stage’s trailer for this show makes very clear). Two beautiful strangers strike up a conversation on an airplane just before Thanksgiving. When the plane must turn back to the gate due to maintenance issues, they are stuck in the city overnight with a paid hotel room… and it’s easy to see where things are headed. But then we follow both of these characters back to their regular lives and discover how truthful they were (or weren’t) with one another. The Layover is one part Harlequin novel, one part film noir, and one part family drama. My only previous exposure to Leslye Headland’s work is Bachelorette, and the way she writes women in that play is very distinctive, no-holds-barred, and foul-mouthed. There weren’t really traces of that in The Layover. But she sure knows how to write dialogue; I found the opening scene between the two leads extremely engaging. Decent acting all-around. This show isn’t must-see, but I’m glad I caught it.

Men On Boats by Jaclyn Backhaus (off-Broadway)

THIS SHOW! It’s my favorite new piece of theater. Check out this description: “Ten explorers. Four boats. One Grand Canyon. Men On Boats is the true(ish) history of an 1869 expedition, when a one-armed captain and a crew of insane yet loyal volunteers set out to chart the course of the Colorado River.” And get this: all of the men are played by women. It’s so delightfully subversive to watch females tell the history of American exploration by inhabiting roles that women at the time would never have been allowed to fill. And the lack of direct commentary on this is perfect — while the play is very funny, the humor does not rest upon the fact that these are women playing men; the exact same show COULD be played by male actors. But it’s so satisfying to see this incredible cast tear it up in their roles. I didn’t know any of these actresses before and each one was so specific and perfect as their character. Staging is simple and low-tech — while these explorers navigate ferocious rivers and treacherous waterfalls, we hear audio of gushing water (the sound design is excellent) and see the lighting change, but that’s it. Images of the Grand Canyon area are projected / wall-papered onto the walls. It doesn’t take much to set the scene when you have a talented cast like this leading the journey. I hope this show sees more action in New York and regionally.

Waitress by Sara Bareilles & Jessie Nelson (Broadway)

I’m going to use the word subversive to describe this show, too — without calling much attention to it, Waitress is firmly rooted in a woman’s perspective to a degree that I’ve never before seen in a Broadway musical. Off-broadway, yes. In plays, yes. But a Broadway musical? This has got to be the first time I’ve heard the word ‘spotting’ five times before intermission, and no one blinked an eye because it was so organic to the nature of the plot (waitress Jenna has been knocked up by her abusive husband and then falls in love with her gynecologist). For the first-time ever on a Broadway musical, this show has an all-female creative team — music and lyrics by Sara Bareilles, book by Jessie Nelson, and direction by Diane Paulus. It’s 2016, how is it the first time that’s happened?! But I digress. I must say that Waitress is excellent — I went in with modest expectations and completely fell for this musical. It’s got heart, humor, and a great cast. My only bone of contention is to the producing team who decided to completely hide the fact that lead Jessie Mueller was on vacation the week I saw the show — I bought my ticket at the box office an hour before curtain, and there was no mention of it. No signage in the lobby. No slip in the Playbill. It was only when I started reading cast bios five minutes before curtain that I saw another actress listed for the role of Jenna, and immediately Googled to see if Jessie Mueller had left the show (her face was still on the cover of the Playbill, despite no mention of her name inside). Turns out they printed Playbills just for this week featuring the understudy, so that they did not have to otherwise address the absence of the original star. THIS IS SO SHADY. In fact, the understudy even got entrance applause, because people in the audience didn’t realize it wasn’t the Tony-winning lead! For the record, the understudy was terrific and clearly did not affect my enjoyment of the show, but I give major side-eye to the producers for making the call to keep it under wraps until it was too late for people to ask for their money back.

Mechanics of Love by Dipika Guha (off-off-Broadway)

I heard about this show on Maxamoo, my go-to indie theater podcast. Then I saw that it there were $9 tickets available, and decided to add it to my theater itinerary because a girl can go broke trying to see all these shows. The venue is a small room with chairs lined against the walls on all four sides, with all the action happening right in front of you. Mechanics of Love is a four person play: two men and two women who keep switching romantic partners throughout until almost everyone has been with everyone else. It is surrealist so not everything makes sense or is supposed to make sense. The basic premise is that a man with a memory problem falls in love and elopes with a ballerina, forgetting that he already has a wife. Then the ballerina lives with them and falls in love with the wife. The fourth character is the best friend of the first guy, who is also a mechanic — there is lots of emphasis on the mechanics of things, both literal (cars) and figurative (love, life, death). While I can’t say I loved this show, I am not sorry to have seen it, especially as my experience with surrealist theater is limited and this was a good way to test the waters.

The Encounter by Simon McBurney (Broadway)

This show is something special. The Encounter debuted at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year and is now on Broadway; that impressive fact alone convinced me to buy a ticket. It’s an extremely unique piece of theater, and one largely based around the auditory experience — every member of the audience wears headphones for the show’s duration. While for the uninitiated this might sound like an unnecessary distraction, the fact that it’s done so well — and is so imperative to the storytelling of this piece — is what makes this show exceptional. Writer Simon McBurney stars as himself (he does have an understudy who takes over one performance per week, who presumably does the show as Simon?), detailing the journey of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre. Loren became lost in the Amazon rainforest in 1969 while following the Mayoruna tribe, a group of people who had very little contact with the civilized world before his presence. Simon communicates this story entirely through sound: in addition to the microphone by his chin, there are several other mics on the nearly-empty stage, including one that looks like the shape of a head — and as Simon whispers into its right ear, we feel his hot breath on our own right ear. And as he walks around that microphone, we hear his audio take a similar route from one ear to the other. Small pedals on the floor of that mic (and the mic at his desk) are used as looping devices, which Simon plays like instruments — he nonchalantly presses them to start and stop recording a particular sound, and then again to add more sounds to this loop track, until suddenly he’s created the full sounds of a jungle right before our very eyes with almost no props. Simon is an auditory magician. But he’s also an expert storyteller, and very convincingly puts us into Loren McIntyre’s shoes as he sets off into unknown territory following the Mayoruna tribe. He also invites bigger questions about time, communication, and consciousness. If you are a fan of the theater and appreciate artists who press at its boundaries, you will enjoy this piece. And I’m calling it now: the Tonys will present a special award to Simon and his sound engineer for the level of artistry demonstrated on The Encounter.

Oh Hello by Nick Kroll & John Mulaney (Broadway)

Perhaps I was predisposed to love Oh Hello because I so enjoy the comedic stylings of both Nick Kroll and John Mulaney — I’ve seen Nick several times at UCB in LA over the past decade, and John’s stand-up specials New in Town and The Comeback Kid have both logged repeated listenings on my iTunes account. In Oh Hello they play two old dudes Gil Faizon and George St. Geegland, fictional characters based on real-life senior citizens they saw one day at The Strand separately purchasing a copy of Alan Alda’s autobiography. They’ve honed these characters over the past decade, playing them regularly at comedy clubs and also during a segment on The Kroll Show called Too Much Tuna where they give unsuspecting guests a sandwich overly stacked with tuna. (At the performance I attended, Mo Rocca was the guest in attendance.) If you’re curious how they beefed up their act from a sketch comedy to a 90-minute Broadway play, so was I — and the short answer is they do it by dramatizing their own friendship in a way that references theatrical devices (for example, calling attention to the fact that whenever someone receives a one-way phone call on-stage, they repeat the information the other person is saying to keep the audience in the loop). That is likely where director Alex Timbers earns his keep. But the first half of the show is primarily George and Gil talking to the audience. I found the whole evening delightful and was grateful to find discounted tickets on TDF, considering their regional shows (and last year’s run in NYC) was mostly sold out.

Sell Buy Date by Sarah Jones (off-Broadway)

First of all, can we just talk about Sarah Jones for a minute — while she made a name for herself ten years ago with her Tony Award winning one-woman show Bridge & Tunnel, I only first became aware of her last June while working on the CFDA Fashion Awards (she played multiple characters in the opening video). She immediately calls to mind Anna Deveare Smith, another actress and playwright known for portraying multiple characters in her one-woman shows. In Sell Buy Date, Sarah takes on the topic of sex workers (get it: sell, buy, and date are all things men do to women) — she plays a professor in the distant future who is giving a lecture about the history of sex workers. This is fascinating and humorous because her character is examining our current era through a distant lens, noting how women had way less rights in the 2000s, everyone was gender binary back then, etc. As Sarah gives her lecture, she morphs into the interview subjects — various women and men talking about how sex workers have been treated in various decades. I won’t give away much more than that, but you get the idea. Sarah morphs into each character (around 15 in total) with incredible specificity that is delightful to watch. I highly recommend this show. And all tickets are only $30!

tick tick… BOOM! by Jonathan Larson and David Auburn (off-Broadway)

This will forever be a favorite show of mine, and I’ve seen it around seven times total. So when I read that the Keen Company was going to produce an off-Broadway revival, I knew I had to catch it. For those who aren’t familiar with this show (though I’m guessing that if you’re still reading this, you’re likely a theater geek and definitely know it), tick tick BOOM is the one-man show Jonathan Larsen wrote before he made RENT. After his untimely death, playwright David Auburn reworked it into a three-person show — Jonathan is still the main character, but he’s joined on-stage by his girlfriend Susan and best friend Michael. The premise: Jon’s 30th birthday is fast approaching and he still hasn’t written the next great American musical. Should he continue pursuing a life in the arts? Or if he’s not going to make it, should he sell out now like his friend Michael and take a lucrative yet soulless career in marketing? At its core, tick tick BOOM is about finding the courage to live an authentic life. For me, it’s my touchstone piece of theater — a chance to remind myself every few years that pursuing a dream is always a worthwhile enterprise; it’s about the journey, not the destination. Also — while this cast is great and the staging is energetic — it’s Jonathan Larson’s music that puts me in tears for the last 15 minutes. Not a year goes by that I don’t reflect how tragic it is that we lost this composer at such a young age. The fact that the lead of this production, Nick Blaemire, looks so much like Jonathan Larson adds even more emotional weight to this story.