Between Sept. 29th and Oct. 29th, I saw 14 shows in New York City. Three were on Broadway, eleven off-Broadway. Two musicals, twelve straight plays. A one-woman show. One featured mostly deaf actors, another delved into the politics of transgender pronouns. One is a country music adaptation of Chekov’s The Seagull. Another features a human playing a dog. One stars a recent Oscar winner. Two of the off-Broadway plays have since announced upcoming Broadway transfers.

Let’s dig in… here’s a brief recap and review of each show I saw last month.

Fool for Love by Sam Shepard (Broadway)

I got a last-minute $25 student rush ticket just before curtain (shhhhh let’s pretend I’m still in college) and was really excited to see these two actors — Nina Arianda and Sam Rockwell — in what appeared to be an intimate, tumultuous play. But I found it dreadfully mediocre, and even boring despite its mere 75-minute running time. Basic plot points: former lovers May and Eddie meet in a desert motel and wrestle with their past. An older gentleman sits in a chair on the fourth wall, unseen by the couple although both May and Eddie speak to him at various points; the slow reveal of the older man’s identity became my sole point of curiosity after the play’s first 20 minutes. Aside from that, each story beat of the couple’s back-and-forth struggle felt like a broken record and my interest lagged. Tom Pelphrey’s entrance (former soap actor!) injected some life into the plot as he shows up for a date with May, but I still walked out disappointed that I’d picked Fool for Love as my return to theater-going after two months away. I’m surprised to just now read that this Sam Shepard play was a finalist for the Pulitzer when it was first written in 1983. To this production’s credit, the NYT gave it a glowing review. We’ll agree to disagree.

Ugly Lies the Bone by Lindsey Ferrentino (off-Broadway)

If I was disappointed by Fool for Love, then Ugly Lies the Bone more than made up for it the next night. This Roundabout Underground production is happening in a very small space (62 seats) and all tickets are $25. It’s general seating so I’d recommend getting there early to snag a chair near the front — I sat first row center, which is my favorite place to experience theater, mostly free from the distraction of audience members. Ugly Lies the Bone stars Meryl Streep’s daughter Mamie Gummer who so fully inhabits this role that she really deserves to be mentioned without reference to her mother, but I can’t help it. She plays Jess, a veteran who has recently returned from her third tour in Afghanistan and is adjusting to life in her Florida hometown while dealing with crippling pain, which is made less intense by virtual reality video game therapy. The supporting characters are well-drawn and engaging as played by a trio of great actors — loving sister Kacie, Kacie’s dim-witted boyfriend Kelvin, and Jess’s long-time love Stevie whom she broke up with shortly before her most recent stint in Afghanistan and he has since married someone else. I loved this play and can’t recommend it enough. It runs through December 6th.

Empanada Loca by Aaron Mark (off-Broadway)

This one-woman play is riveting. RENT alum Daphne Rubin-Vega plays Dolores, a former drug dealer, con, and masseuse now living deep underground in an abandoned subway tunnel populated by rats. The entire show takes place in near-darkness as Dolores sits on her massage table — the only major item she brought with her from the outside world — and tells us her story. Writer and director Aaron Mark based this tale on Sweeney Todd, and Dolores’s trajectory mirrors the plot of Sweeney on a level that is fun for Sondheim / musical theater lovers to follow. But it is Daphne’s wholly engaging delivery of the material that draws the audience in and doesn’t let them go. I saw the third preview — with only about 10 other people in attendance; how luxurious to watch this story unfold in such an intimate way — and even that early on I was struck by how remarkable her performance is. There is no room for B.S. when a single actor talks to the audience at close range for 90 minutes. It is entrancing… see it before it closes on November 15th, or seek out a future run.

The Humans by Stephen Karam (off-Broadway)

This family drama has recently announced a Broadway transfer, so if you don’t catch it in its current space by January 3rd, you’ll have another chance to see it in the spring. The plot in a nutshell: the Blake family celebrates Thanksgiving at daughter Brigid’s Manhattan apartment for the first time instead of at their usual Pennsylvania hometown. As the evening wears on, tension cuts deep and hard truths pour out. It’s an honest portrait of how complicated family relationships are, exploring familial irritation / friction and the glue of underlying love that bonds them together. It’s not always easy to watch but I was glad to catch this show.

Barbecue by Robert O’Hara (off-Broadway)

Well this is one of the more surprising shows I’ve seen lately. If you’re familiar with Robert O’Hara’s last play Bootycandy (I wasn’t), then perhaps its structural twists and turns won’t surprise you, but I was very happy to go along for the crazy and unexpected ride that is Barbecue. (I’ll refrain from spoilers in this review but can’t avoid one in the first act, so stop reading after the next sentence if you might see a future production and want to be completely surprised.) A family arrives at a public park to prepare for an alcohol and narcotics intervention for their sister / aunt — although each one of the relatives has his or her own apparent vice that makes one wonder how this endeavor could possibly be successful. And then about 15 minutes into the play there’s a brief black out, and when the lights come back up the caucasian family has been replaced by a black family wearing approximately the same costumes. The story picks up right where it left off with no explanation for this casting switch. (Ushers did not hand out Playbills until intermission to protect this twist.) About 15 minutes later, the lights go out again for a moment, and when they come back up the white family returns to pick up telling the story. They go back-and-forth like that for the whole first act until a MAJOR surprise happens in the last 15 seconds before intermission that completely changes the direction of the play. Act two explains that giant reveal, and the show’s conclusion is one of the most fun ways to end a show that I’ve ever seen. So glad I took a chance on this one.

Spring Awakening by Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik (Broadway)

Much has been written about this transcendent revival of Spring Awakening, a co-production with Deaf West Theatre featuring an even mix of deaf and hearing actors, and I can only add to the heaps of praise lauding the show. Director Michael Arden has staged it with such precision and alchemy, bringing tremendous energy to each number. I challenge you to see this and, regardless of your familiarity with the music, resist the urge to bop along in your seat. But Arden is perhaps best at orchestrating the gut-wrenching moments (musical or otherwise) that illicit such compassion for these young characters trying to find their way in late 1800’s Germany. Spring Awakening ran on Broadway less than a decade ago, but telling this story through the prism of deaf actors makes it as compelling as ever, and perhaps even more so than the original. Deaf actors play the leads, shadowed by their speaking / singing counterparts. Arden draws a parallel to the Milan Conference (also in the late 1800s) where it was determined that oralism — the use of speech, not sign language — would be the standard method of education for deaf students. The confusion that must’ve been inherent for deaf teens navigating that change is closely aligned to the themes of Spring Awakening (young people coming into their own amidst strict adult control), making it a natural choice to tell this story with deaf performers. Do yourself a favor and see this before it closes in January.

The Christians by Lucan Hnath (off-Broadway)

I didn’t know much about this before seeing it, and I can’t say I loved it. But it had powerful moments. The play begins as the head pastor of a mega-church delivers the news that they have finally paid off the church mortgage. He then launches into a sermon about how he’s recently had the revelation that there is no hell. The associate minister rises to challenge him, saying that goes against what the bible preaches. He then departs, with much of the congregation following. As time progresses, a member of the church’s board of directors tries to convince the head pastor to recant his assertion that there is no hell and amend the split in their congregation. A choir member challenges him during a service, asking if the pastor purposely waited to share his revelation until after the church’s mortgage was paid off, anticipating a negative reaction. His own wife questions why he would make a selfish choice on his own that compromises their future lives with the church. This all builds to the pastor’s emotional breakdown at the play’s conclusion. The ideas explored by playwright Hnath were interesting enough but I wasn’t fully captivated.

Eclipsed by Danai Gurira (off-Broadway)

This play follows several women — sister-wives, of sorts — during the second Liberian civil war in the 1990s. They live in a simple hut amidst gun shots and danger, while being alternately called on for sexual favors by their ‘husband’ warlord. The play is about how these women cope with limitations placed on them by men and war, and how one of them — the youngest, played by recent Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o — determines to remove herself from the warlord’s grasp and seek power of her own even as she cannot escape the war itself. Despite the heavy subject matter, there are moments of humor (particularly as the women read through a tattered copy of Bill Clinton’s autobiography in their downtime) and it’s worth investing your time to hear their story. This play will soon wraps up its run at the Public Theater in preparation for a move to Broadway in late February.

Lost Girls by John Pollono (off-Broadway)

I fell hard for this play. I did not see John Pollono’s well-reviewed play Small Engine Repairs when it ran in NY and LA a few years ago, but now I’m kicking myself because I really like his work in Lost Girls (which also transferred from LA). We meet mom Maggie, a chain-smoking Piper Perabo, on the morning that she realizes her teenage daughter Erica has stolen her car to run off just as Maggie herself once did as a teen. Her ex Lou comes over (with his new wife) and they fret over where she might’ve gone. The action cuts back and forth with two teenagers in a motel room, who are presumably (but not necessarily, according to the characters listed in the Playbill) Erica and her boyfriend. Maggie and Lou talk through their past, as does Maggie and her own mother. The dialogue is spot-on; these are fully fleshed-out human beings (side note: I dig their Boston-area accents; the play is set in New Hampshire). And then we’re hit with a series of twists that are smartly worked into the narrative. This play runs through November 29th and I suspect it will have a life beyond this run, as it’s quite good with a very strong cast.

Before Your Very Eyes by Gob Squad (off-Broadway)

I wasn’t familiar with Gob Squad until this show — they’re a group of UK and German theater artists who use performance and video, exploring the point where theater meets art, media, and real life (description from their website). While I like to recap the theater I see in my own words, I’m going to lean on the Public Theater’s description of this show because it’s so apt: “From behind the safety of one-way mirrors, the audience witnesses seven lives lived in fast forward — from angst-ridden teens to hunched geriatrics. As we adults try to stop the process of aging and preserve youth as long as we can, these children peer into the future and nostalgically back at their recent past as they prepare to leave childhood forever.” Two larger-than-life video screens bookend either side the other stage and the children (ages 8-14) look back on interviews they did two years ago upon first starting this project with Gob Squad. The visual impact of seeing these kids interact with their former selves is bound to serve an emotional wallop; it’s almost as though the whole project might have sprung from this premise. But then we see the kids age in front of us, wearing rebellious teenager clothes and make-up, then transition to 30-somethings, then 50-somethings, and finally octogenarians. It feels a little gimmicky at times. But I appreciate seeing how this group experiments with the boundaries of theater.

Sylvia by A.R. Gurney (Broadway)

In this revival, Matthew Broderick plays a man who spontaneously brings home a stray dog from the park one day, giving little thought as to how his wife will appreciate the new addition to their family (she is much less thrilled about the new pet). Recent Tony winner Annaleigh Ashford plays the eponymous dog Sylvia and this actress is almost certain to add to her trophy collection in the spring — her performance is both hysterical and accurately canine, especially in light of A.R. Gurney’s spot-on dialogue in Sylvia’s internal monologues. If you’re a dog owner you might find yourself howling (pun intended) with laughter over lines that you’re certain your own dog has thought at one point or another. My initial suspicions about this play being demeaning to women — a young cute 20-something has to get on the ground and pretend to be a dog for her male master? why couldn’t it be a male dog? — proved less complicated than I feared. The fact that Sylvia is female is directly addressed between Matthew Broderick’s character and a fellow dog owner in the park. Bottom line: this is a very funny comedy and if you love dogs, you’ll love Sylvia. Fun fact: Sarah Jessica Parker played the role in the original Broadway production.

Kill Floor by Abe Koogler (off-Broadway)

I took somewhat of a risk on this new show by a new playwright and found it less fully realized than I hoped it would be. Andy (an always-terrific Marin Ireland) plays a woman returning to her hometown after five years in prison; somewhat desperate for employment, she accepts a position on the kill floor of a slaughterhouse even though the demands of her job routinely induce nausea and her married boss (a high school classmate) often hits on her. Meanwhile, she attempts to repair her relationship with her teenage son who has been in foster care since her prison sentence began. He is gay but not yet out of the closet; we painfully watch him embark on a series of interactions with a fellow student who is less than kind (in fact, downright abusive) towards him. And then the play just ends, quite abruptly. I can’t say it left much of an impression on me. I am glad they didn’t focus too much on the gory details of the slaughterhouse; aside from a few key facts about the process, they left most of it to our imaginations.

Hir by Taylor Mac (off-Broadway)

If the 1990s and 2000s brought about many well-written (and well-received) plays on the theme of homosexuality, then surely the next decade or two will produce terrific work on the topic of transgender issues. This is the first I’ve seen — another, Southern Comfort based on a movie of the same name, was just announced for next season at the Public Theater — and, based on novelty alone, I found it fascinating. Isaac returns from war to his parents’ home, and finds that nothing is as he left it — his father Arnold’s stroke the previous year has left him mentally incapacitated, and his mother Paige has turned their home into a hoarder’s paradise. After being subjected to years of abuse from her husband, Paige is proud to now be in control of their lives and takes tremendous pleasure in humiliating Arnold by dressing him in a woman’s frock and clown wig. Adding to the family drama is the fact that Max, Isaac’s younger sister, is now his younger brother following a gender switch while Isaac was away. Isaac finds out about ALL of this information alongside the audience; he spends the rest of the play processing and trying to make things right again. The play’s title refers to a gender-neutral pronoun — Max prefers to be called HIR instead of him/her and ZE instead of he/she. I had no idea of this politically correct grammar and was glad that playwright Taylor Mac (who often deals with gender issues in his work) uses this story to educate us. It’s a fine play, if at times difficult to get through while watching Paige (a terrific Kristine Nielsen) so loudly control the room after decades of staying quiet. I look forward to seeing more work in this newly emerging genre over the coming years.

Songbird by Michael Kimmel and Lauren Pritchard

This musical — or play with music, as there are lots of book scenes — is one of my favorite shows of the past month. It’s a retelling of Chekhov’s The Seagull set in a present-day small town outside of Nashville. Tammy (played by the outrageously talented Kate Baldwin) has become a superstar country singer over the previous decade and returns with her younger boyfriend to the honky tonk bar where she got her start. Her son, with whom she has a tenuous relationship at best, is ready to make his own country music debut with his girlfriend but Tammy selfishly slams down his hopes. Over the ensuing two hours we watch the characters of this town follow their Seagull counterparts beat-for-beat, but I’d never have realized that if I hadn’t poured over the Wikipedia page on Chekhov’s play following the performance I saw. Songbird unfolds so naturally as though it wasn’t informed by a play from the late 1800s; it appears to operate entirely on its own, with catchy country music to boot. I’m not normally a big fan of that genre (outside of the TV series Nashville) but I eagerly ate up all the music presented here. I can’t wait for the next incarnation of this musical — Broadway producers, are you paying attention? — and the eventual album release so that I can listen to the numbers on repeat.