Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly reported that the the Infinite Abyss company changed the age of the lead character in Mitzi’s Abortion. New Times regrets the error. A reputation of controversy precedes Mitzi’s Abortion, a Seattle black box hit in 2006 that deals directly with late-term abortion…

Before the play even begins, the first thing you notice are the lights. They’re everywhere: chicly mounted in foyer walls, hung from the ceiling, and positioned in wall sconces, table lamps, and floor lamps, all of them poised to illuminate the immaculate IKEA set. But when Side Effects does begin…

The best compliment I can offer Kevin Smith’s new movie, Red State, is that it feels nothing like a Kevin Smith movie — which is to say it’s targeted, finally, to a postpubescent audience. Try as he might have on Chasing Amy and Dogma, Smith has never been a fount…

As Bees in Honey Drown is a witty satire on the vagaries and temptations of fame in the late ‘90s, on the apparent necessity of personal reinvention, and on the impossible reconciliation of art and commerce. It remains compelling until the climax, even if the show’s cynicism is ultimately too…

Song of the Living Dead is set in an apocalyptic world overrun by the walking dead, but it couldn’t feel more alive. The zombies aren’t one-note automatons, snailing across the blood-spattered stage at the Promethean Theatre with arms outstretched in one direction. These are not your grandmother’s zombies, and they’re…

This posthumous world premiere by counterculture chronicler Ann Morrissette Davidon is an ambitious study of cultural oppression in a changing world. It’s set in 1962 in a secluded estate above the Hudson River, where playwright Lorraine Hansberry (Karen Stephens), still reaping the rewards of her groundbreaking Raisin in the Sun,…

Watching Todd Allen Durkin wend his way through a character as hefty and complex as his latest host body — a shell-shocked World War II veteran marooned in St. Louis in the Caldwell’s Six Years — is nothing short of a gift. In his Caldwell debut, Durkin is jittery and…

This posthumous world premiere by counterculture chronicler Ann Morrissette Davidon is an ambitious study of cultural oppression in a changing world. It’s set in 1962 in a secluded estate above the Hudson River, where playwright Lorraine Hansberry (Karen Stephens), still reaping the rewards of her groundbreaking Raisin in the Sun,…

Back in 1929, there was no Hoarders. There was no Hoarding: Buried Alive, its sensationally titled cousin on TLC. But over several decades beginning in the 1920s, Homer and Langley Collyer would become the first tabloid celebrity hoarders. The affluent couple buried themselves under some 130 tons of accumulated junk…

The astounding documentary Page One: Inside the New York Times provides an unprecedented all-access look into the inner sanctums of America’s newspaper of record. It focuses particularly on the reporters who covered the media business over the past year, from the WikiLeaks leak to the Comcast/NBC merger to the apocalyptic…

From the very introduction of this year’s “Summer Shorts” program, you know that change has finally come to an exhausted tradition. On a multipurpose, utilitarian set that looks like the wall of an abandoned warehouse, a couple of dancers in fishnets flank center stage, where the five-member ensemble — a…

Two old men sit on a back porch. They talk. They drink bourbon. One of them shoots down a ceiling fan. The other one thinks he’s having a heart attack. They watch a lunar eclipse. Curtain up. It all takes about 70 minutes. This is Ages of the Moon, the…

The Music Man, Meredith Wilson’s 1957 Tony winner about a traveling swindler who ignites a controversy in a fictional Iowa town, is an oddball sort of musical, which is why it’s accrued more cult acclaim than many Broadway shows. Its musical palette is eccentric, from jazzy scat rhythms to jubilant…

“May you be half an hour in Heaven before the Devil knows you’re dead.” — Irish proverb On the rustic, ramshackle set of Martin McDonagh’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane, a plaque bearing this ancient line of exquisite Irish poetry hangs on the wall like a traditional blessing of the…

Apparently the only thing missing from all those great journalistic exposés of the Afghanistan war is a little surrealist whimsy, some precious comic relief from all that torture and Islamophobia. How about injecting a quirky, wisecracking Afghan-American taxi driver or, better yet, an artificial heart that gives anyone who holds…

A lot can happen in one day, especially if the morning begins by getting wasted on a bottle of scotch. The three roommates in Theresa Rebeck’s Sunday on the Rocks do just that, and it’s no surprise when things don’t go down as smoothly as the liquor. All three have…

What happens when everything a filmmaker tells us about his characters is suddenly turned on its head? This is the dilemma that viewers of Abbas Kiarostami’s confounding Certified Copy will face late into this movie. It is at this point when the two main characters, William Schmiell’s pompous author and…

It’s hard to vomit convincingly onstage. Just ask Kim Ostrenko, who has to do it every show through May 15 at the Caldwell. Upchucking with verisimilitude is easier on film, where the artifice of editing can create a more sophisticated illusion. Watching Ostrenko throw up on opening night of the…

Set in the burgeoning hipster enclave of Portland, Oregon, Cold Weather is a Sherlock Holmes-style detective movie funneled through the lo-fi ethos of mumblecore. This languid, slacker whodunit follows Doug (Cris Lankenau), an unassuming Joe floundering in creative limbo, after jettisoning a career in forensic science. He moves back in…

Of the many wonderful phrases turned in Stephen Belber’s beautifully written Dusk Rings a Bell, one stands above the pack: the “artifice of contrition.” It refers to false acts of remorse or nonapology apologies — the palpable feeling you get when you hear public figures broadcast mea culpas for sins…

Like pornography, sexual addiction has probably been around ever since Adam removed Eve’s fig leaf. But in some eyes, it’s still not seen as a legitimate addiction. There is still no entry for sexual addiction in the DSM-IV — the psychologist’s bible — and the recent emergence of sexually addicted…