Pershing Square Signature Center

[Note: The review is for the 2022 production of Oratorio for Living Things at Ars Nova. The production returns for an encore run at the Signature Theatre in 2025.] Heather Christian's divine Oratorio for Living Things welcomes you to worship. To call this genre-nonconforming show a musical would be reductive: It's a sui generis meditation on time and existence, a classical choral masterwork infused with pop, blues and gospel. A dozen superlative vocalists and six marvelous instrumentalists make sense and aural spectacle out of Christian's compositions. Because the lyrics are dense and can be difficult to parse (some parts are in Latin, sometimes it builds into cacophony), librettos are distributed at the door. You can use them as hymnals to follow along, but engaging fully with Oratorio in all its mysterious glory is a transcendent experience.  Those familiar with Christian's background—she's described her upbringing as "avant-garde Catholicism"—and with her previous shows (I Am Sending You the Sacred Face, Animal Wisdom) know that ritual and religion are threaded throughout her work. Fittingly, director Lee Sunday Evans's simple yet effective staging sometimes evokes a church choir, with the cast swaying and clapping in unison. Aided by Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew evocative lighting, scenic designer Kristen Robinson has completely transformed Ars Nova's Greenwich House, placing the audience in tiered seating in the round; the performers pass inches from your face and sing...

The prolific David Cromer directs Talene Monahon's double-barreled satire, which looks at an Armenian-American family in two time periods: struggling to make it in the 1920s and then living in Kardashians-style hyperpublic luxury a century later. The cast of Second Stage's world premiere includes comic legend Andrea Martin, Susan Pourfar,Raffi Barsoumian, Nael Nacer, Tamara Sevunts and the frequent Cromer crony Will Brill (Stereophonic).