Nicole M Serratore

Arts, Culture, and Travel Journalism

NEW YORK, NY

I write about K-dramas, US and UK theater and my travels to and fro.

Nicole M Serratore

Arts, Culture, and Travel Journalism

NEW YORK, NY

I write about K-dramas, US and UK theater and my travels to and fro.

Review: Speak Softly, Go Far: Hannah Mamalis at Dublin Fringe Festival
As part of a series commissioned by the Dublin Fringe and the Abbey Theatre called Speak Softly, Go Far, three artists designed audio shows for the festival including Irish comedian and storyteller, Hannah Mamalis. Three years ago, I reviewed a show by Mamalis at the Edinburgh Fringe. Calling her work “reminiscent of the storytelling of Daniel Kitson,” I have been eager to get a second look.
Exeunt NYC
Sun & Sea at BAM Fisher
A climate change opera with a sly libretto is undone by a casually messy staging in an undersized venue. Nicole Serratore reviews. From a balcony above, we are looking down on the sand. Bodies of varying ages, sizes, genders, and ethnicities are soaking up the sunshine on this crowded beach where people apologize when their badminton shuttlecock falls on an unsuspecting stranger or an errant beach ball goes astray.
Exeunt NYC
Review: Merry Wives at the Delacorte
Madam Nkechi Ford and Madam Ekua Page, the leading ladies of Merry Wives, an adaption of Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor by Jocelyn Bioh, make for delightful companions for a joyous evening as we slowly return to large scale live theater in New York City. However, the show is entirely dependent on “the wives” for its energy and the comedy and joie de vivre start to fizzle when they are not on stage.
Exeunt NYC
New Zoom-inquisition show by Mabou Mines gets bogged down in its own density
The new show by Mabou Mines, the renowned New York-based experimental theatre company, takes the form of a cryptic Zoom-inquisition. It is meant to explore systemic oppression, but this gets buried in the play’s linguistic density.
The Stage
Review: Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy at the Guggenheim Museum
It feels counterintuitive to have found a sense of rejuvenation and freedom in a show about the oppressive nature of the patriarchy, but a pandemic will do that to you. My first live performance in 15 months was Ragnar Kjartansson’s blistering and yet cathartic Romantic Songs of the Patriarchy at the Guggenheim Museum.
Exeunt NYC
Review: Current at Arts Brookfield
As I start on the walking tour/audio installation Current in Zuccotti Park, a delivery bike races past me with a lit-up front tire that digitally flashes repeatedly “NYC is back.”. New York City did not cease to exist, but it has been changed. This is, in a way, exactly the point of New York and something Current is concerned with exploring.
Exeunt NYC
Review: This American Wife
I once briefly appeared on an episode of The Real World. But I have almost no relationship with reality television otherwise. This put me at a slight disadvantage to review Fake Friends’ This American Wife which takes as its primary text for exploration and interrogation, The Real Housewives franchise.
Exeunt NYC
Review: Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord at NYTW
It’s Day 422 of Kristina Wong’s Auntie Sewing Squad. Or it was the day I watched this streaming performance via New York Theatre Workshop called Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord. In March 2020, Wong, a performance artist with her touring work cancelled, started to create PPE for health care workers and firefighters across the US.
Exeunt NYC
Review: All the Different Ways That Commodore Matthew Perry Could Have Died
I do love long, explanatory play titles. Julia Izumi’s play, in its entirety, is called All the Different Ways That Commodore Matthew Perry Could Have Died Before Opening Japan But Didn’t. There’s something about a title taking up more space than we are used to that feels bold and gutsy. And this show may be small but it is mighty like it’s verbose title.
Exeunt NYC
Review: The Return of the Dragon at REDCAT
In the middle of Guillermo Calderón’s “micro-documentary,” The Return of the Dragon, he states: “We don’t know to what reality we are returning, in theater.”. For him and his creative collaborators in Chile, a revolution that began in 2019 was interrupted by the pandemic. In 2019, they had staged a piece of theater called Dragón.
Exeunt NYC
Review: Honestly Sincere at Theater in Quarantine
Liza Birkenmeier’s short play, Honestly Sincere, reminded me of every sweaty-handed phone call I made in elementary school and junior high (…ok maybe all the way through college). Birkenmeier’s entire play is phone-based. From this small white box theater, Joshua William Gelb portrays Greta, a 13-year-old girl with unauthorized access to her mother’s cellphone who is negotiating teen crushes, discussions of “s-e-x-ual” feelings” with her peers, and the unrelenting attraction to a “cool” girl.
Exeunt NYC
Review: The Long Goodbye at BAM/MIF
“It’s a rigged game, man.”. Riz Ahmed repeatedly says in his livestream performance, The Long Goodbye. He lists the litany of what his family lost—their language, land, and a sense of belonging. That’s a hell of a lot to lose. The British Empire colonized, destabilized, poisoned many parts of the world with white supremacy, and then invited those living in those countries to emigrate to the UK as they were part of “the Empire.”.
Exeunt NYC
Review: Bloodshot: The Call at Exponential Festival
When I saw Elinor T. Vanderburg’s Bloodshot at the Exponential Festival last year, I enjoyed its neo-noir, pulp fiction vibe. It was a dystopian fiction where a strange insomnia plague descended upon New York and caused exhausted people to explode in splattergore fashion. It was an interesting meeting of cinema and theater genres executed in a colorful nightclub-cum-streets of New York setting with a bombastic back-up band to boot.
Exeunt NYC
Review: Disclaimer at Under the Radar
A year ago, I saw Disclaimer as a work-in-progress at Under the Radar. In the halcyon days of January 2020, it was live. A year later, that I have to make that distinction, speaks to our weird moment in time. Disclaimer is now playing as completed work as part of Under the Radar in an interactive, live cameras-on Zoom format.
Exeunt NYC
Review: Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Netflix
An electric Viola Davis glows with sweat, rouge, and power in this successfully filmed version of August Wilson’s play Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. If she is the immovable object in this play, then Chadwick Boseman is the unstoppable force here. He brings awe and fury to this role. As his final screen performance, we are left contemplating the immensity of his absence when it is all said and done.
Exeunt NYC
Review: This is Who I Am at Woolly Mammoth
A father and son prepare fteer (a Palestinian bread) together, apart. Like many of us, they are connecting in a Zoom call across time zones. The unnamed son (Yousof Sultani) is in New York City. Dad (Ramsey Faragallah) is in Ramallah. But their separation is not purely geographic or pandemic-related.
Exeunt NYC

About

Nicole M Serratore

Nicole Serratore (she/her) is a New York City-based freelance journalist.

She has written opinion pieces, reviews, and features for the New York Times, American Theatre magazine, Variety, BAMbill, The Stage (UK), the Village Voice, Exeunt magazine, TDF Stages, TheaterJones.com, Flavorpill, and The Craptacular.

She is the former Managing Editor and the current Board President of non-profit Exeunt NYC Inc., a longform theater criticism website. She is a current member of the American Theatre Critics Association, the Drama Desk, and the Outer Critics Circle.

She was a co-host and co-producer of the Maxamoo theater podcast. She was a Fellow at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Critics Institute in 2015.

She has written about travel and world adventures for Shermans Travel and Frommers.com.

She has a B.F.A. in Film and Television from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She has a J.D. from Fordham University. She is a former film executive and producer. She once had a prize-winning cow.