Seat Filler: NYC Theater Guide for February 2012

Ionescopade
The Bald Soprano, Rhinoceros, and lesser-known works of absurdist playwright Eugene Ionesco get a vaudevillian twist in the York Theater’s strained revival of Robert Allan Ackerman and Mildred Kayden’s 1974 revue, which features mildly amusing skits and clowning. The game cast includes Leo Ash Evans, who plays a gender-bending cabaret singer in “Everyone Is Like Me,” a stale ditty suggested by Jack or The Submission.
Theatre at St. Peter’s, through February 26.

Blood Knot
The phenomenal pair of Scott Shephard (Wooster Group’s Vieux Carré) and out Big Gay Sketch Show alum Colman Domingo (the GLAAD Award–winning A Boy and His Soul) elevate this chilling revival of Athol Fugard’s 1961 Beckettian drama about biracial brothers — one dark-skinned and one who can pass for white — who engage in dangerous games of pretend while sharing a tiny shack in apartheid-era South Africa.
The Pershing Square Signature Center, through March 11.

The Road to Mecca
Although Athol Fugard’s 1987 drama can be exhaustingly slow and talky, LGBT audiences will relate to the incomparable Rosemary Harris as Miss Helen, an elderly South African artist whose neighbors are threatened by her eccentric outsider spirit and controversial sculpture garden. Carla Gugino and Jim Dale provide essential sparks as Helen’s confidant and the conservative priest trying to move her into an old-age home.
American Airlines Theatre, through March 4.