Seat Filler: NYC Theater Guide for March 2012

Tribes
Returning to the space where he helmed Our Town, out director David Cromer lends his exquisite touch to Nina Raine's family drama. Deaf actor Russell Harvard is immensely affecting as Billy, a deaf lip-reader and center of calm in a hearing family that yells but rarely listens. When a newly empowered Billy learns sign language and joins “the deaf community,” his skeptical father likens his self-marginalization to coming out as gay.
Barrow Street Theatre, through June 3.

Eternal Equinox
Enjoy smart but soapy Downton Abbey–style drama in Joyce Hokin Sachs’s engrossing docuplay about the love triangle between charming mountaineer George Mallory (Christian Pedersen) and Bloomsbury group artists Vanessa Bell and actively homosexual Duncan Grant (Hollis McCarthy and Michael Gabriel Goodfriend) in 1923. Extra kudos goes to the handsome gents, who bravely bare all in one of the smallest theaters in town.
59E59 Theaters, through March 31.

Teresa's Ecstasy
Promising playwright Begonya Plaza uneasily stars in her heady but half-baked drama as Carlotta, a journalist who travels to Barcelona to divorce Andrés, her Spanish husband, and write an article on Saint Teresa of Ávila. In a second-act shocker, Carlotta reveals that she’s fallen in love with her vapid editor and traveling companion, Becky (Linda Larkin, voice of Aladdin’s Jasmine), sending Andrés into a rage full of antigay rhetoric.
Cherry Lane Theatre, through April 1.