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Off-Off Dispatch: From a Cherry Orchard to Trinity to TrinityClaire Tumey - October 3rd, 2025
Megan Metrikin’s Lubov commanded attention without ever forcing it, exuding natural sexuality and an aristocratic poise that held just enough charm to lure one into sympathizing (a little) with her fall from power. Czerwonko, as Lophakin, expertly restrained a Barry Keoghan-in-Saltburn-esque volatility that seemed to always be bubbling under the surface of his quest to take Lubov’s place; he hubristically–and satisfyingly, theatrically speaking–falls prey to the forces of materialistic desperation and paranoia that once put him and his father on the losing end of the aristocracy’s consolidation game. Magnetic and idiosyncratic, Lauren Guglielmello was wholly devoted to her mantle as the emotional center of the play: Varya, Lubov’s adopted daughter and the overworked manager of the estate. It’s a large cast, each part with its own starmaking moments and a well-rehearsed synchronicity that constellate to form what I consider to be the greatest achievement a scrappy independent theater company can muster: an ensemble show with truly evenly distributed load-bearing responsibility.
The Cherry Orchard: A multimedia approach to telling the story of Anton Chekhov's Russian classicScott Bennett in theaterscene.net - September 30th, 2025
The ensemble of actors beautifully embodies the characters, exploring some of the subtler elements of their personalities…The character of Firs, as presented in the film, is a departure from the importance of the character and his physical interactions with the various groups. He is deaf and senile and is Chekhov’s representation of old Czarist Russia. While presenting Firs in a film is a departure from the original text, it is handled effectively by director Czerwonko. It imparts a ghost-like presence to the character, which would be in line with the nature of the character as conceived by Chekhov.
The staging area lends itself to an immersive quality, another element that helps focus on particular aspects of the performances. The structure of the show allows for a clearer understanding of who these characters are and how they fit into the whole collapsing world of the estate and ultimately, the cherry orchard.
Acton Says: …And I Feel Fine: “The Cherry Orchard” at Rutgers Presbyterian ChurchActon in Front Mezz Junkies - September 28th, 2025
ADULT FILM always feel custom-built to the space they inhabit, and The Cherry Orchard, staged in an upstairs theater that wouldn’t be out of place in “Twin Peaks“, is no exception. Characters enter and exit from all directions, creating the impression of a vast estate with lives led beyond the proscenium. Our point of view is shifted as if watching a tracking shot as a baby grand piano glides from one corner of the room to the other…The multimedia approach is put to particularly good use in the character of Firs, the aged manservant played by John Christopher Jones and who appears exclusively on film. Firs has the strongest attachment to the old aristocracy, and is abandoned at the end of the play, forgotten somewhere in the old house. It’s a haunting performance, made even more poignant by Jones’ death earlier this month.
Overall, though, this is a happy Cherry Orchard, generous with invention and humor, with its thumb on the scale for the opportunity and excitement that change can bring rather than nostalgic longing for what’s lost.
CHEKHOV IS A DANCE FLOORLee Ritchie in BRUISER MAG - September 25th, 2025
While this is not a Brechtian play in the didactic sense, The Cherry Orchard is certainly liberatory in a very different way—namely, in its sheer vitality. Where Brecht imagines a raised dais to break the fourth wall, Adult Film arguably does so even more effectively across a leveled dance floor. Moreover, there is direct audience engagement, such as when Yasha (Taylor Petracek) extends a trayful of “champagne” to the audience and asks if anyone wants some; the guy next to me accepted and remarked that it was tasty. But the effect is never alienating or estranging. Rather, it is invigorating. These are intensely physical performances—involving complex blocking, song and dance sequences, gymnastic feats, simulated sex, jumping, screaming, laughing, and crying. At one emotional zenith, lamenting the earlier tragic loss of her son, Lubov practically waterboards herself with a bottle of champagne, which splashed at my feet. Is this really happening? I asked myself. Theater today lives and breathes; above all, it moves.
Review: Adult Film's "The Cherry Orchard" Reaps a Fresh Harvest from the Chekhov ClassicThinking Theater - September 22nd, 2025
Adult Film+Theatre's fantastic new production of The Cherry Orchard, which makes its debut after a yearlong development process, embraces and foregrounds these and other sorts of hauntings, including those of cinematic influences such as Federico Fellini, while assertively bringing the play into a present that is simultaneously the past. This sort of category collapse characterizes the production as a whole: it renders permeable boundaries not only between past and present, making the idea of anachronism irrelevant, but also between film and theater, spectator and cast, performance and non-performance spaces, and even genres, giving audiences a funny, sometimes surreal Chekhov by intensifying The Cherry Orchard's inherent tragicomedy.
Living in the chekhovian renaissanceJosh Feye - September 15th, 2025
JF: So what are you doing differently in the process from Sea Gull to your latest production of The Cherry Orchard?
RC: Certain elements we played with in Sea Gull—video projections, dance, anachronistic music—we realized we’d have to quadruple for The Cherry Orchard. I didn’t want to rely on melodrama like in Sea Gull. The Cherry Orchardis much more anti-climactic. Megan Metrikin, who plays Ranevskaya and who played Arkadina in our Sea Gull, is a lifelong Fellini obsessive, as am I. There’s also this Russian director, Nikita Mikhalkov, whose films blend Russian and Italian sensibilities. That’s what I wanted for this, very maximalist, surreal, dreamlike, with ideas exploding against the simplicity of a set that’s just six chairs. I believe The Cherry Orchard is a comedy, and that Chekhov should be fast. I’m not interested in the tired “crumbling aristocracy” line; I’m interested in love and sex. Lubov means love, and I think she’s a woman hurling herself after love, destroying everything in her path, including the orchard, doing it for love…
New York TIMES: HOW a Small Avant-Garde Theater Makes It Work in BrooklynBy Matthew Haag, Photographs by Ye Fan
In New York City, there are three types of theaters. Broadway, of course. One step down is Off Broadway. Then there is Off Off Broadway, with low-budget, avant-garde shows and small venues. The Brick is one of those theaters.
We’re very honored to be featured in this wonderful NY Times article about our favorite theatre in the city, The Brick! Our production of Cemetery Soup was photographed for it.
Review: "Cemetery Soup" Is Seasoned Perfectly with the SurrealThinking Theatre NYC - August 4th, 2025
Unfailingly creative staging and uniformly superb, assured performances from a cast who, the very funny Baum excepted, all play multiple roles, in most cases both human and non-human. In a particularly moving scene with Cramer and Goode, Jester talks about how an other/Other can become part of one's "I," and that all the inconveniences and frustrations that come with that process are worth it. This proposition resonates throughout a play that also has JB ask us to think about what stories we trust. Cemetery Soup is further evidence that Adult Film should be high on that list.
A Conversation with Stephee BonifacioJosh Feye - June 19th, 2025
JF: Okay, for my last question, this is one I love to ask everyone that I interview: What are your dreams for the future of American theatre?
SB: That it never dies. My personal dream as an actor is just to not have to have a second job. I just want to act, do music, write, make art, and be able to pay my bills. I want that to be enough. For theater more broadly, I hope it stays intimate and community-driven. I want it to stay accessible and inclusive. I hope it continues to build community and foster empathy. I just want it to be a home where all people feel like they can belong.
BRUISER THEATRE DISPATCH - OTHER PEOPLE’S LIVESBruiser Mag - May 11, 2025
A couple days later, I was once again swiping through Instagram stories and saw Adult Film had posted some photos from what had turned out to be an entirely sold-out run of Other People’s Lives. The photos made me nostalgic for only two days prior, when, for an hour and forty-five minutes, in an unmarked warehouse on the edge of Bushwick, it felt like anything could happen—and everything that did happen was magic. The last slide of their story was a reshare from Katrin Nugent: a photo taken from the second floor of Unit J, looking down on the entire cast in the middle of the “stage.” The caption read, “Something very special happened here.” Indeed it did, and I was honored to have been a part of it, even if I was just a fly on the wall.
Critic Roundup: SLAMDANCE GARAGE, 300 PAINTINGS, WHERE WE'RE BORN, NINA, THE BARBARIANS — ReviewJOEY SIMS - February 20, 2025
The work of Lucy Thurber proves an ideal fit for young company Adult Film, a scrappy new outfit operating out of a private space in Ridgewood, Queens. Adult Film is presenting a barebones, intensely atmospheric revival of Thurber’s 2003 play Where We’re Born through February 9th, under David Garelik’s effective direction.
The production is a heavier lift for Adult Film than past work, and a notable step forward. There’s no distance or irony to Thurber’s text, no remove to hide behind. If this staging at times feels like poverty cosplay, that’s perhaps inevitable with indie theatermakers doing a play of this nature in a Ridgewood basement.
Yet a game cast keeps it grounded—most especially the women. Moriarty’s Lilly is brutally open-hearted; Jamie Coffey is movingly bone-weary as Franky. And Garelik ultimately uses the space to his advantage. Thurber’s plays live in America’s most suffocating corners, and in this production’s more convincing moments, it can truly feel like the walls are closing in.
Review: Adult Film's "Where We're Born" Is a Fantastic Rebirth for a Timely PlayThinking Theatre NYC - January 17, 2025
Lucy Thurber's play Where We're Born was published in 2008, the period of financialized capitalism's most recent national and global meltdown, but the resentments expressed by some of its white working-class characters about being looked down upon by people who think they're better and about racialized Others having it easier than "real Americans" have if anything intensified–or at least been amplified–in the intervening years. Adult Film's fabulous new production of Where We're Born, one of five works that make up Thurber's award-winning cycle The Hill Town Plays, fittingly comes at a historical juncture in which such grievances have helped to usher in what promises to be a period of further intensified income inequality, deregulation, and rule by a billionaire oligarchy…
CLOSE ENOUGH TO TOUCH: THE RISE OF HYPER-INTIMATE THEATREJOEY SIMS - July 5, 2024
Adult Film, a burgeoning company and artistic training center based out of a Bushwick basement, welcomes no more than 30 people per performance. Every inch of the subterranean space, including the makeshift kitchen, becomes part of the play. That blurred line between performers and audience helps the venue feel less formal, according to artistic director Ryan Czerwonko—more akin to a gathering spot than a theatre.
"It eliminates the need many artists feel for as many people as possible to see their work—actually, it's pretty amazing that 30 people crammed into a room to see it," says Czerwonko. "It's a real communal feeling."
Review: Adult Film hatches a splendid new "sea gull"JOHN R ZIEGLER AND LEAH RICHARDS - May 24, 2024
Anton Chekhov's The Sea Gull (1895) was unquestionably innovative in its time, becoming a milestone in world drama, and Adult Film's new production of the Chekhov classic, Sea Gull, channels that innovatory spirit in a fleet, engrossing staging. Using a new translation by film and theater veteran John Christopher Jones, Sea Gull…
Where did NYC’s indie theatre go? Backyards, basements, and rooftops.KENNEAL PATTERSON - March 5, 2024
Several dozen people crowded into a tiny Bushwick apartment basement on a cold February night for a live performance of Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.” Ryan Czerwonko, 34, who lives upstairs and runs the space, set the scene with his very own furniture: bookshelves dragged downstairs, an old black futon, and a rickety table topped with his morning coffee mug. The basement isn’t just home to Czerwonko and his worn and torn furniture. It’s also an independent theater and artistic training center called Adult Film…
Cracks in Postmodernity - The Chekhovian Renaissance: Adult Film's post-pandemic theatre revivalJOSH FEYE - Jan. 5, 2024
Through revival, plays and their playwrights produce new meanings and understanding, becoming portals for the soul and contemporary culture. Since the pandemic, Anton Chekhov’s plays are everywhere. At the turn of the twentieth century, before the Russian Revolution, Chekhov, a decadent Russian playwright, explored feelings of nostalgia and the inner world. He has made his grand return to New York stages…
The Sheila Variations 2.0 - Creating Space, Symbolically and LiterallySHEILA O'MALLEY - Mar. 27, 2023
A couple years ago, through a mutual friend, I became aware of Ryan Czerwonko. We “became friends” on Instagram, and his posts revealed a kindred spirit. He would post on John Cassavetes, Lee Strasberg, Marlon Brando. He is an actor, a director, and seemed - from what I could tell on Instagram - to be working constantly in a close group of actors on films and different projects. We started talking. I learned more about what he was doing. He and some friends had formed Adult Film, a theatre company with a broad scope, operating out of his apartment in Bushwick…
The Sheila Variations - Re-cap: June 18-19 Adult Film’s Film + Theatre FestivalSHEILA O'MALLEY - Jun. 27, 2023
Ryan Czerwonko is a go-getter, a thoughtful subversive, a committed artist, immersed in theatre history and the precedents set by the giants who came before, he knows his shit, he’s an actor and writer and filmmaker committed to creating a space where good work can flourish, work that doesn’t fit into the little ideological boxes so prevalent in theatre right now (and everywhere else, I suppose), where the Message is more important than the Story…