The secret to successful entertainment in any form is conceptually simple: know your audience. I suspect that the producers of Samuel Beckett’s All That Fall at 59E59 Theatre had an audience in mind when they chose to produce the show. I am also confident that I am not that audience. In a single word, I […]
There are a large number of suspicious deaths occurring at the Walter Kerr Theatre, and, strangely enough, all of the victims bear striking resemblances to one another – and to Jefferson Mays, the gifted actor who portrays every doomed D’Ysquith family member in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. Gentleman’s Guide is an artistically […]
Ah, Shakespeare. In a Broadway season filled with Hamlets, Macbeths, and Romeos, there is no short supply of good old Bill. Admit it. The word “Shakespeare” conjures up very specific images (a skull named Yorick, perhaps?). For a lot of people, the word “Shakespeare” also conjures up bad memories of a high school literature class […]
I am a sucker for a good murder mystery. Or even a bad one, really. In a fantasy world where I could ignore work and personal obligations for an entire Saturday, I would spend the day playing Cluedo, browsing the bookshelves at the Mysterious Bookshop in Tribeca, and hosting a murder mystery dinner party (preferably […]
I feel like I have visited the sanctum of red-haired women and should dye my hair fuchsia plum before disclosing their secrets. Thankfully, having rocked (albeit fake) red hair at least twice in my life, I think that I am qualified to say this: One Old Crow Productions’ creative staging of Sherry Kramer’s David’s RedHaired […]
The law is reason, free from passion. Point taken, Aristotle. The law is neither sympathetic nor scornful. Everyone is theoretically equal before the black letter of the law. Philosophy is all well and good, but let’s get real for a second. While the law may be free from passion, humans are anything but. This simple […]
I re-wrote this review three times, which is never a good sign. Do not get me wrong. Sharr White’s new play The Snow Geese is not bad per se, it just left me feeling incredibly nonplussed. Set during the first World War, Snow Geese is a story about adaptation, perception and pretense – it thrusts […]
We all have them. Those books or plays we battled in high school and despised for a plethora of reasons, some legitimate (with all due respect William Faulkner, punctuation is a useful writing tool that you should consider wielding) and some less so (dear Holden Caulfield, please stop being emo, thanks). Do not get me […]