Precision is a quality we expect of detectives and surgeons, not playwrights. Yet it’s precisely what makes Pinter’s plays so unnerving. The pregnant pauses like labor pains at the birth of some monstrous crime. The forensic insistence on minute detail, right down to the crumbs of an Eccles cake. As if each crumb were evidence […]
Month: December 2019
DeSotelle and the Deep Blue Sea
“We’re all more than the worst thing we’ve done.” That’s not a line from “Danny and the Deep Blue Sea.” It’s a quote from public interest lawyer and civil rights activist Bryan Stevenson. But it could serve as a tagline for John DeSotelle’s deeply affecting production of John Patrick Shanley’s modern classic, running at the […]
Max and Kirill Go to “The Thin Place”
A séance in the intimate (by off-Broadway standards) Peter Jay Sharp Theater? Max agreed to suspend his disbelief long enough to join Kirill for “The Thin Place,” a haunting new play by Lucas Hnath running through January 5th at Playwrights Horizons. From there they retired to Astoria watering hole and RfU stomping ground The Local […]
La MaMa’s “Trojan Women”
We watched astonished as the Greeks burst in, pikes leveled, horns blaring, a song of victory on their lips. We said nothing as they mocked us in strange tongues and herded us into the great hall to witness scenes of horror. To see mothers and daughters carted away in separate cages. A princess dragged off […]
An Ear to the Celestial Vault in “The Listening Room”
One of the pleasures of attending fringe theatre is discovering unexpected troves of art tucked away in underground spaces. A prime example is The New Ohio Theatre, which, to judge by the imposing vault door, once concealed wealth of a more mundane character.