Lily Houghton’s new play “Of the woman came the beginning of sin and through her we all die” starts strong with a promising premise and a talented cast. Unfortunately, it takes a problematic turn halfway through and drives on for far too long. As a thesis, this sounds harsh and categorical, which is why I chose to get […]
Painting the Roses Black: A Playdate Review of “Painted Alice”
Tortured artists are an insufferable bunch. As partners they tend to drag you down with them. As characters, though, they can be lots of fun to watch—when you’re not on the receiving end of the drama. Case in point: “Painted Alice: The Musical,” running through November 9 at the Plaxall Gallery in Astoria. I’ve seen […]
“Terra Firma”: A Platform at the End of the World
Micronations hold a perennial fascination for students of the human condition. On the one hand, they seem to offer a ready model of the commonwealth on an individual scale, a Leviathan shrunk down to human dimensions. On the other, they represent the possibility of radical self-determination. And what could be more attractive in a world […]
Why?
The product of over six decades of fruitful collaboration, Why? by legendary English director Peter Brook and French playwright Marie-Hélène Estienne is many things: a fanciful reimagining of the birth of theatre from the spirit of boredom, a playful comparison of the methods of Stanislavsky and his lesser-known but equally influential contemporary Vsevolod Meyerhold, a […]
Theatrical Investigations: A Review of ‘Ludwig and Bertie’
‘Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.’ A famously pregnant quote that, like much of Wittgenstein, defies easy interpretation, idiomatic translation. Though perhaps it could best be rendered as a variation on the old parental saw: ‘If you can’t say anything meaningful, don’t say anything at all.’ I mention it not only because […]
Looking Through a Glass Onion: A Review of “This Is Why We Live”
A Nobel laureate, a cellist, two actors, three languages—it sounds like a list from one of Polish poet Wisława Szymborska’s lyrical flights of irony. On the surface the recipe promises a reverential homage to a Great Writer, the kind of soufflé savored by schoolteachers and cultural attachés and roundly parodied by exiled Polish writer Witold […]
Two Critics, Three Opinions: A Review of “The Talmud”
A genre-bending show combining Kung Fu and the Talmud by a company called Meta-Phys Ed? Max and Kirill wanted in, even if it meant schlepping down to Sunset Park. Luckily, the post-industrial neighborhood boasts more than just bleeding-edge theater. Five Boroughs Brewing Co. a few blocks north set the stage for their post-show debate. Max: […]
A Coney Island of the Mind: Strindberg’s “The Father”
There’s a passage in August Strindberg’s autobiographical novel Inferno where the playwright, with a madman’s talent for connecting random dots, builds a vast conspiracy out of a pianist playing Schumann’s Aufschwung in the next room. In The Father, running at Theater for the New City through September 2, that same talent is on brilliant display—this […]
“At Black Lake” Speaks, But What Is It Saying?
Metal foil lines a bare stage, a black mirror warping the bodies of two barefoot couples in mourning. Two chairs, two milk crates rearrange themselves endlessly in patterns of resentment, avoidance, aggression, indifference during brief, unpredictable blackouts, as dissonant music plays and bits of glow tape flit through the dark like fireflies on a summer […]
The Threepenny Flute, or Kirill Drags Max to the Opera
When word reached Kirill that a production of his favorite opera “The Magic Flute” was touring from his native Berlin, he somehow convinced fellow Berliner Max to join him. What follows is a rough transcript of the bilingual debate that ensued, some of it edited for clarity, some translated from the German. Kirill: There’s something […]