Theater & the Arts
Clifford Odets‘ stylized naturalism combined with sometimes faux poetics often edges close to melodrama in his 1937 play about the conflict between art and money. The dialogue doesn‘t wear well with time and might seem almost ridiculous on stage today. But director Bartlett Sher makes it all believable with a strong and respectful staging. This production is still a powerful moment in theater and one of the best plays by an historically significant American playwright. And the politics of the play still matters.
Theater & the Arts
Christopher Durang, always clever and inventive, has taken four characters from different Chekhov plays and transported them to the countryside of Bucks County, PA. Durang‘s comic remix of Chekhov is amusing and gets laughs, even if it doesn‘t always quite hit the mark.
Vanya and Sonia (“Uncle Vanya”), are brother and (adopted) sister who commiserate about their empty lives. They get a visit from their sister, self-centered actress Masha (“Three Sisters”) and her crude boy-toy Spike who could be Trigorin (“The Seagull”), but that would be a stretch. They meet the ingénue Nina (“The Seagull”) who arouses Masha‘s jealousy. There is also a Cassandra (“The Oresteia”) to stir the cauldron with prophecies. Nicholas Martin directs with an in-your-face this-is-a-joke spirit.
Theater & the Arts
Wild and wonderful and definitely not only for children, Rick Elice’s play imagines what turned a mistreated orphan boy into Peter Pan. Captain Hook and the crocodile are there, too, and we find out how they got the hook and the tick-tock. While you get the history lesson, you will enjoy one of the cleverest, funniest spoofs to come down the pike in years. The direction by Roger Rees and Alex Timbers is inspired.
It seems that in 1885 two sailing ships were making for an unknown Asian country. The one captained by the brigand Slank (Matt D‘Amico) was transporting Peter (Adam Chanler-Berat), who didn’t yet have a name, and some other boys to be servants for the Asian potentate. Another ship was carrying the aristocrat Lord Aster (Karl Kenzler) to deliver a very valuable trunk to the same destination. But that ship is taken over by pirates led by the comically threatening Black Stache (the unforgettable Christian Borle) who is after the trunk, which is full of valuables, including stocks, bonds and unregulated derivatives.
Theater & the Arts
Charlie Chaplin wasn‘t just an actor. He created the characters he portrayed and wrote and directed the films he starred in. There hasn‘t been anyone like him since. But his art, his life, and above all his politics were dangerous to the political system. The opening of “Chaplin” shows him on a tightrope, and he was heading for a fall. Based on a book by Christopher Curtis and Thomas Meehan and with music and lyrics by Curtis, this is the best, most powerful, most intelligent new musical of the season. It‘s a worthy tribute to Chaplin the man, inventive and often thrilling.
Theater & the Arts
The most astonishing moment in this rich and nuanced play comes when the magnificent horse Joey is caught in barbed wire in a no-man’s land between World War I British and German soldiers. Troops on both sides call an unofficial cease fire so one of them can climb out of the trenches and free him.
It takes a horse, an animal with no politics, to bring out the humanity of both sides. We see that the soldiers are not born killers; they are simply obeying orders by political leaders far from the front.
Theater & the Arts
This avant garde take on the Faust story at BAM is by turns inventive, surreal, quirky, gimmicky, tedious, diverting and fascinating. Inspired by the works of Goethe and Marlowe, it was produced and written collaboratively by members of the Vesturport Theatre and the Reykjavik City Theatre of Iceland. Their devil Mephisto (Magnus Jonsson), starts out looking like a moribund Andy Warhol and ends up channeling a hollow-faced David Bowie.
Theater & the Arts
When I saw the promotion photos of a man lying on a woman with his hand on her bare breast, I thought this play would be erotic. It is anything but. It is searing, but it is the heat of violence not of sex. There is a lot of blood. The blood of a violent coupling. The blood of puppies that the white farm owner wanted killed because his dog mated with a local black dog, not one of the pedigreed ones. Funny that it seems exploitative and humiliating of both the man and the woman while not being erotic.
Theater & the Arts
“A woman who behaves never writes history” was the motto of Aimee Semple McPherson, who beginning in the 1920s became a media phenomenon. This smashing and smartly staged production shows how the farm girl who wanted to be an actress turned Pentecostal preaching into a theatrical art form, for two decades besting envious men and winning millions of followers to her radio programs and giant Hollywood temple.
