I loved this hokey, funny, vaudeville-style parody of a British mystery melodrama. My mouth stretched into a wide grin at the lampooning of British imperialism. My feet tapped at the high-stepping, high-kicking choreography. A combination of operetta and English music hall, “Drood” gives clichés a bad name and this production – book, music and lyrics by Rupert Holmes – a very good one.
Sharr White‘s play is a wrenching psychological mystery where the audience is kept in the dark until slowly clues emerge. Joe Mantello directs coolly and subtly so you see everything through the eyes of the protagonist until you don‘t.
This may be the most original play of the season. It‘s a Chaplinesque melodrama in the style of a silent film, done in black and white, with titles and live piano music. There‘s even a sense of the flicker of the old silents.
Attending Barry Manilow‘s new show is a nostalgic visit to the 1960s and 70s. The overwhelming mood is sentimentality. But it‘s hard to criticize this when Manilow engages in such marvelous self-parody, viz a video of foaming waves crashing on boulders.
If this play were written today, you‘d expect it to end with a murder or at least some physical brutality. The confrontation between George (Tracy Letts) and Martha (Amy Morton) in Edward Albee‘s riveting, iconic play pursues another kind of violence. Each of those expertly drawn characters, forcefully directed by Pam MacKinnon, commits sizzling, psychological mayhem on the other. It‘s a shock to discover that this college professor and his wife have been married for 23 years and haven‘t yet done each other in.
by Lucy Komisar If you are in Berlin in mid-July, do not miss the city’s best party of the year! A baritone in a straw hat sat in a rowboat in a pond surrounded by shrubs and trees. He sang opera and lieder to the delight of the dozens of people who stood at the […]
