The first half of Jaclyn Backhaus‘ feminist satire “Wives” is hilariously funny. The mordant wit doesn‘t last till the end, but the first parts are so good, it‘s very much worth seeing. The idea is to focus on the wives of some famous men. You haven‘t seen anything like it.
Dozens of patrons, as many as 75, artistic director Ross Williams said, perched on stools and benches and gathered in the pit as actors performed excerpts from four of Shakespeare‘s plays: “The Comedy of Errors,” “Romeo and Juliet,” “As You Like It” and “Henry IV, part 2.”
Sometimes you go to dinner and sometimes you go to an event. Dinner at the Russian Samovar is an event! First, the drama is clear from how this was envisioned by the previous owners, Russian dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov and poet Joseph Brodsky. They made it into a place for artists, especially Russian artists.
The sky has to be just right for a Key West sunset. Some clouds to capture and spread the rays, but not so many that the sunset is blocked. The wind has to be good, too, enough to push sailboats through the waves, but not so wild as to rock passengers too roughly and disturb people on land. If the stars are in alignment, ie the weather is right, a Key West sunset is a gorgeous thing to watch.
In 1978, Harold Pinter wrote a play inspired by his seven-year affair in the 1960s with Joan Bakewell, a BBC presenter. He was married at the time to actress Vivien Merchant and left her in 1975 after 20 years and one son. He married author Antonia Fraser in 1980.
Sept 4, 2019 – I wrote this to The Washington Post a week ago, and also to fact checker Glenn Kessler and then to public editor Margaret Sullivan. The Post turned down the response, to be expected from a very Russophobic publication. No response from the truth tellers.
Sept 1, 2019 – The European Court of Human Rights says Sergei Magnitsky‘s arrest for tax evasion was justified. But then it blames the Russians for his death by violence for which it gives no evidence.
Why does an accomplished French theater and film actress want to act in an American web series? Nathalie Schmidt stars in “I Do,” a story set in Brooklyn about Zoe and her screwball attempts to catch a husband. Each episode will be about another prospective guy.
Aug 27, 2019 – The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has just released a very flawed decision in a case brought by the widow and mother of Sergei Magnitsky and lawyered by a George Soros-funded Open Society Justice Initiative. I will analyze it soon, but this is a quicker take on a report by the BBC, which is published without a byline and is even more flawed.
Galen Ryan Kane gives a shattering performance as Bigger Thomas, the anti-hero victim of Nambi Kelley‘s bravura take on Richard Wright‘s 1940 novel of the desperation of inner-city black men.
Aug 16, 2019 – The Anderson Brothers take you on a gorgeous trip to the jazzy 1930s and 40s of the great composer Duke Ellington. With their swing jazz horns, Jeb Patton‘s fast-fingered piano and Molly Ryan‘s ethereal voice, you have magic.
Aug 15, 2019 – Karen Oberlin, a well-liked figure on the New York cabaret scene, bring a welcome slightly jazzy tempo to this musical tour through the discography of Doris Day. Her voice has the Day honey and lilt, but I think she improves on the tempo. Oberlin did two shows Aug 13 at the Birdland Theater.
Aug 12, 2019 – Stephen Cohen‘s important, disturbing book “War With Russia?” is subtitled “From Putin & Ukraine to Trump & Russiagate.” In an era of Russophobia where the major media and politicians are conspiracy theorists, he is among the few who challenge their ignorance or deceit.
KT Sullivan is a smash as a comic Elaine Stritch in Noël Coward‘s “Why do the wrong people travel?”
It certainly was red, all over, except perhaps for the life-size naturally gray elephant on a riser to the right. Red must mean demimonde. The women are in bustiers and mostly bare bottoms. It‘s garish Montmartre. Or, forget Paris, it‘s old Las Vegas.
Aug 9, 2019 – At the Whitney‘s summer exhibit, a rich retrospective of decades of art produced in America, are some highlights that show politically aware painters reflecting the important struggles of the era, against the oppression of workers, against fascism, against racism.
Jonathan Cake is terrific as Caius Martius, the Roman general who is a master of war and an abject failure at politics. The one demands a tough hierarchical leader in a system where everyone below must follow commands.
Aug 1, 2019 – Another fake @Politico Browder stenographer, lapping up his fabrications, this time targeting Cyprus. Why would Browder do that? Probably a salvo in his war to prevent Cyprus from providing the Russians with evidence of his tax evasion using Cyprus shell companies for nearly a decade till the mid-2000s.
A café performance of “Midsummer Night‘s Dream” is quite a delightful way to spend any mid-summer eve. And the actors of this production, who double passing out tapas and wine to patrons, are as good as any you‘ll see on the boards. In fact, most of them have been there.
July 29, 2019 – More Browder fakery, this one on @Politico in a story today about the new national intelligence director nominee, John Ratcliffe. William Browder, ever ready to feed clueless reporters his fabrications, finds a willing one in @NatashaBertrand.
July 24, 2019 – Some notes from today’s surreal House Judiciary and Intelligence Committee hearing where the Democratic inquisitors showed fake outrage and frequent ignorance about the subject of Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The Republicans refused to challenge the evidence-free premise of massive, albeit unproved, Russian interference, which put them at a big disadvantage. And nobody mentioned the unseen elephant in the room, William Browder.
A bit of summer fluff, slightly hokey, but with a good underlying message, this play by Joe Iconis, Lance Rubin, and Jason Sweettooth Williams, is about an “older woman,” Annie (Annie Golden) who can no longer get roles in theater and is scooped up by a bounty hunting firm on the track of a drug trafficker hiding out in the jungles of Ecuador.
July 22, 2019 – Robert Morgenthau, who was the District Attorney of Manhattan for 33 years, died today at 99. He was a mortal enemy of the corrupt offshore bank and corporate secrecy system and used the fact of dollars settling in Manhattan banks to go after money-launderers throughout the world.
July 19, 2019 – Jamison Firestone was a featured speaker at a panel in Miami called Bill Browder: Hero or Villain? I took the villain side in the debate. Firestone, who collaborated with Browder on his tax frauds, opted for hero. The event at a Miami Beach conference in April was sponsored by Offshore Alert, a Miami-based newsletter that writes about offshore fraud.
Stories about men pretending to be women walk a fine line between skewering sexism and practicing it. “Tootsie” falls on both sides of that divide.
And this one, book by Robert Horn based on the 1982 film, is somewhat outdated. Real gender-bending stuff makes it unbelievably tame. And those stereotypes just don’t go away. But it gets a good breezy production by director Scott Ellis, including a Fosse-style chorus line. And there is a cacophony of funny new topical one-liners.
