I don‘t know what the title means. And I don‘t know what the play is supposed to mean. Other than that Reality Winner is a loser. And so is the “conceiver” and director Tina Satter, who decided that a Q&A with a couple of FBI agents was enough to be a play. About someone with security clearance who downloaded a classified report and sent it to some media. Without telling us what it was about. Or who she sent it to. Or why.
Oct 12, 2019 – For mainstream media, “disinformation” is something the Russians do, and maybe the Chinese. When I confronted three mainstream journalists – two who made seamless moves into the U.S. government –with fake news by the New York Times, they presented pitiful excuses. It was on the Trump phone call to the Ukraine president, now considered to be the key reason for a Trump impeachment, so truth matters.
Oct 9, 2019 – A member of Congress you thought was a liberal is caught up in a Russiaphobe con-job. His name is Jim McGovern, and he is a congressman from Massachusetts. I thought he was pretty decent, so how has he bought into the Browder hoax?
Sept 30, 2019 – Guest: Lucy Komisar. A deep dive into the story behind the “Magnitsky Hoax”. Lucy tells the story of Bill Browder, Hermitage (his hedge fund) and how he managed to create a massive political weapon called the Magnitsky Act to protect himself and his benefactors and to use against others. The story also involves shell companies, tax havens, money laundering, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Robert Maxwell, Gasprom, HSBC, Natalia Veselnitskya, the Trump Tower meeting, the resurgence of the Cold War with Russia, Russiagate, the Mueller Report, and more.
What happens to the partner of a 50-year marriage living without the other? What if the husband dies and the wife survives? What if the wife dies? What would each do? How would each cope? How would their children, in this case grown daughters, react?
Sept 23, 2019 – Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s speech in Washington Square Park was a stunner. On Monday (Sept 16), she threw down a gauntlet against America’s staggering and paralyzing political corruption. She said she wanted to plant signs in front of federal buildings, not for sale!
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.
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.
