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.
July 14, 2019 – Freddy Cole didn‘t make it to his 8:30 set at Birdland last night. He was stuck in a nearby hotel when the power outage struck and, at 87, he couldn‘t take the stairs.
July 13, 2019 – On Wednesday July 10th, I was interviewed by John Batchelor for his radio program. Here are the key points. There are a few corrections and edits. And here is the link to the audio.
In the 1920s, an original, a young black woman with a fanatical devotion to the quintessential American sport, fought racism and sexism to become the first woman to play in professional baseball as a regular on a big-league team. She played in the Negro Leagues.
This is the best juke box musical since “Motown” and “Jersey Boys.” In fact, it‘s about a Motown group that also started in Detroit and had the famous manager Berry Gordy. As one local explains, in Detroit, “you either sang or you join a gang. If you can‘t do neither, better learn to run.”
July 8, 2019 – On June 20th, the Wall Street Journal ran this article by reporter Kristin Broughton, “Financier Bill Browder Plays the Long Game to Expose Russian Money-Laundering.” The paper invited comments to mo*******@*sj.com, so I sent this, first explaining my background as a prize-winning journalist on financial crime whose past stories have been published by the Journal.
Consortium News, July 3, 2019 – A “key event” described in the Mueller Report
is the Trump Tower meeting where a Russian lawyer met with the
president‘s son Donald Trump Jr, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his
campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Russiagaters have been obsessed with the meeting, saying it was the smoking gun to prove collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign to steal the 2016
election. Months after Mueller concluded that there was no collusion at all, the obsession has switched to “obstruction of justice,” which is like someone being apprehended for resisting arrest without committing any other crime.
Director Daniel Fish puts the iconic American musical “Oklahoma” in a country setting with a modern sensibility. And it sizzles.
It’s the Oklahoma territory in the early 1900s. A very feminist take on men and women is established by a strong cohort, Aunt Eller, her niece Laurey (Rebecca Naomi Jones) and Ado Annie (Ali Stroker).
“Hadestown,” written and composed by Anaïs Mitchell and directed by Rachel Chavkin, is a very radical play. It takes the audience to Hell, which is peopled by oppressed workers who have been indoctrinated to fear those who are poorer. Though that is probably not how it is described in the reviews you have read in mainstream media. It won the Tony for best musical play. But you probably have no idea what it is about. I call it the censorship of cultural ideas.
June 17, 2019 – In May I was thrown off the IRE Investigative Reporters list because one of its influential members, OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Project) objected to my posts about William Browder, the tax fraudster who cheated Russia of $100 million and whose fake stories OCCRP has posted for years. Details here.
It opens with sensual and noisy sex in the bed, the bodies turning and pushing against each other, the familiar noises with great realistic direction by Arin Arbus. And then not quite what you might expect. Frankie falls out of bed. And the post sex conversation; he compliments her breasts. She is not pleased. Is this how a love affair begins?
