Nov 28, 2025 – The Macy’s thanksgiving day parade started 100 years ago. Yes this is the centenary. Immigrant workers at Macy’s department store wanted to recreate the parades that they and their families produced in this season in their home countries. But alas, Macy’s, now a corporate operation that has no interest in their workers’ history, did not commemorate the event’s origins. Most of the floats are commercial — buy this, watch this on video.
“Queen of Versailles” – Book by Lindsey Ferrentino — starts out feminist, about a working-class girl who struggles to get an education, makes a bad marriage choice and pulls out of it. Then she becomes so entrapped by the lure of riches and conspicuous consumption that she devotes her life and sacrifices her daughter to it. I’d want to see that straight play.
Rajiv Joseph’s “Archduke” at the Roundabout is a surreal and entertaining take on an attempt to assassinate Archduke Ferdinand of Serbia organized by a soi-dissant military leader who wants to derail the Austro-Hungarian empire and achieve Serbian independence and Slavic unification. oseph is masterful at historical plays, and this is directed with a combination of realism and absurdity by Darko Tresnjak, who was born and raised in Zemun where some of the action takes place.
Jamie Lloyd’s vision of Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” is set in the opening of a huge round tunnel where the protagonists Estragon/Gogo (Keanu Reeves) and Vladimir/Didi (Alex Winer) hang out, sometimes climbing up and sliding down the circular walls. The set is by Soutra Gilmour. Usually, one begins by talking about the text of the play and the acting. In this case, the set overwhelms all.
Yasmina Reza’s superb surreal comedy takes aim at her favorite subject, the pretentious French bourgeoisie. (Another fine play of the genre is her “God of Carnage.”) I admit to liking this play’s target, the ridiculous one or two-color paintings that hang in galleries (and museums) with bloated prices and pompous wall labels and the arty “intellectuals” who admire them.
As the 30th international conference on climate change takes place in Belém, Brazil, — which the U.S. refuses to attend — this Royal Shakespeare Company production at Lincoln Center is a devastating exposé of how the American government run by the corrupt Democratic and Republican uniparty has brought the planet close to destruction. It is a brilliant play, telling you more than you will read in the American corporate media.
What happens when you mix the characters of a late 18th century novel by Jane Austin with the sensibility of modern teenage girls who spend their time on dating apps and 20-something boys who seem stuck in a past century or are confused about the current one? Inspired by “Pride and Prejudice,” Emily Breeze’s musical plays a bit loose with the text but is a happy romp that could have been set in a sorority house as much as at a modest estate in the English countryside. It’s a satire, a spoof. Or a sitcom. This is not your Cliff Notes “Pride and Prejudice.”
Nov 4, 2025 – One of the few places in America where free speech is glorified (I didn’t see any ICE agents handcuffing marchers), this year’s Greenwich Village Halloween Parade still had only a handful of political themes compared to the past. A yellow-haired prison orange-suited Trump, a couple of blow-up dolls labeled Frog and Ampifa (a misspelling I am sure) and U.S.A. v Epstein (was that satiric?)
“The Best is Yet to Come, Celebration of Cy Coleman,” the first night of this year’s Cabaret Convention, put on by the Mabel Mercer Foundation, could have been called “the best is on these stages”– for all three evenings. Out of the 60 singers that appeared, I’ve picked what I thought were the best!
Oct 20, 2025 – The only official signs in the No Kings march were the anodyne “No Kings Since 1776” and “We Have Friends Everywhere.” They could have been for a TV sit-com series or a new breakfast cereal. Because the neo-con Democrats who organized the events in NYC and across the country were against Trump but not for anything.
Oct 19, 2025 – Ironic that the Indigenous Peoples Parade in New York this year took place the same time and a few blocks away from the massive New York “No Kings” demonstration. On Saturday there were probably fewer than 50 dozen marchers and performers among the Native Americans gathering at Madison Square Park and marching from 27th Street inside unnecessary metal police barriers down Broadway at 12 noon, compared to the estimated 100K that took off from Times Square down Seventh Avenue at 11 am. I went to both.
It’s the “melting pot” of 1906, but the melt isn’t easy. A few heroes and many moral cowards move in a swirl of racism and anti-immigrant abuses. Based on the stunning novel by E.J. Doctorow, a century later, one can say plus ça change.
Oct 12, 2025 – Hillary Clinton a few days ago replied to my question about Ukraine at the Council on Foreign Relations. She and colleague John Sullivan are revealed as either liars or so ignorant of reasons for the U.S. Ukraine war as to be utter fools.
Oct 9, 2025 – This Whitney exhibit of the Surreal Sixties show a time of art that existed alongside a political movement against the U.S. imperialist attacks on Vietnam that were also part of repressive attacks earlier against indigenous Americans and later against people of color. In other word, these paintings showed a history of murderous repression that continues to the present.
Oct 5, 2025 – Why would the Council on Foreign Relations host a public meeting in Washington with Reza Pahlavi, son of the Shah of Iran
deposed in 1979? And what might that have to do with indications he is part of a movement to restore the monarchy?
A journalist is interviewing Rupert Murdoch about his life. Except it is more than it seems. I figured it out midway but it doesn’t really matter to say it now: it’s his conscience. Which doesn’t exist. Otherwise, the interviewer is quite hokey.
Sept 26, 2025 – The corruption of the U.S. government-aligned “human rights” establishment was excruciatingly on display at the Council on Foreign Relations today.
Sept 25, 2025 – South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says he learned from the fight against apartheid in his country that the legal route is the way to go to combat apartheid by Israel.
He said that replying to a question I asked at the Council on Foreign Relations Tuesday, September 23, 2025.
Sept 22, 2025 – At the Council on Foreign Relations today I heard Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney show how delusional and out of touch the political-corporate elite is with world events. Carney was governor of the Bank of Canada, then of the Bank of England. He bragged about cutting capital gains and income taxes, all boons to the very rich. But on to foreign policy, Gaza and Ukraine.
The Public Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” is a disappointment.
First surprise, the event starts with a Chinese woman who arrives on stage. She tells a story of how she came to New York a decade ago, her kid had problems (maybe autism, I forget), she went to school to help out. They thought she was so good they hired her. Please tell me what her ten-minute personal history had to do with Shakespeare!!!! Is this a woke satire? No, I think it was serious. For whatever its purpose.
Aug 12, 2025 – Two major western propaganda operations, self-described international investigative news outfits that distribute stories picked up by major media across the globe, list their addresses at the same Amsterdam letterbox company that provides no space, just answers phones and forwards mail. They are the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, or OCCRP, and Bellingcat. Both organizations are funded by the US, UK and other Western European (and NATO-aligned) countries. They both run “news” stories that promote the political interests (mainly by portraying Russia as an enemy civilization) of their western funders which are then picked up by other western media outlets.
“Ava: The Secret Conversations” is the story of Ava Gardner, a Hollywood glamor girl pre-feminism. Elizabeth McGovern, the playwright and actor, is brilliant recreating a woman who somehow knew something was wrong with how the system and men treated her, but couldn’t quite figure it out. Women today would see her dialogue as a feminist cry of pain.
Dance programs always tell you what movements really mean. Poetic descriptions. But of course what matters is how you react to the movements.
So this production by “Taiwan Season: Trace of Belief” at the Edinburgh Fringe choreographed by Hsieh Yi-Chun is inspired by memories of temple processions and personal memories, including faith in a changing world, collective ritual vs individual will. Okay to see the dance through that prism. But I just love this company’s dance, which I have seen before at Avignon.
This biopic, written and performed by the masterful and accomplished British actress Alison Spilbeck at the Edinburgh Fringe, tells the story of the extraordinary Eleanor Roosevelt. To keep the interest of the British audience as this tours the UK, it is built around a wartime visit she made to London.
