“Zorozora: A history of music” a clever entertaining take on how music evolved

“Zorozora: A history of music” a clever entertaining take on how music evolved

It starts with cavemen with bows and arrows. Stick and string become like bass. A stick turns into a musical pipe. A clap is rhythm. A move to wood and metal. Then a bagpipe with a symbol of the British lion. This production by Richard Navarro of Le Rouge Groupe at the Avignon Theater Festival OFF is delightful and fascinating and shows how music came from paleo grottos to the electronic sphere. It is clever, witty, and quite an original.

“Borders” powerfully examines borders of morality, commitment, separating war’s victims and observers

“Borders” powerfully examines borders of morality, commitment, separating war’s victims and observers

Brit Henry Naylor‘s play about the moral choices of people trapped in the Middle East horror and the western reporters of it could not be more timely, or more searing. The dialogue is stirring, often tough, and poetic. It is part of a series he has presented at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe the last few years about the human suffering and the ethical challenges posed by the region’s crises.

“My Fair Lady” goes back to Shaw‘s socialist feminist original

“My Fair Lady” goes back to Shaw‘s socialist feminist original

More than 60 years after its charm overwhelmed the American stage, Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s“My Fair Lady,” with revivals through the years, is back, and this time there‘s a feminist kick. And some class solidarity. They are changes from America’s reactionary 1950s when it premiered. Credit  director Bartlett Sher. The street flower seller Eliza (Lauren Ambrose) is a sweetheart, and you get the sense of a supportive society among the sweepers and other night workers at Covent Garden

Stoppard‘s brilliant “Travesties” explores radical politics, meaning of art, and role of memory

Stoppard‘s brilliant “Travesties” explores radical politics, meaning of art, and role of memory

“Travesties” is a glorious kaleidoscope of famous people, fiction and events that converge in Zurich during World War I and raise questions about radical politics, the meaning of art, and the validity of memory to link it all. Tom Stoppard pays homage to and questions absurdist and revolutionary art in a play which presents three of the great figures of the time through the clouded memory of a retired British diplomat posted in Zurich during the Great War. It is a brilliant historical fantasy directed by Patrick Marber.

“Carousel” is a gorgeous show with a hokey, simplistic, no-politics story

“Carousel” is a gorgeous show with a hokey, simplistic, no-politics story

Carousel is gorgeous. Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, music by Richard Rodgers, produced in 1945. Well, I‘ll take the lyrics, not the book. The story is from “Liliom,”a 1909 play by the Hungarian Ferenc Molnar. The balletic and acrobatic dancing is stunning, not surprising from Justin Peck who is resident choreographer of the New York City Ballet. The vocals are thrilling, led by opera diva Renée Fleming who presents her solos as if they were arias. But, the story is a little silly, hokey, a young cotton mill worker becoming infatuated with a carnival barker, but you must look at it as you would an opera or ballet. If only it was done in another language!

“Three Tall Women” features a mesmerizing Glenda Jackson at end of unhappy stages of life

“Three Tall Women” features a mesmerizing Glenda Jackson at end of unhappy stages of life

Edward Albee‘s 1991 play “Three Tall Women” is the attempt of a gay male to get into the psyches of three women, or rather of one women at three stages of her life, played by three actresses on stage at the same time. It is reportedly inspired by his adoptive mother, whom he despised. So, you get a clueless young girl marrying a rich man for money, morphing into a cynical lady in her 50s, and a nasty old woman past 90. Mostly about their interactions with men, nothing about their own hopes or dreams.

“Lobby Hero” a smart funny morality tale about honesty and corruption

“Lobby Hero” a smart funny morality tale about honesty and corruption

In Kenneth Lonergan‘s smart, serious, funny morality tale of the big city, a cop angling for a promotion visits a hooker in a high rise while his newbie female partner waits below, a clueless young security guard in the lobby has a propensity to blather, and his supervisor has a crisis when his brother is implicated in a killing, The “hero” is the one who can‘t help telling the truth.

“Yerma” presents disaster of a woman‘s obsession with motherhood

“Yerma” presents disaster of a woman‘s obsession with motherhood

Federico García Lorca was a poet and playwright in Spain in the 1920s and 30s. In 1934 he wrote “Yerma,” about a peasant woman who is obsessed with the desire to have a child. Her husband is a farmer, but she has nothing in life but to be a mother. Lorca was gay. Don‘t know how that affected his attitude toward women who defined themselves only by what they could do with a uterus. Or if he used the story as a critique of women he viewed as crazed baby-making machines. The lady gets no sympathy.

“Admissions” asks who decides who pays and gets reparations for minorities

“Admissions” asks who decides who pays and gets reparations for minorities

Clever, funny, challenging, not totally persuasive, “Admissions” tells of the family crisis when Charlie (the terrific Ben Edelman), son of parents with top jobs at Hillcrest, an expensive second-tier prep boarding school in rural New Hampshire, doesn‘t get into Yale. The father runs the school, the mother is admissions officer, and they are committed to diversity. But Charlie thinks his friend Perry – child of middle class black father and white mother– got in because he checked the “black” box.

“Kings” is like watching the news. Riveting. Good candidate fights corrupt system. Guess who wins.

“Kings” is like watching the news. Riveting. Good candidate fights corrupt system. Guess who wins.

When I saw this amazingly timely play by Sarah Burgess, about corporate Democrats attacking a progressive Texas candidate, I thought people might think, that really is a stretch. But no, it was real. It‘s at the Public Theater, but have you checked the news? Do you know that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has just in recent weeks attacked Laura Moser, a terrific progressive female candidate for Congress from Houston, Texas?

“Once On This Island” gorgeous folk opera about color & class in Caribbean

“Once On This Island” gorgeous folk opera about color & class in Caribbean

Don‘t arrive late to this charming, surreal and politically sharp-edged play. When you claim your seats, you may be almost touching distance from a sandy oval filled with a few chairs, discarded plastic bags and cups, a real goat being fed by a peasant guy, and a caged rooster that is grabbed and petted by a peasant lady. A lake is edged in sandbags. The livestock will disappear, but the sense of magical realism created by director Michael Arden will not.

“This One‘s For The Girls” is terrific feminist take on pop music

“This One‘s For The Girls” is terrific feminist take on pop music

This smart musical revue tells the changing attitudes of and toward women over a century with the lyrics of popular songs of the time. It‘s semi-autobiographical about the author Dorothy Marcic, a former Vanderbilt professor who wrote a 2002 book on how women were portrayed in songs, channeled here by Janet (Jana Robbins), as a middle-aged college professor.

“The Fountainhead” is van Hove’s misogynistic take on Ayn Rand

“The Fountainhead” is van Hove’s misogynistic take on Ayn Rand

A B movie” would be too generous a description of this dreadful play. It is based on the tome by Ayn Rand, a bible of the far-right, which, if the play is any indication, shows they have no more taste in literature than politics. Or maybe this is just the fault of adapter Koen Tachelet. Director Ivo van Hove adds his own horrors.

“Farinelli and the King” about “crazy” monarch is subtle political commentary

“Farinelli and the King” about “crazy” monarch is subtle political commentary

This gorgeous fantasy by Claire van Kampen, directed by John Dove, is based on a real story, with the narrative setting art and sensitivity against the plotting of ambitious court politicians of the time. The candles on overhanging chandeliers suggest the whimsy that is a mirror of reality. Philippe V (the brilliant Mark Rylance) is the feeble-minded 18th-century Spanish king who was the grandson of King Louis XIV of France. (It was the time of imperialism by Europe‘s royals.)

“Junk” explains Wall Street corruption better than most newspapers do

“Junk” explains Wall Street corruption better than most newspapers do

I have been doing investigative journalism about financial and corporate corruption for 20 years. Ayad Akhtar‘s play is right on the mark. It is based on the story of the corrupt junk bond trader Michael Milken. He got confederates to manipulate stocks so he could take over companies to loot and destroy them. It was a scandal of the 1980s. Too bad the market corruption he revealed never stopped. But this Akhtar gives you an excellent play-by-play. Better than what you might read in the press. Doug Hughes direction is a bit TV potboiler, but he nails it.

“Hangmen” ” Martin McDonagh‘s dark mystery raises questions of justice

“Hangmen” ” Martin McDonagh‘s dark mystery raises questions of justice

At the start of Martin McDonagh‘s quirky “Hangmen,” a condemned prisoner, Hennessy (Gilles Geary) is shouting his innocence. It hardly matters to hangman Harry (Mark Addy) who has heard it all before in his 25 years on the job. It‘s 1963 in Lancashire, the north of England. Near the end, Peter Mooney (a very good Johnny Flynn), a menacing stranger who exudes fake charm, erupts in a storm when Harry‘s wife Alice (Sally Rogers) refuses to rent him a room because his references don‘t check.

“The Parisian Woman” is a good/bad play about political corruption

“The Parisian Woman” is a good/bad play about political corruption

This is a very good/bad play. Actually, it‘s a staged TV sitcom. It hits all the political bases, as they do. I enjoyed it, as I might a sitcom if I ever saw them (I don‘t), but great drama it is not. The most is to call it a trenchant satire.

So, we enter the upper-class townhouse, with its a white couch and high sideboard, (there will be a terrace). Peter (Marton Csokas) is spying on the phone of Chloe (the always sharp Uma Thurman). She in blonde ponytail wears jeans and black heels. What does that say? Not comfort. (Jeans comfort, heels not) A certain carefully scripted cool sexiness.

1 8 9 10 11 12 29