how to save a world
“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:24) One legitimate critical…
Performances Begin on Tuesday, June 7, 2016 for a Limited Engagement through Sunday, July 3, 2016 at Broadway in Chicago’s Oriental Theatre. “The SpongeBob Musical” is thrilled to announce Yolanda Adams, Sara Bareilles and Alex Ebert of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros will contribute original songs to the show. Individual tickets for the Pre-Broadway World Premiere, ‘The SpongeBob Musical,” will…
“Turning and turning in the widening gyre/The falcon cannot hear the falconer;/Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,/The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” (W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming’) In Terry Johnson’s “Insignificance,” currently running in Room 505 at “Langham Place” in New York City (the first staging…
Depending on the point of view of the audience member, Jane Martin’s striking and deeply moving “H2O” can be viewed as either a play within a play or a remarkable retelling of the “Tragedy of Hamlet.” After its successful world premiere at the Contemporary American Theater Festival in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, the play is currently running at 59E59 Theaters in…
Two men – one older, one younger – cross paths in the former Pennsylvania Train Station from 1963 until 1966. The older Joseph Lanzarone (Clyde Baldo) teaches American and British Literature at Xavier High School. The younger Paul Abbot (Matthew Pilieci) works on the crew contracted to demolish the iconic train station and is an amateur photographer. Each holds a…
In the words of Theatre Critic Charles Spencer, “there are moments in my line of work when criticism seems impertinent.” The Culture Project’s Nirbhaya seems such an occasion. The show consists of six Indian women recounting their personal stories of sexual abuse in response to the 2012 gang-rape murder of the medical student in Delhi. (Nicknamed ‘Nirbhaya’ or ‘Fearless One’…
Ensemble Studio Theatre’s Winners makes me yearn for my years of reviewing psychotic performance art in meat lockers. Those days were horrific, to be sure, but at least ritalin-deprived cacophonies have the potential to evoke some sort of reaction. Maggie Bofill’s new play not quite thoughtful, not quite comedic, but something wedged woefully in between. Something of a manic artsy…
Under St. Mark’s Theatre looks like a Eurotrash sex dungeon. Not that that’s a particularly bad thing, but I didn’t expect it to house one of the sweetest shows I’ve seen since “Peter and The Starcatcher.” In the first scene, a gruff, drunk (and preposterously attractive) homeless man gives a frantic dancer his jar of coins so she can make…
Theresa Rebeck asks an important and rich question in her new “Poor Behavior” currently running at the Duke on 42nd Street the new home of Primary Stages. This question might go unnoticed it is so intertwined with Ms. Rebeck’s rant about the state of marriage in contemporary “civilized” culture: and it is a good rant indeed. The real question though…
Suggested by a work by Keith Walker, Shirley Lauro’s 1991 “A Piece of My Heart” attempts to celebrate the lives of the women who served in the Vietnam War as enlisted soldiers, nurses, entertainers, and other volunteers. Under director Betsy Aiello Sanders’ steady hand, the talented ensemble cast of the Speranza Theatre Company tackles Ms. Lauro’s script and brings it…