“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” Richard Wright, “Black Boy” (1945) With rhythms more reminiscent of song than spoken word, Dael…
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’…
How do we remember The Holocaust in 2015? Writer/performer Jane Elias grapples with this behemoth question in her profoundly moving, exquisitely personal solo show ‘Do This One Thing For Me’ currently running at Barrow Group. The play chronicles Jane’s relationship with her late father, a Greek-Jewish Holocaust survivor. His own family having been brutally murdered in concentration camps, all Mr….
It’s Doubt meets Lolita in Nate Rufus Edleman’s pontifical comedy The Belle of Belfast, currently at the Irish Repertory Theatre. Anne, a seventeen-year-old girl living in Belfast during the violent Troubles, falls in love with Ben, a dashing young(ish) priest. Initially he resists, but when Anne shows up at his parish soaked through from the rain and teary over her…
Exiles from Europe’s last true dictatorship, the Belarus Free Theatre delivers a knockout punch with its monumental “Trash Cuisine”, now onstage at La MaMa. An amorphous dedication to capital punishment under the guise of an international cooking program, the show gruesomely highlights socially sanctioned killing from around the globe. Leather straps, machetes, and bulk food items are brought ominously to…
“The Tailor of Inverness” is the compelling and often haunting story of playwright Matthew Zajac’s inexhaustible search for the truth about his father Mateusz’s past after discovering new information about him after his father’s death in 1992. This information is provided through a powerful and engaging performance by Matthew Zajac in this first offering of 59E59 Theaters’ “Brits Off Broadway”…
Classic Stage Company’s “Hamlet” might just be the definitive “Hamlet” for the twenty-first century. Staged with shimmering creativity, the iconic Shakespearian tragedy bristles with a contemporary edge firmly rooted in tradition. The castle in Elsinore here is a swanky mansion with a designer dining table, bar, and contemporary seating areas. The platform, the room of state, Polonius’s house, the churchyard,…
“Danger! Danger! Warning! Warning!” – Robot in “Lost in Space” Lost in space, the Robinson family knew they had landed in a dangerous place. But danger is not found only in outer space: indeed, Earth itself is a dangerous place. The danger is sometimes closer than one thinks, lurking in the shadows, rustling in the closet at night, waiting under…
“Don’t worry. That cycle of violence you wannna break so badly? We didn’t enlist into it. We were born into it. Once you accept that, going won’t be so scary.” Lance Corporal Lynn Downey, “Soldier X”) After seeing Rehana Lew Mirza’s “Soldier X” at the HERE Arts Center, one wonders whether the playwright takes on too much, just enough, or…
“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; /The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity.” William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming” Rachel Corrie was a remarkable young woman who willingly traded the comfort and privilege of her…