When Ed Kilgannon (played with powerful panache by Peter Cormican) stretches out on his favorite chair in his Buffalo, New York home, he is not simply snoozing; the head of the Kilgannon clan is doing his best to hide from the matrix of disturbing truths that threaten the fabric of his nuclear and extended Kilgannon-Jablonski families. And he is hiding…
Plays about the making of plays or the making of movies ought to adhere to the conventions of the genre being dramatized. Playwright Mike Bencivenga fails to accomplish this important writer’s task in his new “Billy and Ray” currently running at the Vineyard Theatre. This play about the collaboration between Billy Wilder (Vincent Kartheiser) and Raymond Chandler (Larry Pine) on…
“The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, ‘Who can bring me down to the ground?’” Obadiah 1:3 Obadiah tried to warn Edom to repent of its pride, its inexorable hubris – but to no avail. The nation had…
“Kleider machen Leute” (Clothes people make.) – Gottfried Keller In mufti, with all the typical theatrical trappings stripped away, “Big: The Musical” becomes just small enough to really understand the characters in this iconic musical, clearly relate to their conflicts, and share in and relate to the stories these child and adult-sized conflicts spin. In its current run at the…
“Give me my flowers/While I yet live/So that I, I, can see the beauty/That they bring.” – James Cleveland In 1994, just before the Thanksgiving turkey is carved and served, Calvin (Larry Powell) packs his things, says good-bye to Eva (Sharon Washington) and his sister Tonya (Sheria Irving) and leaves his Pittsburgh house and home. Sexually abused by his stepfather…
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” – Ecclesiastes 3:1 It seems everything in Cori Thomas’s “When January Feels Like Summer” is out of synch, out of time, somehow oddly akilter and often akimbo. The weather is not seasonal. Relationships are not functioning within desired limits. Gender shakes itself out of traditional…
In October 1970, on his fourth attempt to smuggle hashish from Turkey to the United States, “the blond hippie” Billy Hayes was apprehended and remanded to Sağmalcılar prison for a four year and two month sentence. Because of then President Nixon’s war on the smuggling of drugs into the United States and his pressure on countries like Turkey to stem…
Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” is the epic examination of not only why marriages disintegrate but whether marriages are sustainable as a cultural institution. Director Ivo Van Hove’s reimagining of Bergman’s original screenplay – as did the television miniseries, the feature length movie, and prior stage versions – raises what are the essential questions about marriage, truly enduring questions…
Shipping ports worldwide are governed by rules of access: regulating who can dock and who cannot; who can ship to and from and who cannot; who has authority to enter and exit and who does not. Unlike those ports of call, the three men in Conor McPherson’s 2001 “Port Authority” have no control of their “ports.” These are men to…
Mario Correa’s “Tail! Spin!” was the breakout hit of the 2012 NY International Fringe Festival (Fastest-Selling Show in FringeNYC history) and the charmingly irreverent show has found its way into the Culture Project’s 2014 Season at the Lynn Redgrave Theatre. What TMZ is to celebrity gossip “Tail! Spin!” is to political gossip and it showcases a delightful romp through the…