“You would not see. I can’t get beyond these hands. I jam in the fingers. I break on the bone. I am lonely. I mean, oh, no, not exactly lonely, not really. That’s a little strong, actually.” (Ozzie to David) As soon as Rick (Raviv Ullman) enters his family’s house in David Rabe’s “Sticks and Bones,” the audience knows it…
(A second review of “A Delicate Balance” by David Roberts will be posted next week.) There might come a day when Edward Albee is treated like Shakespeare. A familiar foreign language with rhythmic underpinnings, Albee’s angst over the unattainability of human connection could be tantamount to The Bard’s dread of the Great Chain of Being. Artists and academics of the…
Most of us (at least the Everyman in most of us) get through life by continuing to put one foot in front of the other day in and day out despite life’s often unseemly vicissitudes. This works until we encounter some “road block” and often that road block can be the fast-paced life, one of those “roads not taken” that…
Rural green forest swallows the set of “Pitbulls,” the most recent installment from veteran playwright Keith Josef Adkins. Though overwhelming at first glance, the lush stage proves a fitting frame for this gothic tale of love and violence. Mary, a modern-day witch survives in the forest by brewing wine with her son Dipper. When the mayor’s prize-fighting pitbull is killed,…
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…
It is a shock to the senses, entering the turn-of-the-century transformation underway at John DeSotelle Studio. A wooden jungle of beams and antique furniture consumes the black box space, a testament to the low-budget ingenuity of set designer Brian McManimon. The 1920’s tenement replica is immersive to say the least, a clever imagining of Clifford Odets’ masterpiece about a poor…
The first red flag of Live Source’s “Bohemian Lights” (currently at HERE Arts Center) came during the curtain speech. The audience was informed of the cultural significance of the show they were about to see, as if to preemptively warn us we’re imbeciles unable to fathom the genius about to ensue. The play, adapted from the Ramón del Valle-Inclán script…
By now you’ve discovered the horrible truth, that A.R. Gurney’s ‘Love Letters’ is essentially a staged reading with a $127 price tag, but veteran director Gregory Mosher couldn’t have made a more fitting decision. The play follows the written correspondence of Andrew Ladd and Melissa Gardner, two upper-crust kids growing up, starting careers, creating families, and eventually fading into old…
The current renaissance in New York City’s Harlem is not to be mistaken for the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s (and before). The current revival has much to do with real estate, privilege, and power. The iconic Harlem Renaissance had everything to do with artistic collaboration, white bootleggers, and crazy rhythms. This is the Harlem T. Oliver Reid knows well….
“Fear not, I am the first and the last, and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.” Revelation 1:17b-18 In her challenging and remarkable performance piece “Hard Rain,” currently running at 59E59 Theater B, Barb Jungr alludes to the often cryptic nature of Bob Dylan’s lyrics. There…