To paraphrase Alexander Pope, Richard Bean’s One Man, Two Guvnors is what we oft have seen, but ne’er so well—for the most part, that is.
Read more
What Moment Does Resurrection Choose?
The silent agony of three women living in a cavernous home in Los Angeles is suddenly interrupted by the introduction of Roscoe (Gary Cole), a Cervantes professor who is working on some sort of video project with the family’s youngest daughter, Sally (Julianne Nicholson). The home has no patriarch—”Whitmore” left years ago—and Roscoe himself has […]
Read more
What We Talk About When We Talk About Sex
For those of us whose first sexual experiences took place in childhood bedrooms, high school bathrooms, and community swimming pools, the people who choose to remain abstinent seem like members of some kind of reverse freak show, where everyone is fascinatingly boring. Just as foreign as the bearded lady or the conjoined twins is the […]
Read more
Venus in Stilletos
Victor L. Cahn has written a book on gender and power in the plays of Harold Pinter, and his new play, Getting the Business, feels like a riff on the issues raised in his predecessor’s work. Billed somewhat misleadingly as a “noir farce”—probably because it features a femme fatale—it is more like a black comedy […]
Read more
Back in the town of Bnei Brak
Gilad Shalit has returned home. He is plumped up, safe, and writing about sports. But the questions raised by his capture and release linger, so it is appropriate for the Diverse City Theater Co. to revive Lee Blessing’s Two Rooms, a 1988 play about the kidnapping of an American professor in Beirut. As Michael (Curran […]
Read more
If in the First Act You Have Hung a Pistol On the Wall…
In the winter of 1932, Hitler discovered one of his trusted colonels in the company of a thirteen-year-old boy. He removed all but one bullet from a 9mm Luger, handed it to the man and left the room, expecting him to do the honorable thing. But the colonel valued his own life more than Hitler’s. […]
Read more
Mountains. Sure.
Surely there are better unproduced plays out there.
Read more