a new york-based theater blog
Carcass is a play about Jews yelling at each other. Avrush (David Greenspan) yells at his stepdaughter Reyz’l (Rebekah Levin) for being like her “shrew” mother Brayne (Kathryn Rossetter). Reyz’l yells at her stepbrother Mend’l (Alvin Keith) for smelling like animal hides. And Brayne yells at Avrush for being a drunk. It’s enough to drive […]
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Christopher Hitchens once quipped, “everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.” This sentiment is the thrust of George Kelly’s 1931 comedy Philip Goes Forth, in which the eponymous Philip (Bernardo Cubría), a young man fueled by vanity and a desire to disprove his detractors, has decided […]
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The Blue Dragon is a melodrama devoid of drama. Which is odd, since a plot description would suggest otherwise: Claire (Marie Michaud), a French Canadian whose alcoholism has prevented her from adopting in her native country, flies to China in order to buy a baby. When that fails, she finds hope in an old friend, […]
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With the possible exception of David Lynch, Joel and Ethan Coen are the greatest working American filmmakers. They breathe and sweat cinema. As a result, their movies bestow upon their audiences a clear and contagious love of the medium, and nobody since Stanley Kubrick has been so successful in combining high and lowbrow. Which makes […]
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George Bernard Shaw is at his best when he doesn’t take his social mission too seriously, when he is upending gender and class norms like a merry prankster instead of a dogmatic moralist. Thus, a line like, “Women have to unlearn the false good manners of their slavery before they acquire the genuine good manners […]
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If we’ve learned anything from director Will Detlefsen, it’s that Sarah Kane’s Blasted should be done very, very well or not at all. This is a play that hits us so many times over the head that we should leave the theater weak kneed and punch drunk. But when, early on, Ian (Jason de Beer) […]
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