“All this is fact,” Marilynne Robinson writes late in her novel Housekeeping. “Fact explains nothing.” In other words, facts are just naked data waiting for interpretation. It is in that interpretation, in that carving out of a story from the facts, that one reaches truth. If the facts have to be massaged to reach a greater truth, so […]
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Theatre at St. Clement’s 423 West 46 Street, NYC 10036 http://www.KennedyBobbysLastCrusade.com Kennedy: Bobby’s Last Crusade follows Robert F. Kennedy during the fateful 1968 presidential campaign, from his announcement of his intention to enter the race in March, to his last speech on June 4th at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. The play contains many […]
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In his condition-of-England play, Jerusalem, Jez Butterworth drew in broad strokes: not only does he set the action on St. George’s Day, but he begins with a dreamy, mostly-accurate recitation from the Blake, courtesy of a fifteen-year-old girl, dressed as Phaedra and interrupted after two stanzas. Still, Jerusalem worked, and phenomenally so, because Butterworth largely earned his […]
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Bill Irwin—who reminds us several times throughout On Beckett that he is in his “dotage”—is a member of a fading profession. In the ‘seventies, he trained at Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College, a defunct school named after a company that closed after over a century just last year. The vaudeville tradition he adores […]
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Transformation has been the only constant of Bob Dylan’s career. Yet there are clear strains of American mythology throughout his body of work, from his early idolization of Woody Guthrie to peak-year releases like John Wesley Harding. It can even be found in his born again years and embrace of gospel. In “Gotta Serve Somebody,” his […]
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Oscar Wilde’s Salomé is a fascinating play, one that breathes life into the woman who is only called “the daughter of Herodias” by the authors of Mark and Matthew. In the New Testament, this daughter (Laura Butler Rivera) is just following her mother’s orders when she asks for the beheading of John the Baptist. In Wilde’s play, […]
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Ellen Lauren is a terrific Dionysus. Lanky, agile, and puckish, she even quips with the audience in a way that feels unforced: “Wanna touch an actor?” she asks moments into The Bacchae, making a beeline for the front row. “I know you do.” I’m not sure he did. But Lauren seemed like she would be delighted with […]
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