First things first: Hadestown is the best new musical I have seen in years. Anaïs Mitchell’s gorgeous adaptation of the myth of Orpheus (Reeve Carney) and Euridyce (Eva Noblezada) takes its cues from folk, bluegrass, and jazz, with the band onstage and eventually introduced, one by one, by a heavy-drinking, husky-voiced Persephone (Amber Gray). A sharply-dressed […]
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George (Austin Smith), steeped in European sensibility after a recent trip to France, returns to America to find a plantation he has inherited in financial peril. He’s caught the eye of the wealthy heiress Dora (Mary Wiseman), but his heart belongs to Zoe (Amber Gray), the eponymous daughter of his uncle and a slave. George’s eloquence […]
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When James Baldwin published Giovanni’s Room in 1956, nobody knew what to make of it. After his debut novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, Baldwin was hailed as The Next Voice of Black America. How to read, then, its follow up, which details the lives of gay, white expatriates in Paris? It wasn’t until the 1980s […]
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