Setting Macbeth in an insane asylum is not an entirely original idea—after all, Sleep No More has been running just twenty blocks south of the Barrymore Theatre for over two years—but apart from adding an irrelevant, “creepy” aesthetic, I’m sure I don’t know why anyone would do this to Shakespeare’s play. In its newest incarnation, […]
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According to a popular but apocryphal story, successful Roman military commanders returning from battle would participate in elaborate parades in which the spoils of war were flaunted before the city; however, a slave would trail the triumphant commander, repeatedly whispering in his ear—depending in the variation—either “Memento te mortalem esse” (“Remember you are mortal”) or, […]
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When Philip Seymour Hoffman walks onstage, he sits down and takes a long beat before exhaling his first line: “Oh boy, oh boy.” He says it so quietly, so privately that we would probably miss it if we didn’t know it was coming. He says it like it’s not meant to be heard by over […]
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