a new york-based theater blog
In All the Way, playwright Robert Schenkkan followed LBJ through his first year in office: the accidental presidency, the landslide victory against Goldwater, and the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In its sequel, The Great Society, he picks up right where he left off: battling with Martin Luther King (Grantham Coleman) and […]
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Jerry Springer: The Opera is probably as good as any opera about Jerry Springer could be. That’s not an endorsement. Still, if you’ve spent your life looking for the show where you can hear a soprano sing “Piss on me, you whore” with all the self-seriousness of an Aida, then you’ve come to the right […]
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During the mid-sixties, the Holocaust was very much on American minds. This wasn’t always the case. At the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, Germany (or West Germany) flipped from foe to friend faster than you could say Zyklon B. American Jews, hesitant to criticize this now-ally and be […]
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James Joyce loved Henrik Ibsen; he considered his work superior to Shakespeare’s. In fact, an early, lost play of his—A Brilliant Career—was partially modeled on An Enemy of the People, which is currently being revived by the Manhattan Theatre Club at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre. In a puerile attempt to emulate the Master, I […]
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