From stage left of the paint-splattered canvas set – designed to evoke faded brain cells – music begins. Themes from glaring examples of lowdown popular trash, such as snippets of the McDonald’s song about deserving a break today and the twice-incarnated Addams Family whistle, waft ominously through the air. Like…
Lately, there’s been a lot of tongue-clucking and finger-pointing at Brian C. Smith’s Off Broadway Theatre. The artistic director stands accused of pandering to a predominantly Jewish audience in the (often futile) attempt to make a profit producing live theater. And the critics who make these accusations certainly offer enough…
After watching the recent Los Angeles debacle – and numbed by the evidence of mankind’s inability to coexist peacefully and democratically – a thought struck me: While the inner cities were screaming and burning, the plutocratic residents of Beverly Hills and Bel Air were probably resting their massaged bodies on…
One of the most subtle, powerful, and potentially hazardous relationships is that which takes place between father and child. In an effort to project masculinity and strength, fathers sometimes trample hearts; as a legacy, they may leave behind mixed messages and hard memories. They don’t yield as easily as mothers,…
Guillermo Gentile is the David Lynch of playwrights: either you get his work or you don’t, either you fall into the fantastic and misshapen spell he weaves, or you leave the theater disturbed and confused. Challenging and surrealistic, his With Folded Wings won the 1989 Best Play Award from the…
Having just coordinated a three-day conference with some of theater’s finest critics and scholars (hosted by New World School of the Arts, with performances by NWSA and Florida International University that did the area much good, as far as credibility goes), I attended numerous panels about the theatrical body, and…
In one senseless scene from The Lion in Winter, actress Susan Clark as Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine plants her body on-stage like a lead stump and bellows to the audience, “We have done a big thing badly.” She’s referring to her hellish relationship with husband King Henry II, but her…
Glasses clink behind the bar, air conditioners grind on and off, and bodies, covered in more make-up than clothing, swing from the rafters. It’s difficult to see, sometimes impossible to hear, but the rumble of excitement builds to a near-erotic pitch. These houses quickly sell out, no matter how bad…
In the spirit of growth, the New World School of the Arts (recently named the best arts high school in the country by Redbook magazine) presents a conference and play festival featuring the work of critic/translator/author/playwright Eric Bentley, who introduced American audiences to Brecht and Pirandello, and who today remains…
During one wrenching scene near the end of Lee Blessing’s Independence, the oldest sister, Kess, tries to convince her unstable mother and two bitter siblings to join in a civil afternoon tea and say positive things about one another. According to the town psychiatrist, she insists, it’s more important to…
My husband, a research scientist and well-educated man, has a mental block when it comes to the arts. Using the logic and empirical knowledge that serves him so well in the laboratory, he wonders aloud at the end of a cinematic or theatrical disaster – as an impressive list of…
Eugene O’Neill believed that artists who try to save the world lose themselves. I don’t think he meant to discourage the role of theater as a social or religious force, but instead recognized the contrivances possible when one tries to write something “important.” Like expert lovemaking, great plays insinuate themselves…
It’s tourist season, which means you can expect local theaters to pull a few bunnies out of their hats. Most venues try to open top shows, or at least new shows, to snag the attention of snowbirds temporarily bored by beach and bar. Catering to audiences wired on a vacation…
As bizarre as any form of sycophantic behavior is – whether it’s tearing out chairs in a frenzy over Sinatra, or throwing underwear on stage at the feet of Axl Rose – one of the most perplexing and bloodless incarnations has to be the literary groupie. While living in New…
What’s a theatrical producer to do? Grants are being slashed without warning, ticket sales plummet in proportion to the economy, while the salaries of some artists strain modest budgets to the point of cancellations. Minimizing set changes and elaborate costumes may help, but usually not enough, so the producer resorts…
It’s a challenge to define the term illuminati in all its incarnations. Several science fiction novels, as well as historical documents, describe a secret society of white and black magicians – including the legendary British sorcerer Aleister Crowley – who planned on ruling the world through esoteric rituals and spiritual…
The question most frequently asked of a theater critic is whether a particular production was good or bad. This often is not answered simply, but requires a lengthy discussion. Actors may be deficient, while the direction is innovative; an excellent play may suffer because of a markedly inadequate presentation. Among…
Neil Simon is the most prolific and successful of contemporary playwrights. And the most maligned. Legendary director and theatrical scholar Harold Clurman wrote an article back in the Sixties called “In Defense of Neil Simon.” Whereupon Simon’s business manager asked Clurman “why a man who earns $40,000 a week needs…
On a fateful night in February, 1964, en route to pick up custom-made plaid tuxedos for their first big gig, an eager but amateur singing quartet is slammed broadside by a busload of parochial-school virgins bound for the Beatles’ debut on the Ed Sullivan Show. All four members of the…
Rita, a working-class hairdresser from the north of England, bumbles and bounces into the life of Frank, an overeducated college tutor and failed poet. Sporting a red fright-wig and rag-doll clothes, she comes on teetering heels to the open university, which she aptly dubs “degrees for dishwashers.” Here she hopes…
At the age of eight, after the bite from a cottonmouth snake failed to scare him, Truman Capote visited a legendary witch in his hometown of Monroeville, Alabama. Armed with Grandma’s ornamental necklace – stolen to bribe his fondest wish out of the crone – he demanded to become a…
“Work in progress” — it’s a theatrical tradition, a sacred one that conjures up visions of feverish writers and composers relentlessly chiseling masterworks into perfection, guided by enthusiastic audiences and patient critics. Unlike the novel, rarely revised after its formal public introduction, musicals and plays may be recrafted several times,…
