I attended the next-to-last showing of Jean Genet’s play “The Maids” at Lincoln Center Festival last night. This production was brought to New York by the Sydney Theater Company. To me, the big discovery was the least well-known of the three actresses – Elizabeth Debicki, who played the Mistress. Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert, both major international film stars, played the two sisters who are the Mistress’s maids.
Of course Genet wrote this in French, … <Read More>
I’ve just returned from a weekend in the Cooperstown, New York, area, where I attended three of the four main stage presentations of this year’s edition of the Glimmerglass Opera Festival. Glimmerglass takes it name from Lake Glimmerglass in the Leatherstocking Tales of James Fennimore Cooper. Cooper, whose family gave its name to Cooperstown, was thinking of Otsego Lake when he created the fictional Lake Glimmerglass for his tales of Indians and settlers in colonial … <Read More>
I attended a performance this afternoon of Atlantic Theater Company’s production of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s new play, “Between Riverside and Crazy.” It was not clear to me whether this was a preview or whether the production has actually opened, but everything went very smoothly and the cast and technical crew certainly have everything under control.
I was very entertained and impressed by this story of an elderly African-American former NYC police officer, retired on a … <Read More>
I recently had the opportunity to attend performances of two new musicals playing in Broadway houses: Woody Allen’s “Bullets Over Broadway” and Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak’s “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.” And a fine time was had by all.
I don’t think one would necessarily imagine that “Bullets Over Broadway,” a Woody Allen film of long ago, would readily translate to musical comedy, especially without the active participation of a composer … <Read More>
Three-judge panels of the San Francisco-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit issued two rulings of some consequence from the perspective of LGBT rights on May 20. In one, the court delayed implementation of U.S. Magistrate Candy Dale’s ruling striking Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriages while expediting the court’s consideration of the merit’s of Idaho’s appeal of that ruling. In the other, the court rejected a challenge by Prop 8 Committees (organizations formed … <Read More>
I saw two new plays over the past week: “The Realistic Joneses” by Will Eno at the Lyceum Theatre, and “The City of Conversation” by Anthony Giardina at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. I was drawn to the first by the cast — I was eager to see Michael C. Hall and Marisa Tomei — and to the second by the subject matter — the famed female political hostesses of Washington D.C. … <Read More>
I attended the matinee performance of City Center Encores!’ performance of Irma La Douce on May 10. I’ve been a fan of this series for many years, and I find that most of the productions are a pleasure to attend, but I was not particularly impressed by Imra La Douce. I don’t put this down to the production itself. They constructed a terrific set — more elaborate than usual for this series — and all … <Read More>
One expects light comedy at the Neil Simon Theatre, but sometimes one gets heavy drama. At least that is the case with “All the Way,” Robert Schenkkan’s dramatization of the first year of Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, November 1963 through November 1964. Johnson was propelled into the presidency unprepared with the sudden assassination of John F. Kennedy. Bringing his masterful legislative talents to bear, he pushed through several key pieces of the Kennedy legislative agenda that … <Read More>
I’ve had a busy few weeks, both in terms of attending things and in terms of work having to get done, as a result of which there is a big pile-up of programs for me to write about, so herewith a diary of brief comments about the events I’ve attended from March 22 through April 16. I have omitted comment about the Jeremy Denk piano recital at Peoples’ Symphony Concerts, which I wrote about separately … <Read More>
Didn’t expect to see those two names in the same headline? Well, I’m multicultural…. I’ve been so consumed with writing about legal developments that I now have a backlog of cultural events upon which to comment, so here goes:
On January 27, I attended a recital by the Canadian-American pianist Marc-Andre Hamelin at Carnegie Hall’s Zankel Hall, the recital auditorium under the main stage. Hamelin likes to play unusual repertory, so the biggest single piece … <Read More>