drama
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Jamie Lloyd Reminds Us of Some Essentials
A New York Post writer named John Oleksinski recently wrote an article in which he chided Broadway producers for productions that charge big money but offer skimpy production values. Oleksinski claims that chintziness in scenery is based in a desire to cut budgets. If you go to Broadway (or any theater) for the fun of Continue reading
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Homeless, Lizzie Borden and Three Plays With Brooklyn Connections
A few days ago, as I was leaving the Upper West Side building where my wife and I live, I ran into one of our neighbors, a former state Supreme Court judge. She knows I’m a playwright and a theater journalist and she wanted my take on a play. A minute or two later we Continue reading
A Doll's House, A Raisin in the Sun, Alexander Zelden, Anne Kauffman, August Wilson, Becomes a Woman, Betty Smith, Brooklyn, Crumbs From the Table of Joy, David Mamet, Eric Tucker, Fall River Fishing, Frederick Wiseman, Herman D. Farrell III, Jamie Lloyd, L:loyd Richards, Lorraine Hansberry, Love, Lynn Nottage, Mint Theater, National Theater of Great Britain, Oscar Isaac, Rachel Brosnahan, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window -
Chasing Stories
If you took a census of all of the characters who are alive in my mind, it wouldn’t surprise me if the number reached into the thousands. Sherlock Holmes and Mama Rose, Clytemnestra and Walter Lee Younger, Jackie Brown and Zatoichi – leading, supporting and cameo characters reside uneasily in an ever-expanding repertory company and Continue reading
Bedlam Theater, Chris Chibnall, Christopher Walken, Doctor Who, Eric Tucker, Henrik Ibsen, Jennifer Westfeldt, Jodie Whitaker, Liba Vaynberg, Mike Birbiglia, Othello, Pygmalion, Rattlestick Theater, Saint Joan, Sense and Sensibility, Shakespeare, Susannah Millonzi, The Gett, The Old Man and the Pool, The Winter's Tale -
“Raisin in the Sun” at the Public
The first grown-up straight play I remember seeing was Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun in Chicago. I didn’t see it the first time it played Chicago, when it stopped there on its way to Broadway in February 1959 and, to the surprise of its author, received a rave review in the Chicago Tribune Continue reading
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As You Kink It
Because of serendipitous scheduling, I saw Kinky Boots on a matinee and the New York Shakespeare production of As You Like It that night. Kinky Boots is about a guy who gets to say and do some things because he dresses up as a woman. As You Like It is about a woman who gets Continue reading
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Telling it Clearly — “Macbeth” vs. “Cyrano”
I’m a story guy. I think the roots of the theater lie in people sharing stories. I’ve written before about a conversation I had in the mid-Seventies with novelist Louis L’Amour that influenced my thinking. He described how Native Americans, upon their return from a hunt or a battle, knew it was part of their Continue reading
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“American Buffalo” on Broadway
In 2001, I served on a grand jury. At one point, an ADA played for us a recording from a wiretap. It was a conversation between two members of a violent drug gang. One was assigning the other to kill the girlfriend of someone who had displeased him somehow. (The ADA assured us that the Continue reading
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SPACE DOGS and ENGLISH
It’s no surprise that American playwrights usually write plays set in America. It is a little surprising that three current off-Broadway plays by American playwrights are, in fact, set outside our borders. I wrote recently about Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic, set in Paris. Joining this are two very different off-Broadway offerings, Space Continue reading
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“Long Day’s Journey Into Night” – sort of
The program that comes with the off-Broadway production at the Minetta Lane Theater says the play on offer is Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill. And it’s true that every word spoken on the stage is by O’Neill. It’s also true that it’s about half the length of normal productions (something that the Continue reading
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Thoughts after watching THE VERDICT
Just watched The Verdict for the first time since it came out forty years ago in 1982. Sidney Lumet at the top of his game, a perfect damn script by David Mamet (I can’t say how much it owes to the original novel), and spectacular work by an extraordinary cast including, in supporting roles, Lindsay Crouse, Continue reading
Chicago theater, drama, film adaptation, movies, off-Broadway, playwriting, Pulitzer Prize, Second City, UncategorizedAmerican Buffalo, Daniel, David Mamet, Duck Variations, Glengarry Glen Ross, Harold Pinter, James Mason, Jay Presson Allen, Julie Bovasso, Lewis Stadlen, Lindsay Crouse, Mike Nussbaum, Paul Newman, Prince of the City, Sidney Lumet, Slap Shot, St. Nicholas Theater, Stanley Richards, The Verdict, Village Voice, W.H. Macy
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 