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Notes on SUNSET BOULEVARD
I doubt you need my advice to help you make up your mind about whether to see the revival of the musical version of Sunset Boulevard. There are a few silly bits in which people run around the stage to no particular purpose, but mostly it is as impressive as it intends to be. Jamie… Continue reading
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Review: “Hold Onto Me Darling”
Once in a blue moon, I have a strong sense of what a playwright was thinking when they wrote a text. I may well be wrong, of course. But, as I was watching Hold Onto Me Darling (my fingers itch to put in the missing comma), I fancied I could hear Kenneth Lonergan in the… Continue reading
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Review: “The Counter”
Much drama focuses on conflict. Two or more points-of-view building to the point where they bang away at each other. What we’ve come to expect from Arthur Miller, Lillian Hellman, August Wilson, Tennessee Williams and Tony Kushner. I’m not saying I don’t love it when the adrenaline kicks in and the metaphoric swords start clanging.… Continue reading
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“Our Class” and “Fatherland”
Compare and contrast. Does anybody use that phrase any more in high school English? I remember the groan that would arise when one of our teachers assigned a paper and began with that phrase. Compare and contrast The Great Gatsby with To Kill a Mockingbird, or whatever two titles could be randomly paired together. And… Continue reading
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James Earl Jones
I wouldn’t presume to call James Earl Jones a friend, but I had four encounters with him that immediately leap to mind. Some years ago, I was involved with a group attempting to revive the theater in Stratford, Connecticut. If the outfit had been successful, I was told I would become literary manager, a gig… Continue reading
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Playing With History
One of the things that theater is supposed to do is to give us a way to tell ourselves stories about ourselves. A bunch of us gather together in a public place with some other people who get up in front of us and show us behavior that, with luck, may help us understand better… Continue reading
1776, A Hundred Circling Camps, Andrew Hamilton, Arthur Miller, Bonus Army, Caroline Sherman, Cole Escola, Dogteam Theatre Project, Donald M. Miller, Empire, Hamilton, Iphigenia in Aulis, Irve Tunick, John Peter Zenger, Lenny Bruce, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Marian Seldes, Mary!, Peter Stone, Rebecca Wear, Robert Hull, Sam Collier, Sherman Edwards, Sidney Kingsley, Studio One, Supreme City, The Crucible, The Patriots, The Trial of John Peter Zenger -
“Here There are Blueberries” and Other Reports
By coincidence, Here There are Blueberries, the new documentary play by Moisés Kaufman and Amanda Gronich (conceived and directed by Moisés Kaufman) has arrived shortly after Jonathan Glazer’s film The Zone of Interest reached a wider American audience through its Oscar and Annette Hess’s German TV series The Interpreter of Silence arrived on streaming channels.… Continue reading
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Review: “Sally and Tom”
I couldn’t help but think of the musical Kiss Me, Kate as I emerged from Suzan-Lori Parks’s new play, Sally and Tom at the Public Theater In both, we see actors dealing with each other as they work on a new play. In Kiss Me, Kate, the offstage relationship between the couple playing the leads… Continue reading
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A Conversation With Christopher Durang
This appeared in my book What Playwrights Talk About When They Talk About Writing, which was published by Yale University Press in 2017. Q: When I’m asked to teach, I discover more about what my philosophy is just because I’m required to articulate it to others. To what degree have you surprised yourself teaching? To… Continue reading
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Review: DEAD OUTLAW
I didn’t expect to see two musicals within one year about the disposition of corpses. But, yes, last summer I saw the London hit, Operation Mincemeat and the other day I saw Dead Outlaw. Both shows are based in fact. Mincemeat is about a misinformation operation run by British intelligence during WWII which involved dressing… Continue reading
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 