review
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“Kyoto”
One of the things I value about Lincoln Center Theater is it has a history of putting up large-scale plays that no other management in town would attempt. Now, sometimes they’re from the UK. But then American writers have been discouraged by our managements from writing large-scale non-musical plays. (Among my least-produced plays is American Continue reading
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“The Honey Trap”
I first saw English, The Buena Vista Social Club, Eureka Day, Prayer for the French Republic, Dead Outlaw and Liberation at small non-profit venues before they were picked up for critically-praised productions on Broadway. If I were going to place a bet on current off-Broadway offerings that might make the move, I would put my Continue reading
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George White and Finding the Way at the O’Neill
Lucy Rosenthal’s playwriting professor at Yale was critic and anthologist John Gassner. Her memories of him are not warm. “He advised me to transfer to the education school so I could be home at three o’clock to give the children milk and cookies. And then he said – if you want to know what the Continue reading
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Actors Better Than the Plays That Make Them Look Good
Sometimes, at the end of a show, I feel pulled in two directions — admiration and dismay. Four recent shows made me feel this way. As the lights came up I found myself clapping fervently for the performances but feeling that the scripts that made those performances possible fell short as writing. I was particularly Continue reading
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“Cherry Orchard,” “Streetcar,” and More
As it happened, some of the productions I saw in the weeks after my return from London have been productions I had heard about a lot while I was in London. I’ve already commented on Vanya, so I’ll focus on the others. Benedict Andrews’s staging of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (at St. Anne’s) and Rebecca 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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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
Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 