theater
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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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“The Merchant of Venice”
The production of The Merchant of Venice that opened recently at CSC was among the most dismaying evenings I’ve had in the theater in recent memory. It’s particularly dismaying because the director, Igor Golyak, recently staged in the same space a play called Our Class from a script by Tadeusz Słobodzianek that I thought, though… Continue reading
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Notes on VLADIMIR
Not so long ago, Peter Morgan’s play, Patriots, featured an account of how a Russian oligarch named Boris Berezovsky helped raise Vladimir Putin to power and lived to regret it. Putin, played by Will Keen, was a formidable presence. In Erika Sheffer’s Vladimir (now playing at Manhattan Theater Club’s off-Broadway space at City Center), Putin… 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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What I’m Trying to Do Here
For something like thirty years, I had the luxury of writing a column for Dramatics, a magazine put out by the Educational Theater Association. The primary audience was high school kids enrolled in drama programs. It was a terrific gig. I generally wrote six pieces a year, so, unlike other critics, I wasn’t under pressure… Continue reading
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Terrence McNally
I had the pleasure of knowing Terrence McNally from his off-off-Broadway period. Because I worked free in those days, I played keyboard for the 1973 production of his play WHISKEY at St. Clement’s on West 46th Street. Kevin O’Connor directed. It was about a group of alcoholic country-western stars and their horse (Whiskey). Quite a… Continue reading
