The Revelation of the Undertow of Wonder “I can’t help but wish and feel as if there’s more to our lives, somewhere, in this moment. Than this concern for the whereabouts and well-adjustment of a devil. I’m bored to exhaustion. Devil, devil. Devil. Bringer of evil. Filler of vacuums, blah blah blah.” Dora In a recent New York Times interview…
“I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.” Richard Wright, “Black Boy” (1945) With rhythms more reminiscent of song than spoken word, Dael…
If Eugène Ionesco and Martin McDonagh watched The Maltese Falcon, they may very well have come up with something akin to Stolen Chair’s Kill Me Like You Mean It; but it wouldn’t be nearly as good as the comedic masterwork currently running at Fourth Street Theatre. When private eye Ben Farrell is hired to investigate a series of crimes seemingly…
“I like to imagine him in that night,/A trial berserker/An orphan in the moonlight,/Walking, singing, patrolling the bins by the coastal path,/looking for a tribe to protect.” Claire in “The Events” Reportedly, Anders Breivik – the rightwing extremist who bombed a government building in Oslo, Norway in 2011 killing eight people then shooting sixty-nine more in a youth camp –…
Ayad Akhtar’s “The Invisible Hand” currently playing at the New York Theatre Workshop is an intelligent, emotionally charged, and captivating exploration of the complex dynamics of self-interest in a globally codependent environment. Under Ken Rus Schmoll’s electric direction, the ensemble cast leads – sometimes propels – the audience through a series of “ah-ha” moments which culminate in the kind of…
Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes from a Marriage” is the epic examination of not only why marriages disintegrate but whether marriages are sustainable as a cultural institution. Director Ivo Van Hove’s reimagining of Bergman’s original screenplay – as did the television miniseries, the feature length movie, and prior stage versions – raises what are the essential questions about marriage, truly enduring questions…
Despite Ranger Steve Reynolds’ (Jeremy Wilhelm) welcoming words to the NYTW audience and his insistence that “Red-Eye to Havre de Grace” is “gonna have a lot of good information [and] some important dates,” there is not much Edgar Allan Poe aficionados do not already know about Poe, his marriage to his thirteen year old cousin Virginia Clemm, his attachment to…
“Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.” I Corinthians 13:8 (NIV) Sans a singular protagonist, sans a singular antagonist, sans clear conflicts, therefore sans plot, Caryl Churchill’s “Love and Information” depends on a singular trope to provide focus and interest…
When Kyle Riabko finishes his improvised introduction of the band and the origin of “What’s It All About” which he co-conceived with David Lane Seltzer, he glides into his soulful arrangement of “Anyone Who Had A Heart” (Bacharach/Hal David). The audience collectively leans in (Mr. Riabko intentionally makes his audience pay attention) and everyone is immediately aware they are in…
The ancient Mesopotamians, the ancient Egyptians, the African peoples of Silluk and Pangwe, the Amerindians, the Karens of Burma, and the Incas all have folkloric tales about the creation of humans from clay, earth, or mud. Their deities, in short, fetched clay and made humankind. Will Power’s “Fetch Clay, Make Man” chronicles the making of the man Muhammad Ali from…