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Photo by Brigitte Lacombe

The Legendary Zoe Caldwell on Her New One-Woman Show, ‘Elective Affinities’

If you’re a visitor to New York, here’s a little trick to play on your hotel concierge: Slip him or her a nice tip, say $100, and let it be known that you’d be so eternally grateful for a pair of tickets to Elective Affinities, the new one-woman show starring Zoe Caldwell.

It’s not going to happen.

You’ll have no better luck if you’re a New Yorker, but the experience will be less fun, because the abject failure will be yours alone.

Elective Affinities, you see, is a very tough ticket, probably the toughest in town. Read More

What Makes Political Theater Effective—Or Not

The mortal danger of all the political theater I’ve seen this season is whether it preaches pointlessly to the choir—or takes an imaginative leap to exist in its own dynamic right.

All propaganda plays date quickly—unless the play transcends the propaganda. Who today remembers Tim Robbins’ anti-war docudrama, Embedded? But then, who remembered it two Read More