By Benjamin-Emile Le Hay 1/29 8:24pm

The Shindigger

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Wham, Ma’am, Thank You BAM!

As John Turturro approached the head table, the president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Karen Brooks Hopkins, rose from her seat. “I present to you the consul general of Sicily,” she said in jest, introducing the actor to her tablemates, a group that included South African Consul General George Monyemangene, his wife, Louise Monyemangene, and Mr. Turturro’s better half, Katherine Borowitz.

It was a frigid night, smack in the middle of the city’s latest cold snap. Inside the grand foyer of the Peter Jay Sharp Building, however, the atmosphere was warm and bubbly. Many had braved the elements for BAM’s 2013 Theater Benefit, an evening honoring renowned British theater and film director Peter Brook and celebrating the U.S. premiere of his latest (quite beautiful) production, The Suit. Read More

By John Heilpern 11/04/08 5:05pm

Brook’s Radical Simplicity Does Dostoyevsky Proud

It’s been 40 years since Peter Brook wrote in the opening to The Empty Space, his famous manifesto, “I can take any empty space and call it a bare stage. A man walks across this empty space whilst someone else is watching him, and this is all that is needed for an act of theatre Read More

By John Heilpern 3/29/04 12:00am

Sweet Dream! The Finest Shakespeare in Years

I surely can’t be alone in joyfully acclaiming Edward Hall’s all-male A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. I imagine tickets will be hard to come by, but you must beg for one if necessary, or batter down the doors of the theater and storm the place.

The extraordinary production by the Read More

By John Heilpern 5/05/03 12:00am

Letter To A Young Director

Dear Erica Schmidt,

You don’t know me, but I wanted to tell you how very gifted you are and, if I may, offer a little advice. Let me say, firstly, that any young director at the start of their career who can stage As You Like It as wittily as you and the recent Debbie Read More

By John Heilpern 2/24/03 12:00am

Gay Play Asks: What Makes a Play Gay?

In Jonathan Tolins’ new play, The Last Sunday in June , several gay guys meet in a Christopher Street apartment during the Gay Pride parade. Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

The guys-including the apparently contented couple who own the apartment but are moving to the burbs, a young actor who’s recently come Read More

By John Heilpern 9/24/01 12:00am

The Reasons Why the Show Goes On

It’s all too understandable why concern has been voiced over

the theater’s ability to carry on in our grieving, shattered city. What use a

play-a mere play strutted on the stage? How can we laugh and dance when life

has become a nightmare?

My feeling is that at no time in our lives have Read More

By John Heilpern 5/21/01 12:00am

The Suitcase Hamlet Gets Lost in Transit

Another opening, another Hamlet !

I must say, with regrets, that I found the Royal National Theatre production of

Hamlet a very poor one, indeed. It

shall henceforth be known as “The Suitcase Hamlet .”

The motif of John Caird’s long, literal, murky production-the bewilderingly

lame idea behind his entire conception of the play-is Read More

By Ron Rosenbaum 5/14/01 12:00am

Sara Kestelman: Theater In a Crowded Fire

Who was that voice?

Who was that Voice?

I’m talking with Peter Brook, renowned theater guru, a week before his Hamlet opened at B.A.M., and we’re trying to recall a remarkable moment in the theater we were both witness to long ago. A life-changing moment for me. A moment when fire broke out in Read More