Julia Roberts performs each night in Three Days of Rain at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater on 45th Street. The audiences chanting her name can be heard through the walls all the way into the theater next door.
That neighboring theater, the Booth, is where Ralph Fiennes performs each night in Faith Healer. And sometimes Read More
Either I’m getting soft in the heart or I’m getting long in the tooth. Probably both. Anyway, I’m getting used to Keanu Reeves. He can’t act, but his blank-blackboard expressions and his narcoleptic demeanor while mumbling lines in his sleep have become as so-what routine as Madonna’s push-ahead self-promotion. And speaking of routine, his shared Read More
I love Brian Friel’s heart and soul, suffering though they are. Mr. Friel stands above the new generation of Irish dramatists, Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, and you have only to see his haunting and wonderful Faith Healer to understand why.
There is—to borrow a word from Mr. Friel about his own tortured hero—a magnificence Read More
I love Brian Friel’s heart and soul, suffering though they are. Mr. Friel stands above the new generation of Irish dramatists, Martin McDonagh and Conor McPherson, and you have only to see his haunting and wonderful Faith Healer to understand why.
There is—to borrow a word from Mr. Friel about his own tortured hero—a Read More
Harold Ramis’ The Ice Harvest, from a screenplay by Richard Russo and Robert Benton, based on the novel by Scott Phillips, plays out as a blacker and bleaker film noir than anything Mr. Ramis, Mr. Russo and Mr. Benton have ever undertaken in the past. Mr. Ramis, in particular, came into prominence in the 70’s Read More
The plight of impoverished Africans is all the rage with film people lately. Again!
At The Constant Gardener premiere, Rachel Weisz arrived in a backless teal gown by Narcisco Rodriguez and Cartier earrings. She was followed closely by a handler who let the young journos know that they were to ask only about the movie Read More
It’s a shame that Karin Coonrod’s bold and brilliant new production of Coriolanus has been so misunderstood. The director stands virtually alone in refusing to talk down to Shakespeare (and therefore to audiences). She isn’t in the popularizing game. Nor, incidentally, was Shakespeare.
We can say confidently, at least, that Coriolanus is one of his Read More
The Bard’s Cabaret
Act
Relentlessly searching for new ways to make Shakespeare fun
for the uncultured masses in a contemporary commercial market, filmmakers have
taken liberties with the Bard of Avon before (the court of Richard III became
the Third Reich and Ethan Hawke’s recent Hamlet drove Ophelia wild on a cell
phone), but Read More
The trains were late, according to the message delivered with a gentle Caribbean lilt over the platform loudspeaker, owing to a delay. So when I arrived for lunch at the hottest new restaurant in town, the friend I was meeting was already at the table. The maître d’ showed me through the small, sleek and Read More
Gillian Armstrong’s Oscar and Lucinda , from a screenplay by Laura Jones and a novel by Peter Carey, turns out to be, to borrow a pungent phrase from Woody Allen, an Australian film with a vengeance. I had heard mostly negative reactions to it before I saw it, and so I was somewhat startled by Read More
