On Friday, Curbed re-blogged an item from W that detailed Klaus Biesenbach’s living situation. They paraphrased the introductory anecdote from that piece in which “the curator once stripped his Mexico City hotel room of the telephone, TV remote, even the curtains, keeping them stacked neatly in the closet until he departed.” We believe the Read More
There is, I believe, a catastrophic error of judgment in Anthony Page’s production of Waiting for Godot, starring Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin.
Samuel Beckett’s seminal Modernist masterpiece—first produced in America in 1956—is famously set in a void with only a near-barren tree (a Beckett tree: one too fragile upon which to hang yourself). Read More
The thing about the plays of Samuel Beckett is that while I’ve read a number of fine books and scholarly essays analyzing them, and fancy I can grasp what a state of “non-being” is, and even the fuzzy meaning of a “non-play” for that matter, the truth is much simpler in my case: Beckett’s plays Read More
Tony-nominated director Deborah Warner and longtime collaborating actress Fiona Shaw (Aunt Petunia in the Harry Potter movies) will be bringing a "far from conventional" production of Samuel Beckett’s Happy Days to Brooklyn Academy of Music starting Jan. 8 (check here for tickets), according to Jason Zinoman of the New York Times. Read More
The new Broadway musical Grey Gardens, directed by Michael Greif, is a tale of two acts. After last season’s successful run at Playwrights Horizons, the show’s creators tried to solve the problem of the expository first act, but what they might have done is drop it entirely—it would have been a courageous stroke of mad Read More
Wodehouse: A Life, by Robert McCrum. W.W. Norton and Company, 530 pages, $27.95.
Oh, to be P.G. Wodehouse! There aren’t many authors whose life one actually covets-not really. To come up with a Dorothy Parker witticism might seem like fun for a millisecond, but you’d also be the one to take that multi-bladed brain Read More
So many people were doubled up with laughter at Bill Irwin’s latest feat of clowning at the Signature Theatre, they were in danger of spoiling my displeasure. They made me feel guilty for not laughing. Who wants to be the one in the audience with the invisible sign over their head: “MISERY”?
Not I (as Read More
Given the publishing-world scuttlebutt last week, you might have thought the P.E.N.-sponsored tribute to Samuel Beckett, held at Town Hall on Monday night, Dec. 9, was subtitled “Waiting for Barney.” Former Grove publisher Barney Rosset, Beckett’s original U.S. publisher, was not initially asked to participate in the event, which featured such Beckett-friendly literary types as Read More
Lee Breuer’s epic investigation of the artist as a pig, Ecco Porco , is the kind of experimental piece that gives avant-garde theater a bad name, which is usually fine by any self-respecting member of the avant-garde. Mr. Breuer and his renowned, award-winning Mabou Mines troupe have been confusing and infuriating people for over 30 Read More
I can’t imagine a more fantastic-or fantastically enjoyable-summer event than Villa Villa , created, and flown, by the extraordinary Argentine group known as De La Guarda. If you haven’t seen it yet, proceed to jail immediately. The show-if that’s the word for this flipped-out flying circus-must be seen by everyone at least twice for maximum Read More
