Raúl Esparza was waiting for fried chicken and talking about the mystery of existence. “The most beautiful thing about the play, and what moves me every night, has to do with humanity’s search for something greater than themselves,” he said. “Some sense of fitting in, whether it’s in time, whether it’s a sense of history.” Read More
THEATER
Well, if you don’t feel guilty about crossing the picket lines, Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein at the Hilton Theatre is still the hottest ticket on Broadway, albeit with a slightly less fiery flame. According to the Observer’s John Heilpern, the “production is handsome, like a stylish facade, but the pace of Read More
There are three and a half good reasons to celebrate Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll: the three star actors from England and the second act of the play.
Mr. Stoppard dazzles and surprises, as we’ve come to expect from the celebrated playwright and intellectual—not least by using rock music as his central metaphor for Read More
Patrick Marber’s Howard Katz—first staged at London’s National Theatre in 2001—is this smart playwright’s middle-age-meltdown play. Desperate heroes in midlife crisis are as common in theater as memory plays of lost youth, but Mr. Marber’s is unusual in one startling aspect: His crude, floundering hero, Katz, in search of meaning and a soul, learns that Read More
Seeing again August Wilson’s compelling Two Trains Running (directed by Lou Bellamy, now in the last two weeks of its extended run at the Signature), I was struck by how badly our theater needs emotion—plain, simple, direct emotion.
It isn’t just Wilson’s widely admired musicality and unadorned poetry that touch us so deeply. It’s the Read More
As you enter the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center for the opening installment of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard’s trilogy about the fate of the revolutionary intellectuals of mid-19th-century Russia, it would be understandable if you were overcome by the fear that you were to be seated at desks.
We’ve been inundated with Read More
As you enter the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center for the opening installment of The Coast of Utopia, Tom Stoppard’s trilogy about the fate of the revolutionary intellectuals of mid-19th-century Russia, it would be understandable if you were overcome by the fear that you were to be seated at desks.
We’ve been inundated Read More
Among the shows I’m looking forward to this fall (accompanied by a few prayers), let me begin by celebrating the innovative season of August Wilson plays at the Signature Theatre Company. Mr. Wilson’s great dramas, forged in the chains of American history, speak magnificently for themselves. But nothing speaks more positively for the future of Read More
Among the shows I’m looking forward to this fall (accompanied by a few prayers), let me begin by celebrating the innovative season of August Wilson plays at the Signature Theatre Company. Mr. Wilson’s great dramas, forged in the chains of American history, speak magnificently for themselves. But nothing speaks more positively for the future of Read More
There’s a true story that Tom Stoppard liked to tell about a man he knew who kept peacocks. Not to worry! This is a completely comprehensible Stoppardian story. No particular knowledge of peacocks, moral philosophy or the existence-or nonexistence-of God is required, thank God.
One bright morning the man was shaving, and he looked out Read More
