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The Irish Battle in Katie Roche and Donnybrook!, Chinese-Americans in Hwang's Dance and the Railroad - Identity crises

"I could hate the lovable Irish," sings the hero of the 1961 Broadway musical Donnybrook! (Irish Rep), "but I'm Irish myself." We all know that strange mixture of pride, irritation, and affectionate contempt for our own ethnic group, nation, religio...

by Michael Feingold on February 27, 2013
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Reading Around: Mary Shelley Meets Grave Robbers, Movie Stars, and Other Monsters

Chief among the dark oddities of life in 18th- and 19th-century London is that the city, which produced so many dead, was itself forever in want of corpses. Grave robbers found stocking the labs of scientists and students such profitable work that ...

by Alan Scherstuhl on February 27, 2013
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The Madrid: Mama Tried - Edie Falco Flees Family in Manhattan Theatre Club Show

Fathers disappear. Telephone men fall in love with long distance, traveling salesmen never come home from the road. But our culture quails at the idea that a mother would do such things. When was the last time you saw a poster dunning "Deadbeat Moms...

by Alexis Soloski on February 27, 2013
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The Wild Bride: Devil May Care - Kneehigh makes marry with gleeful Grimm adaptation

Oh, the litany of wedding-day traditions--the bouquet, the garter, the rings, the borrowed, the blue. But here's a custom not often practiced: chopping off your beloved's hands. The Cornish company Kneehigh returns to St. Ann's Warehouse with The Wi...

by Alexis Soloski on February 27, 2013
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The Revisionist: Pole Position - Jesse Eisenberg rewrites the culture-clash comedy

"Am I a terrible person?" David (Jesse Eisenberg) asks his Polish cousin Maria (Vanessa Redgrave). "I think I might have some anger directed inwardly. Am I terrible?" Maria wisely leaves his question unanswered. "It's okay," she says. And it is. ...

by Alexis Soloski on February 27, 2013
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Village People - Hit the Wall riffs on the riot that started the modern gay-rights movement

Historical, rhetorical and phantasmagorical, Ike Holter's explosive extravaganza Hit the Wall (Barrow Street Theatre) depicts the Stonewall Riots as a series of snap-fights and bitch battles that escalate to such a fever pitch during the nights of J...

by James Hannaham on February 27, 2013
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"NYC 1993": The New Museum Takes Us Right Here, Right Then - Nontrivial pursuits, 1990s edition

So now we know: If Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet in the 1980s, the art world, circa 1993, would have spawned it instead. The New Museum's nostalgia trip "NYC 1993" surfs through five floors of primordial DIY video epics, outr sex, and self-a...

by R. C. Baker on February 20, 2013
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All in the Timing Whips Up Dessert; The Laramie Cycle Proves Deeply Worth Digesting - The sweet and the sobering

Since we have some tougher matters to digest this week, let's sweeten the deal by starting with dessert. I recommend, as the most deliciously silly theatrical treat in town, the 20th anniversary staging of David Ives's short-play omnibus, All in the...

by Michael Feingold on February 20, 2013
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Jonathan Cake and Maggie Siff Feud and Frolic in TFANA's Much Ado - Brawl's fair

Flowers wilt. Chocolates molder. Card stock yellows. Shakespeare knew--in his comedies and tragedies both--how abruptly even the purest love can sour into jealousy, hate, indifference. And yet, in the late plays particularly, he also shows how mirac...

by Alexis Soloski on February 20, 2013
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Really Really: School for Scandal - Girls Just Wanna Cry Rape in New Campus Drama

Zosia Mamet, of Girls fame, stars in Paul Downs Colaizzo's Really Really for MCC Theater. You might also expect to see the name of her father, David Mamet, somewhere on the program. Colaizzo's college-set script about a frat-party encounter between ...

by Alexis Soloski on February 20, 2013
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Jesus Christ, Punk Superstar - Ma-Yi stages Son of God's youthful meanderings

Jesus was, by most accounts, the original hippie--sporting long hair and sandals, and spreading peace and love among Jews and Romans alike. But even if you're on board with the idea that Christ belonged at Woodstock, you probably don't imagine his f...

by Miriam Felton-Dansky on February 20, 2013
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Bed-Bouncing Opera - Thomas Ads's Powder Her Face at New York City Opera tells "dirty duchess" stories

Onstage and off, the pleasures of sex have always played a major role in opera. While the lurid love lives of superstar divas kept the gossips busy, the even more lurid lives of the characters they embodied--from Monteverdi's Poppaea to Berg's Lulu...

by Michael Feingold on February 20, 2013
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Spooks and Aliens: Trevor Paglen Surveils the Surveillance State

In a stroke of grim serendipity, Trevor Paglen's latest exhibition opened on the day the Senate began confirmation hearings on John O. Brennan, President Obama's choice to head the CIA. A recent brief by the ACLU notes that Brennan is "something of ...

by R. C. Baker on February 13, 2013
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Painfully Funny Playwrights: Luck of the Irish and The Good Person of Szechuan - Kirsten Greenidge matches Brecht for bitter laughs

I should probably feel guilty. The world's in a horrible mess, and I'm having a wonderful time at the theater. When the world's in a mess, the theater's deep sense of tragic irony gets aroused. The mess, recent weather disturbances included, is all ...

by Michael Feingold on February 13, 2013
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Isaac's Eye Spies a Lonely Genius - Ensemble Studio Theatre's Experiment Pays Off

When you imagine the exploits of the young Isaac Newton, cartoon graphics of falling apples and a fortuitous knock on the noggin might come to mind. But Lucas Hnath's eloquent Isaac's Eye--now playing at the Ensemble Studio Theatre, in a sensitive p...

by Jacob Gallagher-Ross on February 13, 2013
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Leonid Sokov's Cocktails and 500 Cocks - On the artist's dissident mash-ups

"I love him--no, no!" says a laughing Leonid Sokov when I mention Joseph Stalin. We are surrounded by guests hoisting shots of horseradish-infused vodka at a noisy reception for the impish dissident artist, who is explaining that his numerous depict...

by R. C. Baker on February 6, 2013
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Song Dong's Smash - The Chinese artist shatters the everyday

You can't get more quotidian than Song Dong's large photographic self-portraits, Eating Drinking Shitting Pissing Sleeping (1999). The listless affect is disturbed, however, by the fish-eye format, which summons a whiff of surveillance so universal ...

by R. C. Baker on February 6, 2013
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David Shields' How Literature Saved My Life Successfully Murders the Novel

David Shields did it, again. He killed the novel. But it's less painful than it sounds. In How Literature Saves My Life, his eleventh book and first since the controversial 2010 hit Reality Hunger, Shields convincingly reminds us why novels aren'...

by Emily Gogolak on February 6, 2013
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Martin Moran Investigates His Inner Gentleness; Fiorello! Explores La Guardia's Showy Side - Told without anger

Martin Moran's new solo work, All the Rage (Peter J. Sharp Theater), records his paradoxical search for an anger he doesn't feel. Moran has reasons to be angry, as you know if you've seen his earlier piece, the Obie Award-winning The Tricky Part, or...

by Michael Feingold on February 6, 2013
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How Uptown Money Kills Downtown Art

"The art market focuses attention on what its priorities are, which is big buying and big selling--so we wind up talking about Koons, Hirst, Murakami, the usual suspects. The big problem is figuring out how to focus attention in other directions." ...

by Christian Viveros-Faune on February 6, 2013