Audiences love obsessives. Set a character with a crazy, unquenchable hunger center stage and they eat it up, whether the character's hunger is for money, love, fame, or anything else. The public can often develop an unquenchable appetite of its own...
Did you order a side of magical realism with your moo goo gai pan? Is that a dash of absurdism in your tom yum? In Roland Schimmelpfennig's The Golden Dragon, a brisk, fantastical drama nominally set in a "Thai/Chinese/Vietnamese fast food restaurant...
Is Off-Broadway a galaxy far, far away? Stars effervesced Monday night, when theatrical luminaries and icons of TV and film thronged the East Village's Webster Hall to honor theatrical excellence blocks and boroughs distant from the Great White Way....
Painters, even the most experimental ones, continually time-travel for inspiration. Right now, you can traverse half a millennium of painting within two dozen blocks on the Upper East Side. Begin with a conclave of panels by Piero della Francesca...
Samuel (Rocco Sisto), the central figure of Richard Foreman's new work, Old-Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance) (Public Theater), has a problem. Not a major problem--those were dealt with in Foreman's 1993 creation, Samuel's Major Problems. But a...
Mike Bartlett's vicious Bull, a nasty one-act dissection of office politics mapped onto a bullfight, represents a companion to his earlier Cock (2009), a full-length battle royale of sexual politics whose form refers to cockfighting. Is Story, abou...
What if composer Nikolai "Nicky" Nabokov, choreographer George Balanchine, composer Igor Stravinsky, designer Sergey Sudeikin, and a host of ex-wives, dancers, pianists, and the odd State Department official all gathered for a weekend on a Connecti...
In the office lexicon, are there words more demoralizing than "corporate retreat"? Not for employees of Skyline Travel, the decaying agency at the center of Steven Levenson's workplace comedy Core Values. In headier times the company would take its...
The sunshine. The palm trees. The dashing leading men. The lissome starlets. The spangles. The elephants? As you may have guessed, Ayub Khan Din's new musical Bunty Berman Presents ..., a mash note to the movies, takes place somewhat east of Hollyw...
Ever fancy yourself a politician? Perhaps a much-beloved mayor, or a city councilor staunchly shepherding your hometown along? If so, seize the chance (no campaign necessary) at City Council Meeting, a new participatory performance created by Mallor...
When you go home after living abroad, you inevitably leave part of yourself behind. If you were living in a different language, there are zesty idioms and forceful exclamations for which you now find no native equivalent--and maybe that means whole ...
Here's one of the toughest of all form vs. content dilemmas: How do you craft narrative art out of the slog of unhappy family life, making something true to that slog but not a slog itself? Bob Glaudini's A Family for All Occasions, the bruised-up b...
In 1958, a six-year-old Mad Magazine published a parody of America's fourth-most popular newsstand title, which they called Bitter Homes and Gardens. Among its articles were "They Built Their House on a Lot 22 Inches Wide"; a "How-The ..." column th...
Three obstinate females--one fictional and two historical--dominated my theatergoing last week. Tenacious women make great showy roles for leading actresses, and also seem to have a stimulating effect on male writers: Medea and Tosca, Mistress Quick...
"How angry am I? You don't want to know," begins the gripping first chapter of Claire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs (Knopf). The furious voice belongs to Nora Eldridge, an unmarried 37-year-old elementary schoolteacher, dutiful daughter, an...
A new musical about Alzheimer's disease? If you harbor suspicions that the musical, an all-American dramatic form, skews toward sentimentality, The Memory Show won't convince you otherwise. This two-hander, produced by the Transport Group Theatre Co...
Nick Vaughn and Jake Margolin's A Marriage has modest ambitions. The two conceptual/performance artists, married in 2008, want viewers to contemplate gay marriage, queer assimilation, and fetishization of the suburbs. In contrast to their humble aim...
Ben Durham doesn't seem like the sort of guy who would be involved with criminals and delinquents. He has the earnest and measured mien of a philosophy student. But Durham's subjects for "Portraits, Maps, Texts," his second--and final--solo exhibiti...
The title of Richard Greenberg's new play, The Assembled Parties (Friedman Theatre), carries multiple meanings. Its "parties" are a pair of Christmas dinners, occurring 20 years apart, and also the oddly assorted individuals who gather for them--mem...
Rachel Kushner was the girl who spent her teens sneaking onto the backs of motorcycles in California. Today, a couple of decades later, she's the novelist who is writing about girls on bikes and becoming something of a literary phenomenon in the pro...
The Film Society Can't Quite Make the Leap From Past to Present
What happens to a political play that's three decades old? Can it keep its emotional charge, or does it wither when its social relevance fades? You may be asking these… More >>
Blame It on Magritte
You might assume that the Photoshop fantasias of our age would make the visual conundrums of René Magritte's pre-war paintings feel quaint. Certainly the beguiling originality of his fractured figures… More >>
Deceptive Practices: The Glass Menagerie's Poignant Con Game
The theater is a swindle, an exercise in sham. Every play operates on principles of treachery: Flimsy set pieces substitute for solid spaces; people assume names and accents other than… More >>
Not What Happened: A Meditation on Truth and Historical Accuracy
Provocations don't come much gentler than Ain Gordon's Not What Happened, which concluded a brief run at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A meditation on truth and historical accuracy, directed by… More >>
Arguendo Is Full of Supremely Naughty Charm
Who knew Supreme Court justices have such complicated, libidinous inner lives? Anthony Kennedy muses on adults-only car washes. Sandra Day O'Connor contemplates pornographic videos. Antonin Scalia obsesses over nude opera.… More >>
Tragic Lovers Get Teenage Kicks in Romeo and Juliet Revival
The ardor animating the latest Romeo and Juliet seems less the marriage of true minds than the commingling of hot bods. In David Leveaux's revival at Broadway's Richard Rodgers, Orlando… More >>
The Propeller Group Take on the Art World's Celebrity Fixation
"Are celebrities the new art stars?" asked a Newsweek cover story in July. A few months later, certain windy developments (or popcorn farts) that passed for world-shaking events on TMZ… More >>
Q&A: Mario Alberto Zambrano on Taking the Leap From Dancer to Novelist With Lotería
The game Lotería can best be described as a Mexican version of bingo, but instead of numbers, each card bears a striking image, such as beautiful sea goddess La Sirena… More >>
Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Latest Movingly Illustrates a Sexual Awakening
Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s Life and Times: Episodes 4.5 and 5—at this year’s Crossing the Line Festival—are the newest installments in an epic performance depicting the life story of Kristin… More >>
Anna Nicole: A Cautionary Tale Against Gigantic Breast Implants
What homeless diva recently threatened to commit suicide if her rich patrons didn't cough up $20 million by the end of the year? That's right—the New York City Opera. So… More >>
