"I'm not really an opera," says dynamic performer Joseph Keckler at the start of his tantalizing song cycle-cum-multimedia one-man show I am an Opera. "I just said that to intrigue you." Joseph, you tease! If not nearly as overblown as an opera, he ...
Tentatively, I'd say that there might be some good work in Tim Minchin's music and lyrics for the new musical Matilda (Shubert Theatre). I can't be certain, because the score's transmitted, in performance, through Simon Baker's sound design, which I...
The mother of all Great Depression books, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, grew out of a Time magazine assignment. Accepting it were two young artistes, James Agee and Walker Evans, who agreed to produce a "photographic and verbal record of the daily l...
Every play is a partisan act, giving only the playwright's view of the events it describes. When it's fiction, and the playwright has dreamed up the whole thing, he or she can be cut plenty of slack: It's his or her dream, not ours. The playwright's...
Scots playwright David Harrower caught the attention of American audiences with Blackbird, a sly and agonizing two-character play that revealed a past liaison between an older man and a young girl. It was a tale of sexual abuse that played as a love...
Contrary to many expectations, there is rigorous contemporary art that knocks your block off at first sight. James Nares's high-definition video Street, currently on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Galleries for Drawings, Prints, and Photog...
The new musical Hands on a Hard Body (Atkinson Theatre) opened just as City Center's Encores! series revived the 1966 musical It's a Bird . . . It's a Plane . . . It's Superman. The two make an intriguing study in contrasting ways to write a musical...
It's March, but a zigzag of skiers still winds its way down Corkscrew, Aspen Mountain's double-black-diamond run. This is the view from Justice Snow's, an unpretentious restaurant and bar tucked into the Sheridan Opera House, where James Salter is t...
Adam Cost is at a Basquiat exhibit at the Gagosian Gallery, a rare trip for him into a world he's never been welcome in or belonged to. But for the legendary graffiti artist, that may have to change. "I'm trying to be more legit, so I want my stuff ...
As a girl in County Cork, the Irish actor Fiona Shaw walked past a statue of the Virgin Mary every day on her way to school. She didn't care much for the sculpture--"this revolting statue, this mass-produced blemished virgin with marble all around"-...
Bill T. Jones could not be busier this week. His 30-year-old ensemble, Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, just opened "Play and Play," a two-week season at the Joyce, studded with new and repurposed dances, many set to live music by the Orion S...
King of Cuba By Cristina Garca, May 21 Set partially in modern Havana, Garca's sixth novel offers a profane, rollicking sendup of a dictator on his deathbed--a buffoon transparently redolent of Comandante You Know Who. Our first introduction...
Palermo: Works on Paper 1976-1977 April 25-June 29 As noms d'artiste go, he had a ringer. Born Peter Schwarze, the adopted Peter Heisterkamp was rechristened Blinky Palermo by his teacher Joseph Beuys at the Kunstakademie Dsseldorf. Beuys, it...
Stephen Petronio Company April 30-May 5 His inspirational evening-length work, Like Lazarus Did, sets Petronio's fleet, fluid contemporary dancers loose to an original score by Son Lux, performed live by members of Bon Iver, yMusic, and 30 mem...
Julius Caesar Performances begin April 10 The last time the Royal Shakespeare Company graced our shores, they brought five shows and an entire multilevel theater with them. This time around, they're packing just a bit lighter. Gregory Doran, t...
Robert Arneson (1930-92) was an incorrigible provocateur. You might recall his notorious 1981 memorial for slain San Francisco mayor George Moscone: all proud teeth and wavy hair, the larger-than-life bust brilliantly parodies an adman's dream of af...
Christopher Durang's new play, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (Golden Theatre), which has just transferred to Broadway from its Lincoln Center run, shows you one key difference between critics and audiences. Audiences need only to enjoy a play;...
No exaggeration: I coughed hot soup out of my nose while reading the new hardbound volume of deadpan dadaist Michael Kupperman's Tales Designed to Thrizzle (Fantagraphics; $24.99). The strip that did it was one of the book's last, an alt-historical...
New York audiences are well accustomed to seeing nudity on the stage, but witnessing a man's junk ripen into a rock-solid boner has got to be a first. Before incriminating the Baruch Performing Arts Center for endorsing public lewdness, it should be...
What happens when F. Scott Fitzgerald meets Wes Anderson? Welcome to Kristopher Jansma's debut novel, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, a literary fun house that follows an unreliable narrator on his quest to write the next Great American Novel. T...
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 >>
