Email Author Alexis Soloski

2008 Stories by Alexis Soloski

• Torben Betts's Intensely Silly The Unconquered

  published May 13, 2008

  'Britons never, never, never shall be slaves,' says "Rule, Britannia!" Except, of course, onstage in Scottish writer Torben Betts's intensely... More >>

• Vengeance Can Wait: A Short-Lived Joy

  published May 6, 2008

  "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, but Hidenori Yamane (Paul H. Juhn) would like to have a crack at it, too. In Yukiko Motoya's comedy... More >>

• John Turturro's Does Beckett Hamm I Am

  published May 6, 2008

  In the midst of Samuel Beckett's Endgame at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Hamm (John Turturro) asks worriedly: "We're not beginning to... More >>

• Emancipation: Nat Turner's Come and Gone

  published April 29, 2008

  On New Year's Day, 1863, Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation into law. Booker T. Washington remembered his mother weeping... More >>

• Crooked: Modest but Pleasing

  published April 29, 2008

  In Catherine Trieschmann's bristly comedy Crooked—about a difficult maternal bond—mother Elise, daughter Laney, and Laney's... More >>

• The Guardian's Michael Billington: A Man for All Theater Seasons

  published April 22, 2008

  In 1991, Michael Billington estimated he'd published some two million words since joining The Guardian in 1971 as a theater critic. He's... More >>

• Untitled Mars: Lost in Space

  published April 15, 2008

  "Is there any life on Mars?" David Bowie and various scientists have long inquired. Writer-director-performer Jay Scheib doesn't answer their... More >>

• Sizwe Banzi Is Dead Remains Alive

  published April 15, 2008

  On the BAM Harvey stage, Styles (John Kani), an elderly man, his hair and beard dappled white, flips through the newspaper. Verbose and... More >>

• Anthony and Cleopatra at the Duke: Asp You Like It

  published April 15, 2008

  A sumptuous tiled pool dominates the foreground of director Darko Tresnjak's revival of Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. The... More >>

• Class Action: Listings

  published April 8, 2008

  Health/Body/Wellness Yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar remarked, "The body is your temple." The staff and attendees at Naked Yoga NYC... More >>

• Democracy in America and Something You Did: United Stating

  published April 8, 2008

  While director Annie Dorsen found inspiration for Democracy in America in the work of Alexis de Tocqueville, her new show at P.S.122... More >>

• City's Young Actors Juggle Schoolwork and the Spotlight

  published April 8, 2008

  During finals week at Columbia University, students eat little and sleep less. They trudge to and from exams attiredin hoodies and sweatpants.... More >>

• A LOVE/HATE RELATIONSHIP

  published April 8, 2008

  With the theater increasingly seen as a passé art form, it’s exciting to think it important enough to have any impact on America at... More >>

• PLAYING POLITICS

  published April 1, 2008

  Talk about an arresting performance: When South African actors Winston Ntshona and John Kani first performed their play, Sizwe Banzi Is... More >>

• ’Ello Blighty! A London Spring Theater Tour

  published April 1, 2008

  On July 20, 1957, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave a speech at a Conservative party rally. He told the assembled constituents,... More >>

• Talking With Booker Prize Winner John Banville

  published March 25, 2008

  In 2005, when John Banville heard his name called as the winner of the Booker Prize for his novel The Sea, he looked around the hall and... More >>

• The Break-Up and The Happy Sad: Love Moat

  published March 25, 2008

  In January, an article in The New England Journal of Medicine suggested that the efficacy of many antidepressants may be greatly... More >>

• Six's Soft Upper Lip

  published March 18, 2008

  A 1909 piece in The New York Times called for men to shave off their upper-lip adornments. "A moustache," the article claimed, "is not... More >>

• Rapunzel: Mane Attraction

  published March 18, 2008

  In their original forms, of course, fairy tales contain all manner of violence, rudeness, and sexual suggestion—but even in the grimmest... More >>

• FREE RADICALS

  published March 18, 2008

  Like the recent novels Eat the Document, My Revolutions, and His Illegal Self, Willy Hotzman’s new play, Something... More >>

• Tropics Topics

  published March 11, 2008

  In the wildly popular video game Grand Theft Auto III: Liberty City, you increase your score by bludgeoning prostitutes, committing... More >>

• Lower Ninth: Katrina Drama

  published March 4, 2008

  Right smack-dab in the middle of town, Malcom (James McDaniel) has found himself up on the roof. Yes, Malcom's up there in Beau Willimon's... More >>

• Paradise Park: No Thrill Ride

  published March 4, 2008

  As Benny (William Jackson Harper) stands at an amusement-park ticket window, he muses on what he wants: "I want to escape from my daily life,"... More >>

• Spring Theater Preview: The Sound and the Fury, An Idiot's Tale

  published March 4, 2008

  In 1929, William Faulkner presented the typed manuscript of The Sound and the Fury to his literary agent with the warning, "It's a real... More >>

• Jonathan Coe's Tapes of Wrath

  published March 4, 2008

  "Friendship is far more tragic than love," Oscar Wilde believed. "It lasts longer." British writer Jonathan Coe seems to agree with this... More >>