Email Author Alexis Soloski

2009 Stories by Alexis Soloski

• Under the Radar Festival Gets the Low-Tech Lowdown

  published December 29, 2009

  The stage shows a drab apartment, bare save for a folding table piled with wine, snacks, and electronic debris. Here, a slender man named Serge... More >>

• PULLING STRINGS

  published December 29, 2009

  Gepetto had a tough task, but as beleaguered toymakers go, none is more put-upon than Sylvester Cloud, the hero of Yip Harburg’s peculiar... More >>

• RESCUE ME

  published December 29, 2009

  In a letter to Britain’s then Prime Minister, Mirza Tahir Hussain begged, “Please Mr Blair, take me home. I have suffered enough.”... More >>

• Verona meets Verizon in The Kitchen's Romeo & Juliet

  published December 22, 2009

  "Two houses, both alike in dignity . . ." OK, stop right there. There is little that's dignified, though much that's amusing, in the Nature... More >>

• Trapped in the Brig of the Living Theatre in Red Noir

  published December 22, 2009

  There are words to describe the experience of Anne Waldman's Red Noir at the Living Theatre. Alas, most of them are unprintable. For the... More >>

• LAZY BOY

  published December 22, 2009

  The Foundry Theater has excellent vision. Whether ceding the stage to an early career artist or supporting a mid-career one, the Foundry has... More >>

• The Great Recession in Need of a Bailout

  published December 15, 2009

  Is playwriting another casualty of the economic crisis? Clearly not—the fall season has provided several excellent shows. And yet the six... More >>

• Quarky, Quirky Terrible Things and Crime or Emergency

  published December 15, 2009

  According to one interpretation of quantum mechanics, in the course of any event in which multiple outcomes are possible, every outcome... More >>

• PRETTY IN PINK

  published December 15, 2009

  Though I was born too late to enjoy an '80s prom myself, I may once have actively requested Bon Jovi's "You Give Love a Bad Name" at a junior high... More >>

• NYTW Tries Carson McCullers's The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

  published December 8, 2009

  Jake, a carnival roustabout and Communist sympathizer, lounges in a diner and grumbles, "This town's full of freaks." "I like freaks," Biff,... More >>

• Len Jenkin's The Dream Express

  published December 8, 2009

  Sometimes life does indeed imitate art. Sort of. For 15 years, Len Jenkin's lounge act, The Dream Express, performed by Deirdre... More >>

• ON THE FLY

  published December 8, 2009

  It’s so hard to find a good tailor anymore, and Axis Theater has long since given up, substituting the plucky seamster of the Grimm tale for... More >>

• BIG BANG

  published December 8, 2009

  A plane crash is not typically the inciting event for a comedy, but this George Bernard Shaw play chooses to begin with a bang. Once an aircraft... More >>

• GOING NUTS

  published December 8, 2009

  File Under: Do Not Try This at Home. These fiery neo-vaudevillians—Gyro, Pyro, and Walter—arrive at the New Victory to delight tots with... More >>

• No Joy in Troy for The Age of Iron

  published December 1, 2009

  In recent years, our country entered into an expensive, protracted, possibly unwinnable war on the most feeble of pretexts—presumed... More >>

• A Little Chandler, a Little Lewis and Clark in 13P's American Treasure

  published December 1, 2009

  Like an menacing episode of Antiques Roadshow, Julia Jarcho's American Treasure examines the relics of U.S. history and reveals a... More >>

• KNOCKOUT

  published December 1, 2009

  In the red corner, weighing in at 2,400 years of history, we have theater—and in the blue corner, we have brawling, a much older tradition.... More >>

• SECRET LOVERS

  published December 1, 2009

  What’s more British than tea cozies and bad teeth? Repression. At St. Ann’s Warehouse, the Cornwall-based company Kneehigh offers an ode... More >>

• With Ellen Stewart Ailing, What's La MaMa's Future?

  published November 24, 2009

  For decades, a show at the East Village's La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club began with a jingling sound both authoritative and merry. Like a... More >>

• MACABRE ROCK

  published November 24, 2009

  Those who prefer their musical theater replete with soppy sentiments and toothy smiles should steer clear of Obie-winning composer/lyricist Kyle... More >>

• TRUNK SHOW

  published November 24, 2009

  What a trunk show. In this new one-man show, Saul Jaffe plays Joseph Merrick, the pachydermous patient who became a sensation in Victorian London.... More >>

• IT'S A PARTY

  published November 24, 2009

  A lot of the most commonly used Yiddish terms—putz, bupkes, schmuck—aren’t so appropriate for tots’ tender ears. But we trust... More >>

• The Provincetown Playhouse Meets the Ontological in The Verge

  published November 17, 2009

  In greenhouses the world over, botanists work to create new flora—a showier orchid, a more fragrant rose. And in garrets, offices, and... More >>

• Brits Off Broadway Should Toss Red Sea Fish Back

  published November 17, 2009

  "Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside," trills the popular British holiday song. But a day at the beach isn't much fun when one has a deadly... More >>

• NOT-SO-SWEET DREAMS

  published November 17, 2009

  Len Jenkin writes plays that renders American history as nightmare—a troubled landscape of motels, tenements, and the occasional miniature... More >>