Email Author Francine Russo

1999 Stories by Francine Russo

• West With the Might

  published December 21, 1999

  What do the 1926 Sex and the 1999 Extreme Girl have in common? Plenty, from slinky lingerie and a red velvet sofa to some ballsy... More >>

• Performance Anxieties

  published December 14, 1999

  Forget shocking. Nearly a decade after Tim Miller fought the feds as one of the NEA Four, it's getting hard for performance artists even to be... More >>

• Forging a Family

  published December 7, 1999

  In one of many quirkily touching scenes from Jessica Goldberg's Refuge (Playwrights Horizons), Amy, in bed with near-stranger Sam, presses... More >>

• A Little Chin Music

  published November 30, 1999

  When The Beard played San Francisco in 1965, it was closed down after one performance; it played 10 nights in L.A., and the actors were... More >>

• The Outer Limits

  published November 23, 1999

  It is 5:50 p.m. in the rehearsal hall for Tina Landau's alien-abduction fantasia Space, and leads Amy Morton and Tom Irwin have just read... More >>

• Men Without Women

  published October 26, 1999

  No penis envy here. Only painfully engorged phalluses in the Classical Theatre of Harlem's raunchy take on Aristophanes's Lysistrata, the... More >>

• Man and Superman

  published October 19, 1999

  The triumph of Never Swim Alone, by Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor, is that it takes characters who are scarcely more than stereotypes... More >>

• Arctic Blasts and Desire's Masks

  published September 14, 1999

  Sarah Edkins's spare, stark set—a panorama of lavender-blue ice overwhelming a tiny human figure—perfectly evokes the spirit of Glenn... More >>

• Mad About It All

  published September 7, 1999

  The neurotic Jewish guy in Jerusalem Syndrome is convinced that God will send him a message . . . if only he can go on the right... More >>

• Love the One You Are

  published August 31, 1999

  Feel good is fat Bertha's message, as she waggles her imposing ass at the crowd. Feel good, wily panhandler Willie's fingers thrum as he... More >>

• Nuraldeen's Lifetime

  published August 10, 1999

  In the most powerful scene in Nuraldeen's Lifetime, Nuraldeen, the leader of a Bengali peasant revolt against British rule, recalls how... More >>

• Art of Darkness

  published June 22, 1999

  A cornered man plots his own demise. Lowlifes circle with sharpened knives. Pasts are murky, names false. Murderers, thieves, and seducers trade... More >>

• Life After Wit

  published June 8, 1999

  Sure, he won the 1999 Lucille Lortel award for Outstanding Director, but Derek Anson Jones, the person most responsible for getting Wit... More >>

• Mummy Dearest

  published June 1, 1999

  Near the end of Goodnight Children Everywhere, one character carries a small bundle; a shrill infant's cry pierces the air but does not... More >>

• The Author's Voice

  published May 25, 1999

  What's behind that door?" This line from Richard Greenberg's The Author's Voice is also its premise, and that of Peter Hedges's... More >>

• Harlem Days

  published May 11, 1999

  Misfits and losers: before a word is written, they're a drama unto themselves. She chafes against her surroundings and is rebuffed. Scorned, he... More >>

• Dirty Pictures

  published April 13, 1999

  It would be hard to find two plays further from each other on the theatrical spectrum than The Censor and The Exact Center of the... More >>

• Trial by Era

  published March 16, 1999

  Clarence Darrow defended the big ones— Eugene Debs, Leopold and Loeb, and biology teacher John T. Scopes in the "monkey" trial. In... More >>

• Asian Lite

  published February 16, 1999

  Ethnic pride can be a dangerous thing. It can burst out in civil unrest, or, at its most bloodless, in historical pageants—benign propaganda... More >>

• Women's Rites

  published February 9, 1999

  What does a spinster teacher in 1930s St. Louis have in common with a Mennonite teen in modern Canada? Angst— and plenty of it. Like women... More >>

• The Road Worrier

  published February 2, 1999

  The eccentric, mustachioed man in black presses his face to the mirrored wall where it meets the rear of the stage. As he rotates and flutters... More >>

• Classic Act

  published January 19, 1999

  When Classic Stage Company announced last month that Uma Thurman would be joining the cast of The Misanthrope—following CSC's sold-out... More >>

• The Coffin Corner

  published January 5, 1999

  More intentionally shocking than intentionally amusing," warns director Scott Shattuck about Joe Orton's Loot (Cocteau Rep). Well, maybe... More >>