Email Author James Hannaham

1999 Stories by James Hannaham

• The Trouble With Harry

  published December 14, 1999

  With Shyster's Lower East Side wastrel Harry Sobel, playwright Bryan Goluboff has created a character almost unwatchably irritating. This... More >>

• Sex with Dad

  published November 30, 1999

  A woman gambols onstage in a red satin dress, smiling and waving to the audience. The dress is draped around her hourglass figure like a curtain,... More >>

• Funnyhouse of a Negro

  published November 2, 1999

  We don't have much time. Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and I have been talking for 10 minutes, and the batteries suddenly run down on my tape... More >>

• Limp at the Firm

  published October 12, 1999

  This is how I picture Vick's Boy getting produced. It's Tuesday morning, a few months ago. Daryl Roth, in her robe and plush slippers, has... More >>

• Naked, Famous, Increasingly Fond of Murder Songs

  published September 14, 1999

  No pop star is as aptly nicknamed as Tricky—not Ol' Dirty Bastard, not Flea, not even p. When a pop star like Will Smith or Mary J. Blige... More >>

• A Formalist Affair

  published September 14, 1999

  Every few years, some upstart director at a remove from New York's young avant-garde theater scene arrives in town with many of the same formal... More >>

• Summer of 69

  published September 7, 1999

  Do you believe in life after "Believe"? It's easy to have affairs with pop songs, since mass culture pimps them so effectively. The demand for a... More >>

• Bourgeois Nights

  published August 24, 1999

  Verfremdungseffekt. No, it's not a gastrointestinal disease, but the word with which we will forever associate Bertolt Brecht. Brecht... More >>

• Guided by Vices

  published August 10, 1999

  I have to prove to myself that Dylan Baker is a normal person. So far, people mostly recognize him as the child-molesting suburban dad from Todd... More >>

• Beat-itude

  published July 6, 1999

  What does Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott got that you ain't got? I mean aside from a wardrobe made entirely of Hefty™ bags,1 a... More >>

• Missing Persons

  published July 6, 1999

  It's hard to imagine the same universe produced two playwrights as seemingly opposed as Neil LaBute and Naomi Wallace. In this corner we have... More >>

• Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time

  published June 29, 1999

  Created by Jeff Stryker, porn impresario John Travis, and someone identified in the program as "a writer," the horrifying Jeff Stryker Does... More >>

• Banjee

  published June 22, 1999

  In A.B. Lugo's sassy drama Banjee, you don't really get much more than its provocative naked-torso promo card promises: "Angel and Tony are... More >>

• 'The 7-Minute Series'

  published May 11, 1999

  The simple premise has worked for the last six years: get a slew of downtown theater-makers to create eight pieces, then present all of them on... More >>

• The Washington Psst

  published May 4, 1999

  Constance Congdon's new play, Lips, she claims, was inspired by a debate she had with her cousin. What would happen if a woman in a... More >>

• Hocus-Pocus

  published April 13, 1999

  Like some tacky aunt showing up at an elegant ball, Alan Hollinghurst's unfortunate third novel, The Spell, seems out of place and... More >>

• Sweet Talk

  published February 23, 1999

  Sentiment and edginess make strange bedfellows, whether they're shacking up in the run-down flats of Jonathan Harvey's '90s London or screwing in... More >>

• Director's Cut

  published February 2, 1999

  "Flays." Maybe that's what we should call them. Flays are plays that share a lot of conventions with film, sometimes so many you wonder whether or... More >>

• Zebra Lives

  published January 5, 1999

  Behold the paradox of the Nuyorican Poets, an achingly familiar '90s cultural trope: If you rail against the establishment with enough... More >>

• MEA CULPA!

  published January 5, 1999

  The Perfect Beats: New York Electro Hip Hop and Underground Dance Classics 1980–85 Tommy... More >>