Email Author Michael Feingold

Awards

• 2010 - The Pulitzer Prizes in Journalism/Columbia University

  Theater Reviews

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2009 Stories by Michael Feingold

• The Wiz at Encores! and Central Park's Twelfth Night Both Somehow Lack Vividness

  published July 1, 2009

  We use the word "vulgar" in two senses, one favorable and one less so. Art can be vulgar by having the common touch, the gift of pleasing the... More >>

• In The Temperamentals and Next Fall, Same-Sex Couples Refight Old Battles

  published June 24, 2009

  Data informs; memories burn. Taken together, the two equal history, the sense we make of the past. Neither supplies the whole truth. Time... More >>

• Rebeck's Our House and Wallace's Dry Hours Bring News We've Already Heard

  published June 17, 2009

  Shakespeare and his business partners called their theater the Globe, believing they could put the whole world on view within its wooden O.... More >>

• Greenspan and Merritt's Coraline Does Gaiman Proud

  published June 10, 2009

  Sometimes the price you pay for freshness is that it comes to you a little scruffy, a little rough around the edges. And if the scruffiness... More >>

• Young Writers Take Notes In Williams's Vieux Carré and Alexander's New 10 Things

  published June 3, 2009

  In Austin Pendleton's new production of Tennessee Williams's 1977 play, Vieux Carré, the steep downward slope of the center aisle... More >>

• Obies 2009: Saying Goodbye to Tom O'Horgan, Paul Sills, and More

  published May 20, 2009

  They dimmed the lights of Broadway this year for Horton Foote, for Bea Arthur, even for super-agent Sam Cohn, but not for Tom O'Horgan, who... More >>

• Godot's Worth the Weight, The Philanthropist Donates Little, 9 to 5 Shows More Heart Than Art

  published May 13, 2009

  Counting The Norman Conquests as three, eight Broadway shows opened just before the Tony nominations' cutoff date. This manic pileup... More >>

• Lucas's Singing Forest and O'Neill's Elms Need Thinning; Accent on Youth Needs Bulking Up

  published May 6, 2009

  "Plays and novels are not written," Edmund Wilson once said, "by people who have everything clear in their minds." I wish I could read Wilson's... More >>

• Alan Ayckbourn's Conquests Leaves Everyone Marginally More Miserable

  published April 29, 2009

  You remember The Importance of Being Earnest: "In married life," Algernon quips, "three is company and two is none." "That, my dear... More >>

• Next to Normal and Joe Turner: Visions on Broadway; Yeats Project: Near Myth

  published April 22, 2009

  It's the end of the spring season, normally a time when producers trot out their dressiest trivialities, while visions of tourist dollars dance... More >>

• Durang's Torture Gets Laughs, LaBute's Reasons Brews Anger, Howe's Manet Equals Wordplay

  published April 15, 2009

  Where art's concerned, Americans love reality—or, anyway, what they take to be reality. In their eagerness to niggle over its details,... More >>

• Too Briefly, Finian's Rainbow Brought Back Old Joys; Hair and West Side Story Still Offer Some

  published April 8, 2009

  The stock joke about lunatics used to be that they all thought they were Napoleon. The stock joke about New York theater people should probably... More >>

• Acting Fleshes Out God of Carnage; Even Stars Can't Animate Impressionism or Exit the King

  published April 1, 2009

  Strange, the prevailing tastes of a transitional era. Three "straight" plays open on Broadway within a week, similar in the pallidly narrow... More >>

• Ronald Tavel, 1941-2009

  published April 1, 2009

  The sad news arrived late Wednesday afternoon of the passing of playwright, novelist and screenwriter Ron Tavel, one of the formative figures of... More >>

• The Good Negro and Incident at Vichy Hunt Conflict; Blithe Spirit Hunts Comedy

  published March 25, 2009

  Birmingham, Alabama, was the city where racial segregation made less sense than anywhere else in the South. Not founded till after the Civil... More >>

• 33 Variations and Humor Abuse Display Joy, Human Agony

  published March 18, 2009

  "The sickness of the oyster," says the old proverb, "is the pearl." People have always known that creativity has some indefinable link with... More >>

• Guys and Dolls and Distracted Go Media-Heavy; Savannah Disputation Amuses More Modestly

  published March 11, 2009

  The time has come to get Broadway unplugged, and the new production of Guys and Dolls shows you exactly why. Here, after all, is the... More >>

• This Beautiful City, Our Town, and Winter's Tale

  published March 4, 2009

  Funny, to be watching plays fixated on places while real estate drags the world economy into a huge downward spiral. What do the evangelicals... More >>

• The Story of My Life Leaves Out Whatever Might Give It a Story or a Life

  published February 25, 2009

  A student of the poet Richard Howard once asked him, "Isn't it painful when two men make love together?" The poem that Howard wrote in reply... More >>

• Ruined's Women Face a Congo Civil War; Shipwrecked!'s Hero Wrestles with His Imagination

  published February 18, 2009

  "Do you have a smile?" the madam asks her new employee. "Yes," the girl answers softly, but she doesn't display it. So begins the journey into... More >>

• Busched and Ambushed in The Third Story and You're Welcome America

  published February 11, 2009

  A woman who loves telling stories has a child, and thereby hangs not just one tale, but a great many of them, elaborately and complexly tangled... More >>

• The Victorian Cult of Beauty Infuses Hedda Gabler and Freshwater

  published February 4, 2009

  The Victorians had what they called a cult of Beauty, with a capital B. While they watched industrialism make their world increasingly drab and... More >>

• In BAM's Cherry Orchard and MTC's American Plan, Mixed Emotions Produce Mixed Results

  published January 28, 2009

  I love Richard Greenberg's plays, and I love Chekhov's four masterpieces. Yet it floors me, sometimes, that so many other people love, or at... More >>

• Tom O'Horgan, 1924-2009

  published January 21, 2009

  For most of his last four decades, the composer and stage director Tom O'Horgan, who died in Florida on January 11, occupied a rambling loft on... More >>

• Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw In Search of Greatness

  published January 14, 2009

  Gina Gionfriddo's Becky Shaw, now running at Second Stage Theatre, has done one a big favor: It has annoyed me into reaffirming my... More >>