Archive Search Results

1. Sightlines

   Mahida's Extra Key to Heaven Risks Reinforcing Stereotypes

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: September 29, 2009

   When Mahida's Extra Key to Heaven begins with an American guy and an Iranian girl meeting cute on a Nantucket-like ferry dock, you might wonder if you've wandered into the...

2. Sightlines

   She of the Voice Thinks Big, Acts Small

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: July 15, 2009

   As a 10-person, 15-scene musical packed into 45 minutes, She of the Voice sure thinks big. But the action is small: nosy neighbors on a city block gossiping about an eccentric,...

3. Sightlines

   Hospital 2009: Episode One

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: June 24, 2009

   Axis Company's annual Hospital series, a sci-fi serial staged in weekly installments, may sound like a cool idea, but the 2009 incarnation, at least, is off to a shaky start....

4. Theater

   A Brooklyn Tommy Revival Is No Magic Journey

   Not gonna take it

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: May 20, 2009

   If you thought The Who's Tommy on Broadway was already a watering down of the original rock opera, then you probably want to avoid the Gallery Players' semi-pro shoestring...

5. Sightlines

   Decades Before Harvey Milk, The Temperamentals

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: May 13, 2009

   Decades before Harvey Milk, a rebellious Mayflower-descended communist queer named Harry Hay and his Mattachine Society declared themselves a "sexual minority" in 1950s Los...

6. Sightlines

   Stoppardian Banter Meets William Gibson Mindfuck in A New Theory of Vision

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: April 8, 2009

   You probably don't picture your college philosophy professor pacing his office in an oversize metallic helmet trying to commune with the dead. But that's what becomes of Lee...

7. Sightlines

   Inked Baby's Sophisticated Political Allegory

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: April 1, 2009

   About 30 minutes into Christina Anderson's Inked Baby, the Lifetime-esque domestic drama suddenly takes a turn into X-Files territory when an unnamed virus breaks out in a...

8. Sightlines

   Fresh Kills' Facile Morality Tale Offers Cheap Laughs

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: February 25, 2009

   A play featuring a secret Internet tryst in an old pickup truck—parked in Staten Island's favorite landfill, no less—promises some compelling seediness, if nothing...

9. Sightlines

   Leaves of Glass Far From 'In Yer Face'

   It hardly musses yer hair

   By Garrett Eisler

   Published: January 28, 2009

   London critics have dubbed the rude, shocking playwrights that came of age there in the 1990s the "in yer face" school. But while Philip Ridley is counted among their number,...

10. Sightlines

    Wickets is Faux-Site Specific Performance at Its Best

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: January 14, 2009

    If you're at all averse to high-concept "director's theater"—or to transatlantic flights in coach—you might be wary of Wickets, which time-warps María Irene...

11. Sightlines

    Potatoes of August Still Seems Under Construction

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: December 17, 2008

    Hebrew linguistics, futile customer service, and the musings of Carl Sagan constitute just some of the ingredients in the hard-to-digest stew of Sibyl Kempson's Potatoes of...

12. Sightlines

    Peter A. Campbell's Yellow Electras

    A "virtual" chorus of video-projected Valley girls and more

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: July 23, 2008

    Writer-director Peter A. Campbell's Yellow Electras, a multimedia meditation on the daughter of the House of Atreus (part of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater's "Incubator"...

13. Theater

    Misha Shulman's Brunch at the Luthers

    Duck, motherfucker

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: July 2, 2008

    Misha Shulman sure has a thing for ducks. In the collection of sketches Brunch at the Luthers (and Other Quacks), the playwright/actor delivers a brief monologue, "The Meaning...

14. Theater

    The Film Festival: A Theater Festival Explores the Celluloid Boundary

    Stage and screen wrestle it out at the Brick's new fest

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: June 17, 2008

    Upset that you missed Sundance or Cannes this year? Well, forget the slopes of Utah or the sands of the Riviera, and hop the L train to Williamsburg instead, where the...

15. Theater

    Hello, New Amsterdam! The Obies Honor Off-Broadway's Best

    The 53rd time is yet another charm

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: May 20, 2008

    'You don't know how good it feels to be drunk and below 14th Street,' exulted Obie winner Stew, bringing his Passing Strange downtown to the Obie Awards from his uptown...

16. Theater

    Yellow Moon's ADD Drama

    Spastic production should slow down

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: May 6, 2008

    At its best, "theater for young audiences" can rivet grown-ups as well. But Yellow Moon, from Glasgow's TAG Citizens Theatre, gives the impression of being tailored to a crowd...

17. Theater

    The Conversation's Attempted Coppola Update

    Rendered obsolete by Netflix

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: April 15, 2008

    Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 cult film The Conversation memorably dramatizes the rather uncinematic topic of listening. While the main plot events unfold slowly and usually...

18. Theater

    Hello Failure: Subdued Existentialism

    Too flimsy for more than one act

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: March 11, 2008

    Kristen Kosmas's subdued existentialist comedy Hello Failure takes us into the humdrum lives of submariners and the women who wait for them. While the men submerge offstage on...

19. Theater

    Don Juan

    Faithful to Moliere's dark vision

    By Garrett Eisler

    Published: February 26, 2008

    Molière may forever be the property of the Comédie Française, but the cheekily named National Theater of the United States of America (by no means under...

20. Theater

    Genocide Writ Small

    A Holocaust story told—successfully—through puppet theater

    Garrett Eisler

    Published: January 29, 2008

    Norway may not be the first place you'd set a Holocaust drama, but that's where Polish émigré Moritz Rabinowitz spent the 1930s as a successful tailor and...