Theater

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Cumming as Macbeth: The king as mental patient.

Alan Cumming does "Macbeth' on Broadway

The ultimate modern man: A paranoid delusional Macbeth

This insightful conception sets Macbeth in a mental hospital, with a single patient— the remarkable Alan Cumming— playing all the roles. His Macbeth comes across as a modern man driven mad by his inability to cope in a frightening, out-of-control world.

Carol Rocamora

Articles 6 minute read
Alhadeff (left), Putney: 12 seductions, and counting.

David Ives's "Venus In Fur' at Philadelphia Theatre Co, (2nd review)

I am woman, hear me roar

Do women's liberation and sadomasochism go hand in hand? The father of S & M thought so, but what do men know about women? In David Ives's Venus in Fur, a modern-day wonder woman bites back.

Marshall A. Ledger

Articles 6 minute read
Putney (left), Alhadeff: An actress, or a goddess?

David Ives's "Venus In Fur' at Philadelphia Theatre Co. (1st review)

Man smart, woman smarter, or: Aphrodite rides again

David Ives's Venus In Fur is an intense, perceptive, provocative, often very funny, sometimes brilliant one-act comedy-drama by an incisive playwright who perceives the dance of seduction between the sexes as the ultimate dramatic conflict. But its process is more important than its product.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Articles 5 minute read
Regensburg, Tarves, Michael: Is life a bitch, or a rock concert?

"Spring Awakening' in Norristown

The difficult years

Frank Wedekind's gripping 1891 drama of adolescents coping with a repressive society and unsupportive parents seemed an unlikely idea for a Broadway musical. Horizon's production has gone a long way toward salvaging it.
Steve Cohen

Steve Cohen

Articles 2 minute read
Lawton (left), Raphaely: Familiar faces.

"Pinocchio' at the Arden

How Pinocchio's nose grew (and other Arden flights of imagination)

At the Arden Children's Theatre, literalness always takes a back seat to the imagination, and talented actors enlist their child audiences as co-conspirators in their deceptions.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Articles 2 minute read
Whyte (left), Kern: Indochina, here we come.

Stoppard's "Heroes' at the Lantern (2nd review)

Waiting for Godot, or for Stoppard?

The audience was in stitches throughout much of Heroes. But the intellectual fireworks that accompany most Tom Stoppard scripts are largely absent here.
Jake Blumgart

Jake Blumgart

Articles 3 minute read
Kraigher (left), Sisto: A world fashioned from one man's obsessions.

Richard Foreman's "Old-Fashioned Prostitutes' in New York

Errant thoughts in the mind's field of vision

As with so many of Richard Foreman's experimental plays, what's on stage is a dramatization of the mind— his or ours— slipping and darting this way and that, propelled by desire and the dazzle of possibly actually knowing or grasping something.

Articles 5 minute read
Whyte, DeLaurier, Kern: Will the dog move?

Stoppard's "Heroes' at the Lantern (1st review)

Take that, Godot! Or: Band of brothers, refusing to go gently

Beckett's Waiting for Godot argued that life is absurd but suicide is no solution; there is only waiting. In Heroes, Tom Stoppard offers a new twist: Even in a world without purpose, he suggests, heroics are possible.

Marshall A. Ledger

Articles 4 minute read
Beschler (left), Brannon: In place of seduction, negotiation. (Photo: Alexander Iziliaev.)

Robert O'Hara's "Bootycandy' at the Wilma

Alice (black, gay and male) in a 21st-Century Wonderland

The characters coping so ludicrously with issues of sexual desire in Robert O'Hara's stinging and original satire all happen to be black or gay (or black and gay)— that is, they're authority figures who've never exercised real authority.
Dan Rottenberg

Dan Rottenberg

Articles 4 minute read
Hecht (left), Light: Unsurprising surprises.

"The Assembled Parties' on Broadway

Terms of estrangement

In Richard Greenberg's witty comedy drama, The Assembled Parties, life doesn't turn out as expected for an extended upper class New York family. But does Greenberg have a substantive message to deliver, or is he just out to entertain us with witty dialogue and plot contrivances?

Jane Biberman

Articles 3 minute read