We have been telling each other stories through theater for twenty-seven hundred years, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do it better. Two hundred years ago, a proposal to sing songs in the middle of a play would have brought howls of outrage; now we have musicals about religious books. Five years ago the innovative […]
Archives for June 16, 2011
Spacebar: A Broadway play by Kyle Sugarman
As Spacebar opens, Kyle Sugarman’s dad (Brian Razzino, good in this) is dragging himself into Kyle’s room, carrying a neat whiskey for fortification. He looks like he is preparing himself to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dog. He draws himself up, and then delivers an astounding monologue – shocking, howlingly funny, bitter, profoundly tragic. It […]
I Wish You Love
Cozying up in the Terrace Theatre for Penumbra Theatre Company’s reverent musical portrait of Nat King Cole is like taking a nice, long, lukewarm bath. The unvarying pace lulls you into a state of quiet nodding. Familiar melodies massage your ears. The show’s plot raises no challenges or difficult questions. By the time audiences leave […]
Purge
When Aliide looks out her window, across her silent stretch of rural Estonian farmland, she sees a country sent reeling from the impact of Soviet occupation. Cold-eyed and resolute, she is the kind of hardened survivor who stands at the center of some of the most moving historical dramas. Her role in Sofi Oksanen’s 2007 […]