Had I seen Signature Theatre’s fine revival of Athol Fugard’s most popular play just a few days earlier, I might have appreciated it primarily as a well-wrought work of theater, relegating its depiction of the brutal effects of state-approved racism to a safely distant time and place. Now the play feels more like an urgent […]
Archives for November 10, 2016
Tame. Powerful Shrew re-do from Avant Bard (review)
Dark. Squirmy. Brutal. Galling. Backwards. Chilling. A slew of punchy, powerful words ran through my mind, much like the pithy (and punctuated) Tame. on Monday night, as I watched a man dominate a woman into a Christian-prescribed-submission.
Keegan’s Six Degrees Separates the Catcher from the Lie (review)
Six Degrees of Separation shares much in common with Catcher in the Rye, the novel at the play’s moral center. Both are full of terribly unlikable characters who can turn our loathing into self-reflection. Both turn a sad situation into something humorous, at least in their ability to elicit pathos. But most of all, they […]
High flying Mary Poppins at Olney Theatre Center
Sometimes nostalgia can be disappointing, but even so, it’s awfully nice to go home again. So it is with Olney Theatre Center’s Mary Poppins. The movie you remember has been reshaped into a Broadway extravaganza, courtesy of Disney and assorted cohorts. That’s both a good thing and a bad thing, for if you’re expecting a literal blow-by-blow […]