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“There’s Sydney Pollack—and there’s everybody else.” That thought came over me last April when I found myself sitting next to him at the Housing Works Used Books Café; we and a few others had been asked to read some selected work from the winners of the PEN Prison Writing program that night, and I remember…
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A costume designer whose work enlivened Broadway (Pipe Dream, On The Town (photo) Jerome Robbins’ Broadway) and Off-Broadway (he was Forbidden Broadway‘s principal costumer for oh so many years). RIP.
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This month’s theatergoing has left me pleasantly anesthetized—such disparate gems as Passing Strange, Sunday in the Park with George and Xanadu pass their time on the stage with such wit and grace that surrender is easy. Getting a musical right isn’t easy; what’s required is a mysterious alchemy of talent, brains and luck. When it…
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Even before Tuesday evening’s performance of Passing Strange began, the buzz in the house was unmistakable. You can take a show’s temperature by its audience; the cool thing about last night was the diversity, and by that I don’t mean simply the preponderance of blacks to whites. Suits were there, hobnobbing alongside folks old enough…
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This is a play about a couch. There I was at a Sunday evening performance of Drunk Enough to Say I Love You? at New York’s Public Theater. Yes, this barely-a-play (at 45 minutes, a hair longer than an old Warner Bros. serials) yielded fitful laughs but that was all. The first 10 minutes gives…
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Or so I felt growing up. Ivan Dixon (1931-2008) was ever-present in the 60s and 70s, especially on television where his cool-as-a-cucumber bemusement enlivened a million guest spots. I believe the only reason my father watched Hogan’s Heroes was to catch a glimpse of Dixon so’s he could smile back at the television with pride. …
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You’ve gone too soon. For transporting me and making me laugh, for breaking my heart at the movies, thanks… Photo: Rankin
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This morning I awoke to the news that a mysterious stranger on a bike had detonated a device in Manhattan’s Times Square. No casualties, no damage except some shattered windows and, oh, train delays, an occurrence that doesn’t usually require an explosion, but that’s another trauma. Like something out of a movie the event served…
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How can you tell if a play is working? The other night at August: Osage County I took my cue from the elderly gentleman sitting in front of me. Halfway through this ferocious dissection of familial dysfunction someone attempts matricide, an act our friend found so satisfying he all but leapt to his feet—with approval. …
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