Criticultura em Portugal

Office Hour Written by Julia Cho Directed by Neel Keller Starring Sue Jean Kim, Ki Hong Lee New York Public Theater December 3, 2017   Office Hour was the second of two plays at NY Public Theater that I saw on a recent Sunday, each written by an American playwright associated with “ethnic” themes, and each feeling like it occurred far from Manhattan. Cho, the 42-year-old daughter of Korean immigrants, has created several plays for southern California theaters, and has a gift for creating memorable characters and for dialogue that communicates the conflicting emotions and pressures of the immigrant experience. On the east coast depictions of Asian issues are much less common than of black or Latino themes, so this play was very welcome. It is essentially a two-person play, ninety minutes long, but the “office hour” depicted is a tense session between a troubled, enigmatic young Korean student and his well-intentioned college writing professor, also Korean. Other teachers

The Shape of Water Directed by Guillermo del Toro Starring Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins Guillermo del Toro makes adult fantasy-parable movies, most notably the Spanish-language Pan’s Labrynth (2006), a mystical, dreamy movie about a faun and a woman, all set amidst the horrors of the Spanish Civil War. In some ways, the just-released The Shape of Water is a US version in the same vein. In this film, del Toro sets a “Beauty and the Beast” film in an analogously grim period of US history—the paranoid, McCarthy 1950’s. Unlike the dreamy landscape of the earlier film, this one is all grit and technology gone wrong: the setting is largely an enormous cement bunker in which the CIA performs scientific experiments driven by competition with the Soviet Union, and where Soviet spies are a constant presence. Where the earlier film sought to distinguish a colorful, dreamy fantasy labyrinth with the horrors of war outside, this film is much darker, immersing us in the

Oedipus el Rey Written by Luis Alfaro Directed by Chay Yew Starring Juan Castano, Sandra Delgado New York Public Theater December 3, 2017 The ancient Oedipus legend, with roots to Homer and before, was very popular among Greek playwrights, most notably Sophocles ( Oedipus Rex , Oedipus at Colonus ) and Euripides. Later re-tellers include the Romans Julius Caesar (yes, he wrote plays) and Seneca, then Dryden and Voltaire. While the twentieth century offers Stravinsky/Cocteau’s wonderful neoclassical operatic treatment, and Freudian Oedipal dynamics were incorporated into such plays as All my Sons and Desire under the Elms , modern adaptations of the legend itself have been rarer.  This is odd, since a son’s subconscious wish to murder his father and seduce his mother was a cornerstone of twentieth century psychology. Perhaps the topic does not resonate well in our time since the Greek notions of the gods punishing hubris and Freudian concepts of our behavior being dete

Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train Written by Stephen Adly Guirgis Directed by Mark Brokaw Starring Sean Carvajal, Edi Gathegi, Ricardo Chavira, Stephanie DiMaggio SignatureTheater The Pershing Square Signature Center November 29. 2017 Jesus Hopped the A Train (2000), a masculine, edgy exploration of criminality, race, and religion, is the second play I have seen by Stephen Adly Guirgis. I also saw his later Pulitzer-winning Between Riverside and Crazy  (2014) in Washington DC a couple years ago, and was impressed by his ability to convey smoldering, repressed anger and resentment hiding in middle class black lives. Guirgis was born of Egyptian and Irish middle-class parents, and grew up in Manhattan’s far upper west side, largely among black and Hispanic kids. He also writes for TV cop dramas and acts in movies, TV, and stage. His nine plays (including the problematically-named The Motherfucker with a Hat) seem mostly driven by giving voices to the underclass of our society,

Downtown Race Riot Written by Seth Zvi Rosenfeld Directed by Scott Elliot Starring David Levi, Chloë Sevigny Pershing Square Signature Center November 25, 2017 Downtown Race Riot is a new play that joins many others in examining racial tensions from new perspectives, here returning to the grim days of New York City in the 1970’s for inspiration. The set was immediately nostalgic for me; a kitchen/dining room and two bedrooms replete with floral wallpaper and green cabinet paint similar to my parents’ décor of the era. Except for Chloë Sevigny (HBO’s Big Love ) as a strung-out mother getting by with love but little sense, the cast was of young relative unknowns with limited professional credits, all portraying teens and young adults trying to negotiate the turbulence of the era. The play centers on the performance of Jimmy “P-nut” Shannon (an angelic-faced David Levi, second from right below, previously a child star in Nickelodeon’s The Naked Brothers Band ). P-nut is a

The Swedish Radio Choir Peter Dijkstra, director Works of Einfelde, Sandström, Hillborg, Schnittke Church of St. Mary of the Virgin, Manhattan November 14, 2017 Beethoven: Missa Solemnis, op. 123 (1823) The Swedish Chamber Orchestra Swedish Radio Choir Thomas Dausgaard, conductor David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center NYC November 12, 2017  Singing used to be a common form of social interaction, as in carols at parties, show tunes around the piano, etc. Given the drop in public school music and our lack of exposure to the unamplified singing human voice, I now wonder if anyone even sings in the shower. The exception to this void comes from the Lutheran and/or Scandinavian traditions, where singing is very much alive. In the US we see this in vital choral departments at places like St. Olaf’s College in Minnesota and by the robust choruses in many Lutheran churches, such as the bevy of talented young Lutheran musicians in the choir I sing in at the Church of the

The Florida Project Directed by Sean Baker Starring Brooklyn Prince, Brina Vinaite, William Defoe, Lady Bird Directed by Greta Gerwig Starring Saoirse Ronan, Laurie Metcalf, Tracy Letts These two films by young directors both have a realistic, slice-of-life approach to exploring childhood ( The Florida Project ) and adolescence ( Lady Bird ). Neither has an important life/societal event to set things moving—we just drop in on lives already established. While each has an ending of sorts, we are left unresolved, much as life is. Each relies on an unpromising setting (the tacky hotels and strip malls of Florida, the humdrum world of Sacramento CA) as a main “character” that drives the plot forward. Finally, each depicts much-discussed working class families trying to get by while creating a future for their children. On a personal level, it was fascinating and nostalgic to see two areas I resided in (and was generally unimpressed by) serve as such key elements in these fil

Strange Interlude (1928) By Eugene O’Neill David Greenspan, actor Jack Cummings, III, Director Irondale Theater, Brooklyn October 27, 2017 Measure for Measure (1603) By William Shakespeare Elevator Repair Service John Collins, Director NY Public Theater October 29, 2017 Even great artists create subpar works, as you can hear in Bach’s finale to Cantata 205 ,  and Beethoven’sWellington’s Victory (a.k.a. “The Bear went over the Mountain”). Much of this is understandable, since great creators need to experiment and take risks, and sometimes work fast to make money. One of the great artistic periods of history, one that gave us both masterpieces and curious flops, came in the post WWI era, when Picasso painted in sequentially more daring styles (Blue Period, Cubism, masks) and Igor Stravinsky migrated from colorful post-romantic works ( Firebird, Petroushka ) to rhythmic revolution ( Rite of Spring ), then to neoclassical and serialist styles. Also from th

Music, Imagination, and Culture Nicholas Cook Clarendon Press, 1990 A Clockwork Orange Adapted for the stage by novelist Anthony Burgess Directed by Alexandra Spencer-Jones Starring Jono Davies New World Stages, Manhattan October 20, 2017 New Work for Goldberg Variations (2016) Simone Dinnerstein, piano/Pam Tanowitz, choreography Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair, NJ October 21, 2017 Morphed (2016) Tero Saarinen Company (Dance) Joyce Theater, Manhattan October 22, 2017 Emerson String Quartet Beethoven String Quartet in E-flat major , Op. 127 (1824) Shostakovich String Quartet No. 15 in E-flat minor , Op. 144 (1974) Alice Tully Hall, Manhattan October 24, 2017 In Nicholas Cook’s outstanding book on how we hear music, Music, Imagination, and Culture,  he discusses a tribal culture in which a musical performance is appreciated and evaluated not by the sounds produced, but by the visible physical way in which the performers interac

La Favola d'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi Sir John Eliot Gardiner, conductor English Baroque Soloists, The Monteverdi Choir Krystian Adam, Orfeo Gianluca Burato, Pluto Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center October 18, 2017 For the past seven months the famed Sir John Eliot Gardiner has embarked on an ambitious road show called “Monteverdi 450”, in honor of the 450th anniversary of the great composer’s birth. He has performed each of the three extant Monteverdi operas as a set, each one traveling with the same cast, in 8 different countries and nine settings, now ending in New York.  After my transcendent experience with a Monteverdi opera performed by Italians last year, this week’s L’ Orfeo was a disappointing mixed bag (you can see the entire performance here ). L’Orfeo (1607) is the very first opera that entered the repertory, following the beginnings of opera ( Dafne and Euridice by the Florentine Jacopo Peri) by about 10 years. Opera in its infancy drew its just

The Alchemist (1988) Novel by Paulo Coelho Tiny Beautiful Things Based on the book by Cheryl Strayed Play adapted for the Stage by Nia Vardalos Starring Nia Vardalos, Teddy Cañez, Hubert Point-du Jour, Natalie Woolams-Torres The Public Theater October 11, 2017 Hitler, Ascent 1889-1939 Biography by Volker Ullrich Alfred A. Knopf, 2016 Triumph of the Will (1935) Directed by Leni Riefenstahl Thursday was about self-help literature: in the evening I saw Tiny Beautiful Things at the Public Theater, while earlier in the day my library book club had discussed the novel The Alchemist , now translated into 70 languages and under development as a Hollywood picture produced by none other than Harvey Weinstein, who certainly could use some self-help these days. As I grew weary of this day of needy self-actualization, on the subway home I thought back to my recent reading of the excellent new biography Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939 by the German Volker Ullrich. All