Criticultura em Portugal

Five Easy Pieces Written and Directed by Milo Rau NYU Skirball Center, Manhattan March 8, 2019 Spaceman Written by Leegrid Stevens Directed by Jacob Titus Starring Erin Treadway Loading Dock Theater, Manhattan March 3, 2019     Swiss writer Milo Rau (b. 1977) is known in Europe for his political theater, challenging audiences with multimedia provocations on subjects like racism, colonialism, and terrorism. His theater company, International Institute for Political Murder, has produced works about the death of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu (2009), Compassion: The History of a Machine Gun (2016), and now Five Easy Pieces (2016), a challenging, thought provoking work that received its US premiere in NYC this month. Equally disturbing and stimulating, it challenged what we think about childhood and personal freedom. The play is based on a famous episode of mass murder in Belgium during the 1990’s. Marc Dutroux, “The Beast of Belgium”, gr...

The Price Written by Arthur Miller Directed by Jonathan Church Starring Brendan Coyle and David Suchet Wyndham’s Theater, London February 26, 2019 Arthur Miller (1915-2005) is often included in the US playwright “holy trinity” of Miller, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O’Neill. In my experience, though, I have found most US productions of his plays a tad melodramatic, with the working class-in-agony depictions in Death of a Salesman or A View from the Bridge often coming across as sophisticated soap opera. The British seem to love him, and I had heard that their productions are often superior to Americans’. So I sampled one in London, and it definitely rose to the occasion. The Price (1968) is less familiar to audiences than some of the other Miller plays, but I think it deserves more recognition. It is based on a familiar setup, the family gathering. Here, NYC cop Victor Franz (Brendan Coyle) arrives at the antique shop of his deceased father to clean it out and ...

Follies Written by Stephen Sondheim Directed by Dominic Cooke National Theater, London February 26, 2019 Company Written by Stephen Sondheim Directed by Marianne Elliott Starring Rosalie Craig and Patti LuPone Gielgud Theater, London February 27, 2019 Seeing London productions of Stephen Sondheim’s (b. 1930) first two breakout plays from the early 1970’s on consecutive nights gave me a good perspective on how different and path breaking he was. These were perhaps the first two plays to truly break out of the musical-as-diversion stereotype, and show how the form could be used for societal critique ( West Side Story, South Pacific, and Hair were earlier prototypes). Sondheim says that he wanted to turn the mirror back on the NY city upper-middle class couples who came to the theater to escape their lives, and instead show them their lives for their consideration. Both Company and Follies do so, but with varying success. Both received updated and stunningly...

Shipwreck Written by Anne Washburn Directed by Rupert Goold The Almeida Theater, London February 25, 2019 Edward II Written by Christopher Marlowe (1564-1593) Directed by Nick Bagnall Starring Tom Stuart and Colin Ryan (Young Spencer, Edward III)  Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare’s Globe, London February 27, 3019 On my trip to London I had a chance to see two plays about failed leaders, written about four hundred years apart. The tone of the plays was very different, but each author uses the failed leader as a springboard for societal critique. Christopher Marlowe’s Tudor version of the life of failed medieval king Edward II (1284-1327) depicts his vices honestly, and with some compassion, but equally critiques the society around him. American playwright Anne Washburn’s Shipwreck comically pillories Donald Trump as a satanic figure, but critiques the inconsistencies in his liberal critics.   Anne Washburn has written sixteen plays in twenty ...

The Mother By Florian Zeller (translated by Christopher Hampton) Starring Isabelle Huppert and Chris Noth Atlantic Theater Company Linda Gross Theater, Manhattan February 24, 2019 The Unconsoled By Sir Kenji Ishiguro Portraying dreams, altered consciousness, and mental illness is a challenging business. How does the artist put the viewer/reader in the distorted mindset of the affected person, yet maintain narrative coherence, often limited in the aforementioned states? I’ve recently experienced to different approaches to this. Neither completely succeeded, but each was an intriguing entry into the disordered mind. The Mother (2010) is the fifth play of French novelist and playwright Florian Zeller (b. 1979). His best-known play Le P è re ( The Father) came two years later and explored the mind of a man with dementia. Like it, The Mother uses fragmented narrative and nonlinear structure to convey the mind of a woman (Isabelle Huppert) who is popping sleepi...