Criticultura em Portugal

Hadestown Music, Lyrics, and Book by Anaïs Mitchell Directed by Rachel Chavkin Walter Kerr Theater, NYC March 4, 2020 There’s been a recent flurry of media articles honoring the 90th birthday of Steven Sondheim, the great musical theater composer of works like Company, Sweeney Todd , and A Little Night Music . He’s a great example that you do not have to be a supreme melodist a la Richard Rogers to make a compelling musical. He hits just the right balance of literate words, contemporary plots, and sophisticated music with just enough hummable-ness to make the whole package work. But it turns out that it’s hard to do. I have only found a few musicals in the past two decades to be truly excellent: The Book of Mormon, Hairspray, and Dear Evan Hanson. Enter Hadestown , the Emmy winner from last year. Hadestown  is yet another popular musical with an interesting concept, but mediocre music that does not justify the question “why are these people singing?” These days most Bro

Hamlet  Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Yaël Farber Starring Ruth Negga Gate Theater, Dublin St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn February 29, 2020 I don’t know why I avoid Hamlet . Perhaps because it’s The Greatest Play. Perhaps because it is a testing vehicle for every young movie star to show they are “serious”, ranging from the plausible (Jude Law, Simon Russell Beale, Ethan Hawke) to the less so (Mel Gibson, Paul Giamatti). Perhaps because Hamlet is a young man who speaks like someone much older, and its hard to find an actor with the right mix of youthful abandon and gravitas. The older “big tragic” roles of Macbeth and Lear are easier to cast, as they seem to exemplify the challenges of middle and old age, respectively. And perhaps because I resist the play because it seems overly familiar, seemingly more a collection of famous phrases than a real play. The stellar production by the Gate Theater, Dublin, presented in Brooklyn the past few weeks, reminded me

Beethoven Symphonies Four and Five The Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique John Eliot Gardiner, conductor Carnegie Hall, NYC February 21, 2020 English conductor John Eliot Gardiner (b. 1943) made his name in the 1980s with Handel and JS Bach performances conduced on period instruments. He founded the Monteverdi Orchestra (later becoming the English Baroque Soloists) in 1977, following the first wave of period instruments recordings by people like Gustav Harnoncourt. A great series of Bach and Handel performances followed. In 1990 he formed the Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique (ORR), seeking to bring period performance to later repertory like Beethoven and Berlioz. Like many of these pioneers of period performance, Gardiner’s early efforts were sometimes uneven technically, and marked less by interpretive revelations than by rapid tempos and fascinating new sounds and timbres from the reconstructed “original” instruments like wooden flutes, valveless oboes, trumpets,

Dracula Written by Kate Hamill (after Bram Stoker) Directed by Sarna Lapine Frankenstein Written by Tristan Bernays (after Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) Directed by Timothy Douglas Starring Stephanie Barry Classic Stage Company, Manhattan February 11 and 14, 2020 The innovative Classic Stage Company is now producing staged versions of the classic horror tropes Dracula and Frankenstein , both gothic novel classics of the nineteenth century. These shows were billed and justified as updates addressing modern issues of sex and race. The two adaptations were very different..one more conventional and overtly political, the other minimalist and only vague in its updating and political messages. Neither fully succeeded and entertained, but both were provocative. The more conventional production was Dracula . It followed the Bram Stoker (and classic 1931 Bela Lugosi) plot pretty carefully, with Dracula migrating from Transylvania to London to seduce nubile young wom

Swan Lake Choreography by Sir Matthew Bourne Music by Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky New York City Center, Manhattan Starring Will Bozier and James Lovell February 9, 2020 Matthew Bourne  (b. 1960) is among the most renowned of modern choreographers, but has often been criticized for his “pop” ballet takes on classics such as The Car Man (based on Bizet’s Carmen) and revivals of classical musicals like My Fair Lady . He tends towards bisexual/polyamorous takes on these classics, and has done so for decades, well ahead of the current trends in art. Perhaps his most famous retake was of Swan Lake , which premiered in 1996 and shocked the establishment for its treatment of the story as a gay coming-out tale, replete with hunky swans. This famous production recently completed a worldwide, yearlong tour with a sold-out NYC engagement. The fame of this production is now such that Matthew Ball, a principal dancer of the Royal Ballet, was flown in to share the role of The Swan/The St