Criticultura em Portugal

Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House (2015) begins very promisingly, with a lovely sense of anticipation. We enter the small theater walking through and amidst actors already mingling in the living room of the intimate surround-set. Wow, there is Wallace Shawn ( My Dinner with Andre ) and Matthew Broderick, two feet away from me!  What might come of this glam-casual NYC cocktail party? What follows is a dark, unsatisfying play. It opens with an overly long monologue by Mr. Broderick, playing a laconic playwright-in-decline, who goes on about the decline of theater, his past successes, the decline of culture in the world, etc. Then the cocktail party of over-the-hill theater performers and producers gets going, largely with chit-chat, interrupted by Dick’s (Mr. Shawn) entrance in pajamas, with bandages on his face. As the two hour play unfolds, the casual conversation reveals Mr. Shawn’s view of the dark dystopian side of our society. The old and past-their-prime (like Dick) a...

The terrific Film Society of Lincoln Center sponsors a yearly two week festival of new French film. I had the chance to see three of these this week. As luck would have it (or not), all the films ended up about millennials responding to stress. Given my stereotypes (amply backed up by student teaching) that millennials lack resourcefulness and resiliency, I was curious to see these films' perspectives, potentially broadening mine. Nocturama —millennials blow stuff up Nocturama  (2016) by director Bertrand Bonello (1968-) was an irritating version of the “shocking adolescent rebellion” movie. This genre has a venerable tradition of critiquing establishment mores. The 1930's saw Jean Vigo’s Zero de Conduite shock a rigid Catholic society with visions of schoolboy rebellion. In the conformist 1950s The 400 Blows and Rebel without a Cause showed teens breaking out of rigid societal conformity. The protest stakes were raised by the 1960’s-- If… (1968) ends with rebellious...

Sometimes there are a lot of interesting things to do in New York City. Here is a the first of a two part synopsis of an extended weekend of viewing in and around Lincoln Center. Thursday: New York Philharmonic at David Geffen Hall Lera Auerbach (1973-) is a Julliard-trained Russian composer mostly active in the west. Her NYx: Fractured Dreams (Concerto No. 4 for Violin and Orchestra) , 13 connected “sogni” (dreams) for full orchestra, premiered this week. Like her somewhat vague introduction onstage, and her poem upon which it is based (she is a bit of a polymath, also into painting and performance art) was colorful, atmospheric, and varied, but like so many compositions did not have a true forward thrust or achieve a sense of momentum or destination. Her sound palette is similar to that of Saariaho (see reviews) but without so much electronic music and architectural use of sonic landscape. I did not really hear any connection to NYC (despite the title). Soloist Leonidias Kav...

Escaped Alone , a short, intense play written last year by British playwright Caryl Churchill (1938-) explores anxiety from both a micro- and macro-perspective. Its structure is of two superimposed narratives. One shows four seemingly normal British grandmums in their backyard chatting about mundane issues of common discourse (we all used to do that before social media). The other cuts to a (maybe) alternate reality in which one of the ladies narrates a harrowing apocalyptic narrative that ranging from bombs to fantastic animal mutations to mass stress-induced psychosis.  The play is a series of rapid-fire five minute scenes that flips back and forth between these two constructs, effectively enhanced by the lighting and sound design that contrasts the backyard (birds twittering, sun shining) with a humming, throbbing, geometrically framed blackness for the apocalypse narrative. The dialogue is rapid, witty, and goes in many unexpected directions, not always following...

Erica Schmidt’s new play All the Fine Boys takes a decidedly female perspective on adolescent development, with mixed results. It centers on two 14-15 year old girls, (played here by the 20’ish Isabelle Fuhrman and Abigail Breslin (the junior beauty pageant star Olive in filmdom’s Little Miss Sunshine). Each has an experience with an older boy/man, with very mixed results. The play begins with a prelude—a giggly slumber party where the Jenny and Emily talk about boys, watch explicit horror films (helpfully left by Jenny’s mother), and do typical teenage things. The rest of the play unfolds their respective relationships with a 17 year old high school artsy rebel (well played by Alex Wolff) and a 28 year old married man. Despite their close friendship, Jenny and Emily oddly do not share much information as these relationships evolve; each is on a solo adventure, and one ends very badly indeed. Like some teen films, the males play a lesser role, cast as negative foils to the girls. Unl...