Criticultura em Portugal

True West By Sam Shepard Starring Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano Directed by James MacDonald American Airlines Theater, Manhattan January 27, 2019 This excellent production of Sam Shepard’s 1980 drama True West was jolting, and reminded me of how much society has changed in 40 years. Seeing Ethan Hawke and Paul Dano assault each other’s egos, strut their masculinity, and neglect, demean, or lust after their women felt like some sort of time capsule from an era when men were men, women were women, and vive la diff é rence . We now live in an era where blandly reassuring young men in TV commercials are fussing over the kids, where transgenderism (either real or affected), is all the rage, and where “male aggression” is pretty much a felony. And, by the way, where women are not so marginalized, typecast, and condescended to as they were in the past. Well, that was not Sam Shepard’s world in 1980. Shepard (1943-2017) wrote 44 plays, won a Pulitzer for one ( Buried Child ) and a...

Fire in my Mouth Composed by Julia Wolfe Conducted by Jaap van Zweeden New York Philharmonic Orchestra Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center, Manhattan January 25, 2019 The Nix by Nathan Hill The Ferryman by Dez Butterworth “Postmodern” is one of those terms that is bandied about by literary and film critics, usually without definition, and, like the term “ironic” I am sometimes hard pressed to connect the similarities of the examples used. So I looked it up in Wikipedia, and got more confused. While the term seems to have started with French philosophers like Foucalt and Derrida, espousing the end of expertise and criticism, and pushing the narcissistic idea (appropriate for our times) that how we experience something is all that matters, the term has bled over into architecture, music, visual art, and literature, and has been dominant since the 1960’s. Some general commonalities include eclecticism (multiple styles, voices, or media contained in the same work), parod...

The Waverly Gallery Written by Kenneth Lonergan Directed by Lila Neugebauer Starring Elaine May, Lucas Hedges, and Joan Allen Golden Theater, Broadway, Manhattan January 20, 2019 American writer Kenneth Lonergan (b. 1962) is best known for his masterful Oscar-winning screenplays for You can Count on Me (2000), Gangs of New York (2002) and Manchester by the Sea (2016), but he has also written nine plays, the best known of which are the award-nominated This is our Youth (1996), Lobby Hero (2001), and The Waverly Gallery (2000). This star-studded revival of the latter play brought out all the things I admired in Manchester by the Sea : a restrained, realistic ability to shine a lens on everyday family trauma, featuring characters that evoke people you have met in real life. The clear star of this production was the wonderful Elaine May, an 86-year-old uber-New Yorker best known first for her satiric improv comic turns in the 1950’s (!) paired with Mike Nichols, then la...

Bleach By Dan Ireland-Reeves Directed by Zack Carey Starring Eamon Yates Bleach  is one of those plays where entering the theater is half the fun. It is staged in eerily quiet corner of outer Brooklyn, and you enter the theater by walking down an unpromising stairway directly from the sidewalk, where you would normally expect a trash chute. Entering the “theater” (renamed “Tyler’s Basement” for this play only) through a solid metal door that looked like a meat locker portal, you are ushered into what appears to be a very small, humbly furnished studio apartment and seated with 9 other audience members on worn chairs (mine kept leaning back). Asleep on the bed is our protagonist Tyler (Eamon Yates), an adorable young blonde kid just recovering from one of his tricks with a wealthy Manhattan John. After he rolls naked out of bed, we spend the next 70 minutes with him as he shares his life, dreams, history, and traumas (sexual, laundry, and others) with us. The title of the...