Criticultura em Portugal

Happy Talk Written by Jesse Eisenberg Directed by Scott Elliott Starring Susan Sarandon The New Group Pershing Square Signature Center, Manhattan May 19, 2019 The Manhattan off-Broadway theater company The New Group is a little hard to peg. They alternate between interesting, edgy new plays by unknown playwrights and star-studded plays written by famous actors, e.g. Hamish Linklater’s The Whirligig and Wallace Shawn’s Evening at the Talk House . The latter category of productions sometimes seem to me as a type of vanity exercise—an actor writes an adequate play, then gets his famous colleagues to come by and act in it, presumably at a discounted cost to the company, while selling out the house. Happy Talk by 35 year old actor Jesse Eisenberg ( The Social Network ) is another such example.  Eisenberg has written plays before. He usually acts in them as well, but did not here, focusing our attention on the 72 year old Susan Sarandon ( Thelma and Louise ,...

Burn This Written by Lanford Wilson Directed by Michael Mayer Starring Adam Driver and Keri Russell Hudson Theater, Manhattan May 5, 2019 Playwright Lanford Wilson (1937-2011) specialized in realism, featuring earthy, flawed Americans in real world situations. Plays like Talley’s Folley, Fifth of July, and The Hot l Baltimore presented a cross section of middle class America to playgoers in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Presumably, the fantasy USA of the Reagan era caused his earthy plays go out of fashion, so his plays were not often revived in the following years. But these days our increasing attention to “forgotten” middle class issues has made this a hot topic, so the timing seemed good to revive the 1987 play Burn This . This production, featuring two of the hottest millennial actors, was entertaining and allowed us to enjoy the talents of Adam Driver up close, and volcanically personal. The play centers on a group of young Manhattan housemates trying to make it ...

Hans Christian Andersen: Tales Real and Imagined Written by Eve Wolf Directed by Donald T Sanders Starring Jimmy Ray Bennett and Daniel Moody Ensemble for the Romantic Century The Duke on 42 nd Street, Manhattan May 4, 2019 Eve Wolf has become known for creating plays based on the lives of famous people, using integrated media and music to give a sense of their lives and eras. There were raves in New York about her past biodramas about Tchaikovsky, van Gogh, Dreyfuss, and (Russian poet) Anna Akhmatova. These subjects all had in common a mix of great talent with personal stories placing societal, medical, sexual, or other limitations on their genius. Wolf’s company, the Ensemble for the Romantic Century, therefore seems to specialize in the tragic, doomed, romantic genius. Hence to the famed Danish storyteller Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875). As detailed in excellent program notes by musicologist James Melo, Anderson had a complex for overstepping his abilities and...

Do You Feel Anger? Written by Mara Nelson-Greenberg Directed by Margot Bordelon Vineyard Theater, Manhattan April 23, 2019 Mara Nelson-Greenberg is another example this season of a young playwright given a chance to have a play produced off Broadway. The New York Times recently featured articles and a roundtable discussion of young black playwrights whose works appeared this season, so this youth movement is quite a trend in New York theater--no more paying your dues for years prior to getting a play produced. While the resultant plays can be inconsistent, plays like Do You Feel Anger? justify the strategy. This was a fresh, creative play with its own unique voice. It also gave a millennial woman the chance to comment on the hot topic of sexism in the workplace.   She demonstrated a refreshing style and perspective quite different from that of older women writers, and certainly from that of men. I have never seen a play written quite like this one. It mixed...

King Lear Written by William Shakespeare Directed by Sam Gold Starring Glenda Jackson Cort Theater, Manhattan April 21, 2019 Seeing the octogenarian Glenda Jackson as King Lear was a little like my early days seeing opera, where I would go to see Luciano Pavarotti or Monserrat Caball é and be dazzled by their virtuosic performance, but be left a bit cold about the entire performance. In the old days that was usually because the resources and production surrounding the star were intentionally underpowered, perhaps to shine light on the star, not on some hotshot director. In contrast this overstuffed production of King Lear by a noted director was just the opposite. Sam Gold jammed so many ideas and innovations into the production that the great drama was enervated, and became a high tech video game where we waited for the next appearance by Glenda, er, Lear to see what she would do next. My prior experience with director Sam Gold was in the excellent A Doll’s Ho...