Criticultura em Portugal

The Irishman Written and directed by Martin Scorcese Starring Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci The Underlying Chris Written by Will Eno Directed by Kenny Leon Second Stage Theater, Manhattan December 5, 2019 63 Up Directed by Michael Apted   New Year’s 2020 (and, BTW, Happy New Year! to my readers) is a good time to think about aging. Boyhood , the famed 2015 movie that followed the evolution of a dysfunctional family, all filmed by director Richard Linklater over 12 years with the same actors, was at heart a creative attempt to show aging. It was fascinating to watch the young actor Ellar Coltrane (age 6 at the start) grow and evolve, not to mention grownups Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, over the span of the film. While the storyline itself was basic and not particularly memorable (the parents divorce, the kid manages), the unprecedented technique of filming a movie over a such a span was a fascinating special effect. The director accomplish...

One in Two Written by Donja R. Love Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb The New Group Pershing Square Theaters December 18, 2019 Donja R. Love (below) is a millennial-generation Afro-Queer (his term) playwright with credentials from Julliard, among other places. One in Two is his new autobiographically-flavored protest to the unresolving AIDS epidemic in the queer black male community. It is estimated that 1 in 2 (hence the name of the play) queer black men are HIV+, rates far higher than, say, the Latino or white community. The reasons for this are complex, including cultural factors of shame and avoidance within both the queer and black communities, as well as lack of interest from medical organizations and complete neglect by the media. Since AIDS became, for at least white patients, a manageable disease live with, rather than die from, it has largely disappeared from most public discussion. But this is because many patients have access to a variety of antiviral drugs fo...

The Sound Inside Written by Adam Rapp Directed by David Cromer Starring Mary Louise Parker and Will Hochman Studio 54 Manhattan December 12, 2019 Adam Rapp (b. 1958) is an American playwright and novelist best known for a small collection of intimate interpersonal dramas and novels (young adult, graphic, and adult). The Sound Inside , an intense, beautiful two-character play from 2018, shows a keen sense of plotting, nuanced dialogue, and using speech to reveal unconscious or repressed feelings of the actors. While on the surface this production was a star vehicle for Mary Louise Parker ( The West Wing, Weeds, Grand Canyon, Fried Green Tomatoes ), it is one of those rare plays that transcends the actors and stage technique to immerse you in a gripping personal drama, a sort of emotional cocoon from which you emerge 90 minutes later on the streets, a bit disoriented. The play centers on Bella, a writing professor at Yale. She is moderately satisfied with her caree...

Lear Music by Aribert Riemann Libretto by Claus Henneberg (after Shakespeare) Conducted by Fabio Luisi Directed by Calixto Bieito Starring Bo Skovhus Palais Garnier Op é ra Nationale de Paris November 24, 2019 I first saw Lear by German composer Aribert Rieman (b. 1936) at the San Francisco Opera back in the early 1980s, not long after its world premiere in 1978. I was fairly new to opera then, but was impressed by its drama and colorful modernist score. Since then, I have become much more experienced in both twentieth century opera and in Shakespeare’s King Lear , which I’ve see twice during the last year, neither in a quality production. King Lear has proved amenable to adaptation, most famously by Japanese director Akiro Kurosawa's film  Ran , where the drama is memorably transported to feudal Japan in a movie that is on my top 10 list. Rieman’s operatic adaptation, revived by the Paris Opera the past few years, was even more memorable this time around, a...