Criticultura em Portugal

Crossing Composed, written, and conducted by Matthew Aucoin Directed by Diane Paulus Starring Rod Gilfrey (Walt Whitman), Alexander Lewis (John Wormley) Brooklyn Academy of Music Howard Gilman Opera House October 8, 2017 Matthew Aucoin (b. 1990) is a millennial poet, conductor, and composer now making a big splash for writing full length operas and orchestral pieces at a tender age. He has already conducted the Chicago Symphony, been an assistant conductor at the Metropolitan opera, and composed/written four operas at age 27, drawing comparisons to Mozart (Aucoin supposedly played the score of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro by memory at the piano at age 11). Crossing (2015), an impressively conceived, written, composed and paced one act opera, received its New York debut this past weekend in a large venue with major publicity, attesting to the rapidly advancing career of this young man. What I heard and saw was the work of a composer with an excellent talent for drama, ver...

A Doll’s House, Part 2 By Lucas Hnath Directed by Sam Gold Starring Julie White (Nora), Stephen McKinley (Torvald), Jayne Houdyshell (Anne Marie) Golden Theater, Manhattan September 21, 2017 In Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 shocker A Doll’s House , the previously-compliant wife Nora famously walks out on her husband Helmer Torvald, her children, and her familiar life, with only uncertainty and societal condemnation in her future. She does this because she has been awakened to a realization that her own needs are as important as those of others; she cannot reconcile this with her stultifying family life. The play ends as follows: Helmer . Nora--can I never be anything more than a stranger to you? Nora  [taking her bag] . Ah, Torvald, the most wonderful thing of all would have to happen. Helmer . Tell me what that would be! Nora . Both you and I would have to be so changed that--. Oh, Torvald, I don't believe any longer in wonderful things happening. Helmer . B...

Hamilton Book, Music, and Lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda The Private Bank Theater, Chicago IL September 7, 2017 Directed by Thomas Kail Starring Miguel Cervantes, Gregory Treco, Ari Afsar, Jonathan Kirkland, and Chris De’Sean Lee It's fair to say that Hamilton is quickly asserting itself as the most important musical of our time. Miranda's revolutionary musical gets people thinking about race, history, and theater in ways they're probably not used to.  -Chris Weller, Business Insider The hip-hop musical Hamilton won multiple Tony Awards in 2016 and has been lauded as a brilliant, transformative, entirely original masterpiece by many theater critics. I finally caught up to it in Chicago, where it has played for the past year. Tickets there are about ½ the $400-700 price on Broadway, and could actually be obtained the week of the show. Despite the palpable excitement and anticipation in the theater, the show failed to deliver a clear point of view, compelling music...

Dear Evan Hansen Book by Steven Levenson Music and lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul Starring Michael Lee Brown, Garrett Long, Michael Park, Mike Faist August 26, 2017 In my review of last year’s hit film La La Land , I commented on how it looked backwards to the big film musicals of the 1950’s but also conveyed a uniquely millennial sensibility, in which the lovers sing, dance, part, but don’t get back together, since their individual goals trump an old fashioned off-into-the-sunset relationship. The current hit Broadway musical Dear Evan Hansen now takes us to some millennials in their formative, angst-ridden teen years. This topic has a long history of portrayal in generationally-specific films (from Rebel without a Cause to The Breakfast Club to Boyhood ), and at least a few musicals, most recently the 2015 Broadway  Spring Awakening , a dark rock musical about tortured adolescence based on a nineteenth century German play.   Dear Evan Hansen plays qui...

1984 by George Orwell Adapted for the stage by Robert Icke and Duncan Macmillan Starring Tom Sturridge, Olivia Wilde, Reed Birney Hudson Theater, Manhattan August 15, 2017 With our modern arts swamped with apocalyptic and dystopian views of society, it must have seemed like a good idea to produce one of the famed early models, George Orwell’s 1984 . Written in 1949, then novel reflected this committed socialist’s disappointment with Stalin’s totalitarian metamorphosis of socialist principles into a police state, similar to the one that the defeated Hitler had established in Germany. The novel coined phrases that have become near-clichés, frequently referenced or copied by subsequent literature, TV, and movies: Big Brother, Doublespeak, Newspeak. Can this novel’s events still resonate? This adaptation of the novel became notorious for the observed vomiting and fainting of patrons in London and New York since its debut in 2014, at least suggesting one type of impact. The plo...