Criticultura em Portugal

Lise de la Salle, piano Town Hall, Manhattan March 4, 2018 Michail Lifits, piano Carnegie Hall Weill Recital Hall, Manhattan March 23, 2013 Two recent NYC recitals by young pianists revealed different ways of structuring a recital, neither in the tired tradition of virtuoso barn-burning technical display. Both are competition winners yet eschewed the standard pieces that demonstrate one’s technical prowess that are often done in an initial NYC recital (e.g. Liszt B minor Sonata, Chopin Ballades, Beethoven Appassionata or Hammerklavier , etc.). Lise de la Salle is a 29-year-old French pianist who has recorded a couple Bach CDs. Her recital, blandly narrated by her from the stage, explored Bach’s influences on later composers. This could be a very fertile idea, perhaps delving into the use of counterpoint or fantasia by composers like Mozart, Mendelssohn, or yes, Beethoven or Liszt. She instead stayed more literal, choosing either direct transcriptions of Bach works (Bach/Bu...

Say Something Bunny! Written and Performed by Alison S.M. Kobayashi UNDO Project Space, Manhattan March 19, 2018 When I was a child, my parents bought me a mini reel-to-reel tape recorder. I remember one excellent Christmas when my cousins and I made a surreptitious tape of our parents talking in the dining room. I recall an odd experience when we played it back. Statements that would have seemed normal or mundane live were somehow imbued with comic or other significance when played back as a performance piece. This kind of recording is at the core of Alison S.M. Lobayashi’s performance piece Say Something Bunny!, in the middle of a cultish 12 month run in a (very) intimate Chelsea performance space. Kobayashi ran across a wire recorder (a dated mid-20th century technology) which documented the holiday conversation of the Newburges, a 1950’s New York Jewish extended family. She then did a sleuthing project to find out, solely based on vague audio clues, who these peopl...

The Low Road Written by Bruce Norris Directed by Michael Greif Starring Daniel Davis and Chris Perfetti The Public Theater, Manhattan March 15, 2018 Playwright Bruce Norris (b. 1960) started as an actor in the 1980s but has been writing plays for the Steppenwolf Theater, Chicago in recent years. His Clybourne Park (2010), a follow-up to A Raisin in the Sun , won a Pulitzer Prize as well as Tony and Olivier awards for Best New Play in 2011. His plays often address white liberal hypocrisy, esp. regarding race, and US issues of class and wealth disparity. The Low Road (2013) does so as well, but through an inventive scheme not set in the modern era like Norris’ other plays. This play follows an entrepreneurial young man of the 1700s, Jim Trumpett (a fresh, appealing, and perfectly innocent-sociopathic Chris Perfetti), seeking to rise from poverty to make a fortune in pre-revolution America.  Jim doggedly seeks to succeed by following “modern” economic princip...

Hangmen Written by Martin McDonagh Directed by Matthew Dunster Starring Mark Addy and Johnny Flynn Atlantic Theater Company, Manhattan February 28, 2018 Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri Written and directed by Martin McDonagh Starring Frances McDormand, Sam Rockwell, Woody Harrelson Funny Games Starring Anthony Jeselnik Count Basie Theater, Red Bank NJ February 22, 2018 Irish writer/director Martin McDonagh (b. 1970) is in the news for his Oscar-winner Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri , but has been writing plays for 21 years. This week I had a chance to see this movie and his 2015 play Hangmen , sampling his dark humor. His earlier plays were set in Ireland and England, but he has recently taken on settings in the American South (as in the movie) and the rural American West ( A Behanding in Spokane , 2010), nearly always involving sardonic wit in the face of crimes or death. I am a fan of his twisted crime caper film In Bruges (2008...

Good for Otto Written by David Rabe Directed by Scott Elliott Starring Ed Harris, Amy Madigan, F. Murray Abraham Playwright David Rabe (b. 1940) was a hot commodity back in the 1980s, when he wrote the screenplay for the Jill Clayburgh star vehicle I’m Dancing as Fast as I Can and the Tony-winning play Sticks and Bones . His plays are more sporadic now, and his recent Good for Otto suggests that his inspiration is waning. This is a large 16-character play luxuriously cast with Oscar-winners and nominees F. Murray Abraham ( Amadeus),  and the married couple   Ed Harris ( The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, Pollock ) and Amy Madigan ( Places in the Heart ,  The Right Stuff ). Why these famed actors would have been attracted to this overstuffed, overlong play is unclear. Good for Otto (Otto is the hamster pet of one of the characters) is a series of vignettes showing the interaction of 8 patients in a local mental health clinic with one of two therapists (Ha...