Criticultura em Portugal

The Lehman Trilogy Written by Stefano Massini (adapted by Ben Power) Directed by Sam Mendes Starring Simon Russell Beale, Adam Bodley, and Ben Miles Park Avenue Armory, NYC March 27, 2019 This epic play begins with the dissolution of the financial services giant Lehman Brothers during the crash of 2007. The epic play that follows spans the nearly 200 years of the Lehman family in the USA. The play was written in 2012 by Italian Stefano Massini (b. 1975) as a radio play, and lasts over three hours. It was translated into 24 languages and performed all over Europe, but only received its English language debut in London in 2018. This was the American premiere, benefiting from the vast performance space of the Armory and the attention of the famed director Sam Mendes ( American Beauty, Skyfall ). The play begins with boxes being moved as the company collapses in 2007, then tells the story leading up to that collapse. The playwright uses several meta-themes over t...

Daddy: A Melodrama Written by Jeremy O. Harris Directed by Danya Taymor Starring Ronald Peet, Charlayned Woodward, and Alan Cumming The New Group and Vineyard Theater Pershing Square Center, Manhattan March 31, 2019 Jeremy O. Harris is a young black California-born playwright recently lauded for The Slave Play ( I had mixed feelings about it ) and its often-shocking exploration of black-white sexuality and relationships. He’s now commissioned to produce new plays both the Lincoln Center Theater and Playwright’s Horizon, all while finishing his degree at the Yale School of Drama—this is clearly a man on the move. So it was interesting to see his earlier play Daddy, written in 2015 (and the play that got him into Yale) but premiering only now . The play had interesting moments and received excellent performances, but seemed (as it was) the work of a very young playwright who had not yet figured out how to create a convincing dramatic arc. Harris’ more recent ...

Sea Wall Written by Simon Stephens A Life Written by Nick Payne Directed by Carrie Cracknell Starring Tom Sturridge and Jake Gyllenhaal New York Public Theater March 21, 2019 These two one actor/one act plays were ingeniously paired by the New York Public Theater, and featured prime acting talent. In Sea Wall (2008) English playwright Simon Stephens (b. 1971) tackles how a pretty normal guy processes the random death of his young daughter. The text leaps between past, present, and future, only revealing the actuality and circumstances of the death near the end of the 45 minutes. Stephens writes in a naturalistic style, relying on his actor, here the outstanding English actor Tom Sturridge, to supply the overtones, repressed pain and grief, and controlled emotion typical of how many men grieve. Sturridge’s great performance carefully tread the line between over-emotiveness and dysfunctional rationality. He adeptly portrayed a rational guy repressing and being ov...

Ain’t No Mo Written by Jordan E. Cooper Directed by Stevie Walker-Webb New York Public Theater March 24, 2019 This raucous play by 24 year old black actor/writer Jordan E. Cooper is a set of vignettes, mostly comic-satiric, reflecting on the current state of black Americans, but with a horrific undertone. The 90-minute single act consists of a variety of sketches, often similar to what one would see on an edgy version of Saturday Night Live . The play begins with a gospel funeral for a dead black man, “Mr. Right-to-Complain”, now interred after Barack Obama is elected, setting an ironically optimistically opening to the play. After this preamble, most of the remaining scenes flesh out the play’s horrific central conceit that the US government, in a sort of reparations, has decided to spend its money by flying each and every black American to Africa, along with a bit of spending money. This is a fascinating echo of a plan actually considered by Abraham Lincoln as a solutio...

Five Easy Pieces Written and Directed by Milo Rau NYU Skirball Center, Manhattan March 8, 2019 Spaceman Written by Leegrid Stevens Directed by Jacob Titus Starring Erin Treadway Loading Dock Theater, Manhattan March 3, 2019     Swiss writer Milo Rau (b. 1977) is known in Europe for his political theater, challenging audiences with multimedia provocations on subjects like racism, colonialism, and terrorism. His theater company, International Institute for Political Murder, has produced works about the death of the Romanian dictator Ceausescu (2009), Compassion: The History of a Machine Gun (2016), and now Five Easy Pieces (2016), a challenging, thought provoking work that received its US premiere in NYC this month. Equally disturbing and stimulating, it challenged what we think about childhood and personal freedom. The play is based on a famous episode of mass murder in Belgium during the 1990’s. Marc Dutroux, “The Beast of Belgium”, gr...