Criticultura em Portugal

History of Violence Written by É douard Louis Directed by Thomas Ostermeier Starring Laurenz Laufenberg schaub ü hne berlin St. Ann’s Warehouse, Brooklyn NY November 14, 2019 This excellent, jarring play was adapted from a memoir/novel by French author É douard Louis in 2016 by Thomas Ostermeier, the author and company director of the modernist German company schaub ü hne berlin. It made for quite a multinational evening…a French book portrayed in German by a multinational cast, done in a Brooklyn theater. The German text was translated with supertitles on a screen behind the actors which, common to many modern plays, served a major role in the production via many handheld camera projections. The play was an excellent commentary on both modern sexuality (not really so modern as it turns out) and class/racism in Western countries, and did so with a visceral, immediate fusion that made me reflect more than most such plays with political points to make. The memoir/novel ...

Cyrano Written and Directed by Erica Schmidt Lyrics by Matt Berninger Music by Aaron and Bryce Dessner Starring Peter Dinklage and Jasmine Cephas Jones The New Group Daryl Roth Theater, Manhattan November 2, 2019 Cyrano de Bergerac , Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play about the guy with a heart of gold and a too-big nose, has timeless popularity, and has been reframed as a musical or opera several times. This is logical, given its heart-on-sleeve romanticism and timeless theme of frustrated love. The plot of the beauty (the lovely Roxanne) who initially falls for a handsome hunk but later realizes that the physically challenged, but devoted and brilliant Cyrano is the real catch, appeals to the emotions of a broad public. So it’s not surprising that the New Group has devoted all of its fall schedule, in a larger-than-normal theater, to this new musical treatment of the story, featuring Game of Thrones ’ Peter Dinklage, and adapted and directed by his wife Erica Schmidt. It i...

Turandot Composed by Giacomo Puccini (completed by Franco Alfano) Libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni Conducted by Marco Armiliato Production by Franco Zeffirelli Does the Metropolitan Opera have a future? A ridiculous question, seemingly—it’s only the world’s most prestigious house, and the place where opera careers are defined. Yet seeing the overstuffed, overwrought Turandot in a section where ¼ of the seats were empty made me wonder. The company must do better than this if it is to remain relevant to modern audiences who seek challenge and provocation at live performance, not just comfort. This production failed to do this. Turandot is an uncompleted opera by the postromantic master Puccini. His best works ( Madama Butterfly, Tosca, La Fanciulla del West , and (perhaps) La Boheme ) made him an icon across the globe in the early part of the twentieth century. So when he died prior to completing his last grand opera, the opera world was left with a dilemma...

Macbeth Written by William Shakespeare Directed by John Doyle Starring Corey Stoll and Nadia Bowers Classic Stage Company, Manhattan October 30, 2019 Parasite Written and Directed by Bong Joon-ho Wow, that was a brisk Macbeth ! The play is already a concise one by Shakespeare’s standards with fewer side-plots and subsidiary characters to dilute the playwright’s focus on the sociopathy of Macbeth and his wife, and how they murder the king and violently die. But this bracing version by John Doyle came in at 100 minutes in a single intense act, a short-duration record in my experience. Doyle is known for his creative, scaled-down Broadway revivals of works like Sweeney Todd and Company (where the actors also played orchestral instruments). He brought his principles of conciseness to bear here. There was a minimalist black set with a single Tudor-style balcony. There were minimal cuts to the text, but things were mostly kept moving by the absence of scene changes,...

Heroes of the Fourth Turning Written by Will Arbery Directed by Danya Taymor Playwrights Horizon, Manhattan October 26, 2019 Millenial playwright Will Arbery is from Texas, specifically conservative Texas. He’s written a new play Heroes of the Fourth Turning about young conservative Catholics wrestling with their faith in a disturbingly liberal world. This is a world Arbery knows well. His father is currently the president of Wyoming Catholic College, a small conservative place that features a mixture of Outward Bound-style wilderness training and a traditional Western Great Books curriculum. The playwright now lives in New York, and this new play is alternately sympathetic and critical of conservative religious (and political) viewpoints. Yet it has been praised by a variety of conservative commentators, somewhat to the surprise of the playwright. This reminds me of the response to The Book of Mormon, which can be viewed by different audiences as either ribald critique or warm reflect...