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Macbeth
When Malcolm says of Macbeth’s grief after the discovery of the murdered Duncan, “To show an unfelt sorrow is an office/Which the false man does easy,” it is in contravention to the late king’s lament on the execution of the traitorous Cawdor that “There’s no art/ To find the mind’s construction in the face.” No…
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Poe X 2
It was interesting, recently, to see two stage treatments of the works, and in one case the life, of Edgar Allan Poe. Interesting, that is, in the differences and similarities between them and in the fact of their synchronicity. Each was flawed, but memorable, both singly and, by fortuity, paired. Each set Poe’s poetry to…
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The Killer
The Bérenger plays of Ionesco – in which an ordinary man finds himself in a variety of situations – are what they are, but it can be illuminating to consider them in terms of artistic and literary movements. I tend to agree that they don’t exactly qualify as existentialist or absurdist. It is, granted, pretty…
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The Library
It is tempting to attribute the visual elegance of THE LIBRARY to the fact that it is directed by the filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. And in some ways the production at the Public Theater does have a cinematic feel. The frame defined by the proscenium is, to the eye, a perfect rectangle, its corners sharp and…
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St. Matthew Passion
Any corps of actors that can cause a hush to fall upon its audience, such that the angel of silence is not just flying by but is still hovering, must, as they say, be doing something right. For it to happen in the ambit of a sacred holiday, and be done in a fashion that…
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Bésame mucho
BÉSAME MUCHO, which bears the subtitle “Latinas Sing Latinas,” and the further tagline, “Una antología musical de las más grandes compositoras latinoamericanas,” is substantial, even educational, in content, yet light and emotionally buoyant. Structurally it resembles Voces del tango, which I saw late last year from the same writer and conceiver, Pablo Zinger: four singers…
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King Lear
The art of the stage is largely one of clearing space, of getting impediments out of the way and avoiding the incursion of new ones, demarcating fields on which patterns of experience emerge through time, be they psychic, spiritual, or ideological. A new lushness can take root, or a greater austerity. Or both, as they…
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Measure for Measure
MEASURE FOR MEASURE is one of the more fascinating plays in the Shakespeare repertory, comedic in its structural attributes yet, it is thought, dark in tone, involving as it does an act of sexual blackmail to stop the execution of a young man for getting his girlfriend pregnant. But after seeing the Fiasco Theater’s rendition…
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A Doll’s House
The version of A DOLL’S HOUSE currently at BAM positions the iconic play within the Ibsen canon as a whole, an act that is no mere literary exercise, but which draws upon the entire body of work to invigorate the drama at hand. I think that there is no other playwright who so approaches Shakespeare…
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King Lear
The end of the Chichester Festival Theatre’s KING LEAR tore my heart out and cast its remnants on a desolate plain. But I’ll get to that later. Up to then, Angus Jackson’s production, currently on loan to BAM, is refreshingly straightforward but somewhat nondescript; it tells the story, without dragging, but rises only occasionally to…