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Este nuestro espacio
The lovely little play that I saw on Saturday night began with the Spanish singer Lara Bello, dimly visible, evoking a lost bohemia from behind a diaphonous scrim, accompanied by the pianist Shai Bachar. It is almost a cameo to look at now, like something contained in a locket of long ago, from someplace in…
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Julius Caesar
For the London-based Donmar company’s JULIUS CAESAR at St. Ann’s Warehouse, we are herded into, and, two-and-a-half hours later, released from a place of mock confinement. Initially, we are retained in a holding room, between a door that has rolled down behind us and one ahead of us that has yet to open. One looks…
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Recuerdo tango
RECUERDO TANGO is the second of Mariela Franganillo’s tango shows that I have seen, and like the previous one, Tango Connection: Love Stories, it is distinguished by a feel for dramatic structure that goes beyond that of a revue whose main purpose is to showcase the history and virtuosity of the dance. Franganillo – in…
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Arguendo
May it please the Court, and for the sake of argument, the Elevator Repair Service has clear and unambiguous standing in the matter of the transformation of non-theatrical texts into performed drama, as evidenced by Exhibit A, Gatz, which brought every word of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby to the stage, and Exhibit B, The Select (The Sun…
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Then She Fell
I wonder if anyone has called in an anonymous tip about 195 Maujer Street in Williamsburg. The century-old building must be disconcerting to walk past for the uninitiated, not because it is abandoned but because there are signs that it might not be. The blacked-out windows, with wire mesh embedded in the glass, lower overhead,…
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Under the Greenwood Tree
The cross-dressing heroines of Shakespeare’s comedies create a new social relation by virtue of their masquerades and the secret knowledge they hold. They are thus empowered to influence events to a degree otherwise unpermitted of their sex, and so fulfill Beatrice’s repeated plaint in Much Ado About Nothing: “O that I were a man.” The…
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Tango House
It is a cliché in criticism to call something a gem, but here you have it: the show at TANGO HOUSE is a gem. It is small, can be taken in at a glance, is faceted, fitted to the space, the talent, and the audience, and of undoubted value and elegance. I have now seen…
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Por el agua de Granada
Before time overcomes the memory, I should say something about the presentation last Thursday by Lara Bello and Erik Kurimski of their new CD of folk songs collected by the Spanish poet García Lorca. What I knew going in was that Bello is the ideal interpreter of the material. I have heard her before in…
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The Master Builder
There is much to appreciate in the version of THE MASTER BUILDER now playing at BAM. John Turturro’s sheer onstage presence as Ibsen’s feckless protagonist can scarcely be gainsaid, nor can the charm and playfulness of Wrenn Schmidt as Hilde, the young woman who changes everything by walking into – BACK into – the master…
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Social Tango
I was privileged to observe a rehearsal of SOCIAL TANGO and am the more regretful that the show’s opening does not overlap with my stay in Buenos Aires. This does not fit the stereotype of a tourist show, but a tourist ought to love it. The dances are not about acrobatics or overwrought sexuality. There…