-
Thérèse Raquin
The whites, greys and blacks of the Roundabout’s THÉRÈSE RAQUIN are so muted that, when a brown-hued backdrop appears, it is like a flash of color, and so, later on, is a sparse scattering of autumn leaves, dropped and faded. The interiors, when they appear, are dim and woody, the windows opening, at best, on…
-
Antigone
ANTIGONE is the most sedate of the productions I have seen directed by Ivo van Hove, but it might be the most deeply thought-provoking. There is little to be gained from it without thought. It hasn’t the sadism of his Hedda Gabler, the pain of his Cries and Whispers, the angst of his Scenes from…
-
Comida de puta
COMIDA DE PUTA (F%&KING LOUSY FOOD), a new play by Desi Moreno-Penson at the West End Theater, transposes the Greek myth of Phaedra to the Nuyorican Bronx and its cosmology to the spirit world of Santeria. There are signposts along the way that point to the original, if you wish to follow them. The Phaedra…
-
Tristan and Yseult
The story of Tristan and Isolde shares with Romeo and Juliet a special status among the archetypes of love, which for the Romantics was a thing so strong that it doomed its feelers, its sublimity fulfilled only through the greater sublimity of death. But I am convinced, having seen TRISTAN AND YSEULT, which revives the…
-
The Descent of Orpheus
St. Paul’s Chapel is a lovely place, the sort of structure that tempts the non-believer to belief and, no doubt, reconfirms adherents in theirs. That aesthetics can have such an effect is one of mysteries of being human, and it applies, of course, to music as well as architecture. It is, then, appropriate that the…
-
Orpheus
The New York City Opera has been on an Odyssean voyage since setting sail from the financially burdensome port of Lincoln Center, with “its return to its birthplace, New York City Center” set for next April, according to the teller of tales that is next season’s brochure. The journey has been a chance for artists…
-
Penelope
On one level, Enda Walsh’s PENELOPE is just a modernization of an episode from The Odyssey. Four suitors – living at the bottom of a drained out swimming pool on Odysseus’s Adriatic estate – vie for the affections of Penelope in advance of her husband’s homecoming – finally! – from the Trojan War. They continue…
-
Ondine
The trailer for ONDINE does not even try to capture the delicacy of Neil Jordan‘s new film, which is more lyrical and poetic than suspenseful and melodramatic. Myths and fairy tales are not so much accounts of fancifully impossible events as patterns of experience that provide insight into the quotidian by seeming to defy the…