• The Crucible

    The Crucible

    The director Ivo van Hove has turned his eye on THE CRUCIBLE, Arthur Miller’s treatment, in 1953, of the Salem witch trials as analogous to McCarthyism. Van Hove’s version begins, as did his A View from the Bridge, also by Miller, with a black scrim interposed between the audience and the playing area. No –…

  • Congregata

    Congregata

    So, I saw CONGREGATA by FKA twigs. There were three back-to-back sold-out shows at the Brooklyn Hangar, of which I availed myself of an opportunity to see the last one. I was in pretty good company, not just of the exceptionally well turned-out twentyoneoroversomethings who dominated the crowd, but, at least for a while, the…

  • Einstein on the Beach

    Einstein on the Beach

    Seeing EINSTEIN ON THE BEACH at BAM put me in mind of the designer Edward Gordon Craig, who just over a century ago publicly desired the transformation of actors into übermarionettes, by which means he would have wrestled the idiosyncratic presence of human beings on stage into the service of an overarching artistic vision. The…