Theater antireviews
As the story goes, pork shoulder was a tough sell in 1920s America, so a scion of the Hormel Foods empire devised a way to blend the cheap meat with ham and preservatives, and in …
I saw Queens on the eve of Independence Day, so I was particularly struck by the fact that not a single positive thing was said about the United States in the entire show. How can …
Drink a few pints in a Dublin pub, and there’s a better than even chance you’ll be asked to sing. Drink a fourth and you’ll probably comply. As if there weren’t enough of a musical …
“That was a weird comedy,” he said, as we left the Old Globe after seeing The Tempest. “Indeed,” I replied, “it’s not usually classified as a comedy anymore, but a romance.” “Romance? The love story …
To paraphrase Abbie Hoffman, don’t trust any play over 30. The yippie author of Steal This Book popularized guerrilla theater more than half a century ago, staging performative countercultural protests to subvert the establishment, such …
“The most certain sign of decadence in a nation is the fact that it cannot witness the performance of tragedy but must ever be titillated by comic entertainments.” –St. John G. Ervine, author of John …
Afghanistan’s most famous face belongs to a name few have ever heard: Sharbat Gula. Mainly, she’s famous for enduring a very, very difficult life. As a child, she trekked fifty mountainous miles to escape the …
I went to college in Dallas, which is not really in the South, but is a sort of first cousin. We had our share of Southern Belles on campus, including one of my roommates. One …
“I wonder if they will forgive me?” painter Mark Rothko asks towards the end of Red. “They” are his paintings, and what he needs forgiveness for is hanging them in the posh Four Seasons restaurant …
Stage backdrops exist in the same way Newton’s Laws exist. They establish which direction is up, and remind us two solid objects cannot occupy the same space. However, once we understand the basic framework, they’re …
Peter and the Starcatcher! was inspired by Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie, a narrative that has inspired 25 fiction books, 22 plays, 16 movies, 11 television shows, 9 comics, 7 video games, and a radio …
While watching Men On Boats, I hearkened back to a production of Julius Caesar at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. The atmosphere before the show was electric: this is actually Shakespeare’s Globe! We were thrilled: London …
Occasionally, an experience forces me to reflect on just how much American culture has twisted around what we pay attention to in music. And I don’t know whether to be proud or disturbed. Manufactured pop …
Shakespeare is universally acknowledged to be the greatest English playwright, yet very few playwrights have the audacity to leap the cultural and historical chasm and try to imitate him. I get it. First, there’s the …
I admit that it was with some trepidation that I went to Finest City Improv. The location was a small theater on Louisiana Street just behind the Lafayette Hotel and its notorious Red Fox Room. …
“I am not your friend!” Thomas Edison tells Henry Ford early on in Camping with Henry and Tom “Of course we’re friends,” Ford protests. “Why else would we spend time together?” “Because we each enjoy …