Wordy and deep, Jez Butterworth's Olivier-Award-winning play leaps brightly into the sunshine carrying the bloody torch of Irish drama.
Read More »Jon Sobel
Concert Review: Pianist Guy Livingston – ‘Dada at the Movies’ (NYC, 17 October 2018)
Livingston doesn't just champion this early 20th-century music, he brings it to vivid life, even as he entertains and educates on the classic Dada films.
Read More »Concert Review: Zemlinsky Quartet – ‘Zemlinsky, Janáček, Dvořák and Their Muses’ (NYC, 16 Oct 2018)
The Zemlinsky Quartet's onstage bonhomie, vivid engagement with the audience, and tremendous skill made the concert a joy.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Salome’ by Oscar Wilde
This fine new production uses an admirable new translation from the French that stays close to the original, giving us Wilde indeed, flaws and all.
Read More »Music Reviews: Strands of Bluegrass from Hot Rize, Kenny and Amanda Smith, and Singer-Songwriter Beth Snapp
Hot Rize's live 40th anniversary album is a blistering set of 18 prime bluegrass tunes. Many written by band members, they showcase the group's undimmed musicianship and enthusiasm.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): Euripides’ ‘The Bacchae’ at BAM
Director Anne Bogart and SITI Company charge up Aaron Poochigian's balanced new translation in a graceful 90-minute production of Euripides' 'The Bacchae,' alive with ecstatic bacchanalia and gruesome violence.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC Off-Broadway): ‘I Was Most Alive with You’ by Craig Lucas
Being Deaf today brings with it controversies over vocalizing, lip reading, and ASL. All of that helps define just one character in Craig Lucas's kaleidoscope of a drama, now in its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC Off-Broadway): ‘The True’ by Sharr White, with Edie Falco and Michael McKean
Edie Falco is an unstoppable force as a political operator in this vivid dissection of nitty-gritty party politics.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘A Chorus Line’ at the Gallery Players
The Gallery Players' sterling new production reminds us that 'A Chorus Line' is not only loaded with some of the greatest show music ever, but one of the best pieces of meta-theater ever devised.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Worse Than Tigers’ by Mark Chrisler
Intermittently funny and unevenly powerful, Mark Chrisler's play 'Worse Than Tigers' is amusingly absurdist and patently symbolist yet on another level grittily real.
Read More »
Blogcritics The critical lens on today's culture & entertainment