notanotherbookreview

  THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE by Ashley Griffin , directed by Rachel Klein produced by New York Rep at Royal Court Performing Arts Space, 145 West 46th St., 3rd floor. Through June 15th THE OPPOSITE OF LOVE   is a courageous play on target for these ultra commodified times, when sex, if not love, is yet another "market" to be navigated for strategic advantages--status, finance.  Eloise, played by Ashley Griffin, and Will, played by Danny Garner, are magnificent combatants except that this courtship is a work for hire.   Historically, in this "man's world," marriageable girls (Rapunzel anyone?) were locked up for their own good. "No man marries a cow, if he already has the milk" was the basic idea of  women's value. Whether rich or poor, around the globe, legacies were at stake. Yet Eloise's conundrum is emotionally like Rapunzel. Unable to leave her tower, she hires Will, a sex professional Though women are sometimes accused of being obsessed with...

TCG, Theatre Communications Group, published Tony Kushner's  PERESTROIKA , the second part of Angels of America in 1994 .  Would   book reviewers mention a book of this play, a huge cultural breakthrough?  As a book publicist and playwright, I was excited about this idea, as was the publisher, who created The "Plays are Literature Campaign." Packages of books with materals supporting this book as literature were sent. A couple weeks later, I began my follow-up. Was the exclusion of published playscripts arbitrary? "Everyone knows,  plays are only reviewed  in performance." But in England, play scripts in books are reviewed.  Some are reviewed both IN PERFORMANCE and when the book is published. Why? Playscripts are accepted, like poetry, as a form of  LITERATURE!  The   Plays are Literature Campaign  showed Angels in America was a  unique literary achievement published in two books.   Perestroika was a worthy exc...

In 2020 ICE is a frightening fact of life for undocumented aliens, as is mistreatment at the border for asylum seekers; a far cry from " Give me your tired, your poor,  Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,  The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.  Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,  I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”   Lazerus' poem, long part of the American creed, is a question  in 2020. With the rise of the Trump administration there's a belief among his supporters that illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, are unlike "us" Americans. They are criminals, interlopers stealing our jobs/resources. Ironically, this attitude ignores the reality that hardworking immigrants fueled America's climb to the top. The politics of hate has heated up a crisis in 2020, yet as 72 MILES TO GO Shows, the huge impact of immigrant policy on families is not new. Set in Tuscon, Arizonia in 2008-16, the fissures between legal and illegal runs ...

THE SHADOW BOX by Michael Cristofer is a Pulitzer-winning play and justifiably so, since it takes on content as difficult as any life lived. This play's focus is on people preparing for the moment when death, abstraction and certainty, will arrive.  Not with the medieval figure in a black cloak carrying a sycthe but in a mythical enclave in California's poconos in the 1970s. In Regeneration Theatre's wonderful restaging, the scene's a mythic "summer camp" with cabins indicated by roofs of wooden triangles and walls with Birchwood branches (set Samantha Cancellarich) . Random furniture fleshes out interiors, though it's dwarfed by the heavenly feel of the invisible Poconos (Lighting Domino Mannheim) . Hikers exclaim about the clean air and difficulty finding the place, as they catch their breath in the clearing. Spirits are high, they might be on holiday but for the travelers they seek, who have already arrived. These loved ones have been told this ...

The Archbishop's Ceiling by Arthur Miller, presented by Regeneration Theatre, is a play rarely done and this was the first New York production.  I thought I knew Miller's work but never heard of this  play set in the 1970's in an unnamed Eastern European country, where government controls  information and the freedom of writers.  In this behind the "Iron Curtain" drama, Miller, who lived through the McCarthy era, had insights into the clash between governments' need to control information and writers' need for free speech. This reverberates in 2019's chaotic "fake news" environment. Our former Cold War enemy's divide and conquer tactics, that influenced our 2016 elections, is a propaganda model used in the former soviet bloc and now imported abroad. History does repeat itself, though never in the same form. Miller's play opens with Adrian and Maya having drinks in an elegant high ceilinged room in a bygone Imperial style. Maya ...

WHERE DO ALL THE GHOSTS GO ?  Theater for the New City  ( Written and directed by Barbara Kahn , ) opens with a rapier thrust by Sarah Bernhardt ( Steph Van Vlack ). a ghost in   Napoleonic drag. She thinks herself condemned to solitude in the derelict hotel, until Marcel Duchamp with his transparent chessboard shows up. Played with droll astringency by David Leeper, his verbal provocations are interrupted by fellow ghouls Elizabeth Keckley, a   demure companion to Mary Todd Lincoln ( Chloe Simone Crawford ). Then Buffalo Bill Cody ( Christopher Lowe) crashes into the room. When Duchamp purposes chess, you get that he and Cody may have been playing an infinite game. When the Baroness ( Sarah Teed ) floats through the room and Duchamp dramatically calls her a thief, it's but a ripple in her trajectory through time with a bright scarf. It is a scarf, ostensibly lost, that brings Jos ( Ashley Versher ) and her wife, Frankie ( Fleur Voorn ) to return to the de...

Around 1973, I was living in San Francisco when an actor friend called me from a phone booth to ask  if I wanted to have a drink with Tennessee Williams. Alas, I heard the message the next morning, a missed opportunity you don't forget. Mr Williams was in town for rehearsals at A.C.T. of   SMALL CRAFT WARNINGS . My friend said Williams talked about his problem with the director, who was too respectful. Unlike Kazan, who shaped his plays and made them successful, this director was careful about cutting the text. With all due respect, I am of a different opinion. For me, the 50's naturalism extolled by the Actor's Studio (Kazan was a Founder) seems dated in 2018. And the classic  films productions of  plays Williams is known for, The Glass Menagerie,Cat on the Hot Tin Roof, Street Car fo cus less on the hypnotic reverie he creates on the page, the humor laced with pathos, than the laceration of secrets revealed. While those revelations are profound, the met...

https://vimeo.com/269716307 The mystery of the THE WAPSHOT W HATEVER. What does a cat meme, a desk top of strange icons, a MacLaren stroller, and an orgy have in common? Programs and Users know...Find out   http://dixonplace.org/performances/the-wapshot-whatever-the-secret-lives-of-computer-programs/  more reactio Codi McGarry is an amazingly creative and intrepid designer, undaunted by the most insane requests for projections, animation, sound. Can you make individual icons for characters and put them on a projection of a desk top? What about talking encyclopedias? She can do almost anything, and if it doesn't work the first time....it will soon! If you don't yet have a ticket, TUESDAY May 1st is right around the corner. For more info: https://www.facebook.com/events/101261304023716/permalink/113050032844843/?notif_t=feedback_reaction_generic&notif_id=1524754094052661 ...