A Powerful New Prison Drama

Written by Jonathan Kalb on December 26, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

Let me get this straight. I’m supposed to put patriotism over partisan rancor now because otherwise the major party machines might actually start to look bad in a way people remember, endangering next year’s vote and voter manipulation? And I’m supposed to accept old boy George Dubya, the most embarrassing mediocrity to attract a national
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The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Written by Jonathan Kalb on December 2, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

Transvestism, nudity and kinky sex, juggled sexualities, dismemberment, gratuitous violence, mad scientists, rampaging psychotics, depraved and corrupted adolescents: you know you want to see it. Preferably all together. The only question is what package you want it in. Are you the sort who likes to think in an atmosphere of panting, gasping, fantasizing and salivating?
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Susan Sontag Gets a Bad Production; Cobb Is a Happy Surprise

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 25, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

Alice in Bed By Susan Sontag The O’Neill and Williams plays that made van Hove notorious in New York, let’s remember, were by dead canonical authors, classics long in public circulation that were due for radical freshening. Susan Sontag’s Alice in Bed is a first play that has never been seen in New York before.
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The Full Monty: Televisionâeuro;”If Good Televisionâeuro;”Comes to Broadway

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 18, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

The Full Monty, in case you’ve been orbiting Saturn, is a British phrase meaning totally naked. It is also, again for planetary vacationers, the title of a $3.5 million 1997 movie about unemployed British steelworkers who try to raise their spirits and some cash by becoming strippers, which surprised everyone by earning $256 million. As
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The Dinner Party, another Neil Simon Lightweight; Yasmina Reza’s Compelling, Perceptive The Unexpected Man

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 11, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

The Dinner Party By Neil Simon The Unexpected Man By Yasmina Reza Lest I seem prematurely snobbish, let me backtrack and say that, for 20 minutes or so, I thought The Dinner Party (which runs an intermissionless hour and 45 minutes) might be an interesting hybrid. After all, why shouldn’t Neil Simon stretch? Who’s to
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Bill Irwin Interprets Beckett’s Most Challenging Texts

Written by Jonathan Kalb on October 31, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

Samuel Beckett’s later prose is a remarkable substance. It sometimes reminds me of one of those unstable heavy elements that, under "normal" atmospheric conditions, can exist for only a brief time before breaking down into more "normal" constituents. To read it closely is to feel simultaneously tickled by ordinary impishness and bewildered by quicksilver slips
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Tom Donaghy’s The Beginning of August Needs Better Actors

Written by Jonathan Kalb on October 28, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

The title of Tom Donaghy’s new play, I take it, is meant to be mildly ironic. The action is set in early August, but there’s an emotional chill in the air more befitting February gloom. Fair enough. I like chills and paradoxes as much as anyone. Trouble is, freezers have to be kept truly cold,
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Report from London

Written by Jonathan Kalb on October 19, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

London Theater London – American reports from the London theater tend to fall victim to one of two excesses: fawning praise or towering contempt. The former is just an extension of the shadow p.r. that passes everywhere as criticism nowadays, exacerbated by unacknowledged colonialist awe. The latter is simply the flip side of the awe–the
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The Man Who Came to Dinner Revisits Broadway’s Golden Age; The Soapy and Dull Avow; The Sad, Fascinating Man in The Flying Lawn Chair

Written by Jonathan Kalb on October 3, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

The Man Who Came to Dinner By Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman Because it requires a cast of 29 (huge for a nonmusical nowadays), it reportedly qualifies as risky for the Roundabout Theater’s artistic director, Todd Haimes, but its wisecracking essence is safely proto-sitcom. Its other source of appeal today is equally obvious: it
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Rebecca Gilman’s Obvious Spinning into Butter; Innocent as Charged, by the Neglected Alexander Ostrovsky

Written by Jonathan Kalb on August 12, 2000. Posted in Posts, Theater

Spinning Into Butter By Rebecca Gilman Rebecca Gilman’s Spinning into Butter is a case in point–a play about white people’s attitudes toward racism that would probably seem perfectly pungent if tied to a recognizable news event. The plot centers on the earnest but clueless responses of some white college administrators in Vermont to what they
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