Arthur Miller’s Moralizing

Written by Jonathan Kalb on December 7, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

I’ve always been grateful to this production, both for its own beauties and for introducing me at last to a Miller work that I could genuinely like. Miller’s major plays invariably move me, but after carrying me along on their carefully arranged emotional journeys, they just as inevitably let me down. As soon as my
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Ruskin’s Runaway Countess

Written by Mimi Kramer on December 7, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

The story it tells is one that most people have probably heard at one time in some form or another, whether they know it or not. It’s probably most readily available in Parallel Lives, Phyllis Rose’s 1983 study of five idiosyncratic Victorian marriages. Briefly, Gray left Ruskin–more or less for the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett
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Checkov, Modernized & Naturalized

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 30, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

The Group Theater itself began rehearsals in 1939 for a version of Three Sisters with Americanized dialogue by Clifford Odets, abandoning it before opening as a result of a feud between Stella Adler and Morris Carnovsky over what constituted "truthful" acting. Numerous later American playwrights, such as Lanford Wilson and David Mamet, have laid claim
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Lite As Air

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 23, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

Lite As Air Few spectacles are closer to the American heart than that of the professional famous person. Celebrity-worship is our culture’s vernacular faith, and (as the sociologist C. Wright Mills once said) our star system is the inevitable result of making a fetish out of competition. We venerate people who have done remarkable things,
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JAMES JOYCE’S THE DEAD James Joyce’s The Dead …

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 16, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

Playwright’s Horizons 416 W. 42nd St. (betw. 9th & 10th Aves.), 279-4200, through Nov. 28. The Deadly In 1939, Henry Miller added his voice to the chorus of prestigious detractors who had greeted James Joyce throughout his career: "At bottom there is in Joyce a profound hatred for humanity–the scholar’s hatred. One realizes that he
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Watery Myths

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 9, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

Atlantic Theater Company, 336 W. 20th St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 239-6200, through Nov. 21. Watery Myths David Mamet is not usually thought of as a political playwright. None of his plays deal with topical issues purely for their own sake, and he has reiterated his abhorrence of explicit polemicism in drama on numerous
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Magnificent Oddity

Written by Jonathan Kalb on November 2, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

Magnificent Oddity For the third year in a row, before the theater season is two months old, I’ve seen a production that I’m sure–without prejudice to any future show–will be one of the pinnacles of my year. In 1997 I had this feeling with Ivo van Hove’s version of O’Neill’s More Stately Mansions. In 1998
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Who Does Oliver Cromwell Remind You Of?

Written by Jonathan Kalb on October 19, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

McGinn/Cazale Theater 2162 Broadway (76th St.), 4th fl., 279-4200, through Oct. 31. Tinpot Cromwell Three and a half centuries ago, following a catastrophic civil war, the government of England was entrusted to a man with even more contempt for pluralistic democracy than the current Mayor of New York. According to his biographers, Oliver Cromwell wasn’t
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Marie Irene Fornes & Judy Elkan

Written by Jonathan Kalb on October 12, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

Signature Theater, 555 W. 42nd St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 244-7529, through Oct.10. Splattered Despite an impressive career nearly four decades long in the American theater and a reputation among serious critics scarcely short of reverence, the Cuban-born playwright Maria Irene Fornes remains relatively unknown to theatergoers in her adopted country. She belongs to
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Privy Party

Written by Jonathan Kalb on October 5, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

Privy Party Do You Come Here Often?, an extended comic sketch about two men stuck in a bathroom together for 25 years, may just be that perfect collision of comedy and surreality that Beckett looked for in his collaboration with Keaton, and that Ionesco simply wished for. Having said that, I flash back to a
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