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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Towers of Techno-Babble

Written by Jonathan Kalb on August 4, 1999. Posted in Posts, Theater

through Aug. 1 at the Signature Theater, 555 W. 42nd St. (betw. 10th & 11th Aves.), 244-PLAY. Towers of Techno-Babble The theater has a troubled relationship to new technology. Not that most of its practitioners are particularly conservative—quite the contrary—but there is an abiding conservatism in the form itself. The technical advances theaters have incorporated over the centuries, such as
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