Originally published in The New Yorker, Mar. 21, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 51.It must suck to be the one guy in the room who actually cares. The story opens with "I…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:15PMOriginally published in The New Yorker, Mar. 19, 2001. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 8.[Translated, from the Japanese, by Jay Rubin.] A bit of an opportunistic reprint, here, by Th…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 04:45PMOriginally published in The New Yorker, Feb. 28, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 93. "Why aren't you eating?" he asked."I saw a fly land on it," I admitted.With irritatio…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 02:03PMWe first meet Anna (Kristen Bush) as she, a stony and/or stoic adjunct, is being dumped by an older professor, Simon (Matthew Rauch), who we will never see again. That's fine: in the next hu…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 05:45PMStephanie Dickinson (Lois Robbins) is a prickly nurse, which is to be expected: for years she's been reduced to nothing more than a potted fixture beside her boss, Dr. Julian Winston (Maxwel…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:45PMOriginally published in The New Yorker, March 14th, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 53.Coover, he of the experimental concept stories. Here's a life, told through the vague and…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 03:08AMPhoto/Jill SteinbergJesse (Jennifer Conley Darling) lies there in a hospital bed, sipping lime water through a straw. In flashbacks, her husband Noel (Pierre Marc-Diennet) enters through the…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 05:47PMOriginally published in The New Yorker, Feb. 14 & 21, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 11.I never thought of killing Jenna. I didn't think about killing anyone I actually kn…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 04:29PMA famous tragedy once wondered, "What's in a name?", but it's doubtful that Shakespeare, a master of double-talk and other precise tricks of English, ever thought that question would come so…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 07:06PM[Note: Due to an unfortunate circumstance, I was unable to see Part 3: Nursing, by today's opening. Given how unrelated the first two plays were, and how strongly negative my reaction to the…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 09:34PMOriginally published in Little Kingdoms (1993). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 83.There's a bit of Pale Fire in this, a story told through the gallery notes for the twenty-six portr…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 03:59PMThe last thing an audience wants is to be told that they're entering limbo for the next seventy minutes, so it's a ballsy move on Ashlin Halfnight's part to have the characters in God's Wait…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 01:23AMOriginally published in Little Kingdoms (1993). Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 76."Grapes swell on our slopes, deer graze in the grassy trench between our walls, and in the winding …
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 02:02AM"Hello Flux," reads a recent blog posting on the website of the Flux Theatre Ensemble. "I didn't know about your company or this show until I read the NY Times review. I noticed it because…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 02:01AMOriginally published in The New Yorker, February 7, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 23.I declare a war on storytelling terrorists like Hadley, you know, the sort of people who …
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:55PMOriginally published in Little Kingdoms, 1993. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 92.The animated cartoon was nothing but the poetry of the impossible -- therein lay its exhilaration an…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 02:07PM"Visually enchanting . . . dazzling" - New York Post"Bono and The Edge have contributed stellar songs. SPECTACULAR!" - New Jersey Star-Ledger "Succeeds thunderously! I was riveted." - …
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 01:58AMPhoto/Isaiah TanenbaumAfter the apocalypse, long past our scavenging and regression to a Clockwork Orange-meets-Shakespeare argot ("In a mutant’s anus, thou quark-witted son of a three-eye…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 06:58PMPhoto/Bella MuccariRobert Martin (Eric Weaver) is marrying Janet Van De Graaff (Whitney Branan), and it's the task of his best man, George (Colin Pritchard, doing a great Roger Bart), and he…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 07:15PMPhoto/Michael Mahoney It's the unscheduled delay on the local train that convinces Christopher (Gregg Mozgala) to fake a sneeze, hoping to catch the eye of the pretty girl, Anna (Sara Buffam…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:59PM"Oh, we'd be so adult here," says Alan (Erin Gann), giddily ogling the newest lot in his father-in-law's precious gated community. How better to prove one's manhood, after all, than by playi…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 03:43AMLathem (Kris Kling) is chilling in the cemetery with his bro Patio (Bryan Grossbauer), smoking some bud to take the edge off his father's recent death, a possible murder that's incorrectly, …
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 06:25PMBetween each of their productions, one can just imagine artistic director Jesse Berger sitting in a dark corner of a rehearsal space, plotting and scheming, using their excellent reading ser…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 06:07PMPhoto/JP YimPerhaps younger demographics and changes in our future will turn this unsavory combination of social media and live theater into the next pairing of chocolate and peanut butter, …
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 11:25PMOriginally published in The New Yorker, Jan. 31, 2011. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 91.One of the many nice things about Alice Munro as a writer, beside her effortless ability to …
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 06:26PMTime and again, Sir Charles Worgan (Rob Breckenridge), the manager/publisher of dozens of newspaper magazines in England tells us that, as a practical businessman, he isn't concerned with th…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 03:27AMPhoto/Max RubyThere's something inherently appalling about self-help seminars: the idea of a super-serious guru getting up on a stage and telling you that they can radically Change Your Life…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 05:14PMPhoto/Jim MooreIn 2008, the troupe Parallel Exit was nominated for the Drama Desk's "Unique Theatrical Experience" award. Their latest show, Room 17B, suffers in comparison: not only is a gr…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 04:23AMOriginally published in A Public Space, No. 6, 2008. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 63.[Translated by Will Schutt as part of the FOCUS: Italy series.]The child opens her eyes and di…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 03:40AMOriginally published in A Public Space, No. 6, 2008. Personal enjoyment rating (out of 100): 33.[Translated by Will Schutt as part of the FOCUS: Italy series.]Ah, the Wall! How he missed the…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 04:20PMHas it been over three years since Kinderspiel last trod the boards? Apparently so; my old review can be found here, but information about the new production, which will be done in repertoir…
SOURCE: That Sounds Cool at 02:45AM
