Friday, October 21, 2011
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Dog Day cable box.The Good Book on stage.Lots of Sarah Ruhl on this rainy-day-play list.A tribute to Mike Daisey from his director.Speaking of Daisey, these comments are getting ugly.
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:15PMTuesday, October 18, 2011
I mostly agree with Terry Teachout's rave for Mike Daisey's new Steve Jobs show, an opinion shared by most critics. Daisey's assault on the blissful ignorance in which we enjoy our electroni…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:48AMFriday, October 14, 2011
Sully waxes Shakespearean, including a gratifying shout-out to D.C.'s theatrical riches.
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:13PMBack in the 1990s in L.A., I got to know a brilliant singer/songwriter, Kevin Ray, at several open mikes, chiefly Highland Grounds' "Open Mind" Wednesdays; we who plied our tunes on piano, a…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 07:50AMWednesday, October 12, 2011
Michael Feingold, on Robert Wilson's Threepenny:Although the installation-like works of his creative years, long since past, employ live performers and move through time, Wilson has never re…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 07:32AMTuesday, October 11, 2011
As a member of the press, I'm typically shielded from the ticketing headaches of the average theatergoer, but occasionally I opt to pay for my tickets through the usual channels and receive …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:26AMI don't have much to add to Isherwoodgate (Isaac has been on the case), but I wanted to pass along this comment on the American Theatre Facebook page. It's a point of view you don't hear ver…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 07:06AMSaturday, October 8, 2011
A blast from the past, from David Ng's Oct. 2007 profile of Adam Rapp in American Theatre (as quoted in this space):Criticism is really unevenly distributed in this town. Obviously the power…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 08:31AMFriday, October 7, 2011
I think Isaac nails the problem with Charles Isherwood's public offer to stop reviewing Adam Rapp's work: that to admit how one's personal tastes color one's reviews creates a very slippery …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:18PMThursday, October 6, 2011
photo by Sarah Krulwich for the New York TimesI admired Stephen Karam's two previous New York productions, Columbinus and Speech & Debate, and had the chance to write about him for the L.A. …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:32PMThe writer Stephen Karam has two productions this fall: the play “Sons of the Prophet” and the chamber opera “Dark Sisters.”
SOURCE: The New York Times Subscription at 02:20PMAnother index of how theater is disproportionately on my brain: When Gary Coleman died, the first thing I thought of was Avenue Q. And when I heard that Steve Jobs died yesterday, the second…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:42PMWednesday, October 5, 2011
The opera composer Nico Muhly recently half-joked to me that he'd like to see all Broadway musicals directed by Robert Wilson, imagining how much Phantom of the Opera, for instance, might be…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:41AMTuesday, October 4, 2011
Last month I had the pleasure of playing my first gay wedding in New York, and I found the occasion to change one lyric, in the classic "As Time Goes By." Where the original said, "Woman nee…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 05:54PMI place no stock in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, but I'll care for it even less if it disses Laura Nyro.Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie in Ohio certainly doesn't look like your average junio…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:11AMFriday, September 30, 2011
The October season preview issue of American Theatre just went up online, and it's a keeper. There's a meaty, provocative interview with Clybourne Park's Bruce Norris (available online here;…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 03:58PMMatthew Freeman has perhaps the best response I've seen to the handwringing about the parlous state of American playwriting, from Todd London's Outrageous Fortune to this recent lamentation …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:10AM"As critics get older – and I concede this may be a fault – they also tend to become less recklessly violent in their judgments."-Michael Billington, quoted by Miriam Gillinson
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:07AMphoto of the Steppenwolf production of The Hot l Baltimore by Michael BrosilowIsaac Butler kindly asked me to contribute to his blog's awesome Lanford Wilson "issue," and I turned in a consi…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:55AMWednesday, September 28, 2011
Parade in the shadow of Lincoln's last stop.All hail Parabasis' Lanford Wilson issue.Tim Rice wants to hurt Charles Isherwood.Alexis Soloski revisits a familiar topic; the real scoop here is…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:19PMLast month it was Sondheim; now Time Out gives me another chance to geek out on another favorite composer on the occasion of a production of his biggest hit. What Bob Wilson and the Berliner…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:28AMWednesday, September 21, 2011
Pace Hunka, I found this, from Billington, bracing:I think people are in danger of getting a little prissy about the qualifications to be a theatre critic. Obviously, you need a passion for …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:42PMDavid Cote, a.k.a. Benedict Arnold (kidding!), has a thoughtful piece in today's Guardian about why American companies can't compete with the UK's far-reaching National Theatre. And it's mor…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 10:21AMTuesday, September 20, 2011
Clybourne Park comes home.Apparently a different Hunka.A farce about the IRS in Beijing.Four Baltimore dudes in a diner would totally be singing Sheryl Crow tunes.A most helpful web page.
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 12:17AMMonday, September 19, 2011
"Parenting small children is many things. It is a reminder of the essence of things, for one...Parenting small children is also fucking boring."-Catherine Treischmann, in a marvelously frank…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 04:48PMFriday, September 16, 2011
Long-running shows don't get revived.Black-lahoma.Rocky Horror banned in Carrollton.Chatting with David Cote about Trouble in Tahiti led me to this delightful Dawn Upshaw clip.Two scoops fro…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 11:12AMTuesday, September 13, 2011
"A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist."-Louis Menand, wr…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 02:09PMMonday, September 12, 2011
...I could be another linkin':When the talkback is better than the show.Passing Strange in St. Louis.Only a Papermoon: Puppets depict the unsung lives of the working elderly in Singapore.Tod…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 07:43AMFriday, September 9, 2011
More Intertube samplings...August: Osage County holds up.Rebeck and LaBute take suggestions from readers...for their next plays.TNC's wise rules for comment flame wars.Romulus Linney speaks …
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 01:43PMCast members of They Simply Said EnterOn Sept. 9, 2001, I went to the downtown L.A. offices of Cornerstone Theater Company to audition/shop for a project in their Festival of Faith, a five-s…
SOURCE: The Wicked Stage at 09:56AM 
