Category: theatre

Terry Teachout has problems with the Broadway theatre adaptation of Joan Didion’s “The Year of Magical Thinking.” “All the familiar features of her style, hardened into slick, self-regarding mannerism after years of constant use, were locked into place and running smoothly, and I felt as though I were watching a piece of performance art, or reading a cover story in People: Joan Didion on Grief. Is this unfair? Probably.”

Charles McNulty: “This dramatic meditation on what most of us would rather not intimately consider — mortality as a personal fact — is remarkable for its ruthless concentration and intelligence. Intermittently frustrating as a theatrical experience, it slowly but inevitably crescendos in moments that are shattering in their naked candor.”

Ben Brantley: “That tension has not been translated to the stage. Ms. Redgrave sounds all the emotional notes in the play clearly and articulately in its first sequences, meaning there’s no further journey for her to take us on. The consolation is that Vanessa Redgrave is Vanessa Redgrave, and she has her own means of plumbing depths.”

John Simon: “True grief is not an attitudinizing catalog of self- regarding minutiae. There is a 15-line poem by Theodor Storm, ‘Einer Toten” (‘For a Dead Lady”), that moves me every time I read it. Didion’s 90-minute intermissionless itemization of oh- so-literary epiphanies, as recited and enacted by Vanessa Redgrave, leaves me as stone-cold as the dead.”

“Because it starts so early and is so voluminous, the Fringe now equals Edinburgh. But the idea that the International Festival is a luxurious add-on for a few high-culture freaks seems set to change. Jonathan Mills, the Festival’s new Australian director, yesterday announced a programme that is bold, radical and closely integrated.”

August Wilson’s “great plays are surely without equal in our time. The staggering King Hedley II–the ninth in his magnificent 10-play cycle of African-American life–has now been excellently revived by the Signature Theatre Company, and it still frightens me. The concluding scene of accidental murder and messianic biblical incantation leaves us devastated and helpless, as if we were watching ritual human sacrifice.”

“A theatrical booking agent that left thousands of theatergoers holding tickets to shows that were never staged has filed for liquidation under the federal bankruptcy code. The filing by Baci Management in a Maryland federal court could turn out to be good news for jilted patrons. The court-appointed trustee handling Baci’s Chapter 7 liquidation said yesterday that he will seek reimbursement out of Baci’s remaining assets for those who hold tickets.”

Off-off-Broadway’s Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre has a new name, a new artistic staff and a new mission. Recent years have been hard on the Cocteau…

The TV show was created to choose leads for a revival of “Grease.” “The impact of Grease: You’re the One That I Want! was felt as soon as the first episode, which was seen by 11.6 million viewers. The box office, which opened the day of the first program, took in $1.3 million in the first two days. And, the TV show’s appeal appears to be drawing a wide geographical audience to Broadway.”

“There’s more permission in theater to use the word in its most vile context because there is presumption of purpose and the possibility of enlightenment. So you’d think audiences would be more receptive to considering the n-word in a theater.” But experience suggests otherwise.