Americans love quantity. They prefer novels to short stories, symphonic to chamber music, feature films to short subjects. They put up with today’s, economics-induced favorite theatrical format, the 90-minute, intermission less play, only because that is mostly what there is. Well, now there is “Relatively Speaking,” a bill of three one-“acters.” The one-act play, never very popular, makes, when three …
Eye on Theatre Who Exactly Lives Here? By JOHN SIMON
The cast of We Live Here. Photo by and courtesy of Joan Marcus.>>> Is there any topic the New York stage has been more steadily bombarded with than the dysfunctional family? Or, more precisely, the dysfunctional Jewish family? Well, here they seem to be again in Zoe Kazan’s “We Live Here.” The only reason I think they may be Jewish …
Eye on Theatre: Actors in Command By JOHN SIMON
Virginia Kull as Carol Penn, Frank Langella as Gregor Antonescu and Adam Driver as Basil Anthony in Man and Boy. Photo credit: Joan Marcus.>>> The gifted British dramatist Terence Rattigan, author of several memorable plays, thought that “Man and Boy” (1963) would be his magnum opus, to be remembered even fifty years later. He was partly right. The current revival …
Eye on Theatre Autobiography, Good and Bad By JOHN SIMON
I hope the world is beginning to realize that the late Lanford Wilson was—is—a major playwright, and that his talents vastly exceed the two or three best-known efforts. So it is that the Keen Company is to be congratulated for reviving his 1970 play, “Lemon Sky.” This relatively early work concerns how Alan (read Lanford), at age 17, left his …
Eye on Theatre: The Shoptalk and the Shopworn By JOHN SIMON
“Completeness,” by Itamar Moses, is about the bumpy love affair between Molly, a molecular biologist—note the anaphora in “Mol” and “mol”—and Elliot, a computer scientist (why not Conrad, for symmetry?), as endless palaver about proteins in yeast and algorithms on computers supposedly supply the orchestration for an age-old song.
The Bitter and The Sweet By JOHN SIMON
It is good that Noel Coward spelled what is ordinarily one word as two in the title of his 1929 operetta, Bitter Sweet. That way, for a production at the Bard College SummerScape, I feel more justified in separating the few sweet things from the more numerous bitter ones. It is a shame that, at Bard, such a worthy but …
Eye on Theatre: Youth Will Be Served By JOHN SIMON
<<< The Company of RENT performs "La Vie Boheme." Photo by Joan Marcus. John Simon. >>> This is no review for young people; no one under 50 or even 60 need read it. It is about Rent, which I have been repeatedly lukewarm about, back only three years after its long run closed. It is revived to cater to the …
Eye on Theatre: Fancy Footwork By JOHN SIMON
Cast of All New People (left), Zach Braff (center), and John Simon (right). When the two plastic scrim panels that serve as curtains for The Second Stage’s All New People separate, Charlie, a barefoot man in pajamas is standing on a stool with a noose around his neck made of an extension cord …
Eye on Theatre: Not So Grim Reaper By JOHN SIMON
<<< Death Takes a Holiday poster.Photography and idea by Geof Kern;Creative Direction by Drew Hodges, Vinny Sainato in 1934, when the Hollywood movie Death Takes a Holiday opened, the New York Times critic, Mordaunt Hall (a playwright himself), called it “a really intelligent fantasy.” It was based on a 1928 Italian play by Alberto Casella (not known for anything else), and …
Eye on Theatre: Star Gazing By JOHN SIMON
Broadway’s Rising Stars—now in it’s fifth year as part of Town Hall’s Summer Series—just gets better and better. It’s a showcase for young performers to sing a number from a musical as a rung on the ladder to becoming better known as musical-comedy performers. This year, Town Hall’s artistic director Lawrence Zucker and creator/writer/host Scott Siegel along with Barbara Siegel …