Critic at Large
Look Back in Anger
As I was waiting for the bus home, I ran into someone who often writes about the theatre who had also just emerged from seeing Look Back in Anger. She was in a rage. Why was the Roundabout Theatre putting on this old, second-rate British stuff?
I didn’t get the feeling she would be particularly receptive to the answer I could give her, so I only said a few words that I knew she would shrug off. She got on one bus, and I got on another.
I think there are indeed reasons to revive this play.
More…The theatre hall of fame
I’m in the middle of casting the New York premiere of Court-Martial at Fort Devens (a production that came about, by the way, because the play was published in Dramatics). I arrived at auditions on Tuesday to hear stories about an event that had slipped my mind—this year’s induction of new members to the Theatre Hall of Fame. One of our company had been invited to witness our producer, Woodie King, Jr., see his name added to the honor roll in big letters in the lobby of the Gershwin Theatre.
More…More on Mike Daisey
In a recent article for Dramatics, I wrote about a solo performer named Mike Daisey and his piece The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which was playing (and will soon reopen) at the Public Theatre in New York. It’s a piece in which Daisey, a longtime enthusiast of the technology that the late Jobs developed for Apple, exposed some uncomfortable facts about how this technology gets into our hands. The short answer is China.
More…'The Agony and the Ecstasy...'
Those who read my piece in Dramatics about Mike Daisey's The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobsmight be interested to learn that a radio adaptation of the show is featured on this week's edition of Ira Glass's radio series, This American Life.
More…'Stick Fly'
The usual—and usually true—complaint that Broadway is largely oblivious to drama and diversity is not applicable this season. So far, we have three straight plays by women (two of them black) and one by an Asian-American, with major roles for black and Asian-American actresses. Now, the question is whether any of them will be successful.
More…
