Nick Dybek’s new novel, When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man, is an introspective coming of age story that focuses heavily on a young man’s loss of innocence. …It’s also basically Shakespeare’s Richard II as populated by the men of The Deadliest Catch. I’m serious. The basic story is this: Cal (rhymes with Hal), […]
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“The Blackout, Part 1: Tragedy Porn” was one of the weakest Newsroom offerings in quite some time. Not because it was lazy (like one infamous subplot from “News Night 2.0“), overly sentimental (like parts of “5/1“), or mildly offensive (like various things, depending on your sensitivities, from Charlie calling Sloan “girl” to Will’s condescension towards […]
The summer air has begun to cool down, but With Somebody Who Loves Me, an independent production by Manzo Entertainment, is heating up the Tarragon. A shortened version of the dance spectacle just completed a successful run at this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival, where the cast of eight dancers played to packed and enthusiastic houses […]
Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible in response to McCarthyism in the 1940s-50s, and it is appropriately infuriating. Responding to the communist witch hunt that was targeting writers like himself, Miller wrote a piece that would become one of the most widely produced American plays in history, about an actual witch hunt. He uses the 1692 […]
Post-Avengers, there have been a pile of movies I’ve been excited to see and only one of them has exceeded expectations. Magic Mike wasn’t what I was expecting, Brave annoyed me, and I was largely disappointed in The Dark Knight Rises– just for a few examples. But the one movie I saw on absolute instinct […]
I’m loving Bunheads. Have I mentioned how much I’m Loving Bunheads? It’s like an hour of pure joy once a week. And not guilty pleasure Bachelorette joy, actual Amy-Sherman-Palladino-Is-Back-On-TV joy. It’s like having Lorelai Gilmore back, but instead of Lauren Graham (with whom I have a love-‘annoyed by’ relationship) we get Sutton Foster (with whom […]
I haven’t seen the full season of Stratford Festival fare yet but The Pirates of Penzance is one of very few things so far that’s thrilled me. I loved it. I went in fond of but aware of the flaws in Gilbert & Sullivan’s work, and specifically the technical insanity of trying to stage Pirates. […]
When Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera about a crumbling marriage in the 1950s suburbs premiered in 1952, I imagine it was pretty subversive and revealing. The idea of something so flawed yet so seemingly perfect is a fascinating, dark and specifically suburban concept that would have played as insightful and daring back when the suburbs were […]