In this time of anxiety regarding the present and uneasiness about the future, it might feel as if the arts are, at best, escapist fodder and, at worst, self-indulgent vanities. Certainly, Alec Baldwin’s Trump impression on Saturday Night Live, thoug …Read more

Despite its uncontested standing as the ultimate vampire story and a classic horror novel, Bram Stoker’s Dracula contains very little outright blood and gore. It’s implied, for sure; but other than the scene in which Jonathan Harker accidentally cuts …Read more

What if everything you believe is wrong? (I once asked this of very religious actress friend of mine.) What if there is no God? What if Jesus wasn’t the Son of God? Her answer haunts me to this day. She looked me straight in the eye and said, “Then I …Read more

Produced by the Onomatopoeia Theatre Company and directed by Thomas R. Gordon, Shirley Lauro’s award-winning play A Piece of My Heart about six women serving in the Vietnam War, is playing in the East Village from now until, aptly, Veterans Day. The …Read more

Brian Friel’s oft-used fictional town of Ballybeg, Co. Donegal, marks a Chekhovian outline as well as the path to Friel’s own hopscotch bearings either side of the nearby Irish border. The Home Place, the last of his full-length original plays, is se …Read more

The chasm between our varied lives and theater’s capacity to reflect it is nothing to get down on; in fact, it’s a beautiful opportunity, and in many ways, is what this art form does do best. Red Light Winter, an excellent play by Adam Rapp, getting …Read more

For their first foray into Shakespeare, Elevator Repair Service, New York’s stalwarts of experimental theatre, tackle Measure for Measure at the Public Theatre. ERS delivers a screwball, slapstick rendering of the Bard’s problem play that is in turns …Read more

It isn’t until the final scene of Debra Whitfield’s new play FIRE that the drama’s various threads intertwine and the playwright’s ultimate purpose becomes clear. However, that doesn’t mean the rest of the play leading up to that point is inferior. I …Read more

“I think it is beautiful, what he did. I think he is brave.” That was Maria Alyokhina’s response during the interview section of the new performance piece by Belarus Free Theatre’s Burning Doors. It was a question posed to her by an audience member r …Read more

Set in Donegal, Ireland in 1878, Brian Friel’s The Home Place (at Irish Repertory Theatre) dramatizes the racial tension between the native Irish and the ruling English. It also depicts the tension between Christopher Gore and his son David, who are …Read more