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Perhaps not so coincidentally, the adventuress Isabelle Eberhardt has something of the qualities of a Great White Whale herself: a life of such convulsively original self-creation that she can be appropriated to accommodate any conceivable perception.– BY MYRON MEISEL
“Hopscotch”‘s meta-significance may lie in its unabashed embodiment of an anti-operatic happening, shorn of opera’s traditional barriers of social class and pretension (as well as a Happening’s reliance on spontaneity and chance). Yet most of the various innovations can be viewed as effectively a brazen checklist of grant-magnet attributes: prolix profundities, expanding audience appeal to younger demographics, technologically savvy, community-based, environmentally grounded, academically au courant theoretical underpinnings. — BY MYRON MEISEL
What’s bracing is that everything O’Neill tackled has been thoroughly reconceived in century-later terms, most impressively in some of the most originally-wrought dialogue I’ve heard in a long while: snappy, cryptic, cynical and ingenuous all at the same time. Better still, Kelley’s own production transforms what might read stilted on the page into something rich and strange and alive.– BY MYRON MEISEL
Antigone’s justifications for her beliefs may provide a principled basis for resistance to oppressive authority, against collaboration and for fundamental liberty of conscience, but as applicable as they may have been as a parable for refusal of Nazi tyranny, they uncannily also precisely mirror the heinous positions of a Kim Davis, insisting on the holiness of her sacrifice for the primacy of her own personal beliefs over the dictates of the State. –BY MYRON MEISEL
Like probably everyone else of my generation, my entry point into the theater was through the musicals, back when they embodied rather than aped the pop music of the time, when one’s piano teacher would breathlessly announce on arrival that he had in hand pirated copies of the latest sheet music from the newest Broadway hit.
It’s a strong ensemble, A Noise Within’s longest suit, but arguably no one could resist its spasms of inspired wackiness. Camille, afflicted with a speech impediment that cannot pronounce consonants, the sort of convention no longer permissible without air-quote irony, is here so inventively incarnated by Rafael Goldstein that the disorder transcends issues of political correctness. To a lesser degree, the stereotype of jealous Spanish husband with a pistol is nearly as well overcome by Luis Fernandez-Gil’s zealous embrace of all the ridiculousness of the role. Contrastingly, the ever-versatile Joshua Wolf Coleman instills an insinuating quality as an ambiguous doctor in the first act that one wishes paid off more heartily than the way in which the script strands him.–BY MYRON MEISEL
I believe Jean Renoir said it takes about 25 years to know if a work of art is any good, obviating all instant criticism. (Walk through any “contemporary” art museum to confirm.) Certainly they mutate over such a length of time. Context changes, and more importantly, so do we. –BY MYRON MEISEL
Accordingly, while A Night with Janis Joplin was on its own terms unquestionably a rousing, imaginary concert, I must admit to unfairly subjecting it to a double bind: alternately annoyed by its deviance (and pretense) of authenticity and equally unnerved by the many sweet spots of enthusiastic pleasures it could elicit, some nostalgic, other just showbiz savvy. –BY MYRON MEISEL
Gina Young, who years back issued some superb rock albums, has been maturing into an increasingly compelling playwright with her “Femmes: A Tragedy” and “Tales of a 4th Grade Lesbo.” “sSISTERSs” is her most challenging, if sometimes obscure, work to date, but don’t be put off: It’s a playful piece with passages of delicious wit and an almost scholarly appreciation for pertinent nuggets of historical rhetoric (both sexist and enlightened).
Midway through I found myself thinking, in all sincerity, that while it might be alright for Jews to grapple with this shocking display of extreme caricature grounded in recognizable reality, I sure hoped none of the goyim were watching: they might not understand.– BY MYRON MEISEL
