Is it tragic that tens of millions of people's entire conception of Gilbert & Sullivan comes from a minute or so of silliness on a Simpsons episode? Or is it laudable that The Simpsons, once our culture's smartest pop phenomenon, at least managed to...
An agreeably minor comedy in both scope and key, Ethan Coen's Women or Nothing opens with a surefire farcical premise and then, to its credit, refuses to fire the surest shots. Gretchen and Laura, a pair of moneyed lesbians eager to have a child, op...
Actor-director-playwright Regina Taylor's quasi-experimental stop. reset. (Signature Theatre) takes place in the offices of the awkwardly named Alexander Ames Chicago Black Book Publishers, a business faintly reminiscent of the Johnson Publishing Co...
Despite its title, The Machine isn't really about Deep Blue, the supercomputer that famously beat chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997. As rendered by Matt Charman and bombastically directed by Josie Rourke at the Park Avenue Armory, the story i...
Nestled in a central gallery on the fourth floor of the Museum of Modern Art, between rooms containing seminal works by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol, "Walker Evans American Photographs" consists of approximately...
Being from Western Massachusetts myself, I was excited to sample The Hill Town Plays, Lucy Thurber's cycle of five dramas set amid the hamlets and college towns west of Boston and east of the Berkshires. The series, produced by the Rattlestick and r...
Although it's double-stuffed with counts and balls, with duels and scandal and exquisitely described hunting parties, with idealists debating affairs of state and gambling rakes caught in dumb, doomed love, Mikls Bnffy's sweeping Transylvanian Tri...
Ever had a friend whom you both love and love to hate? One who feels like a parasite sucking at your soul, but whom you can't cut loose, because, ultimately, you need them more than they need you? A study in the complexities of friendship and cla...
In his introduction to this superbly illustrated compendium of underground newspapers, editor Geoff Kaplan channels the 1960s' exuberant ad-hoc vibe by referring to his book as "Power of the People," despite the title on the cover--Power to the Peop...
One thing you could say about John Collins: He likes an oral challenge. Under his direction, the New York-based ensemble Elevator Repair Service (ERS) has staged, among other things, three modern American novels--usually recited in their entirety...
In April 1993, a show took place at MOMA that turned the world of pictures inside out. The result of five trips made by New York photographer Philip-Lorca diCorcia to L.A.'s rent-boy underbelly--the strip between La Brea Avenue and Santa Monica Boul...
Last autumn, the fearless folks at The Chocolate Factory in Long Island City let Big Dance Theater into their basement to stage Sybil Kempson's Ich, Krbisgeist. Performed in an invented language based on German (with bits, according to the company'...
Chris Burden: 'Extreme Measures' October 2-January 1, 2014 In 1971, L.A. artist Chris Burden spent five days jammed inside a school locker. Later that year, he got an assistant to shoot him in the arm with a .22 rifle. In 1974, he was crucifie...
Not a lot happens in the Apple Family plays. In each of Richard Nelson's four dramas, the Apples (three sisters, one brother, an uncle, a boyfriend) gather in the same room of the same upstate house. They eat, they sing, they talk. A dog gets loose ...
Royal Ballet September 17-29 Britain's premier ballet troupe arrives at the Joyce with an award-winning dance version of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, choreographed by Arthur Pita and featuring principal dancer Edward Watson as Gregor Samsa, who ...
Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols, and Other Typographical Marks Keith Houston ? September 24, W. W. Norton & Company, 320 pp., $25.95 Pilcrow. Interrobang. Octothorpe. No, not the names of obscure demons from The Less...
Essays: Art: The Return of the Real by Christian Viveros-Faun Philip-Lorca diCorcia on turning the ultimate photographic trick Dance: Smashing Pumpkins by Elizabeth Zimmer Big Dance Theater creates a culture that destroys itself Film: Bor...
The Machine Performances begin September 4 You might think that observing a chess match has all the spectatorial thrill of watching paint dry or grass grow. But playwright Matt Charman thinks otherwise. He has crafted a play about chessma...
An Italian guy, a gay guy, a black guy, and a girl show up in Savannah looking for action. If that sounds like the setup for a bad joke, it is--or rather, it's the setup for two and a half hours of bad jokes courtesy of the Amoralists in their new p...
Some specifics, of course, have staled since 1935: the idea of Soviet Russia as a society ours should emulate, or that a premarital pregnancy would necessitate a family conspiracy, or that it takes a clean-spirited young man to dare to seize hold of...
"Confidential." That was the beguiling subject of an e-mail seemingly randomly addressed to the Village Voice in mid-September. "I represent the artist Banksy," the message began, "and I would like to talk… More >>
There’s something stupid about the ongoing condemnation of Millennials happening now in our culture. You know, the one that asks questions like: "Why are Generation Y yuppies so unhappy?" and… More >>
Jonas Wood's new paintings present seemingly straightforward scenes—rooms devoid of people, a poker tournament on TV—that front for dazzling formal invention. In some pieces Wood focuses on his childhood home, yet… More >>
Adriano Shaplin's gonzo epic Sarah Flood in Salem Mass blends Our Town and The Crucible with verve, slang, and hallucinogenic beaver stew. (Yes, the Wooster Group did it first—minus the… More >>
If the effigies of famous Yankees sluggers at Madame Tussauds aren't lifelike enough for you, cross 42nd Street to watch Eric Simonson's Bronx Bombers, a veritable walking-talking wax museum of… More >>
If Broadway musicals had trailers like movies, the one for Big Fish might go something like this: Meet Edward Bloom! He's a father and a husband with a big heart—and… More >>
What happens to a political play that's three decades old? Can it keep its emotional charge, or does it wither when its social relevance fades? You may be asking these… More >>
You might assume that the Photoshop fantasias of our age would make the visual conundrums of René Magritte's pre-war paintings feel quaint. Certainly the beguiling originality of his fractured figures… More >>
The theater is a swindle, an exercise in sham. Every play operates on principles of treachery: Flimsy set pieces substitute for solid spaces; people assume names and accents other than… More >>
Provocations don't come much gentler than Ain Gordon's Not What Happened, which concluded a brief run at BAM's Next Wave Festival. A meditation on truth and historical accuracy, directed by… More >>