Here's one of the toughest of all form vs. content dilemmas: How do you craft narrative art out of the slog of unhappy family life, making something true to that slog but not a slog itself? Bob Glaudini's A Family for All Occasions, the bruised-up b...
In 1958, a six-year-old Mad Magazine published a parody of America's fourth-most popular newsstand title, which they called Bitter Homes and Gardens. Among its articles were "They Built Their House on a Lot 22 Inches Wide"; a "How-The ..." column th...
Three obstinate females--one fictional and two historical--dominated my theatergoing last week. Tenacious women make great showy roles for leading actresses, and also seem to have a stimulating effect on male writers: Medea and Tosca, Mistress Quick...
"How angry am I? You don't want to know," begins the gripping first chapter of Claire Messud's new novel, The Woman Upstairs (Knopf). The furious voice belongs to Nora Eldridge, an unmarried 37-year-old elementary schoolteacher, dutiful daughter, an...
A new musical about Alzheimer's disease? If you harbor suspicions that the musical, an all-American dramatic form, skews toward sentimentality, The Memory Show won't convince you otherwise. This two-hander, produced by the Transport Group Theatre Co...
Nick Vaughn and Jake Margolin's A Marriage has modest ambitions. The two conceptual/performance artists, married in 2008, want viewers to contemplate gay marriage, queer assimilation, and fetishization of the suburbs. In contrast to their humble aim...
Ben Durham doesn't seem like the sort of guy who would be involved with criminals and delinquents. He has the earnest and measured mien of a philosophy student. But Durham's subjects for "Portraits, Maps, Texts," his second--and final--solo exhibiti...
The title of Richard Greenberg's new play, The Assembled Parties (Friedman Theatre), carries multiple meanings. Its "parties" are a pair of Christmas dinners, occurring 20 years apart, and also the oddly assorted individuals who gather for them--mem...
Rachel Kushner was the girl who spent her teens sneaking onto the backs of motorcycles in California. Today, a couple of decades later, she's the novelist who is writing about girls on bikes and becoming something of a literary phenomenon in the pro...
The onstage installation which the audience is invited to come up and inspect before the performance of Colm Toibin's Testament of Mary (Walter Kerr Theatre) includes a live vulture, an object of fascination to me. My experience of vultures is limit...
A recent college grad finds himself back home, careerless and directionless. His rich father, interfering stepmother, and doting grandmother suggest various professions and pursuits, but he can't stick with anything for long. Left to his own devices...
A serious golfer, artist Charles McGill knows from bad lies. In 1997, he photographed himself playing through a vacant lot in Harlem, firing off elegant fades amid blowing trash, shattered bricks, and rusting rebar. A few years later, his job at the...
Roaming through MOMA's chockablock installation of highlights from Claes Oldenburg's early career, you can sense a febrile mind and lightning-speed hands digging out from under the sludge of late-term Abstract Expressionism. It's 1960, and for inspi...
Douglas Carter Beane's The Nance (Lyceum Theatre) has got what it deserves from Lincoln Center Theater: a first-rate production, handsomely staged by Jack O'Brien, with a gigantically fine performance by Nathan Lane in the title role. Beane's play d...
The Women's Project tends to favor domestic comedies that play like tragedies. Or maybe it's the other way around. Recent shows such as Jackie, Bethany, Apple Cove, Lascivious Something, and Smudge show mothers and fathers, and husbands and wives, d...
Any Broadway show has much to live up to: burgeoning production costs; audience hopes inflated by high ticket prices; competition from film, television, and the dozens of other shows glutting Times Square. But Lyle Kessler's Orphans, now revived at ...
The new Broadway revival of the musical Jekyll & Hyde feels more like an exhumation of sorts. Some may remember the first time it was here in the late '90s: Despite very little help from critics, it was nominated for four Tony Awards and was kept go...
What did Shakespeare think about during his fallow final years? The playwright's retirement remains a mystery. We find it hard to imagine that one of humanity's greatest literary minds could be content with the fatted life of a gentleman farmer. But...
Here's a test you can take to help determine whether shelling out $150-plus for the Motown musical is for you. Head on over to YouTube, and find the Jackson Five singing "Who's Loving You" on The Ed Sullivan Show. As he patters before the song kicks...
Macbeth is one of the loneliest characters Shakespeare ever wrote. He sacrifices everything to his ravenous ambition--sleep, friendship, loyalty, conscience; even, eventually, his loving if twisted marriage--leaving him to enjoy his hard-won ascent ...
"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 >>