Although the Museum of Modern Art garnered prestige (and occasional derision) by bringing such European exemplars as Picasso, Czanne, and van Gogh to the New World, the institution did not forsake homegrown talent, including the 50-plus artists gat...
Ken Urban'sThe Awake begins with a disorienting swirl of scene shifts. Malcolm (Andy Phelan) prepares to visit his mother (Dee Nelson), who later lies comatose in a hospital; Nate (Maulik Pancholy of 30 Rock) faces arrest, captivity, and brutal inte...
George Orwell inhabited a certain counterfeit Chinese curse like a silk kimono: He lived and wrote in interesting times. Having experienced world wars, ideological smackdowns, intellectual lunacy, and what George Packer (editor of an Orwell collecti...
Rabbis don't usually take center stage in Broadwaymusicals. But nothing could be more natural in Soul Doctor, a new production celebrating the real onstage and offstage life of Shlomo Carlebach, aka the 1960s' "rock star rabbi." Carlebach, who sough...
First, for the record, Ronald Reagan lied. In late October 1980, candidate Reagan and his campaign sent a letter to Robert E. Poli, then the president of the air traffic controllers' union, pledging staunch support to that union--PATCO--and its f...
In the theater, the age-old fantasy of a happy marriage between art and science has given us some truly great plays about the lives of scientists: Brecht's Galileo and Michael Frayn's Copenhagen, to name just two that have set the bar quite high. Un...
Like time spent staring at roof pigeons, the summer doldrums in New York are good for stocktaking. A recent lunch with an uptown museum curator led to some, as we debated a type of show popular with local institutions since 2008: the historical sur...
Four ladies, four dudes, some wacky clowns, and lots of wordplay--sounds like a foolproof formula for Shakespearean comedy, right? In the case of Love's Labour's Lost, though, it's not that simple: On its surface, the play is a love-fest celebratin...
First Date is a new and aggressively stupid Broadway musical that follows a young man and woman through a blind dinner-date. Even its lone moment of fun is embarrassing. That moment arrives when the female lead's phone rings, the call goes to voice...
Untitled Theater Company's workshop production of Money Lab explores one of the quintessential cocktail party dilemmas--the "flower vs. food" dichotomy, as its charismatic, fast-talking MC Clive Dobbs calls it. Is it possible to measure the relative...
Last weekend kicked off the 17th year of the New York International Fringe Festival (aka FringeNYC), which runs through August 25. As with any such festival, when you choose what shows to see, you're really rolling the dice. This two-week-long feast...
Ahhh, the '80s: Reagan was in the White House, Thirtysomething was on the tube, and Julian Schnabel's retrospective was at the Whitney. But the decade wasn't all bad. Early in curator Raphael Rubinstein's insightful essay for this group exhibitio...
How does this sound: Whitney Houston stars in Precious: a one-woman musical based on the TV show Intervention, with music by Diane Warren, from executive producer Tyler Perry! Jeannette Bayardelle's solo musical Shida might not fit that bill exactly...
How will the expansion of the American family influence the domestic drama--that most durable and venerable of genres? Will our stages still be dominated by an endless supply of formulaic tales of dysfunction and healing? Or will playwrights imagine...
The camera pans across battered cinder-block walls, a muddy infield, concrete stands shorn of awnings, and palm trees silhouetted against gray skies. On the soundtrack, an old-timer reminisces in Spanish about his days on a Cuban baseball team: "Nob...
While organizing the group show "Hair and Skin," curator Isaac Lyles considered recent research into "mirror neurons" and "physical empathy" suggesting that the human brain simulates the experience of what the eyes are seeing (now we understand how ...
Who killed Arthur Whitney, the successful New England novelist who knew everyone's secrets--and used them in his books? Why doesn't anyone in his shifty entourage seem to care that his corpse lies flat on the parlor floor? And not-so-incidentally, w...
Let It Be, a new concert-style "celebration" of the Beatles and their ubiquitous music--which you would hardly think needs more celebrating--is basically a living greatest-hits album, an ambulatory boxed set, only performed by a bunch of ringers. (T...
Bushra Rehman's first novel, Corona, is a fragmented, poetic, on-the-road adventure told from the perspective of the charismatic Razia Mirza. After coming of age in a tight Muslim community surrounding the first Sunni Masjid built in New York City, ...
Wallace Shawn is a dangerous man. If he confronted you in some darkened alley you might feel more inclined to giggle than cower, but don't let that roly-poly exterior and slight lisp catch you off guard. His plays describe the seductive power of bad...
"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 >>