The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin (Roundabout Theatre Company) is not, as the title suggests, a clever Irish play, but a flatly earnest American one. Competent and occasionally provocative, the drama could serve as playwright Steven Levens...
Ah, summertime, when a gallery-goer's fancy turns to . . . group shows. "Sunsets and Pussy" (Marianne Boesky Gallery) focuses on two time-honored summer pastimes, envisioned by four artists from three generations. The youngest, Lucien Smith (b. 1...
The last Amoralists show I saw, Happy in the Poorhouse, was so shrill that I avenged myself by writing the review in all caps. Therefore, I had expectations lower than the Marianas Trench for Rantoul and Die, another of the group's forays into filth...
Like the famous tar pits, Gregory S. Moss's La Brea--directed by Adam Greenfield, part of Clubbed Thumb's 2013 Summerworks series--reminds us that memory can be a sticky swamp. And if you're not careful, it might swallow you. Leah (Rebecca Hender...
What lies along the bus route from Syracuse to Schenectady? In the Public Theater's cheerful Comedy of Errors--now playing in Central Park--it's Ephesus, town of endlessly confused identities, cigar-puffing mafiosi, and the occasional flying baloney...
The question is not so much if "EXPO 1: New York," a multi-site exhibition, is engaging, but rather if it is pointless. It aims to present a "darkly optimistic" view of the 21st century, which the organizers purport has been marked by ecological dis...
"It's up to artists to make the art world they want." On the Acela Express from Penn Station to Providence, Rhode Island, with two members of The Bruce High Quality Foundation, it suddenly feels like the sealed windows are thrown open and a gust o...
For a young artist whose past works include videos of herself dancing in her underwear with middle-aged men who have picked her up in parking lots, Laurel Nakadate's current exhibition, "Strangers and Relations," is uncharacteristically un-polarizi...
Composer-lyricist Matt Sax loves hip-hop. He also loves Shakespeare. These enthusiasms unite--not always smoothly--in Venice, a rap and pop musical loosely tied to the tragedy of Othello, but more concerned with post-9/11 America. A terrorist...
A box of ice cream sandwiches suffers a vicious assault in Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Happy, produced by MCC. As does a vending machine, a sports trophy, a microwave, a purse, and a cinnamon roll. Does LaBute hate inanimate objects? Possibly. But ...
Forget potty-training, teenage drama, and the SATs: as any discerning New York parent knows, the trickiest part of child-rearing is getting your offspring into the elite kindergarten of your choice. The interviews, the coaching, the tests: in A Kid...
Are you sitting comfortably? Then you are not attending Cora Bissett's Roadkill, a site-specific screed against human trafficking produced by St. Ann's Warehouse, in which attendees share a minibus bound for a Clinton Hill rowhouse with an excitabl...
Few people who read Susan Sontag's work--essays, fiction, nonfiction, plays--feel lukewarm about it. The polarizing cultural critic's proclivity for using her vast breadth of knowledge to make bold, grand assertions (sometimes bypassing explanation)...
The playwright Jenny Schwartz savors words the way a more indolent person might gorge on bonbons--delighting in language's sound, shape, and scrumptious connotations. In Somewhere Fun, the dreamlike three-act play at the Vineyard, even the character...
When Rod McLachlan's smart, passionate play Good Television begins in the offices of Rehabilitation, a cable show that bears a strong resemblance to A&E;'s Intervention, you may draw a breath, preparing for an excoriation of the very existence of tha...
In Erica Lipez's The Tutors--now playing at Second Stage Uptown, directed by Thomas Kail--a trio of earnest young pedagogues gets schooled in some tough (and somewhat trite) life lessons. Former college buddies and now roommates and business partner...
"You must be sympathetic to man's condition in his environment," the modernist architect Le Corbusier said in a 1957 film. "That's what interests me, and I've found in painting a way to develop this idea. It's an exciting way, but dangerous." With m...
At 75, many a man might reasonably think of retirement. Instead, John Guare has embarked on a fresh career. In 3 Kinds of Exile, the portmanteau play at Atlantic Theater, directed by Neil Pepe, Guare not only supplies the script, he also appears in ...
"Maybe I am not very human. What I wanted to do," Edward Hopper once explained, "was to paint sunlight on the side of a house." A telling observation from an artist whose characters are as enigmatically motivated as the gumshoes and dames in a Raymo...
Would you let gas companies drill beneath your yard, if it meant a payout so huge you'd never have to work again? Your answer might surprise you--so suggests Marcellus Shale, a new play about fracking from venerable downtown ensemble Talking Band. W...
In 1588, Queen Elizabeth rode to Tilbury and delivered a speech rousing the troops against the Spanish Armada. "I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble… More >>
Depending on who you are, Eternal will seem endlessly fascinating or flat-out boring. Director Daniel Fish has recorded two actors (Christina Rouner and Thomas Jay Ryan) on two channels of… More >>
Holocaust humor: a tricky genre, best attempted with truly revelatory material or not at all. And in the case of Donald Margulies's The Model Apartment—a dark comedy about survivors, revived… More >>
Out with the samovar, in with the Irish folk tunes! We need new forms! In keeping with the make-it-revolutionary spirit of Anton Chekhov's tormented young artist character Constantine, Culture Project's… More >>
Inside the Metropolitan's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor galleries is the perviest art exhibition to be found anywhere in New York: "Balthus: Cats and Girls—Paintings and Provocations." The canvases on… More >>
"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 Tussaud's aren't lifelike enough for you, cross 42nd Street to watch Eric Simonson's Bronx Bombers, a veritable walking-talking wax museum of… More >>