By EDWARD RUBIN “Every day I read the play, I think, I hear the words these words on CNN as I read them on the page. The play will be falling right around the midterm elections, and it is fitting that it reminds us of the choices that are available to us in relation to […]
By EDWARD RUBIN People on trial, especially women who end up being executed, make good subjects for theater and film, as well as objects of art. The two reigning ladies, whose lives still continue to resonate long after their deaths are Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), the last Queen of France who literally lost her head, and […]
By ANNE SIEGEL NEW YORK – It’s just an off-Broadway memory now, but the recently exited India Pale Ale gave audiences some serious issues to consider. India Pale Ale was written by 32-year-old Punjabi-American playwright Jaclyn Backhaus. The play won this year’s Horton Foote Prize, and Manhattan Theater Club launched the play on October 23. […]
By EDWARD RUBIN If you want a bit of theatrical heaven, along with a smidgen of hell, a mini primer of late 60s gay history – with the obligatory nod to Stonewall included – and a lot of love, all both literally and figuratively, get thee to Midnight at the Never Get, the York Theater […]
By EDWARD RUBIN The Irish Repertory Theatre’s production of Wild Abandon, Lyeena Rideout’s intimate one-woman autobiographical extravaganza – housed in the Rep’s second theatre, a cozy 50-seater – is one of a handful of Off-Broadway plays that everybody is talking about. Critics are raving, and audiences are returning again and again with friends in tow, […]
By EDWARD RUBIN “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e. the reality of experience) and the distinction between the true and the false (i.e. the standards of thought) no longer exist.” – Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) Thinking […]
By ALAN SMASON, Theatre Critic, WYES-TV (“Steppin’ Out”) There is a reason that the current National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s production of Fiddler on the Roof (Fidler Afn Dakh) in Yiddish has been held over not once, twice or three times. It has just been announced that it will be extended until November 18. Obviously, this […]
By EDWARD RUBIN Most famous people long in the tooth, if they are not dead, quietly retired, or resting on their well-earned laurels, tend to keep a very low profile. You rarely even hear about them. But not the indefatigable 85-year- old Renée Taylor, an Energizer bunny whose funny and bittersweet autobiographical one-woman-show, My Life On […]
By EDWARD RUBIN I did not see Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews, which, by general consensus, is said to be his best play to date. But the last three Harmon plays that I did see, Significant Other, Admissions, and the still-running Skintight – were each a familiar mixture of comedy and drama containing everything and the […]
By EDWARD RUBIN Celebrating its 50th anniversary, New York City based IATI Theater Todo Vanguardia which is devoted to contemporary, cutting-edge Latino works, could not have selected a more compelling and beautifully crafted play than Rhett Martinez’ Three On A Match, which examines state sponsored terrorism in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s, and […]