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The only math in Life of Pi is in the CGI
Life of Pi is a gorgeous film, a visual feast — once you get used to the 3D. I’m glad the technology exists allowing stories like Life of Pi to be told by great directors like Ang Lee, without...
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The Joy of Reading
The best thing about commuting by public transportation is the opportunity to read.I am, once again, utterly enamored of Michael Ondaatje. When I first read The English Patient back in the early...
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A Good Title Masks a Missed Opportunity
The Radiant is a clever title for a play about Madame Marie Salomea Skłodowska-Curie, a brilliant and courageous woman who discovered the element radium and the science of radioactivity, and was the...
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Did Jackie O Color Outside the Lines?
My musing continues on Elfriede Jelinek’s Jackie a week later. I find myself still pondering its form, its message, and the fact that it’s still riffing in my head.Tina Benko is vaguely creepy and...
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Pretty Much Your Grandmother's Jack
Jack the Giant Slayeris not a feminist retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk or Jack the Giant Killer. Just because it has “slayer” in the title doesn’t mean this is a Whedonesque female empowerment...
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Ginger and Rosa Come of Age in 1962
Ginger and Rosa is a subdued film in its story-telling style and cinematography. The England of 1962 apparently had little sunshine and what there was of it was filtered through fog and dreary lives...
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Durang + Chekhov + Disney = Laughter
Happy April. Still pretty chilly, but I can offer some hope: My cats are shedding like crazy, so the cold weather is almost behind us. It’s been quite a week. My friends and I have seen three plays...
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Powerful Political Theatre at EST
Finks is a powerful piece of theatre with a lot of laughs. For those who would look across the oceans at other countries that curtail the freedoms, physical and intellectual, of their citizenry, and...
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Kafka Story Takes On New Life In The Theatre — Again?
Kafka’s Monkey is distressing, fascinating, and riveting because Kathryn Hunter subsumes her human self and becomes an ape. She is dressed in white tie and tails and can do a sweet soft shoe, but she...
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Julius Caesar in Africa via the RSC
I have a fondness for the play Julius Caesar. Several years ago I directed a staged reading of it with an all female cast, and it was an enlightening experience. For instance, despite the fame of...
View ArticleNew One Act Soars Beyond the Intimate Boundaries of the Duplex Stage
On Wednesday I caught the last (for now at least) performance of Aaron Mark’s one act play Another Medea upstairs at the Duplex. This is not a modern Medea. It is not Medea in drag. It is not funny,...
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My Year In Shakespeare
Once a year, some of us, we few, we happy few — or, as my cousin calls us, people with greasepaint in our blood — celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday. Why celebrate the birth (and death) date of someone...
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Spring Planting
I gave myself a 3-day weekend to ensure I had time enough to do my usual weekend collapse as well as planting flowers and/or herbs/veggies in the front and back gardens. The front is along the Grand...
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From French Film to Norwegian Theatre
I wasn’t in the mood for explosions or wearing my rock club earplugs to the movies, so the weekend Iron Man 3 opened, I went to my local movie-house and saw François Ozon’s Dans La Maison (or In the...
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The Next Generation's Star Trek, Take Two
It’s not that I’m a Trekkie, but I did read Stephen E. Whitfield& Gene Roddenberry’s book Making of Star Trek when I was in high school. I learned spiffy things like how the doors were made to...
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First of Three Evenings of One Acts at EST
The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s 34thMarathon of One Act Plays begins with Series A, running from May 18ththrough June 2nd. The first half of the evening includes three one-act plays. First up, a short...
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The Not Great Gatsby
The best thing about Baz Lurhmann’s film of The Great Gatsby is that it inspires me to re-read F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel for the first time in decades. I remember quite well that it was about much...
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EST Marathon of 1-act plays -- Series B (2 out of 3)
Back to EST for Series B, the second set of One Acts in the Marathon. The clever and creative production staff at EST has created a mix-and-match playing area, with pillars offering their services as...
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Weekend in the 'burbs
Friday night I saw Joss Whedon’s newly released film version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing (black and white, modern dress, modern sensibilities…except....) at Lincoln Center. Saturday I...
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Come Saturday Morning
I'm back from a few perfect days with friends in Pennsylvania (more of that anon, when I sort through my photos of the Solebury/New Hope area and write my review of the wonderful new Terrence McNally...
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