This is lively full-strength Shakespeare, a dizzying story of changing fortunes and changing sides, loyalty and betrayal, weakness and strength, war and more war, with only small and hesitant hopes for peace – and all made easy to follow and admire.
Read More »Jon Sobel
Music Review: Alison Moyet – ‘Other’
Though an experimental spirit hovers over her new album, Alison Moyet's writing mojo remains as strong as her forever-unmistakeable voice. 'Other' is as vital as anything she's ever done.
Read More »Book Review: ‘The Monkey Grammarian’ by Octavio Paz
For Paz, language means more than just syntax and grammar; his "world before language exists" is something pre-life, a universe of abstraction that monkeys can't imagine but poets can.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Pity in History’ by Howard Barker
The debut stage production of a 1985 BBC teleplay questions whether the two warring sides of human nature can ever be reconciled. The answer it suggests doesn't bode well. Yet as a polished, powerful, challenging piece of art itself, it offers a silver lining of hope too.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Temple of the Souls’ at the New York Musical Festival
Tuneful songs and strong performances enliven this tragic love story set in the time of the conquistadors. The show flutters nervously along two parallel tracks, one reflecting the real butchery and horror of the conquest, the other of semi-cartoonish family fare.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Arcadia’ by Tom Stoppard, Potomac Theatre Project
Whether it's Lord Byron's whereabouts on a certain few days or the entropic fate of the universe, the search for knowledge drives us all.
Read More »DVD Review: ‘Gospel According to Al Green’ by Robert Mugge
For insight you'll get nowhere else into one of the most interesting artists of his era, pick up this re-release of Mugge's 1984 profile of the born-again singer.
Read More »Music Review: Kenji Bunch – ‘The Snow Queen’ Ballet Score from Orchestra Next
This suite is full of heart and likely to move yours, and while it might make you wish you could see the ballet, it won't leave you frozen.
Read More »Music Review: Stew Cutler & Friends – ‘Every Sunday Night’
NYC soul man Bobby Harden joins the guitarist and his band for good vibes, good times, and musicianship that's fluid and sharp, expert and humane.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Terezin’ by Nicholas Tolkien
Nicholas Tolkien's new play presents the terrible story of the Nazis' propaganda camp by focusing on a few characters on both sides.
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