Two true artists who've gone their own way after TV appearances.
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Music Review: Pianist Luca Buratto – ‘Schumann: Davidsbündlertänze, Humoreske & Blumenstück’
Buratto envelops the listener in what feels like the Schumann's authentic presence, bringing out melody, harmony, and inner voices with both raw feeling and fragile-seeming sensitivity.
Read More »Music CD/DVD Review: The Who – ‘Live at the Isle of Wight Festival 2004’
Pete Townsend and Roger Daltrey took the stage at the 2004 Isle of Wight Festival to show us what they still had, and a new box set brings us the concert on two CDs and one DVD that show there was plenty of life in the old boys yet.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘A Hunger Artist’
Boisterously funny and chokingly sad, Sinking Ship Productions' new adaptation of Franz Kafka's short story follows the original rather closely, yet through pure showmanship it defies expectation at almost every turn.
Read More »Language Matters in Life and Business: My Last and Final Column About Redundancy
Every walkway is a "pedestrian walkway." Redundancy should be used sparingly, and only when it contributes to rhetorical effect or provides necessary emphasis.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Maps for a War Tourist’
The true story of 'the girl with the red foulard,' killed fighting with the PKK against the so-called Islamic State just as this production prepared to mount, takes its place in the connected and seemingly neverending sagas of the war on terror and the struggle for self-determination in the face of what may seem destiny.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC Off-Broadway): ‘The Whirligig’ by Hamish Linklater
Linklater's new tragicomedy doesn't sustain its dreamy magic consistently, but it offers much to appreciate.
Read More »Music Review: The Whistles and the Bells – ‘Modern Plagues’
Tying together this dizzy tangle of glam-Americana, electronics, and collage-rock are three things: snarly vocals, literate and pointed lyrics, and creative muddling of roots and pop music traditions.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): ‘Rotterdam’ by Jon Brittain
In the aftermath of a season of "identity politics," the Olivier Award-winning new play zooms in on a handful of young people whose personal identity politics happen to involve sexual orientation and gender identity, but who could stand in for any and all of us. And it does so with glitz and panache, meaty insight, sinewy dialogue and performances, and top-notch skill from beginning to end.
Read More »Theater Review (NYC): Mint Theater Revives ‘The Lucky One’ by A.A. Milne
Though his ongoing fame today rests almost entirely on his writing for children, especially the world of Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Milne (1882-1956) was a literary polymath who had a successful career on the London and Broadway stages in the 1920s. The Mint Theater reminds us with the first New York revival of this "serious comedy," a character study of two brothers.
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