News Ticker

Jennifer Tipton

Twyla Tharp Dance: Winter Season 2024

February 20, 2024

Like her masterful Sinatra solo for Mikhail Baryshnikov, “Brel” takes Cornejo from a strolling meditating figure (“Quand On N’A Que l’Amour”) to an anguished lover (“Ne Me Quitte Pas”).  Cornejo twists and thrashes until the song “Amsterdam” had him gliding all over the stage.  The mood rises through “Les Marquises” and “Marieke,” matching Brel’s penchant for crescendo, leading Cornejo into jags of runs, leaps, turns and wilder gestures. Although not as immediate a success as her other ballets to songs, “Brel” will soon be a favorite of solo danseurs all over the ballet world. [more]

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Spring 2023 Season

June 11, 2023

"Dancing Spirit" was a gentle ballet choreographed by Ronald K. Brown to a suite of music by Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis, Radiohead and War. First one dancer, then two and then the entire cast slowly made their way down a darkly lit diagonal (perfect lighting by Clifton Taylor) dressed in Omotayo Wunmi Olaiya’s white flowing dresses for the women and dark pants and pale shirts for the men.  This was a ritualistic journey.  The simple movements—walking, tilting, dipping into deep, wide pliés and bending at the waist—were developed into complex combinations all to quiet music of Ellington. [more]

Pictures from Home

February 19, 2023

"Pictures from Home," a stark, but eventually moving vision of a family, is based on the photo memoir of the same name by Larry Sultan.  Sharr White, the playwright, has taken Sultan’s expansive volume of family remembrances and reduced its literary and visual extravagances to the size of the stage of Studio 54. The director Bartlett Sher and his colleagues have fashioned a microcosmic look at a mother, father and son, all hiding behind façades carefully sculpted over decades.  That they are played by three terrific theater veterans—Nathan Lane, Zoë Wanamaker and Danny Burstein—helps spin this play into theatrical gold, an intimate, human-scale work that stands out in a season of blaring musicals. [more]

Paul Taylor Dance Company 2022

June 17, 2022

The new work on the program, a world premiere, was “Hope Is the Thing with Feathers” by Michelle Manzanales, choreographed to John Lennon & Paul McCartney, Bob Marley, Harry Woods and several others.  Using ten of the Taylor dancers, Manzanales produced a work that was charming if a tad repetitious.  Santo Loquasto’s pale costumes had an elegantly informal look. The dancers trooped on in a long line performing unison steps, lunges, leans and twists until movements moved sequentially down the line, mostly soft falls to the stage.  In between these unison sections there were jaunty solos and quick duets that segued into group dances.  The pop song soundtrack underlined the work’s informal feel.  Manzanales certainly put the dancers through their paces.  There’s nothing more appealing to an audience than a line of performers dancing their hearts out in unison! Her work shows promise but also is clearly the work of a novice.  What the ballet had to do with the Emily Dickinson poem it came from wasn’t clear. [more]

Intimate Apparel

February 11, 2022

The new opera, "Intimate Apparel" is a very impressive, accessible work. If it has a fault, it is completely humorless but then the original play did not include comic relief either. Unlike Ricky Ian Gordon’s last opera, the recent Garden of the Finzi-Continis, the music here is not only beautiful but suitable and appropriate as the singers and the music are one. Lynn Nottage’s libretto is a masterpiece of economy, though her play was too. Will the opera supersede the play? Probably not, but it should certainly do well in other intimate opera houses where its charms can be fully appreciated. [more]

The Michaels

November 10, 2019

Richard Nelson’s latest play, "The Michaels" (subtitled a “Conversation During Difficult Times”) is a thing of beauty. Low-key like his "Apple Family" quartet and his "The Gabriels" trilogy, it is Chekhovian in the best sense of the word: very little happens but life passes by. The characters who sit in a Rhinebeck, New York,  kitchen (also the setting for the other seven plays) talk of life and death, love and desire, memories and accomplishments. They reveal secrets and ponder changes and ultimately make decisions. Not much takes place but then again all of life occurs in the course of the play’s two hours. [more]

Bad News! i was there…

October 1, 2019

The latest offering by JoAnne Akalaitis, "Bad News! i was there…" is something of a misnomer, since none of us was there for the “bad news” of the ancient Greeks, which is what Akalaitis focuses on. If the text is cobbled together with passages taken from Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus, it can prove pretty tedious and at a far remove. But then, Akalaitis is more known for her spectacles than for her texts. [more]

To Kill a Mockingbird

February 16, 2019

It has been well publicized that the Harper Lee estate filed a lawsuit in February 2018 alleging that the play deviated too much from the novel. They should not have worried. As directed by Bartlett Sher, Aaron Sorkin’s astutely scripted "To Kill a Mockingbird" with Jeff Daniels as Atticus Finch is a magnificent and moving theatrical experience that treats the novel with respect and dignity. The additions and changes from the novel only make the material more stage worthy and a better experience in the new medium. Harper Lee’s justly famous lines about it being a sin to kill a mockingbird and never knowing a person until you walk around in his or her skin brought an audible reaction from the audience at the performance under review, demonstrating that they were with the story all the way. [more]

Twyla Tharp: Minamalism and Me

December 3, 2018

Her quietly wry, gently self-deprecating autobiographical lecture demonstration, “Minimalism and Me,” was the first half of a program devoted to her early works. These works more often than not caused more chin scratching than accolades.  From the virtually motionless “Tank Dive” to the giddy, if slight, “Eight Jelly Rolls,” her intellectual processes—including stacks of graph paper jottings that guided her and her dancers on stage (or on gymnasium floors, museum exhibition rooms and outdoor spaces)—were sensible yet challenging to the status quo of the 1960’s when she did her first choreographic experiments with her all-female quintet. [more]

The Saintliness of Margery Kempe

July 19, 2018

The cast list in the program reads more like a medieval phone-directory--even if there were no phones in the Middle Ages--than it does a dramatis personae. And then there’s what happens to the characters during the course of the play which is as hard to say as it is to remember all of their names, let alone pronounce them. [more]

Illyria

November 17, 2017

The conversations revolve around the topics of the New York Shakespeare Festival’s poor finances in 1958, Vaughan’s defection to the Phoenix Theatre which was paying a living wage while the NYSF was not, the choice of Mary Bennett (Vaughan’s choice) or Peggy Papp (Papp’s choice) to play Olivia, George C. Scott’s defection to the movies in his unnamed first film, the House UnAmerican Activities Committee appearances by both Papp and Gersten which has put their jobs in jeopardy, and whether Free Shakespeare in the Park can survive without charging admission. However, none of these conversations are allowed to erupt into real conflict. We are placed in the center of the action as though we are in the room where it happened, but the dialogue remains on the level of chit-chat rather than life or death threatening decisions. The problems never seem to be resolved and the play moves on to its next topic. [more]

A Doll’s House, Part 2

May 12, 2017

Hnath’s new story is absorbing and twisty, interestingly creating an entirely new set of ethical and social questions than was handled by Ibsen in 1879. He has handled it in a similar fashion to Bergman’s "Scenes from a Marriage" but without the painful emotional fireworks. It is 15 years since Nora had left her husband, stating he had no further claim on her. She has not been heard from since. Having become a famous feminist author with advanced ideas writing under a pseudonym, she has recently discovered due to a blackmail attempt that Torvald has never divorced her which she assumed he had done. Having lived as a single woman, signing contracts, controlling her own money, and having relationships with men not her husband, she is guilty of a criminal offense under Norway’s laws at the time and can be sent to jail. She arrives at his door to obtain her divorce to really be a free woman. [more]

Paul Taylor American Modern Dance: Spring Season 2017

March 31, 2017

Now named Paul Taylor American Modern Dance, Taylor has included ballets by other choreographers which allows for some healthy comparisons and a hope for the future of this legendary company. The four non-Taylor works, all but one danced by the Taylor dancers, made fascinating comparison with his work: particularly Martha Graham’s “Diversion of Angels,” her ode to romantic and sexual love, choreographed in 1948 to music by Norman Dello Joio, one of the few works in which Graham, herself, did not appear. [more]

Evening at the Talk House

February 24, 2017

However, as the title implies it is also a very verbose, long-winded affair giving an excellent cast made up of such veterans as Matthew Broderick, John Epperson (a.ka.a Lypsinka), Jill Eikenberry, Larry Pine, Claudia Shear and Michael Tucker not much to do. Shawn has written the best role for himself but that is not saying much. While the play may be meant as a cautionary tale, it is also over-written and self-indulgent. Long before you realize where the play is going you may have lost interest due to all the explanations. [more]

Women of a Certain Age – Play 3 of The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family

November 14, 2016

Told in real time from five to seven PM on Election Day, November 8, 2016, not much happens in the play but as the Gabriel women talk, they reveal their hopes, their fears, their desires and their memories. By the end of the play, we know everything there is to know about them. Under Nelson’s direction, his cast of six who now have played these people in three plays since February 27 (first "Hungry" and then "What Did You Expect?" which began previews on Sept. 19) are not so much acting these characters as living them. [more]

What Did You Expect? – Play 2 of The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family

September 21, 2016

Like his "Apple Family Plays," Nelson’s "The Gabriel" cycle all take place in a kitchen on a specific day in almost real time using the same six actors to play the family members. These are occasional plays which define a moment in time, as well as being chamber plays, small cast plays set in one place. Not much happens but much gets said and discussed. Described as “Chekhovian” by Oskar Eustis, artistic director of the Public, "What Did You Expect?" is less so as there really is no dramatic event as in such Chekov plays as "The Cherry Orchard" or "The Sea Gull." However, leisurely told and extremely detailed, "What Did You Expect?" offers its own rewards but may not be for all theatergoers. It is an evening of excellent talk which defines a family of have nots in our own time. [more]

Twyla Tharp and Three Dances

July 13, 2016

From 1976, “Country Dances” represented the post-experimental avant-garde phase after breakout success with her ballets for major dance companies. From 1980, there was “Brahms Paganini,” her entrée into her hybrid style combining her eccentric, seemingly casual movements with the classical ballet vocabulary and from 2016, “Beethoven Opus 130,” virtually a classical ballet with quirky touches. [more]

American Ballet Theatre: Shostakovich Trilogy

May 19, 2016

His Shostakovich Trilogy may have been too much of a good thing, somewhat weakened by too many overlapping themes, generally dark moods (with some bright moments, of course) and a sameness of choreographic technique. However, these three ballets displayed his talent for moving dancers around the stage with musicality and dramatic expressiveness and a good ear for Shostakovich’s quick-changing musical themes which often go from ponderous to lighthearted within a few measures. [more]

Julliard Dances Repertory 2016

March 29, 2016

This was a particularly satisfying showing by the Juilliard Dances Repertory. It’s good to know that there is hope for the future of dance represented by these students, all of whom displayed fine technique and understanding of the different works. Also, the respect and care paid to these three choreographic geniuses makes it clear that they won’t soon be forgotten. [more]

Hungry: Play I of The Gabriels

March 19, 2016

"Hungry" is both an occasional play (written for this moment in time) and a chamber play. Not much happens but a great deal is implied. It will not please all theatergoers. However, it will be interesting to see how Nelson develops the next two plays in the series, "What Did You Expect?" and "Women of a Certain Age," with the same actors. Demonstrating their expertise, the cast is real enough to make you think they are not performing. [more]

Rasheeda Speaking

February 23, 2015

Under the assured direction of Cynthia Nixon, renowned actresses Tony Pinkins and Diane Wiest turn Joel Drake Johnson’s "Rasheeda Speaking" into an acting tour de force. A play which investigates office politics and concealed racism, Rasheeda Speaking is a provocative work for our times which asks some serious questions. This spellbinding play increases the tension in each scene to an almost unbearable pitch. Just try taking your eyes away from the stage. [more]

Copyright Jack Quinn, 2001-2023