Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:02:49 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Joy Goodwin :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Joy+Goodwin istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/iraq-war-veterans-in-their-own-words-in-conflict/86767/ Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST As a source of firsthand information about American soldiers' experiences in the Iraq war, "In Conflict," a documentary theater project now at the Barrow Street Theatre, is irreproachable. Artistically, however, Douglas Wager's adaptation of Yvonne Latty's nonfiction book has some problems — primarily a tendency to add histrionic flourishes to material that needs no further amplification. It's a pity that Mr. Wager, who also directed, couldn't resist the temptation to stage exaggerated marching... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-pre-feminist-fantasyland-the-marvelous/86076/ Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST "The Marvelous Wonderettes," a candy-colored import from Milwaukee, is, in a way, the purest form of jukebox musical: a transparent excuse to hear a hit parade from the 1950s and '60s performed live. For theatergoers content to bask in girl-group renditions of tunes like "The Shoop Shoop Song" and "Leader of the Pack" for two hours, it will go down easy as a malted milk shake. Otherwise, even the show's charming cast may not get you through a marathon evening of sugary nostalgia. Roger Bean... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/desir-fantastic-feats-on-a-small-scale/84043/ Mon, 18 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST Down under the Brooklyn Bridge, near the site of the old Fulton Fish Market, the portable carnival known as Spiegelworld beckons for a third consecutive summer. In two vintage, hand-hewn pavilions known as spiegeltents, two cirque-themed shows are on offer this year: the returning "Absinthe," a naughty variety-act cabaret that reshuffles its format each season, and the brand-new "Dιsir," billed as a cirque show with a through line (ΰ la Cirque du Soleil) about the backstage lives and loves of a... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-golden-oldies/83126/ Mon, 4 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST By rights, there ought to be a handful of good new plays about the lives of the 65-and-older crowd — the millions of seniors who have relocated to retirement communities and reckoned with reconstituting both their everyday lives and their social circles. Alas, "Flamingo Court," now at New World Stages, fails to lift the beleaguered genre above the level of the middling sitcom. Penned by 80-year-old Luigi Creatore, a former New York record producer who retired to Florida decades ago, "Flamingo... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/toxic-testosterone/82731/ Mon, 28 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST A wounded, snarling male ego seethes beneath the surface of "Stain," a clumsy melodrama by Tony Glazer, now at the Kirk. And it tries to take a bite out of everything in its path. Not that Mr. Glazer's play (in an unpolished production by Scott C. Embler), is aware of its own sexism. "Stain" seems to think it is mocking and dismantling the crude frat-boy perspective frequently espoused by its male characters. But the suburban landscape sketched by "Stain" is all too familiar. The women nag and... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/candlelight-and-conversation-laurie-andersons/82505/ Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Laurie Anderson calls it a "concert poem." Depending on your point of view, you might categorize it as an art-rock song cycle or a spoken-word performance set to music. But whatever you term it, Ms. Anderson's "Homeland," which opened on Tuesday in its Lincoln Center Festival incarnation, is the work of a consummate artist at the highest level of her craft. "Homeland," staged with austere elegance at Jazz at Lincoln Center's Frederick P. Rose Hall, unfolds in front of a giant scrim that is... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/a-generation-and-its-discontents/80361/ Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST The paralyzing ambivalence of Generation X is Brooke Berman's subject in her latest play, "A Perfect Couple" (now at the DR2 Theatre, directed by Maria Mileaf). Ms. Berman, who has a keen ear and a sharp eye, is as unflinching as a crash-scene photographer in documenting her characters' alienation from their chronic ambivalence: the unreturned phone calls, the relationships that stretch on for years without a glimmer of commitment, the friendships undermined by mistrust. In this wry and often... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/albees-occupant-a-portrait-of-the-artist-by/79536/ Mon, 9 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST In their day, estimable portrait photographers such as Richard Avedon, Arnold Newman, and Robert Mapplethorpe all tried to capture the elusive Louise Nevelson on film. Now Edward Albee, a friend of Nevelson's for 25 years, takes his shot at immortalizing the late Expressionist sculptor in "Occupant," a 2001 play now belatedly receiving its world premiere production at the Signature Theatre Company. Between Mr. Albee's expert characterization and Mercedes Ruehl's ferocious incarnation of the... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/august-director-poised-to-join-broadways-most/79532/ Mon, 9 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST In the 61 years since the Tony Awards began, only four women have won Best Director honors: Julie Taymor ("The Lion King") and Garry Hynes ("The Beauty Queen of Leenane") in 1998, Susan Stroman ("The Producers") in 2001, and Mary Zimmerman ("Metamorphoses") in 2002. This Sunday night at Radio City Music Hall, Anna Shapiro is poised to become the fifth. For her work on the Pulitzer Prize-winning "August: Osage County," Ms. Shapiro has already won the coveted Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/in-dublin-an-all-male-lonely-hearts-club/76861/ Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 EST The three men — one young, one middle-aged, one old — waiting in the antiseptic bus terminal barely acknowledge each other's existence. Yet each man's story evocatively echoes the others' in "Port Authority," the slender but affecting play by Conor McPherson that closes the Atlantic Theater Company's season. Written in 2001, a few years before Mr. McPherson's "Shining City" and "The Seafarer" (both recently produced on Broadway), "Port Authority" is steeped in loneliness. Even the format is... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/well-manicured-meltdown/76706/ Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 EST In his few short years on the New York scene, the playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has proven to be a natural entertainer. Good actors like to sink their teeth into his dialogue, and his hard-charging stories proceed with the speed and verve of television. But he takes a leap forward with his latest drama, "Good Boys and True," displaying a new deftness in layering troubling moral questions under a smooth, entertaining surface. The play goes down easy, but its aftertaste is sharp. The story is... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/champagne-fizz-from-yesteryear/76244/ Mon, 12 May 2008 00:39:14 EST From the moment the curtain goes up on Walter Bobbie's whiz-bang production of "No, No, Nanette," you have the delicious sensation that you're going to get the full old-fashioned works. Chandeliers? Check. A magnificent 30-piece orchestra fanned out upstage, replete with twin pianos and a conductor in a dapper white dinner jacket, presiding from a fetching little terrace? Check. A lushly orchestrated, romantic score, spiced with Jazz Age riffs? Check. Never mind that the book of "No, No... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/above-and-beyond-wedding-night-jitters/76252/ Mon, 12 May 2008 00:00:00 EST How marvelous, at the end of the theater season, to find a gem like "Rafta, Rafta ..." lying in wait. The New Group's production of Ayub Khan-Din's Olivier Award-winner from last year is a near-perfect comedy of family life, where the belly laughs come from painfully honest observations about the trials and tribulations of living under the same roof. In "Rafta, Rafta," family togetherness is even more of a strain than usual, since one of the families's two sons has just brought his bride home... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/mr-walshs-wild-ride/75034/ Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST Considerable advance buzz heralded the New York premiere of Enda Walsh's "The Walworth Farce," an Irish import from Galway's estimable Druid Theatre Company, now at St. Ann's Warehouse in DUMBO, and Mikel Murfi's well-oiled production of this dark Irish brew lives up to the hype. "The Walworth Farce" is as brilliant an original as you are likely to see in the theater this year. The play takes place simultaneously in three cross-sectioned rooms of a squalid London flat, all with stained... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/keeping-emotion-at-arms-length/74951/ Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST The young playwright Jenny Schwartz clearly wants to engage our emotions with "God's Ear," her new play about a couple whose son drowns in a swimming lake. But her methods — gratingly repetitive language, cold spotlights, absurdist flourishes — prove so distancing that we never connect with the forlorn parents. The moment that the boy's mother Mel (Christina Kirk) and father Ted (Gibson Frazier) appear onstage, the play's droning meter is launched: long, monotonous sentences, repeated with... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/gem-of-a-debut/74846/ Thu, 17 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST It's not often that an unknown, just-out-of-school playwright is introduced to New York with a full-scale production at the venerable Manhattan Theatre Club. But Liz Flahive proves that she's worthy of the gesture with her marvelous new play "From Up Here," which opened last night at City Center in an invigorating production by Leigh Silverman. What is so striking about Ms. Flahive's play — apart from its compelling characters and pitch-perfect dialogue — is the self-assurance with which she... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/pitfalls-of-stairs-and-stage/74289/ Tue, 8 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST One scene meanders haphazardly into the next in "The Little Flower of East Orange," the fifth play by Stephen Adly Guirgis to be staged by his longtime collaborator, Philip Seymour Hoffman, for LAByrinth Theater Company. Yet if there is a slapdash quality to Mr. Guirgis's semi-autobiographical family drama, "Little Flower" also invokes a pain sharp enough to cut through the haze — the pain of a desperate, destructive love between a demanding mother and her tortured son. It helps immeasurably... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/stylish-spy-thriller/73807/ Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST As the Mint's new production of "The Fifth Column" proves, Ernest Hemingway was an average dramatist at best. Nonetheless, Jonathan Bank's staging of Hemingway's Spanish Civil War espionage drama — the first ever to use the author's original 1937 text — is fascinating for other reasons. For fans of Hemingway's fiction, it's mesmerizing to watch him struggle to give the play's sketchy characters the heft they possess in his novels. (They wind up somewhere in the zone of a 1940s gumshoe movie... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/friendly-feud/73721/ Thu, 27 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST To those on the far side of 30, the question of whether two 20-something artists can remain friends after one of them gets a million-dollar book deal may seem a slender one on which to hang an entire play, but such is the premise of "The Four of Us," the latest work by 30-year-old playwright Itamar Moses ("Bach at Leipzig") to reach New York. Mr. Moses and his able director, Pam MacKinnon, however, counterbalance the preciousness factor by successfully re-creating a pulse-pounding state of... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/straw-men-in-a-cold-embrace/73037/ Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST For most of Caryl Churchill's new play, "Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?," Sam and Guy lounge together on a sofa, cuddling between bouts of strenuous indoctrination. Sam (as in Uncle Sam, played by Scott Cohen) is the one seducing Guy (Samuel West), a Brit of middle age, away from his wife and kids. Under the tutelage of the manic Sam, Guy's eyes are opened to the joys of rigging elections, torturing suspects, bombing civilians, engineering pandemics, and countless other blood sports undertaken... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/young-at-heart/73029/ Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST "Ebullient" is not a word one normally associates with "The Seagull," a play in which the haunting refrain is "I'm so unhappy." But Anton Chekhov's brooding drama has a spring in its step in the Classic Stage Company's compelling new production directed by Viacheslav Dolgachev of the Moscow New Drama Theatre. The familiar storm clouds still gather over that once-elegant house by the lake, where the aging diva Arkadina (Dianne Wiest) drops in on her family and her local connections. But wherever... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/wrestling-with-katrina/72163/ Mon, 3 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST In his new drama, "Lower Ninth," now at the Flea, the young playwright Beau Willimon takes on that formidable behemoth, Hurricane Katrina. Mr. Willimon is a smart, deft writer on the rise; his political yarn "Farragut North," Broadway-bound, has generated considerable advance buzz. But despite his gifts, he can't quite wrestle the overwhelming horror of Katrina into the quiet form of the three-character stage play. "Lower Ninth" takes place in the midst of the flood, on an asphalt-shingled... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/fun-house-america/72174/ Mon, 3 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST "Paradise Park," the final entry in the Signature Theatre Company's season dedicated to the works of Charles Mee, stars America as a rundown amusement park. Paradise Park is past its prime and slightly seedy, a place as garish and corny as its name. The enervated Americans who come here are desperate for a thrill. They try to forget themselves at its faded attractions — bumper cars, games of chance, square dances, roller coasters. Yet when the ride is over, they are the same people they were... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/shocks-drugs-rock-n-roll/71283/ Thu, 14 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST "Next to Normal" may be the first musical about bipolar disorder. It also boasts what is probably the only musical number in which a woman receives electroshock treatment in front of a wall covered in light bulbs. Given all that, the unoriginality of "Next to Normal" is astonishing. There is little in Second Stage's latest offering that hasn't been done, and miles better. Tom Kitt's score consists mainly of average melodies drenched in orchestration. But he's got nothing on Brian Yorkey, whose... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/baghdad-through-iraqi-eyes/70889/ Thu, 7 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST Journalists-turned-playwrights often write message plays, and the reporter George Packer, whose docudrama "Betrayed" opened at the Culture Project last night, is no exception. Mr. Packer's message — that America has systematically failed to protect its Iraqi employees in Baghdad — is bluntly driven home. Yet something rich and diffuse seeps in around the edges. "Betrayed" offers the rare opportunity to spend an evening with three Iraqi civilians, viewing Baghdad and its discontents through... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/home-base/70698/ Mon, 4 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST It's the middle of the night, and Ruth can't sleep. Maybe it's the decapitated birds on the roof above her rent-stabilized downtown sublet. Or the cumulative effect of a young adulthood spent traipsing from one transitory living situation to another. Or maybe it's the romantic confusion she's feeling about Astor — the best friend who just happens to be her ex-lover's brother — a young New Yorker even more transient than Ruth, who's currently sleeping on friends' couches. Ruth's anxious... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/exhilarating-ride/69833/ Mon, 21 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST "2.5 Minute Ride" opened at the Public Theater in 1999 and shot its writer-star, satirist Lisa Kron (of Five Lesbian Brothers fame), straight to the upper echelon of working dramatists. She returned a few years later with the resoundingly acclaimed "Well," which made it all the way to Broadway, where it earned two 2006 Tony nominations. Given that "2.5 Minute Ride" is an autobiographical one-woman show — and that Ms. Kron has spent nearly two decades honing her unique style of delivery — the... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/synagogue-shtick/69422/ Mon, 14 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST At a play with a title like "New Jerusalem: The Interrogation of Baruch de Spinoza at Talmud Torah Congregation: Amsterdam, July 27, 1656," the last thing you'd expect is Borscht Belt humor. Wisecracks at the trial of the brilliant-but-persecuted philosopher as he teeters on the brink of excommunication? Yep — and there's plenty more shtick where that came from. In Walter Bobbie's blithely tone-deaf production of David Ives's play, now at the Classic Stage Company, loudmouthed comic outbursts... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/300-years-of-solitude/68024/ Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST On its surface, "Doris to Darlene" inhabits a Barbie fantasy world, saturated with pink and pulsing with girl-group shoopshoops. Yet a pained and valiant heart beats beneath the candy-colored veneer of Jordan Harrison's marvelously inventive new play, which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons in a perfectly calibrated production by Les Waters. Though its step is sprightly, the true concern of "Doris to Darlene" is the struggle faced by those of romantic temperament — to hold on to... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/tough-emotions-race-relations/67971/ Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST In his new play, "Yellow Face," David Henry Hwang boldly goes for the gauche. He names his leading man David Henry Hwang ("D H H" in the program notes). He also names characters after his father, as well as actual producers, casting agents, actors, and congressmen. He quotes from reviews of his own plays, and tells jokes about race. Yet somehow, working with recycled themes and hokey theatrical devices, Mr. Hwang produces an invigorating original. In Leigh Silverman's agile production, now at... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/somber-yet-magical/67740/ Mon, 10 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST The French director and cirque performer James Thiιrrιe reputedly dislikes being compared to his famous grandfather, Charlie Chaplin. But it's hard not to wonder what Chaplin would have made of the fragmentary blend of images and skits in Mr. Thiιrrιe's newest dance-theater-circus hybrid, "Au Revoir Parapluie" ("Farewell, Umbrella"), now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. In the show's 90 minutes, the troupe of five performs stunts with a giant carousel of spinning gray ropes, a rolling... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/tragic-lives-in-triplicate/67580/ Thu, 6 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST The emerging playwright Abbie Spallen has several of the qualities often associated with her native Ireland: an ear for the music of ordinary talk, a keen sensitivity to beauty, a tragic bent tempered by a hearty sense of humor. All are on display in the Manhattan Theatre Club's production of her drama "Pumpgirl," which arrives in New York on the heels of successful runs in Edinburgh and London. But while this strange, strong brew confirms Ms. Spallen's promise, she seems to have gotten its... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/pulsing-with-life/67598/ Thu, 6 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST As the title suggests, "Queens Boulevard" feels a lot like a day spent strolling through, say, Jackson Heights: You eat a samosa, browse at a street fair while foreign pop blares over loudspeakers, then buy a mochi ice cream from a cart and head home. A pleasant and richly textured experience, but a mild one — that's the essence of the new musical by collage theater specialist Charles Mee, which opened on Monday at the Signature as the second production in a season-long celebration of Mr. Mee's... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/miracle-on-42nd-street/67384/ Mon, 3 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST When "Black Nativity," a gospel musical with a slim book by Langston Hughes, opened on Broadway in 1961, the very notion of an all-black re-enactment of the birth of Jesus was acutely politicized. (Original cast members Alvin Ailey and Carmen de Lavallade, concerned about the separation implied by the title, quit before opening night.) Almost half a century later, the novelty of a black Mary, Joseph, and Jesus has worn off. But Hughes's essential concept — that of an unfussy Christmas show that... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/off-the-shelf-restoration-comedy/66971/ Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST The Pearl Theatre Company returns to Restoration comedy with "The Constant Couple," a seldom-seen 1699 comedy by George Farquhar ("The Beaux' Strategem"), which opened last night. But though director Jean Randich and the Pearl's resident actors have done a creditable job of dusting off Farquhar's rarely produced romp, "The Constant Couple" offers few of the sidesplitting laughs that made the Pearl's 2005 rediscovery of Wycherley's "The Gentleman Dancing Master" a triumph. Unlike that play, "The... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/master-class-2007-11-19/66662/ Mon, 19 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST She passes the long days of retirement alone in her living room, amidst the doilies and Oriental rugs, the now-silent grand piano. In her prim, sweetly aged voice, she reminisces, periodically reaching into a drawer with a palsied hand to take a cookie from one of her secret stashes. The actress Elizabeth Franz does little more than sit and talk in Julia Cho's cunningly-crafted new drama, "The Piano Teacher," which opened last night at the Vineyard Theatre. Yet Ms. Franz's spellbinding... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/muffled-cry-from-the-heart/66115/ Thu, 8 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST A chain of brutal events propels Adrienne Kennedy's "The Ohio State Murders," but you'd hardly know it from Evan Yionoulis's detached, almost impersonal production now at the Duke on 42nd Street, courtesy of Theatre for a New Audience. Restraint is the hallmark of this strangely inert production, which presents its central tragedy — the titular murders — almost as a footnote. It doesn't help that Ms. Kennedy's 1990 play takes the strained form of an academic lecture, illustrated by stand-ins... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/oh-the-glory-of-it-all/65911/ Tue, 6 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST A few minutes into Lincoln Center Theater's misguided new musical "The Glorious Ones," it becomes apparent that the title is not ironic. No, indeed: For co-writers Lynn Ahrens (book and lyrics) and Stephen Flaherty (music), the show's subjects — members of a 16th-century commedia dell'arte troupe — are everyman heroes bound for glory and immortality. Why? Because they are actors — members of that rare, courageous breed who go "without bread" to make others feel deeply. And in so doing, they... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/young-lady-sings-the-blues/65850/ Mon, 5 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Youth — audacious, openhearted, foolhardy — will be served in "Hoodoo Love," an uneven but affecting play at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Written by the 26-year-old Katori Hall and centering on the struggles of a young black woman in 1930s Memphis, "Hoodoo Love" is an earnest, often naοve story of dreams and heartbreak. And though the play makes its share of youthful mistakes, it also exudes a winsome sincerity that is hard to resist. The work is an old-fashioned melodrama about the spirited... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/flights-of-fancy-grounded-by-hq/65647/ Thu, 1 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Is there such a thing as a killjoy fantasy? If so, Jim Knable's "Spain," at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, belongs to the genre. Like its heroine, the unbalanced Barbara (Annabella Sciorra), "Spain" likes its fantasy full-color and uncensored: a guidebook Spain of flamenco, roosters, and Picassos. Yet "Spain" also shares Barbara's puritanical impulse to squelch and punish her fantasies. To this uneasy alliance of freedom and repression, add Mr. Knable's obvious desire to craft a latter-day "Don... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/devil-in-the-details/65591/ Wed, 31 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST At first glance, Adam Bock's "The Receptionist," which opened last night at the Manhattan Theatre Club, is just one more Dilbert comedy. There's the receptionist, bossy Beverly, manning the phones; there's her neurotic co-worker Lorraine, stopping by for gossip and coffee — and a quick flirtation with the swaggering Mr. Dart, a visitor from the central office. For its first half-hour, "The Receptionist" might be a close cousin of the BBC version of "The Office," well-stocked with the genre's... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/mosh-pit-meets-cirque/65216/ Thu, 25 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST With its jostling mosh pit of a crowd, strobe lights, feel-itin-your-spine bass boost, and scantily-clad girls wriggling around in water, "Fuerzabruta" would make a great nightclub concept. But as it opened last night at the Daryl Roth Theatre — as a $70 night at the theater — it's unsatisfying: an undercooked, smallish portion of "Cirque du Soleil." "Fuerzabruta" ("Brute Force") arrives in New York from Argentina prestamped with the De La Guarda brand. The new show has one of the same creators... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/send-up-that-throws-it-all-down/65093/ Tue, 23 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Charles Busch's campy comedy "die Mommie die!" opened Sunday in an agreeably glossy, giddy new production at new World Stages that delivers pure entertainment. Mr. Busch's comedy may be, dramatically speaking, little more than a send-up of the so-called "women's pictures" of the 1940s and '50s. But there are send-ups and send-ups, and this one — replete with an evil twin, a well-endowed tennis pro, a Hollywood mansion, and a giant suppository — sails along on gusts of inspired invention. Mr... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/vaudevillians-in-a-bleak-21st-century-light/64999/ Mon, 22 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST Nine shabbily dressed characters pack the stage of the Axis Company's 99-seat home theater for the troupe's revival of the 1848 vaudeville hit "A Glance at New York." But though they stand elbow to elbow, these bedraggled creatures never connect. Missed connections and frustrated schemes are the raw material of Benjamin A. Baker's dated and mediocre melodrama, a series of sketches about a country rube called George, his urbane cousin Harry, and a strapping fireman known as Big Mose. Axis... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/tending-the-objects-of-his-affection/64393/ Thu, 11 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST A middle-aged man — alone, with his back to the audience — sits hunched over his battered desk. Finally, as if to comfort himself, he puts an old record on a turntable. One by one, three women walk past him: a waitress, his mother, a ballerina with wings. Awkwardly, he scurries toward them, one arm outstretched, but he gets there too late. Once again, he's left alone. Thus begins the play "Hotel Cassiopeia," Charles Mee's strikingly beautiful homage to the outsider artist Joseph Cornell, now... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/young-gifted-and-gasping-for-breath/57707/ Mon, 2 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Dre. dance generated considerable attention when it arrived on the downtown scene two years ago, mainly because the actor-singer-dancer (and sometimes choreographer) Taye Diggs was lending his celebrity to a modern dance venture. With his childhood friend, the choreographer and electronic composer Andrew Palermo, Mr. Diggs has since developed a company with its own discernible style — no easy feat — and an intriguing future. Thursday's concert at the Joyce SoHo, however, was about the troupe's... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/preaching-with-the-choir/57482/ Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST The Reverend Billy is a tall, sweaty preacher in white loafers, a white suit, and a clerical collar. Though his voice sounds only vaguely Southern, his act is pure gospel revival — the quavering intonations of the sermon, the trembling body, the shout-outs from the congregation, and the improvisational feeling of the lines he shouts over the refrains sung by his green-robed gospel choir. Rev. Billy (the alter ego of the performance artist Bill Talen) presides over what he calls the Church of... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/when-the-sounds-arent-bare-enough/57049/ Thu, 21 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Savion Glover is a big enough star that people will watch him in just about anything, but "Invitations to a Dancer," which opened on Tuesday night at the Joyce, really flirts with the limits of audience tolerance. In the past, Mr. Glover's willingness to strip the tap show down to its essence has yielded some great evenings, like "Classical Savion," and the gospel-infused "Visions of a Bible." But here the concept — tap meets modern and ballet — is too weak to carry the all-acoustic show. In... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/sessions-therapy-lite/56836/ Tue, 19 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST You might expect "Sessions," a new musical about eight New Yorkers and their psychotherapist, to be an ironic comedy, something in the vein of an early Woody Allen film or an episode of "Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist." But the biggest surprise of this lukewarm show is how superficial it is: "Sessions" is blithely unsophisticated about therapy and mental illness. It's a given that musicals tend to simplify events and speed up transformations, but great musical theater writers know how to make... JOY GOODWIN http://www.nysun.com/arts/ayckbourn-phenomenon/56772/ Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Once in a great while a play comes along that is so extraordinary it actually alters the experience of theatergoing. The terrific production of Alan Ayckbourn's 1982 play cycle "Intimate Exchanges," now at 59E59 Theaters, is that kind of phenomenon. "Intimate Exchanges" makes people want to chat up the stranger sitting next to them. It compels audiences to return night after night, to see the same beloved characters in another of the eight episodes of which it is comprised. In short, it...