Alan Bennett’s (Relatively) Unsung Brilliance
Common to all the writing of this quintessentially English playwright, under-exposed in the U.S., is a reluctance to take people, or situations, at face value.
Category Archives: Critic’s Notebook
The Theatre of Guilt
The theatre is not a courtroom, a distinguished critic argues, and should have nobler ambitions than dispensing guilt and blame.
Power to the Actor
Great actors in the full sway of their passions are likely to be more persuasive conduits to the interior of plays than the arbitrary, decorative conceptions of postmodernist directors.
Miller and Hare in less than top form.
Reviews of London productions of ‘The Ride Down Mt. Morgan’ and ‘Murmuring Judges.’
A Pinter Puzzle Still Unsolved
Can you go ‘Homecoming’ again?
Coming to Terms
American plays offer new truths about the collective trauma of Vietnam.
Stars & Strife Forever
In the New American Epics, drama busts out of the living room into the open spaces of our national history.
One Devil Too Many
The persistence, contra the puritans, of Marlowe’s ‘Doctor Faustus.’
Not Much Ado After All
On the evidence of their current showing on Broadway, the R.S.C. has fallen from its ensemble ideals into mere spectacle and showmanship.
You Have to Be There: Notes on Robert Wilson
In Wilson’s gigantic vision of ‘CIVIL warS,’ the conflict extends from classes and races to species and sexes, and even beyond, to the cosmic.
