Divine Comedy Festival: Joy and Despair, Head-Scratching and Mind-Blowing
This last dispatch from the 2024 gathering checks in with some Americans who’ve felt both inspired and challenged by their Polish counterparts.
Category Archives: Critic’s Notebook
Sex, Politics, Guarded Optimism: A Report From Kraków’s Divine Comedy
Theatre in Poland inevitably intersects with politics, and not only because it relies on state support.
Our Man in Kraków: Dispatches From Divine Comedy
This correspondent returned eagerly to a place where theatre still matters in a troubled world, even if it can’t quite make sense of it.
Dallas’s Latinidades Was More Than a Festival
This celebration of community stretched over weeks and connected Latine and Latin American performance.
Borne Back Ceaselessly Into ‘The Great Gatsby’
With so many adaptations, including the return of Elevator Repair Service’s ‘GATZ,’ are artists reinventing a classic—or destined to repeat the errors of the past?
Picturing Theatre: Looking Through Iconic Photographs
Two exhibits on view at the New York Public Library invite visitors to look both at and through stunning theatre photographs from Joan Marcus, Carol Rosegg, and Friedman-Abeles.
Holding the Mirror Up to Russia
A spate of new productions and adaptations explore the geopolitical and theatrical legacies of an empire in decline.
‘Tommy,’ Can You Hear Me? I’m Not Gonna Take It
From its casting to its staging, the acclaimed new Broadway revival of the iconic rock musical misses opportunities to engage with, and subvert, harmful tropes around Deafness and disability.
How ‘Days of Wine’ and ‘White Chip’ Stage Alcoholism and Recovery
2 shows currently running in New York mix unique strengths with some predictable tropes about ‘rock bottom’ and recovery.
NYC’s January Festivals: Not Dead Yet
With Under the Radar bouncing back and Prototype and Exponential still going strong, it was challenging, surprising festival season all over again.
