I am pleased that the reports from Cannes about the On the Road, Walter Salles' film are mainly favorable, although I have taken note that some say there is no inner world for the characters, that the film has no discernable plot, that it is overlong. I have been following...
(0) Comments | Posted May 23, 2012 | 4:33 PM
Of the brownstone at 7 Middagh Street, the basis of a new musical, February House at the Public Theater, the composer/ writer Paul Bowles used to say he did not want to live in a place with another composer. He was referring to Lincoln Kirstein. When he heard the rent...
(2) Comments | Posted May 21, 2012 | 1:47 PM
Jewish jokes are so plentiful online; who hasn't been blessed with multiple emails forwarded from friends, or visited the YouTube videos of real-life old Jews telling jokes? Now a fast-paced revue at the Westside Theater -- where the beloved Love, Loss, and What I Wore held sway for many seasons...
(0) Comments | Posted May 19, 2012 | 10:25 AM
On a 42nd Street block that used to house peep shows, The Duke Theater is a resonant location for a play called Cock. For this four-actor drama, The Duke is entirely reconfigured as an arena where onlookers are up close and personal as if watching a cockfight, taking bets. Four...
(1) Comments | Posted May 18, 2012 | 2:12 PM
The U2 frontman joined the festivities somewhere in the middle of the Jazz Foundation of America's annual benefit singing "Angel in Harlem," assuredly an anthem to the Apollo theater. In rock style, the orchestra audience rushed the stage, iPhones snapping. Bono was simply one of many headliners in "A Great...
(0) Comments | Posted May 15, 2012 | 5:40 PM
The new movie Hysteria answers an age old question, what do women want most? Based on a historic moment in the 1880's when a particular contraption for the alleviation of women's non specific ailments (unhappiness, indigestion, the desire for equality, the right to vote, freedom) was invented, this romantic comedy...
(2) Comments | Posted May 10, 2012 | 2:08 PM
Introducing Hillary Clinton to 2,300 women -- and a sprinkling of men -- gathered in a ballroom at the Marriot Marquis for breakfast celebrating the New York Women's Foundation's 25th year this morning, Abigail Disney recounted where this filmmaker and activist was in her own life at each stage of...
(0) Comments | Posted May 8, 2012 | 3:57 PM
The Costume Institute's new exhibition is a happy collision of fashion titans. Decades apart, Elsa Schiaparelli and Miuccia Prada are joined in a conceit devised by Met curators, Andrew Bolton and Harold Koda: a filmed dialogue, directed by Baz Luhrman, inspired by Louis Malle's two-hander, Dinner With Andre -- only...
(0) Comments | Posted May 6, 2012 | 7:56 PM
Of the atrocities of the Nazi period in Europe, the theft of art may be the least of the horrors, but as the new documentary Portrait of Wally shows, the provenance of art can be infinitely fascinating. "Who owns art?" you might say is the center of the debate concerning...
(0) Comments | Posted May 3, 2012 | 3:35 PM
If you are going to chat with New York based artist Audrey Flack, she might ask you about the color of your lipstick, particularly if it is a shade of classic red as worn by iconic women, say Marilyn Monroe.
In her early photorealist phase, this very girly prop...
(0) Comments | Posted May 3, 2012 | 11:27 AM
Wednesday evening at the Metropolitan Museum was meant to be a correspondence, an exploration of words and music featuring the Kronos Quartet and the writers Rula Jebreal, Marjane Satrapi, and Tony Kushner, but to most ears there was a friendly cacophony. Salman Rushdie, president of PEN introduced the much-anticipated event...
(2) Comments | Posted April 29, 2012 | 7:31 PM
Greeted by a standing ovation, Wayne Shorter and the band he's been playing with since 2000 took the stage on Friday night for the first of two sold out concerts at the Rose Theater at Jazz at Lincoln Center: Brian Blade on drums, John Patitucci on bass, Danilo Perez on...
(1) Comments | Posted April 23, 2012 | 9:36 PM
Rumor has it that Tennessee Williams used to sit in the back of the theater for performances of his Streetcar Named Desire and laugh hysterically when, in the end, Blanche is escorted out on the arm of a doctor en route to the insane asylum. Following his lead, two Tennessee...
(0) Comments | Posted April 23, 2012 | 5:35 PM
Now on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theater after a stunning debut two years ago, Bruce Norris biting Pulitzer Prize winning drama Clybourne Park begins in 1959 with a couple leaving their Chicago home after many years. Under Pam MacKinnon's expert direction, Russ (Frank Wood) sits in a lounger eating...
(0) Comments | Posted April 20, 2012 | 7:21 PM
Well, The Daily Show funnyman John Oliver did not exactly recommend stealing the six rather heavy-looking, grand crystal chandeliers at the St. Regis Hotel, but he did refer to them a few times as emblematic of the posh surroundings at the same time that he advised the gown and tuxedo-clad...
(1) Comments | Posted April 16, 2012 | 4:26 PM
Perhaps the most inventively preposterous play ever to hit Broadway is the prequel to the Peter Pan story, Peter and the Starcatcher, at the Brooks Atkinson Theater. Opening on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, this fanciful lark features two ships at sea, two trunks, one filled with...
(2) Comments | Posted April 14, 2012 | 4:52 PM
Grounded in a current day realism about sex, friendship, and work for recent college grads, HBO's much touted series Girls, airs this weekend. To focus on one aspect of its satire, in Girls, sex is free and freely given, an unsatisfying service by the girls, done with bewildered cads, happy...
(1) Comments | Posted April 10, 2012 | 2:29 PM
While Republicans evaluate the electability of Mitt Romney vs. Rick Santorum, the revival of Gore Vidal's witty 1960 play, The Best Man, comes to Broadway. At the Gerald Shoenfeld Theatre, dressed up as convention headquarters, this Cold War era take on how Americans nominate our presidential candidates, the man in...
(1) Comments | Posted April 3, 2012 | 11:33 PM
Do not miss Tracie Bennett as Judy Garland. The petite frame, boyish chestnut do, twitchy gesture, agile thrashing, lusty bravado, pouting tantrums, and powerhouse voice, Tracie Bennett has the "Over the Rainbow" girl down.
End of the Rainbow, coming to Broadway's Belasco Theater upon the heels of Whitney Houston's sad...
(4) Comments | Posted April 3, 2012 | 11:23 AM
"I'm the only presenter who slept with Catherine Deneuve," said Susan Sarandon in a tribute speech at Alice Tully Hall on Monday night when the French actress was honored with the Film Society of Lincoln Center's 2012 Chaplin Award. The ensuing clip from The Hunger (1983) shows the iconic Deneuve...

(3) Comments | Posted May 26, 2012 | 4:26 PM