Category — Abdul

When it was decided that Yvonne Latty’s In Conflict: Iraq War Veterans Speak Out on Duty, Loss and the Fight to Stay Alive would be adapted into a play, the director should have paid particular attention to the format of the work that, while built upon socially responsible subject matter, is of a very unique nature and difficult to interpret in theater. Unfortunately, director Douglas C. Wager fails to do just that, not realizing that a play with narrative can have an audience but a play with interviews needs to have listeners. [Read more →]

Source: www.metoperafamily.org

What’s makes judging Sellars and Adams’ Dr. Atomic difficult is not that any individual element is or isn’t done particularly well.  On the contrary, there is no doubt that very little in Dr. Atomic is done well.  What makes passing verdict difficult is that Dr. Atomic, despite using a laudable libretto as its foundation, still displays enough insightful thinking to make it worth watching. [Read more →]

Source:www.chicagocritic.com

There aren’t many who can bear the burden of being responsible for virtually every aspect of production.  It can prove suicidal because the result, be it success or failure, is all pinned on that one person responsible.  In the case of Clay, Matt Sax wrote, scored and performed this New Works Program production and, by assuming this gargantuan responsibility, Sax gave himself unlimited liability if the production were to fail.  However, such a disaster didn’t occur and Clay, despite having a predictable plot, succeeds in being an original, enjoyable production. [Read more →]

source: www.baruch.cuny.edu, photo by Marion Ettlinger

It begins much like any other show.  There are introductions outlining the point of the evening, there are forgettable speeches received with light applauses, and there are refreshments devoured before the arrival of most guests.  Yet, amidst all this sits a woman with an air of confidence and self-acknowledgment, knowing full well that all these arrangements have been made in her honor.  In that crowd of dozens, it is easy to point out Francine Prose, the Fall 2008 Sidney Harman Writer-in-Residence. [Read more →]

Source: www.irenasvow.com

Terri Sue “Tovah” Feldshuh is the most acclaimed artist in the cast of ten performing in Dan Gordon’s Irena’s Vow. While the play succeeds in delivering a satisfying and occasionally chilling plot, the production fails to fully comprehend the true depth of its own characters and thus realize the narrative’s full potential. [Read more →]

Source: www.broadway.com

As Luther Billis and company declare what exactly is unlike anything else in the world while Nellie Forbush washes charming Emile de Becque out of her hair, it becomes obvious that spunk is something Rodgers’, Hammerstein’s, and Logan’s South Pacific delivers in spades.  Drawing from James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, Bartlett Sher’s endeavor is an enjoyable experience that fails to be anything more socially responsible. [Read more →]

Just Me

There’s not much more you can say about me than you can about the average teenager attending college and living with his family on the outskirts of New York bordering New Jersey.  I was born in a small Pakistani city, where I stayed until I was about two.  We moved to the country’s capital afterwards, stayed there for three years, only to settle back in my birth city.  It was then that we immigrated to the United States, a transition that, as a student, proved fairly easy.  Having studied in a school based on Canadian standards back in Pakistan, grasping the English language didn’t prove difficult.  Also, those same schools were rigorous and had given me enough of a standing that education did not prove to be a challenge for nearly four years.  It was then that I found algebra, the most difficult and exciting subject for me, even today.  At the end of the day, all other classes took second seat to math, which still doesn’t come easy to me. [Read more →]