Category — Critic’s Corner

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 →]

The audiences recognized the success of the play. South Pacific, opened at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, captured the audiences with the originality of the music by the orchestra and the theme of love and racial prejudice. Although the original play had a bigger impact, South Pacific was able to convey the idea that many issues from the past are still relevant today, such as the debate on the legality of gay marriage, very similar to the arguments on interracial marriage sixty years ago.
South Pacific centered on the love story between Ensign Nellie Forbush, naïve Navy nurse from Little Rock, Arkansas, and Emile de Becque, affluent French planter owner, with the subplot of love between Lieutenant Joe Cable and Liat, daughter of Bloody Mary. The play advanced with the struggles both couples have had for facing racial prejudice from the society as well as inner conflicts within the characters. The play also showed other elements of struggles of soldiers during World War II, particularly the African Americans. During one of the musicals, they were separated from the rest of the Seabees. By including this small part of the play, the director achieved his goal of not only questioning interracial marriage but as well as military segregation.  [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 →]

My mixed emotions about Dr. Atomic, an opera composed by John Adams, are quite alike those of Robert J. Oppenheimer when he was creating the atomic bomb. The process of watching the opera in its beauty was alluring, but the end product was puzzling. My expectations for an intriguing opera ended with disappointment. [Read more →]

Weird Dream

With a title like “Waltz With Bashir,” one may expect a dance documentary or a movie about ballroom dancers, but that was not the case at Ziegfeld Theatre for the New York Film Festival this year. Instead, I was blown away by an animated feature about the 1982 war in Lebanon. It is the personal story of its director, Ari Folman. [Read more →]

War, tragedy, catastrophe, massacre, bomb, horror, radiation poisoning. These are just a few words that we can associate with the end of World War II and the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each one of these words evokes many negative emotions and may even bring some to tears considering the magnitude of destruction that this event caused. As viewers went to watch Dr. Atomic, an opera depicting the Manhattan Project itself, they expected to get the sense of these feelings: to put themselves at the scene and to experience what the scientists experienced. Unfortunately, due to sub-par voices, an overly simplistic story line, and a dissatisfying ending, this opera did not evoke much empathy or feeling. [Read more →]

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            “Soldiers are not politicians, ”Ty Simmons asserts in Yvonne Latty’s book “In Conflict”, now adapted into a thought provoking Culture Project production. Our main military man was one of the many veterans whose tortured stories were heart wrenchingly revealed on the small stage at the Barrow Street theatre.

            Revealed would be the word because the open-minded cast and directors of the show managed to create both an expository play about a war that is very simple to bash. It would have been far easier for Culture Project or even Yvonne Latty to compile the memoirs of bitter and disgruntled opponents of the war but they didn’t and their lack of narrow-mindedness made this production all the more credible. [Read more →]

what ain't they got?

Ladies and Gentlemen, there is sunlight on the sand and dames aplenty in the sparkling new revival of Roger and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific” regardless of what twinkling hedonist Luther Billis’ (as played by a cheeky Danny Burnstein) groans.

Stepping into the theater I instantly felt a sense of glee and burning anticipation in the crowd. This anticipation was not misplaced as I observed that many of the beaming theatergoers were probably old enough to have seen the original “South Pacific”.  I wondered if this musical was good enough to see more than once and after watching it, I am sure it is. Their anticipation slowly changed into participation as I was touched by many couples sitting side by side slowly singing along or mouthing the words. My peers and I may not have been in the same situations but the wonderful thing about “South Pacific” and its classic score is simply that. It is classic and will always be relevant. It is a multifaceted gem of sorts to be handed down from generation to generation and to bridge the generation gap. [Read more →]