It’s hard to think of a play more diabolically suited to the era of reality TV, vanished privacy and ubiquitous surveillance than Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Request Concert. It’s a play that asks whether the ultra-examined life of branded distractions, compulsive sharing, an...

Richard Gilman, an old teacher of mine and a terrific critic, used to say that whenever he read reviews dismissing a new play as “static,” “inert” or “tedious” he wanted to run right out and see it. The wisecrack was meant to disparage reviewers more than to praise ant...

Taylor Mac calls his extraordinary theatrical marathon, five years in the making, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music. This title is coyly misleading, because the show is really a blazingly perceptive, wildly subjective history of the United States told by means of a...

This is a first for me! A video commentary rather than composed one--about Matt Ross's beautiful film Captain Fantastic.

Setting Shakespeare in modern Africa is risky business for a white first-world  director. That said, the temptation is perfectly understandable. No place on today’s earth struggles more prominently and dramatically over democracy, tyranny and the corruptions of power—S...