Anna Katsnelson
By Anna Katsnelson
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’
Imagine walking into a beautiful Fifth Avenue mansion then being transported along with 43 other guests to wintry Dublin in 1904 — to drink sherry and Irish whiskey with a handful of James Joyce’s characters. This was my time travel experience at New York’s American Irish Historical Society where the Irish Repertory Theatre staged an…
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Culture Meet Rachel Chavkin, Director of Broadway Smash ‘The Comet’
The shining shifting spectacle “Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812,” is playing at the aptly titled Imperial Theater starring Josh Groban and directed by Rachel Chavkin. “The Comet” (as it is colloquially known), by Dave Malloy, is one of the most exciting electro rock operas to hit Broadway in recent years. Based on…
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Culture A 3-Hour Play About the Oslo Accords Is Surprisingly Entertaining
According to a famous study conducted by psychologist Arthur Aron two decades ago, all it takes to fall in love with someone is to stare at the person for four minutes and ask a series of 36 personal questions. “One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers,” Aron and his…
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Culture Bezmozgis + Ibsen = Natasha
Natalie Portman’s “A Tale of Love and Darkness” might be the most anticipated film adaptation of a work of prose (Amos Oz’s incomparable memoir of the same name, 2002) at the current New York Jewish Film Festival. But Russian-speaking Jews are rooting for “Natasha.” This film, by Latvian Canadian writer and filmmaker David Bezmozgis, is…
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Culture The Sorrow and Pity of Arthur Miller’s ‘Incident at Vichy’
The trouble with a play like Arthur Miller’s “An Incident at Vichy” is the ubiquitous presence of Holocaust narratives in contemporary films and books. Recently, on NPR’s “Fresh Air” Terry Gross said of the movie “Son of Saul,” “At this point, I don’t want to go to a theater to watch such unbearable suffering unless…
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Culture Is ‘Lulu’ the Best Opera the Met Has Ever Staged?
William Kentridge’s new production of Alban Berg’s atonal opera “Lulu” is sordid, seductive, sadistic, scandalous and, as one of the characters quips in German, full of schmutz. It might be the best new production the Met has seen since Kentridge’s daring 2010 take on Shostakovich’s “The Nose.” “Lulu,” based on “Spring Awakening” author Franz Wedekind’s…
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Culture I Am a Fugitive From a Catholic School
Soviet kids had it bad upon immigration. My fellow Soviet refugees and good friends were sent by their well-intentioned parents to a yeshiva, only to be circumcised at the tender age of 12 (Soviet Jews didn’t circumcise their kids because of military hazing). Welcome to the 12 tribes of Israel, boys. Their parents handed them…
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Culture Moliere as a Sitcom, Complete With Jewish Mother Jokes
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the most marriageable of all? According to a recent New York Times article, “How To Make Online Dating Work,” 70% of gay and lesbian couples meet online. Unfortunately, no one sent a link of that article to Jordan Berman (Gideon Glick), the gay man at the heart of Joshua…
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Fast Forward In a Polish town where locals burned Jews alive in 1941, new plaques deny complicity with Nazis
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