Gwen Orel
By Gwen Orel
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Culture Looking Backward, Dancing Forward
They slap shoes on the stage with gusto, pirouette around them, share them. They roll balls of yarn, play with them, grow tangled in them. They interact with an onstage singer; they respond to live music that in turn responds to them; they form a counterpoint to the abstract paintings projected behind them. Perhaps most…
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Culture Awaiting Rapture
By Gwen Orel Deborah Zoe Laufer’s play “End Days,” which received an American Theatre Critics Association Steinberg citation, has already been staged nine times this year — including an ongoing production in Salt Lake City — and will open in Atlanta next month, and outside Philadelphia over the summer. In “End Days,” a Jewish mother…
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Life Is American Theater Becoming Genteel-y Antisemitic?
Is American theater becoming more like British theater — that is, genteel-y antisemitic? Playwright Jeremy Kareken posted this announcement on a Yahoo! Group for playwrights two weeks ago: God Damns. By David Hare The Royal Court presents a new one man show from the author of Via Dolorosa and Skylight. The time is “End Times”…
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Culture Jason Isaacs Draws a Line in the Sand
As Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter films, Jason Isaacs shimmers with pale Aryan-looking evil. As Michael Caffee in the Showtime series “Brotherhood,” Isaacs is a violent and mentally unstable gangster. In Vicente Amorim’s new film, “Good,” opening on December 31 and set in 1930s Germany, you might expect Isaacs to play a Nazi. Instead,…
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