Jesse Oxfeld
By Jesse Oxfeld
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Culture From the Mind of Larry David, a Play About Nothing
Although he is by all appearances a man who does what he wants when he wants, Larry David is nevertheless obsessed by etiquette. It is a recurring motif throughout his two landmark television series, “Seinfeld,” which he co-created, and “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” which he created and in which he stars. There are debates about tipping,…
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Culture Navigating ‘Love and Sex’ and a Slew of Other Hot Button Issues Off Broadway
“Listen, there’s nothing wrong with changing a name to get ahead,” says Howard, a self-impressed, avuncular Jewish transplant to the south, visiting his daughter and her lifelong best friend, an African-American boy who grew up next door, at college. “Jews have been doing it for centuries. It’s the only way. That is the great advantage….
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Culture Like Father, Like Daughter? Hopefully Not When It Comes to ‘I’m Gonna Pray for You.’
He’s been discoursing for a while, this character called David Berryman—né Bergenstein — drinking and smoking (the pot and coke will come later) and telling well-worn stories, and now he’s in high dudgeon over the suggestion he might have regrets. “Everything I did — every decision I made — led me right here — right…
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Culture Why ‘Honeymoon in Vegas’ Is Quintessential Jewish Mother Story
The 1989 movie “New York Stories” is composed of three short films about New York City. In Woody Allen’s segment, “Oedipus Wrecks,” his character’s overbearing Jewish mother disappears as part of a magic show — but rather than reappearing after the trick is finished instead is transformed into a celestial presence hovering over Manhattan, continually…
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Culture When Terrorists Become Capitalists
Nick Bright is a trader, and he’s working an angle. The main character in Ayad Akhtar’s new play “The Invisible Hand,” Nick is an American banker working in Pakistan, and he’s been kidnapped by what we might politely term an armed Muslim religious group. (We might also call them terrorists.) Nick was kidnapped by accident…
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Culture What Would You Do If Someone Thought Your Son Was God?
What do you do if your toddler is a god? (To start, hold the Jewish mother jokes.) In Sarah Ruhl’s beautiful and searching new play, “The Oldest Boy,” now playing at Lincoln Center Theater’s off-Broadway Mitzi Newhouse Theater, a Catholic-raised, all-American mother is visited by a pair of Buddhist monks, who inform her that her…
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Culture Ayad Akhtar’s ‘Disgraced’ Raises Profound Issues About Dual Loyalty
Amir Kapoor is a guy you know, maybe went to college with. His parents were born in India — or was it Pakistan? — and he grew up in a devout Muslim-American family. He went to college, then to law school; along the way he abandoned his faith, and now he’s a corporate lawyer at…
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News Revival of ‘On the Town’ Goes Forward Into the Past on Broadway
There’s always some nostalgia baked into a Broadway musical, that old-fashioned and always-dying art form that reached its apex in middle of the 20th century. It’s there in the subject matter, too: Even the freshest “Guys and Dolls” puts you in vintage New York; “Gypsy” is ever in the late days of vaudeville; and even…
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