49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think
By Laura Albert Growing up Jewish in Brooklyn, I often heard that Jews were the Chosen People. So, imagine my surprise when I realized that Moana, the Polynesian princess in Disney’s new animated feature, repeatedly proclaims herself to be “chosen.” She is chosen to save her people — and she has no doubt that she…
In May I left a preview for “Indecent” at Manhattan’s Vineyard Theater uncharacteristically silent. The play was advertised as a tale about Sholem Asch’s “God of Vengeance,” a Yiddish play that famously closed after one night on Broadway, with its entire cast arrested on charges of obscenity. “Indecent,” co-created by playwright Paula Vogel and director…
For years I’ve been reading the essays and blog posts of MacArthur “genius” grant-winning pianist Jeremy Denk. Not since Leonard Bernstein has the music world had such a compelling explainer. Who else would compare a moment in the first movement of Beethoven’s Opus 31 No. 3 to a “Seinfeld” episode? Last March, I finally heard…
We’re all addicted. And we’re all in trouble. That’s the blaring siren of a message from Andrew Sullivan’s New York magazine cover story from September, “My Distraction Sickness — and Yours.” The piece tells the personal story of how Sullivan unplugged from his life as a hyper-prolific blogger and spent time recovering at a silent…
Arthur Lubow’s biography of Diane Arbus, which claims that Arbus carried on a lifelong sexual relationship with her brother, appeared a month before “In the Beginning,” an exhibit of Arbus’s early photographs, opened at the Met Breuer. I submit that the images on display — uncanny but deeply human, curious and impartial, full of lust…
I read Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen: An American Lyric” this summer, as I started a new job, teaching at a high-needs public school in New Orleans. Soon before the school year began, Alton Sterling was shot and killed by a white police officer in nearby Baton Rouge. I tried to process the onslaught of police murders…
Going into Bob Dylan’s concert at Tanglewood on July 2, 2016, I was prepared to hate it, having absolutely no interest in hearing him sing Frank Sinatra songs live (or on record, for that matter). Leave it to Dylan, then, to perform a scorching two-hour show. He alternated some of his moodiest, angriest, late-period rockers…
No options but jail or death; look askance at a cop at your own peril; we’re failing our kids, our young adults, our own humanity. These are but some of the messages Anna Deavere Smith channeled in her indelible show, “Notes From the Field.” Melding journalism, anthropology and performance, Smith stitched a riveting investigation of…
‘Next Thing,” the latest album from Frankie Cosmos, is a masterclass in “Less is more.” The album has 15 songs but runs for only 28 minutes. These 28 minutes, however, have significantly more depth than their run-time suggests. Lead singer Greta Kline (daughter of actors Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates) uses bare bones synths and…
The best play I saw on Broadway this year was the revival of “Falsettos.” From its opening number, “Four Jews in a Room Bitching,” to its tear-inducing bar mitzvah denouement, it is also the most haimish. “Falsettos” tells a story of love and family in the late 20th Century and it resonates as clearly today…
What’s “Stupid F—king Bird” about? Oh, so, so many things, including the need for new forms in art and the impossibility of those forms; the unrequitedness of love, romantic and familial alike; the foolishness and vanity of human wishes; the frailty of the flesh and of the spirit. Now, add music. Aaron Posner’s adaptation of…
