Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – While the press salivates about the box office achievement of the last film in the Harry Potter series, it’s worth noting that, financial success aside, it also represents a victory for cinematic storytelling.
Richard III: Loud and Glib at the Theatricum
Don’t let the program fool you; the casting of two actors in the role of Richard III isn’t a sign that the Theatricum has developed an appetite for the avant-garde or the experimental.
Deconstruction for Beginners: A Cheeky, Clever Primer on Derrida’s Infamous Idea
Derrida for Beginners demonstrates serious substance beneath its lighthearted surface, and helps bring one of philosophy’s most controversial and exciting thinkers within everyone’s reach.
The Old Settler: Beautiful Theatre at the ICT Long Beach
In the parlance of World War II Harlem, an old settler is a woman long past what society considers the peak age for marriage; a spinster.
On Stranger Tides: Watered-Down Rum but Rum Nonetheless
The Hollywood blockbuster has always been vulnerable to film’s version of shock-and-awe: Too much is never enough. After their previous entry in the Pirates of the Caribbean series, the entertaining but ultimately exhausting and overstuffed At World’s End, screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliot (and other filmmakers) take mercy on our senses and return to the focused storytelling of the film that started it all, The Curse of Black Pearl.
Not Your Ordinary Music Fest: ‘This Is Drop Dead’
For nine years, New York and other cities around the world have played host to a scrappy DIY bacchanalia dedicated to drinking up, as the official website puts it, “Art in every aspect of Life.” Still young and independent enough to be considered underground, unlike other DIY-fests that have since sold out, the Drop Dead Festival (DDF) has become an international showcase of iconoclastic musicians and artists from a scene that might loosely fit under the umbrella of goth/death rock/punk if its members didn’t often achieve a more singular, category-defying individuality.
Bin Laden is Dead, Bin Laden Lives On
King of the Greek Molossian tribe during the Hellenistic era that spanned from 323 B.C. to 146 B.C., Pyrrhus of Epirus was considered by Hannibal himself to be the time’s greatest military commander, perhaps second only to Alexander the Great. He was a staunch and able opponent to the Romans, as demonstrated in encounters such as the Battle of Asculum that pitted roughly equal forces against each other.
The Magic of Indian Dance in a Tribute to Tagore
On Sunday, April 10, mother and daughter called upon their art to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rabindranath Tagore, a notable and prolific Bengalese artist whose work encompassed writing, music and painting, and whose accomplishments were recognized with the first Nobel Prize for literature awarded, in 1913, to a non-European.
The Actor’s Gang Triumphs with ‘Tartuffe’
Despite what it might sound like, “Tartuffe” is not the name of a French custard-filled pastry and the Ivy Substation has not been remade as a Parisian café. Yet what we have here is nevertheless a wicked confection as one of France’s greatest playwrights, Molière, gets the Actor’s Gang treatment in a revival of their hugely successful 2005 production.
‘The Cripple of Inishmaan’: Laughter Hides a Hollow Heart
Although Tadhg Murphy offers as fine a performance as one could ask for, it’s telling that the titular character in The Cripple of Inishmaan is played by an able-bodied performer.