It is impossible to get away from the grim state of the world, its politics, its ever-simmering wars, its ever-widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the ecological disaster that is hurtling us into extinction. As a person of emotion, I feel it physically every day, not to the point of contemplating suicide, … Continue reading “Human Interest Story” at The Fountain Theatre
There is a certain something about the Upper West Side of Manhattan, especially Riverside Drive with that ribbon of park, the Hudson flowing downstream, and the view of the New Jersey Palisades across the river. If you happen to live in a Riverside Drive apartment and are fortunate enough to have that river view, it … Continue reading “Between Riverside and Crazy” at The Fountain Theatre
The Fountain Theatre’s production of Idris Goodwin’s award-winning play, Hype Man, is a fast-paced, hyper-energetic, seriocomic wonder that is more serio than comic. It brings the hip-hop scene to vivid life for audiences who may not have experienced it in close, intimate contact. Virtually everybody who watches television has seen rap performances at one time … Continue reading “Hype Man” at The Fountain Theatre
Aaron Posner’s splendid adaptation of Chaim Potok’s well-loved novel, The Chosen, immerses the audience in a time now distant, and in a culture that has persisted since the dawn of literacy. In a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn in 1944, two young men, boys really, from radically different branches of Judaism live only five blocks apart, … Continue reading “The Chosen” at The Fountain Theatre
Bakersfield Mist — where to begin with this exhilarating piece of theatre. The actors? The script? The production? “In the beginning was the word,” so let’s start with Stephen Sachs’ brilliant, erudite script. The two-character play puts diametrically opposite people in delicious conflict. Maude Gutman (the effervescent, surprisingly athletic Jenny O’Hara), a recently fired bartender … Continue reading “Bakersfield Mist” at The Fountain Theatre
1956—the Eisenhower years, fondly or angrily remembered by those who can still remember as a time of big cars, Elvis Presley, black and white television, a time when people knew their place and chafed against it. Bigotry was rampant and the glass ceiling was so low and thick it crushed those who couldn’t crack it. … Continue reading “Baby Doll” at The Fountain Theatre
In The Fountain Theatre’s production of Athol Fugard’s “The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek,” a West Coast premiere, the time is 1981 and the setting is an arid hillside in Mpumalanga Province, Union of South Africa. An old man and a young boy enter onto a dry, dirt-filled stage where stones have been painted in … Continue reading “The Painted Rocks at Revolver Creek” at The Fountain Theatre
Paul Myrvold's Theatre Notes 