Word: theaterful
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...Theater critics love to complain about the glut of revivals on Broadway, but what would we do without them? For one thing, they keep the theaters filled - something that a handful of new musicals (and an even smaller handful of straight plays) each season could never do on their own. For another, they let critics show off their taste and theatrical erudition: doling out ritual praise to the classics of the canon, comparing and contrasting the new production with the Definitive 1975 Version That I Saw But You Didn't. And they give stars a chance to demonstrate their acting...
...probably unfair to compare the subtleties of Chekhov with the high-strung dramatics of Arthur Miller, but at least Simon McBurney, director of the gripping new revival of All My Sons, seems energized by the play rather than enervated by it. McBurney, artistic director of the avant-garde Complicite theater company, has reimagined Miller's domestic drama as a stylized mixture of Brecht and Euripedes. The main characters open the play by announcing they're going to perform a play for us; supertitles introduce us to "Act I," "Act 2" and even the "Intermission." The set is spare and semi...
...reason crowds are rushing to see All My Sons is the fourth member of the ensemble: Katie Holmes, making her Broadway debut as the daughter of Joe's disgraced business partner. Mrs. Cruise holds her own quite well. She's got stage presence, a voice that fills the theater, and if her line readings can seem a little strident, they are perfectly in tune with the haunting modernist symphony that McBurney has created. It's a revival to remember...
...Mystery Science Theater 3000 Cable's first and coolest nerd-genius hit, MST3K elevated a derisory premise?a guy and two robots riff on cheesy movies?into glorious comic art. This 20th anniversary edition contains four episodes (the best: Werewolf) and enough goofy extras to make any MSTie mist...
Wait. It gets worse. Hello, Dolly is one of many versions of The Matchmaker, a play by Thornton Wilder, author of Our Town and other treacly warhorses of the American theater. Over the years, millions of American children have had to sit through what once was viewed as sentimental propaganda and therefore good for them. Many impressionable young people have even been forced to say the line about spreading money around in student productions of The Matchmaker, taking innocent pleasure in the joke about manure while their little minds were being polluted with redistributionist propaganda. While I remember Wilder...