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about: Regina Weinreich

  • Tony Awards Nominees for Grabs: Looking for Hugh Jackman 

    TonyxxxxCelebrating the Tony nominations this year held special excitement: it’s the 75th anniversary, the first in-person comeback after Covid, a year of re-emergence for shows shuttered in March 2020. Vaxxed, masked, Covid-tested, journalists met with the nominees in a return to Broadway-as-usual. A dozen or so sat at designated places in a room at the Sofitel Hotel in midtown, just a stone’s throw from the classic stages where many of the nominated would perform for the evening. Handlers offered stars as they worked the various outlets, as in, we have Hugh Jackman, do you want him? Duh. Who doesn’t want Hugh Jackman? Ok, you have two questions.

    And so it went, as stars came in and out often yanked, and still, the event was like a master class in theater production, and a recognition of just how hard, and how special live theater is. Lessons are learned in passing. Allowed almost no time with Hugh Jackman, you may get the superficial, how he feels about being nominated. Great. But then, with Music Man choreographer Warren Carlyle, you find out “Hugh’s success is not an accident. He worked hard all through the pandemic, rehearsed for the Music Man revival for three years.” A quintessential Broadway vehicle, The Music Man is not perceived as a dance show. What changed? Two things, said Carlyle, Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster. “All the choreography is new, every step out of my head, nothing from past shows. I really went for it.”

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  • Mr. Saturday Night: Billy Crystal Has “IT”

    Billy Christal2
    I’ll have what Billy Crystal’s having–stamina. In his show, Mr. Saturday Night, the comedian/ actor/ Oscar host sings and dances with flair, if not youthful energy. Shuffle, low-key moonwalk, at least the man—now in his ‘70’s– has moves, which makes the show’s premise very funny. With a career on the skids, his character, Buddy Young, Jr., performs at old age homes, cajoling his audience, that is all of us at the packed Nederlander Theater, with ageing jokes. Because he is adept at his act, having had a hit show at the dawn of television, his jokes land. And with his family backstory, he asks his wife Elaine (a wonderful Randy Graff), his straight man/ manager brother (fine David Paymer), his daughter (excellent Shoshana Bean) and agent (terrific Chasten Harmon): did you see what I did? Explaining his timing, his verbal and visual diversions, he teaches a master class in comedy, a side plus to this highly entertaining show.

    Alert: this is not a stand-up act, which you might expect from comics coming to Broadway—think Jackie Mason. Mr. Saturday Night has a narrative, maybe it’s corny: how Buddy met Elaine in the Catskills, his fraught relationships with just about everyone. But curmudgeons are loveable anyway, and when at the 1994 Oscars, he shows up on the In Memorium reel, well, you can imagine how that mistaken death kicks off some pretty funny bits. And, there’s a backup act too: a trio of stock types (Jordan Gelber, Brian Gonzales, Mylinda Hull)—the recurring showbiz antics will be a nostalgic send-up for anyone who was watching in tv’s nascent years. It all makes for a fun night with laughs all the way.

  • Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga in Macbeth: Dressed to Kill

    MacbethA highly experimental Scottish play bloodies the Longacre Theater on Broadway. As the audience takes seats, cooks brew in pots (cauldrons) on a set that resembles a downtown city loft. Smoke blowers create a dreamy, sinister atmosphere. One actor, Michael Patrick Thornton, takes center stage, greeting the crowd, asking them to whisper the name of the play, Macbeth, to ourselves as if to expel the superstition attached to Shakespeare’s popular tragedy. This year brought us Joel Coen’s movie, Macbeth in abstract, in black & white, and this one contrasts in its specificity, red spots everywhere. Partly that’s owing to this Lady Macbeth, a dynamite Ruth Negga with sharply defined finger waves, a tiny frame, a bullet of a personality challenging her husband’s manhood. Would anyone doubt the potency of Daniel Craig as Macbeth? He’s a happy camper at the outset and as his life becomes more and more tarnished in blood: is it just a problem of laundry or just a change of expensive pajamas?

    Out out brief spot. That’s a lot of blood, spurting from a man hoisted upside down, a pig releasing juices for an odd stew. Suttirat Larlarb’s costuming makes a splash. Craig is most stained, in white t-shirt, fur coat, brocade jacket, silk loungewear with armored vest. Negga dressed in a gold gossamer tiered gown, looking like Cleopatra, never has blood on her hands, but she’s busy scrubbing the floors. Till those woods encroach, –that’s always the opportunity for Macbeth’s greatest and most innovative dramatic spectacle.

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  • A Holocaust Symphony Premieres at Carnegie Hall 

    SynphonyPhoto:  Aylin Tekiner

    The Holocaust continues to unravel secrets. During this period of remembrance, a symphony by a survivor from Salonica, Greece pays homage to his community, its creative artists, and a little-known pocket of wartime history. You know the joke: how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Way more than practice! The music took a very long and arduous route by way of Auschwitz, culminating last week in an evening featuring Renan Koen on piano and a symphony conducted by Maestro Gurer Aykal from Turkey. Entitled “Hymns from Auschwitz,” the program, sponsored by Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, was named for a newly composed piece by Elcil Gurel Goctu (b. 1979) for hazans, pianos, and orchestra, followed by the historic work, a symphonic postwar poem, whose composer Michel Assael (1918-2006) never heard his masterpiece performed.

    As a researcher, renowned pianist Renan Koen was awed by the composers of Theresienstadt: how under the murderous conditions of the camp were they able to make art? Her work led to composer Viktor Ullmann who encouraged his fellow prisoners to write music before he was deported to Auschwitz, and murdered two days later. Michel Assael survived Auschwitz by playing in the orchestra there alongside Dr. Albert Menache who later wrote a memoir BIRKENAU (Auschwitz II): How 72,000 Greek Jews Perished. It may have been that Menache and Assael were performing when Ullmann was led to the gas chambers, as reported in the memoir. The music we were hearing at Carnegie Hall was Assael’s symphonic poem (1947-1948) inspired by Dr. Menache’s memoir.

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  • How I Learned to Drive Comes to Broadway

    How I learned to drive
    Ewwww! That’s not my critique of Paula Vogel’s tight memory play, How I Learned to Drive– rather the play, now having a Broadway debut after 25 years– is brilliant. It’s the people: the family. At center, Uncle Peck and Li’l Bit (the sublime actors David Morse and Mary-Louise Parker) who originated these roles Off Broadway. You will wonder, what took them so long to get to Broadway? And you will marvel at how prescient the play is of the present moment. And then, you will realize just how normal and natural that “ewwww” factor really was all along.

    Affable and courteous, Uncle Peck held Li’l Bit in his hand as she was born, he said, and from there he’s loved her every day, from that time, and when she was eleven, and he asked to unbutton her shirt as she sat on his lap. “Only if you want,” he said. And continues to say even when he courts her with gifts and encourages her martinis. And teaches her to drive. Which becomes a structural device marking scenes but also providing a nuanced and loaded language: avoid reverse gear and idling.

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  • The Little Prince: An Intergalactic Journey on Broadway

    Little Prince
    Aerial feats, dance, a touch of Gaul—Antoine Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince at the Broadway Theater brings a beloved children’s classic to the stage with visual flair. Beginning as the book does with a crash landing in the desert, the show moves quickly from scene to scene as a boy in a yellow jumpsuit and yellow spiky hair from a nearby asteroid recounts his adventures to the downed aviator. Sort of a Candide meets Cirque de Soleil. 

    One such encounter is with a beautiful rose (Laurisse Sulty), another with a wily fox (Dylan Barone), all of whom impart some wisdom to the boy (Lionel Zalachas). Chris Mouron, writer and co-director with the show’s choreographer Anne Tournie, does a fine job narrating these events. In green hair and tweetle-dum suit, she speaks with a heavy French accent, the story translated to English on both sides of the stage. My companion, 7-year-old Max Herman was grateful to be able to read her words, but was far more dazzled by a dancer with a toilet plunger, loving the spectacle—and proclaiming this part his favorite.

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  • Ben Foster in The Survivor: The Camps Never Leave You

    Surviver2
    HBO launches its movie, The Survivor, with a lavish premiere just in time for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Barry Levinson’s latest stars Ben Foster as boxer Harry Haft, Auschwitz survivor and refugee. 

    As Auschwitz stories go, Harry Haft’s exceeds the norm. Grasping his world in the camps and beyond in Brooklyn, Ben Foster, in the performance of the year, gets Haft –as boxer and as nightmare-ridden refugee– in Barry Levinson’s adaptation of son Alan Haft’s book, The Survivor. Told in two-time frames, The Survivor pares down Haft’s experience: the Holocaust period in black & white when he is made to entertain the Nazis using his skill as a boxer. Nazi officer Dietrich Schneider puts him in the ring fighting fellow prisoners to their death. If you thought Billy Magnussen was “bad” in the recent James Bond movie, here he brings his super-bad game, “owning Haft,” as it were. In color, survivor Haft fights in the rings of Coney Island, fighting even Rocky Marciano, with one goal shaping his American existence. That is, to find Leah (Dar Zuzovsky), his love from before the war.

    Picture Raging Bull meets The Pawnbroker. Imagine the violence, the searing impression of the blood oozing out of the fighters—with Haft so gaunt, so spent, you cannot even think of his having body fluids in his vividly depicted post-war visions, triggered even on his honeymoon when he marries Miriam, Vicky Krieps in a tender role. They go on as survivors do, having three kids, managing the past as best they can—singing “God Bless America” in Yiddish.

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  • Clive Davis at 90 

    Clove davis“The thing about turning 90,” quipped music impresario Clive Davis, “is I realized, last year I was 89.” The occasion was a birthday dinner at The River Café that was also a celebration of the Clive Davis Institute at New York University, an educational venue that also features studios where young artists can record their work. The pre-dinner opening of an exhibition of Davis’ archive showed off his gold and platinum records and a wall of artists Davis represented at Columbia, later Arista, J Records, and SONY: Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Patti Smith, Bruce Springsteen, Simon & Garfunkel, Barry Manilow, and so many more in Davis’ stellar career spanning six decades. Famously, Davis signed Janis Joplin after hearing her perform at Monterey back in the day. In one vitrine with personal correspondence a visitor can see invitations to concerts, such as one, to a supper at Davis’ home for Joplin following a performance at Madison Square Garden. Clive Davis has an ear. Has—he is still going strong.

     

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  • Oscars So Real in 2022: No Offense Intended

    Oscars 2022
    Despite a contretemps at the Oscars—a slap seen round the world—the ceremony and awards proceeded as expected, apace, with favorites winning all around. When Will Smith accepted his Best Actor award, he tearfully mentioned defending family, as his character Richard Williams did coaching his daughters Venus and Serena to top tennis honors. Of course, Smith had just hit Chris Rock for a dumb, inconsiderate joke about his wife Jada Pinkett Smith, mumbled while Smith’s expletives were bleeped out. The morning after, many are thinking his tearful Oscar acceptance speech is not sufficient to brush aside his behavior. 

    Last year’s Best Actor, Anthony Hopkins, present this year after missing the 2021 Academy Awards; so sure he would not win, he stayed home in Wales. Smith was the favorite for his prize as were the best supporting actors, Ariana DeBose and Troy Kotsur. Jessica Chastain, awarded for Best Actress for her role as televangelist Tammy Faye spoke about being seen. The Oscars –spreading the love– made sure many were both seen and heard. CODA –the smaller film that could—about a young hearing woman coming into her own in a deaf family–took top honors.

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  • MJ: The Musical: The Art of Michael Jackson

    Michel Jackson
    If you love Michael Jackson, you will love MJ—it’s that simple. The musical limns the controversial performer’s rise to “King of Pop,” avoiding the more difficult challenges of his personality in favor of music and dance—it’s that simple. Not that the star’s dependence on pain killers is not a significant plot issue—it’s that plot is not really significant. You do hear the word accusers—once—but that particular untoward issue is not a part of Lynn Nottage’s book either. If you are of the mind that he should be cancelled, shove it. MJ is not about that, but about his art. 

    Taking place in a rehearsal studio in 1992 Los Angeles, –along with an ensemble of talented singers and dancers—Michael Jackson is rehearsing for his “Dangerous” tour. A film crew follows him around, hoping to get more of his personal side in an interview. Everyone’s concern for his demons is out front, getting at his opioid consumption and how that’s wrecking the schedule, not to mention the budget—but wisely, the music and dance, everything you know and love, shapes the origin myth, with first-rate staging, and Christopher Wheeldon’s brilliant choreography and direction.

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  • Lady Gaga’s Passion at the New York Film Critics Circle Dinner at Tao

    LOady GaGa6Brought to tears in telling the tale of her immigrant ancestry, Lady Gaga thanked the New York Film Critics Circle for recognizing her for Best Actress for her performance in House of Gucci. Big on heart, she was grateful to everyone from director Ridley Scott to her hairdresser and makeup artist, but mainly, she cited her matrilineage of strong Italian women who taught her to be bold and fearless, in a family that featured lots of shouting. Sorry, mom, she shouted out to her platinum haired mother seated at her table at Tao, the meatpacking Asian-themed restaurant and longtime venue for this annual—except for the Covid years–event. 

    She was not the only awardee crying with emotion. Jane Campion, the NYFCC’s pick for Best Director, her citation given by Martin Scorsese, spoke of an early turn around in her career when the movie Sweetie, which many critics did not like, got a second wind after the New York Times critic Vincent Canby wrote favorably about it and changed the “trajectory of my career.” Back in the day, Susan Sontag took her to tea. Nothing if not edgy, Campion’s Power of the Dog is frontrunner for the Best Picture Oscar, but Drive My Car, from Japan, got that honor with the New York critics.

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  • Celebrating Guild Hall at Cipriani 42 Street

    Guild Hall 2922Many revelers at this week’s Guild Hall winter gala remembered that before Covid locked everyone down, they were celebrating the premiere East Hampton cultural institution at its 2020 annual gala. And while much has changed in these two years—the venue was now the cavernous Cipriani 42nd Street—and, the 2022 honorees were Board Chair Marty Cohen and Michele Cohen without the customary Academy of the Arts recipients—the mood was exuberant, as this huge, yet intimate event of East End neighbors chatting, catching up has not lost any of its warmth. Academy president Eric Fishl recalled that in that pre-pandemic limbo, no one knew whether to fist or elbow bump but preferred to kick one another in the ankles. All these dressed up people kicking the s__t out of each other, he laughed.

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  • Renee Zellweger in The Thing About Pam at the Whitby Hotel

    The thing about Pam
    Her spindly legs over sky high heels, Renee Zellweger, both star and a producer on NBC’s series The Thing About Pam, commanded the stage at the Whitby Hotel this week after a screening of the first two episodes of the 6-part series. Based on a true-life crime podcast, already well known, about a 2011 murder in small-town Troy, Missouri, The Thing About Pam is so tongue-in-cheek, you have to laugh at the shenanigans of bungling law enforcement and grieving citizens, as a beloved wife and mom—and daughter—is found dead of multiple knife wounds in her living room. The two-time Academy Award winning actress plays Pam, hardly recognizable with her pudgy face and physique, her legs like elephant trunks, who slurps endlessly on a giant sugary beverage further sweetened with cherry syrup. The camera can’t get enough of her fat face and squinty eyes as she figures out her next shady moves.

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  • Girl Power: My Brilliant Friend, season 3 on HBO 

    Girl
    Addiction to the HBO series My Brilliant Friend is second only to a passion for the source, Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels. That’s why, writing about the eight episodes of season 3, I do not fear spoilers. Faithful to the literature—in fact Ferrante is listed among the script writers—the series follows friends Lenu (Margherita Mazzucco) and Lila (Gaia Girace) from childhood on, with season 3 the period of young adulthood: each has been married; Lila has a son, Lenu, 2 girls. Proud to a fault, and difficult to comprehend, Lila works in Bruno’s meatpacking plant, a harrowing flesh factory on every level. Lenu, now a famous novelist living in Florence seems to have it all. Something, however, is seriously missing. Their domestic lives play out against blistering violence in Naples, with friends beaten and raped. Yet all the while, their relationship endures, at times through enormous bouts of envy, irritation, ambivalence. Who among us can’t relate?

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  • Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster in The Music Man: “There Was Love All Around”

    Music Man
    Harold Hill, a talented conman, who wants to swindle the Midwest town of River City, Iowa, had me at hello. That may owe to the fact that “The Music Man” is played by Hugh Jackman. Arriving on a train, bumping along with salesmen grousing about Hill’s wiles, Hill pays them no mind, singing and dancing his way into the townsfolks’ hearts. All except Marian, the librarian, who is onto him from the start. It does not take the signature “Seventy-six Trombones,” to know he will win her over too. That’s the stuff of the American musical, and especially a revival as juicy as this one is, at the Winter Garden Theater. It helps too that Marian is that darling of this classic genre, Sutton Foster, who when she is won over by Hill can cast a look of epiphany as no one else can.

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  • The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Still Marvelous in Season Four

    Mrs Maisel
    She’s baaack! Expect funny throughout The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, season four, starting with a strip tease in a taxi. No, it’s not what you think. Miriam Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan) is acting out, not working, mind you. The opposite of work. She’s been fired from a European tour, and with Susie Myerson (Alex Borstein), the agent (who dresses like she’s refereeing prize fights), beside her, she’s having a tantrum, ripping off her beautifully coordinated hat and throwing it out the window of the cab as she’s making her way back into the city. Next comes the jacket, the skirt. Susie is wailing, representing us all bemoaning this untoward episode, equal parts astonishing and hilarious. We all know these clothes are much lauded –the work of costume designer Donna Zakowska who, in real life, has been feted at the White House and beyond for her to-die-for swing coats. “Stop, that goes with the outfit,” screams Susie before they find the one remedy for what ails our Midge—the comedy stage.

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  • Black No More: A Skin Deep Musical Fantasy

    Save
    A new “The New Group” production, Black No More, a musical adaptation of George S. Schuyler’s Afrofuturist 1931 Harlem Renaissance novel, has the feel of something special, theater that may go off the charts in the manner of Hamilton. Black No More opened this week at the Pershing Square Signature Center.

    Featuring a stellar Broadway cast led by powerhouse Tony winning vocalist Lillias White, and Brandon Victor Dixon, of Hamilton and Jesus Christ Superstar fame, the show’s ensemble of excellent singers and dancers tell a tale of contrasts: the exciting free, artsy denizen of Harlem vs. the racist crackers of Atlanta and how they handle their black folk. Needless to say, whites do not fare well in this scenario, even as the fine performances by such actors as Theo Stockman as chief villain Ashby Givens beguile us with their villainy.

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  • Oscar Picks 2022

    Oscars 2022
    Fair is fair. Choosing among the pleasures of this year’s best movies could not have been easy. Awards, particularly the Oscar voters’ choices announced this morning, reflect a nuanced vision: I am especially heartened by the nods to two of my favorite actresses, Jessica Chastain and Penelope Cruz in two outstanding of this year’s films: The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Parallel Mothers respectively. Will they win, over the work of Oscar winners Olivia Colman and Nicole Kidman? They can. And Kristen Stewart for Spencer, a movie that many people simply did not love—her fine performance as Diana deserves a category all its own.

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  • The Gilded Age on HBO: Oh, the vulgarity of the rich in America!

    ???
    Mountains of gorgeous food: lobsters, roasted meats, salads, caviar. The eye filling opulence of Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey follow up series, The Gilded Age on HBO more than sates any desire for decadence. Forget Stanford White’s magnificent design for the newly completed Russell mansion on turn of the century Fifth Avenue; nothing says conspicuous consumption more than the spread Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) hoped would lure the city’s elite to her home to solidify friendships in wealth. Not surprisingly, snobbery does not work that way. No one shows up. Any readers of the novels of Henry James and Edith Wharton would know how the hierarchies among the rich work, their laws finite. Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijn looks her chiseled nose down on her neighbors, nailing the divide between Old New York and New. And viewers are left to look on hungrily at the grandeur, and guffaw at the Russell’s servants’ dumping amply piled silver platters into garbage bins.

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  • Audible’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night: What’s Your Poison?

    Long day
    The Tyrones in lockdown look a lot like you and me. Amazon boxes, Chinese takeout, Starbucks, not to mention the Purell. Never mind that Long Day’s Journey Into Night, the classic 1912 American play by Eugene O’Neill, features another kind of affliction than the one we are experiencing. The scaled down version of O’Neill’s play, an Audible production directed by Robert O’Hara at the Minetta Lane Theater, neatly conflates what’s ailing us. The title says much about the longeuers, the boredom, the stasis that forces this family—and us– to relive sad pasts. The Tyrones in seaside residence make the best of it at first. James (Bill Camp in cut offs) flirts with Mary (Elizabeth Marvel in workout tights), his wife of many years, remarking to their two sons at how great she looks—a picture of health doing yoga. Before too long the tippling begins. Never too early to take a shot: James, the sons Jamie (Jason Bowen), not doing much, and Edmund (Ato Blankson-Wood), ambitious with a bad cough—whiskey is their medium. Mary’s something else, retreating upstairs, visibly tying up her arm, shooting up.

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  • Cecily Strong at the Shed in The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe

    Cesiloy Strong
    A homeless woman who communicates with aliens, “Trudy” opens the show, The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, created by Jane Wagner in 1985 for her then partner, now wife, Lily Tomlin. Revived at The Shed, under Leigh Silverman’s astute direction, the baton for dispensing planetary consciousness is passed to Saturday Night Live’s comedic virtuoso Cecily Strong. As Trudy, she wears an ill-fitting coat, its lining bedecked with post-its. How else will wisdom be saved in a world accustomed to one-liners? More aptly, how will this wisdom be communicated to the life beyond our atmosphere? A gimmick maybe, but at the show’s end, audience members picked up post-its on their way out. My bright green one reads: “Humanity’s biggest hurdle is human behavior.”

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  • Bridget Everett Stars in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere: The Heart of Manhattan, Kansas

    ??
    First aware of Bridget Everett as a mother in Patti Cake$, an indie hit of 2017, I met her on two occasions: she was a flamboyant speaker at the Nantucket Film Festival that year receiving an award. Trust me, you never want to follow her onstage. Second, at the Athena Film Festival, she attended with her pal Murray Hill, so named for the Manhattan, NYC neighborhood. Both make a big impression, HUGE, and now you can see for yourself as Everett stars in an HBO series, Somebody Somewhere, with Hill in a supporting role, directed by Robert Cohen and Jay Duplass. So full of heart, I would say, the series is a gift for Valentine’s Day.

    Rural America is a foreign country to me, but Manhattan, Kansas is both strange and ironic given that you cannot imagine a place more remote from Manhattan, New York, ground zero for misfits seeking personal expression. And guess what, looks like Bridget Everett feels the same way. She’s from there, and as Executive Producer of the series featuring autobiographical details from her life, she’s crafted this location, and at least fictionally, finds a voice there. Manhattan, Kansas is to Bridget Everett as Baltimore is to John Waters.

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  • Drive My Car: An Oscar Game Changer from Japan

    Drive my Carjpg
    Life moves slowly. Loss. Grief. So much happens in Drive My Car, Japan’s entry for the Best International Film Academy Award, it is amazing that the movie is only two and a half hours long. That it has been named Best Film by the venerable NY and LA Film Critics can make you think, Parasite all over again, but that Best Picture Oscar winner from Korea is action-packed, a satiric bloody nightmare romp, while the longeuers of Drive My Car drive home deeper, more difficult truths, and how we process them. An acclaimed theater director (Hidetoshi Nishijima) loses his beautiful wife. Two years into his grief, he takes a job directing Uncle Vanya in Hiroshima. A young woman (Toko Miura) from a remote mountain town Hokkaido, dour, her face expressing oceans of sadness, chauffeurs him around in his red Saab. Producing Chekhov in Japan may represent one aspect of multi-culturalism, but the players speak many languages, including sign. And perhaps most poignantly, it takes more than translation to make inner lives connect.

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  • The Kinky Truths of Slave Play

    Slave Play
    Sex play informs Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play, a sensation when it opened prior to the pandemic, and now re-opened on Broadway at the August Wilson Theater. The fuss is understandable: The riveting drama opens with three interracial couples enacting slave-master fantasies in period dress. What follows is contemporary group therapy as each couple is  scrutinized, and evaluated by a team of analysts. In Harris’ drama, fitting in our moment of reckoning, text and subtext all come down to Race. As the slave-master scenario is so archetypical, you wonder, shouldn’t all sex deserve this clinical touch? “A Note on Your Discomfort” by writer Norman Parker in the Playbill is explicit: “Slave Play is a study in American memory: the psychologies of the prized and of the oppressed; the grateful and the entitled: who’s top, who’s bottom; who speaks, who can’t, and who betta listen.”

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  • Candace Bushnell Dares to Ask: Is There Still Sex in the City?

    Candice22The night before the HBO series she spawned reincarnated as And Just Like That at MoMA, Candace Bushnell signals, she has moved on. At the Daryl Roth Theater, she struts across a stage fitted with a hot pink couch and shelves lined with Manolos, recounting a stellar career as columnist, coming from Connecticut, modest suitcase in hand, sleeping around. This “having sex like a man” becomes material, and quite explicit. If you are a fan of Sex & the City, you know what I mean. Miraculously, in her tour de force hour and a half one-woman show—with the exception of a cameo by two dogs, the words “penis” and “vagina” are uttered once each, as Bushnell poses the question, Is There Still Sex in the City? Phone in hand, she converses with her Samantha, her Miranda, and her Charlotte, paragons of wisdom, as she navigates her rise as writer, all the while dumped by lovers including her ballet dancer husband. The men she mentions do not fare well—even her supportive father somehow lets her know her flat chest will get her nowhere in love. An exception is Darren Star, the series showrunner who attended the opening. I caught up with him over a gargantuan urn of guacamole at the Rosa Mexicana afterparty where a Covid test was now the new condom: “Yes, she got it right. She’s honest about Sex & the City and how we got it made. She would not have invited me if she was going to trash me.”

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