NEW YORK — When Cuban-American director and playwright María Irene Fornés died last fall, the New York Times obituary referred to her as “an underrecognized genius.” Now, what is perhaps her finest work, “Fefu and Her Friends,” can be seen at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center. Revolutionary in its form and daring in its philosophy, “Fefu,” from 1977, hasn’t played off-Broadway since its debut. Think of it as the masterpiece no one has seen.
NEW YORK — Ian Barford can tell when the audience turns against him. It begins with a kiss, and escalates during a breakup scene. By the time he hobbles through a door, desperate to reconcile, “they’re just hissing at me, practically throwing things at me,” Barford said.
Tania and Syngin were fighting. It was mid-June and sultry, with the afternoon temperature snaking toward 80 degrees. They hadn’t slept much the night before — blame work, blame sex — and now, in the front seats of a lumbering Chevy Suburban, having already missed a couple of turnoffs along a New York highway, they began to argue about the future. Did Syngin have a plan? Could Tania stop yelling?
Yes, Jake Gyllenhaal was crying, but it was a dignified kind of crying. Less sobbing, more welling. “Sorry,” he said, collecting himself. “I hate this. It seems performative in an interview.” But if you open yourself to the problem of existence in what may or may not be a determinate universe — which is what Gyllenhaal was doing on an afternoon two weeks ago — tears happen.
Halley Feiffer was a lonely high school student when she fell hard for a tall, dark and long-dead Russian. Aaron Posner met the same man in college and it was really more of a love/hate situation. “It ended up being kind of the ultimate frustration,” he said. “Almost like a tease.” That special guy: Anton Chekhov, a father of modern drama and one of the most acute chroniclers of the human condition in its brilliant, broken, awkward variety.
At the end of a dinner break recently, a group of actors and designers sprawled in a loose circle. Two men huddled together, sharing an online video, another man scrolled through a feed, fingers skimming the screen like skaters gliding across a frozen lake. A woman lay on the floor stretching, her phone nestled neatly at her hip.
Tom and Louise meet up every week, same time, same place, same order: London Pride for him, white wine for her. They chat, down their drinks, rush out the door to the office of their marriage counselor.
NEW YORK — Behind the glass window of a Midtown Manhattan recording studio, Patti LuPone, summery in a short white dress, swayed to the syncopated beat. “A kiss can be bliss when it spans the abyss,” she sang. Then she began to scat: “Zoowa zoop zooza zooway.”
A Shakespeare play is a dangerous place. Swords can kill you. So can poison, grief and bears. Eleven corpses crowd the stage in “Richard III.” “King Lear” does away with 10 characters.
NEW YORK — There are 43 muscles in the human face and you can count most of them during “Skin,” a sometimes absorbing and sometimes irritating evening of cast-created vignettes, performed by the wildly expressive members of Broken Box Mime Theater at A.R.T./ New York Theaters. A company dedicated to giving a new wordless spin on an old wordless form, Broken Box skips walking against the wind and trapped in a box in favor of pop culture capers and #MeToo inspired riffs.
NEW YORK — Before rehearsals for Amir Nizar Zuabi’s “Grey Rock” could begin, refugee camps had to be visited, apartments had to be rented, checkpoints had to be passed and an uncertain, monthslong visa process had to be completed.
NEW YORK — Before rehearsals for Amir Nizar Zuabi’s “Grey Rock” could begin, refugee camps had to be visited, apartments had to be rented, checkpoints had to be passed and an uncertain, monthslong visa process had to be completed.
NEW YORK — When you move to a new city, it’s tough to make friends. You can search online communities for meetups, strike up fumbling conversations in coffee shops or bother friends of friends, or friends of friends of friends, until they extend invitations. Or you can rent a small theater for four or five months and cajole a bunch of famous and almost-famous actors to hang out onstage with you. You’ll even provide snacks.
NEW YORK — Actor Santino Fontana had his legs waxed for the first time last year. His chest, too. He mastered, mostly, how to walk in heels and riddled out which lipsticks flatter him. (He’s an autumn. Clearly.) Last spring, during a turn in “Hello, Dolly!” he brought Bernadette Peters pictures of himself in a variety of women’s wigs. “Pretty girl” she scrawled next to some of them. Beside others: “Not so pretty girl.”
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