Just before catching a plane back to South Florida, I was able to squeeze in one final play -- a matinee of David Ives’ kinky, amusing Venus in Fur, starring Broadway’s latest “it” girl, Nina Arianda. Last season, she made her Broadway debut in Born Yesterday, filling the legendary shoes of Judy Holliday quite credibly. Now, she returns to a new work, a darkly comic … [Read more...]
‘Hell’ a darkly comic riff on the real land down under
The temptation to construct a review of Robert Olen Butler’s novel Hell entirely from quotations and excerpts is almost more than I can resist. And really, why should I resist? In Butler’s propulsively clever yet unsettling vision of the afterlife, I would be unable to avoid eternal damnation no matter what I chose: virtue or vice, piety or sacrilege, ethical rectitude or … [Read more...]