As at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the unanswerable question is: Does violent interrogation extract valuable information from terrorists or does it turn prisoners into terrorists? The issue is explored in Yussef El Guindi’s Back of the Throat, the dramatic case of an Arab-American writer wannabe named Khaled, whose apartment is forceably entered by a pair of thugs who claim to … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: From ‘Red’ to the ghoulish black of ‘Addams Family’
“What do you see?” demands intense abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko, referring to the massive red canvas with two darker red vertical lines that dominates the stage. He is speaking to his new assistant, a would-be artist named simply Ken, hired to do all manner of grunt work, freeing up Rothko to ruminate, cogitate, bellow and, only occasionally, paint. And he is … [Read more...]