Certain roles are simply owned by their originators, whose memorable performances cast a shadow over all those who dare attempt to fill their shoes. Like, say, Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! But at The Wick Theatre, as reverent as Lee Roy Reams is to the Jerry Herman-Michael Stewart musical and to those who walked down that red velvet staircase before him, he will have you … [Read more...]
Theater roundup: ‘The Last Schwartz,’ ‘Old Times’
Whatever would the theater do without dysfunctional families? They are the subject of so many rip-roaring dramas and dark comedies, from Long Day’s Journey into Night to August: Osage County to Deborah Zoe Laufer’s Catskills clan in The Last Schwartz. First seen at Florida Stage in 2002, the play has had an active life at regional theaters across the country and has come close … [Read more...]
A mommy-porn idyll without ideas
Freud and Kinsey would have field days with Adore, a raging libido of a film from the presumptively provocative French director Anne Fontaine. Instead of Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, the major players in Fontaine’s new sexual roundelay Roz (Robin Wright) and Lil (Naomi Watts) and Ian (Xavier Samuel) and Tom (James Frecheville) -- two mothers and -- gasp! -- their sons. No, … [Read more...]
‘Good Without God’ a well-written case for ethical non-belief
Books by atheist authors have flooded the market in recent years, and some, such as Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, exhibit a stridently anti-religious tone. Now comes a more nuanced and balanced book written by Greg M. Epstein, the humanist chaplain at Harvard University. Good Without God critiques religious belief in a respectful … [Read more...]