The Scottish play and others

New reviews in this week's TONY:

The National Theatre of Scotland's terrific, sense-assaulting military drama Black Watch, in which director John Tiffany pulls out every stop and yanks out every trick in his director's bag. The war comes home to Scotland in a way that every American can relate to, sort of. Had writer-director Josh Fox been supported over the last few years by, say, the Public Theater or another Off-Broadway institution, he'd have created the American equivalent, a hard, politically informed look at our fighting men & women, and the culture that produces them and, sometimes, abandons them. (Instead, he made a movie: Check out Memorial Day on the International WOW site.) One of the things I liked best about the play is that it doesn't make apologies for the very existence of war or the need for soldiers. It takes fighting as a given. I can understand Isaac's reservations about the show, but don't share them myself.

Does that make me prowar, or just a soft, cowardly civilian who vicariates through the testicular-enlarging spectacle of well-equipped bullies? Hurrrm. But I really love Wallace Shawn.

I too felt old and out of place at the remarkably vapid Fuerzabruta.

Thanks for the shoutout, John!

Drums of the Waves of Horikawa is beautifully crafted postmodern silliness.

Watch me interview A Bronx Tale's Chazz Palminteri here. See how he resists the urge to snap my neck. This is even before my colleague Adam Feldman's um, mixed review of his show came out.

I review Adam Bock's The Receptionist on NY1's On Stage this Saturday and Sunday at 9:30am and 7:30pm.

Diiiiismissed!

Comments

[isaac]

hey David,

Thanks for the shoutout yourself!