Friday, April 26, 2024
For a single night each month, you can join Gary Ferrar, one of New York’s most sought-after entertainers, for a mind-bending evening of magic and mentalism. You gather around an antique pool table in an underground parlor to become part of an intimate experience that will leave you questioning what, if anything, is actually real. Mentalist and magician Gary Ferrar’s world premiere of NOTHING HERE IS REAL, directed by Harrison Kramer, has begun its residency and open-ended run at The Cocktail Lounge Below Tom Valenti’s Oxbow Tavern (240 Columbus Ave. at West 71 St.). Performances take place every last Tuesday
Month: June 2019
Final Performances of Megan Monaghan Rivas’s ‘Three Musketeers: 1941’ This Weekend!
Even if King Arthur didn't return to the aid of Great Britain during World War II, other heroes like Wonder Woman, Captain America, Sherlock Holmes and The Scarlet Pimpernel aided the Allies. Now they are joined by Megan Monaghan Rivas's Three Musketeers: 1941 at the Jeffrey and Paula Gural Theatre at A.R.T./New York Theatres. June 27-30 are Rivas's likable re-imagination's final performances. Hopefully her smart update will find audiences beyond NYC. Commissioned for the Women in Theatre (WIT) Festival, the four loyal guards are now dedicated female Resistance fighters. The time transition is so smooth that there's no need to be familiar with the 1844
Celebrations Two Legends Remembered During PRIDE Month
It's been 30 years since photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) and choreographer Alvin Ailey (1931-1989) died from AIDS. The June-long celebration of civil rights and respect is also a reminder that while there are now ways of controlling the disease, there remains no cure. Two recent performances were timely reminders that both left indelible marks on art and society. Triptych (Eyes of One on Another). New York premiere. BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, June 6-8, 2019. In 1989 when the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. caved to pressure from politicians and the Religious Right and cancelled the travelling Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment exhibit, protesters aimed a high-power scenic projector and
Madame Lynch at New Ohio Theatre
Madame Lynch is a buffet of bloodthirsty; maniacal madness, flavored heavily with every theatrical device imaginable. It's quite simply delicious from start to end. The Drunkards Wife theater company espouse a maximalist design sense -a core tenet of their mission, with a glorious over-the-top exuberance. It's superior theatrical eye candy. Normandy Sherwood and Craig Flanagin exhume the legacy of Eliza Lynch - the "Empress of Paraguay" to interrogate her influence on cultural imperialism. Her history is really worth a Google search - born Irish, fled to France to escape the potato famine, french courtesan turned mistress-wife to Paraguayan dictator -Francisco Solano Lopez,
Pilobolus –The Joyce Theatre
Pilobolus is performing two programs during its three-weeks at the Joyce Theater this summer, and each piece is unique while being ineffably consistent with the style of the company. It is dance in the broadest sense of the word, rhythmic movement. Yet, the company borrows from gymnastics and acrobatics, and sometimes, the closest parallel one can find is the Moscow Circus in the old Soviet Union. The five pieces in program A are distinct and appeal to both dance mavens and neophytes. “On the Nature of Things” is a classical study in movement. Nathaniel Buchsbaum, Krystal Butler and Quincy Ellis
NY Philharmonic Ends Its Season with David Lang’s ‘prisoner of the state’
The New York Philharmonic began the 2018-2019 season in light and ended in darkness with the world premiere of David Lang's opera prisoner of the state. The NYP commission, conducted by Music Director Jaap van Zweden, performed June 6-8 as part of the orchestra's Music of Conscience series, explored the long tendrils of totalitarianism - and an opera born out of hate is brilliant. prisoner of the state is a meditation on Beethoven's only opera Fidelio (1805), whose titled character infiltrates where her wrongfully incarcerated husband is held and saves him from execution. Written during the Napoleonic wars, Beethoven never hid his passion for freedom. Lang removes
A Positive Russian Influence: Ballet
As the Romanovs's bewilderingly indifference to the political and socioeconomic upheavals leading to the Russian Revolution worsened, ballet at home and abroad flourished. French-born Marius Petipa (1818–1910) was Chief Choreographer of Saint Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater where he set the premieres of Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker among others. Artists dissatisfied with his autocratic yet groundbreaking vision joined impresario Serge Diaghilev in his Paris-based Ballets Russes. The two aesthetics share a legacy of brilliant choreographers (Ballets Russes had Michael Fokine, Nijinsky, his sister Bronislava, Leonid Massine and George Balanchine) and enduring influence. New York had pleasing reminders of this lofty dance heritage when American Ballet Theatre opened their
Remembrance: New York City Opera and The Museum of Jewish Heritage
Apologies for the delayed review of New York City Opera's world premiere of Ted Rosenthal's Dear Erich. The sold-out performances were January 9-13, 2019 at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene at The Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Before finally reporting on Rosenthal's loving tribute to his father and the grandmother he never met, I wanted to visit the Museum. An opportunity presented itself with the exhibit Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away, on view now through January 3, 2020. Displayed are 700 artifacts and materials on loan from over 20 institutions and private collections, including the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The Museum'