Theater: 'Lady Day' Sings; Steven Soderbergh Slips
LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR & GRILL *** out of **** THE LIBRARY ** out of **** SOUTH PACIFIC ** 1/2 out of **** LADY DAY AT EMERSON'S BAR & GRILL *** out of **** CIRCLE IN THE SQUARE Audra...
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Celebrating a Magnificent War Memorial on the International Day for Monuments...
©Mike Masters Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Romania (CC BY-SA 3.0 RO) (Creative Commons) April 18 is the International Day for Monuments and Sites, a day when we remember and celebrate the places that...
View Article5 Questions for Poets: Part 4
In the 4th part of the National Poetry Month blog, I ask America's best poets to answer five more questions by readers of poetry. 1. April 23 is Shakespeare's 450th anniversary. If you went back in...
View ArticleAisle View: Kiss of the Vampire
The comedic chameleon Arnie Burton first came to view in the 2008 parody version of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, a four-character romp in which he was one of two men who played all the roles other...
View ArticleBullets Over Broadway Comes with Guns Blazing
With Woody Allen at the helm, Zach Braff in a starring role, and a rich ensemble cast that earns both laughs and applause, Bullets Over Broadway has a lot to offer. The 1994 movie may have fallen off...
View ArticleFirst Nighter: Moss Hart's "Act One" in Two Great, Big Acts
When theater veteran Moss Hart published his bestselling Act One in 1959, he packed a lot into it about his impoverished childhood and neophyte playwriting years with the already famous, successful and...
View ArticleMet Opera: Olga Peretyatko Shines in Bellini's 'I Puritani'
The Metropolitan Opera returned its vintage production of Bellini's I Puritani to the stage last night and the fast-rising Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko wowed the first-night audience in an...
View ArticleHabib Koite: A West African Fête at the City Winery (VIDEO)
Habib Koite, one of Mali's most beloved singer/guitarists was in town last month to promote his new CD "Soô" on Contre Jour Records. He packed NYC's City Winery with a polyglot audience, which included...
View ArticleThe Value of Music
What is music for? Is it a pastime, a diversion? Is it a luxury, an amusement for the privileged? Or is it something more? In our schools, we try to ensure that children are at least given some small...
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New Movies for Foodies
Popcorn is the perfect crunchy, salty accompaniment to film viewing, but it might be insufficient while watching two new mouth-watering movies -- Tasting Menu, opening today at Manhattan's Quad Cinema,...
View ArticleThings I Learned From James Franco
I've been thinking about James Franco a lot lately. Okay, in the wake of his recent controversy, this isn't going to sound great. I was prepared to write this beautiful love letter to James Franco and...
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Artists' Statements: Can't Live With Them, Can't Live Without Them
There's a phenomenon in the art world I like to call the "metamorphosis of crap." It happens in that instant when, after having been initially bored, confused or repelled by a completely artless pile...
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92 Artists Drew Our Favorite Female Disney and Pixar Characters
Snow White by Jessie Slipchinsky (@jslipchi) Disney's female heroines and villainesses stand proudly amongst the most longstanding and beloved fictional characters -- both online and off. Unusually...
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Once Again, Moss Hart's Name Shines on Broadway
Moss Hart -- more than fifty years after his death, his name is back up in lights on Broadway with the smash new stage adaptation of his 1959 memoir, Act One, at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre. A...
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Laugh At Death: Kris Martin on Mortality, Silent Bells and the Skeleton He...
As spring again sputters into being and we witness another revolution of the life/death/life cycle, a recently installed artwork in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden stands as a marker of this type of...
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LA Ballet Honors Celebrity Philanthropists
Paula Abdul, Lori Milken, Jane Seymour Photo Credit: Brian Lindensmith/ All Access Photos Recently, the LA Ballet honored Lori Milken, Paula Abdul and Jane Seymour with a gala at the Beverly Wilshire...
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Mark Innerst at DC Moore Gallery
Mark Innerst's recent paintings of New York City fuse the artist's sense of awe with his confident ability to improvise and invent. Innerst's midtown cityscapes and Hudson panoramas use geometry as a...
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Discovering Gabriel García Márquez
"A mis doce años de edad estuve a punto de ser atropellado por una bicicleta. Un señor cura que pasaba me salvó con un grito: ¡Cuidado! El ciclista cayó a tierra. El señor cura, sin detenerse, me dijo:...
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Boys in the Attic
Anna Russell used to say that "The best thing about opera is that you can say and do absolutely anything -- as long as you sing it!" And, in all honesty, the operatic repertoire is riddled with...
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'Next to Normal,' Cal Rep
Directed by Joanne Gordon for Cal Rep, "Next To Normal," with music by Tom Kitt, and story and lyrics by Brian Yorkey, tells the story of a family's reaction to a mother's mental illness. The mental...
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