(Michael Feingold’s article appeared in The Village Voice, 5/1.)

Three obstinate females—one fictional and two historical—dominated my theatergoing last week. Tenacious women make great showy roles for leading actresses, and also seem to have a stimulating effect on male writers: Medea and Tosca, Mistress Quickly and Mrs. Warren, Dolly Levi and Maggie the Cat all sprang from masculine imaginations. In plays by women, who see the female mind from inside, the woman at the center is more often vacillating or self-doubting. Men, stuck with the external gaze, focus on the determination that masks the doubt.

Mrs. Carrie Watts (Cicely Tyson), the heroine of Horton Foote's 1953 play The Trip to Bountiful (Sondheim Theatre), has flickering doubts, but conquers them on her way to her simple goal. Raised and married in a tiny Texas town called Bountiful, she's been trapped for over a dozen years in a claustrophobic flat in noisy Houston, with her son, Ludie (Cuba Gooding Jr.), and daughter-in-law, Jessie Mae (Vanessa Williams). Getting back to Bountiful, for reasons even she doesn't fully understand, is her one desire.

http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-05-01/theater/tyson-takes-a-trip-to-bountiful-imelda-dominates-here-lies-love-midler-meddles-as-sue-mengers/

(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/23.)

Discothèques make strange bedfellows. To confirm this dangerous fact of life, just boogie on down — and you must — to the glittery new dance palace at the Public Theater. There you’ll find yourself dancing hip by pelvis with one of the most notorious power couples of the 20th century.

I mean Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, the former president and first lady of the Philippines, who turn out to be a lot of fun if you just go with the sweaty flow. After all, who’s thinking about morality in politics when the music’s this loud and catchy? Be careful how close you get to them, though, or you might wake up to one hell of a morning after.

http://theater.nytimes.com/2013/04/24/theater/reviews/david-byrnes-here-lies-love-at-the-public-theater.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1367079985-F94GtoGDW8rIJeeti3Eqlw

(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/24.)

Chances are you are not a movie star. Chances are equally good that this state of affairs is not likely to change soon. But if you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to explore that golden realm where the gods and goddesses of the screen dwell, race over to the Booth Theater, where you can enjoy an audience with a woman who consorted almost exclusively with box office luminaries, or “twinklies” as she affectionately calls them.

http://theater.nytimes.com/2013/04/25/theater/reviews/ill-eat-you-last-starring-bette-midler.html?pagewanted=all

(Michael Feingold’s article appeared in the Village Voice, 4/24.)

The title of Richard Greenberg's new play, The Assembled Parties (Friedman Theatre), carries multiple meanings. Its "parties" are a pair of Christmas dinners, occurring 20 years apart, and also the oddly assorted individuals who gather for them—members of a single family (plus one outsider) but oddly assorted nonetheless.

Though they are indeed assembled on Christmas, the Bascovs and their in-laws, the Rapoports, are Jews, one generation removed from the shtetl, and not particularly big on Christmas spirit. Julie Bascov (Jessica Hecht), whose cooking and passion for domesticity hold the clan together, calls Christmas "a lovely, lovely season" except for Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas"—"a tiny acoustic rape every time you leave the apartment."

The apartment, a sprawling 14-room epic on Central Park West, is where these celebrants collect, hosted by Julie and her husband, Ben (Jonathan Walker), an affluent practitioner of some unspecified business. Ben's sister, Faye (Judith Light), and her husband, Morty (Mark Blum), a prosperous "fruiterer," brave the holiday traffic from Long Island to be there. The two occasions we see, occurring in 1980 and 2000, seem as strangely perfunctory as the family connections. A tree is decorated, apathetically; presents are a rarity; Yiddish words are flung about, especially by Faye and Ben. Dinner, constantly postponed, seems almost an afterthought. The event that Christmas commemorates is only referred to once, when someone trying to get a repairman to fix a leaky pipe offers to pay a "Nativity surcharge."

http://www.villagevoice.com/2013-04-24/theater/greenberg-s-assembled-parties-sort-of-celebrate-christmas-odets-gives-hollywood-a-big-knife/