Category Archives: Commentary

‘LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT’ (2026 FILM) REVIEW FROM NEW YORK · Sep 30th

By Bob Shuman

Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night has been filmed, to acclaim, multiple times, including Sidney Lumet’s 1962 production, which  garnered Katharine Hepburn an Oscar nomination—and, at its culmination, left the cast immobile, like mice caught in glue.  In 1973, Laurence Olivier’s version, won an Emmy for the actor’s portrayal of the father, James Tyrone, which was based on the 1971 National Theatre production.  O’Neill had already won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1936, but he never intended his original “play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood,” to be published, until twenty-five years after his death (he died in 1953).  Never to be performed, he did make arrangements for the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm to stage it, even so.  His widow, Carlotta, overriding alarum, approved the first staging of Long Day’s Journey into Night to take place in Sweden, in 1956. 

 
Jonathan Kent’s new film is drawn from his 2016 Broadway revival, for which Jessica Lange won a Tony Award.  The work, in a streamlined adaptation by Pulitzer-winning David Lindsay-Abaire, is shaped by and focused on Lange’s Mary Tyrone, a convent girl who becomes addicted to morphine, after the delivery of her last child.  Some would disagree, though, that she is the leading character in the script, if the drama is examined in a more Aristotelian way (Aristotle, of course, did not write plays). The main role in O’Neill’s masterpiece probably belongs to the youngest son, Edmund (Colin Morgan), traveling to the doctor to confirm a diagnosis of TB.

 
The playwright might have felt he had earned his own way of seeing drama, as an unruly experimentalist, like James Joyce, who wrote too long, as well (O’Neill said he actually did cut his texts, however);  Kent nods to this untameable, Irish instinct, when showing the help in the Tyrone kitchen (including the cook, Bridget, who is not seen in the play (Lesa Thurman). Did not Treplev, in Chekhov’s The Seagull (the Russian writer influenced O’Neill), call for New Forms?: “and if we can’t have them, then we’d better have nothing at all.” The great interpreter of O’Neill, Brian Dennehy, once explained, in a 2003 Theater Talk interview, as well, that the playwright felt the length, and repetition, of his work was needed–he wanted to “wear the audience down” in order to “saturate them with his ideas.”

 

The run-time for the new movie is 109 minutes (1 hour and 49 minutes). The show time for the Kent-Lange stage production was approximately 3 hours and 45 minutes (225 minutes).  All other film records are longer than two hours and 30 minutes: The Hepburn film lasts 2 hours and 50 minutes; the Olivier version is 2 hours and 40 minutes. Jack Lemmon’s 1987 showing, directed by Jonathan Miller, runs 2 hours and 50 minutes. Ingmar Bergman’s 1988 stage version lasted approximately three hours, but was cut down from its original four-and-one-half hour stage length. The Dennehy production, also starring Vanessa Redgrave: 4.5 hours.

 

The current adaptation, given its relatively brief running time, with what could be considered at least 50 missing minutes, might be comparable to the brittle and delicate 35-year-old wedding bouquet, unpacked in the film, a keepsake, but not the wedding gown (I recall Bibi Andersson dropped hers and left it, forgotten, in Ingmar Bergman’s production).

 

Number of real American dead:  from between 19 and 22, with over 820 wounded.  Record Fuel Costs* (Drudge Report).  Kitchen table up 1.2% (May-June). Mortgage rates rise. In the entertainment industry, healthcare benefits are being lost for unionized performers, who do not earn the $28,933 earning requirement to retain SAG-AFTRA health insurance plans.

 

Trends in Arts and technology are allowing films to be executed differently today, more efficiently than in, let’s say, Lumet’s Hollywood of 1962–even in 2007, before his death, improved methods ran Bergman out of the business.

 

O’Neill had become passé, in the East Village (1980s), after a 1972-1973 surge, with Colleen Dewhurst in A Moon for the Misbegotten.  Other playwrights arrived, a new generation stormed the gates:  Sam Shepard, Wendy Wasserstein, August Wilson, Christopher Durang, to name only four.  When I mentioned O’Neill, one day in a class, I was greeted with silence.  Irish-Americans might still feel that their own experiences were so uncannily his, or his were theirs, but in an ever-changing New York City, who, except us, could find episodes from 1912 relevant?  Were they real or imagined, anyway, heard or literal, no matter how accurate: or were they all from a book?:  The priests and nuns, churches and convent girls, bad doctors and orphans, bogs, and whiskey, pianos and famine, lack of responsibility, stubbornness and outside work, the seashore, God, circumvented fathers, Holy Mary, and “leopards whose spots don’t change.”

 

Kent and Lindsay-Abaire do seem to be mistaking O’Neill for Tennessee Williams, a late convert to Catholicism, born an Episcopalian, at the beginning of their Long Day’s Journey into Night, as if they’re starting to mount The Glass Menagerie (Tom and Edmund both go to sea). The team is forfeiting an amazing stream of naturalism, as if we’re listening from the next room, caught so well by David Wellington in his 1996 Canadian production, starring William Hutt and Martha Henry (run-time: 2 hrs. and 53 minutes).

 

In the early ‘90s, my new roommate, decades my senior, a proper, divorced stockbroker, who wore navy pin-striped suits and Brooks Brothers shirts—and had gone through a nasty, protracted divorce from “the dragon lady,” suddenly mentioned Eugene O’Neill. He thought one of the most memorable parts, from Long Day’s Journey into Night, was the light bulb scene.  “Did you ever see it?”

 

The aforementioned sequence is handled swiftly, in the new film, in the dark, but both Ralph Richardson (in the Lumet version) and Olivier, actually unscrewed them, facing the burning, tactile electric heat, one by one.

 

My new roommate, I would find out, read biographies of Eugene O’Neill.  It  was an interest. He became an expert on the writer, as he saw his children less and less.  What a strange coincidence–I was still dressing in all black (he suggested I change that to blue). Was our common literary interest based on identifying with creatures from the gloam?  Or was emotional truth prevailing, penetrating–like drama was supposed to behave?  The ridiculed, misunderstood James Tyrone (Ed Harris), O’Neill’s paterfamilias, may be critical to an understanding of the reality of the playscape, speaking to most people’s needs and lives, now. Our breaking shopping bags and mice in the dormant heater, during the summer humidity and coming nor’easter.

James is the character who knows, most intimately, the panic of financial insecurity, having been deserted by his father as a child and, by default, working to support his mother and four siblings for 50 cents a week.  As breadwinner, he then took on the economic complexity of his own tormented life and family.  In the play, the “Old Man” can afford his properties, for he became a successful thespian. His investments, however, are considered ill-advised by his wife and sons. He does pay for a cook, maid, and chauffeur/garbageman, even so (how many could do that now?). For those who have been poor, the internal panic may never end—and regarding Tyrone, in particular, Social Security, no matter how long it will last into our future, would never lessen his anxiety:  it wasn’t even implemented until 1940.

 

I’ve never completely understood why Mary is left alone, during the afternoon of the day when Edmund and Jamie (Ben Foster) go to the doctor.  They will hear Edmund’s diagnosis then (James, in the meantime, is looking after his business interests and has an appointment at the club, to follow-up at the doctor’s office, later).  They’ve worried about Mary’s return from the hospital; she’s been “home” for two months, and, the previous night, she entered her old room where she habitually takes morphine. She’s emotionally fraught about the triggering news that her son may be terminally ill.  

 

Why would they leave her—or why wouldn’t more precautions have been set in place? The family throws their hands up so easily; I don’t know whether it’s a plot hole or disturbing inner truth.  Cathleen (Ericka Roe), the maid, is clueless—and useless. But wouldn’t one of the other domestic workers have filled her in?  

 

I suppose the larger  issue with the new Long Day’s Journey into Night is that it does not “fail better,” to quote Beckett.  All the monumental productions, with famous actresses, shocking revelations, artistic imaginations and visions, and the new Aristotelian reflection does not inform our lives more meaningfully than what has gone before.  An anomaly, it is.  The line readings are done well, but this may be thought of, perhaps, as a tribute–not a primal haunting or rite.  The pages of dialogue  have been strategically edited to size.  The cinematography (Mark Wolf) and lighting can be shimmering, the colors muted, but the way of life portrayed seems too dependent on current stereotypes and sensibilities–not the graver, more hardscrabble existence suggested by the accusations, confrontations, and self-destruction of the play, or even from faces in sepia-toned portraits, from the setting’s time.  So much entertainment industry know-how, with the stuff of lived life, and everyday carry, largely beautified, sentimentalized, or missing (such a drop zone of detritus was actually highlighted in the Jessica Lange’ movie Country, 1984).  O’Neill himself, the philosophically anarchistic, radical playwright, would have rebuffed this prestige-film operation–but, like the first Swedish production of Long Day’s Journey into Night, cooler heads prevail. 

 

Long Day’s Journey into Night is unknowable, unfathomable, an Everest, worth reading long biographies about, in which it is analyzed and contextualized–while putting away money for next month’s alimony.  Multiple exposures are warranted, at different venues in various productions; hours and hours of them.  Fortunately, that will never change.

 

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Mary’s shattering last monologue is, perhaps, what people remember most vividly, when they conjure recollections of the play’s emotional excavations, or the dark admittance of sibling betrayal between the brothers.  The story goes that after the first night of the American production, on February 7, 1956, the audience wouldn’t leave.  They came up to the stage and stood there transfixed, wanting to be near it still;  they had been so moved.

 

Mary, you may know, beat her morphine addiction after her husband’s death. Never conclusively diagnosed, Eugene (Edmund), was unable to write for the last ten years of his life, due to a progressive neurological disorder, marked by severe tremoring of the hands.  Jamie, taking care of his mother, until her death at age 64, in L.A., rode with her body back to the East Coast, by train, boozing it up with whores.

 

(c) by Bob Shuman. All rights reserved.

CREDITS

IN MEMORY OF
Bill Kenwright

CAST
(In order of appearance)
Mary Tyrone JESSICA LANGE
James Tyrone ED HARRIS
Jamie Tyrone BEN FOSTER
Edmund Tyrone COLIN MORGAN
Cathleen ERICKA ROE
Bridget LESA THURMAN
Captain Turner BRENT HEARNE
Smythe DEREK CARROLL

Stunt Coordinator DONAL O’FARRELL
Stunt Double WILL WILLOUGHBY

Financial Consultant LUKE RANDOLPH

Associate Producer EMILY LOWE

First Assistant Director DOMINIC CHANNING WILLIAMS

Production Manager BERNIE MCGRATH

Production Sound Mixer ROB FLANAGAN

Supervising Art Director MARK LOWRY

Additional Photography MIKE ELEY BSC

Script Supervisor SUSANNA LENTON

Dialect Coach ERIK SINGER

Sound Supervisor DANNY SHEEHAN

Re-recording Mixer PAUL COTTERELL

Post Production Supervisor MEG CLARK

First Assistant Editor RUTH ANTOINE

Casting Director (Ireland) MAUREEN HUGHES

A Camera Operator MARK WOLF BSC
A Camera First Assistants JOHN MCCARTHY  OLIVER DRISCOLL

 

ANOTHER TASTE OF HONEY: SHELAGH DELANEY’S LONG-LOST PLAY ABOUT A TEENAGE TRUANT IS A LITTLE GEM · Sep 23rd

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/23/26. A remarkable gift for dialogue … Shelagh Delaney pictured in 1960. Photograph: Tom Stuttard/the Guardian.)

‘The playwright’s daughter found Catch Me Who Can after her mother’s death. Now it has become a compelling audio drama with Toby Jones and Rita Tushingham

Was Shelagh Delaney a one-hit wonder? Absolutely not. Aside from A Taste of Honey which, in the words of Dominic Dromgoole, “has a rock-solid heart and the gleam of the natural”, she wrote the screenplays for the films Charlie Bubbles and Dance With a Stranger, TV series including The House That Jack Built and several radio plays. But now a 30-minute piece, Catch Me Who Can, has come to light, been released as an audio drama and turns out to be a little gem.

Its origins are fascinating. It deals with a teenage truant and was discovered by Delaney’s daughter, Charlotte, after her mother’s death in 2011. But why did it lay hidden for so long? According to Charlotte, who has adapted it for audio: “It imagines my last few hours on the lam having run away from home and school when I was 14 in 1978. I was gone for three days and two nights. I’d suggest it’s a racing certainty that the reason nothing has ever been heard of it is that it’s about me and my mum had rules about that kind of thing.”

The bulk of the play consists of a testy confrontation between the runaway Hattie (Ivy Sheehan) and her maths teacher (Toby Jones) who tries to persuade her to return home. Although the teacher is only out jogging in a park because he is on strike, he stands for a world of order, discipline and control; Hattie, on the other hand, embodies the need for freedom, anarchy and self-expression. But Delaney imbues the situation with its own ironies. The teacher argues for the sanctity of family life but is himself a conspicuous loner; Hattie’s urge for self-discovery conceals a total disregard for other people including her anxious parents.

Rita Tushingham, far left, with Robert Stephens, Murray Melvin and Dora Bryan in the 1961 film version of A Taste of Honey. Photograph: Ronald Grant

Several things make the play worth listening to. One is the ease and naturalness of the dialogue. Hattie, not unlike the teenage Jo in A Taste of Honey, asks endless questions. At one point she taxes the teacher as to whether he ever did anything to find out what it was like just for the sake of it since “you once told us curiosity was divine”. Delaney also introduces an itinerant bag lady – played by none other than Rita Tushingham who was Jo in Tony Richardson’s film of A Taste of Honey – who says of a relative: “They took him into hospital and took his leg off – just like President Tito.”

(Read more) 

HOW EMERGING DIRECTOR ENZO SZARÁN (22) SHAPES A NEW VOICE FOR PARAGUAYAN THEATRE · Sep 21st

(From the Asuncion Times, 9/20/26.)

At 22, Paraguayan actor, writer and emerging director Enzo Szarán is developing his own theatrical language. His work explores tragedy, German philosophy and human passions. On 23 September, 2026, Szarán presents Sobre una cama de rosas (On a bed of roses) at the Teatro Municipal Ignacio A. Pane. A production that merges theatre, music, dance and visual arts.

Finding his artistic voice

Growing up surrounded by artists gives Szarán an early connection with the creative world. However, his artistic direction becomes clearer during his teenage years. At 15, a scholarship allows him to study theatre with master Agustín Aletto.

“When I travelled to Buenos Aires for a scholarship, I studied with the master Agustín Aletto. That changed my life,” Szarán tells The Asunción Times. “It changed the way I saw things and especially art.”

Until then, his interests centre on comics and comedy. However, discovering tragedy through Romeo and Juliet changes his artistic perspective. “I used to do a lot of comic books, a lot of comedy. Then I saw Romeo and Juliet and the movies. I understood that tragedy was what I liked.”

Since then, tragedy remains central to his creative identity. “Everything I write is tragic, dramatic or melodramatic,” he explains. Alongside tragedy, German philosophy and theatre shape his artistic approach. In particular, Bertolt Brecht and Friedrich Nietzsche influence how he understands theatre.

Enzo Szarán’s writing through music

For Szarán, the creative process begins with classical music. Before writing, he listens repeatedly until an emotional connection develops. “First I listen to classical music for a long time. When the music connects with the words I want to say, I start writing.”

From there, his process becomes detailed and methodical. He writes, listens and analyses each section before continuing. Consequently, music becomes more than background inspiration. Instead, it helps him find the emotions and words behind each scene.

Above all, Szarán wants audiences to think about what they see. His theatre therefore seeks reflection alongside emotion. “What I look for is that people think and reflect, especially about the themes in the work. That is why I use Brecht’s language in my works. I would like people to think more and reflect more on the themes present in society.”

Bringing Sobre una cama de rosas to the stage

These ideas now come together in Sobre una cama de rosas, his newest production. The story grows from his experiences as a writer and actor. Meanwhile, the play introduces a fictional religion inspired by the New Testament.

“I always wanted to create a religious work, but not a real religious work. I wanted a fictitious religion.”

From that idea, Enzo Szarán builds a larger fictional universe. The production also becomes an opportunity for young performers entering the arts. “This new work was created to encourage young people, especially those starting in this art.”

For Szarán, however, the project involves more than creating opportunities. Building a strong relationship between performers also remains essential. “Theatre is pure connection. You build a bond within the cast and create an art that requires a lot of thought.”

As a result, collaboration becomes part of the production’s creative process. The cast works together to communicate the ideas behind the story.

A different theatrical experience

On 23 September, Sobre una cama de rosas premieres at the Teatro Municipal Ignacio A. Pane. The performance begins at 20:00 and lasts approximately one hour. For audiences, Szarán promises an experience that moves beyond conventional theatre. The production mixes theatre, music, dance and visual arts through the concept of “total theatre”.

(Read more)

A SPECTACLE OF PUPPETRY: BUFFALO PARADE THROUGH NEW YORK CITY · Sep 20th

(from CBS Sunday Morning; Photo: Hyperallergic.)

This past week, a herd of 40 buffalo roamed the concrete canyons of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn – life-size puppets that are part of a public arts project by St. Ann’s Warehouse, a Brooklyn theater. Correspondent Anthony Mason reports. “CBS News Sunday Morning” features stories on the arts, music, nature, entertainment, sports, history, science and Americana, and highlights unique human accomplishments and achievements. Check local listings for “CBS News Sunday Morning” broadcast times.

‘WE DEMAND THE TRUTH’: OLGA TOKARCZUK AND JM COETZEE LEAD CALLS FOR PROOF OF LIFE OF DISAPPEARED ERITREAN WRITERS · Sep 18th

(Ella Creamer’s article appeared in the Guardian 9/18/26; From top to bottom, left to right: Temesgen Ghebreyesus, Dawit Isaak, Dawit Habtemichael, Seyoum Tsehaye, Fessehaye ‘Joshua’ Yohannes, Medhanie Haile, Amanuel Asrat, Said Abdelkadir, Sahle ‘Wedi-Itay’ Tsegazeab, Idris Said ‘Aba Arre’, Yousif Mohammed Ali, Matheos Habteab. Photograph: PEN International.)

More than 180 writers sign letter renewing calls for information on 12 authors detained incommunicado since 2001 crackdown on free speech by Isaias Afwerki

More than 180 writers have signed a letter to Eritrean president Isaias Afwerki calling for proof of life for 12 writers arrested in 2001.

Nobel laureates Olga Tokarczuk and JM Coetzee join prominent writers including Colm Tóibín, Elif Shafak, Isabel Allende, Ben Okri, Yann Martel, Kamila Shamsie and Tsitsi Dangarembga in signing the letter organised by PEN International and dated 18 September, marking 25 years since a government crackdown on the independent press. “Within days, Eritrea’s free press and the nation’s independent voices were systematically crushed,” opens the letter.

It lists 12 writers who have been held incommunicado since 2001, including the poet Amanuel Asrat and playwright and journalist Dawit Isaak.

“The families of these writers, the Eritrean people and the global literary community have been met with a painful and unlawful silence,” continues the statement. “To withhold all information regarding their health, location, and survival is a violation of international law and an act of cruelty.”

Along with Asrat and Isaak, the other writers named in the letter are Dawit Habtemichael, Fessehaye “Joshua” Yohannes, Mattewos Habteab, Medhanie Haile, Sahle “Wedi-ltay” Tsegazeab, Said Abdelkadir, Said Idris “Abu Are”, Seyoum Tsehaye, Temesgen Ghebreyesus and Yousif Mohammed Ali. Six of the writers were profiled in the Guardian in 2015.

The letter, signed by 188 writers in total, calls for “immediate, verified proof of life for all arbitrarily detained Eritrean writers and critics”.

Other signatories include Andrei Kurkov, Anthony Doerr, Chloe Aridjis, Lauren Groff, Lemn Sissay, Maaza Mengiste, Madeleine Thien, Margaret Busby, Max Porter, Philippe Sands, Preti Taneja, Tice Cin and Viv Groskop.

“Mr President, Eritrea’s future must be built with its brightest minds, not based on their suppression,” the letter adds. “No writer or journalist should be disappeared for peacefully expressing their views.”

(Read more)

KENNEDY CENTER WILL CLOSE FOR RENOVATIONS AFTER JUDGE BLOCKS RETURNING TRUMP’S NAME TO BUILDING · Sep 16th

(Steven Sloan’s and Ashraf Khalil’s article appeared on the AP, 9/15/2026; Photo: AP/ Jacquelyn Martin.)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump-aligned Kennedy Center board voted Tuesday to close most of the iconic performing arts venue just hours after a federal judge blocked the institution from returning President Donald Trump’s name to the building.

In a social media post, Trump said the closure was needed for safety repairs. But he said the repairs, which Congress has allocated $257 million to cover, would only happen if the board was allowed to move forward with plans to add his name to the building. A federal judge has twice said that can’t happen without the approval of Congress.

“Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing,” U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper said in the latest ruling Tuesday.

The Justice Department appealed the ruling. Trump, who was named the Kennedy Center’s chairman last year by loyalists on the board, participated in the virtual board meeting and said on social media he’d given $17 million to an endowment intended to support the institution.

The meeting included testy exchanges at points between Trump and Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who has led the campaign to block efforts to memorialize the president at the Kennedy Center. At one point, Beatty referred to Trump as someone who caused “extreme harm,” according to a participant in the meeting who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump said Beatty was “incompetent” and “holding up everything.”

 

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“You’re holding up the whole country,” she responded.

White House spokesman Davis Ingle said, “Trump-deranged Dumocrats like Joyce Beatty oppose anything that celebrates the greatness of our country because they put America Last.”

Kennedy Center fans worry about possible demolition

The developments threw into limbo the fate of one of the nation’s most prominent cultural institutions, a place where presidents, lawmakers and celebrities of all political ideologies have gathered for decades to recognize and celebrate the best in American arts and culture.

The venue’s leaders have argued that the massive building, which began construction in 1965, was in dire need of renovations. A partial ceiling collapse in the building’s main hallway earlier this month intensified the calls for renovations.

“The building is not currently built to last, the chairman knows that because he is among the best builders in the world,” Brian Ballard, Kennedy Center board member, said in a statement.

But Trump’s insistence on a physical recognition of his work on the building, reminiscent of his tendency to add his name to buildings as a real estate developer, has been a persistent sticking point — alienating many of the institution’s longtime supporters and facing repeated legal roadblocks.

The fight over the Kennedy Center marks a rare setback in Trump’s second term bid to dramatically remake the nation’s capital in his gilded tastes. He’s demolished the East Wing of the White House and is replacing it with a ballroom and plans to build a triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery. He’s also eyeing a golf course renovation along the Potomac River.

The Kennedy Center board voted in August to inscribe his name on the Kennedy Center’s facade so it would read “The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts Restored and Renovated By President Donald J. Trump.” If the Trump Kennedy Center Fund reached $100 million, another inscription would be added reading “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”

The plaza in front of the Kennedy Center would also be renamed in Trump’s honor.

Cooper ruled in May that the Kennedy Center illegally added Trump’s name to the building, ordering it removed. The institution’s leaders complied in June but left a tarp and scaffolding in place where Trump’s name was once displayed.

(Read more)

***** ‘PRE-EXISTING CONDITION’ REVIEW – LUPITA NYONG’O IS PHENOMENAL IN DOMESTIC ABUSE DRAMA · Sep 15th

(Juan A. Ramirez’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/14/26; Photo: Lupita Nyong’o in Pre-Existing Condition. Photograph: Jessica Kourkounis.)

Greenwich House Theater, New York
The Oscar-winning actor transfixes in Marin Ireland’s masterfully nuanced play about a woman reeling from a toxic relationship

Paradoxically, the more stars step into the lead role in Pre-Existing Condition, the more the brilliance of Marin Ireland’s domestic abuse play takes center stage. Not that it ever suffered from a lack of acting talent – when it premiered in 2024, at New York’s tiny Connelly Theater Upstairs, it counted Tatiana Maslany, Edie Falco and Deirdre O’Connell among the actors who played its central character in quick succession, for only a few weeks each. And this return engagement, at the larger Greenwich House Theater across town, kicks off with Lupita Nyong’o, before making way for Phillipa Soo, Susannah Flood, Hari Nef, Falco again and Whitney White.

It’s a straightforward conceit, perfectly calibrated for a 75-minute run time. A woman (whom the script refers to as A, currently played by Nyong’o) is dealing with the aftermath of a breakup triggered by her partner hitting her. When we meet her, someone (perhaps a lawyer, or a therapist) is laying out the reality of her situation: even with the deep pockets required to go to court, it’s been seven months since the incident, it happened across state lines and she never called the police. “You have to be ready for a fight,” she tells A. “Which, just from our short time with each other, I can already tell that you’re not.” 

Characters might define who they are midway through a scene. But as played by the rotating trio, and with even well-meaning acquaintances capable of uttering something unwittingly devastating, anyone who walks into A’s life registers as a stranger. Director Maria Dizzia blurs transitions by having characters linger as Isabella Byrd’s lighting shifts, and the next scene begins before we’ve realized the current one has ended. (Cate McCrea’s set and Enver Chakartash’s costumes are aptly nondescript.)

The result is an atmosphere of confusion, matching A’s destabilized self. Ireland’s script places her on a gently upward trajectory, but is clear about the reality that healing is hardly linear. She’s based it on her own experience with domestic violence: her ex, the actor Scott Shepherd, struck Ireland while they were rehearsing a play in London in 2012.

(Read more)

WHERE CIVILIANS ARE HUNTED, THEATER ENDURES: KHERSON HOSTS INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL · Sep 13th

(Myroslava Makarevych’s article appeared in the Kyiv Post, 9/6/26; Photo: Destruction of the theater as a result of enemy shelling. (Credit via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater.) The 28th Melpomena Tavrii International Theatre Festival will take place Sept. 12–19 under its longstanding motto, #TheaterWhereWeAre. Despite Russia’s war, the festival will return to Kherson, with performances also staged in Mykolaiv and at participating theaters across Ukraine.

Founded in 1999, Melpomena Tavrii has presented 610 productions by around 230 theaters from more than 100 cities and more than 20 countries.

Kyiv Post spoke with festival president and artistic director of the Mykola Kulish Kherson Theatre Oleksandr Knyha about why the festival continues in one of Ukraine’s most dangerous cities, what theater means to Kherson residents today and why keeping the stage alive has become an act of resistance.

Oleksandr Knyha. (Photo via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater) 

Kyiv Post: Melpomena Tavrii continues despite the war, and in extremely difficult conditions. Why is it so important to keep the festival in Kherson?

Oleksandr Knyha: In 2022, after we escaped occupied Kherson, I wrote on social media: “Melpomena will definitely take place in Ukrainian Kherson. Despite everything!”

As soon as the city was liberated, we returned and began restoring the theater. Our team was scattered across Ukraine and Europe, while some people remained in occupied Kherson. We created a format that allowed our friends to participate and, most importantly, helped us tell the world what was happening in our city.

The theater itself has been badly damaged. How do you work under these conditions?

We no longer work in our theater building because it is in a red zone. It has been heavily damaged and shelled, and we are trying to save it. Practically no windows remain. The roof is badly damaged.

On March 8, 2026, a rocket from a multiple-launch rocket system hit the theater roof. Had it landed about 10 centimeters higher, it would have hit the auditorium.

The team told me, “Let’s cancel the program. Nobody will come.”

I said, “No. We won’t cancel it. Even if one person comes, it will be therapy for that person.”

And the auditorium was full.

It turned out that even being destroyed, even having bombs falling around us, is not enough to stop us. We are needed.

People come to us like to a source – to drink healing water and keep going.

 

The play “D.I.M.” (Photo via the M. Kulish Kherson Regional Academic Music and Drama Theater) 

So theater has become a form of psychological support?

Yes. I don’t want to use overly grand words, but it really is a mission. It is our duty and our responsibility to people.

(Read more)

IN SUPPORT OF THE FOURTH WALL: PROSCENIUM ARCH THEATRE’S SURPRISINGLY RADICAL HISTORY · Sep 11th

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/11/2026. Vaulted ambition … the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London. Photograph: Peter Dazeley/Getty Images.)

Dominic Dromgoole’s new book, Time Frames, shows how this format’s stuffy reputation belies the room it has made for daring experiments from Chekhov to Brecht and beyond

How do you make theatre history come alive? One way is through creating lists backed up by quirky essays. I tried that myself in The 101 Greatest Plays, which is one reason why I’m in awe of Dominic Dromgoole who, in Time Frames extends the possibilities of the format and comes up with a book that is passionate, personal, informative and argumentative. It just seems unfair that a director should outperform most of us critics.

He starts with the advantage of a strong framework. His book covers the years from 1865 to 1965, when the proscenium theatre was dominant, and deals with more than 70 playwrights. Today we celebrate the limitless possibilities of theatre with open, apron, traverse and circular stages but Dromgoole enthuses over a time when plays were mainly enclosed behind a proscenium arch. He describes the form as “liberatingly restrictive” like the 14-line sonnet or the 12-bar blues and he has a point.

We associate the proscenium with the good-mannered, well-made play but it also gave birth to Chekhov’s work for the Moscow Art theatre, Brecht’s revolutionary ideas in East Berlin and, closer to home, Joan Littlewood’s radical populism at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and the explosion of energy at the Royal Court. Seizing on the closely crafted, socially critical plays of John Galsworthy, Dromgoole says they are perfect examples of the proscenium paradox: “entertainment encasing dysfunction”.

While charting the proscenium century Dromgoole also forces us to question existing assumptions. One of his great discoveries, initially unearthed in a book by Maggie Gale, is that between the wars 21% of West End plays were written by women: a considerably better ratio than later times. This leads Dromgoole to examine a whole host of neglected female writers. He shows how Clemence Dane’s A Bill of Divorcement dealt seriously with the problem of men returning from war still saturated in violence. He makes a strong case for Dodie Smith whose Dear Octopus was recently revived at the National but whose Call It a Day, with its “shamelessness about unbridled female desire”, sounds even more fascinating. He suggests that sex was also at the heart of Daphne du Maurier’s achievement in rarely seen plays such as September Tide and The Years Between. He also rediscovers Alice Childress, an American playwright who was a big influence on Lorraine Hansberry and whose 1955 play, Trouble in Mind, dealt with the tension between a black female actor and a white male director.

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CONSTANT STANISLAVSKI (174) · Sep 9th

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

(To the actor: ) You must not think (your roles) out ‘somehow,’ or ‘in general,’ or ‘approximately,’ because all those terms do not hold in art.  You must do it with all the details proper to such a large undertaking.  Always remain in close contact with logic and coherence.  This will help you to hold unsubstantial and slippery dreams close to steady solid facts.  (AP)