Review: The breathtaking beauty of ‘for colored girls’
This revival of “for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf” is one link in a chain of productions re-introducing the work of our titans — Alice Childress, Adrienne Kennedy and more — to modern audiences. Only Shange’s work has been on Broadway before, first premiering at the Booth Theatre, where the revival is currently playing, in 1976. It remains a seminal, sacred text; one I’ve been able to recite phrases from for the better half of my life. This revival, by director and choreographer Camille A. Brown, is the most essential production of Shange’s masterwork to date.
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‘for colored girls’ Is a Timeless Movement in Compassion
After playwright Ntozake Shange’s death in 2018, her sister—the playwright Ifa Bayeza—said, “I don’t think there’s a day on the planet when there’s not a young woman who discovers herself through the words of my sister.” As I watched the revival of Shange’s “choreopoem” for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow […]
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‘How I Learned To Drive’ is a Nuanced Exploration of Memory
As the adage goes, “More Vogel, less Mamet.” Right now on Broadway, this is just beginning to come true, or at least approaching it. Although we have to suffer through both David Mamet’s problematic and dangerous rant about male teachers being pedophiles and a lackluster revival of American Buffalo, we also are graced–thank God–with a […]
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