Ben
Brantley

April 12, 2014

Richard Maxwell looks at the world with X-ray eyes. Watching the plays of this rigorously inventive auteur, we are encouraged to see the plasterboard behind the wallpaper, the skin under the greasepaint and the skulls beneath the skin. Or in the case of Isolde, his smashing new work at the Abrons Arts Center, the beams and blueprints — and light and air — that go into the imagining of something as substantial and transitory as a dream house. Or, come to think of it, a play. As a director and dramatist, Mr. Maxwell has applied his unnerving vision to many of the popular fictions with which we entertain and explain ourselves: the spy story, the crime caper, the medieval saga and even the western. But with Isolde, he has touched down in a world where I somehow never expected to find him.