In a divided America, ‘Ragtime’ strikes a defiant chord
Twenty-five years after its original run, the musical roars back not with spectacle but with purpose, and in doing so, it may finally have found the moment it was meant for. This revival, now at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater and expanded from last year’s high-powered City Center concert staging, arrives not as nostalgia but as a galvanizing statement, both thrilling and newly vital.
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Pope/Bettany Elevate ‘The Collaboration’ Into Art Worth Contemplating
One of them paved a path of his own ascending to artistic godhood by glorifying the mundane; the other painted SAMO (meaning the Same Old Sh*t) criticizing the very idea of repetition. One of them broke down the wall between art and business; for the other, walls didn’t mean a thing. One saw beauty, immortality, […]
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Complex Men and Caricatures of Women Are Caught ‘Between Riverside and Crazy’
Walter “Pops” Washington, as he self-describes in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Pulitzer-winning play Between Riverside and Crazy, is “a flesh and blood, pee standing up, registered Republican.” He is also a litigious former cop caught within the crossroads of bureaucracy, racism, life as a widower, and a fast-gentrifying Riverside Drive. He also happens to be Black. […]
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