Hit Netflix show becomes an astonishing stage spectacle
Stranger Things: The First Shadow is a lot of show. It is at once possession horror, family melodrama, high school dramedy, Cold War thriller, and haunted house nightmare, lurching from one tone to the next scene by scene. It is astonishing simply for its scale, and never boring, if seldom technically or dramatically satisfying.
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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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