Articles tagged with: Ayad Akhtar
Theater 2015-16: ‘Disgraced,’ 4 world premieres accent a many-splendored season at Goodman
11th in a series of season previews
‘The Who & The What’ at Victory Gardens: It’s ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ meets ‘Other Desert Cities’
Review: Ayad Akhtar’s third play, “The Who & The What,” which now occupies the stage at Victory Gardens, shares with its masterly predecessors — “Disgraced” and “The Invisible Hand” — the core issue of conflict between Muslim heritage and mainstream American culture. But this time, Akhtar’s work verges on ethnic sitcom. ★★
New York Aisle: Met’s balanced ‘Klinghoffer’ revealed depth of Adams’ controversial opera
Analysis: To sit in the audience at the Metropolitan Opera, where a richly inflected production of John Adams’ 1991 opera “The Death of Klinghoffer” unfolded this fall, was to experience the opera itself coming into focus. “The Death of Klinghoffer” is already a different experience than it was at its Brussels premiere 23 years ago.
New York Aisle: In Kimberly Senior’s Broadway view of ‘Disgraced,’ a man’s long fall is crushing
Review: Before hitting Broadway, Ayad Akhtar’s “Disgraced” bounded from its starting point at American Theater Company in Chicago to a run at Lincoln Center in New York. All three stagings have been the work of Chicago-based director Kimberly Senior, and the sequence has displayed a steady sharpening of her perspective, an ever firmer grasp on the conflict and torment that push the play and pull its anti-heroic protagonist toward inexorable ruin. The latest incarnation, at New York’s Lyceum Theatre, is nothing short of devastating. ★★★★★
Theater 2014-15: Five premieres shape season as Victory Gardens observes 40th year
Ninth in a series of season previews: Two world premieres anchor the 40th-anniversary season at Victory Gardens Theater, which opens with the Midwest premiere of “Rest,” company ensemble member Samuel D. Hunter’s story of senior citizens and their youthful attendants at a retirement home trapped by a blizzard and forced to confront the chasm between their generations. A second Midwest premiere follows with Colm Tóibín’s one-woman show “The Testament of Mary,” a re-imagined narrative by Mary on the last days of Jesus.
Left dangling by Sandy: Carnegie Hall looks warily up and B’way pauses as NY regroups
Report update: Carnegie Hall’s concerts for Nov. 1 have been cancelled as the crane remains unsecured, and more cancellations are expected. Broadway theaters have resumed their performance schedules, so it’s back to work for several Chicago-based performers. Many off-Broadway theaters in the downtown area are still without electricity and remain closed.
When ethnic roots snag the American dream, idealism stumbles in ‘Disgraced’
Meltdown at Amer. Theater Co. 5 stars!
