1,898 stories from The New Yorker
No one who follows classical music can have been remotely surprised by the announcement that came in from the Metropolitan Opera earlier today: James Levine, who has been the dominant artist…
Last week, the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the Panama Papers, implicating thousands of people in a global sc…
“Hamlet”
Last year, the British critic Philip Clark had a provocative response to the perennial question of how to save classical music from its so-called image problem"the perception that it is stuf…
Of the many allusions woven throughout Lin-Manuel Miranda's score for "Hamilton"""The Pirates of Penzance," the Notorious B.I.G."one of the funniest comes in Act II, when Alexander Hamilton …
I have so many complicated responses to David Harrower's 2005 play, "Blackbird" (at the Belasco), that trying to separate what I feel about the subject tangentially and what Harrower achieve…
All this talk about diversity"in newspapers, on college campuses, at the Oscars"can be hard on a liberal white guy. How's a sensitive Caucasian man"no Trumpite"supposed to deal with so much …
I'm always somewhat surprised to discover how many of the writers and thinkers I've admired over the years grew up reading Eugene O'Neill with a passion equal to my own. For years, I thought…
Directors who have an interest in style are not prevalent in the American theatre. Mostly, directors are there to serve the play and keep the bodies moving in space as clearly, effectively, …
Until a few weeks ago, if you wanted to see Africa represented in a Broadway show, you had two options, both ridiculous. There is the colorful puppet wilderness of "The Lion King," in which …
It was always exciting to see, around town, those lovely posters by Paul Davis announcing a new production at the Public Theatre""our" theatre, over on Lafayette Street, a place that promote…
The Broadway musical, to the distress of those of us who think of it as America's own fine form, the thing we made first and still, Andrew Lloyd Webber be damned, make best, isn't really pop…
Sunday night saw the première of "Grease: Live," a television adaptation of the original musical that no one really needed but was wholly entertaining nonetheless. The revival came after…
In 1889 Giacomo Puccini wrote to his publisher about getting the operatic rights to Victorien Sardou's melodrama "La Tosca," which the playwright had written for Sarah Bernhardt: "In this 'T…
New York City Opera was once a radiant and seemingly indispensable part of New York's cultural life. But ever since its closure, two and a half years ago, the prospect of reviving the compan…
"Sold Out Till When?"
A Christmas in the company of Thornton Wilder is not exactly merry. The Peccadillo Theatre Company combines two of Wilder's seasonal one acts""The Long Christmas Dinner" and "Pullman Car Hia…
Although the civil-rights movement did a lot to change how black life was dramatized on the American stage in the fifties and sixties, white composers and lyricists often still rely on famil…
For close observers of the cultural phenomenon that is "Hamilton," a new milestone in the musical's unfolding journey was reached last week: the appearance of the understudy in the title rol…
Don’t let the fact that he’s been dead for five hundred and thirty years fool you"there isn’t a more astute political mind around today than that of Richard III, the last P…
This Christmas we are staying in,Skyping en masse with all our kinAnd friends linked up in cyberspace,Slipping the surly bonds of place,And traffic on the Tappan Zee,Cross Bronx, and Hutch, …
"This is the most Kubrickian room," Lin-Manuel Miranda said the other night, sweeping into the seventh floor of the New Museum, on the Bowery. The room was long, very white, with two glass w…
More than sixty years ago, the young Viscountess de Ribes, née Jacqueline Bonnin de La Bonninière de Beaumont, stood on the balcony of a friend's Venetian palazzo. She was twenty-two, and …
The language around Christmas is usually pretty treacly, as befits the season. But future writers should remember that one of the amazing things about the holiday's ur-text, Charles Dickens'…
Two things are frequently said about Caryl Churchill: that she is the greatest playwright alive, and that she is one of the most elusive. While she occasionally discusses her work with resea…
