#theatre-criticism

#theatre-criticism

Who will free us from the handsome British issue drama? Plays that float across the Atlantic on clouds of critical praise with sumptuous, starkly modern whizbang production design-lord how much funding you all have over us Americans-and which purport to tackle serious issues, but exhibit, once you scratch past the hard lighting and drum-forward soundscapes, a facile shallowness. Earlier this fall on Broadway, we had Will Graham's swing at masculinity in , and before that, his Rupert Murdoch in Ink;

A gloriously grotesque aluminum corset in the shape of an alien spine; a pair of pearlescent antlers draped in embroidered lace; stiletto heels, bulbous, scaly, and spiky, like armadillos balancing on their heads and tails; wraithlike models with black contact lenses or silver prosthetic jaws, or covered in feathers, chain mail, spray paint, or the shells of razor clams ...