Upcoming Picks
Edward A Kliszus, Editor-in-Chief / Music and Arts Critic
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Rebecca Chace’s new play, Obit, is a twist on the old story of an academic taking advantage of their student, or in this case their student’s mother. It is full of rich, smart dialogue and opens with the premise that New York Times obit writer Maya Hawthorne (Carolyn Holding) has come to the home of esteemed, aging College President Phillip Stern (the always great Richard Topol) to interview him for his obituary. Most newspapers and television news stations stockpile “advance obituaries” of prominent and public figures. Often, they interview the individuals and family members well before their death so that they may craft a more personal obit and have it ready when needed.
There are two elements at work here. The first one being that Clark’s skill as an actor is so refined that she disappears while you watch and leaves her character in her place. The other reason is that Joshua Owen has given Clark text that lets her make unexpected choices. The writing here is precise and covers substantial ground in a few sentences.
Warm-voiced, funny, and unashamedly sentimental, Sam Fazio’s My Broadway turns a supper club into a communal memory palace, one show tune at a time. Anchored by Chris White’s luminous piano and John Sutton’s buoyant bass, this is cabaret at its most generous — intimate, swinging, deeply humane, theater history sung by a man who has clearly lived every lyric. Watch for Fazio’s next 54 Below engagement, bring tissues for the ballads and your fullest voice for the choruses, and leave humming, quietly grateful.
Edita Gruberová sings Zerbinetta’s “Großmächtige Prinzessin” from Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos, among the most punishing coloratura solos ever composed. Strauss wrote it for Frieda Hempel, but she had decamped to the Metropolitan Opera, and Margarethe Siems created the role at Stuttgart on October 25, 1912. The premiere drew luminaries and an orchestra of borrowed Italian strings. Molière’s framing play made the evening unwieldy; by 1916 a Prologue replaced it, and the aria was mercifully shortened.
The presentation of Public Records is the records of our lives. Much more than the certificates handed out at birth, marriage, and death. What happened in front of us exploded through dance, song, and storytelling, stepped out from the everyday to the extraordinary: The tap tap tap of water drops as the A/C of the neighbor above you drips onto yours, the music of the constant sirens, the call to prayer of different religious denominations, hyper aware on the subway while simultaneously looking unbothered, what it is like to the live in the proximity of other’s armpits, the coo of mourning doves, pots clunking out of windows during Covid, when the towers fell and we couldn’t look at one another without breaking down, and the reaching out and giving back when the need was present.
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