| Anonymous 4 takes on David Lang's 'Love Fail' at Kennedy Center Nov 30th 2012, 00:06 Four women sit on a sculpted wooden platform dressed in simple, vaguely medieval gowns of wool and silvery gray. They sing gently, voices moving together, intoned words overlapping and echoing one another, the music gently nudged into different shapes by subtle electronic enhancement, tinged with the tocks and thwacks of glockenspiel and drum. It's exquisite, hypnotic, watery, dreamlike. Read full article >> |  | Illuminating Per Kirkeby's dark collections Nov 29th 2012, 23:21 Danish artist Per Kirkeby trained as an arctic geologist, and much of the work in his current Phillips Collection retrospective is as dark and heavy as volcanic mud. Some of that exhibition's motifs recur in Robert Brown Gallery's show of Kirkeby's prints and drawings (and a single painting). But the artist's drypoints, etchings and aquatints have a lighter touch, even when they're mostly black. Read full article >> | | 'Portrait of a Novel' looks at Henry James and the bridge to modernism Nov 29th 2012, 22:53 Henry James was in his late 30s when he published his first uncontested masterpiece, "The Portrait of a Lady" (1880-81), which elevated him from a talented up-and-comer to a major novelist. It is the story of an intelligent, independent young woman named Isabel Archer who is taken from America to England and allowed to make something of herself, but who "affronts" her destiny (as James worded it) by making a bad marriage. When James revised the novel for the collected New York Edition of 1908, he wrote a preface to account for its origins and aims, concluding after a dozen pages with the admission, "There is really too much to say." Read full article >> | | They're your 'Dreamgirls,' they'll make you happy Nov 29th 2012, 17:45 To miss Nova Y. Payton singing "(And I Am Telling You) I'm Not Going" would be like skipping Christmas. The gift is delivered midway through Signature Theatre's sizzling revival of "Dreamgirls," and it's not the only present bestowed under the hot lights. Payton has the juiciest role, that of Effie White, the plainest, angriest Dreamgirl, who in being cast out of the group reaps the biggest melodic rewards: the 1981 musical's powerhouse solos, "I'm Not Going" and "One Night Only." But she's matched for potency by Cedric Neal, whose electric turn as Jimmy Early, a soul singer cursed by self-destructive narcissism, infuses the character with tragic heft — an ingredient perennially absent from the musical's main arc, which covers the rise and disintegration of a Supremes-like trio. Read full article >> | | Exclusive 'Parenthood' preview, featuring Dax Shepard and, yes, Glen Hansard of 'Once' Nov 29th 2012, 15:42 Regular viewers of NBC's "Parenthood" are aware that, per the episode that aired this week, Crosby (Dax Shepard) is engaged in a major zoning feud with a woman who recently moved into a condo adjacent to the Bravermans' recording studio, the Luncheonette. (That woman, by the way, is played by Pamela Adlon, who you may recognize from "Californication," "Louie" or her voice work on "King of the Hill." Or, if you're me, "Grease 2.") Read full article >> | |
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