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Coming of Age: Mamet at Sixty, by Robert Vorlicky
David Mamet claimed to have converted to conservatism in a notorious Village Voice essay earlier this year. A probing article uses his two most recent plays, November and Keep Your Pantheon, to show that the full truth is a bit more complicated than that.

Vijay Tendulkar (1928-2008), a tribute by Balwant Bhaneja
A translator and adaptor reflects on the life and career of one of India's foremost playwrights, the greatest of an embattled group of modern writers who subjected Indian social reality to merciless scrutiny.

Ophelia, Thrice Born, by Loren Edelson
Aya Ogawa's new play Oph3lia interweaves three different tales of adolescent girls and young women who embody and embellish aspects of Shakespeare's fallen heroine.

Macbeth's Young Frankenstein Moment, by Adam Casdin
The much-ballyhooed version of the Scottish play starring Patrick Stewart is in fact "overstimulated" and weakened by the same amped-up "hurly burly" as several other current Broadway blockbusters.

Breaking Ice, by Alexis Soloski
An American critic journeys to Reykjavik for the first version of "Lokal, an international festival of art and performance."

RECENT ARTICLES

The Gold-Painted Plaster Leg of Love, by Kevin Byrne
The National Theatre of the United States of America's production of Moliere's Don Juan is another of the company's brilliant exercises in authentic fakery.

A Playwright's Worries, by Theresia Walser
A well-known German playwright breaks a cultural taboo by speaking her mind about the uses and abuses of director's theater. An essay translated by Claudia Wilsch Case.

In a Garden State: Jason Grote in conversation with Caridad Svich
The author of 1001, recently premiered at the Denver Center Theatre and Baruch Performing Arts Center in NYC, speaks about politics, boredom, surviving as a playwright, and what it's like to be from New Jersey.

Not Since What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, by Alexis Greene
The over-the-top family fighting in Tracy Letts's August: Osage County may have thrilled mainstream reviewers, but the play is shamefully misogynistic.

Rude Awakening, by Shawn-Marie Garrett
Steven Sater and Duncan Sheik's lavishly praised musical adaptation of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening, now playing on Broadway, is at long last treated to a dissenting opinion.

Todd's Not There, by Karin Badt
An old school chum of filmmaker Todd Haynes traces the emptiness of his new Dylan film, I'm Not There, to a college seminar on semiotics and postmodernism.

Bodies That Matter, by Gitta Honegger
A penetrating essay on the Hamburg premiere of Ulrike Maria Stuart, the latest play by Nobel-winning Austrian playwright Elfriede Jelinek, describes how directors "enact" violence upon her "texts-as-bodies" akin to the violence she "stages in her writing."

Tracking America: Heather Woodbury in conversation with Caridad Svich
In a penetrating and wide-ranging interview, the creator and performer of Whatever and Tale of 2 Cities discusses theatrical artifice, the communist leanings of "global corporatism," the DJ mix as the theatrical form of the future, and much more.

FORUM ON JAN FABRE'S JE SUIS SANG:

Blood Lettings, by Kathleen Dimmick
In a rare visit to the U.S., Jan Fabre and his renowned Belgian company perform Je suis sang, a piece focusing on vestigial medievalism in the contemporary world and the human body's potential for extreme beauty, chaos and destruction.
Psychic Bloodspurts, by Joseph Cermatori
Another view of Fabre's piece reads it as a residue of tragedy--an ecstatic, carnivalesque spectacle perfectly suited for a blighted contemporary world.

Crimes of the P.M., by Terry Stoller
A new "verbatim play" by London's indefatigable and politically fearless Tricycle Theatre holds Tony Blair to account for Britain's role in the war in Iraq.

No Noises Off, by Martin Harries
Target Martin Theater's stage adaptation of two ancient Greek nondramatic texts--Aristotle's Poetics and Plato's Symposium--is delightfully playful, and it also suggests several fresh ways in which theater can "think."

Tony Kushner on Mother Courage, an interview with Jonathan Kalb
One of America's foremost playwrights discusses the Brecht drama that he translated for Meryl Streep and George C. Wolfe in summer 2006.

Terrorists and Christian Husbands, by Martin Harries
In Theatre for a New Audience's beautiful and intelligent pairing of Marlowe's Jew of Malta and Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, the actor F. Murray Abraham plays both notorious Jew-villains in repertory.

Sly in Bottomless Love, by Gordon Rogoff
Ron Rosenbaum's new book The Shakespeare Wars takes careful aim at the excesses of the academic Shakespeare Industry but unfortunately scores only sporadic hits.

Our Debts to the Duke: A Note, by Stanley Kauffmann
All contemporary theatergoers owe a debt to the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen (1826-1914). A probing essay explains why.

Acceptance Speech for the Thalia Prize, by Eric Bentley
In his speech accepting the first International Association of Theatre Critics' Thalia Prize, Eric Bentley reflected on criticism and on his long and productive career.

The Second Life of Rachel Corrie, by Jason Fitzgerald
Despite the "murky waters of controversy," there is beauty and a powerful "call to action" in the documentary drama inspired by a young American woman who famously died defending a Palestinian home.

Tim Crouch's Theatrical Transformations, an interview with Caridad Svich
The remarkably versatile and protean British author-performer of My Arm and An Oak Tree speaks at length about his unique creative process.

Richard Gilman: In Memoriam
A farewell to one of the great 20th-century theater writers, who died in Japan on Oct. 29, 2006.

Staging Sam: Beckett as Dramatic Character, by Hersh Zeifman
To the copious evidence of Samuel Beckett's world-wide stature, add now the fact that he has been used as a dramatic character by at least three very different playwrights.

Are We All Eating Cake?, by Karin Badt
A critic of French background skewers Sofia Coppola's political disinterest and historical ignorance in her new film Marie Antoinette.

Go Ost Young Man: New Theater in Berlin and Copenhagen, by Kathleen Dimmick
Recent productions at the Volksbuhne and Berliner Ensemble in Berlin and at the Royal Theater, the Badteatret and the Cafe Teatret in Copenhagen exemplify stand as important critical reflections of their societies.

Rewriting Revenge, by Gordon Carver
A recent revival of Cyril Tourneur's Jacobean classic The Revenger's Tragedy, adapted by Jesse Berger, provides an occasion to reflect broadly on the revenge-play genre.

An Unsentimental Education, by Caridad Svich
Alan Bennett's The History Boys is "a deeply funny, heartbreakingly anguished exploration of a monumental social shift" that took place during the Thatcher years.

FORUM ON MY NAME IS RACHEL CORRIE
HotReview.org enters the editorial fray in response to New York Theatre Workshop's controversial decision to postpone production of a play drawn from the writings of a young American woman killed while protesting Israeli treatment of Palestinians:

A Singular Voice, by Terry Stoller
An Open Letter to James Nicola, by Robert Simpson McLean
Thoughts on My Name is Rachel Corrie, by Miriam Felton-Dansky

Macbeth's Tomorrow, by Stanley Kauffmann
Remembered after 87 years, a whimsical English comedy sheds light on "one of the most beautiful passages ever written in the English language."

On a Far-Away Island, by Martin Harries
Behind Kate Valk's masterful performance in the Wooster Group's revival of its 1998 production of The Emperor Jones lurk serious questions of historical and political context that beg to be unpacked.

Measure for Pleasure, by Alisa Solomon
The London Globe Theatre's production of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, starring and directed by Mark Rylance, is inspiring, infused with an exhilarating sense of new discovery.

Beyond Landscape, by Una Chaudhuri
The Broadway production of Edward Albee's 1975 play Seascape offers the rare and moving specatcle of a landscape imbued with a new environmental ethics.

Brilliant Gestures, by Caridad Svich
John Doyle's new Broadway version of Sweeney Todd is "a ritualized, madhouse retelling" of the classic Sondheim musical that delivers all the requisite thrills but also demands much of the audience.

Notes on my Next Project -- ZOMBOID!, by Richard Foreman
In this new manifesto, the inimitable Foreman describes the aims of his upcoming production, which combines film and live performance; he also makes a passionate case for "ELITIST ART."

Cirque du Soulless, by Kevin Byrne
Equal parts magic show, medicine show, freak show and revival meeting, the latest production by the National Theater of the United States of America, Abacus Black Strikes NOW!, is a marvel of politically jumbled flimflammery.

Fruits of Anger, by J. Ellen Gainor
The product of nearly two decades of research, Linda Ben-Zvi's new biography of the pioneering American playwright Susan Glaspell (1876-1948) is "a compelling and much-needed corrective" to an unfortunate "legacy of dismissal and neglect."

Marina Abramovic Repeats: Pain, Art, and Theater, by Marla Carlson
The spectacle of real pain had very different overtones in Marina Abramovic's re-performance at the Guggenheim Museum of her 1975 work The Lips of Thomas, in which she sliced a star into her stomach with a razor blade, ate a kilo of honey, and lay naked on a cross of ice blocks.

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