Blogcritics Author: Ethan Stanislawski

Movie Review: Doubt

Ethan Stanislawski — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 07:19:08 EST

We should be eternally grateful that in the adaptation of Doubt to film, the play's core struggle was not lost in translation.
What is Doubt about? Fundamentally, it’s not about anything particularly Catholic, or any mundane detail of the mortal world for that matter. That would be the “parable” side of the play’s original title, Doubt: A Parable. Both the play and the movie are about a much more universal dilemma that plagues any system of beliefs:...

Theater Review (NYC): Too Much Memory by Keith Reddin and Meg Gibson

Ethan Stanislawski — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 00:45:54 EST

With a fiercely intelligent script and remarkable performances, this version of Antigone is an exceptionally honest, vital adaptation for our time.
I've seen a lot of off-off-Broadway and workshop productions in the past year that have played with meta-theatricality, political symbolism, and reworking classics. Some have utterly failed, some have been more successful, and some I've reviewed positively. After seeing Rising Phoenix Company's Too Much Memory at the New York Theatre...

Theater Review (NYC): The Truth About Santa by Greg Kotis

Ethan Stanislawski — Mon, 8 Dec 2008 09:16:51 EST

Greg Kotis brings the same intellectually-grounded absurdity to religion that his Urinetown brought to revolutionary politics.
Greg Kotis' The Truth About Santa was a good test of my critical sanctity. Growing up an intellectual theater geek in New York, I basically discovered I was bound for the University of Chicago by seeing Proof and Urinetown (twice each) while in high school. I would draw the somewhat arbitrary line at reviewing Proof scribe David Auburn, whom I...

Theater Review (NYC): The Scandal! by Kristen Kosmas

Ethan Stanislawski — Sun, 7 Dec 2008 22:14:26 EST

The Management Company keeps its emphasis on broken pieces of Americana alive with The Scandal!
"Postmodernism is a theory that eats itself" is a line repeated twice in Kristen Kosmas' challenging, confounding play The Scandal! It seems that Kosmas, is determined to see just how far she can go in testing that assertion. Pink, The Scandal!'s protagonist (played here for the first time not by Kosmas herself but by another...

Theater Review (NYC): Plucking Failures Like Ripe Fruit by No Tea Productions

Ethan Stanislawski — Wed, 3 Dec 2008 21:11:32 EST

In a financially starved Off-Off-Broadway scene where quality is a crapshoot, No Tea Productions has emerged as one of the few sure things.
Say what you will about the depressing state of Off-Off-Broadway theater (and it certainly is depressing), one thing you can’t complain about is the unprecedented quantity of theater that currently exists in New York City. Quality theater, and quality coverage, is what’s missing, and venturing Off-Off-Broadway has increasingly turned...

Movie Review: The Dukes

Ethan Stanislawski — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 14:01:06 EST

"The Dukes" is a deceptively ambitious film, but one that gets lost in sentimentality before it can become anything substantial.
It seem alright to give The Dukes a pass for its supposedly modest goals, as many critics have done up to this point. But in terms of narrative themes, this movie is more ambitious than it initially seems. There are a lot of things going on in The Dukes, a modest but still turgid dramedy directed by longtime character actor Robert Davi, and some of...

Theater Review (NYC): Vice Girl Confidential by Todd Michael

Ethan Stanislawski — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:06:27 EST

Pure spoof generates boisterous laughs in this former Fringe Festival hit, but it leaves you feeling empty afterward.
Vice Girl Confidential is one of those plays where if you drink the Kool-Aid of its premise, you’re in for a raucous, thoroughly entertaining, maniacally smart show. What you have to accept is that you’re witnessing pure, unadulterated spoof and nothing more.If you want depth to your satire, look somewhere else. This film noir take on a...

Theater Review (NYC): American Buffalo by David Mamet

Ethan Stanislawski — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:47:14 EST

In arguably his best play, David Mamet gives a better explanation for the current economic crisis than any economist could provide.
American Buffalo, David Mamet’s breakthrough play currently in an excellent revival at the Belasco Theater, may be a better source of explanation for the current economic crisis than you can get from any economist. Every exchange in the play has business on the mind; in the world of Donny, Teach, and Bobby, even friendship breaks down into...

Theater Review (NYC): As We Speak by John Patrick Bray

Ethan Stanislawski — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 10:46:33 EST

Other than its use of technology, Bray's adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel is too amateurish to resonate in any real way.
If there’s any reason to see As We Speak, an otherwise unbearable new play by John Patrick Bray, it’s to see how theater is slowly beginning to adapt to the Web 2.0 era. It seems virtually impossible to dramatize a generation who grasps their laptops like respirators, but as liberal grad student Noreen, Alyson Brock assumes a pose in...

Theater Review (NYC): Missa Solemnis or The Play About Henry

Ethan Stanislawski — Thu, 6 Nov 2008 12:06:28 EST

Just as Proposition 8 is passed, a new play by Roman Fesser examines the impossible dynamic of homosexuality and Mormonism.
It’s impossible to discuss Missa Solemnis or the Play About Henry without mentioning that I happened to see it the same day California's Proposition 8 was passed into law. The politics of Proposition 8 are virtually identical to those of 2000’s Proposition 22, the law that prompted the suicide of gay Mormon Henry Stuart Mathis (the...