Heather Lind

The Nap

October 7, 2018

It isn’t revealing too much to say that the play culminates with a real Snooker match between two men vying ultimately for the world championship and ostensibly being watched by 23 millions viewers all over the world. And since they’re playing in real time, Bean had to come up with alternate dialogue, depending on which of them wins. Those two men are the local Sheffield champ, Dylan (Ben Schnetzer), and his competitor Abdul, who is played by world-class Snooker champion Ahmed Aly Elsayed. (Elsayed actually won the Egyptian Snooker Championship for three consecutive years before moving to the USA and winning US National Snooker Championships for another three consecutive years.) [more]

Othello (Shakespeare in the Park)

June 20, 2018

In the recent Metropolitan Opera production of Verdi’s "Otello," Otello was white which left no reason for his jealousy if he was identical to all the Venetians around him. In the current Shakespeare in the Park production, using color blind casting, Santiago-Hudson chooses to make at least five of the leading characters people of color so that Othello is no longer an outsider, nor are they. The meaning of the theme is diluted in such a reading. It may be politically correct, but in this play about race there is no getting away from its original meaning. Even The Public Theater’s artistic director Oskar Eustis’ program notes remark that Othello is only one of two explicitly black characters in all of Shakespeare, the other appearing in "Titus Andronicus." Other than this casting choice, the production offers no new interpretation of the play or characters, making it more like a staged reading than a full production. [more]

Incognito

June 5, 2016

This is heady theater and demands concentration. However, the excellent cast of four made of Geneva Carr (Theatre World Award winner for "Hand to God"), Charlie Cox (Netflick’s" Daredevil"), Heather Lind (AMC’s "Turn: Washington’s Spies"), and Morgan Spector (Drama Desk Award nominee for "Russian Transport") make this an unforgettable evening in the theater. The versatile cast play 20 characters, some as many as six, without changing costume but with different accents and demeanors, while the succeeding scenes take place almost as fast as the synaptic functions in the brain. The play which alternates in its telling of the three stories is also divided into three parts: "Encoding," "Storing' and "Retrieving." Before each section the cast perform hand gestures create by Peter Pucci that mimic the synaptic actions in the brain. [more]

Of Good Stock

July 18, 2015

Plays about three very different sisters go back to Shakespeare’s "King Lear." In modern times, the topic immediately recalls Chekhov’s "Three Sisters" and more recently Wendy Wasserstein’s "The Sisters Rosensweig" and Beth Henley’s Pulitzer Prize-winning, "Crimes of the Heart." Melissa Ross, whose excellent Nice Girl just completed its world premiere at the Labyrinth Theater Company, has entered the fray with "Of Good Stock" with a cast led by film star Alicia Silverstone returning to the New York stage. While the play is entertaining and believable under Lynne Meadow’s direction, it is also overly familiar without revealing any new depths. [more]