Two good theater pieces in the Gray Lady this morning: first, Patrick Healy interviews the cast of the Ethan Hawke-directed revival of Sam Shepard’s A Lie of the Mind (which absence from my library I should rectify):
MARIN IRELAND: One trap with any iconic writer is that you think you know the tone of the play and motives of the characters. Part of our job is to look for the opposite in any moment.
(Completely irrelevant and inappropriately snarky, but doesn’t Ethan Hawke always look like he’s three-quarters stoned?)
Second, Charles Isherwood has some uncomfortable reservations about the Jones-Lewis-Hendel bio-revue Fela!:
As much as I enjoyed the show, directed and choreographed by Bill T. Jones, it left me with lingering questions about the depiction of the African milieu it evoked. In short, the emphasis in Fela! on the spectacle of African culture tilted the show a little too closely toward minstrelsy….
It’s vibrant, exciting and fabulously performed.
But there really are no characters, aside from Fela Kuti himself.