Shakespeare’s Roman Empire Strikes New Trumpean Notes by Barry David Horwitz I have always avoided this play. It’s a horror show of grotesque, gory, and ghoulish murders, rapes, and tortures that take place in a fictional late Roman Empire. “Titus Andronicus” sports lots of ranting and raving and mainly, the ever-popular REVENGE, that drips…
August Wilson’s Twenties Saga Traces ‘Race’ Records by Barry David Horwitz “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” burns with suppressed Jazz Age anger: “How to deal with the white man?” Accomplished singer Susie Butler plays real-life 1920s Ma Rainey, the “Mother of the Blues.” Butler showing us how a powerful Black singer could exert power over…
Madhuri Shekar Unmasks Our Lies: Joy, Freedom, Equality by Robert M. Gardner & Barry David Horwitz Madhuri Shekar’s “House of Joy” delivers ancient Indian spectacle, gorgeous costumes and set, and loyal Mughal women warriors—telling a complex and instructive story. “House of Joy” re-creates Indian tales and legends with a melodramatic flair. The playwright has…
John Fisher’s One-Man Army Triumphs! by Barry David Horwitz John Fisher is obsessed with WWII. When he was a kid in the Marin suburbs, John Fisher found a way to escape his family’s bigoted outlook. He and his older brother studied the battles of WWII, and played them out in excruciating detail in the…