Helen Shaw

In honor of World AIDS Day, I'd like to share a story that breaks my heart whenever I tell it. Please read it. It's the story of David Carroll.

Tom Stoppard’s Radical Invitation The playwright offered a kind of on-ramp to the literary canon, a way into a life of unabashed, unstoppable thinking.

Loss upon loss www.newyorker.com/culture/post...

I would love to be a fly on that bar

photo credits are Ken Yotsukura

Weinstein, a woman in a dark dress and apron, prepares to stab a person lying down on the floor in front of her.

Townsend writes in rare registers: heightened melodrama, yes, but also densely written jeremiad about personal, political anguish. How much is "real" here wavers, except for the rock-solid sense we're in the presence of real talent—both onstage (Weinstein is amazing) & behind it. www.jewishplot.com

Madeline Weinstein and Neil D'Astolfo are clearly making Cockney noises while staring, shocked, from behind a curtain. They could be lit by candlelight.

But Townsend dug this thing up (the word "plot" has certain graveyard implications, no?) to explore even darker matters than antisemitism in Dickens's London. The games-within-games that Townsend and director Sarah Hughes play instill a sick dread in us. I found it thrilling but nauseating (3/4)

Tess Frazer and Eddie Kaye Thomas, wearing vaguely nineteenth-century garb, duel with tiny blades in front of a row of footlights

When Madeline Weinstein welcomes us, she introduces Eddie Kaye Thomas, playing the lead in Townsend's reconstruction of a "lost" nineteenth-century play subtitled "The Semite of Mayfair." The melodrama wends along; it's almost too bad to be true. "Oh," you'll think, "how far theatre has come" (2/4)

a poster for the play Jewish Plot; a woman in a high-necked nineteenth century dress sits on a stool in front of a red curtain

Torrey Townsend's "Jewish Plot" has two more nights: tonight (Sunday) and tomorrow (Monday). It's the rare show where anything I say could undermine it; the tonal and structural switchbacks here are genuinely exhilarating & I don't want to ruin it for anyone who can get to Theatre 154 in time. (1/4)

The show is just right for Election week: it demonstrates the vulnerabilities of coalition building while inspiring us to do it anyway. It also helps us recognize bad-faith actors by naming their strategies—now, when we see someone working the refs as Pearlman did, we won't fall for it. Right? (5/5)

Stephen Kunken in a tan overcoat stands on a circular stage; behind him is a group of menacing characters in black coats, holding papers

"Kyoto"'s point is that Pearlman invented the anti-progress rulebook: delay negotiations on procedural grounds, exaggerate scientific uncertainty, attack the scientist rather than the science, exploit your enemies' inner divisions, etc. In this important way, "Kyoto" is good, because it's useful 4/5

an image from "Oslo," in which three men sit at a table, while another addresses them. In the background, Jennifer Ehle, a woman in a grey dress and a worried expression, observes

Like other such shows, Kyoto builds tension with cinematic music, bustling movement to create a sense of drama (some of us still remember the way Jennifer Ehle vigorously slid a coffee table onstage for J.T. Rogers's Process Drama "Oslo"), and a climactic Storm of Papers. This stuff kinda works 3/5

an image from the play "Grenfell": a group of four people sit around a pile of cardboard boxes filling out forms on the box-lid; a woman in a headscarf stands behind them

an image from the play "Agreement": a group of people at a table shuffle papers as papers seem to blow around them in a storm

It's another Process Drama from overseas: we've recently had "Grenfell: In the Words of Survivors," brought over from the National, which re-enacted the inquiry after a hellish fire, and "Agreement," from Belfast's Lyric, which dramatized the down-to-the-wire peace process in Northern Ireland 2/5

An actor stands on top of a huge circular table; audience members and cast members playing climate delegates sit at the table looking up at him

In Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson's "Kyoto" at Lincoln Center Theater, the real-life oil lobbyist Donald H. Pearlman (played by Stephen Kunken) tries to derail the UN's Kyoto Accords by sabotaging a decade of negotiations aimed at preventing the climate disaster. His story's compressed but true. 1/5

NYMag blew up its story about ICE's increased presence at 26 Federal Plaza, and pasted it on a wall a few blocks away on Broadway

Graham, wary of the "dark ladies" she plays, talks about being a "vessel" for her characters; Move's embodiment is in that same spirit. He too makes himself a cup for another person's wine. Graham's intensity hasn't dimmed...and the show at its best feels like touching a still-live electric wire.

In the foreground, a dancer in a deep purple bodysuit reaches up with one hand; in the faraway background, we can see an interview set up, with two people in chairs. Martha Graham is on the right, and her arm is up in the same gesture

The first section, when Move and the two former Graham dancers Catherine Cabeen and PeiJu Chien-Pott enter silently, moving in elegant and sorrowful hieroglyphics, was stirring; the section when Graham/Move is explaining the company exercises, demonstrated by the two dancers, was illuminating

Two seated figures with a standing dancer between them—on the left, Lisa Kron as the dance critic Walter Terry, on the right, Richard Move as Martha Graham holding out her hand in what looks like a warding or stopping gesture. Between them, the dancer Catherine Cabeen, recreates a moment from "Clytemnestra"

Move and Lisa Kron (as Walter Terry) reenact the pair's 92nd Street Y interview from 1963. Martha Graham never knowingly under-dramatized. Asked about how to deal with repetition, she says, graciously, head bowing like a lily, "Don't get bored—think of yourself as dancing towards your death." Right.

Richard Move in character as Martha Graham: a black and white photo of a regal figure, wearing a silk cape and golden moons in their hair.

Richard Move's bewitching "Martha@BAM—the 1963 Interview" continues Move's long history of "becoming" Martha Graham—what started at a nightclub (Martha@Mother) in 1996 arrives on the BAM Fishman stage at last. Of course the eye makeup is TIGER, the hair is ARCHITECTURE, the torso is CANTILEVERED 🧵

Ugly Face Theatre - oh, Honey

I saw Jeana Scotti's "immersive" show Oh, Honey last season at the restaurant Little Egg; now it's back! A support group for moms of sons who have done regrettable things spirals into disarray...I can 💯 recommend the soup, as well as the up-close, phenomenal performances uglyfacetheatre.com/oh-honey

I've been thinking about Keanu Reeves & double-acts, and I got overwhelmed all over again at the loss of River Phoenix. My Own Private Idaho is so similar to Godot, though there Reeves plays the knowing Didi-type and Phoenix's narcoleptic ingenue is Gogo...I can see their version in my mind's eye

I bet there’s a waitlist! No show is ever truly full!

The ending wobbles, but all else is superb... lovely performances—Arielle Goldman & Molly Carden as bickering sisters are particularly good—in a drama that is studiously about this world: its mystery, its types of harm, and the excitement of those who read and discuss it deeply, making it new (4/4)

Cespedes plays the most questioning and querulous of them, badgering her invisible mom (Botchan, offstage) for answers, even as she grows elusive about what help she'll provide. Is help coming? The girls call the voice "Mrs. H" and, after a bit, I remembered what letter "Hashem" starts with. (3/4)

Vaynberg writes about a group of orthodox Jewish girls who grow into women. As 13-year-olds, they study Torah (& laugh & eat snacks), instructed by an (offstage) mother in Talmudic categories of damage. In the 2nd act, they reunite as adults, and we see patterns of ego & learning & hurt repeat (2/4)

Liba Vaynberg's vividly drawn play "The Matriarchs" (directed by Dina Vovsi) features a rogue's gallery of wonderful downtown actors. Helen Cespedes from Fefu! Rachel Botchan from the Pearl! All doing funny, wise, detailed work in tight quarters @ TheaterLab...(1/4) theaterlabnyc.com/theaterlab-p...

Being a High-Profile Comedian Right Now Is No Joke

In which Jason Zinoman tells Fallon he is becoming a Kremlin star... www.nytimes.com/2025/09/20/a...

A tall, dark haired performer in a black tshirt gestures magnificently while speaking into a microphone.

The tremendous Morgan Bassichis show "Can I Be Frank?" at Soho Playhouse has added a show tomorrow at 9pm! Everything else is sold out out OUT
Bassichis is the funniest and most entrancing comic performer out there; if you don't take that last ticket, I'm gonna www.sohoplayhouse.com/see-a-show/m...

Sign of the Times I am heartbroken to report that after thirty-five proud years, the program I currently direct at USC, the MFA in Dramatic Writing, is being sunsetted.

“I am heartbroken to report that after thirty-five proud years, the program I currently direct at USC, the MFA in Dramatic Writing, is being sunsetted…I feel the acute message being sent here; four of its five professors are people of color.” — @luisalfaro.bsky.social #TheaterSKY

Not sure what happened there, but I stand by it

Of course the