The Play's the Thing

I have a few complaints about The Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park program, and I basically think the Public is just plain full of it, but now is not the time nor the place. If you are fortunate enough to get tickets to their Shakespeare in the Park productions, it's definitely a great experience, even if the production is sub-par. Even if they're doing Twelfth Night for the four hundredth time. But nothing beats watching some of the greatest pieces of art ever created in the middle of Central Park, in the greatest city in the world, on (hopefully) a beautiful summer night. Their first production this season is Othello , which is my second favorite tragedy and probably third favorite work by Shakespeare. And for some reason, regardless of its compelling and powerful nature and relatable themes, it's not performed very frequently. So I was very, very excited to finally see the Moor of Venice on stage. Ruben Santiago-Hudson's production of Othello is stro...

There are so many things wrong with Anthony Giardina's Dan Cody' Yacht that I don't even know where to begin. As soon as the play began, I couldn't help but think, "no, wait, I saw this play already." It exists in the same vein as Admissions , Joshua Harmon's better written play from last season. We're once again thrown into a prestigious Massachusetts suburban high school (this time a public one) with white parents worrying about their already-privileged children's future at college and beyond. We're immediately introduced, in an opening scene filled with so much exposition that the playwright should be embarrassed, to Kevin, a wealthy single, gay father (yeah, he's gay, just so we're clear that everything that follows does not happen because he wants to get into a woman's pants) who has a job in Finance and knows everything there is to know about Finance and making money and being successful. He knows because he wasn't ver...