Jesse Oxfeld
By Jesse Oxfeld
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Culture In These Dark Times, Finally Some Hope And Inspiration On Broadway
To whatever extent there is an argument to be made that Terje Rød-Larsen is Israel’s greatest diplomat — it’s a small extent: he is neither Israeli nor a diplomat, and his great triumph has been rendered essentially defunct — it is currently being made where it should be, on the Upper West Side of Manhattan….
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Theater The Unbearable Sadness Of Being Single And Jewish (Natch)
“You just have to meet your bashert,” says grandma, sagely. Jordan, her late-20s grandson, is despairing that his friends are all getting married and he’s still alone. “And you will,” grandma continues, “because you’re the most wonderful grandson in the world.” Jordan is sad, but he’s also smart and a smartass. “I don’t think that’s…
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Theater David Mamet Finds God, Still Searches For Inspiration
David Mamet has written a new play, and, unlike his last three new ones produced in New York, it is not offensively bad. It is merely not at all good. That’s not quite true. It is potentially, slightly, maybe a little bit good. It is centered on a kernel of a good and interesting idea:…
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Culture How a Stolen Picasso Inspired an L.A. Story
Ellen Umansky’s first novel, “The Fortunate Ones,” features two protagonists and innumerable weighty subjects: the Holocaust, the effect of divorce on children, the death of a parent, art theft, the Kindertransports, art restitution, family secrets, guilt and life in postwar London. It centers on a (fictional) painting by the (real) Jewish expressionist Chaim Soutine, a…
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49 Reasons Why 2016 Wasn't as Bad as You Think The Crucible
I have a strong suspicion that the most important piece of theater this year was one I missed: Richard Nelson’s three-part “The Gabriels: Election Year in the Life of One Family,” at the Public Theater. His previous masterpiece, the “Apple Family Plays,” written in near real-time, was a richly novelistic examination of a liberal family…
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Culture Could a Song Save the World? And Other Things That Make Us Go ‘Ugh!’
If everyone in the world were a classical musician, we’d long ago have made peace in the Middle East. That’s a realization I had in the early 2000s, reading in the Times about yet another youth orchestra for Israeli and Palestinian prodigies — or maybe it was a chess program for Jewish and Muslim grandmasters…
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Culture Richard Greenberg Is Back on His Home Turf — Suburbia
The three women who shriek with excitement when they find themselves in the same classroom are thrilled to see each other — they’re Sisterhood ladies. It’s Levittown, Long Island, in 1967, and they’ve signed up for an adult-ed class in creative writing. It’s clear they don’t really want to be there, both because they tell…
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Culture ‘Falsettos’ Isn’t As Gay As It Once Was — But It’s Still Just as Jewish
Its very first word, shouted by men dressed as Biblical Hebrews and bathed in a quick flash of light, is “oy.” Its first song is titled “Four Jews in a Room Bitching.” And it ends with a bar mitzvah. “Falsettos,” a groundbreaking gay musical that opened in a beautiful, emotional revival at the Walter Kerr…
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