All Sections. About Us. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options. By Ramin Zahed. It was really hard to pick the right pic for this post, so here is a shot of us in a hug after we filmed the last group scene we would ever film for the series All of us will miss seeing you in this format, but we will be around in all sorts of ways, I assure you Facebook Twitter Email.
Show Caption. Hide Caption. The couple have been together for 14 years. Crowley is 82 years old. Director Joe Mantello's 50th anniversary revival of this seminal play must be the most surreal bookend on his career. Heck, on his life. All of that feels uncommonly relevant — actually, "relevant" understates the matter.
That contrast between actor and performer is at the core of what this fundamentally optimistic production wants to say, what it wants to reveal, which is the great American march — always two steps forward, one step back — toward greater freedoms for more Americans. Mantello wants his audience to breathe in not just his characters, with their one-liners, quips, power trips and deep sadness, but also to imbue the breathtaking contrast with the self-assured men who now are playing them, luckier men not born when the play was written.
That is not to imply condescension on the part of these actors — on the contrary, for you can read the seriousness with which they take their assignments to play men much less famous than themselves — but merely to claim Mantello's clear purpose, as intensified by a design from David Zinn that has one foot in two eras and its cleverly timeless body in the close proximity of such contradictions as intimacy and performance, privacy and display.
It's all a bit meta, I know, but I swear there is no place better than the theater to be overwhelmed by suddenly comprehending the transformations of 50 years in minutes.
Gradual change can limit your appreciation. Sometimes you have to see it all unveiled before you at once. Writing this review on the plane, an older professional man I did not know, a man who had been staring at my screen, leaned over unprompted to tell me how he had been transfixed and terrified when he first saw the play in his youth: "I was worried," he said, smiling across the aisle, "that this was going to be my life.
His life, of course, has been otherwise, and that truth is all over Mantello's production, maybe overwhelming the actual play, which is fine when you consider that this is a work whose historical significance is its greatest asset.
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