Simon Callow Charm Defensive Mike Nichols was charismatic, witty, invariably quotable. But do I feel I knew him? Not at all. September 24, 2020 issue
Joan Acocella The Red Shoes Mikhail Baryshnikov has never played so undashing a hero. May 14, 2020 issue
Clair Wills Stepping Out The joy of dancing as a follower is to listen for the barely said—to interpret signs almost before they have been given, to read messages in the moment they are being sent. August 20, 2020 issue
Matthew Aucoin Making Shakespeare Sing On Verdi’s last two operas, Otello and Falstaff December 19, 2019 issue
Erica Getto and Max Nelson ‘Don’t Write on Here, Bad Girl’ Over sixty years, Yvonne Rainer has made an art of bringing a deadpan comic tone to strenuous scenes of bodily exertion, political struggle, emotional strain, and taxing thought. April 23, 2020 issue
Maggie Doherty Bella Abzug’s Fight for a Broader Feminism On the feisty congresswoman’s posthumous return to the spotlight. November 5, 2020 issue
Christopher Benfey Missed Steps So many steps! So many turns! A leap. A landing. And done. The other dancers had no trouble remembering the steps. I had trouble. August 26, 2020
Caryl Phillips Derek Walcott in New York Derek Walcott had many New Yorks, and all of them played a part in his life and in his evolution as a writer. But perhaps the most important of all his New York sojourns was the one from the Fifties. July 29, 2020
Marisa Mazria Katz An Interview with David Adjmi David Adjmi’s newly published memoir, Lot Six, as well as his play Stunning, are testament to a rapturous ability to capture the cadence and idiosyncrasies of a group never previously brought to dramatic life in mainstream culture. July 23, 2020
Alexandra Enders The Plays of Richard Nelson Richard Nelson’s recent play The Michaels is subtitled “Conversations During Difficult Times” but it’s every bit as much about what goes unsaid. May 26, 2020
Matthew Aucoin Opera at the Edge Perhaps, in our newfound state of isolation, we can learn new ways to listen across borders, with open ears May 14, 2020 issue
Anastasia Edel A Winter’s Night at the Bolshoi, 1985 By the time we reached the Bolshoi, Sverdlov Square was swathed in white. Even the granite Karl Marx facing the theater no longer looked as though he was trying to break out of the massive rock but was leaning into it, rather. March 6, 2020
James Romm The Winking Satire of ‘Agrippina’ Agrippina, the Handel opera now premiering on the Metropolitan Opera’s stage, may have been written as a satire on the politics of its own time, but in the hands of producer Sir David McVicar, and set in the present day, it offers a timely paradigm of hypocrisy, corruption, and sexual manipulation in the halls of power. March 1, 2020