Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

2010 Independent Theater Bloggers Association Awards Winners

The 2nd Annual ITBA awards have been announced. This was a pretty weak year for New York Theater Overall, IMHO, and some of the best shows I’ve seen didn’t get enough eyeballs to make the nominations. There were some awards that caused some minor controversy in the ITBA discussion (Viral caused the biggest blip), but [...]

Theater Guide: 2009-2010 season, through March

[For more info please read my guide to theater reviews] It’s A Hit! Emperor Jones A+ Superior Donuts Variety film critic Todd McCarthy said that A Serious Man, which I considered the best movie of 2009, was the kind of movie that the Coen Brothers could only make after winning the Oscar. I sort of feel [...]

Theater Review (NYC): Re-Entry by Emily Ackerman and KJ Sanchez (Urban Stages)

The problem with all movie, television, video game, and other media views of war, as Re-Entry’s Joseph Harrell asserts from the start, is that it inevitably provides, at best, a two-dimensional detached view of a world that is very much real for those who experience it. Like those other arts, theater cannot simulate the battlefield, [...]

Theater Review (NYC): Princes of Waco by Robert Askins

From the start of Princes of Waco, it’s pretty clear that Robert Askins is writing about what he knows. The 29-year old Houston native has a smoothness in his Texas dialogue that comes from a native speaker, and the play streams so comfortably through the ins and out of the mythology of Texas and the [...]

Theater Review (NYC): The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill (Irish Rep)

There’s little doubt in my mind that 2009 was the best year in recent memory for the revival of straight plays in New York City, and the year was bookended by two of the very best. In January, vaunted Chicago import Our Town turned what had always been a more intelligent play than its reputation [...]