Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

Blow Up The Jukebox: An Open Letter To Jim DeRogatis, Greg Kot, Chris Jones, and the Entire Tonys Committee [TYNAN'S LETTERS]

[Inspired By This Week's Sound Opinions Episode] Image by Getty Images via @daylife First off, let’s get one thing out of the way: this ongoing beef between rock n roll and musicals has to end. This beef is understandable, as the transition from musical songstylings to rock n roll was arguably the biggest change in [...]

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 [...]

Theater Review (NYC) American Treasure by Julia Jarcho

13P Started as a collective of mid-level playwrights (e.g. regional and off-Broadway level) who were unsatisfied with the workshop process. It’s interesting to watch that mission apply to American Treasure, which feels like a good play that would have been great with more workshopping. American Treasure is one of the few plays I’ve seen that [...]