What a supremely difficult task it would be to make Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot a theatrical catastrophe given the rich nature of the existentialism, the slap-stick comedy, the downright absurdism. That said, what a trying undertaking it is to … Read More
Jed Peterson ’06 has created an epic version of the tragic love story of Romeo and Juliet – so creative and grand that his remains the best Shakespeare performed at Princeton in the past few years and the best play … Read More
“TRUST but verify,” goes the Old Russian proverb, and such a maxim can apply to the Guggenheim’s current “RUSSIA!” exhibit, which seems to require further probing – further verification – to find the reason for the obvious compensation attempted by using all capital letters and an exclamation point in its title.
A French damsel and I decided to take a train To New York to see the Gates and be at play. You were late to the Dinky and had to book It to meet me by the stop to pause, … Read More
It takes an impresario to found a Russian movement. But for a moment’s continued interest in the present, a queer and inexplicable slavophilia must appear to have its dance with history. And now, 15 years after the fall of the … Read More
Though it might otherwise be dismissed as a horribly-written play, Me, Myself & I inspires additional disappointment, flowing as it does from the pen of three-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Edward Albee. A moving and clever piece, it is not. Perhaps the only element that could have saved and justified its stodgy formal progression—an insistent meta-theatricality—comes off as forced, hackneyed, dismissible. Yes, Albee reveals, these are actually actors onstage. We get it. Got it. Good.
It all came to me freshman year while studying Russian syntax and reading some Puskin. I’m there with a semi-erect penis (a state in which I often find myself when studying anything Slavic) and snacking on a chocolate chip cookie … Read More
American vernacular explodes ecstatically, euphorically such that it becomes positively contagious—seeping into our speech patterns, our lives. The use of sexual terms augments our tendency and predisposition for this vernacular, but it too can be found in other languages. Ben … Read More
When I meet Howard Nuer ’07, a Hassidic Jewish student, three Sundays ago in his room, I am struck most by his bookshelf—filled to the gills with advanced math books and Hebrew scripture. The math major sits relaxed at his … Read More
It’s a show of love, soul, ravished innocence, sexual passion, emotional pain, Nordic landscapes.
At a time in which art shows tend toward the massive; jam-packed galleries swarming with fat-upper-armed women loaded with streams of banalities, New York has been granted a reprieve at the MoMA by an artist best known for the now-stolen painting “The Scream”.
Bereavement can be rather grave in certain circumstances, and the loss of decorum- the circumstance I address this very instant- has its sufficient fill of seriousness.
Just walk in Micawber Books, now as it phases out its inventory in preparation to close its doors in March, and you will undoubtedly bear witness to a sad scene, not quite of mourning but of definite melancholy, downtrodden emotion. Yes, of course, the friendly staff is still smiling; Bobbie Fishman, a long-time employee, interestedly asks what I need help finding, but there is a somber air looming over the store: the shelves in the used-book section have been disassembled and piled in orderly disarray, the stacks in the new-books section increasingly reveal empty wood as customers continue to remove the books and buy them at heavily discounted prices.