The Collaboration
Written by Anthony McCarten
Directed by Kwame Kwei-Armah
Manhattan Theatre Club/Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
January 6, 2023
Production website
💉💉 out of 5.

This play is a somewhat fictionalized meeting between two famous painters, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.  BUT before the play begins we are treated to a post show, live DJ mixing hits from the 70’s and it is loud.  So loud that the young set of the audience was dancing in the aisles and the older set were cringed in their seats covering their ears – a risky move given the age of the audience;  Now to the play

Leopoldstadt
Written by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Patrick Barber
Longacre Theatre
January 4, 2023
Production website
💉💉💉💉 out of 5.

This was one tough tough chew. This was one play that I wished I could have read or, ideally, seen twice.  There were just so many story lines; so many years covered; so many characters, with such rich; so many mathematic illusions, Zionist history, and commentary on modern art , AND poetic language that I was treading water trying to gather as much as I could.   Leopoldstadt is a late career masterpiece likely Tom Stoppard’s plays as he is well in his 80’s ,and he spends so much time in making his plays.  But this is one great exit play!  The play is much like a kaleidoscope – taking us through a boisterous Christmas party in 1899, a Passover in 1990, and a farcical circumcision in 1924.