

Civic Damnation, or Farce?
"...This Measure for Measure, Elevator Repair Service’s first foray into Shakespeare, also deals with the messy intersection of law and sexuality—the play’s plot kicks off when the Duke, worried he lacks the credibility to start enforcing Vienna’s strict anti-fornication laws, pretends to leave his city and puts his puritanical deputy Angelo in charge. In this production, however, Elevator Repair Service’s madcap experimentation robs the text of much of its weight. The result


Julius Caesar, Smothered in Trumpery
"The decision to stage Julius Caesar with “Trump” as the dominant production idea has generated controversy and was enough to make sponsors like Delta Air Lines withdraw their support. Ultimately, the production was not a threat or an incitement to violence, but merely tacky—and it mangled both the meaning of the play and the progressive causes its creators hold dear. Shakespeare’s Caesar is no vulgar political neophyte, but a successful general and career politician remaking


Judas in Japan
"Scorsese’s foreword fills one with familiar dread. Here is the voice of mock piety, yet another chin-stroking sophomore speculating that the real sacrifice would be to give up one’s morals. In his discussion of Silence, Scorsese recapitulates the way he portrayed Judas as a collaborator in Jesus’s sacrifice in his own The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)—projecting his particular interpretation of Judas as pseudo-saint onto Endo: “In order for Christianity to live, to adapt