Colin Quinn is one of the better comics doing political satire – he communicates highly complicated ideas through the most mundane and absurdly funny examples. I thoroughly enjoyed his Broadway hit Long Story Short, which told the history of the world, brought wittily down to a comprehensible human scale.
Police in New York are currently investigating two gay bashings that occurred in the city over the past week. Two men are currently in custody, and cops continue to search for other suspects. One of those suspects is seen here smiling. You can watch video of some of the other suspects below.
The first attack took place on Sunday when two gay men say they were beaten outside Madison Square Garden, and the second took place early Friday morning when two more men were attacked outside the 33rd Street Path station.
Cops were able to nab Asllan Berisha and Brian Ramirez for the most recent attack while others involved were able to run away. They are being charged with hate crimes.
On Saturday police released new video in the search for a group that authorities want to question about last Sundays attacks. The video footage shows eight men who the victims say started yelling anti-gay slurs, then beat them after the Knicks game.
You can watch the surveillance video here:
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What a great way to end the Broadway season! I’m definitely a fan of Bette Midler, and, somewhat more randomly, a fan of the real-life woman she’s portraying, Sue Mengers, the first female Hollywood superagent, who dominated the town during the wild and woolly 1970s. So I had a great time simply being in the presence of Midler and Mengers, as squired onto the Broadway stage by a writer and director who are among the best and brightest Broadway has to offer (John Logan and Joe Mantello, respectively).
I really enjoyed the circus acts that populate director Diane Paulus’s revival of Pippin. They did nothing, however, to make me reevaluate my lukewarm feeling toward the show as a whole.
Mark Nadler is one of the greatest showmen of our time, capable of leaping from floor to piano bench, tap-dancing madly, singing and keeping steady eye contact with the audience, all this while playing a complex passage on the piano without even glancing at the keys. However, in his latest, I’m A Stranger Here Myself, he takes a somewhat more low-key approach – the abundant theatrics and virtuosity are still there, but applied in a different way. Stranger was originally a cabaret show, but Mark has worked with director David Schweizer to craft it into an even more thoughtful multimedia theatre piece.
