CMU School of Drama


Thursday, April 01, 2010

Isherwood and Macaulay Spar Over ‘Come Fly Away’

NYTimes.com: "Twyla Tharp has been choreographing to the music of Frank Sinatra since the 1970s, but “Come Fly Away” brings her Sinatra dances to Broadway for the first time. Charles Isherwood, a theater critic for The New York Times, hailed it as “a major new work of pop dance theater,” while The Times’s chief dance critic Alastair Macaulay called the choreography “less sensational than sensationalistic” and “intimacy perverted into exhibitionism.”"

1 comment:

Brian Rangell said...

Without having seen the show, I cannot add much to the conversation here, but this discussion between the two critics is why I love working in the theatre - to spark intellectual firefights like this. From what I have heard of the show, I would tend to follow Isherwood's reasoning about the exhibitionist role played in the nightclub environment, though Macaulay brings up an absence of subtlety - moments of intimacy that would contrast against the flashy affair and provide a deeper look at the relationship when out of the public eye. Broadway houses do necessitate a larger scale, but that could mean that moments of intimacy should really be amplified in that environment as well.