John Collins

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Baldwin & Buckley at Cambridge

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Baldwin & Buckley at Cambridge

On Feb. 18, 1965, author James Baldwin (Go Tell It on the Mountain) and conservative commentator and author William F. Buckley Jr. (God and Man at Yale) debated whether “The American Dream Is at the Expense of the American Negro” at Cambridge University in England. The debate generated excitement and interest at the time—as described by historian Kevin Schultz, more than 700 (white) students showed up, and filled the room to overflowing. The face-off, reenacted in Baldwin & Buckley at Cambridge, has since become legendary, the subject of books and documentaries, in particular because of Baldwin’s brilliant dissection of race in America, which continues to be painfully relevant today.

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Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf

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Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf

Elevator Repair Service (ERS), the adventurous downtown troupe known for theatrical adaptations of iconic modernist works, is parodying Edward Albee and Tennessee Williams in a new play by Kate Scelsa that has the cleverest title in town—Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf. The production is directed at breakneck speed by the company’s founder, John Collins. It features visuals by Louisa Thompson (scenery), Amanda Villalobos (properties), and Kaye Voyce (costumes) that give the proceedings the kitsch-cluttered aesthetic that’s an ERS signature. 

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Measure for Measure

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Measure for Measure

Duke Vincentio of Vienna doesn’t have time to sit and chat. He’s got a dukedom to observe in disguise. “Our haste from hence is of so quick condition,” he says at the start of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, “that it prefers itself and leaves unquestioned matters of needful value.” Elevator Repair Service’s gaga production of the play at the Public Theater is in as big a hurry as the Duke, but achieves the opposite effect: it tears through the niceties of Shakespeare’s plot only to screech to nearly a full stop in the scenes of highest tension, ensuring that none of the most meaningful fragments of “needful value” passes unheard, if not unfelt.

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