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Karen Ebenezer

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The Baroness

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The Baroness

“Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me a chance to do my best.” So says Danish writer Karen Blixen, better known by her pseudonym Isak Dinesen, in her collection of short stories Babette’s Feast and Other Anecdotes of Destiny. There is willful ambition in these words, a desire to live out the hunger at the heart of the artist. The Baroness, subtitled Isak Dinesen’s Final Affair, is a Scandinavian American Theater Company production written by Danish playwright Thor Bjørn Krebs, and the play cannot escape its famous protagonist’s obsession with her art. Directed by Henning Hegland, the play opens with Thorkild Bjørnvig (Conrad Ardelius) addressing the audience as the voice of Karen Blixen (Dee Pelletier) plays over him.

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The Crusade of Connor Stephens

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The Crusade of Connor Stephens

A newsreel about faith-based adoption restrictions on Jewish, Muslim and interfaith couples in the state of Texas plays somberly over a smooth jazz gospel concert at the start of The Crusade of Connor Stephens, a new play by Dewey Moss. In between the voices of newsreaders decrying the discriminatory new laws and the gospel choir, an evangelist preacher calls for us to repent our sins and come into the light of the Lord Our God. It’s enough to make a New York audience gag.

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Mourning Becomes Electra

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Mourning Becomes Electra

Target Margin Theater’s production of Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra signals its nonconformist nature by having its audience to gather outside the Abrons Art Center, packed together like rush-hour travelers. The production, which is part promenade, rejects the usual, classical interpretation of O’Neill’s trilogy, which has often proved difficult to pull off. But director David Herskovits, in his progressively exhilarating realization of Mourning Becomes Electra, comes close to throwing off the curse.

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