Alexandra Schwartz
The New Yorker
New York, NY, United States
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Past articles by Alexandra:
Kate Berlant’s Broken Mirror
In her first solo special and a new stage show, the comic deconstructs the relationship between performance, ego, and audience. → Read More
How “Less Is Lost” Finds Its Footing
In the sequel to Andrew Sean Greer’s Pulitzer-winning novel, a fiction writer leaves the Bay Area for a trip across America, and learns how little he knows. → Read More
The Fraught Fantasies of “Into the Woods” and “Hamlet”
From Shakespeare to Sondheim, the world is not what it seems. → Read More
Sarah Silverman’s Childhood Pee Problem Takes Center Stage
“The Bedwetter” turns the comedian’s memoir into a goofy, sweet, and hopeful musical. → Read More
Mottled Morals and a Fight for Justice in “Golden Shield”
Anchuli Felicia King’s play reimagines a lawsuit in defense of Chinese dissidents. → Read More
Jamie Lloyd’s Minimalist Hip-Hop “Cyrano de Bergerac”
A new staging, starring James McAvoy, gives us rappers instead of rapiers. → Read More
A “Hamilton” for the Suffrage Movement
Shaina Taub’s new musical follows Alice Paul’s tireless quest to win American women the vote. → Read More
Alex Edelman Gets Political in “Just for Us”
In his solo show at the SoHo Playhouse, the comedian delves into a world of neo-Nazi wannabes, to explore his whiteness—and his Jewishness, Alexandra Schwartz writes. → Read More
Shifting Identities in Sanaz Toossi’s “English”
Alexandra Schwartz reviews a play about a TOEFL class in Iran, in which speaking a second language isn’t just a way to say the same things differently but a way to be different. → Read More
“The Music Man” Is a Nostalgia Machine
Alexandra Schwartz reviews the latest Broadway revival of Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man,” starring Hugh Jackman and Sutton Foster, and notes how this iteration evokes a spirit of sanitation rather than the critical portrait Willson once intended in his original text. → Read More
Two Musicals on the Perils of Aging
A buoyant revival of Sondheim’s “Company” and the refreshingly off-kilter “Kimberly Akimbo.” → Read More
President Killers and Princess Diana Find Musical Immortality
“Assassins” and “Diana: The Musical” turn tragic history into song. → Read More
Maggie Gyllenhaal and Girlfriends Channel Elena Ferrante
The stars of “The Lost Daughter”—Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson, and Jessie Buckley—gab about spinach pie, wine, and “press-clothes bullshit.” → Read More
Work, Motherhood, and Capitalism Onstage
The musicals “Caroline, or Change” and “The Mother” take on personal and political revolutions. → Read More
An American Dream and an American Nightmare
“The Lehman Trilogy” and “Dana H.” explore stories of success and survival. → Read More
“Is This a Room” and “Chicken & Biscuits” Bring the Unexpected to Broadway
A thrilling dramatization of the interrogation of the whistle-blower Reality Winner and a crowd-pleasing family comedy both rise above their pre-Broadway origins. → Read More
Margaret Qualley Acts Her Age
The “Once Upon a Time . . . in Hollywood” ingénue and star of the Netflix series “Maid” visits Color Me Mine for some sophisticated conversation. → Read More
We’re Shaped By Our Sexual Desires. Can We Shape Them?
What we want may be more socially conditioned than we realize. → Read More
“Merry Wives” and “Endure: Run Woman Show” Transform Central Park
A Shakespeare adaptation and a marathon-inspired performance turn the city’s back yard into a stage. → Read More
David Adjaye Tries Rammed Earth
When the British architect and his family got locked down in his parents’ homeland of Ghana, last year, he was inspired by their low-slung local village to create a structure that serves no practical purpose—an art work—now on display at the Gagosian gallery. → Read More