Tom Sellar
Village Voice
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Past articles by Tom:
The Biennial Bonanza ‘Performa 15’ Brings Us Live Performances Created by Visual Artists
Sometimes it's hard to imagine that live video feeds weren't always included in theater, or that exhibitions didn't normally involve choreography and poetry. Contemporary art has become reflexively multidisciplinary today, and it makes plenty of room for live bodies. Since its founding ten years ago, the biennial Performa has nurtured... → Read More
You Are ‘Hir’: Taylor Mac’s Trailblazing New Play Explores Gender Identity to Dramatic Effect
Hir, a new play by the writer-performer Taylor Mac, depicts a single messed-up family but evokes an America in transition. Like the drama's transgender character Max (Tom Phelan) and the Connor household, the nation has changed fundamentally and now struggles to locate its real values. For Max, formerly biological female... → Read More
Knockout Punchless: Despite Good Intentions, the Dystopian Allegory 'Privatopia' Drops an Ideological Anvil on the Viewer’s Noggin
Through a circle of translucent screens, we glimpse a luxurious inner sanctum: the West. Five satin-clad figures, representing Europe and America, enjoy a bacchanal around a long table. These narcissistic aristocrats gorge themselves with Reddi-wip while obsessing over their pleasure, security, and self-image. "When did the rules turn around?" they... → Read More
‘King Charles III,’ Mike Bartlett’s Monarchy Play, Arrives From the U.K. Ambitious to a Fault
"Long live the King — that's me!" cries Prince Charles when he suddenly inherits the throne. Mike Bartlett's King Charles III leaps from today's tabloid-tinged realities into a cheeky fantasy of Britain's political future. It kicks off with a supposition: The long-lived Elizabeth II dies (in reality the Queen just... → Read More
César Alvarez’s Musical ‘Futurity’ Commands You to Drop Your Arms and Raise Your Hands
"Have you ever lived in the past? Have you ever tried to re-create the way the future might appear to a person not aware of the way things are now?" That question kicks off Futurity, a new concert-performance by César Alvarez and his band the Lisps. It's one of the... → Read More
With Liberia as Its Backdrop, the Forceful ‘Eclipsed’ Illuminates the Plight of Women in War
Civil war changes everything when it ravages a troubled country like Liberia. Men get conscripted or murdered. Women must choose sides while normal life collapses around them. Warlords abduct daughters and wives from their families, taking them hundreds of miles away to care for violent masters (sometimes their husbands). Survival... → Read More
‘Houseworld’ Portends Extraordinary Immersive Theater but Lingers in the Laid-Back Lane
Approaching the doors of Williamsburg's historic San Damiano Mission, I felt for a moment that I stood on the threshold of a revelation. Alone in the rectory's courtyard, a robed quasi-biblical woman had just washed my hands while singing to me gently. Now I rang an old bell, summoning a... → Read More
In ‘The Daisy Theatre,’ Puppeteer Ronnie Burkett Has the World — and His Audience — on a String
"What I'm going to do is make shit up," announces the master puppeteer at the top of his new show. He stays true to his word. The Daisy Theatre, a funny and sometimes provocative evening with cult marionette showman Ronnie Burkett, doesn't have a fixed running time. (It came down... → Read More
With ‘Fondly, Collette Richland,’ Elevator Repair Service Stages Its First Actual Play — And It’s a Doozy
For more than twenty years, the downtown theater ensemble known as Elevator Repair Service has staged entire novels by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. They've riffed on Greek tragedies. They've enacted hilariously arcane legal transcripts. But until now, director John Collins and his accomplices have never worked with a living, breathing... → Read More
New York Theater Redraws Its Borders This Fall
This theater season, what's new is what's old. Revivals and shows spawned from familiar stories mark Broadway's autumn schedule: Oprah Winfrey makes her foray into producing with The Color Purple, a new production based on Alice Walker's novel and starring Jennifer Hudson. Fiddler on the Roof, with Danny Burstein as... → Read More
Lacking Only Heft, 'Hamilton' Bowls Over Broadway
Around the time Barack Obama won the 2008 election, I remember seeing a wonderful cartoon with silhouettes of the nation's chief executives in chronological order. A long symmetrical lineup of white men in wigs ended with a beaming Obama in the final oval frame, his black profile contrasting proudly —... → Read More
‘Cymbeline’ in the Park Is a Smidge Showy, but Who’s Complaining?
Shakespeare titled his late romance Cymbeline, and words emblazoned on the back curtain at this Shakespeare in the Park production read, "The Story of Cymbeline." But this often absurd tale of innocent love belongs more to slandered daughter Imogen (Lily Rabe) than to her royal father in the title role... → Read More
The Star of ‘Colin Quinn: The New York Story’ Lets NYC Off Too Easy
Colin Quinn misses the old New York, a city of iconoclasts and rough edges that disappeared when blond trust-funders infiltrated North Brooklyn and made it hard for him to ride the L train. Quinn, who hails from Park Slope, pines for the reliably tawdry but entertainingly gritty Times Square before... → Read More
The Saccharine ‘Amazing Grace’ Exemplifies Our National Obsession With Sentimentalism
Abolitionist kitsch has a vivid history in this country, and that's helpful background for understanding Amazing Grace, a new Broadway musical that makes a firm and heartfelt stand against the evils of slavery. Among other examples from America's past, Harriet Beecher Stowe's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin got spun into... → Read More
Waiting for Fluff, Man: 'Shows for Days' Is Too Cute for Its Own Good
Everyone who works in the American theater hangs on to a story about how they fell into a crazy life of hits and flops, fulfillment and frustration. Sometimes those tales whisper of seductions — siren calls to a place where the lights promise to shine just a little bit brighter,... → Read More
Shakespeare in the Park's 'Tempest' Fails to Resonate
Like their characters clinging to the rails of a storm-tossed boat, the actors stand exposed to the elements in this open-air production of The Tempest. Rain. Heat. Moths. Helicopters that fly overhead just as Ferdinand, the prince of Naples, happens to say, "I hear it now above me." Shakespeare's play... → Read More
In 'Composition...Master-Pieces...Identity,' David Greenspan Channels a Gertrude Stein Trifecta
If you stare at downtown theater veteran David Greenspan long enough, he starts to look like Gertrude Stein. Certainly he's svelter than the matriarch of modernism, whose likeness Picasso made iconic with his Cubist portrait (now in the Met's collection). Stein's face often appears impatient and inquisitive, but Greenspan gives... → Read More
In Permission, the Bible Isn't the Only Thing That Gets Thumped
Robert Askins sets his new play Permission in "nice clean suburban Waco," but the Texas you see here might not look the way you imagined. Sure, the characters go to Bible study groups. They care about... → Read More
Five Off-Broadway Luminaries Assess the Evolution of the Downtown Theater Scene
Keeping tabs on New York theater is a tricky business, with shows of all stripes appearing at venues of every size. But when the 2015 season drew to a close, one thing was easy to notice: how many wo... → Read More
Alas, Heartbreak Won't Hurt You
"Everybody leaves home," says Stammy (Seth Clayton), a bewildered and disappointed young man, near the end of Heartbreak, Ariel Stess's new play. He's right, of course. And that's one of the reasons... → Read More