All four of Tom Stoppard's grandparents died in the Holocaust, but he only learned about his Jewish roots in middle age. His new play, Leopoldstadt, which opened Sunday on Broadway, is both an acknowledgement and personal excoriation, asking how for so long he could have ignored his family's history of suffering.
Stoppard is known for his wit, verbal dexterity and intellectually challenging work. Born Tomáš Sträussler in 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia, his family fled the Nazis in 1938 and moved to Singapore. Read More...
“It” girl Song Ji-a in action. It’s been a wild and sometimes infuriating ride, but Single’s Inferno is finally over. The eight-episode Netflix reality-dating show brought a cast of attractive singles to a deserted island and had them face off for opportunities to escape to a luxury hotel for better accommodations and one-on-one dates. It became the first South Korean reality show to ever make it into Netflix’s top-ten list of TV shows watched globally, and it showed us just how much can change over the course of nine days (Moon Se-hoon, for example, managed to end up receiving praise instead of a restraining order). Read More...
A guide to contemporary classical musicClassical musicA guide to Toru Takemitsu's musicTakemitsu's understated and crystalline compositions combine elements of his own Japanese traditions with the western modernism he loved so muchI can remember the first time I listened to Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu. It was his piece Archipelago S, written for a large ensemble, and it was back in 1993 in Vienna. He was one of the featured composers in that year's Wien Modern new music festival. Read More...