Game Over
Jon Robin Baitz has written a new play, "Chinese Friends," about American politics circa 2030. It derives its title from a board game of the same name, also called Go or Othello. I saw it at two disadvantages: first, not knowing the game; and second, not having Mr. Baitz sit next to me and explain what I was seeing. Generally I prefer to puzzle out the meanings of plays by myself, without an authorial nudge. In fact, I take a dim view of playwrights loitering around the...
REVIEW
`Friends' in need ... indeed Jacques le Sourd The Journal News Watch out when your college-age kid comes home for the weekend with a couple of friends. Even if you've got a tenderloin of pork with morel sauce waiting along with a nice Sancerre, it may turn out the boy has far more sinister plans for you. Before dinner.In "Chinese Friends," a truly abysmal play by Jon Robin Baitz that opened last night at Playwrights Horizons, the...
Think racial harmony is natural? Think again
IT WILL be the Chinese New Year tomorrow. Thousands of Malay and Indian Singaporeans will visit their Chinese friends, just as their Chinese friends would have visited them on Hari Raya and Deepavali. Such occurrences seem so natural to us we no longer think they are worth especial note.But how 'natural' is the 'natural', when it comes to inter-racial or inter-religious relations? That like should stick to like - and that they should all...
The Observer: Observer Food Monthly: ENTERTAINING: 'I drew the line at killing a pig': Cooking a Chinese
New Year dinner for Chinese friends is a challenge - especially if you're English
Location Fuchsia's house in northeast London Cost around pounds 65 Cooking time eight hours spread over several days Clearing-up time an hour As I stood in front of my kitchen window poking pieces of salty spiced pork into slithery lengths of pig intestine, I thought perhaps this was going a bit too far. I'd had to scour north London for the intestines, picking them up in a squidgy bag from a butcher's depot in Finsbury Park. Stuffing them...
Playing with the plays,
Local actor Peter Strauss joins diverse cast, helping readings at Ojai Playwrights Conference
Actor Peter Strauss' latest character isn't necessarily a rich man or a poor man. In "Chinese Friends" a new play by theatrical Wunderkind Jon Robin Baitz that will be given a semi-staged reading Sunday at the Ojai Playwrights Conference he's a former spy who has retreated to an island with an incriminating tape recording in his possession.Baitz's work-in-progress also will feature Maggie Gyllenhaal playing against...