Odalisque OD

You know a labor of love when you see it, and "Matisse: The Pursuit of Harmony," now on view at Acquavella counts as two: a French artist's adoration of the fair sex and an émigré family's devotion to re-kindling his flame. I say devotion because none of the painter's works are for sale; the nearly 50 works on view have been borrowed from private collectors (mostly anonymous) or museums. More than a few haven't been seen by the public since they were painted, which explains the lines in front of the East 79th Street gallery.

"Odalisque à la robe rayéeAll" (1937)

Matisse, along with frenemy Pablo Picasso, a decade younger, were both favorites of Gertrude Stein, who attributed the popularity of her early 20th century salons to a desire among Parisians to view his latest work. Unlike Picasso, however, he declined to paint her.

"L'Idole" (1906)

Apparently, neither Ms. Landsberg nor her Brazilian family, who commissioned this striking portrait, which had gone from traditional to radical after multiple sittings, liked the completed work enough to purchase it. 

Mademoiselle Yvonne Landsberg (1914)

When Matisse was "blocked" from expressing himself with a paintbrush, he sculpted. Late in life, after cancer confined him to a wheelchair, he turned to paper cut-outs or decoupage.

"Figure décorative" (1908)

His use of intense color established him as a co-leader of the Fauvists, or "wild beasts" with André Derain.

"L'Artiste et le modèle nu" (1921)

In 1913, Matisse returned from a seven-month sojourn to Morocco with a passion for the odalisque.

"Odalisque couchée aux magnolias" (1923)

"Odalisque au tambourin" (1925-26)

"Odalisque allongée" (1926)

"Odalisques jouant aux dames" (1928)

Matisse, who had contemplated fleeing to Brazil before the Nazis invaded Paris, spent the war years in Nice where he had lived since 1917. Vichy France exploited his decision to stay put for propaganda purposes.

"Elena" (1937)

"L'Odalisque, harmonie bleue" (1937)

"Odalisque en manteau rouge" (1937)

"Vase d'anémones" (1946)

Back to the Acquavellas. They're playing the long game, as they have since patriarch Nicholas arrived in the United States from Naples during the Roaring Twenties and established a gallery specializing in Italian art, including Renaissance masters. His son Bill added post-Impressionists, including Matisse, Cubists and Surrealists in the 60s. Since 1980, works by post-war and contemporary artists, such as Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat have hung in the townhouse gallery Bill purchased from Norton Simon. Simon also sold him the Matisse odalisque that opens this post. A third generation-- a daughter and two sons--now have begun selling art to private collectors and museums, a family business lucrative as it is tasteful.  Nice work if you can get it!

"Jeannette III" (1911)

 

The Fear of 13 (4*)

This injustices-of-incarceration love story, based on a 2015 documentary, begins with a welcome jolt:  a burly guard walks on to the dimly lit stage to announce forcefully the rules of Death Row: no cell phone use during the performance, no late seating, no unwrapping candies.  It gets a laugh even if the audience remains less compliant than the inmates.

The Fear of 13 takes a while to get going with a surprisingly musical cast assuming multiple roles as various members of the criminal justice system, types we've all met before under conditions we'd mostly prefer to ignore whether or not we oppose the death penalty.  Nick Yarris wasn't allowed to speak for years in a Pennsylvania maximum security prison; he's resigned to his fate until Jacki Miles, a naive volunteer who writes poetry, begins her visits. A spark between them ignites early, when Nick makes an allusion to David Copperfield which turns out later to have been a "move"; Jacki gently points out that he's actually referring to A Catcher in the Rye.  Their relationship builds slowly--so slowly that I must have drifted off during the discussion of Nick's vocabulary, absorbed from the thousand books he's read in the prison library--which accounts for the play's title and tragic vibe.

Tessa Thompson seems perfectly cast from the outset--who wouldn't fall in love with a woman as beautiful, smart and kind as she?--but it took a while for Adrien Brody's performance to accumulate power as a man whose only reason to live has been snatched away by mutual, mature consent. During the final 30 minutes, he floods the stage with restrained emotion while unlocking a childhood memory that shows how unlucky he has been from the very beginning. When it rains, it pours.  Only a bias against garrulous movie stars can explain Brody's Tony snub.

Kudos to playwright Lindsey Ferrentino for mining the dramatic potential of David Sington's political advocacy (the ceaseless, casual cruelty of corrections personnel and the capriciousness of judges are especially rich veins); to director David Kromer for building to an unforgettably devastating crescendo; and to Heather Gilbert, who illuminates the play's subsuming darkness with pinpoints of hopeful light.

Cameramen

I had no idea there would be a trove of Factory images at the International Center for Photography.  I never can get enough of Andy.

 

Eugène Atget: The Making of a Reputation, closing soon, was the initial draw.  Berenice Abbott took the photo of him below.  She certainly was the French photographer's first champion, although Man Ray used one of his photos--Parisians staring at an eclipse with various techniques to protect their eyes--in a 1926 issue of his surrealist magazine.  Atget, however, rejected the classification.  He had little interest in interpreting his work, even though he spent much of his life lugging heavy photographic equipment around Paris to document the rapidly changing city.  He preferred shooting in the morning light, when people also were less likely to interfere; their absence is one of the reasons I've never cared much for his work.

Abbott returned to America to supervise production of Atget: Photographer of Paris, a book that was published several years after his death in 1927 at the age of 70.  With nearly a hundred images of street scenes, shops and architectural details, it made an impression of both Walker Evans and Ansel Adams.  Many of the original prints are quite small; a slide show makes it easier to appreciate them.  I left the exhibit feeling like we shared a mania for capturing whatever our eye finds interesting.  

Other exhibits explored more mannered approaches to photography.  "Latitudes" includes works by two African photographers from Côte d’Ivoire. 

Nuits Balnéaires (partial)

"Fresco" by François-Xavier Gbré (partial)

Hard Copy New York reminded me of the NSFW pleasures afforded by the high quality photo copy machine that the National Orchestral Association acquired when I worked there in the mid-1980s, after returning from Australia.  I spent a not inconsiderable amount of time reproducing body parts as well as images from the family photo album for collage, and photos I had taken with my Yashica single lens reflex camera.  But in an age when photos are more commonly seen on screens than printed on paper, the curators of this show have transformed illicit fun into an inexpensive analog reminder of how photography uniquely reflects the personalities behind the camera.  

This is my heart.

They come in many square and rectangular forms.

In each shape is a face that sits deep within me.

Since 2016, I've been stealing screenshots from the people in my life.

A way to access reality without

A moment in between a yawn and the quivering mouth before they cry.

Friends, family, old and new lovers.

A documentation of my world in

If I know you, you're probably in it, you

This project is an ode to the people in

A reminder of time that was off the

A moment that wasn't interrupted by a camera between you and me.

A way for me to look you in the eyes and make sure we were connected.

 

"Call Me/Love You Excerpt 2, #002 by Gray Sorrenti (partial, 2025)

The process was simple: when I saw a dog coming toward the car I would prefocus the camera and set the exposure. With one hand on the steering wheel, I would hold the camera out the window and expose anywhere from a few frames to a complete roll of film. I'll admit that I was not above turning around and taking a second pass in front of a house with an enthusiastic dog.

Contemplating a dog chasing a car invites any number of metaphors and juxtapositions: culture and nature, the domestic and the wild, love and hate, joy and fear, the heroic and the idiotic. It could be viewed as a visceral and kinetic dance. Here we have two vectors and velocities, that of a dog and that of a car and, seeing that a camera will never capture reality and that a dog will never catch a car, evidence of devotion to a hopeless enterprise.

From the series Dogs Chasing My Car in the Desert" by John Divola (partial, 1996-2001)

Stephen Shore, just 17 when he walked into the Factory on Union Square in 1964, took these photos, which are part of a much larger ghost-like mosaic as remote as Atget's Paris.  Although this body of photocopied work is uncaptioned and doesn't include any commentary from Shore, now 78, I'd call it the perfect example of being in the right place at the right time.

Andy, Chinatown restaurant

Lou & Andy

Edie

Nico

As I walked uptown on a perfect spring afternoon, I wielded my i-Phone with renewed vigor.  I suspect New York has changed even more than Paris has since Atget's heyday.  If only I'd had his dedication and determination!

Intersection, Essex & Delanncey 

"When You Open Your Eyes, There Will No Longer Be Anything to See"

I'll be returning to the Bowery soon to check out the recently reopened New Museum, which has been expanded since I last visited in 2023.

View North, Bowery

Plastic Dinner Plates, East Village

Cooper Union, East Village

Fifth Avenue View, Madison Square Park

I'll bet Marty Supreme never played table tennis in Herald Square.  Paddles and a ball are all you need to compete in one of the city's most heavily trafficked areas.

Macy's Flower Show, Herald Square

Deutsche Bank Building, Columbus Circle

Plaza, Lincoln Center

Maybe I need a mission statement . . . 

What They Said: April 2026

“The Iranians have achieved mutual assured destruction without a nuclear weapon,” said Robert S. Litwak, a scholar at George Washington University who has written extensively on Iran’s nuclear program. “If Trump attacks Iran’s civil infrastructure, Iran will destroy the comparable energy and desalination facilities in the Gulf.” (New York Times, 04.01.26)

“We have this obsession with gas prices because they dictate a lot of ‘Can we drive? Can we do things we enjoy?’ And now some of that is at risk,” said Patrick De Haan, an analyst at GasBuddy, which also tracks fuel prices. (New York Times, 04.01.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“At this point, I kind of want to hire people because I’m lonely,” said Matthew Gallagher who used AI to build and operate a $1.8 billion telehealth company marketing GLP-1 and erectile dysfunction drugs with his brother as his only employee.  (New York Times, 04.05.26)

“I only use it like for 10 minutes when I’m bored,” said Quentin, whose interactions with AI chatbots have declined since he began dating another teenager. “Even though I could torture people in that universe and beat up a kid named Oliver, because I hate that name, I’d rather be in my life.” (New York Times, 04.05.26)

“One principle of collage, for me,” said Lucy Sante, a visual historian and the author of Low Life, an account of tenement life in lower Manhattan during the Gilded Age, “is you have to kill one thing to make another. It’s a small-scale model of revolutionary behavior.”  (New York Times, 04.05.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“It’s something so clearly unlawful and deeply misguided,” said Oona A. Hathaway, a Yale law professor who co-wrote an open letter signed by 100 legal experts and lawyers expressing their concerns about the U.S. strikes on Iran. “It’s hard to fathom how much the rules have been completely thrown out.” (New York Times, 04.06.26)

“Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash wars choose peace,” Pope Leo XIV said in his first Easter message. “Not a peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.” (New York Times, 04.06.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“One wonders,” wrote Ronald H. Spector, a Viet Nam veteran turned academic historian, in 2017 in Politico, “how anyone could have believed that a complex and intractable war that began 14 years before President Kennedy came into office and continued for six years after Johnson left it could have been won or lost by presidential decisions in Washington during the four years between 1961 and 1965." (New York Times, 04.08.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Listen, I may not be part of the solution here[a world of doomscrolling, political chaos and uncertainty about AI]  in any fundamental way,” said Patrick Radden Keefe, author of Say Nothing, a humanistic account of "the Troubles" in Ireland and a staff writer for The New Yorker. “But I’m not part of the problem. And that’s something.” (New York Times, 04.09.26)

“The feature of these negotiations that may extend the cease-fire is that there is a bit of mutually assured destruction between the U.S. and Iran right now,” said Suzanne Maloney, an Iran expert and the vice president of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution. (New York Times, 04.09.26)

"We call it the manosphere, but it could more accurately be described as the boyosphere," observed Louis Theroux, director of Inside the Manosphere, a documentary. (New York Times, 04.09.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“We made cameras that threw treats for pets. and now we make cameras that throw explosives at occupiers,” said Ukrainian drone manufacturer Yaroslav Azhnyuk.  (New York Times, 04.09.26)

“Two months ago the global news story was Tehran massacring its own people,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Today the global news story is Tehran successfully resisting America and Israel.” (New York Times, 04.09.26)

*   *   *   *   *

"I’ve also spent a long time with the song “Memory,” writes Betty Buckley, the Tony Award-winning actress and singer who originated the role of Grizabella in the Broadway production of “Cats. "I sang it at the Tony Awards in 1983, and I sang it at The Saint, a gay club in the East Village. At the song’s core is a simple plea of longing to be seen again — to be recognized and to be welcomed back into the circle.  (New York Times, 04.11.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“They could hold their ground for another two months, if not more. And economically, I think there is no threshold for how much more pain the Iranians are willing to tolerate,” said Ali Vaez, the head of the Iran program at the International Crisis Group, a think tank.  (New York Times, 04.12.26)

“There’s one new thing I know, and that is: Planet Earth, you are a crew,” said NASA astronaut Christina Koch at a press conference celebrating the success of the Artemis II expedition. (New York Times, 04.12.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Look at what [Mark Carney, Canadian Prime Minister] has been able to do; ‘remarkable’ is just not the correct word,” said Shachi Kurl, president at the Angus Reid Institute, a nonpartisan political research group. “He took a party that was a bus with no brakes headed for a brick wall and somehow managed to not only pull it from the brink of oblivion, but then within a year, get it into a majority position.” (New York Times, 04.15.26)

"I can talk to actors who are 20, 30 years younger than me who have never heard of Laurence Olivier or Noël Coward or John Gielgud or Peggy Ashcroft or these giants of my youth: Gone. Particularly theater actors, over and done with. That’s fine," said Ian McKellen. "And I don’t have children. That’s most people’s legacy, isn’t it? No. I don’t think there’s any life after death in both senses of heaven and hell and a legacy. It’s over. So you better enjoy it while you’re here." (New York Times, 04.15.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“When needed, try to be there — it’s as simple as that,” said Mary Kay Finneran, one of the last members of the Sisters of Charity, a Catholic order that has voted to close after serving New York City since 1869. “That’s how we all were as younger women. It is how I try to be now.” (New York Times, 04.17.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“They [Germany's far right party, AfD, in the wake of Viktor Orban's defeat in Hungary] will latch on to whatever narrative is convenient,” said Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “If they have to, they will latch on to the idea of being the last of the Mohicans.” (New York Times, 04.18.26)

“Netanyahu influenced how the war started,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He won’t influence how it ends.” (New York Times, 04.18.26)

“We believe there’s a sweet spot where we can meet our investment goals and help a project through that might otherwise not get built,” said NYC Comptroller Mark Levine, who announced a $4 billion pension fund investment in affordable housing. (New York Times, 04.18.26)

“It is a bit weird to see my professors in the audience at readings, knowing that they still need to grade my papers,” said Nelio Bidermann, the 22-year-old author of a bestselling German novel that has drawn comparisons to Buddenbrooks by Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann. “But I imagine they can still do that without being biased.” (New York Times, 04.18.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“I think the vast majority of Americans recognize that there is a large group of undocumented immigrants who have been literally keeping food on our tables,” said Kelsey Erickson Streufert, the chief public affairs officer for the Texas Restaurant Association. “And if we remove those people, it is going to hurt everyone in terms of higher prices.”  (New York Times, 04.19.26)

“My grandma would collect cans out the trash can for money," recalled Hykeem Jamaal Carter, Jr. who performs as Baby Keem.  "We’d walk home, sell cans. You kind of get the why. You don’t have to ask why. You’re living the why.” (New York Times, 04.19.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Leo wasn’t looking for a fight,” said Christopher White, a senior fellow at the Georgetown Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life. “One of the reasons he found his voice is out of necessity.”  (New York Times, 04.20.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Ever since the Trump Administration took office, something crazy like this seems to happen every single day,” said Bianca Marino whose travel plans were suddenly interrupted by the February closure of the El Paso International Airport, “so I just assumed it’s just another part of their incompetence and chaotic management going on.” (New York Times, 04.22.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“Sometimes controversy makes artists more visible,” said Larry Miller, the executive director of the Sony Audio Institute for Music Business and Technology at New York University. “And in the streaming era this translates directly into listening.” (New York Times, 04.26.26)

“There have been wonderful queer people elected from the district over the last 30-some years,” said Cynthia Nixon, the actress and activist, who supports a heterosexual woman for a New York City Council seat in a district that has elected gay representatives since 1991. “But I feel now and have always felt we should be voting for people not based on their identity, but based on who they are.” (New York Times, 04.26.26)

“We are so broken emotionally when it comes to our politics that we’ve literally created this story that it’s inherent in being a competent political leader to kill civilians,” observed Graham Platner, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Iran, and Maine Democratic candidate for Senate. “If you’re not willing to do some hard things and drop some bombs, then you’re not up to the task of power. I think it’s the opposite. You’re not up to the task of being in power if you do not think about the cost of violence. If that’s not at the front of your mind, then I don’t think you are morally in the right place to be in positions of power.” (New York Times, 04.26.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“I always look for exits every time I’m in a room,” said Representative Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat from Florida and a target of an assassination plot in October 2024. “We can do a lot of stuff, we can mitigate it. But if someone really wants to try to cause harm, it’s almost impossible to prevent it.” (New York Times, 04.28.26)

“I saw this gorgeous photo on social media, and I was like, ‘How can I get myself here as fast as possible’?” said Julia Morrow, 26, an Ohio retail worker visiting Fujiyoshida during the peak of Japan's cherry blossom season. “If you don’t get that photo, it’s like, what’s the point of the trip?” (New York Times, 04.28.26)

“When you look at the Democrats, they actually look like America,” said Kevin McCarthy, the former House Republican leader shortly after leaving Congress in 2023. “When I look at my party, we look like the most restrictive country club in America.” (New York Times, 04.28.26)

*   *   *   *   *

“A.I. is less regulated in America than sandwiches,” said Max Tegmark, a physics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who is also a co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit trying to reduce catastrophic technology risks. “You can’t open a sandwich shop without having your kitchen inspected. But you can release an A.I. girlfriend for 11-year-olds and that’s fine.” (New York Times, 04.29.26)

“The internet restrictions [in Russia] have turned a large number of people against the ruling class, if not against Vladimir Putin personally,” said Mikhail Komin, a political scientist at the Center for European Policy Analysis. “That’s why we’re seeing approval ratings drop and people who never spoke out on political issues suddenly getting political.” (New York Times, 04.29.26)

*   *   *   *   *

"I don’t have any problem with Trump being a Republican," said CBS Late Night host Stephen Colbert.  "I have a problem with Trump being a complete narcissist who is only working for his own interest and does not appear to care if the entire world burns. That’s not a partisan position. I have eyeballs and ears, and I think calling late night partisan is just roughing the ref. And we don’t even want to be refs, but they perceive us as refs. I reject the partisan description. Partisan means you’re never, ever going to make a joke about a Democrat, and that’s just not true. There’s just no comparison of how fertile the fields are." (New York Times, 04.30.26)

“The first Americans I met in life were the characters I met in my treasured childhood novels,” British Queen Camilla said during a public appearance at the New York Public Library. “I knew even then: The books are best friends you can have, in good times and bad.”  (New York Times, 04.30.26)

“The Americans obviously have no strategy,” said German chancellor Friedrich Merz, “and the problem with such conflicts is always that you don’t just have to go in, you also have to get out again. We saw that very painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw that in Iraq. So this situation is, as I said, at least ill-considered, and I do not see at the moment what strategic exit the Americans are choosing now.”  (New York Times, 04.30.26)

Dog Day Afternoon (3*)

A desire to see two terrific actors I have long admired from television perform live got me to the August Wilson Theater where costume designer Brenda Abbandandolo rewarded my willingness to ignore so-so reviews.   Both Jon Bernthal and Eben Moss-Bachrach, attired in the tight, high-waisted pants that peacocks in the '70s favored, have nice butts. 

Too bad the lumbering production, based on the Sidney Lumet's unrelentingly kinetic 1975 movie about a Brooklyn bank robbery--which remains one of the most authentically New York movies ever shot--doesn't serve their thespian talents as well. Bernthal, who excels at playing tough guys, can't quite command the stage like Al Pacino did the movie, mostly because the latter's performance remains so vivid in my memory, half a century later, and his less convincing transitions between swagger and sensitivity. Bachrach plays Sal as if he were addicted to downers rather than uppers, surely the more believable high of choice for the trigger-happy accomplice played by John Cazale.

News accounts of a blow-up between the director Rupert Goold and writer Stephen Adly Guirguis prior to opening left me wondering who to blame for my underwhelmed reaction. Some efforts to make the story relevant today--such as the brutality of the federal government, represented by the FBI agent (Spencer Garrett, eerily Trump-like) who overrules the Latino detective (John Ortiz) trying to defuse the volatile situation by talking Sonny down--are effective, others are not.  I nodded off during an extended scene between Sonny and his trans wife (Esteban Andres Cruz).  Their chemistry isn't nearly as convincing as that between Sonny and Colleen, the head teller (played by Jessica Hecht for big, broad laughs).  What almost seemed like a head-scratching punch line in the mid 70s (Al Pacino is married to a . . . guy!) has evolved into something more maudlin than shocking.  Guirguis also inserts a "teachable moment" speech about homosexuality that might better have served its purpose upon the film's initial release when few Americans had any understanding of gay sexuality.

These inconsistencies in approach and tone are also reflected in the odd choice of not-quite-period music by David Bowie that opens and closes the play: "Queen Bitch" and "Aladdin Sane," quickly followed by "Heroes" with some entirely anachronistic Talking Heads thrown in during a scene change for good measure.  In terms of establishing focus, the production seems almost as hapless as the robbers themselves.

But I'm still glad I saw it.

Yesteryear (2*)

In Hollywood they call it an "elevator pitch," and this one was irresistible, good enough to overcome my snobbery about reading novels before they are classics, well-reviewed by critics I respect or recommended by literary friends:  a "trad wife" influencer finds herself time-travelled back to the mid-19th century.   

Author Caro Claire Burke seduced me further with her even-handedness, declaring, in a New York Times interview, “We were all sold a bill of false goods, and that’s true for conservative women and it’s true for liberal women.  The point of the book is not that one wins.” 

Actually, no one wins in this cynical, borderline offensive exercise in comeuppance which might just as well have been penned by one of the "angry women" who comment on narrator Natalie Heller Mills's Instagram account. Yesteryear brings to mind a self-help book I had to promote when I worked in publishing which suggested "we criticize in others our own short comings."

Natalie, a Christian homebody living her best life on a "farm" in Utah, intuitively understands the dynamics of social media.

The goal of an influencer is not to be lovable, and it is not to be unbearable. The goal is to be both at once. In other words: addicting.

But Natalie also expresses her profound contempt for the human race from the very beginning:

A space must always look lived-in for someone to want to live in it. This is a completely obvious notion, when you take a moment to really think about it, but most people don’t take a moment to really think about anything. Most people are morons.

Caleb, her husband and the ineffectual black sheep of a wealthy family whose patriarch eventually runs for president on a manosphere platform, doesn't meet her expectations either.

My husband was like a farm animal, or a very expensive suede couch. Constant work. Diminishing returns. It required relentless sacrifice and impeccable discipline to give your life over to the care and management of a man like that.

Worse yet, Caleb can't even get it up.  Burke establishes an ugly parallel between this shortcoming and her attitude about his desire to teach children.

A substitute kindergarten teaching job was the professional version of a fully flaccid penis. Humiliation incarnate.

Yet his lack of desire doesn't get in the way of procreation:  the couple have so many kids that I lost track.  Burke uses far more ink to develop Reena, a "modern," childless woman just as alienating as Natalie even though she mostly disappears after they room together briefly in their first year of college.  It turns out that Burke's equanimity boils down to thoroughly negative depictions of both her female protagonists, regardless of their politics.

If you want to spend time with characters as unlikable and unedifying as these, be my guest.  And yes, I'm aware that it's sexist to insist women must be likable but I wouldn't be any more sympathetic to men this fucked up, either.  Even worse, using mental illness as the cornerstone of Yesteryear's structure seems like a bait and switch as unbelievable as it is unforgivable.

The Balusters (5*)

If David Lindsay-Abaire had listened to Jesus ("Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her") this set would have remained empty of its uniformly terrific ensemble cast, assembled to represent America's most diverse neighborhood association of equal-opportunity hypocrites locked in a battle between preservation and progress.  

Like newcomer Kyra (the ageless Anika Noni Rose), who hosts the meetings at her impeccably decorated upper-middle-class home, I needed Elliott (Richard Thomas, a native New Yorker), the association president, to explain the meaning of "baluster," an architectural term.  By the end of this intermissionless, two-hour dramedy--the kind that used to be the meat and potatoes of Broadway--it turns out that a vertical support for a porch railing can be wielded as a weapon, too, both literally and figuratively.

The Balusters also proves that all politics are local, as Tip O'Neill, a powerful Speaker of the House (remember them?), once famously proclaimed.  Elliott wants to stop a disabled resident of their landmarked neighborhood from installing historically inaccurate balusters; Kyra is more interested in solving a traffic problem she fears may endanger her children.  

Black and white horns lock. while alliances and zingers galore emerge among the association's membership who include an Asian lesbian (Jeena Yi) whose legal skills enable her to execute a long-overdue and wholly justified coup; a Jewish matron (Margaret Colin) who selects her maids based on their nationality and wears a rabbit fur coat to press the buttons of the association's youngest member, a politically correct heiress (Kayli Carter) who inspires a White Girl Tears wager; a not-yet doddering woman (Marylouise Burke) almost as old as the neighborhood; a macho Latino contractor (Ricardo Chavira, from Desperate Housewives) who probably voted for our current president; an almost-woke middle-aged teacher who might as well be named Caspar Milquetoast (Michael Esper); and a travel writer (Carl Clemons-Hopkins, from Hacks) whose gaydar seriously malfunctions, revealing his own prejudices.  Even though many in the group only vaguely recall meeting Kyra's new Filipino housekeeper (Marina-Christina Oliveras) she remembers their drink preferences and knows the meltdown secret of Elliot, her former employer.

Although Lindsay-Abaire stacks the deck heavily in Kyra's favor from the beginning, I found myself sympathizing more with Elliott for reasons that had less to do with the issues and motivations explored by the play or Kenny Leon's superb, fast-paced direction than the experience of watching it.  Like the former John Boy, I'm now an old white man, one who longs to sit in a theatre with an audience respectful enough to put their phones away during a live performance.  If it means picking up a baluster, so be it.