Spotlight Album Review: Pat Wictor "Flare"

Nearly 20 years ago I first encountered Pat Wictor and was immediately struck by his supple vocals and guitar playing, his well-crafted songs, and astute choice of covers. He shared those gifts with kindred spirits Greg Greenway and Joe Jencks during their seven-year tenure as the trio Brother Sun. Those elements are all in evidence on his brilliant seventh solo album, Flare.

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Cynthia Cochrane
Review: Leopoldstadt

Tom Stoppard is regarded by some as the greatest living English playwright. Ironically, like Joseph Conrad, English wasn’t his first language. He was born Tomas Straussler in Czechoslovakia, but left in 1939 at the age of 2 as the Nazis were invading, first to Singapore, then India.Tom Stoppard is regarded by some as the greatest living English playwright.

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Cynthia Cochrane
Review: Paradise Square

The multi-talented Irish expat Larry Kirwan has been a force in NYC culture for decades. He’s probably best known as the leader of the Celtic rock group Black 47, but he’s also been a novelist, an Irish Echo columnist, a Sirius XM radio host, a political activist, and a playwright with 17 plays and musicals to his credit.

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Cynthia Cochrane
Spotlight Album Review: Willie Nelson "A Beautiful Time"

Willie Nelson is music’s Energizer bunny. Now just past 89 years old, he’s got a summer tour planned, in spite of some pulmonary issues (all that pot smoking will do that)…Now he’s released A Beautiful Time, and it is, in fact, beautiful, one of his best albums in a while, and the New Folk Spotlight of the month.

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Cynthia Cochrane
Review: Hangmen

The Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has one of the theater’s most singular voices: perhaps Pinteresque in its menacing tone, but often funnier and with a larger cast.

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Cynthia Cochrane
Spotlight Album Review: Amy Speace "Tucson'

Initially it’s confusing that Amy Speace, who grew up in Baltimore and lived in New York before settling in Nashville, should title her new seven-song EP Tucson. Further explanation reveals that she spent part of the summer of 2020 at Cottonwood de Tucson, a treatment center for “trauma, complicated grief and depression.”

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Cynthia Cochrane
Review: The Minutes

Tracy Letts, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and Tony Award-winning actor, displays both his talents in his new play, The Minutes, now at Studio 54 on Broadway. Using just one set and one scene, The Minutes, describes a city council meeting during a stormy night in the small town of Big Cherry.

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Cynthia Cochrane
Review: Company

In the wake of Stephen Sondheim’s hugely mourned death, the revival of Company, one of his most accessible musicals, at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, couldn’t be more timely. This new production comes with a caveat: the main character, the marriage-phobic Robert (a.k.a. Bobby), has been cast as a woman, Bobbie. Have no fear, though, the gender switch works fine, and the production is first-rate all-around.

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Cynthia Cochrane