Larry Sultan’s groundbreaking photo-memoir, from 1992, is recast for Broadway.
Nathan Lane and Danny Burstein are Broadway veterans and consummate showmen, greeted as beloved tummlers whenever they appear onstage. Purveyors of the same wry bonhomie, these two throwbacks to the vaudevillian era could almost be brothers—Lane is sixty-seven to Burstein’s fifty-eight— but in “Pictures from Home,” at Studio 54, they play father and son. What to do? The production has decided to fake an age gap with hair styling: a white swoosh for Lane and a glossy dark emo-coif for Burstein. Whenever my mind wandered, I watched the lights play on these oddly reflective hairpieces. The shine—Burstein’s head occasionally turns a kind of bronzy purple—isn’t only a question of wigs. It also illuminates the deeper trouble with the playwright Sharr White’s stage adaptation of the photographer Larry Sultan’s book, an endeavor that, in its follicles, is a case of tonal mismatch.
This story is from the February 27, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the February 27, 2023 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
TRIPLE FAULT
A meal is never just a meal in a Luca Guadagnino movie; each bite is a prelude to a kiss, every feast a form of foreplay.
NIGHT MUSIC
“Stereophonic” and Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” on Broadway.
LITTLE OLD HER
Is Taylor Swift doing too much?
BEASTLY MATTERS
Where the logic behind the concern for animal welfare begins and ends.
PULSE
He footed off his shoes, the logs balanced on an arm, and tugged the door shut.
TOWER IN FLAMES
What kind of right is academic freedom?
THE BATTLE FOR ATTENTION
How do we hold on to what matters in a distracted age?
ON NATIVE GROUNDS
Deb Haaland faces the cruel history of the agency she now leads.
DESIGN FOR LIVING
Can converting office towers into apartments save empty downtowns from ruin?
HOROSCOPES WRITTEN BY MY MOTHER
Your zodiac alignment this month is governed by Venus, the planet of intuition, something my daughter Bess seems to lack.