Reviewing the Drama: Broadway, Off-Broadway, Ballet, Movies, and TV Reviews

According to the definition posted in the lobby, "engagements" has three meanings: Formal agreements to get married Arrangements to go somewhere or do something at a fixed time Battles between armed forces In her play, Engagements , playwright Lucy Teitler  explores all three meanings, showing the ever-blurring line between them. Set mostly at a series of engagement parties, Engagements  begins with Lauren ( Ana Nogueira ) speaking into a microphone, telling us her inner monologue. She is admiring her best friend, Allison ( Jennifer Kim ), and remarking that Allison's beau, Mark ( Michael Stahl-David ) is unremarkable. He's just average, she bemoans. But sometimes, as the sage Paula Abdul notes, opposites attract, and all's fair in love and war, so, wouldn't you know it, Lauren and Mark end up sneaking off to a gazebo for a (maybe dangerous) liaison. The rest of the play (which includes a visit from Lauren's cousin, Catherine ( Brooke Weisman ...

The US has a black president. We supposedly live in a post-racial society. If you're paying attention, though, you know that's not the case. On a recent episode of Real Time with Bill Maher , Ben Affleck ( Argo , Gone Girl ) got into a heated argument with author Sam Harris and the show's host. They were debating religion, its effects on society and its adherents, and whether one religion was better or worse (or more damaging) than another. (They were talking, in particular, about Islam.) Just a couple of weeks later, professional bloviator Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly got in the ring (on The Daily Show ) with Jon Stewart, and the two "discussed" the issue of white privilege . Stewart, being the sensible one, argued that, of course, it exists. Clearly, we're not in a post-racial or post-religious society (the latter will never happen). There are still racists and prejudicial people by the score, many of them with a microphone. Yet we tend to sw...