Laughs are always erupting, like bubbles from the depths of tar pits, in the writings of Samuel Beckett. I sometimes wonder if his reputation for annihilating pessimism owes as much to photographs of him in the winter of his life -- the glowering eyes, the craggy face and the set mouth beneath a shock of hair that seemed to scream, ''Egad! No...
''A Magic Flute,'' not ''The Magic Flute,'' is the title the director Peter Brook gives to his enchanting adaptation of Mozart's beloved opera, which opened at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater of John Jay College on Wednesday night. Mr. Brook uses this slight alteration of the original German title to make clear that his pared-down, 100-minute,...
Time, that indifferent destroyer of all things mortal, seems to stay its scythe, to borrow a metaphor, for the brief passage of ''Love Is My Sin,'' Peter Brook's theatrical adaptation of select Shakespeare sonnets, at the Duke on 42nd Street. Although the production is of a spare simplicity that can make seconds stretch like hours if the words...