Author Archives: James Lu

In my three trips to the Yale Bookstore this past week, I saw flocks of people, many of whom were shelling out hundreds of dollars for their course books. In my three trips to the Beinecke this past week to see the current exhibit, “How is a book …,” I saw no one. That might »

“You know what bastards they are.” The anonymous cab driver’s observation of “perfectly normal human beings” in “Harvey” is spot-on. Fortunately, the Dramat’s production of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which opened last night at the Iseman Theater and runs through Saturday, has this maxim in mind throughout. Material that could be lackluster and lifeless »

If August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” were a score, it would be a difficult one to transcribe. Darting from dreams to dogma and flitting from foppery to feeling, it is a work of delicate progressions. The Yale Repertory Theatre’s current production of the play, which officially opened Thursday and runs until Feb. 19, handles Wilson’s »

Edward Albee’s “A Delicate Balance” is a mad play. A dispossessed daughter returns home, best friends become bothersome fools and at the heart of it all, a married couple teeters on the lip of lunacy. Yet there is method to this madness in the Yale Repertory Theatre’s production of Albee’s Pulitzer Prize winning play, which »

The power of the Dramat’s (Yale Dramatic Association’s) production of Jean Anouilh’s “Antigone” lies in its freshness. And this freshness begins with the cast, two-thirds of whom are first-time freshman: They bring to the stage an unstudied air that is ideal for communicating the visceral concerns of the play. Antigone asks at one point: “We »

Though it may be relaxed and pulled together, Chromeo’s third LP, “Business Casual,” is not aptly named. We need not listen to more than the opening track, “Hot Mess,” to get a sense of what Québec duo P-Thugg and Dave 1 think of themselves, and by extension, their creation here: “You’re a hot mess; you »

“The American” is a difficult transaction to agree to. On the surface, this deal, based on Martin Booth’s 1990 novel “A Very Private Gentleman”, has promise — an accessible plot set in the lush Abruzzo region of Italy, gritty shots often populated by beautiful women, and George Clooney. But look more closely at the fine »