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It’s been around since Sheridan was a current hot playwright:  The Grand Theater in Lancaster, Great Britain.

And speaking of Sheridan, turns out that The Rivals is being revived in April by Manhattan’s Pearl Theatre.

There’s not much about political strategy and platform that I’d agree with David Plouffe about, but he’s right: Obamacare is not the problem. The problem is the Democrats perennial cowardice, their 24/7 capitulation reflex.  Yes, it’s nice that Harry Reid has finally remembered that he was once a boxer. But if the Democrats cannot defend their signal legislative achievement under Obama–something that actually gives taxpayers something for their money besides a trillion-plus in military subsidy–it really is time for major in-service training.

In The New York Times, Steven Yaccino and Lizette Alvarez spotlight the GOP’s war on voting rights.

A thought: after Roberts gutted the Voting Rights Act last year isn’t t time to declare our current Supreme Court rogue and void?

Villages West and East used to be places of political engagement. People discussed ideas, current events, politics at the micro and macro levels.  Today when I sit in a West Village coffee shop, what I overwhelmingly hear people talking about is—themselves.

I goofed when I said that Taylor’s Private Domain was done for this year’s NY season–in fact, it’s on the program this evening at the closing performance.  Starts at 6:00 p.m. Maybe I’ll go again too.

But wait–you probably knew the correct schedule anyway; readers of this blog have the intrepid initiative to look things up for themselves.

This weekend, at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, One of Us: The Chapel enacts short plays by new young playwrights.

The Paul Taylor Dance Company closes its run at Lincoln Center this weekend.

On the nights I’ve been to see them at the Koch theater, the orchestra looked very full but it didn’t seem as though everyone knew that there was a Promenade one level above—So the Promenade looked on the empty and dismal side.

Perhaps the spectators were City Center frequenters who hadn’t been here before.  Or perhaps entirely new audiences attracted by the great discount offers? But they needed to be encouraged to sojourn freely.

In 1969’s Private Domain Taylor and designer Alex Katz make the audience do some real work by obstructing sight lines via a set formed by tall vertical piers. The positions for obstruction are endless, different according to where you are sitting.  And since what’s going on behind the fourth wall is saturnalish, you get to reconsider spectating as a form of intrusion.

Premiered in 1969, Private Domain was on view during my first Taylor season, fall 1981 at BAM.  It continues to make for an admirable exercise in perception and self-reflection.

It’s done, however, for the duration of this run, but this weekend’s Taylor fare is jam-packed and makes it clear that he’s always got a few more tricks up his sleeve.

Watching last year’s Perpetual Dawn, which will be performed one more time this weekend, I started thinking about how many changes on simple walks he can muster, and how graphically they register juxtaposed to other, more kinetic and flowing progresses through space.

Needless to say, the company has been dancing superbly!

I was out early this morning; despite the cold, the slant of sunlight said “Spring!”

Obama’s defense in Brussels of G.W. Bush’s catastrophic and entirely illegal invasion of  Iraq was of a piece with his consistent defense and perpetuation of his predecessor’s transgressions, and yet it is stupefying nonetheless.

Charles Pierce at Esquire reels  appropriately and eloquently.

in Maine. Sarah Lazare overviews at Commondreams.org.