1+ day, 3+ hour ago (69+ words) In a career of magnificent plays, The Coast of Utopia stands out for its humor, its characters, and its warnings about ideological fervor. In a career of magnificent plays, The Coast of Utopia stands out for its humor, its characters, and its warnings about ideological fervor. Read: A nine-hour resurrection I wonder whether it was Alexander Herzen I fell in love with. Maybe it was actually Tom Stoppard....

3+ week, 2+ day ago (860+ words) Keeping up with national politics this year hasn't been easy. Even amid a government shutdown, so much is happening in Washington, at such a rapid clip and such a high pitch, that a browser of The New ... Keeping up with national politics this year hasn't been easy. Even amid a government shutdown, so much is happening in Washington, at such a rapid clip and such a high pitch, that a browser of The New York Times' homepage could be forgiven for giving up and clicking straight through to Spelling Bee. But what if keeping up is your job? What if you are, say, a comedy writer tasked with translating the week's headlines into fodder for a 90-minute live variety show? Saturday Night Live seems to have found its solution: Dump it all into the cold open. All of these moments…...

1+ hour, 27+ min ago (158+ words) Writing a play," Tom Stoppard told an interviewer in 1977, "is like smashing that ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so that the fragments of rubble appear to ... His plays hold us in the moment outside of time. "Writing a play," Tom Stoppard told an interviewer in 1977, "is like smashing that ashtray, filming it in slow motion, and then running the film in reverse, so that the fragments of rubble appear to fly together. You start'or at least I start'with the rubble." Death hovers beyond the curtain. We know what becomes of everyone: of Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, Thomasina, Housman, Stoppard himself. But his plays hold us in the moment before, outside of time, when the impossible is always happening. Before Thomasina goes upstairs with the lit candle that will spell her death, she pauses to…...