Marlo Campbell, a writer for Uptown, said that the play critiques masculine egotism and Western heroism through the character of Jason.
They began meeting weekly last fall to work on monologues, read plays, critique one another before auditions and to share both professional and personal goals and frustrations.
Behind me, two 20-something were engaged in a constant play-by-play critique of every scene: "Why don't they just leave?
Eighty years ago, there was, no doubt, a measure of bravery in the play's critique of middle-class white American values and even some prescience in its prediction of race warfare.
If this happens, ask someone else to watch you play and critique you or play in front of a mirror.
You might even consider occasionally videotaping your morning classes and fast forward viewing the footage that day, slowing it to play to critique your instruction and to tweak lesson plans for the afternoon classes.
Yet I couldn't help thinking back to Furtwängler's complaints about orchestral playing — his critique of overrehearsed performances, of "evenly accomplished perfection in all the details of a piece".
Nor is the play a harsh critique.
His vibrant turn as Shen Te brings out the beating heart and the bristling humor in Brecht without in any way obscuring the play's spirited critique of a punishingly mercenary social order.
Marlowe's machiavellian prologue is the coup de theatre of 1592, trailing these dangerous ideas – "I count religion but a childish toy / And hold there is no sin but ignorance" – and fixing the play's dominant critique.
Like his job at the I.R.S., Hal's journey to a far-off, alien place is only a backdrop for the larger drama of self-critique playing out in his head.
