Houman Barekat

2 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Houman Barekat

"My Master Builder," a new take on the Ibsen classic, reduces a complex play to a tawdry marital melodrama. When a big star appears in a conspicuously undercooked show, what rankles is the apparent cynicism - the conceited presumption that the sheer aura of an individual talent will compensate for any shortcomings.

2 weeks ago | nytimes.com | Houman Barekat

The star actor returns to the theater where he started almost a half-century ago, with Samuel Beckett's bleak one-man play. For Gary Oldman, it is a homecoming of sorts.

4 weeks ago | independent.ie | Houman Barekat

FictionFun and Games, the debut novel by Galway author JP McHugh, is set on a unnamed island off the west coast of Ireland. It’s summer 2009 and young John Masterson has a lot going on as he anxiously awaits his Leaving Cert results. His parents are separating and his sister is getting hitched; the island’s GAA team, of which he is a member, is participating in regional championships; and he has just begun a fling with Amber, a slightly older colleague at the hotel where he works part-time.

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Houman Barekat

A new play by Robert Icke about a real-life police chase takes the form of an imagined trial. One of the largest manhunts in British police history took place in northeastern England in summer 2010. The fugitive was Raoul Moat, a 37-year-old bodybuilder and former nightclub bouncer with a history of violence. He had just been released from prison when he shot Samantha Stobbart, his former girlfriend, and her new boyfriend, Chris Brown, in a jealous rage. Stobbart survived, Brown didn't.

1 month ago | spectator.com.au | Houman Barekat

Ed AtkinsTate Britain, until 25 August In the old days, you’d have to go to a lot of trouble to inhabit another person’s skin. Today you can simply buy a customisable 3D avatar from Turbosquid.com, animate it with your own movements by wearing a sensor-filled motion-capture bodysuit, and presto! Lifelike but eerily soulless, Ed Atkins’s video portraits occupy a strange visual hinterland between computer-game graphics and deepfake realism.