CultureVulture.net

1 week ago | culturevulture.net | Lewis Whittington

The hit film ‘Conclave’ is a dramatization of Vatican politics as the college of cardinals (Curia) are tasked with electing a pope. Philip Shenon’s ‘Jesus Wept,’ a sprawling history of the last seven popes, needs no dramatization, the facts are compelling enough and his book clips along at the pace of a Le Carré thriller. The book track the pontiff early careers as clergymen and the success and failures of their papacies starting with Pius XII (1939-1958), through pope Francis’ (2013-2025).

2 weeks ago | culturevulture.net | Brian Lipton

The one-person show, often with the performer playing multiple characters, has produced some of the New York theater’s most memorable evenings, from Jefferson Mays in “I Am My Own Wife” to Jodie Comer in “Prima Facie” to Andrew Scott’s current turn in “Vanya,” in which he effortless essays all eight roles in an updated take on the Chekhov classic.

2 weeks ago | culturevulture.net | Michael Simpson

“House of India “is an engaging, sometimes quite funny, take on South Asian immigrants in the American Midwest. Set in the House of India, a traditional Indian restaurant in a dying strip mall in Akron, Ohio, the play takes a lens to authenticity and the people trying to achieve it. Ananya (Mahira Kakkar) opened the restaurant thirty years before with her late husband, now memorialized in a portrait in the restaurant.

3 weeks ago | culturevulture.net | Lewis Whittington

In the 80s, New York’s East Village was again the locus of an art renaissance with a cadre of Warhol disciples creating a vibrant new scene in the louche dance clubs, abandoned buildings and on the streets. Keith Haring’s radiant child graffiti and Jean-Michel Basquiat’ SAMO public art was famous even before it was co-opted by galleries worldwide. 27 year old Michael Stewart, a graffiti artist/deejay/dancer fashion model was similarly poised for such success.

1 month ago | culturevulture.net | Lewis Whittington

Sean Hewitt is the award-winning Irish poet author of the Laural Award winning collection “Tongues of Fire” as well as a biographer (J.M. Synge) His 2022 memoir “All Down Darkness Wide” is quite possibly destined to be considered a classic of GLBTQ literature. It is a self-portrait of his relationship and passionately rough breakup with his boyfriend Elias who was suffering from a mental illness and addiction.