Free Republic

Trump voters in the flyover states are often referred to as “the forgotten” — the men and women whom the media and other presidential candidates failed to understand. An entire cottage industry has materialized around them, intending to “humanize” them, or explain their perspective to a baffled coastal audience. J. D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, is typically seen as the prototype of this group. But Will Arbery’s riveting off-Broadway play, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, dramatizes an even more obscure group, a forgotten sub-category within “the forgotten” — a group Rod Dreher, whose influence weighs heavily on the play,...

Off Broadway’s nonprofit MCC Theater has abruptly ended its longtime relationship with award-winning writer-director Neil LaBute, canceling an upcoming production of his new play “Reasons to Be Pretty Happy” that was scheduled to run this summer. “MCC Theater is canceling the upcoming production of ‘Reasons to be Pretty Happy’ by Neil LaBute and is terminating his tenure as its playwright-in-residence, effective immediately,” the theater said in a statement issued Thursday. “The Theater will be announcing a new play to complete the current season in the coming weeks.” Reps for the theater offered no further explanation for the abrupt termination, and...

Anne Jackson, a distinguished star of the stage who was half of one of America’s best-known acting couples, sharing much of a long and distinguished career with her husband, Eli Wallach, died on Tuesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 90. Her death was confirmed by her daughter Katherine Wallach. If not quite on the same level of stardom as Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne or Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, Ms. Jackson and Mr. Wallach came close. From the early 1950s to 2000, when they starred Off Broadway in Anne Meara’s comedy “Down the Garden Paths,” they captivated...

First daughter: [Actress] Melissa Rauch [as Jenna Bush] in "The Miss Education of Jenna Bush." Jenna Bush reportedly has a standing invitation to see "The Miss Education of Jenna Bush," a 10-minute comedy sketch stretched to 90 fluffy minutes, and while it seems far-fetched that the first daughter would attend, if she did, there is a chance - believe it or not - that she would like it. Set on the eve of her first day as a public school teacher, the monologue, which has been drawing big crowds to the Village Theater, takes place in her Georgetown apartment, which...