It’s possible that John Turturro was born to play a dirty old man. The actor, one of my lifelong favorites, has a lurid, suggestive smile, curt at the edges, and eyes that shine with hidden information. He often seems to be holding back a disastrous secret, the kind that ruins families and topples friendships, and also often seems just about to spill the beans. In his affect, there’s a tinge of nihilistic fun: Let’s just forge ahead and see what happens!
Turturro, now sixty-six, is the same slim and restless New York City sidewalk denizen he’s always been, but with a softened posture and a gentle white froth bubbling through the waves of his hair. The mischief ’s still there, but alongside it, darkening its colors, is the shadow of experience. It makes some sense, then, that Turturro would play Mickey Sabbath, the horny comic hero—wanting to fuck, wanting to die, weighing those desires on an ever-shifting existential scale—of Philip Roth’s novel “Sabbath’s Theater.” Turturro collaborated with Ariel Levy (a staff writer for this magazine) on an adaptation of Roth’s book for the stage, now up at Pershing Square Signature Center, produced by the New Group and directed by Jo Bonney.
Denne historien er fra November 13, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra November 13, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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QUARTET ISLAND
Mendelssohn on Mull celebrates chamber music away from urban pressures.
FIX YOU
The self-help positivity of Coldplay.
ILLUMINATIONS
Suzanne Jackson captures the transformative power of light.
RAT PACK
The classic rodent studies that foretold a nightmarish human future.
ROYAL TREATMENT
The unrivalled omnipresence of Queen Elizabeth IL.
WELL, WELL, WELL
Eating—and not-in the epicenter of hype diets.
NEWARK STATE OF MIND
Mayor Ras Baraka's reasonable radicalism.
DOOM SCROLLING
Social media and the teen-suicide crisis.
THE WORKER REVOLT
Harris and Walz try to stop blue-collar Americans from drifting to Trump.
THE CHIT-CHATBOT
Is talking with a machine a conversation?