At the outset of Alexander Zeldin’s The Other Place, a funerary urn, unburied but long ignored, sets off a near-nuclear explosion of familial conflict. It’s a humdinger of a beginning; but, as this short, bleak drama proceeds, the motives of the principal characters remain obscure and the twists in the plot, though often startling, can’t conceal the script’s logical lacunae. It’s a striking weakness, since The Other Place is inspired by Sophocles’s Antigone, a compact, laser-focused tragedy that’s intellectually and emotionally satisfying.
Love
Alexander Zeldin’s Love is a remarkably naturalistic and empathetic work about individuals and families experiencing homelessness. The play takes place in an emergency housing facility in London and was created in collaboration with those who have firsthand experience of such a setting. Zeldin writes in a program note that “a crucial step in the creation of Love was meeting these families, visiting their homes over two years, involving them in workshops and rehearsals, and improvising with them on the subjects and scenes in the play.”



