The Sign in Sidney Brunstein’s Window is never comfortable
The Sign in Sidney Brunstein’s Window — set in the blustering world of 1960s New York bohemia — deals with so many hot-button issues it is hard to keep up. Patriarchy, anti-Semitism, gay rights, slavery, sex work, suicide, drugs, adultery, racism. It’s all there. But as I watched Anne Kauffman’s superb, and at times transcendent, Broadway revival, it dawned on me that one theme unites them all: corruption. The play’s moment of truth hangs on the revelation that a local Manhattan politician who preaches progress is actually a crook. But on a smaller, equally devastating level, it is also about the corruption of marriage, of bodies, of values, of morals and of hope.
