President Trump’s apparent campaign to offend and alienate every one of America’s allies continued unabated this week with the erratic billionaire accusing the British government of wiretapping him, based on no evidence other than the imagination of a former TV judge turned Fox News contributor, and a truly bizarre meeting with Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel.

During their surreal joint press conference, Trump was asked about his baseless allegations of wiretapping against former President Obama. He first danced around the answer, before directing any further questions on the matter toward “a very talented lawyer on Fox”—you know, the aforementioned syndicated TV judge Andrew Napolitano, whose imaginary friend told him that Obama had British intelligence monitor Trump. 

“Hours after our last show a couple of weeks ago, President Crazypants started tweeting about how Obama tapped his phone at Trump Tower—based on nothing. That’s the great thing about having tiny hands: It’s easier to pull stuff right out of your ass,” joked Bill Maher.

The political satirist kicked off his Real Time program Friday night with a sharp monologue attacking Trump’s wiretapping shenanigans—a political ruse that has wasted tons of legislative resources, monopolized the airwaves, and been deemed unfounded by politicians and intelligence experts on both sides of the political divide.

“Even though Obama himself has said this is bullshit—the wiretapping, and our former National Intelligence Director said that, the FBI director said that, the speaker of the House said that, the chairman of the House Senate Intelligence Committee, and the Senate from both sides of the aisle said this, Trump addressed all these doubters today,” explained Maher. “He said, ‘Well, I saw someone say it on Fox News.’ Really? That’s it? I saw someone say it on Fox News? What has to happen, Republican patriots, before you act? Does the president have to get naked, roll around on the White House lawn, start eating the grass and going vroom vroom, I’m a lawnmower!”

Maher then addressed Trump’s offhand remark to Merkel where, after being asked about his Obama wiretapping claim, he turned to her and said, “At least we have that in common.” Trump was referencing Edward Snowden’s reveal that the NSA under Obama may have been eavesdropping on Merkel’s mobile phone. Of course, it’s particularly crass for Trump to make light of wiretapping to Merkel, given how she grew up in East Germany during the Cold War.

“And Trump said this today in front of Angela Merkel. Did you see that? She had a look on her face like, ‘How I long for the days when I got creepy shoulder rubs from George W. Bush,’” joked Maher.  

If the lame jokes and obfuscations weren’t enough, Trump also blew off Merkel’s request for a handshake. Yes, in front of a gaggle of photographers shouting “handshake” in the White House, Merkel is clearly heard asking Trump, “Do you want to have a handshake?” After all, Trump shook Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s hand forever during their summit. But no, Trump, who appeared to register the ask by Merkel, then seemingly pretended to not hear her. Given Trump’s history of misogyny, the childish behavior wasn’t all that surprising.

“Oh, that was a great meeting with Angela Merkel,” said Maher. “He obviously hates her, and of course he’s so great at hiding this stuff. They were sitting there, and the people are shouting, ‘Don’t you want to shake hands?’ like every president has ever done in every photo [op]. No, no, fuck her, I’m not going to shake it. And then after the meeting, he tweeted, ‘Lousy meeting with German Chancellor Barney Rubble. Low energy, unattractive, didn’t even want to make me pop a Tic Tac.’” 

About a year ago, in a remote valley in Mexico’s Michoacán state, I met with the elusive cartel capo Nicolás “El Gordo” Sierra. During our parley I made the gringo mistake of naming then-candidate Donald Trump. Instead of the planned Q and A, now it was my turn to get grilled.    

“What does Trump have against Mexico?” El Gordo (“The Fat One”) growled at me in Spanish. “Will he really build this wall?”

We were sitting in a grove of mesquite and thorn trees, at the hidden base camp of the cartel called Los Viagras—the name means just what you’d think—in the overcooked lowland of Tierra Caliente. Surrounded by Viagras with AK47s, who had already stripped me of cellphone and camera, a diplomatic comeback seemed best.

Mr. Trump didn’t really hate Mexicans, I tried to assure Gordo and his inner circle of cartel warriors, or sicarios, as we sat around their campfire in the woods. It was just posturing, I said: tough talk meant to please his base and intimidate everyone else.

But Gordo Sierra wasn’t so sure. He knew a little about tough talk himself, he said. Trump might be a títere, or puppet, of his party; but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. And Trump’s speeches didn’t sound like bluster. More like he meant just what he said.

What if he were here right now? I asked. What would you say to Mr. Trump?

Gordo thought about this for a long time, his men leaning in around us for the answer.

“I would tell him,” he said at last, “to be careful about pissing us off.” Gordo laughed at his own joke, and the sicarios all chuckled on cue. But it turns out the Viagras, like the rest of Mexico’s cartels, might not have much to fear from Señor Trump.

In fact, instead of bringing down the “bad hombres” south of the border, the president’s approach seems, unfortunately, to be playing right into their hands.

Balls to the Wall

Gordo was right about one thing: Trump has certainly promised a bare knuckle approach to dealing with the cartels. But will construction of the infamous wall, or even deploying U.S. troops onto Mexican soil, as he’s already threatened, really do anything to stop the Niagara of narcotics pouring across the southern border? Or weaken El Narco’s death grip on both U.S. addicts and the Mexican state?

Let’s start with the wall.

From the Ming Dynasty to Hadrian, from East Berlin to modern Israel, history tells us that “great walls” don’t work, or that they have consequences that aren’t those desired. As the poet Robert Frost put it:

“Before I build a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.” 

A third of our border with Mexico already is “protected” by walls and fencing. And that hasn’t turned out so well, either.

Clever contrabandistas can lob baled narcotics over even the highest of barriers, using that ancient wall-thwarter, the catapult. Or they can go under by digging tunnels, for which they are famous. Cleverly disguised trap cars, with false fuel tanks or floorboards, make mass detection at legal checkpoints a pipe dream.

But those are the hard ways. Lazier smugglers often just bribe their way across the frontier, paying off U.S. border guards and Homeland Securityofficials as they go.

So, if its construction isn’t grounded in logic, or the real world of law enforcement, why do Trumpheads love the wall? For the same reason their cheerless leader does: It sounds good in speeches, and makes a handy symbol.

And that mindset is par for the Drug War course, which has never really been about battling America’s addictions, or curbing the abuse of narcotics at the source. Just as Prohibition did nothing to stop—and perhaps even helped glamorize—the speakeasy fiestas of the Roaring ’20s, so the post-Nixon era has seen illegal drug use explode in the U.S. 

Now, as in Gatsby’s day, the favored strategy is to go after the suppliers. And primarily for ideological reasons, instead of rational ones. Religious fanaticism by way of the Temperance movement gave us Prohibition, just asracism and xenophobia lurk behind Trump’s attack on immigrants, as well as the overall war on drugs in its current form.

With all the focus on supply, the demand side of the equation gets far less press from the Trump White House—perhaps because it makes for less glorious speechifying. Even when top officials have directly called for a focus on reduction in U.S. demand for drugs, via treatment and rehab programs, they’ve been largely ignored.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly recently addressed Congresson this very topic, calling the supply-side-only emphasis “embarrassing.” Kelly also urged the House to “get into the business of drug-demand reduction” because “that’s what’s killing our folks.”

Lesson learned? Apparently not, as the new GOP health care bill actuallyeliminates coverage for addiction treatment.

Mr. Trump claims to be a great businessman. Yet he seems unable to understand the simple logic of supply and demand behind this issue. As long as there are vast profits to be made from U.S. consumers, someone in Mexico will find a way to get drugs to them. And no wall, no matter how high or “beautiful,” is going to keep them out.  

Criminal Insurgencies

When a syphilis-ridden Al Capone was finally arrested in the spring of 1929, the government could crow that “America’s Most Wanted” had at last been caught. At the same time, the impact on Capone’s Chicago Outfit—and the rivers of liquor they distributed throughout the nation—turned out to be exactly zilch. They went merrily on their rum-running way, while Scarface Al rotted behind bars. 

Which brings us to El Chapo. Like Capone, Joaquín “Shorty” Guzmán was also America’s most-wanted man. And now that Chapo has been caught and extradited to the U.S.—absolutely nada has changed in relation to the flow of illicit substances into the States.

Meanwhile, in Mexico, infighting between Chapo’s heirs abhorrent is turning the state of Sinaloa into a war zone.

And it’s not just Sinaloa. The vaunted “Kingpin strategy,” so beloved by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Mexican officials, has proven itself to be a disastrous failure across Mexico. 

Following in the footsteps of guerrilla insurgencies across the globe, the cartels have responded to this “behead the hydra” approach by adopting new,horizontal command structures, much like al Qaeda. They’ve alsodecentralized, scattering factions into rural regions, far from large urban centers where they can be tracked easily.

The result is that whole swaths of the country, such as the Viagras-controlled stretch of Tierra Caliente, are now run by “gangster warlords” like Gordo. These bandit chieftains carve out their fiefdoms, which they call plazas, and defend them without mercy against rivals, law enforcement, and even independently organized militias that seek to test their power.

The cartels have also stepped up their paramilitary terror tactics, includingattacks on military convoys, shooting down helicopter gunships, and proliferating ISIS-style decapitation videos to demoralize opponents.

The growing power of these criminal insurgents—and their internecine struggles for dominance—have caused Mexico’s Drug War death toll to spike by a third so far in 2017, with some 2,000 cartel-related murders in January alone. Statistics also show a 22 percent jump in drug-fueled homicides from last year, and more than 30 percent from two years ago, indicating this is not a passing trend.

Most Americans hear little of the open cartel warfare that goes on in places like Michoacán, Guerrero, or Veracruz. This counternarrative—that U.S. policies are contributing directly to the breakdown of law and order in our neighbor to the south—is not one you can expect to hear from the White House anytime soon.

Ideology vs. Rationality

Instead of seeking new strategies or tactics for dealing with America’s drug problem, Trump seems poised to ramp up the same old hardline policies. And targeting the figureheads atop the cartels is just part of the overall cognitive dissonance.

For example, the Trump administration promises a crackdown on “opioids”—by which it apparently means heroin users. But in truth the biggest purveyor of opioids in the U.S. isn’t cartels from down south. That dubious distinction actually goes to the pharmaceutical industry here at home.

New high-powered pain killers have cornered the market on opioid addiction, and their chronic users now outnumber old-fashioned smack junkies by a three to one margin, according to the American Society for Addiction Medicine (PDF). For many caught in the cycle of opioid abuse, heroin is a back-up option when they can’t get painkiller prescriptions filled.

Which isn’t to say we don’t have a growing cartel crisis in our own backyard. Using advanced new procedures for implanting human “drug mules,” Mexican mafiosi have now penetrated into places like Indiana, Minnesota, and North Carolina.

These underground networks can then funnel their vampire profits right back down south, making for a self-perpetuating “farm to arm” industry.

According to insiders, law enforcement alone is not enough to make these pervasive, deeply rooted criminal cells go away. As the attorney general of Ohio lately observed, “We can’t arrest our way out of the problem.”

That’s partly because the plaza business model is no longer unique to Mexico. When authorities do manage to bust a cartel network in the States, there’s always another group waiting to take over the regional market.

Even worse, POTUS and his cabinet are set to roll back some of the limited but important gains we’ve made in undermining cartel power.

One of our few Drug War victories has come in the form of curbing the syndicates’ cannabis profits, as the U.S. Border Patrol reports seizures of illegal marijuana are down to their “lowest level in a decade”—falling by at least 39 percent over the last five years.

Homegrown ganja, in other words—now legal for recreational purposes in eight U.S. states and D.C.—can make a sharp dent in cartel income.

But the new administration wants to change all that. Attorney General Jeff Sessions is hinting strongly that a crackdown is coming against legalized weed, despite the estimated $1.3 billion earned in taxable revenues.

Ideology trumps reason once again.

Solution Evolution?

Given that the Mexican army is openly seeking an exit strategy from its fight against the cartels, and with two thirds of Americans also ready to call the Drug War quits, you might think the Trumpites would be hunting new solutions to this very old problem. But you’d be wrong.

Alternatives like decriminalization, cutting opioid prescriptions, and affordable treatment programs in the U.S.—or anti-poverty initiatives in Mexico, so as to give young people an alternative to the narco lifestyle—just don’t seem to be on the table. At least not yet.

And all of that suits next generation warlords like El Gordo Sierra right down to the sun-scorched ground.

“Maybe Trump is not so bad after all,” the cartel commander told me after a lengthy debate about El Donaldo’s ironfisted agenda.

“Truth is,” said Gordo, “he sounds just like one of us.” 

Haley’s Comet           

Created by: Jack McGarry

Ingredients:
1.5 oz Knappogue Castle 12 Year Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey
.75 oz Lillet Rose
.5 oz Creme de Framboise (Esprit du Vin)
1 tsp Campari      
1 tsp Vanilla syrup*

Glass: Coupe

Garnish: Orange twist                   

Directions:
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir and strain into a chilled coupe glass.

Vanilla Syrup*   

Ingredients:          
1 Tahitian vanilla bean, split down the middle and cut into quarters
1 cup Water
1 cup White sugar

Directions:
Add all ingredients to a pot and simmer over medium heat. Stir continuously until the sugar is dissolved. Let the mixture come to a rolling boil then remove from heat. Let cool and sit overnight before straining off vanilla beans with a chinois or cheesecloth.

“We looked at the Hanky Panky (gin, sweet vermouth, fernet) & Don’t Sink The Ship (gin, sweet vermouth, fernet & curaçao) when riffing on this. I wanted to showcase the malty notes that dominate Knappogue 12 Year Old Single Malt and offset that with a fruit and bitter note. So we added fruit liqueurs and Campari as the bittering agent. A lovely malty styled Manhattan with all the flavors of Spring.”        

Joan of Arc               

Created by Jack McGarry 

Ingredients:
1.5 oz Chamomile Infused Clontarf Irish Whiskey* 
.5 oz Celtic Honey Liqueur
.5 oz Lemon juice
.25 oz Cucumber juice                
.75 oz Rich honey syrup (2 parts honey, 1 part water)
2 oz Champagne

Glass: Flute

Directions:
Add the ingredients, not including the Champagne, to a shaker and fill with ice. Shake and strain into a flute and top with Champagne.

Chamomile Infused Clontarf Irish Whiskey*

Ingredients:
1L Clontarf Irish whiskey
10g Chamomile flowers

Directions:
Add the chamomile flowers and the whiskey to an empty container. Let sit at room temperature for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Strain into a bottle and store at room temperature.                

“One of my favorite drinks during the time I was working at Milk & Honey in London was a Rum Honey Sour finished with Champagne. So simple but so sophisticated. I wanted to reintroduce that style of drink with a more fragrant angle to it. So we’ve worked in an infused Chamomile Irish Whiskey, with Celtic Honey Liqueur, honey syrup and a touch of cucumber to bring it in a slightly different direction.”

Fighter Pilot                   

Created by: Jack McGarry

Ingredients:
2 oz Boru Irish Vodka
.75 oz Fresh lime juice
.75 oz Sugar snap pea cane syrup*
2 oz Ginger beer

Glass: Highball

Directions:
Add all ingredients, not including the ginger beer, to a shaker and fill with ice. Shake and strain into an ice filled glass. Top with ginger beer.

Sugar Snap Pea Cane Syrup*

Ingredients:   
125g Sugar snap peas
.5L Rich cane syrup*

Directions:
Add the sugar snap peas and the rich cane syrup to a blender and blend for 1 minute. Strain through chinois or cheesecloth and bottle. The syrup should be stored in the refrigerator.

Rich Cane Syrup*

Ingredients:
2 parts Organic Pure Cane Sugar (Organic Evaporated Cane Juice)
1 part Filtered water

Directions:
Add both ingredients to a pot and continuously whisk over high heat until mixture comes to a boil. Set aside and let cool.                

“Coming into the spring season, I thought it would be great to focus on the prerequisite flavors of spring and one of those flavors is peas. Doing some flavor pairing research, I’ve seen peas & ginger work quite well and I thought utilizing that pairing in a simple Moscow Mule riff would be accessible and delicious. The Boru here just adds a nice backbone allowing the other flavors to flourish.”

Ventriloquist  

Created by: Jack McGarry

Ingredients:
1 oz Clontarf Irish Whiskey
.75 oz Brady’s Irish Cream Liqueur
.75 oz Crème de Cacao
.5 oz Half and Half
1 tsp Ancho Reyes (red)

Glass: Coupe

Garnish: Grated nutmeg

Directions:
Add all ingredients to a mixing glass and fill with ice. Stir and strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with a dusting of grated nutmeg.

“I recently had a chocolate and chili chocolate bar and I absolutely loved it. I really dug the flavor match and I thought it would be great if worked into the right type of drink. When working on a Brady’s Irish Cream drink, I thought this flavor pairing would work really well in the frame of a Brandy Alexander variant. So instead of brandy we went with Irish whiskey with Brady’s and obviously chocolate and chili. We added a bit of half ‘n half just to take the edge off the viscosity. A lovely after-dinner drink.”

Emerald Old Fashioned   

Created by: Joaquín Simó 

Ingredients:           
2 oz Knappogue Castle 12 Year Old Single Malt Irish Whiskey
1 tsp Honey syrup (2 parts wildflower honey, 1 part water)
1 tsp Green Chartreuse
1 tsp Dolin Genepy Des Alpes

Glass: Rocks

Garnish: Mint sprig

Directions:
Add all the ingredients to a rocks glass and fill with ice. Stir and garnish with a mint sprig.                 

“The Emerald Old Fashioned is my attempt to bring civility and deliciousness back to a holiday desecrated with green beer and disrespectfully named shots. Knappogue 12 year’s fruit and spice notes serve as a rich base to layer upon whispers of herbal complexity and lashes of floral honey. The whiskey remains front and center in the elegant ode to the original cocktail, with only a refreshing sprig of mint to add brightness to the nose and eye while echoing the alpine herbs and modifiers.”                

She-lei-lei           

Created by: Joaquín Simó 

Ingredients:
2 oz Knappogue Castle 12 Year Single Malt Irish Whiskey
3 oz Vita Coco Coconut Water
.5 oz Rich cane sugar syrup (2 parts sugar to 1 part water)
.25 tsp Matcha tea

Glass: Rocks

Garnish: Grated cinnamon and a cinnamon stick

Directions:
Add all the ingredients to a shaker (add the tea last) and shake for 10 seconds without ice. Add ice and shake again. Strain into a rocks glass and fill with fresh ice. Garnish with fresh cinnamon and place a cinnamon stick across the top.                   

“A light and refreshing cocktail perfectly suited to the long day of drinking that St. Patrick’s Day traditionally implies. The coconut water adds a pleasantly earthy, tropical note that plays beautifully with the honeyed malt notes of the whiskey. The green tea provides a gentle grassiness (and a vivid green tint), with the cane syrup mellowing the tea’s vegtal notes while echoing the soft confectionary spices of Knappogue 12 Year. The grated and inserted cinnamon stick over the top both echoes and contracts with the flavors to come, while also adding a lovely color contrast.”

Don’t forget to enter to win a trip to Ireland, so you can drink Irish whiskey in Ireland!

In 1999, during an interview at the 92nd Street Y (then YMHA) later published in the Paris Review, the playwright Arthur Miller told an interviewer he had run into Mel Brooks while on vacation in the Caribbean in 1968, just before the premiere performance of The Price.

“I’d never known him before,” recalled Miller. “He said, ‘Well, what are you doing now?’ I said, ‘Well, I just wrote this play that we’re about to put on. It’s called The Price.’ He said, ‘What’s it about?’ I said, ‘Well, there are these two brothers...’ He said, ‘Stop, I’m crying!’”

You can see why there might be tears watching it: a lesser-known play in the Miller canon, it focuses, like Death of a Salesman and All My Sons, on the emotional knots of fathers and sons, and a lot of very vexed ghosts of the past, and money and its own complicated and perverting force within families. This, as many know only too well, only becomes evident after the death of a parent, and the divisions of the spoils begins.

As Miller once told Humanities magazine, “The two greatest plays ever written were Hamlet and Oedipus Rex, and they're both about father-son relationships, you know. So this goes back.” He and his own father Miller once likened to “two search lights on different islands.”

Living through the Depression, Miller said in the same interview, had left him with “the feeling that the economic system is subject to instant collapse at any particular moment—I still think so—and that security is an illusion which some people are fortunate enough not to outlive.”

In the new Broadway production of The Price, Mark Ruffalo plays the central character, Victor Franz, a stolid New York cop who has come to his parents’ townhouse in his navy blue uniform to host an antique dealer, Gregory Solomon (Danny DeVito, making his Broadway debut). Solomon has come to appraise the value of the residence’s furniture, held in the attic where the action takes place, with a view to buying it all before the property is demolished. And so the negotiations, suspicion and bluster begin. No theatrical pun intended, but DeVito steals the show.

What looks like a simple furniture transaction turns out to be anything but. For one, there is Esther (Jessica Hecht), Victor’s wife, who loves him—indeed their quiet mutuality, even while acknowledging the differences between them, is one of Miller’s most charming, recurring theme in the play.

But Esther’s dissatisfaction, her desire for money and a materially more upscale life is the niggling thorn between them, and probably wouldn’t be quite so hurtful if it didn’t find an embodiment at the end of act one with the appearance of Walter (Tony Shalhoub of Monk fame), Victor’s charismatic, well-dressed and considerably ritzier brother. Just as in other Miller plays, the unseen characters, here the boys’ father, remains a fulcrum of the play.

The Price—this Roundabout Theatre production is directed by Terry Kinney—is not a fast play. Nor are its stakes as abyss-facing as Miller at his most unsparing. All these characters will carry on at the end.

But it is, at moments, a piercing study on familial devotion, betrayal, and disillusion. The appraisal being conducted is not just the cost of furniture, but the cost of relationships; how much we invest in them compared to how much we get out of them, financially and emotionally.

With the end of their father’s life, what are Victor and Walter left with? The recriminations of the past, now filtered through the exacerbating stress of present-day money, and reuniting not for a birthday or a happy occasion but to sell possessions and objects off. Financial transactions, it emerges, have been the family’s inner currency for years—disastrously.

Derek McLane’s crowded set design is significant: There are so many objects on stage that present a suitably claustrophobic saleroom-cum-obstacle course for all the actors. This apartment is crowded with furniture: choc-full of sofas, a giant harp, bureaus, wardrobes, dressers, tables; to convey the crowdedness all the objects hang from the ceiling as well as standing on the floor. Outside are a background set of shadowy water-towers, those lyrical custodians of the New York skyline.

Victor may be the central character in The Price, but he’s also the most flagging (and sometimes it’s just impossible to hear Ruffalo through his macho New York-accented braying): maybe it’s his plodding determination to play at life with as straight a bat as possible. He is 50 and feeling it. Solomon may be much older, but he is a ball of energy. Victor’s determination to keep the transaction brief, and on his terms, is torpedoed immediately. Thank goodness: his dourness would be too heavy an anchor, even if it's true to the character Miller intended.

DeVito, playing the kind of irreverent, hilarious, irritation-generating dynamo that he also does so brilliantly on film—steals the audience’s attention, especially when it comes to consuming an egg, the shell of which he cracks with his cane. He then eats it with the gusto that Cookie Monster attacks his cookies. His character is 89, and in a long, colorful life has been three times married and somehow acquired a discharge from the British Navy. But he, too, is hiding a family tragedy, and DeVito’s emotional register shifts perfectly at the moment of its revelation.

Hecht skillfully does as much as she can do with very little, Miller’s vision of her seems beached between acquisitive shrew and frustrated peacemaker, with little shading in between—it is Hecht’s subtle coquettishness that adds an edge to her interactions with Walter. Shalhoub is also unexpected: he looks as smooth as any stage villain should yet his desire for money isn’t simple greed, and he doesn’t patronize his brother, despite having materially achieved so much more. He puts the price of his beautiful coat at “two gallstones”—operated on “a big textile guy” who keeps sending him things.

Money is the constant rub. Their resentment is rooted in Walter giving just $5 a month to the running of the household when Victor had moved in with their father to take care of him. And now Victor is willing to sell off the furniture for $1100 to Solomon. Well, not if the more eyes-on-the-prize twinning of Walter and Esther have anything to do with it.

But the family mystery and betrayal runs much deeper; the two brothers have, Victor most appallingly, been gulled by their father, and from that has flowed all these years of resentment. Why, Victor wants to know, didn’t Walter help fund his way through college? Was their father really so poor? Why, Esther, wants to know, when harsh truths are revealed, have she and Victor lived so poorly? Solomon’s transactional offer turns out to be the most honestly proffered of the evening. Money has been Victor’s jailer; Esther sees it as a probably elusive key to a happier life for them all.

The tragedy seems in a lower-key than the most dramatic Miller we see on Broadway. The play has a scratchy melancholy to it, rather than a cataclysmic finality—with the characters rooted in the airless apartment, and not really capable of going anywhere. The play comes to feel a little stilted, its action as arrested as the characters’ emotions.

The price of family devotion and betrayal, Miller implies, is one that can taint emotions and bank accounts for years. As Miller told the Paris Review, he wrote the play to show “that the past counted, that they (Victor and Walter) were creatures of the past just as we all were. They had affected to negate the past, cut themselves off from it, and throw it in a wastebasket. As it turned out, they were as much affected by their fathers and grandfathers. There was no way to escape it, any more than you could escape the beat of your own heart.”

The Price is at the American Airlines Theatre, 227West 42nd Street, New York City. Book tickets here.

Solange and Jidenna Bring the Heat

These days, with its strong film lineup and bustling orgy of high-fiving techbros, it’s easy to forget that SXSW was originally a music festival—one that began in 1987 with 700 attendees and has grown into the largest celebration of music in the world, with thousands of up-and-coming acts playing their hearts out in hopes of getting discovered alongside bigger artists doing corporate showcases for big bucks. This year, Mazda and YouTube were the big corporate stars, throwing multi-day showcases that boasted the likes of Solange, who, with her expertly calibrated backup dancers and voguing, has matured into a bona fide R&B goddess; Detroit rapper Danny Brown and his spirited, happy-go-lucky breakneck flow; Lil Yachty, whose youthful exuberance is infectious; and the raw New York rockers Vagabon, led by electrifying frontwoman Laetitia Tamko. There is a rich history of talent being “discovered’ at SXSW, from The White Stripes (2001) and The Strokes (2001) to Katy Perry (2008) and Skrillex (2010). In recent years, it’s been rappers like J. Cole and Chance the Rapper who’ve broken big in Austin. This year, Jidenna, whose song “Classic Man” featured prominently in Best Picture winner Moonlight, staked his claim as “next big thing” with a series of sultry, energetic performances combining catchy rhymes with soulful crooning. And like that, a star is born. —Marlow Stern

Atomic Blonde

You already knew Charlize Theron could go full-metal fast and Furiosa in action movies like Mad Max: Fury Road. What she ascends to in Atomic Blonde, though, is a genre fan’s lushest dream. As ace MI6 agent Lorraine Broughton, Theron viciously hand-to-hand combats an army of Russian agents through a twisty and turny plot set in 1989 Berlin. There’s a (seemingly) single-take fight scene that will go down as an all-timer—equal parts stylish, gruesome, and exhilarating, a divine feat of power and endurance. Before directing, helmer David Leitch spent 20-plus years as a stuntman and stunt coordinator; here, that experience shows. Sure, the plot in between fight scenes can lull, or even veer fuzzy on coherence. But add in sumptuous cinematography and a super-fun ’80s pop soundtrack and Atomic Blonde easily rises above. It’s a blast. —Melissa Leon

Song to Song

Terrence Malick’s latest meandering meditation on romantic angst was labeled everything from a festivalgoer’s Snapchat on the big screen to a beautiful love letter to Austin—to give just a hint at how divisive Song to Songwas. Still, there’s no denying the event and excitement of having Malick’s latest work, which starred Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender, Rooney Mara, and Natalie Portman as a tangled web of lovers brooding against the backdrop of the Austin music scene, debut in the city itself. Austin looks beautiful here, as does the film’s lovingly shot stars. But following opening night, the movie and its response was besides the point as Malick himself, a famed recluse who rarely makes public appearances and even more rarely sits down for interviews, participated in a Q&A session with Fassbender, moderated by friend Richard Linklater. —Kevin Fallon

La Barbecue

What’s better than lunch at La Barbecue on a sunny Austin day? Lunch with legendary New York Magazine critic Adam Platt at La Barbecue on a sunny Austin day. Thanks to “urban winery” The Infinite Monkey Theorem, which makes a surprisingly delicious and refreshing rosé in a can, a group that included Platt, who famously revealed his face to the world on that magazine’s cover a few years ago, got to enjoy a luscious platter that included one ginormous beef rib, pork ribs, sausages and the best brisket in Austin (forget Franklin’s)—along with pickles, potato salad and beans, because you need to have some vegetables. In Platt’s word’s, the BBQ feast was “RFG” or “really fucking good.” The food coma that followed made it nearly impossible to continue on with the rest of that day’s SXSW activities. But nevertheless, we persisted. —Matt Wilstein

The Disaster Artist

Ever since Bridesmaids bowed there in 2011, SXSW has become the go-to place for studio comedy fare. 21 Jump Street, Neighbors, Trainwreck, andSpy have all premiered at the fest—along with less impressive fare like Get Hard and Keanu. The most anticipated comedy flick of this year’s edition wasThe Disaster Artist, a film written, produced, directed by, and starring James Franco about the making of the “best-worst movie ever”: Tommy Wiseau’sThe Room. It is, perhaps, the most James Franco-iest movie ever made: a meta-exploration of obsession, Hollywood pipe dreams, and the modern-day bromance, and a movie-within-a-movie boasting Franco directing his Wiseau directing himself act terribly. Franco, a truly gifted comedic actor, is brilliant here, nailing Wiseau’s oddball demeanor and oddly charming naïveté. Franco’s directorial resume is a bit of a mixed bag, but hey, practice makes perfect. —Marlow Stern

American Gods

They did it, they really did it! Bryan Fuller and Michael Green’s Starz adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s beloved 2001 novel stays true enough to the source material to please diehard fans yet manages to improve on it, too, by using the advantages of the medium. It expands the backstories and personalities of several of the book’s characters, especially its women, to avoid the “sausage party” energy (Fuller’s words, accurate) of the original two-man odyssey. As trickster Mr. Wednesday, Ian McShane steals every scene; as Shadow, The 100’s Ricky Whittle is a tortured sort of pitch-perfect. Stories about faith, division, and the experience of coming to America have only become more urgent in today’s immigrant-vilifying political climate—a fact the show’s diverse cast and crew are passionate about. The show also looks effing gorgeous (Fuller is the man behind Hannibal, after all) and is irreverently funny, too. It’s truly entertainment worthy of the gods. —Melissa Leon

Baby Driver

“Sexy nonsense” could very well have been the theme of SXSW’s nightly showcases, with Song to Song, Baby Driver, Atomic Blonde, and Free Fire all screening in succession, each one-upping the previous in its unapologetic celebration of style over substance. Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver, in that vein, might be the best music video you’ve ever seen. Ansel Elgort is Baby, an ace getaway driver for a gang of robbers led by a gregarious-as-ever Kevin Spacey. Baby’s quirk: he’s always listening to music, with different iPods for different moods. When the music starts blasting for one of the film’s seemingly endless number of car chases is when things get really fun; even the shootout gunfire was choreographed to the music’s beat. It’s all better than the storyline, which veers from heist thriller to romance with little coherence. But with action this bonkers and, as a bonus, Jon Hamm in his best performance since Mad Men, you’re happy to just go along for the ride. —Kevin Fallon

The Relationtrip

This low-budget indie tells the story of two lost souls in Los Angeles, who meet at a party (or “salon de musique” as the hipster host calls it) and decide to escape together to the Joshua Tree desert for the weekend. But it’s much more than that. The film belongs Renée Felice Smith (currently toiling away on NCIS: Los Angeles), who wrote and directed with her real-life partner C.A. Gabriel and stars alongside Matt Bush as Beck, a quirky rom-com heroine in the mold of Ellen Page in Juno or Jenny Slate in Obvious Child. As it goes along, The Relationtrip gets increasingly surreal, and, well, trippy, invokingSimon Rich’s FX series Man Seeking Woman, and, in its better moments,Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. A stand-out sequence comes midway through the film when the burgeoning couple falls asleep in a hammock at sunset only to find the entire thing transformed into a cocoon that they emerge from as newlyweds. —Matt Wilstein

The Documentary Treatment

While Sundance remains the premier destination for cutting-edge documentaries, from Capturing the Friedmans and Grizzly Man toMurderball and Man on Wire, SXSW has, in recent years, offered some stiff competition. Last year gave us TOWER, Keith Maitland’s animated look at America’s first mass school shooting, as well as the haunting Beware the Slenderman. And this year was no different. There was Pornocracy, adult star turned filmmaker Ovidie’s flawed but fascinating exploration of MindGeek’s sketchy streaming porn stranglehold; Becoming Bond, a naughty look at the lascivious life and times of car mechanic turned 007 George Lazenby; and Frank Oz’s intimate look at the people behind Jim Henson’s iconic puppets in Muppet Guys Talking. The film that caused the most noise was undoubtedly Jason Pollock's Stranger Fruit, a detailed, eye-opening and admittedly one-sided investigation into the shooting death of unarmed black teen Michael Brown at the hands of white cop Darren Wilson. Real stories so compelling they’ll sober you right up…for a couple hours, at least. —Marlow Stern

Julio Torres

You cannot take your eyes off Julio Torres when he’s performing stand-up comedy. The Salvadoran Saturday Night Live writer behind such genius pieces as “Wells for Boys” and “Melania Moments” appeared as part of theAbove Average showcase at SXSW, alongside SNL colleague Sasheer Zamata, and slayed the audience with his understated, Andy Kaufman-esque approach to the medium. Sample joke: “I went to the doctor and he told me I was very underweight, and I was like, ‘Stop it, you’re underweight.” If his onstage persona is an act, it’s one he keeps up in the real world, as this writer can attest after approaching him at a party later in the night and gushing over how brilliant his set was. —Matt Wilstein