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From the home page
Misha Berson | The Seattle Times
Is the vintage Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Oklahoma!" just a toe-tapping hoedown of a show, filled with do-si-do-ing cowboys and gals in calico? A fondly hokey vision of a bygone America of box socials and surreys with fringe on top?
For some contemporary theaters (and many theater historians) there's much more to it than that. The classic 1943 tuner was the first Broadway musical to fully integrate music and ballet into a well-developed story (based on the play "Green Grow the Lilacs").
And recent stagings have found new social and racial dimensions in the tale of romance and rivalry in the Territory of Oklahoma.
Now the 5th Avenue Theatre is rustling up its own ambitious, full-scale version ... It aims to blend folkloric homage with a vision of incipient multiculturalism, via some unusual cross-racial casting, and dances by Donald Byrd that incorporate square dance and African-inflected moves. ...
Read more by Misha Berson at The Seattle Times
Asian, and absent in the arts
From the home page
Lucas Kavner | The Huffington Post
In September of last year, an Asian-American actor posted an offhand status message on Facebook. He wrote that he'd finally been seen by one of the top Off-Broadway theater companies in the city, and he was excited about it. But he also wondered why, after graduating from one of the best graduate acting schools in the country, and living in the city for almost 10 years, it had taken him so long to get his foot in the door there.
The actor wasn't aiming to get someone in trouble or cause an uproar, really -- he was merely expressing a frustration. But it sparked a major response. Other Asian-American actors responded in droves: some who had been working for decades vented similar frustrations, while others mentioned that they had also never been seen by that theater and had hung onto similar thoughts for years. ...
Read more at The Huffington Post
Seattle: Christmas with attitude
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Margaret Friedman | Seattle Weekly
Move over, Dewey, Cheatem, & Howe. There's a new(ish) satirical law firm on the block, with a celebrity paternity case fit for Gawker or TMZ. In Wisemen, Mary Christmas has a bouncing baby boy, but her virginal husband Joseph is pretty sure it isn't his. ("The only hump he ever had was on his camel," says one skeptic.) Mary concurs, but instead of copping to copulation with any of the likely suspects—including gangsta E. Bunny, a neighbor, and maybe even Joseph's own shrink—she pins the pecker on God Himself.
In response, since Mary insists she's the wronged party, Joseph hires the Wisemen Law Firm to find the child's real father. What ensues in this musical holiday revue is goofball humor, rap, klezmer, puns (some creaky, some smart), and rapid-fire dialogue. …
Read more at Seattle Weekly
NYC: Opposites attract and repel
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Ben Brantley | The New York Times
There’s more than one way to wear a bath towel. That’s the sum total of Kim Cattrall’s entrance costume in Richard Eyre’s larky revival of Noël Coward’s “Private Lives,” which opened on Thursday night at the Music Box Theater.
And because Ms. Cattrall is indivisible in the public imagination from Samantha Jones — the eternally randy character she played on “Sex and the City” — you may find yourself hoping for (or dreading) that moment when she opens her towel to display the goods to a hunky man onstage, or perhaps lets it fall to the floor with an arch “oops.”
But Ms. Cattrall does nothing of the kind. She inhabits a swath of white terrycloth as elegantly as Audrey Hepburn did in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and seems, if anything, a shade more wistfully fey than Holly Golightly was. Sensual this woman may be, but there’s nothing vulgar about her. ...
More from Ben Brantley at The New York Times
Moscow: An American in Russia
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BBC News
Half a century after the celebrated Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev defected to the West from the Soviet Union, an American is heading to Moscow's most famous ballet company.
David Hallberg is the first foreign dancer to be named the Bolshoi's premier, or principal, dancer.
The 29-year-old from Rapid City, South Dakota, is starting his season in Moscow on 4 November.
David began ballet relatively late at the age of 13. His first dancing passions were tap and jazz. He has danced with the American Ballet Theatre in New York for the past decade. ...
David Hallberg interviewed: See the video at BBC News
Eisa Davis’ double life
From the home page
Jasmine Elist | Los Angeles Times
"I'm in a play called 'This.'"
"OK, what is it called?"
"No, no, it's called 'This.'"
"Yes? What? It's called what?"
With a lighthearted laugh, Eisa Davis says she often encounters this response when revealing that she is in a new production of "This," which recently opened at the Kirk Douglas Theatre. The perplexity may be fitting for the universe playwright Melissa James Gibson has created: a world of confusion in which close friends enter a vulnerable time of unforeseen circumstances testing their expectations — a time also known as middle age.
Davis' work as an actor and a playwright has contributed to a textured career. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama in 2007 for her play "Bulrusher," about a biracial orphan infant found in a basket and raised by a quiet schoolteacher. She went on to write and star in the autobiographical "Angela's Mixtape," which was among the New Yorker's best plays of 2009. Other plays she has written include "Ramp," as well as "The History of Light," which is returning to the stage this fall in New Jersey. A common theme in her work is an exploration of communication and language. ...
Read more in the Los Angeles Times
From the home page
Reed Johnson | Los Angeles Times
The first question is: What the heck do you call it?
How do you describe a 12-day stretch of June in which three very different, recently minted theater festivals with major-league aspirations – "Radar L.A." Hollywood Fringe and the Third National Asian American Theater Conference and Festival – all will be running in Greater Los Angeles at the same time that Theatre Communications Group the nation's largest theatrical professional and service organization, is holding its 50th anniversary conference in downtown L.A.? Not to mention the ongoing Fourth Annual Festival of New American Musicals?
Would you term it a harmonic convergence, since much of the overlap was unplanned? An embarrassment of stage-crafted riches that will tax Angelenos' freeway-cruising skills? A great excuse for hundreds of theater professionals and aficionados to hit every bistro and close down every bar between Little Tokyo and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel?
"We've got basically 'Theaterpalooza' here in L.A. in June," says Ben Hill, director of the 2-year-old Hollywood Fringe, a 10-day (June 16-26) blowout of more than 1,000 total performances by 200 alternative and underground-theater artists, acts and "projects" that someday hopes to become Southern California's answer to Scotland's venerable Edinburgh Festival Fringe (or maybe a slightly tamer, urbanized version of Burning Man).
By whatever name, the next two weeks are shaping up as one of the largest, most varied concentrations of live performances in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. ...
The first question is: What the heck do you call it?
How do you describe a 12-day stretch of June in which three very different, recently minted theater festivals with major-league aspirations – "Radar L.A." Hollywood Fringe and the Third National Asian American Theater Conference and Festival – all will be running in Greater Los Angeles at the same time that Theatre Communications Group the nation's largest theatrical professional and service organization, is holding its 50th anniversary conference in downtown L.A.? Not to mention the ongoing Fourth Annual Festival of New American Musicals?
Would you term it a harmonic convergence, since much of the overlap was unplanned? An embarrassment of stage-crafted riches that will tax Angelenos' freeway-cruising skills? A great excuse for hundreds of theater professionals and aficionados to hit every bistro and close down every bar between Little Tokyo and the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel?
"We've got basically 'Theaterpalooza' here in L.A. in June," says Ben Hill, director of the 2-year-old Hollywood Fringe, a 10-day (June 16-26) blowout of more than 1,000 total performances by 200 alternative and underground-theater artists, acts and "projects" that someday hopes to become Southern California's answer to Scotland's venerable Edinburgh Festival Fringe (or maybe a slightly tamer, urbanized version of Burning Man).
By whatever name, the next two weeks are shaping up as one of the largest, most varied concentrations of live performances in Los Angeles since the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. ...
Not a usual Midsummer Night
From the home page
From the home page
Juliet Wittman | Westword
It's hard to get enthusiastic about another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've seen so many oafishly boring and over-the-top Bottoms; puppet-like Hermias and Helenas; Demetriuses and Lysanders so generic you can't tell them apart; annoying Pucks. And just what in hell is a director supposed to do with the fairies? How do Oberon and Titania communicate their supernatural unreality while standing before us in the flesh? Do you get children to play Titania's retinue? Dancers? Represent these beings with flickering lights, as the Colorado Shakespeare Festival once did rather successfully? Usually by the time the menials are staging their lumpily inept version of the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, I'm surreptitiously poking in my purse for car keys and wondering just why Shakespeare wanted this dopey piece of stagecraft to close out the action.
And yet I couldn't have been more charmed and delighted by Kent Thompson's production, which not only avoids every pitfall, but makes Dream fresh and new again. ...
Read Juliet Wittman’s full review in Westword
It's hard to get enthusiastic about another production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've seen so many oafishly boring and over-the-top Bottoms; puppet-like Hermias and Helenas; Demetriuses and Lysanders so generic you can't tell them apart; annoying Pucks. And just what in hell is a director supposed to do with the fairies? How do Oberon and Titania communicate their supernatural unreality while standing before us in the flesh? Do you get children to play Titania's retinue? Dancers? Represent these beings with flickering lights, as the Colorado Shakespeare Festival once did rather successfully? Usually by the time the menials are staging their lumpily inept version of the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe, I'm surreptitiously poking in my purse for car keys and wondering just why Shakespeare wanted this dopey piece of stagecraft to close out the action.
And yet I couldn't have been more charmed and delighted by Kent Thompson's production, which not only avoids every pitfall, but makes Dream fresh and new again. ...
Read Juliet Wittman’s full review in Westword
The Brothers Size triumphs
From the home page
From the home page
Brendan Kiley, The Stranger
Playwright and theater legend August Wilson (who passed away in 2005) often sounded embattled. In his interviews and articles, he described black American theater artists—Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, himself—as conducting "courageous forays into an area that is marked with land mines and the shadows of snipers." He worried (with good reason) that the struggle to inject a strong black American voice into American theater would die with him.
It didn't.
Case in point: The Brothers Size, by Tarell McCraney, now playing at Seattle Repertory Theatre. McCraney's play is a deeply moving, deeply entertaining, and deeply black story that is getting standing ovations at one of Seattle's whitest (if the audience and staff are any indication) arts institutions. …
Never Let Me Go won’t let go
From the home page
From the home page
Tim Masters, BBC News
As Never Let Me Go arrives in UK cinemas, novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is already planning its transition to the stage.
The writer has recently returned from Tokyo where he has been in discussions on a Japanese-language version of his Booker Prize-shortlisted novel. He is also in talks about a British stage production.
"We have to allow three years from the release of the film to the time it can be done on the stage - but whether it will be a musical or not is another matter," Ishiguro told the BBC.
As Never Let Me Go arrives in UK cinemas, novelist Kazuo Ishiguro is already planning its transition to the stage.
The writer has recently returned from Tokyo where he has been in discussions on a Japanese-language version of his Booker Prize-shortlisted novel. He is also in talks about a British stage production.
"We have to allow three years from the release of the film to the time it can be done on the stage - but whether it will be a musical or not is another matter," Ishiguro told the BBC.
Last year a musical version of Ishiguro's 1989 Booker winner The Remains of the Day ran at London's Union Theatre. ...
Read Tim Masters’ full story at BBC News
Reviving ‘Miss Daisy’
From the home page
From the home page
Mark Kennedy, The Associated Press
NEW YORK -- James Earl Jones had two questions he needed answered before agreeing to join the Broadway production of "Driving Miss Daisy."
He called up the director, David Esbjornson.
"I said, 'OK, am I going to have to dye my hair a little blacker?'"
"Nope," said the director.
Pleased, Jones asked his second question: "I said, 'OK. Do I have to lose much weight?'
"Nope," replied the director again.
And that was that.
"He wanted me," Jones says, still somewhat surprised.
It's really not hard to wonder why. Jones, who is joined by Vanessa Redgrave and Boyd Gaines, has helped turn "Driving Miss Daisy" into the top grossing play on Broadway with advance ticket sales of over $4 million.
Backstage at the Golden Theatre, Jones sits on a sofa with playwright Alfred Uhry, who says he had long resisted taking his Pulitzer Prize-winning play to Broadway, never finding the perfect mix of actors. This time, he did.
NEW YORK -- James Earl Jones had two questions he needed answered before agreeing to join the Broadway production of "Driving Miss Daisy."
He called up the director, David Esbjornson.
"I said, 'OK, am I going to have to dye my hair a little blacker?'"
"Nope," said the director.
Pleased, Jones asked his second question: "I said, 'OK. Do I have to lose much weight?'
"Nope," replied the director again.
And that was that.
"He wanted me," Jones says, still somewhat surprised.
It's really not hard to wonder why. Jones, who is joined by Vanessa Redgrave and Boyd Gaines, has helped turn "Driving Miss Daisy" into the top grossing play on Broadway with advance ticket sales of over $4 million.
Backstage at the Golden Theatre, Jones sits on a sofa with playwright Alfred Uhry, who says he had long resisted taking his Pulitzer Prize-winning play to Broadway, never finding the perfect mix of actors. This time, he did.
David Mamet grows up
From the home page
From the home page
Ellen Gamerman, Wall Street Journal
David Mamet beamed from a crowded aisle at Tuesday night's Broadway opening of his play "A Life in the Theatre," gripping a neatly wrapped box that contained a rattle—a gift he says he planned to give his brother for dating a younger woman.
If age is on the 62-year-old playwright's mind, it's easy to see why: Mr. Mamet wrote "A Life in the Theatre," an exploration of the comedy and tragedy of aging, when he was in his 20s. He says this is the first time he has seen the play on stage in roughly 30 years.
The two-character show, which has been performed often over the years but never before on Broadway, examines the relationship between an aging thespian in a repertory company (Patrick Stewart, a stage veteran known for TV's "Star Trek: The Next Generation") and a young actor (T.R. Knight from "Grey's Anatomy") who must endure his ongoing commentary and advice.
Mr. Mamet, a father of four, says he has more empathy for the older character now than he once did. He understands the impulse to want to impart some wisdom to the next generation.
Moscow: Theater gets serious
From the home page
From the home page
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John Freedman, The Moscow Times
The real season is about to begin in Moscow. Let the film, music and art pundits take potshots at me — I don’t care. Because when Moscow’s drama theaters start gearing up for a new season, that’s when serious work is about to be done.
A quick glance at shows opening in the coming months reveals a strong presence of contemporary writers. Pavel Pryazhko, Yury Klavdiyev, Ivan Vyrypayev and the Presnyakov brothers are all set with new productions of plays.
There will also be plenty to choose from for those interested in the work of Russia’s best directors. Valery Fokin, Yury Butusov, Genrietta Yanovskaya, Sergei Zhenovach and Robert Sturua are all on the verge of opening new productions.
On paper, at least, the title for most promising year must go to the National Youth Theater. Artistic Director Alexei Borodin has lined up what appears to be a whopper of a repertoire.For starters, there is Borodin’s own production of “Chekhov-Gala,” which plays Sept. 19. True, it actually opened this summer during the Chekhov International Theater Festival, but only now does the show settle down in repertory. “Chekhov-Gala” is a souffle of works by Anton Chekhov, including bits and pieces of five of the writer’s one-act plays.
Read the rest at The Moscow Times
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‘Optimism’
in Havana
From the home page
in Havana
From the home page
Victoria Burnett,
The New York Times
“Despite little apparent progress in diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States since President Obama took office, members of the Cuban arts community say more musicians, artists, actors and writers are traveling between the two countries than during George W. Bush’s presidency. …
“Lillian Manzor, director of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive at the University of Miami, said visas for cultural purposes were flowing once more. ‘Cubans from the island are coming to the U.S. easier — not only musicians, but whole theater groups, and academics also,’ she said. ‘It’s a cause for optimism.’”
Read more in The New York Times
The New York Times
“Despite little apparent progress in diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States since President Obama took office, members of the Cuban arts community say more musicians, artists, actors and writers are traveling between the two countries than during George W. Bush’s presidency. …
“Lillian Manzor, director of the Cuban Theater Digital Archive at the University of Miami, said visas for cultural purposes were flowing once more. ‘Cubans from the island are coming to the U.S. easier — not only musicians, but whole theater groups, and academics also,’ she said. ‘It’s a cause for optimism.’”
Read more in The New York Times
‘Spartacus’ rocks London
From the home page
Luke Jennings, The Observer
The Bolshoi's Spartacus, which launched the company's Covent Garden summer season on Monday, tells the story of the uprising against imperial Rome by Thracian gladiators in the first century AD. The piece was choreographed by Yuri Grigorovitch in 1968, and audiences were invited to identify Spartacus and his brave band with the Soviet state, struggling for self-realisation in a hostile world.
Despite its defunct political agenda, the piece has proved to have a life after the demise of the USSR. For sheer machismo, the title role has no equal in the ballet canon. …
On Monday, it was the turn of Ivan Vasiliev, who joined the Bolshoi from the Byelorussian ballet school just four years ago, to don the gladiatorial armour. He gave a performance of stunning virtuosity, hurling himself into leaps and turns that had the audience staring in disbelief. London first saw him in 2007, when he danced the lead in Don Quixote, and it was clear that ballet's technical boundaries were being redefined. No one (although we will never know about the great Nijinsky) had ever jumped this high. …
The Bolshoi's Spartacus, which launched the company's Covent Garden summer season on Monday, tells the story of the uprising against imperial Rome by Thracian gladiators in the first century AD. The piece was choreographed by Yuri Grigorovitch in 1968, and audiences were invited to identify Spartacus and his brave band with the Soviet state, struggling for self-realisation in a hostile world.
Despite its defunct political agenda, the piece has proved to have a life after the demise of the USSR. For sheer machismo, the title role has no equal in the ballet canon. …
On Monday, it was the turn of Ivan Vasiliev, who joined the Bolshoi from the Byelorussian ballet school just four years ago, to don the gladiatorial armour. He gave a performance of stunning virtuosity, hurling himself into leaps and turns that had the audience staring in disbelief. London first saw him in 2007, when he danced the lead in Don Quixote, and it was clear that ballet's technical boundaries were being redefined. No one (although we will never know about the great Nijinsky) had ever jumped this high. …
’Red,’ ‘Memphis’ big at Tonys
From the home page
David Rooney, THR:
"John Logan's two-character biodrama 'Red,' about American abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, took home the night's largest haul, winning six awards, including top-play honors, on Sunday during the 64th annual Tony Awards. ...
"Winners in the revival categories were the 1985 August Wilson play 'Fences' and the 1983 musical 'La Cage aux Folles,' which made history by becoming the only musical to win top Tonys for each of its three Broadway incarnations.
"Wilson's searing '50s-set family drama earned Tonys for lead actors Denzel Washington and Viola Davis. Washington and Viola Davis, won for best actors in a play. It was Davis' second win for a Wilson drama, having scored for featured actress in 2001 with 'King Hedley II.' A major hit driven by across-the-board raves, 'Fences' twice has broken house records at the Cort Theatre, recouping its $2.8 million capitalization in eight weeks.
"'Memphis' was named best musical. The show, about a white DJ bringing black Beale Street sounds to the 1950s mainstream, opened in October has connected with audiences thanks to its high-energy dance numbers and hardworking cast, grossing $22 million to date. The show won four Tonys."
Read more by David Rooney at The Hollywood Reporter
Lynn Redgrave dies at 67
From the home page
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on Redgrave:
"The youngest child of the celebrated British actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, Ms. Redgrave grew up in the shadow of her sister, Vanessa, and her brother, Corin, and never acquired Vanessa’s aura of stardom. But as both a deft comedian and a commanding dramatic actress she carved out a varied career, playing parts in Shakespeare and Shaw and on 'Fantasy Island.'"
Read more in The New York Times
Lynn Redgrave’s official Web site
Chris Smyth’s obituary in The TimesOnline (UK)
BBC: Lynn Redgrave in pictures
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“A family man with a roving eye and a solid breadwinner with unsettling memories of a sports hero’s past, Troy [Maxson] is twisted by fiercely contradictory impulses — of love and resentment, gentle judiciousness and brutal irrationality, responsibility and a lust for careless freedom. Registering troubled ambivalence has always been [Denzel] Washington’s great strength as a screen actor (including in his Oscar-winning “Training Day”), and he uses that gift to redefine Troy on his own terms.
“This newly detailed reading allows us to look at Troy with fresh objectivity, and to realize that Wilson created a more complex, layered character than we may have remembered.”
More in The New York Times
Snapshot reviews of ‘Fences’
More in The New York Times
Snapshot reviews of ‘Fences’
Todd Boyd: August Wilson and Hollywood
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More in The Root
At msnbc.com: August Wilson’s century in blacks and blues
PHOTO CREDITS
This page: From 'Chekhov-Gala,' Vera Zolova/National Youth Theater. Home page: Natalia Blagikh in 'The Tempest': Oleg Khalmov/Et Cetera Theater. This and home page: Yanell Gomez: Reuters via NYT. Redgrave photo: Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press; Redgrave photo, home page: Annabel Clark. Fences photo: Joan Marcus. Fences logo: © 2010 Fences. August Wilson photo, home page: Open Stage Harrisburg.