Category Archives: Events

***** MOUKARZEL/KIDD/SHAKESPEARE: ‘HAMNET’ (SV PICK, IRE) · Oct 5th

Hamnet
Peacock Theatre, Dublin
★★★★★

Who haunted Shakespeare when he wrote Hamlet? A play so steeped in death, full of demanding fathers, hapless sons and restless ghosts, it was completed just three years after the death of his young son, Hamnet. If the name of the Dane was intended as a memorial, it backfired: Shakespeare’s overwhelming legacy and pitted biography have reduced poor Hamnet to the status of a typo.

“You haven’t heard of me,” apologises the 11-year-old boy who arrives onstage alone with a hoodie and a backpack – although, like any contemporary kid, he knows he shouldn’t talk to strangers.

That we are the strangers is made obvious. The expanse of the backdrop to Andrew Clancy’s design holds, as ‘twere, a mirror up to the stage, a live projection from the rear wall that affords us two images: the boy before us and his video apparition.

Photo: Dead Centre

SAM SHEPARD: ‘SIMPATICO’ (SV PICK, PRINCETON) · Oct 2nd

(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/26; via Pam Green.)

PRINCETON, N.J. — It’s hard to imagine a more exuberant wake for Sam Shepard than the party being thrown — and I mean thrown, like a beer bottle in a bar fight — at the McCarter Theater Center here. That’s where A Red Orchid Theater’s revival of his strange “Simpatico” is running — and jumping, stumbling, falling down drunk, writhing on the floor and gleefully reminding us of the fierce and anarchic humor of Shepard, who died in July.

Though Shepard is, in my book, a great American playwright, “Simpatico,” first staged at the Public Theater in New York in 1995, is not a great play. On the page, at least, it finds its author awkwardly trying to shoehorn his fabled sense of a melting American identity into the intricate plots and counterplots of the genre known as noir.

But as lyrical as Shepard could be as a prose writer, he is best experienced not on the page but the stage, where the raw physicality of his brand of theater can be given space to roam wild. That’s the space so jubilantly occupied by this production out of Chicago, directed by Dado and starring the off-center film star Michael Shannon in expertly demented form.

KEITH HAMILTON COBB’S ‘AMERICAN MOOR’–SENOVVA, INC. AND PHOENIX THEATRE ENSEMBLE ANNOUNCE INVITATION-ONLY PERFORMANCES · Sep 29th

AWARD-WINNING PLAY AT THE PERSHING SQUARE SIGNATURE CENTER OCTOBER 2^ND@ 2PM & 6PM FOLLOW-UP TO HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL RUN AT BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble and SenovvA, Inc. announce that Keith Hamilton Cobb’s explosive American Moor will play for two invitation-only performances at The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, The Pershing Square Signature Center at 480 West 42ndStreet on Monday, October 2^nd at 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm.

-A black actor auditioning for the role of Othello, finds himself torn between wanting the role of a lifetime and having to engage an age-old process that invariably ends up with a large black man on stage responding to white decision makers who presume to understand, and ultimately dictate, how a charismatic, intelligent, black man should behave in society. Things can get a little tense… –

Shakespeare, race, and America…not necessarily in that order are explored in AMERICAN MOOR directed by Drama Desk nominee Kim Weild.

Josh Tyson joins Mr. Cobb in the cast, Caleb Spivey is production stage manager.

Powerful, dynamic, humorous, confrontational and ironic, yet truthful throughout,

American Moor played in Boston for 4 weeks to rapturous reviews:

“Spellbinding…A Must See… some plays, and some performances, take the idea of necessary to a deeper level. In those rare cases, the critic’s adjectival exhortation “must-see’’ can almost border on the literal. “American Moor’’ is one such play and one such performance.”” – Don Aucoin, The Boston Globe;

“This is a rare example of a play about which you can say, without hyperbole, that it’s riveting: You hang on every well-chosen, robustly presented word. “American Moor” is both urgent art and an important political statement.” –Edge Media Network

“Our highest recommendation!“ -Boston Examiner

“This piece discusses race relations in theatre, and in the United States, like nothing I’ve ever seen before. It expresses the anger, the rage, the joy, the triumph, and the utter frustration of the black male performer explicitly and humanly.” –New England Theatre Geek

The script was honored by being inducted in the permanent collection of The Folger Shakespeare Library. Michael Witmore, Director of the Library, stated “Keith Hamilton Cobb’s American Moor is incredible…I have spent my life thinking about Shakespeare, but that did not prepare me for the depth of thinking and feeling that his performance provoked.”

What: AMERICAN MOOR by Keith Hamilton Cobb

When: Monday, October 2 at 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm

Where: The Romulus Linney Courtyard Theatre, The Pershing Square Signature Center at 480 West on 42Street.

Information: Craig@PhoenixTheatreEnsemble.org; 212-465-3446

SenovvA,Inc. SenovvA, Producers — Founded in 2005, SenovvA has produced, general managed, supervised, developed and/or designed over 200 theatrical productions internationally. With the latest addition of Production Core, more recent projects include (partial list): (Broadway) Hedwig, Sideshow, Lucky Guy, American Idiot, Bring it On, Tuck Everlasting and [title of show] – (Off-Broadway) Jersey Boys (opens November 2017), Red Roses, Green Gold (opens October 2017), In and of Itself, Curvy Widow, Trip of Love, Fellowship! The Musical Parody, Queen of Wyoming and Peter and the Starcatcher. In Television, SenovvA is well known for its work on live broadcast productions that include The Academy Awards, Kennedy Center Honors, Emmy Awards, Billboard Awards, Kids Choice Awards, to name just a few. Beyond live production, SenovvA’s client list includes Silicon Valley giants for ongoing architectural projects worldwide. In NY, SenovvA is currently a proud participant at the largest real estate development project in North America, Hudson Yards. Find out more about the 400+ projects a year at SenovvA.com

Phoenix Theatre Ensemble: A non-profit 501(C)3 company now in its 13^th season. Under the leadership of Elise Stone, Artistic Director, and Craig Smith, Producing Artistic Director, Phoenix Theatre Ensemble presents 3-5 mainstage productions annually, a reading series, a new play development program, and an arts-in-education program in NYC Public Schools. Mainstage productions this season include Tartuffe by Moliere, The Cult Play by Topher Cusumano, and Klaus Mann’s Mephisto. PTE is the recipient of NYIT Award Nominations, 3 NYIT Awards, and an Audelco Award. The company is a constituent of Network of Ensemble Theatres, ART/NY, Theatre Communications Group, and League of Independent Theatres.

Photo Credit: Chris Lang

ALBERT INNAURATO INTERVIEW WITH STAGE VOICES (SUMMER, 2015) · Sep 28th

Albert Innaurato Gives an Exclusive Interview with SV’s Bob Shuman: Part I appeared 8/26/15 and Part II appeared 9/2/15

Innaurato’s short play Doubtless, produced by John McCormack, appeared at 59E59’s Summer Shorts series in 2014. Gemini, winner of the Obie Award, became the fifth longest-running play to appear on Broadway: premiering Off-Off-Broadway in 1976, and moving to Broadway in 1977, it ran for four years (1, 819 performances). The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie won a second Obie in 1977. Other plays include Passione, Magda and Callas, Coming of Age in Soho, Gus and Al, and Dreading Thekla. While attending the Yale School of Drama Innaurato wrote The Idiots Karamazov, I Don’t Normally Like Poetry but Have You Read Trees, and Gyp, the Real-Life Story of Mitzi Gaynor with Christopher Durang. He was also nominated for an Emmy Award for Vera: U.S.O. Girl; additional television credits are: The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd and short plays for PBS, including Death and Taxes. Innaurato has directed many operas, premiering new work as well as interpreting classics, for a small company in Philadelphia, where he moved to work at the Prince Music Theater. Adjunct at Columbia, Princeton, Yale, and Temple University, essayist, and cultural critic in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, and very frequently in Opera News, Innaurato blogs about serious music and opera at: http://mrsjohnclaggartssadlife.blogspot.com/.

What’s the nicest thing that someone ever said to you about a play you don’t want to be remembered for?

I am so amazed when people remember that I wrote plays that I’m thrilled for a minute or two. I don’t expect to be remembered as a person, let alone as a playwright. I’ve written some lousy plays, God knows, but really, people who remember the good or the bad, are so rare and so sincere, I’m grateful.

Read Part I of the Stage Voices interview: http://stagevoices.com/2015/08/26/two-time-obie-winner-albert-innauratos-exclusive-interview-with-bob-shumanpart-ii-will-be-published-september-2-inn/

Read Park II of the Stage Voices interview: https://stagevoices.com/2015/09/02/albert-innauratos-transfiguration-the-two-time-obie-winner-on-arts-police-the-transsexual-movement-b/

Photo: The New York Times–Albert Innaurato is (l).

ALBERT INNAURATO, REST IN PEACE (1947-2017) · Sep 28th

(Neil Genzlinger’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/27; via Pam Green.)

Albert Innaurato, a playwright who enjoyed spectacular success for a time in the late 1970s, including having a play run on Broadway for more than four years, has died in Philadelphia. He was 70.

His cousin Stephen Paesani said Mr. Innaurato was found dead in his bed on Tuesday, and had probably been dead for two days. The cause was not clear, Mr. Paesani said, but Mr. Innaurato had had heart problems recently.

Mr. Innaurato’s biggest hit, written while he was still in his 20s, was “Gemini,” a comic drama about a Harvard student who returns to his blue-collar Philadelphia neighborhood for his 21st birthday and has to confront, among other things, his sexual orientation. It opened on May 21, 1977, at the Little Theater on Broadway and ran for 1,819 performances.

A few months before that, another of his plays, “The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie,” had an acclaimed Off Broadway run at the Astor Place Theater.

*****SONDHEIM/GOLDMAN: ‘FOLLIES’–SHOWBIZ STUNNER RETURNS IN BREATHTAKING STYLE · Sep 28th

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/6.)

Although it has legions of admirers, Follies has often seemed a problematic show. Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics combine emotional pain and witty pastiche with a deftness that James Goldman’s book never quite seems to match. But Dominic Cooke’s superb revival, reverting to the structure of the 1971 original and ditching the optimistic conclusion that marred the 1987 West End production, gives this bleakly festive musical a poetic unity I didn’t realise it possessed.

The paradox is that Cooke achieves unity by stretching, to the limit, the show’s obsession with duality. That idea of doubleness is built into the Sondheim-Goldman concept. We are invited to witness a grand reunion of veteran Follies showgirls in a Broadway theatre on the verge of demolition; in the background we see the ostrich-plumed incarnations of their younger selves. At the same time we are privy to a double marital crisis. Well-heeled New Yorkers Ben and Phyllis are in as much trouble as their old Phoenix-based chums, Buddy and Sally. What brings the crisis to a head is that Sally has a lifelong yen for Ben that has never been resolved.

FOLLIES by Goldman ;
Directed by Dominic Cooke ;
Designed by Vicki Mortimer ;
at the National Theatre, London, UK ;
21 August 2017 ;
Credit : Johan Persson

The intermingling of past and present is an idea many dramatists have used, notably Tom Stoppard in The Invention of Love, where the older AE Housman views the sexual hesitancy of his younger self with a rueful regret. Here, Cooke’s production lends the idea extra poignancy by making this interaction a two-way process: at one point, Zizi Strallen as the young Phyllis seems about to dissolve in tears as she gazes at the dyspeptic solitude of Janie Dee as her older but no wiser self.

THEY CAN ACT. BUT CAN THEY SERVE? · Sep 27th

(Alexis Soloski’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/22; via Pam Green.)

On a practice court at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, two men were playing some pretty ugly tennis. It was the Monday morning after the United States Open and as the subway rumbled by and workers unstrung banners and logos, Wilson Bethel and Alex Mickiewicz faced each other across the sunstruck acrylic turf.

Mr. Bethel, wearing maroon warm-up gear and a backward baseball cap, lolloped easy volleys to Mr. Mickiewicz, who was dressed all in black like a sporty supervillain. Mr. Mickiewicz sent some of those balls back over the net. Others thudded straight into it.

“These courts have never really seen play like this before,” his castmate, the actress Zoë Winters, deadpanned.

The actors had gathered at the foot of Arthur Ashe Stadium as part of rehearsals for “The Last Match,” a play by Anna Ziegler that begins previews at the Roundabout’s Laura Pels Theater on Sept. 28.

MOISÉS KAUFMAN ON MARRYING ART AND LIFE · Sep 23rd

(Joanne Kaufman’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/15; via Pam Green.)

The playwright and director Moisés Kaufman lives with his husband, Jeffrey LaHoste, in what Mr. LaHoste puckishly calls the smoked fish belt. Murray’s Sturgeon Shop, Barney Greengrass and Zabar’s are all just a cherry stone’s throw away from the rental the men have shared since 1989, soon after meeting in a political theater class at New York University.

The couple, who married three years ago, got the apartment, a Classic Six with crown moldings, hardwood floors and a windowed kitchen, in that time-honored New York way — through somebody who knew somebody who had very good connections.

At the time it felt a little far away,” said Mr. Kaufman, 53, a founder with Mr. LaHoste of Tectonic Theater Project, a company whose productions include “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde” and “The Laramie Project,” an account of the reaction to the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard, a gay college student, both written by Mr. Kaufman.

Photo: Lambda Literary

‘THE CLIMBERS’ BY CLYDE FITCH (METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE–9/8-10/8)—NEXT ON THE STAGE VOICES CALENDAR · Sep 22nd

‘THE CLIMBERS’ BY CLYDE FITCH (METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE)

ABOUT:

ARE WE THERE, YET?

By Alex Roe

In the land of opportunity, no star is beyond our grasp. No aspiration is too high, if only we will reach for it. But is the invitation to continually strive a gift, or a curse? Is opportunity-worship devotion to a jealous idol? Is it, in fact, a goblin haunting the American dream?

Farcical and heartbreaking by turns, Clyde Fitch’s 1901 The Climbers defies easy categorization, but by changing its own tone, this long-overlooked play captures an elusive quarry and an essential conundrum for the American social animal. At the dawn of the 20th century, the altruistic and esteemed head of the Hunter family has died before his time, leaving his wife and three daughters with an unwelcome surprise. Desperate in his final months to keep up with the demands of their extravagant social life, he made a risky investment and lost the family’s once substantial fortune, leaving them with no assets or income at all.

If the fires of adversity prove one’s mettle, the various members of this family seem to be made of different stuff. Mr. Hunter’s widow, youngest daughter, and son-in-law scheme to dupe others into making up their losses. Meanwhile, his sister and two elder daughters vow to care for themselves and their families whatever the personal costs. From these different campaigns spring both the wicked comedy and tender pathos of the play.

and Read more….The Clyde Fitch Report

Photo: L to R: Levi Adkins, Becca Ballenger, Margaret Catov, Matt McAllister
Alexandra Anne, Erin Leigh Schmoyer, Marc LeVasseur, David Licht,
Erin Beirnard (concealed), Alyssa Simonb
photo: Tanya Parks

WRITING RUPERT, PLAYING MURDOCH, MAKING ‘INK’ · Sep 22nd

(Rosalyn Sulcas’s article appeared in The New York Times, 9/21; via the Drudge Report.)

LONDON — Brash headlines. Hyper-opinionated columnists. Celebrity mania. Unabashed appeals to those who feel excluded.

Sound familiar? These themes perfectly reflect the media climate of our time, but they also define the portrait of a young Rupert Murdoch in James Graham’s “Ink,” which is at the Duke of York’s Theater in the West End, after a successful run at the Almeida Theater.

Directed by Rupert Goold and starring Bertie Carvel and Richard Coyle, “Ink” chronicles the 1969 takeover of the moribund Sun newspaper by Rupert Murdoch, then a rising Australian media mogul. Together with Larry Lamb, who he hired as the editor, Mr. Murdoch proceeded to reinvent the mass-market tabloid and to change the media and politics here in a way that still resounds today. (The Sun, still going strong, is one of the tabloids thought to have strongly influenced Britain’s vote to leave the European Union.)

How much could Mr. Murdoch, who is a close friend of Donald Trump, and who controls the Fox News Channel, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, have foreseen the consequences of those early decisions? What motivated him? What does it mean for “Ink” to be seen in Britain now? Mr. Graham, the author of several recently successful plays (“This House,” “Privacy”), and Mr. Carvel, best-known for playing the villainous Miss Trunchbull in “Matilda,” sat down a few days before the West End premiere to discuss these questions and more. This is an edited version of the conversation.

What made you want to write a play about the rise of the tabloids? Was it prompted by the polemics around Brexit?

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