(Patrick Healy's article appeared in the New York Times 4/28/09)

An Out-of-Town Overhaul Helps a Musical Find Focus

Michael Greif sensed something was wrong. It was February 2008, and Mr. Greif — the director of the Tony Award-winning musicals “Rent” and “Grey Gardens” — was watching his latest production, “Next to Normal,” night after night during its Off Broadway run at Second Stage Theater. In a recent interview he recalled feeling that many audience members were not gasping or flinching at a pivotal revelation in Act I: the main character had just tried to kill herself.

“Everything on stage looked pretty — people weren’t getting that Diana had just bled out all over the living room,” Mr. Greif said, referring to the character Diana Goodman, whose struggle with bipolar disorder is at the heart of this musical. “It was one of several moments where the tone of the show was off. Big moments just weren’t landing.”

That led the lead producer of “Next to Normal,” David Stone, to take an unusual step: he moved a show that had already opened in New York to an out-of-town theater (Arena Stage, in Washington) for an overhaul. There, the creative team and actors changed songs, swaths of dialogue, aspects of the characters and the overall tone in hopes of  . . .

(Read more)

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/29/theater/29norm.html?scp=1&sq=Out%20of%20Town&st=cse

(Brian Parks’s talk with Craig Lucas ran in the Village Voice, 4/22/09.)

Q&A With Playwright Craig Lucas, the Man Who Would Have Written Peter Pan

It's been a big theater season for playwright Craig Lucas. In November, his Prayer for My Enemy made its New York premiere at Playwrights Horizons, and now comes The Singing Forest, currently in previews at the Public Theater. The new piece–directed by Mark Wing-Davey and featuring Olympia Dukakis and Jonathan Groff among its cast–explores sexual desire, psychiatry, family history, and the legacy of the Holocaust in both grave and farcical tones. On the occasion of the new play, we sent Lucas a few questions….

Tell us about the impetus for The Singing Forest.

I wrote the first scene for Uta Hagen's 80th birthday. I sent it to her and she wrote back, "Can you really imagine me saying all these filthy things?" Olympia Dukakis does not apparently share these qualms.

A program note by Public Theater artistic director Oskar Eustis mentions that you've been working on the play for almost a decade. Is that an unusually long time for one of your plays?

There was never a time when I was not writing The Singing Forest. I will be writing The Singing Forest in my next life.

Are there any newer or younger playwrights with whom you are especially impressed??

I just spent some time with four MFA playwriting students at Brown University. Their names are Mallery Avidon, Jackie Sibblies, Mia Chung, and Joe Waechter. Absolutely amazing, all of them.

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/archives/2009/04/qa_with_playwri.php

(The following article appeared in the Daily Mail 4/26/09.)

ANDREW LLOYD WEBBER: The last thing this country needs is a pirate raid on the wealth creators who still dare navigate our stormy waters

(…And don't lynch me as a rich b*****d flying a kite for his own cause – I really fear an exodus of talent)

The opinion polls have uttered. The country loves the new 50 per cent top rate of income tax. Soak the rich. Smash the bankers. So Government spin doctors are in second heaven. The Conservatives' silence redefines a tomb. And I suppose there'd be quite a turnout for the public flogging of Sir Fred the Shred.

But before you book your tickets, hold hard. And before you lynch me as a rich b*****d flying a kite for my own cause, let me beg you to believe that I am not.

I believe that this new top rate of tax could be the final nail in the coffin of Britain plc.

I am 61 years old. I have lived and worked in Britain all my life. Not even in the dark days of penal Labour taxation in the Seventies did I have any intention of leaving the country of my birth.  (read more)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1173545/ANDREW-LLOYD-WEBBER-The-thing-country-needs-pirate-raid-wealthy-dont-lynch-Im-rich-b—d.html

(The following interview with Jane Alexander appeared 4/14/09 in New York Magazine.)

Jane Alexander on Snoring Through Chasing Manet and Simulating Sex in Tell Me You Love Me

Jane Alexander is, at 69, perhaps the oldest person ever to simulate oral sex onscreen (in HBO's, Tell Me You Love Me). She's back on the New York stage in Primary Stages' Chasing Manet, a nursing-home caper that opened last week. Alexander spoke to Vulture about napping on the set, why she was never drawn to The Golden Girls, and how it feels to break into action flicks as a near septuagenarian.

In Chasing Manet you play a famous modernist Boston painter. Are you from fancy Boston stock?
Oh, no. In fact, my mother was a Boston Southie and my dad was from North Platt, Nebraska. My character, Catherine Sargent, is from the old-world Bostonians — she married a Lowell. It's clear she has a gusto for life and she's rather egocentric, but she's a survivor and she's wants to live life to the fullest.

Did you have experiences with your own parents aging?
My father, Bart Quigley, was a very well-known surgeon in Boston, a doctor for the Harvard football team. He had a massive stroke. To make a long story short, a lot of doctors are not good patients. He was in seventeen nursing homes in the course of three years. I got a call from the woman who ran one of them, who said, "Come get your father today. He rang the night bell 72 times." A lot of my character's feistiness and mischievousness is totally relatable to my dad.

You're sleeping in bed for the first few minutes of the play. Is that relaxing?
I can't really go to sleep, because I have to listen for my cue. But I found it a delightful rehearsal process because I was in bed most of the time. And it's an extremely comfortable bed. [Co-star] Lynn Cohen and I are of a certain age that we like to take a nap, so in between matinees and evening shows, we crawl into our beds onstage and go to sleep. We have a fabulous stage manager who announces, "Quiet time!"

Do you snore loudly like your character does?
I'm not a snorer. And it's not an easy thing to do [onstage]. It requires a lot of breath.

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2009/04/jane_alexander.html

(Tina Howe’s work appears in DUO!:  The Best Scenes for Two for the 21^st Century out from Applause Theatre and Cinema Books in August.)