Monthly Archives: April 2012

AMY HERZOG: ‘AFTER THE REVOLUTION’ (REVIEW PICK, CHI) · Apr 22nd

(Chris Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 4/11.)

"Those people could be my neighbors," I heard one woman remark at the conclusion of "After the Revolution," the current production at the Next Theatre in Evanston. Actually, Amy Herzog's impressive 2010 play is set in Greenwich Village, where, to paraphrase one of her characters, you could not walk down a street in the 1940s without running into a communist sympathizer.

But in director Kimberly Senior's fine production of a play about the perils of being a child of an ultra-leftist family, Keith Pitts' set also makes subtle reference to the Arts and Crafts homes occupied by the lakefront liberals of Evanston, Rogers Park and thereabouts. And those who grew up in such book-filled homes, paid for with the fruits of teaching or writing, those of the same generation as the playwright, will doubtless sympathize with Herzog's central character of Emma, a radically tutored young woman who finds out that progressives can be shrill, prejudiced, judgmental, elitist, morally compromised and otherwise disappointing.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/theaterloop/ct-ent-0412-revolution-review-20120411,0,3063702.column

***** BRUCE NORRIS: ‘CLYBOURNE PARK’ (REVIEW PICK, NY) · Apr 20th

 

(David Cote’s article appeared in Time Out New York.)

I doubt that George Zimmerman will ever see Clybourne Park on Broadway. The man who killed Trayvon Martin is busy defending himself against second-degree murder charges in Florida, and scoring tickets to the 2011 Pulitzer Prize winner is probably not high on his to-do list. Still, he might benefit from Bruce Norris’s acid, bracing diptypch about prejudice and neighborliness, perhaps even recognize the play’s society, corroded by what Freud called “the narcissism of small differences.” Clybourne Park is a powerful work about closed communities, exclusion and dehumanization of the other. Wartime atrocities slouch in the background. It’s also shockingly funny, and I suspect that at this point, Zimmerman could use a good laugh.

http://www.timeout.com/newyork/comedy/clybourne-park

ON KONSTANTIN STANISLAVSKY · Apr 19th

 

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 4/17.)

Who has had the greatest influence on modern acting? Without doubt it was Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938). He was the great director–teacher who co-founded the Moscow Art Theatre, staged the premieres of Chekhov's plays and codified a system of acting explained in books such as An Actor Prepares, Building a Character and – his autobiography – My Life in Art. He was also the godfather of American "method" acting, whose disciples ranged from Marlon Brando to Marilyn Monroe. But, while Stanislavsky was a colossus, I'd say modern drama requires other approaches to acting; and I've recently seen two brilliant performances that demonstrate both the potency of Stanislavsky and the need to venture beyond him.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/apr/17/modern-drama-konstantin-stanislavsky

LINDA MCLEAN: ‘ANY GIVEN DAY’ (REVIEW PICK, SF) · Apr 18th

 

(Robert Hurwitt’s article appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, 4/13.)

It's raining hard in Glasgow but it's a special day for Sadie and Bill, the odd pair of shut-ins we meet in the first act of Linda McLean's achingly poignant "Any Given Day," which opened Wednesday at the Magic Theatre. Childlike and fearful of the outside world – not without reason – they're awaiting a visit from Bill's niece Jackie.

QUIARA ALEGRIA HUDES WINS THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA FOR HER PLAY ‘WATER BY THE SPOONFUL’ · Apr 17th

 

(from the AP/Washington Post, 4/16.)

Quiara Alegria Hudes’s play “Water by the Spoonful,” about an Iraq war veteran struggling to find his place in the world, has won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama, leaving its author in a “daze.”

The drama, which was produced last fall at Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, was called an “imaginative play about the search for meaning” by the Columbia University’s prize board on Monday.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/theater_dance/quiara-alegria-hudes-wins-the-pulitzer-prize-for-drama-for-her-play-water-by-the-spoonful/2012/04/16/gIQAcZvyLT_story.html

(Hudes’s work can be found in One on One:  The Best Women’s Monologues for the 21st Century and Duo! The Best Scenes for Two for the 21st Century—links in the sidebars of this site.)

‘NEW YORKER’ THEATRE LISTINGS, 4/23 PLAYDECK · Apr 17th

 

CLYBOURNE PARK

Bruce Norris wrote this Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, which expands on Lorraine Hansberry’s “Raisin in the Sun.” Pam MacKinnon directs the original cast, from 2010, which includes Christina Kirk, Annie Parisse, Jeremy Shamos, and Frank Wood. In previews. Opens April 19. (Walter Kerr, 219 W. 48th St. 212-239-6200.)

 

THE COLUMNIST

Manhattan Theatre Club stages David Auburn’s play about the mid-century political writer Joseph Alsop, starring John Lithgow, Margaret Colin, Boyd Gaines, Stephen Kunken, Brian J. Smith, and Grace Gummer. Daniel Sullivan directs. In previews. (Samuel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200.)

 

DON’T DRESS FOR DINNER

The Roundabout Theatre Company presents a new comedy by Marc Camoletti (“BoeingBoeing”), about a web of infidelity among a husband, his wife, his mistress, and his visiting friend. Starring Ben Daniels, Patricia Kalember, Adam James, and Jennifer Tilly; John Tillinger directs. In previews. (American Airlines Theatre, 227 W. 42nd St. 212-719-1300.)

 

AN EARLY HISTORY OF FIRE

The New Group presents a drama by David Rabe, set in the early nineteen-sixties, about a Midwesterner who must choose between small-town life and a college girl’s wider world. Jo Bonney directs. In previews. (Acorn, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200.)

 

FESTEN (THE CELEBRATION)

The Polish company TR Warszawa presents this play, about an ill-fated family reunion, adapted for the stage by Thomas Vinterberg and Mogens Rukov and directed by Grzegorz Jarzyna. Previews begin April 20. Opens April 23. (St. Ann’s Warehouse, 38 Water St., Brooklyn. 718-254-8779.)

 

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VACLAV HAVEL/TOM STOPPARD: ‘LARGO DESOLATO’ (LISTEN NOW UNTIL 4/22 ON BBC RADIO 3–LINK BELOW) · Apr 16th

Theatre critic Michael Billington introduces a classic play from the archives by Czech playwright and President, Vaclav Havel, to mark Havel's death in December last year.

When the death of the former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Havel was announced last year, Europe lost one of its great dissident voices. From the 1960s to the 1980s, BBC radio broadcast many new productions of Havel's plays – plays that were usually banned in his then-Communist homeland because of the way they mocked and interrogated the absurd nature of totalitarian rule.

Michael Billington, theatre-critic for the Guardian for much of this period, introduces another chance to hear a 1987 Havel black comedy called Largo Desolato in an English version by Tom Stoppard, himself born in Czechoslovakia.

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01g4v38

Richard Briers stars as Leopold, a philosopher who has offended the authorities in an unnamed country. He has written a certain philosophical essay and anxiously each day awaits the knock on the door. His friends, of course, expect him to act like a hero….

Professor Leopold Nettles…………………..Richard Briers
Edward………………………………………….Paul Gregory
Suzanna……………………………………..Jennifer Piercey
First Sidney…………………………………..Philip Jackson
Second Sidney………………………………….David Goodland
Lucy……………………………………………Belinda Lang
Bertram…………………………………………John Moffatt
First Chap……………………………………Anthony Jackson
Second Chap……………………………………..Ian Thompson
Marguerite……………………………………….Sue Broomfield

Produced by Matthew Walters.

 

BOTHO STRAUSS: ‘BIG AND SMALL’ WITH CATE BLANCHETT (REVIEW PICK, UK) · Apr 15th

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 4/15.)

How times change! When Botho Strauss's play was first seen in Britain in 1983 it was greeted with boos and mass walkouts on its pre-West End tour. Now it arrives in a crisp new Martin Crimp translation and an exciting Sydney Theatre Company production that yields a tumultuous performance from Cate Blanchett and is met with wild enthusiasm. But we're not just applauding a great performance; we've also finally caught up with Strauss's play.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/apr/15/big-and-small-billington 

‘THE TAMING OF THE SHREW’ FROM THEATRE FOR A NEW AUDIENCE · Apr 14th

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The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's early gender political quagmire, is currently being revived at the Duke on 42nd Street until April 21.  It comes at a time when “the War on Women” has become a hot-button issue, pitting the president against Cardinal Dolan, Rush Limbaugh against Sandra Fluke, Hilary Rosen against Ann Romney—and Sarah Palin against Bill Maher in a continuing battle. Why the production has any resonance in the heated election controversies is not because it uses the American west of the 1800s as a metaphor for today, although a line to Petruchio like, “Will you woo this wildcat?” works well for the conception.  Instead, along with Michael Friedman’s own and period music hall songs—Shakespeare was popular around the country at this time in the nation's history, too–the director, Arin Arbus, solves a major artistic problem regarding the work by casting her leads against type–offering us all HOPE.  Here the performers are attuned to slapstick timing—they’re actually closer to the mechanicals in A Midsummer’s Night Dream or the prospectors in Chaplin’s The Gold Rush than they are to matinee idols we’ve seen in these parts in the past, like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton or Meryl Streep and Raul Julia.  It also offers an alternative conception to the idea that Shakespeare was at war with women himself.  Softening the rougher, polarizing edges, however, does ask Maggie Siff to present a more subdued Katharina.  Instead of her humiliations by the opposite sex, the focus belongs to the strategies men employ toward marital union (you’ll be surprised that guys ever took so much interest in wedding planning!).  Petruchio (played by the terrific comic actor Andy Grotelueschen, last seen in Cymbeline for Fiasco Theater) sets out to marry for money and, as he recognizes the responsibility of love, discovers that geld becomes less paramount (Shakespeare should probably have written him less confident at the start, though). Kate, something of a sadist herself, can work for the common good by the time she delivers her famous cringe-inducing final monologue (“I am sham’d that women are so simple To offer war where they should kneel for peace”). 

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TONI MORRISON INTERVIEW: “I DON’T FEEL GUILTY ABOUT ANYTHING” · Apr 13th

(Emma Brockes’s article appeared in the Guardian, 4/13.)

I first met Toni Morrison about 15 years ago, to talk about her seventh novel, Paradise, an encounter I remember largely for its number of terrifying pauses. Morrison, in her late 60s then, was at the height of her powers, a Nobel laureate with a famously low tolerance for journalists and critics, and a personal style as distinctive as her prose: silver dreadlocks, sharp, unwavering eye contact and a manner of speech – when she did speak – that, to her annoyance, people were wont to call poetry.

Now she sits in her publisher's office in New York, the city laid out beneath her. She looks as grand as ever, but there have been changes. It is right after lunch when, says Morrison, she is accustomed to napping. Guiltily?

"Not any more! At 81, I don't feel guilty about anything." (As she will explain, she appears here in role as Toni Morrison, as distinct from Chloe Wofford, her birth name and real self.) "So there!" Throughout the afternoon she is gloriously, unexpectedly giddy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/13/toni-morrison-home-son-love