Monthly Archives: March 2015

MEMOIRS: FAYE DUNAWAY, TO DEY STREET BOOKS; JULIE ANDREWS, TO HACHETTE · Mar 31st

(from Publishers Lunch 3/31.)

Memoir 
Academy Award winning actress Faye Dunaway's recollections, stories and behind the scenes account of the making of one of Hollywood's most iconic films, Mommie Dearest, to Julia Cheiffetz at Dey Street Books, by Alan Nevins at Renaissance (World). 

Julie Andrews' second memoir covering the 1960's through the early 1990's during which time Andrews began her filmed entertainment career starting with Mary Poppins and The Sound of Music and pivotal career highlights in films like Hawaii, Thoroughly Modern Millie, and Victor/Victoria, in addition to her experiences with motherhood and her marriage to Hollywood writer/director/producer Blake Edwards, to Mauro DiPreta at Hachette Books, by Steve Sauer of Media Four (World). 

GENE SAKS, REST IN PEACE (1921-2015) · Mar 31st

 

(Bruce Weber’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/29; via Pam Green.)

Gene Saks, an actor who switched to stage and film directing in midcareer, winning three Tony Awards and becoming the leading interpreter of the plays of Neil Simon, died on Saturday at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 93.

The cause was pneumonia, his wife, Keren, said.

As a director, Mr. Saks focused on comedy, and he excelled with the kind of snappy, battle-of-the-sexes material that might be termed the theater of repartee. He often said he was concerned that laugh lines be not simply jokes but also expressions of character; nonetheless, he was known for his comic instinct and for helping actors with line readings and timing to make a scene work. That said, he was never a cutup or a wit.

“He could direct actors to be funny, but he wasn’t funny himself,” said Emanuel Azenberg, who produced nine Broadway shows directed by Mr. Saks, including eight written by Mr. Simon. “He would say, ‘This is funny,’ in a very serious way. And you’d laugh, because that was funny. All of those fundamentals — pacing, timing, line readings — that had to do with: If you said it this way it would be funny, but if you said it another way it wouldn’t be funny. That’s what he was good at.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/30/theater/gene-saks-actor-and-director-of-stage-and-film-dies-at-93.html?mwrsm=Email&_r=0

3 RUSSIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO THEATRE THAT CHANGED THE WORLD · Mar 31st

(Alexandra Guryanova’s article appeared in Russia Beyond the Headlines, 3/27.)

The plays of Anton Chekhov

Chekhov's plays were a breakthrough in world drama in the first quarter of the 20th century. Their plots distinguished them from traditional dramas of that time by virtue of their special psychological depth. Chekhov did not show the only true path to the salvation of heroes. Instead, he drew spectators into the study of everyday behavior of the characters and encouraged them to make their own conclusions.

His work, alongside the works of Ibsen, Strindberg and Shaw, formed the basis of "New Drama," an important theatrical trend at the turn of the century. Outstanding playwrights revered Chekhov as the father of psychological theater. For example, Bernard Shaw called his play Heartbreak House a "fantasia in the Russian manner on English themes."

Tennessee Williams adored The Seagull and wanted to put it on stage in his interpretation for the rest of his life. This play, alongside Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, has been translated into more than 80 languages and been staged countless times in the UK, Germany, France, Japan, the U.S. and other countries. 

– http://rbth.com/arts/2015/03/27/3_russian_contributions_to_theater_that_changed_the_world_44807.html)

CORY FINLEY: ‘THE FEAST’ (REVIEW PICK, NY) · Mar 30th

 

(Alexis Soloski’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/20; via Pam Green.)

Ever had a leaky faucet? Or a clogged drain? Cory Finley’s “The Feast” at the Flea is the sort of play to make you grateful for such mundane plumbing problems. Matt’s wonky W.C. is a whole lot eerier.

Screams and groans emanate from deep within his toilet. “Like a man, tied up down there,” a plumber (Donaldo Prescod) explains. “Water streaming over his mouth. All day. Not quite a human. Almost like a dying whale. Full of sorrow. Like it was whispering the experience of its own slow death into your ear.” Is there a Roto-Rooter in the house? (That the Flea’s downstairs space adjoins its musty lavatories makes the production practically site-specific.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/21/theater/review-the-feast-plumbs-the-depths-of-a-troubling-toilet.html

LOOK BACK IN ANGER: HOW JOHN OSBORNE LIBERATED THEATRICAL LANGUAGE · Mar 30th

 

(Michael Billington's article appeared in the Guardian, 3/30.) 

In the summer of 1955 an advertisement appeared in the Stage newspaper asking for new plays. It had been placed by the English Stage Company, which was setting up in business at an unfashionable theatre, the Royal Court, in London’s Sloane Square. The response to the ad was tremendous. Seven hundred and fifty scripts poured in.

The only trouble was, most of them were rubbish: either bottom-drawer pieces by hack writers or, in the words of Tony Richardson, who was to become the ESC’s associate director, “endless blank-verse shit”.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/30/how-look-back-in-anger-john-osborne

‘THE NEW YORKER’ THEATRE LISTINGS, 4/6 PLAYDECK · Mar 30th

 

Airline Highway

Samuel J. Friedman

Manhattan Theatre Club presents a play by Lisa D’Amour, directed by Joe Mantello, in which a group of oddballs gather in a motel parking lot to celebrate the life of a burlesque performer. In previews.

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Ghosts

BAM's Harvey Theatre

Almeida Theatre's production of the Henrik Ibsen play, adapted and directed by Richard Eyre. Lesley Manville stars, as a woman anguished by the moral deceptions of her late husband. In previews. Opens April 12.

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Grounded

Public

Anne Hathaway stars in a play by George Brant, about a fighter pilot reassigned to flying drones. Julie Taymor directs. In previews.

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Iowa

Playwrights Horizons

Ken Rus Schmoll directs the world première of a new musical play by Jenny Schwartz, with music by Todd Almond and lyrics by Schwartz and Almond, in which a girl must move to the Midwest after her mother falls in love with someone on Facebook. In previews. Opens April 13.

 

 

Living on Love

Longacre

Renée Fleming, Anna Chlumsky, Jerry O'Connell, and Douglas Sills star in Joe DiPietro's comedy, in which a famous opera singer hires a handsome young man to write her autobiography. Kathleen Marshall directs. In previews.

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Skylight

Golden

Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy reprise their roles in the play by David Hare, after a run in London last year. Stephen Daldry directs the drama, in which a young teacher is visited by her former lover, a restaurateur whose wife has just died. In previews. Opens April 2.

 

 

Wolf Hall: Parts One & Two

Winter Garden

The Royal Shakespeare Company's productions of Hilary Mantel's books "Wolf Hall" and "Bring Up the Bodies" come to Broadway. In previews. Opens April 9.

http://www.newyorker.com/goings-on-about-town/theatre

 

DIGGING UP THE AUTHOR OF DON QUIXOTE · Mar 29th

(Itxu Diaz’s article appeared in the Daily Beast, 3/29.)

You may not have noticed amid all the hoopla about Richard III’s cadaver, but Spain has dug up a national hero as well.

MADRID — An important forensic investigation in Spain recently confirmed that bones buried in Madrid’s Trinitarian Convent belong to the author of Don Quixote, who died poor and forgotten almost 400 years ago.

One wouldn’t want to spoil a good headline. “Cervantes has appeared! Cervantes has appeared!” proclaimed the papers. But the bad news was, well, he’s dead. And that’s just about the only thing on which all the forensic scientists actually agreed.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/29/the-quixotic-search-for-cervantes-bones.html

INGMAR BERGMAN: ‘FANNY AND ALEXANDER’ (LISTEN TO RADIO VERSION ON BBC RADIO 3—LINK BELOW) · Mar 29th

Listen to ‘FANNY AND ALEXANDER’ at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05ns9lx

A new two-part radio version of Ingmar Bergman's Academy Award-winning 1982 film about a Swedish family at the start of the twentieth century. The critically acclaimed original work is one of the longest films in cinematic history, and is a beguiling drama about childhood where imagination is found to be a passport out of dread and into mystery. Adapted for radio by Sharon Oakes.

Episode 1:
Through the eyes of ten-year-old Alexander, we witness the delights and conflicts of the Ekdahl family, a sprawling theatrical family in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Sweden. Ingmar Bergman intended Fanny and Alexander to be his swan song, and it is the legendary director's warmest and most autobiographical film that combines his trademark melancholy and emotional intensity with immense joy and sensuality.

Songs composed and performed by Carl Prekopp.

‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM’ (REVIEW PICK, UK) · Mar 29th

(Alfred Hickling’s article appeared in the Guardian, 3/29.)

The measure of a good Dream is how it manages the transition between the killjoy austerity of the Athenian court and the magical mayhem of the woods. The Everyman’s new associate director Nick Bagnall has come up with a convincing, low-tech solution that places the action amid the chalk dust and colourless uniforms of a minor public school.

However, what really matters is what lies beyond the blackboard, which Ashley Martin-Davis’s design reveals to be a forest shredded into waist-high drifts of discarded homework. Though the inevitable rustling can become a bit distracting at times, the paper makes an absorbent medium for Peter Mumford’s gloriously iridescent lighting; and it’s great fun to see Titania’s bower hastily heaped together as if the fairies have decided to put their queen out with the recycling.

http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2015/mar/29/a-midsummer-nights-dream-everyman-liverpool-review

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE: ‘THE JEW OF MALTA’ (REVIEW PICK, UK) · Mar 28th

 

(Dominic Cavendish’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 3/27.)

How do you create an enemy within, a lone-wolf saboteur of everything you cherish? It’s not so very hard: just take someone who’s part of an oppressed religious minority and subject them to so much vilification, abuse and injustice that they become hell-bent on revenge, and even the overthrow of the state.

Hurtling down the centuries towards us and landing on the RSC Swan stage with the force and modernity of a missile comes Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (1589). It was written when he was young – 25 – and it retains the ardour of youth: it’s provocative, mischief-making, wickedly funny.

What it isn’t – as Justin Audibert’s exemplary period-dressed revival makes clear – is crudely rabble-rousing. There’s a heap of anti-Semitic sentiment in the play; but you’d have to be looking very fixedly in one direction not to see how vile prejudice unleashes the blood-thirsty, eye-for-an-eye antics of its wilier-than-thou anti-hero, Barabas.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/11490339/The-Jew-of-Malta-RSC-Swan-review-the-force-and-modernity-of-a-missile.html