Monthly Archives: June 2016

ANATOMY OF A BROADWAY FLOP: WHAT SANK THESE 4 SHOWS? · Jun 29th

 

(Michael Paulson’s article appeared in The New York Times, 6/22; via Pam Green.)

The woeful wordplay writes itself. “American Psycho” met a gruesome end. “Tuck Everlasting” was not immortal. “Bright Star” ran out of fuel. And “Disaster!” proved to be — well, you can finish that one yourself.

Broadway is a brutal business, in which real success is enjoyed by a handful of shows, while a vast majority crash and burn. And this season was especially tough, because one show, “Hamilton,” gobbled up much of the attention, enthusiasm and awards that motivate potential ticket buyers.

For musicals that opened this spring, it was an especially unforgiving season. Broadway is increasingly saturated with long-running hits, and four musicals that opened last fall — “School of Rock,” “On Your Feet!,” “Fiddler on the Roof” and “The Color Purple” — reached the new year still running strong.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/theater/anatomy-of-a-broadway-flop-why-these-4-shows-failed.html?_r=0

THE ARTIST CHRISTO TALKS ABOUT HIS LATEST PROJECT · Jun 27th

 

 

(from Here and Now, 6/27.)

The artist Christo’s latest project, “The Floating Piers,” is a walkway covered in yellow-orange fabric that stretches almost two miles into Lake Iseo in northern Italy, connecting two islands with the mainland. The project is open to the public for just 16 days, from June 18 to July 3, then it will be dismantled and recycled.

It’s Christo’s first large-scale project since he and his late wife and artists partner, Jeanne-Claude, installed “The Gates” in New York’s Central Park in 2005. Their other projects include “Wrapped Coast” in Australia, “Wrapped Reichstag” in Berlin, “Surrounded Islands” in Miami, “Running Fence” in Northern California. Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson talks with Christo about this project, which he and Jeanne-Claude first got the idea for in the late 1960s.

(read more)

http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2016/06/27/artist-christo-floating-piers

‘SHUFFLE ALONG’ DECIDES IT CAN’T GO ON WITHOUT AUDRA MCDONALD · Jun 27th

 

(Michael Paulson’s article appeared in The New York Times, 2016; via  Pam Green.)

“Shuffle Along,” one of the most ambitious and anticipated musicals of the theater season just ended, will close next month, abruptly and unexpectedly, the show’s producers said Thursday.

The July 24 closing is a surprise because the show, which explores the back story and aftermath of one of the first all-black musicals on Broadway, has been doing well at the box office, grossing nearly $973,686 last week, with a healthy average ticket price of $127. Directed by George C. Wolfe, it was nominated for 10 Tony Awards but won none.

The show, with a full title of “Shuffle Along, or The Making of the Musical Sensation of 1921 and All That Followed,” was apparently facing a sharp drop-off in ticket sales this summer, after its leading actress, Audra McDonald, is scheduled to begin a maternity leave. The musician Rhiannon Giddens had been cast as Ms. McDonald’s replacement and had already begun rehearsals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/24/theater/shuffle-along-decides-it-cant-go-on-without-audra-mcdonald.html?_r=0

‘THE NEW YORKER’ THEATRE LISTINGS, 7/4 PLAYDECK · Jun 27th

 
OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

THE GOLDEN BRIDE

Museum of Jewish Heritage

The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene mounts an encore run of this 1923 operetta, about a young woman raised in a Russian shtetl who journeys to America to find her mother.

Opens July 4.

GET TICKETS

ICE FACTORY 2016

New Ohio

The festival of new work continues with John Kaplan’s “Are We Human,” set in a postapocalyptic future in which a toxic cloud covers the planet, and “The Annotated History of the American Muskrat,” from the company Foxy Henriques, in which eight people are kept awake as part of a mysterious experiment.

Opens June 29.

GET TICKETS

OSLO

Mitzi E. Newhouse

Bartlett Sher directs J. T. Rogers’s play, which recounts how a Norwegian diplomat (Jennifer Ehle) and her husband (Jefferson Mays) orchestrated the secret talks that led to the Oslo Accords, in the nineteen-nineties.

In previews. Opens July 11.

GET TICKETS

PTP/NYC

Atlantic Stage 2

Potomac Theatre Project presents two plays in repertory, both from 1981: Howard Barker’s “No End of Blame: Scenes of Overcoming,” about a Hungarian political cartoonist sparring with government censors, and C. P. Taylor’s “Good,” in which a professor studies a German man succumbing to madness.

In previews. Opens July 12.

GET TICKETS

SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS

Pershing Square Signature Center

A return engagement of Bess Wohl’s comedy, directed by Rachel Chavkin, in which six urbanites attend a silent retreat in upstate New York.

In previews. Opens July 13.

GET TICKETS

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

‘HAMILTON’ RAISES BENJAMINS FOR HILLARY · Jun 26th

(Dominic Patten’s article appeared in Deadline Hollywood, 6/25; via the Drudge Report.)

Lin-Manuel Miranda won’t be in the house in the title role but Hamilton is once again lending the Democrats a Broadway hand with a July 12 fundraiser for Hillary Clinton.

With the ex-Secretary of State’s campaign having bought out the Richard Rodgers Theatre for the unusual Tuesday matinee, tickets are going from $2,700 to $100,000 a pop (for event co-chairs).

Presumptive nominee Clinton will be in attendance for the fundraiser, which comes two-weeks before the Democrats have their National Convention in Philadelphia.

http://deadline.com/2016/06/hamilton-broadway-fundraiser-hillary-clinton-1201779556/

JOHN LEGUIZAMO’S WALLS MAY TALK, BUT THEY DON’T CRITICIZE · Jun 26th

  

(Joann Kaufman’s article appeared in The New York Times, 6/17; via Pam Green.)

What I Love

John Leguizamo has, in his own words, “a great therapist,” and a while back this estimable health care professional offered his intense patient some very solid advice: Get a hobby.

“Acting was my everything,” said Mr. Leguizamo, 51, who is a new addition to the cast of the Netflix series “Bloodline.” (Season two was released late last month.) He also stars with Bryan Cranston in the feature film “The Infiltrator,” to be released July 13. “But I need distractions, because show business is stressful, man. There’s a lot of stress and pressures and criticism.”

Eight years ago, Mr. Leguizamo came up with a surefire distraction: He would sell his brownstone on the Lower East Side and buy another one in the West Village. Then, with the wavering support of his wife, Justine, 47, who he said favors apartments with doormen, he would fix it up. Eventually, this led to an idea for yet another distraction: He would become the faithful caretaker of the 150-year-old (or thereabouts) wisteria with Medusa-like tendrils in the backyard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/19/realestate/john-leguizamos-walls-may-talk-but-they-dont-criticize.html?_r=0

BARBARA COOK ON LIFE BEFORE AND AFTER SOBRIETY · Jun 25th

 

(Stephen Holden’s article appeared in The New York Times, 6/19; via Pam Green.)

The singer Barbara Cook has a copy of her autobiography, “Then and Now: A Memoir,” propped up near her bed so she can look at it when she wakes up in the morning and marvel at its existence.

“I can’t believe it’s an actual book,” she said recently. Her collaborator on the memoir, Tom Santopietro, helped her organize the material, but she insists that she wrote every word, mostly by hand.

In its pages, she is frank about the steep ups and downs of a career that in her mind has had two acts: before and after recovery from alcoholism.

Sitting in a wheelchair near the piano in the living room of her elegant Upper West Side apartment, Ms. Cook, 88, said in a recent interview that she has been unable to walk for about a year. Wearing a black baseball cap, a loosefitting white shirt and no makeup, she was nonetheless a radiant presence, with twinkling blue eyes. What she conveys as powerfully as any other singer alive is empathy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/20/arts/music/barbara-cook-on-life-before-and-after-sobriety.html

***** KIERNAN/MERCIER/MCCABE: ‘SACRIFICE AT EASTER’ (SV PICK, IE) · Jun 25th

 

(Mary Leland’s article appeared in the Irish Times, 6/21.)

The theatrical centrepiece of Cork’s Midsummer Festival Sacrifice at Easter is billed as a creative collaboration between Pat Kiernan, Mel Mercier and McCabe but whatever its provenance, this Corcadorca presentation reasserts the company’s supremacy in fusing location and inspiration with undeviating production values.

Blessed by a benign twilight and leading its audience along defensive walkways high over the city, this performance blends its lighting and soundscapes in, around and under the unscalable walls of the Elizabethan fort. A massive Friesian cow of thankfully mild temperament is also present. She may be a commentary on a series of episodes that, within a framing fairy-tale, are themselves an interrogation of modern Ireland and its contemporary intellectual pathos. As an allegory this takes mischief-making to an entertaining extreme, but McCabe is a master of the sly and the subtle, and his punches land like improvised explosives, underpinned by Mel Mercier’s layered and looming sound-score.

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/stage/sacrifice-at-easter-review-from-the-bizarre-to-the-beautiful-1.2696596

EDINBURGH FESTIVAL 2016: WHAT TO SEE AND WHERE TO GO · Jun 24th

 

(Lyn Gardner’s article appeared in the Guardian, 6/8.)

The fringe programme is out today – so here’s a venue-by-venue look at some of this year’s highlights across the Edinburgh festival. Let us know what’s caught your eye

Assembly

Russian clowns Derevo are back in town with the whimsical love story Once. Fringe favourite Gavin Robertson, always a clever theatre-maker, returns with a new piece, Escape from the Planet of the Day That Time Forgot. Attrape Moi is a contemporary circus show from Quebec, and the Australian company Casus, who did the fab Knee Deep, are back with a new piece, Driftwood. Plastic Boom are a new circus company and proteges of the brilliant Gandini Juggling so there should be no dropped balls in Water on Mars. If you like cabaret, then the Marie Antoinette-inspired Torte e Mort sounds like a winner; the same goes for Lady Rizo: Multiplied. Also under the cabaret section comes Peter and Bambi Heaven: The Magic Inside which has tickled the fancy of Australian audiences in a big way. Clean Break offer a double bill of new voices with House and Amongst the Reeds. The headphones show Last Dream (on Earth) comes with rave reviews and is part of the Made in Scotland Showcase – always a good sign – as is Cora Bissett and David Greig’s Glasgow Girls. A Streetcar Named Desire is staged by the Tumanishvili Film Actors Theatre, who have delivered in the past.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2016/jun/08/edinburgh-festival-2016-what-to-see-and-where-to-go

INGO SWANN’S ART AT LA MAMA · Jun 24th

  

(Scott Stiffler’s article appeared in Chelsea Now, 6/22.)

A prolific visionary held in high regard by peers from the realms of art, psychic phenomena, gay erotica, and Cold War counterprogramming, the multiplicity of paths blazed by Ingo Swann (1933-2013) are remarkable not simply because they are the achievements of a man ahead of his time, but also because he did not regard his abilities as exceptional gifts. We are all capable of tapping the cosmic consciousness, Swann insisted, if properly motivated to learn how.

For Swann, that spark of desire was ignited in a Lower East Side apartment, when a recently acquired pet chinchilla became evasive before each night’s return trip to its cage. If this furry little creature could sense the plan well in advance of the action, then why, Swann wondered, did that same ability elude him?

Within a few years, by the early ’70s, the self-taught artist had secured his legacy as a founding father of “remote viewing” — a phrase he coined to describe the practice of being given coordinates distant from one’s physical body, then describing the location in seven stages of progressively greater detail. Honed while at the Stanford Research Institute, Swann’s abilities and developmental techniques led to his employment at various clandestine agencies, where he became a valued member of the US government’s remote viewing program.

http://chelseanow.com/2016/06/ingo-swann-an-outsider-with-a-remote-view-of-all-things/