Monthly Archives: December 2016

HEDY WEISS: BEST CHICAGO THEATRE, 2016 · Dec 30th

(Weiss’s article appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, 12/21.)

Queen Elizabeth II pronounced the year 1992 “annus horribilis,” the Latin term for “horrible year,” and while on many fronts that phrase could easily be applied to 2016, the Chicago theater scene defied the global norm. This was a powerhouse season — ranging from that great “elephant in the room” (the smashing Chicago edition of “Hamilton,” the first post-Broadway company of Lin Manuel-Miranda’s mega-hit musical), to a vast, citywide celebration of the 400th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death, to a series of bravura one-person shows. I’d dub it an “annus mirabilis,” or “wonderful year.”

Here is my “top picks” list; it easily could have been twice as long:

“LEARNING CURVE” (Albany Park Theater Project): Staged on all three floors of a shuttered Chicago parochial school, this fully immersive work (created and performed by a cast of 33 youth artists, under the direction of APTP artists and Third Rail Projects of New York) led audiences of 40 people through a stunning sequence of scenes capturing the life of a richly diverse group of students as they navigated the classrooms, halls, library, locker room and hidden spaces of a Chicago high school. A wondrous, one-of-a-kind masterwork, the piece featured the unique alchemy of APTP’s extraordinarily skilled young performers, and evoked life in a Chicago high school in ways that were so real, yet so imaginative — so disturbing, and so life-confirming — that you wanted to grab hold of every politician and school bureaucrat and say: Experience this show, and then do something.”

‘ALADDIN’ REVIEW: A PANTO THAT PUTS PARENTS THROUGH THE WRINGER (SV PICK, IE) · Dec 30th

(Joyce Hickey’s article appeared in the Irish Times, 12/20.)

Tivoli Theatre, Dublin

****

Amid a blaze of jewel-coloured costumes, a burst of dancing whirls and a blast of Jai Ho, Aladdin appears – “I’m just Aladdin, like Madonna, Britney or Moses,” Donal Brennan clarifies – and is soon joined by his principal people: unattainable, sweet-voiced Princess Jasmine (Nadia Forde); loyal, acerbic Sammy Sausages (Alan Hughes); and Buffy Twanky (Rob Murphy), queen of dames, with a big welcome for the boys and girls, the mammies and “especially the daddieeez”, and a big promotion for her laundry, Buffy’s Posh Wonder Wash. “What’s your favourite powder?” she asks an unfortunate daddy, Vinny, before shaming his filthy trousers. “Oh, I’d say you’d like Bold, all right,” she bellows, at which point she has the packed, intimate Tivoli in the palm of her rubber glove.

DEBBIE REYNOLDS, REST IN PEACE (1932-2016) · Dec 30th

Cover of Unsinkable

(Anita Gates’s article appeared in The New York Times, 12/28; via Pam Green.)

Debbie Reynolds, the wholesome ingénue in 1950s films like “Singin’ in the Rain” and “Tammy and the Bachelor,” died on Wednesday, a day after the death of her daughter, the actress Carrie Fisher. She was 84.

Her death, following a stroke, was confirmed by her son, Todd Fisher, according to her agent, Tom Markley of the Metropolitan Talent Agency. Ms. Reynolds was taken to a Los Angeles hospital on Wednesday afternoon.

According to the celebrity news site TMZ, she had been discussing funeral plans for Ms. Fisher, who died on Tuesday after having a heart attack during a flight to Los Angeles last Friday.

Photo: Northwest Public Radio

THAT BROADWAY BABY, NOW IN ‘IN TRANSIT’ · Dec 28th

(Joanne Kaufman’s article appeared in The New York Times, 12/28; via Pam Green.)

When Margo Seibert joined the cast of the Broadway show “In Transit” this fall and learned that the script called for an infant, she knew who’d be perfect for the part: the theater veteran Twan Baker.

He made his debut in a 2009 production of “Into the Woods,” as the newborn offspring of the Baker and the Baker’s Wife at the Pittsburgh Civic Light Opera. Since then, Twan — an 18-inch-long, 10-pound (just a guess) blue-eyed doll with an alert expression — has appeared in five Broadway shows, including “Cinderella,” “The Bridges of Madison County” and “Honeymoon in Vegas.” James Earl Jones cuddled him this summer in “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” in an “Encores!” Off-Center production.

And yes, that was Twan as Marie (he’s clearly versatile), the love child of George and Dot in the recent Encores! rendition of “Sunday in the Park With George.” (Word is he’ll be auditioning to join the human stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Annaleigh Ashford when the show moves to Broadway in the spring.)

JEAN GENET: ‘THE MAIDS’, DIRECTED BY KATIE MITCHELL (SV PICK, AMSTERDAM) · Dec 27th

(Matt Trueman’s article appeared in the Guardian, 12/20.)

Jean Genet’s maids were real. In 1933, the Papin sisters, Christine and Léa, murdered their mistress and her daughter, maiming their bodies and gouging out their eyes, before being found naked in bed together. The French dramatist turned their act into a theatrical ritual; a stark and shocking cycle of fetishistic role-play with its own absurd logic. Making her full Toneelgroep debut after last year’s Brandstichter retrospective (an accolade that translates as “arsonist”, given to an artist who might put some fire into Dutch theatre), British director Katie Mitchell restores their reality. It is as radical a gesture as any.

Claire and Solange are usually abstract, symbolic figures. Earlier this year, Jamie Lloyd put them in identical pinafores in a roomful of rose petals. Mitchell sews them into our world: two middle-aged women in tabards and marigolds shuffling around the sort of luxurious, lily-white bedroom you might find off Sloane Square. One rifles through the owner’s vast walk-in wardrobe, dowdy among its dazzling gowns, while the other, coughing blood at the dressing table, pulls on her bodyshapers, falsies and glossy blond wig.

NEW YORK TODAY: BACKSTAGE AT ‘THE NUTCRACKER’ · Dec 27th

(Alexandra S. Levine’s article appeared in The New York Times, 12/21; via Pam Green.)

Harrison Coll is only 22. But on the day I met him, he became six decades older.

It was a Sunday morning, and he was getting into costume for the New York City Ballet’s production of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker.” Mr. Coll, in his 12th year with the show, is dancing this year as Herr Drosselmeier, the mysterious entertainer who makes the nutcracker dolls.

I joined him backstage at a matinee to see what it’s like between call-time and the moment the curtain rises.

CARRIE FISHER, CHILD OF HOLLYWOOD WHO BLAZED A PATH AS ‘STAR WARS’ HEROINE, SCREENWRITER AND AUTHOR, DIES AT 60 · Dec 27th

(Josh Rottenberg’s article appeared in the Los Angeles Times, 12/27.)

Actress and writer Carrie Fisher, who rose to global fame as the trail-blazing intergalactic heroine Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise and later went on to establish herself as an author and screenwriter with an acerbic comic flair, has died.

Fisher suffered a cardiac incident on Friday during a flight to Los Angeles from London, where she had been filming the third season of the Amazon comedy series “Catastrophe.” Upon landing, she was quickly rushed to UCLA Medical Center, but after three days in intensive care, she died, a family publicist confirmed. She was 60 years old.

From the moment she first stepped onto the screen in 1977’s “Star Wars,” the character of Leia Organa — whip-smart, wryly funny and fearless enough to stand up to the likes of Darth Vader without batting an eye, with an instantly iconic set of buns on either side of her head — inspired generations of young girls to be bold and inspired crushes in generations of young boys.

Photo: Entertainment Weekly

‘CAMELOT’ IN CONCERT · Dec 26th

(via Pam Green)

GLENDA JACKSON AND THE MAKING OF KING LEAR · Dec 26th

Listen at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b085t2wd

A fascinating and insightful documentary as we explore Glenda Jackson’s epic return to the stage for the first time in 23 years. Double Oscar-winner and former politician Glenda Jackson makes a dramatic return to the theatre to play Shakespeare’s tragic King Lear. The role of Lear is considered one of the crowning roles in any actor’s career. It’s particularly challenging if you’re a woman! With contributions from the company including Jane Horrocks, Rhys Ifans, Celia Imrie, Morfydd Clarke, director Deborah Warner and The Old Vic’s artistic director, Matthew Warchus.

Produced by Pauline Harris.

BOOK: ZADIE SMITH’S ‘SWING TIME’ · Dec 20th

(Claire Messud’s article article appeared in the New York Review of Books, 12/8.)

Swing Time by Zadie Smith

Penguin, 453 pp., $27.00

“I feel dance has something to tell me about what I do,” Zadie Smith wrote in a recent article in The Guardian. She cites the dancer Martha Graham’s advice as useful for her writerly self:

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique…. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Her new novel, Swing Time, is both about dancers and, on some level, a dance itself, syncopated, unexpected, and vital. There is a moment late in the novel when the narrator (mysteriously unnamed, for well over four hundred pages) joins in a dance with a group of village women in Gambia:

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