Monthly Archives: April 2018

ST LAZARE/BECKETT: ‘HERE ALL NIGHT’ (SV PICK, IE)  · Apr 27th

(Peter Crawley’s article appeared in The Irish Times, 4/17.)

“I’ll fix their gibberish for them,” says the speaker of Beckett’s Unnamable, in a defiant mood, even as his mind is slowly dissolving into nothing. “I never understood a word of it in any case…”

The reader of Beckett’s prose works will know something of the feeling, alternately enthused, amused, bewildered and worn into submission by the onslaught of absurdist verbiage. Here All Night, Gare St Lazare’s interdisciplinary bricolage of prose, music, installation art and performance, decides instead that the words are neither gibberish nor fixed; finding in their collaboration the permission to jam.

To some extent you can read the results – fractured and spliced, ascetic and experimental – as Modernism: The Opera. The centrepiece on a bare dark stage is a sculptural installation by the artist Brian O’Doherty, in which a petrified body is suspended, supine, mid air, like someone laid to rest in a display case. That this artwork has been shucked from its original context is more methodology than sin: the production is all about reappropriation.

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LERNER AND LOEWE: ‘MY FAIR LADY’ AT LINCOLN CENTER (SV PICK, NY)  · Apr 24th

(Jesse Green’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/19; via Pam Green.)

Poor Eliza. It’s not enough that her own father sells her for five pounds to the bully phonetician Henry Higgins. Or that Higgins strips her of her ragged clothes and Cockney accent so she can become a refined if useless lady.

No, the former flower girl is also a failure of feminism, if recent criticism is to be believed.

Don’t believe it.

The plush and thrilling Lincoln Center Theater revival of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” that opened on Thursday at the Vivian Beaumont Theater reveals Eliza Doolittle as a hero instead of a puppet — and reveals the musical, despite its provenance and male authorship, as an ur-text of the #MeToo moment. Indeed, that moment has made “My Fair Lady,” which had its Broadway premiere in 1956, better than it ever was.

It was always good, of course, one of the gleaming artifacts and loveliest scores of the Golden Age of American musical theater — a canon now being contested, with cause, for its unenlightened sexual politics.

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Photo: The New York Times

‘BE MORE CHILL’: HOW AN ANXIOUS-ADOLESCENT MUSICAL FOUND ITS FANS · Apr 22nd

(Elisabeth Vincentelli’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/13; via Pam Green.)

Before “Be More Chill” even starts previews at the Pershing Square Signature Center on July 26, it will already be one of the most popular new musicals in America, with a passionate fan base that dwarfs the number of people who have ever seen the show.

All this after a barely noticed monthlong run in New Jersey three years ago. And a little cast album that could.

When the show’s songwriter, Joe Iconis, and co-star, George Salazar, did a joint cabaret evening at Feinstein’s/54 Below this month, audience members flew in from Paris, Berlin and London. A dad got behind the wheel to ferry his daughter from Michigan. A pair of friends drove from Florida.

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SIR BEN KINGSLEY, EARLE HYMAN, LIEV SCHREIBER, JAMES EARL JONES, STACY KEACH, ESTELLE PARSONS, AND OTHERS TALK ABOUT SHAKESPEARE · Apr 21st

(from the Folger Shakespeare Library; via Pam Green.)

How Shakespeare Changed My Life

Shakespeare Unlimited: Episode 95

Hear Sir Ben Kingsley, Earle Hyman, Liev Schreiber, James Earl Jones, Stacy Keach, Estelle Parsons, and others open up about their experiences with Shakespeare’s plays. Actor/director Melinda Hall interviewed these actors (and others), as well as writers, directors, linguists, and even a Holocaust survivor for her web-video series How Shakespeare Changed My Life. On this podcast episode, Melinda talks about the origin of the series, what she’s learned from it, and where it’s headed. She is interviewed by Barbara Bogaev.

IBSEN: ‘THE WILD DUCK’ TRANSLATED AND ADAPTED BY CHRISTOPHER HAMPTON · Apr 20th

Listen

David Threlfall, Samuel West and James Fox star in Henrik Ibsen’s masterpiece – as strong on comedy as profound, tragic drama. A family creates an imaginary forest in their loft room for a wounded wild duck.But will someone come to shatter their dreams?

Translated and adapted by Christopher Hampton

Hjalmar ….. David Threlfall
Gregers ….. Samuel West
Werle ….. James Fox
Gina ….. Lise-Ann McLaughlin
Hedvig ….. Lauren Cornelius
Ekdal ….. Clive Hayward
Relling ….. Michael Bertenshaw
Mrs Sørby ….. Georgie Glen

Solo flute played by Martin Feinstein

Director: Peter Kavanagh.

AT FIRST PERFORMANCE OF ‘MY FAIR LADY,’ THE DRAMA WAS OFFSTAGE · Apr 18th

 

 

(Charles Rizzo’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/13; via Pam Greedn.)

NEW HAVEN — The snow was coming down. The turntables didn’t turn. The star refused to perform. The cast was dismissed, thinking that that night’s show would not go on.

Yet “My Fair Lady” opened improbably, triumphantly, to its first paying audience on that Saturday, Feb. 4, 1956, at the Shubert Theater here, making the night the stuff of theater legend.

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“COST OF LIVING” BY MARTYNA MAJOK WINS 2018 PULITZER PRIZE FOR DRAMA · Apr 18th

(from the Washington Post, 4/16.)

The complete list of 2018 Pulitzer Prize winners.

JOURNALISM

Public service

The New York Times and the New Yorker

Breaking news reporting

Staff of the Santa Rosa (Calif.) Press-Democrat

Investigative reporting

Staff of The Washington Post

Explanatory reporting

Staffs of the Arizona Republic and USA Today Network

Local reporting

Staff of the Cincinnati Enquirer

National reporting

Staffs of the New York Times and The Washington Post

[The Washington Post wins 2 Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on Russian interference and the Senate race in Alabama]

International reporting

Clare Baldwin, Andrew R.C. Marshall and Manuel Mogato of Reuters

Feature writing

Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, freelance reporter for GQ

Commentary

John Archibald of Alabama Media Group (Birmingham, Ala.)

Criticism

Jerry Saltz of New York magazine

Editorial writing

Andie Dominick of the Des Moines Register

Editorial cartooning

Jake Halpern, freelance writer, and Michael Sloan, freelance cartoonist, for the New York Times

Breaking news photography

Ryan Kelly of the Charlottesville Daily Progress

Feature photography

Photography staff of Reuters

BOOKS, DRAMA AND MUSIC

Fiction

“Less,” by Andrew Sean Greer

Drama

“Cost of Living,” by Martyna Majok

History

“The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,” by Jack E. Davis

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KRISTEN SCOTT THOMAS AND THE LONDON PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA AND CHOIR PERFORM ‘PERSEPHONE’ BY STRAVINSKY · Apr 13th

Listen

Persephone begins at:  1:13:37

Composer Thomas Adès is fast becoming known as a conductor to be reckoned with, not only in his own music but also in a wide range of repertoire. This not-to-be missed concert begins with the suite from Powder her Face, the darkly comic opera which in 1995 helped established Adès as one of the UK’s leading composers.

‘I’ve never had any luck with sacristans,’ says Gerald Barry, whose youthful organ playing antagonised congregations and clergy alike. Barry’s new concerto, played by virtuoso Thomas Trotter on the spectacular instrument of the Royal Festival Hall, partly draws on memories of his Irish childhood. But don’t expect at pastoral idyll. Barry was also inspired by a picture of a cat to put the ‘fight for atonality against tonality into the concerto’ which ends with organ and orchestra (including 21 metronomes) joining in the hymn, Humiliated and Insulted.

The concert finishes with a rare performance of Perséphone, Strarvinsky‘s restrained and austere 1930s retelling of the Greek myth of Persephone whose descent to the Underworld to become the wife of Pluto plunges the world into winter and whose return to the living brings spring. Dame Kristin Scott Thomas narrates.

Martin Handley presents, live from the Royal Festival Hall.

Thomas Adès: Powder her Face Suite
Gerald Barry: Organ Concerto (London premiere)
Stravinsky: Perséphone

Thomas Trotter (organ)
Dame Kristin Scott Thomas (narrator)
Toby Spence (tenor)
Trinity Boys Choir
London Philharmonic Choir
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Thomas Adès (conductor).

OLIVIER AWARD WINNERS, 2018 (FULL LIST) · Apr 10th

(Rose Hill’s, Jill Robinson’s and Helen Thomas’s article appeared in the Sun, 4/9.)

Who were the nominees and winners at the Olivier Awards 

2018?

Hamilton swept the board, winning awards in several categories…

  • BEST ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
    • Michael Jibson for Hamilton at Victoria Palace Theatre – WINNER
    • Ross Noble for Young Frankenstein at Garrick Theatre
    • Jason Pennycooke for Hamilton at Victoria Palace Theatre
    • Cleve September for Hamilton at Victoria Palace Theatre
  • BEST ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE IN A MUSICAL
    • Sheila Atim for Girl From The North Country at The Old Vic – WINNER
    • Tracie Bennett for Follies at National Theatre – Olivier
    • Rachel John for Hamilton at Victoria Palace Theatre
    • Lesley Joseph for Young Frankenstein at Garrick Theatre
  • OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN MUSIC
    • Everybody’s Talking About Jamie – Music and Orchestrations by Dan Gillespie Sells, his debut as a musical theatre composer and orchestrator at Apollo Theatre
    • Follies – The Orchestra, under the Music Supervision of Nicholas Skilbeck and Music Director Nigel Lilley at National Theatre – Olivier
    • Girl From The North Country – Music & Lyrics by Bob Dylan, Original Orchestrations & Arrangements by Simon Hale at The Old Vic
    • Hamilton – Composer-lyricist Lin-Manuel Miranda at Victoria Palace Theatre – WINNER

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Photo: Secret London

‘THE LUCKY ONES’: A CHILDHOOD EDEN SEARED BY VIOLENCE. SET TO MUSIC? · Apr 8th

(Laura Collins-Hughes’s article appeared in The New York Time, 4/6; via Pam Green.)

There’s a line near the start of the new musical “The Lucky Ones” that’s a deliberate hedge — an explanation of the rules of the show that also leaves those rules a little murky.

“This is a true story,” Shaun Bengson tells the audience from the stage of the Connelly Theater in the East Village. “Even the parts that never happened.”

And with those words, Mr. Bengson and his wife, Abigail — the other half of the folk-rock duo the Bengsons, the indie-theater darlings who created the show for Ars Nova — attempt to draw a cloak of privacy around themselves and the people they love.

Ms. Bengson, 35, has a tale to tell about the autumn she was 15, when her family shattered and the seemingly safe Eden she grew up in was lost forever. Yet she is terrified of compounding anyone’s anguish.

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