Monthly Archives: August 2018

WILLIAM SAROYAN 110 · Aug 31st

(from Armenia, 8/31/18.)

“Although I write in English, and despite the fact that I’m from America, I consider myself an Armenian writer. The words I use are in English, the surroundings I write about are American, but the soul, which makes me write, is Armenian. This means I am an Armenian writer and deeply love the honor of being a part of the family of Armenian wrtiters.”

August 31 marks the 110th birthday anniversary of Pulitzer Prize and Oscar-winning Armenian-American writer William Saroyan.

The writer’s anniversary will see the inauguration of his house museum in Fresno. The grand opening event will be open to the public and held on the campus of California State University of Fresno.  A documentary, musical performances of songs written by Saroyan, a recitation of his writings, and remarks by the founder and board members of the foundation will be part of the event.  Two of the songs will be a debut performance, having never been played for the public.

William Saroyan was born on August 31, 1908 in Fresno, California to Armenak and Takoohi Saroyan, Armenian immigrants from Bitlis, Ottoman Empire. His father came to New York in 1905 and started preaching in Armenian Apostolic Churches.

At the age of three, after his father’s death, Saroyan, along with his brother and sister, was placed in an orphanage in Oakland, California. Five years later, the family reunited in Fresno.

Saroyan decided to become a writer after his mother showed him some of his father’s writings. A few of his early short articles were published in Overland Monthly. His first stories appeared in the 1930s.

Among these was “The Broken Wheel”, written under the name Sirak Goryan and published in the Armenian journal Hairenik in 1933. Many of Saroyan’s stories were based on his childhood experiences among the Armenian-American fruit growers of the San Joaquin Valley or dealt with the rootlessness of the immigrant. The short story collection My Name is Aram (1940), an international bestseller, was about a young boy and the colorful characters of his immigrant family. It has been translated into many languages.

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Photo: Williamsaroyanfoundation.org

VERDI REQUIEM AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL: PROM 64, 2018 · Aug 30th

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Listen  

Live at BBC Proms: Verdi’s Requiem with the London Philharmonic Choir & Orchestra with conductor Orozco-Estrada and Lise Davidsen, Sarah Connolly, Dmytro Popov & Tomasz Konieczny Live from the Royal Albert Hall, London Presented by Georgia Mann Verdi: Requiem Lise Davidsen, soprano Sarah Connolly, mezzo-soprano Dmytro Popov, tenor Tomasz Konieczny, bass London Philharmonic Choir London Philharmonic Orchestra Andrés Orozco‐Estrada, conductor Rising conductor Andrés Orozco-Estrada continues this season’s sequence of Requiems with Verdi’s mighty concert-hall setting – an ‘opera in church vestments’. Embracing the full gamut of human emotion, from the most tender and fragile of hopes to the visceral terror of the Day of Judgement, it’s a work that transforms private grief into an astonishing public statement. An international team of soloists includes the exciting young Norwegian soprano Lise Davidsen and renowned mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly.

***** ‘PERICLES’ AT THE NATIONAL THEATRE (SV PICK, UK) · Aug 30th

(Miriam Gillinson’s article appeared in the Guardian, 8/30.)

Has the National Theatre ever felt as open, compassionate and heartfelt as this? Pericles can be one of Shakespeare’s more difficult plays, notoriously uneven and elusive, but this musical adaptation is a joy. It is the first production in the National Theatre’s Public Acts scheme, and boasts a community chorus of about 200 amateur actors, dancers and musicians. But what might have been a total mess turns out to be mesmerising: a giddy celebration of humanity and our endless capacity for warmth, togetherness and love.

The huge ensemble cast floods Fly Davis’s elegantly sweeping set with performers of all ages, abilities and ethnicities. Emily Lim has corralled the chorus brilliantly but she hasn’t polished the life out of them. Nervous smiles flash towards the audience and Shakespeare’s play feels so much more authentic and touching for it.

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Photo: Playbill

ABI MORGAN:  ‘LOVESONG’ (SV PICK, AUSTRALIA) · Aug 29th

(Cameron Woodhead’s article appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, 8/27.)  

THEATRE
LOVESONG ★★★★

Abi Morgan, Red Stitch Actors Theatre, until September 23

Abi Morgan’s Lovesong is a tear-jerker. A poignant but clear-eyed portrayal of a married couple in the prime of life (and at the end of it), the play swims like the memory of a dream between them.

The four-hander follows Maggie (Jillian Murray) and Billy (Paul English), an elderly childless couple staring down the barrel of Maggie’s terminal illness. Her decision to die looms over the intimate rhythms of their daily life, prompting remembrances of things past.

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Photo:  Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre

 

VIVIAN MATALON, TONY-WINNING DIRECTOR, IS DEAD AT 88 · Aug 28th

(Neil Genzlinger’s article appeared in The New York Times, 8/21.)

Vivian Matalon, who after directing Noël Coward in London in his final stage appearance became a regular on Broadway, where his biggest success was a Tony Award-winning revival of “Morning’s at Seven” in 1980, died on Aug. 15 at his home in Glenford, N.Y. He was 88.

His spouse, the playwright and actor Stephen Temperley, said the cause was complications of diabetes.

Mr. Matalon’s directing career was defined by versatility. He was as comfortable with dramas like William Inge’s “Bus Stop,” which he directed in 1970 in London with a cast that included Keir Dullea and Lee Remick, as he was with a musical like “The Tap Dance Kid,” whose 1983 Broadway production earned him a nomination for best direction of a musical.

Though he worked with many stars over the years, he had special memories of directing Coward late in his career, by which time Coward was a legend as both a writer and a performer. The production, staged at the Queen’s Theater in London in 1966, was “Suite in Three Keys,” a trilogy of Coward plays set in the same hotel room. Coward starred in all three.

“I can state categorically that he was the easiest, least defensive writer I ever worked with,” Mr. Matalon wrote in The New York Times in a reminiscence in 1974, a year after Coward’s death. “He was jealous of nothing in his writing.”

But then there was Coward the actor.

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Photo: WRAL TV

MARIA IRENE FORNES AT MOMA: MICHELLE MEMRAN’S ‘THE REST I MAKE UP’ · Aug 27th

(via Robin Goldfin)

MICHELLE MEMRAN’S ‘THE REST I MAKE UP’

Through August 29

The Museum of Modern Art

 https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/4994?locale=en

Visit: TherestImakeup.com

Maria Irene Fornes is one of America’s greatest playwrights and most influential teachers, but many only know her as the ex-lover of writer and social critic Susan Sontag. The visionary Cuban-American dramatist constructed astonishing worlds onstage and taught countless students how to connect with their imaginations. When she gradually stops writing due to dementia, an unexpected friendship with filmmaker Michelle Memran reignites her spontaneous creative spirit and triggers a decade-long collaboration that picks up where the pen left off.

The duo travels from New York to Havana, Miami to Seattle, exploring the playwright’s remembered past and their shared present. Theater luminaries such as Edward Albee, Ellen Stewart, Lanford Wilson, and others weigh in on Fornes’s important contributions. What began as an accidental collaboration becomes a story of love, creativity, and connection that persists even in the face of forgetting.

Organized by Rajendra Roy, The Celeste Bartos Chief Curator of Film.

Photo: TherestImakeup.com

NEIL SIMON, A MASTER OF COMEDY ON BROADWAY AND BEYOND, IS DEAD AT 91 · Aug 26th

(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 8/26.)

Neil Simon, the playwright whose name was synonymous with Broadway comedy and commercial success in the theater for decades, and who helped redefine popular American humor with an emphasis on the frictions of urban living and the agonizing conflicts of family intimacy, died on Sunday in Manhattan. He was 91.

His death was announced by his publicist, Bill Evans.

Early in his career, Mr. Simon wrote for television greats, including Phil Silvers and Sid Caesar. Later he wrote for the movies, too. But it was as a playwright that he earned his lasting fame, with a long series of expertly tooled laugh machines that kept his name on Broadway marquees virtually nonstop throughout the late 1960s and ’70s.

Beginning with the breakthrough hits “Barefoot in the Park” (1963) and “The Odd Couple” (1965) and continuing with popular successes like “Plaza Suite” (1968), “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” (1971) and “The Sunshine Boys” (1974), Mr. Simon ruled Broadway when Broadway was still worth ruling.

From 1965 to 1980, plays and musicals written by Mr. Simon racked up more than 9,000 performances, a record not even remotely touched by any other playwright of the era. In 1966 alone, he had four Broadway shows running simultaneously.

He also owned a Broadway theater for a spell in the 1960s, the Eugene O’Neill, and in 1983 had a different Broadway theater named after him, a rare accolade for a living playwright.

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Photo: Daily News

LEONARD BERNSTEIN’S NEW YORK (BERNSTEIN AT 100) · Aug 25th

Listen on BBC RADIO 3

Tom Service travels to New York City to discover if Bernstein’s musical and social legacy continues to echo through the streets of the Big Apple and the lives of New Yorkers. Visiting key places where Bernstein lived and worked, Tom meets the musicians, institutions and ensembles of today who are working towards goals Bernstein championed as a musician, communicator and humanitarian. Tom visits Jamie Bernstein at the flat where the Bernstein family archives resides, while at the archives of the New York Philharmonic, Tom finds a musical score which reveals a fascinating self-insight by the maestro himself, and with the orchestra’s archivist Barbara Haws remembers her time working with Bernstein, how he changed orchestral relations, and how his conducting traditions are still in place today. Historian Julia Foulkes explains how resonances of West Side Story are found in the hit Broadway musicals of the 21st century, and with Deborah Borda, CEO of the New York Philharmonic and conductors Michael Tilson Thomas and Joshua Weilerstein, Tom discovers initiatives aimed at bringing the joy of classical music to new audiences today, as Bernstein did. Tom visits National Sawdust in Brooklyn, which carries on Bernstein’s ideas on social and musical collaboration, and Humphrey Burton, Bernstein biographer, offers his views on where Bernstein’s legacy can be found today.

Photo: Chicago Classical Review

BOOK: ‘PERFORMING HAMLET: ACTORS IN THE MODERN AGE’ BY JONATHAN CROALL · Aug 24th

(Stanley Wells’s article appeared in the Spectator, 8/23.)

Glenda Jackson might have made a magnificent Hamlet

The role of Hamlet is, Max Beerbohm famously wrote, ‘a hoop through which every eminent actor must, sooner or later, jump’. In this book, and in its online supplement, Jonathan Croall charts the flight through that hoop of pretty well all of the ‘eminent actors’ — male and female, young and not so young, white and black — who have taken the leap in British performances, from Michael Redgrave with the Old Vic company in 1950 to Andrew Scott at the Almeida in 2017.

The trajectory of the actor’s flight is of course different in every production. No play text is complete until it is performed, and every time it is performed it takes on a new identity, determined by factors such as the personalities of the actors, the place of performance, the interpretative ideas of the director, and even the weather — in a brief account of Hamlets at Elsinore, Croall records John Gielgud’s description of a performance there as resembling ‘extracts from the Lyceum production with wind and rain accompaniments’.

Moreover, even on the page Hamlet is the most fluid of texts. It’s come down to us in three versions: one corrupt (the ‘bad quarto’ of 1603) ; another printed as Shakespeare first completed it (the ‘good quarto’ of 1604–5); and a third with changes, omissions and additions made for performance, some of them of a topical and local nature (the First Folio text of 1623). If you try, as the 18th-century actor David Garrick put it, to ‘lose no drop of that immortal man’, you end up with a text of over 4,000 lines — the ‘eternity version’, as it has come to be known — rivalling in performance length the longest of Wagner’s operas. Most directors, like most editors, draw variously on the good quarto and the Folio.

View Performing Hamlet on Amazon

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Photo: Medium

***** ‘KING LEAR’ WITH IAN MCKELLEN (SV PICK, UK) · Aug 24th

(Tim Walker’s article appeared in The New European, 8/14; via Pam Green.)

King Lear

 

Duke of York’s, London, until Nov 3

***** (Five stars)

Two kings, neither in full possession of their faculties, are currently holding dominion in the West End, and across the Thames, at the National Theatre. One is sublime, and the other is, quite frankly, a ridiculous pretender.

Let us pay court first to Sir Ian McKellen’s King Lear. The actor has played the title role in Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy several times before. I saw him in Sir Trevor Nunn’s much-hyped production of 2007, when he offered a performance of dazzling technical accomplishment. I have to say that it left me stone cold.

By contrast, his latest reprisal of the role – which he has hinted may well be his swan-song on stage – has moved me almost to the point of tears. I reacted differently for two reasons. It is, firstly, difficult now not to feel the contemporary resonance of the story of a leader who, by dint of one vain and ill-considered decision, renders asunder his kingdom and then comes to bitterly regret it. The king even stands before a Union flag in the opening scene as he rips up a map of his kingdom and hands out the pieces to his oleaginous but calculating daughters Goneril (Claire Price) and Regan (Kirsty Bushell).

Secondly, Sir Ian – nudging 80 – has grown into the part, both as a man and as an actor. He seems a lot less pre-occupied with the big, hammy gestures and vocal projection that have characterised so much of his stage work. He is finally feeling the role.

When he says “let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven,” you feel the man as much as the character speaking from the heart of his worst fear. A lot of it – and this is always the measure of great theatre – doesn’t feel like acting at all. It is as a consequence almost unbearably painful to watch.

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Photo:  Manuel Harlan