(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Time, 3/28; via Pam Green.)
In the beginning, there is nothing. And in the end, there is — nothing, once again.
Such is the way of all flesh, no? And, since the subject here is the accumulation of money, let’s say the way of all cash, too. But in this case, out of nothing there emerges such a heaving ferment of aspiration, energy, tenacity and audacity that you’re left reeling by the scope and vitality of it all.
That, in essence, is what the magnificent play “The Lehman Trilogy,” at the Park Avenue Armory, both is about and, more important, simply is. This genuinely epic production out of London, directed with surging sweep and fine-tooled precision by Sam Mendes, charts the history of the financial institution that would come to be known as Lehman Brothers, from its humble origins to its epical implosion, over a span of three centuries and many generations.
The script by the Italian playwright Stefano Massini, exquisitely adapted into English by Ben Power, follows the blossoming of a small Alabama clothing store in the 1840s, founded by three immigrant Jewish brothers from Bavaria, into an international powerhouse of the stock exchange, before its world-rattling collapse in 2008.
(Alexis Soloski’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/20; via Pam Green.)
The actor Santino Fontana had his legs waxed for the first time last year. His chest, too. He mastered, mostly, how to walk in heels and riddled out which lipsticks flatter him. (He’s an autumn. Clearly.) Last spring, during a turn in “Hello, Dolly!” he brought Bernadette Peterspictures of himself in a variety of women’s wigs. “Pretty girl” she scrawled next to some of them. Beside others: “Not so pretty girl.”
“Like what even is a feminine side?” Mr. Fontana said recently, at a theater district bistro, as he pushed a pile of pear salad around his plate.
A Broadway veteran, Mr. Fontana, who turns 37 on March 21, is originating his first true male musical lead in “Tootsie,” which starts previews at the Marquis Theater on March 29. If you squint, it’s his first female lead, too. “He has created two very different characters who live in the same body,” Robert Horn, the show’s book writer said.
(Dave Itzkoff’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/25.)
There are those perennial stage works that are perfectly suited to be performed in high schools across the country every year: say, “Our Town,” “The Crucible,” “Annie” or “The Wizard of Oz.”
A New Jersey high school has found itself the unexpected recipient of online acclaim and viral attention for its recent stage production of “Alien,” the 1979 science-fiction thriller.
“Alien: The Play,” presented last weekend by the drama club of North Bergen High School, starred a cast of eight students in the film roles originally played by Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt and Ian Holm.
Whereas the movie had a budget in the range of about $10 million, “Alien: The Play” had costumes, props and set designs made mostly from donated and recycled materials.
Sean O’Casey’s Juno and the Paycock is a hard and beautiful play, and Neil Pepe’s staging, at Irish Rep, is lovely, as one of its characters, Joxer (a Faginlike wingman, played by John Keating) might say. The production is a soft interpretation, though, right for an American moment, where long-term unemployment is accompanied by cell phones, flat screen TVs, and food stamps—not a fierce enough reflection on the devastation with which the playwright (O’Casey lived from 1880 to 1964) ruins his characters.
The clashing colors and pristine, hanging laundry of Charlie Corcoran’s tenement setting, for the tragi-comedy, are reminders of gauche social class, but they don’t go far enough to artistically render the economic collapse of the Irish at the beginning of the twentieth century. Maybe producers and designers, who would never allow urine fumes to waft through the audience, as did a recent French production of IonescoSuite at BAM, believe it’s too disturbing to present much beyond the bad taste of an underclass; but, nevertheless, the creators are manipulating history mendaciously. A 1989 Juno and the Paycock, from the Gate Theatre, in Ireland, took a much harsher tack. Frank Rich described the set in the following, and the audience could see why the characters would borrow to claw their way out: “The tenement in O’Casey’s play belongs to the Boyle family of Dublin, during the Civil War days of 1922. The home’s crumbling walls are caked with slime, as if sewage had been flushed through the living room. The windowpanes, cracked and sooty, are framed by the cobweb remains of lace curtains, while the meager furniture has long since spilled its guts.”
Pepe dilutes or Americanizes his Juno and the Paycock (the drama is being performed as part of its important Sean O’Casey Season, which runs until May 25) by treating the work as if it is a middle-class play, as opposed to a working-class one, or more directly, as one about abject poverty. As ‘Captain’ Jack, the “paycock,” the loafer, the idler on the dole, Ciaran O’Reilly, with hand in his vest pocket, leaning back on his heels, appears too stolid in the role, perhaps, out of Ibsen; he’s not a bluffer or con or strutter, from which he gets his nickname. The Paycock actually seems akin to Alfred P. Doolittle in Pygmalion–O’Casey and Shaw became friends—who is horrified at having been roped into joining the bourgeoisie. Juno (Maryann Plunkett) is a character who doesn’t make sense in the context of today’s society—if she was ever anything other than an ideal. Feminism has made it clear that women are not saints or martyrs—she and her daughter (Sarah Street) can not even be said to be representative personae of Ireland anymore, after divorce and pro-choice legalization. These are strong characters (and characterizations) to be booed in the public square.
Fine work also comes from the Boyle’s severely injured son (Ed Malone)–Juno and the Paycock is a war play, written by a top-tier playwright, both facts often overshadowed. The suitors of Mrs. Boyle’s daughter create clear, tiny portraits of cowardice (James Russell and Harry Smith) and Terry Donnelly works to give a glimpse of art as it emerges from the school of hard knocks. Perhaps one of the finest roles in the play is that of a woman who loses her son to the revolutionary movement. Hers carries an aching monologue, here performed, unsentimentalized, out of earth and sorrow, by Una Clancy. Even in a production that normalizes despair, O’Casey’s keening shrouds the eyes in mist.
Citrus and sugar: What could be more precious than marmalade? Oranges and other citrus cultivars come from the mountainous parts of southern China and northeast India. They were prized for their beauty, scent, and medicinal properties in this region long before Europeans saw, smelled, or tasted an orange. As Clarissa Hyman writes in Oranges: A Global History, “In India, a medical treatise c. AD 100 was the first to mention the fruit by a term we recognize today. Naranga or narangi derives from the Sanskrit, originally meaning ‘perfumed from within’” (10).
The three original citrus cultivars were the citron (prized for its thick, fragrant peel), the pomelo, and sour oranges, called China or Seville oranges in early modern England. Easily hybridized, these three cultivars are the origin of all modern citrus varieties. Soldiers returning from the Crusades brought citrons and sour oranges home with them. In the early modern period, sweet oranges, sour oranges, lemons, citrons, and exotic varieties like bergamot and blood orange were widely cultivated in Southern Europe and by wealthy gardeners who build special hot houses, or orangeries, further north.
(Josh Gabbatiss’s article appeared in the Independent, 3/12.)
‘I got the idea that maybe acting was a bit similar to possession… when you’re acting you’re kind of being taken over by character,’ says scientist
To truly inhabit a role, actors must effectively turn off part of their brain, according to a new study based on brain scans of thespians.
In a series of experiments, actors were placed in MRI machines and asked to respond to questions as if they were Romeo or Juliet during the “balcony scene” from William Shakespeare’s play.
Scientists were surprised to see that as the participants mused on concepts ranging from romance to religion, their brains were truly taken over by those of the famous star-crossed lovers,
They watched as brain activity dropped off, with a notable deactivation in a part of the frontal lobe.
This result suggested the portrayal of a fictional character goes far deeper than simply learning a script.
(Alexandra Alter’s and Michael Paulson’s article appeared in The New York Times, 3/8; via Pam Green.)
The set for “To Kill a Mockingbird” at the Kavinoky Theater at D’Youville College in Buffalo being taken down last month after several theaters were forced to cancel their productions.CreditLibby March for The New York Times
“To Kill a Mockingbird” is proving to be an eventful legal drama. And not just in the theater.
Last month the producer Scott Rudin, seeking to protect the financial future of a new stage adaptation of the novel now running on Broadway, forced at least eight theaters around the country to cancelproductions of a 1970 stage version. Now the publisher of the earlier script says he will seek compensation and legal vindication.
“We feel horribly for those affected by the shameful bigfooting coming from Mr. Rudin,” Christopher Sergel III, president of Dramatic Publishing Company and the grandson of the author of the first adaptation, said.
Mr. Sergel said he would ask an arbitration tribunal to protect the ability of local theaters to stage his grandfather’s adaptation and to award damages of at least $500,000. He accused the estate of the “Mockingbird” author, Harper Lee, acting in concert with Mr. Rudin, of causing financial losses to Dramatic Publishing by making “false statements” to local theaters.
(Alexandra Guzeva’s article appeared in Russia Beyond the Headlines, 3 /4.)
People living in America and the UK will be able to watch Russia’s best-selling musical, Anna Karenina, staged by Moscow’s Operetta Theater. The performance will be shown throughout this month (in Russian with English subtitles).
The musical premiered in 2016 and its producer Alexei Bolonin spent much of the noughties staging licensed Western musicals on Russian soil including Metro, Notre Dame de Paris, and Romeo & Juliette.
“Tolstoy’s novel like no other is suited for a musical because it has all the necessary ingredients, most importantly, a love story,” Bolonin said.
Turning the famous Russian writer’s masterpiece into a musical was a little risky because addressing the book’s philosophical themes on stage is no easy task. However, it includes many direct quotes from the novel and all the important moments are reflected in the lyrics.
(Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s article appeared in The New York Times, 2/27; via Pam Green.)
At the relatively late age of 43 — though basically a toddler compared to much of a recent audience for the National Yiddish Theater Folksbiene production — I finally saw “Fiddler on the Roof.”
We all have our cultural blind spots. I’ve never seen an episode of “The Simpsons,” either, though I very much have always meant to. Some things just slip by. My failure to see “Fiddler” is only important in that it would be extremely on-brand for me to have seen “Fiddler” 35,000 times — to have “Fiddler” be the only show I’d ever seen. I grew up attending Jewish schools and in a home where my mother became Orthodox when I was 12, and where my mother’s full-time mission became to guide my sisters and me toward her enlightenment. This worked on my sisters. It still works for them.
New York: Urban Stages (Frances Hill, Founding Artistic Director), will close its 35th season with the World Premiere of Will Snider’s DEATH OF A DRIVER directed by Kim T. Sharp.
Urban Stages (259 West 30th Street)
Sarah is an American engineer. Kennedy is an East African taxi driver. They strike up a friendship and embark on a journey to change rural Kenya building new roads. But when a disputed local election lands Kennedy in jail and threatens the work, Sarah questions the integrity of their alliance and wonders how well she knows the man she thought was her friend. Death of a Driver is a bracing examination of “doing good” abroad, the limits of understanding another person, and what happens when personal and political obligations collide.
“We are thrilled to bring Death of a Driver to Urban Stages’ to help close our 35th season. It is a smart, well-written tale of people trying to help. It explores how good intentions may not always have the best results, especially on a global level. I look forward to seeing how audiences react to this piece.” Frances Hill, Founding Artistic Director
DEATH OF A DRIVER will be performed by Sarah Baskins (TV: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”; NY: Wolves) and Patrick Ssenjovu (Theatre:Red Hills; Ga-aad at Uganda National Theater. Film:Sydney Pollock’s The Interpreter). The creative team includes: Frank Oliva (Set Designer), John Salutz (Lighting Designer), Ian Wehrle (Sound Designer), Vincent Scott (Assistant Director), TBA (Technical Director), Miriam Hyfler (Stage Manager), Lindsay Kipnis (Assistant Stage Manager). and Abou Lion Diarra (Original Music). Urban Stages staff includes Antoinette Mullins (Development & Literary Director), Olga Devyatisilnaya (Company Manager/Financial Administrator), Ilanna Saltzman (Outreach Director), Bara Swain (Creative Consultant), Vincent Scott (School Consultant), Myan Disnie Sabastien (Social Media) and Sylvia Haber, Perpetuart (Graphic Designer).
