Monthly Archives: April 2021

SONDHEIM MUSICAL, IN DEVELOPMENT FOR YEARS, LOOKS UNLIKELY ·

(Sarah Bahr’s article appeared in The New York Times, 4/27; via Pam Green. Photo: Stephen Sondheim, who had been working on developing “Buñuel” for the last decade or so with the playwright David Ives.Credit…Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times. )  

The 91-year-old composer told the Public Theater last year that he was no longer working on a show based on the films of Luis Buñuel.

One big lingering question for theater fans following the news that the prolific producer Scott Rudin will “step back” from his stage projects: What will happen to his shows in development, notably the Stephen Sondheim musical “Buñuel,” which at last report was slated to be produced Off Broadway at the Public Theater?

Rudin, who is facing a reckoning over decades-long accusations of bullying, had been a commercial producer attached to the musical.

But the Public now says: It isn’t happening.

In the wake of reports about Rudin, the Public on April 22 put out a statement saying it had not worked with him in years. Responding to a follow-up question, Laura Rigby, a spokeswoman for the Public, said last week that Sondheim had informed the theater last year that he was no longer developing the musical. (The Public clarified that its cancellation had nothing to do with Rudin.)

Sondheim, who turned 91 at the end of March, did not respond to emailed questions about the project’s status.

The work, which was based on the films of the Spanish surrealist Luis Buñuel, promised to be one of the last chances for theatergoers to see a new stage musical by musical theater’s most venerated composer. Sondheim had been developing it for the last decade or so with the playwright David Ives (“Venus in Fur”), who also did not respond to email requests for comment.

Sondheim had previously said that the show would comprise two acts, the first based on the filmmaker’s “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” (1972), and the second on “The Exterminating Angel” (1962).

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MABOU MINES: ‘LEAR’ (WATCH NOW–THROUGH MAY 5) ·

MBOU MINES
LEAR
BY William Shakespeare
ADAPTED AND DIRECTED BY Lee Breuer
PREMIERE: Triplex Performing Arts Center, NYC January 9, 1990
Ruth Maleczech with Greg Mehrten and Karen Kandel, photo by Michael Cooper.
“It’s rude, it’s radical, it’s outrageous. And it’s one of the most powerful Shakespeare productions I’ve seen in a long time.”

Visit Mabou Mines:
Ruth Maleczech, photo by Jonathan Atkin.
“Lear (Ruth Maleczech) could be a Tennessee Williams Big Mama. Her evil sons Goneril and Regan are bourbon-swilling good ol’ boys who have their way with the bastard Elva (nee Edmund), a hot number in tight leather jeans, in the back seat of a convertible. The fool, a transvestite wearing a tatty fur coat and wielding a dildo instead of a coxcomb, is divine, if not exactly Divine. The music of Hank Williams and Elvis competes with the chattering of crickets for dominance of the fetid night air.”

– Frank Rich NY Times
Isabell Monk, Ruth Maleczech, Karen Kandel and Greg Mehrten, photos by Beatriz Schiller.

CROWD ME WITH LOVE! OUR ULTIMATE TOP 20 “BEING ALIVE” COUNTDOWN FROM STEPHEN SONDHEIM’S COMPANY ·

 BroadwayBoxCom BroadwayBox

Crowd Me With Love! Our Ultimate Top 20 "Being Alive" Count…

Photo by Emilio Madrid, Martha Swope/NYPL for Performing Arts

At the Alvin Theatre on April 26, 1970, the name Bobby became not only a powerhouse role in musical theatre history but also a lush orchestral “overture” and exclamation by Manhattan couples in Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s musical Company.

Broadway audiences met vibrantly, unique couples, each character hilarious, charismatic, and at times zany in their own way – not to mention the three singles Bobby is pursuing that confess he could drive a person crazy. At the end of the musical comedy comes a Sondheim anthem that has been covered by Broadway’s absolute finest, “Being Alive.” After considering marriage or staying single on the eve of his 35th birthday, Bobby expresses himself through this sensational song.

On the anniversary of the musical’s opening night, it seems like no better time than the present to run our all time ultimate YouTube countdown of our favorite performances of Stephen Sondheim’s “Being Alive” from Company

20. John BarrowmanCarol BurnettGeorge HearnRuthie Henshall and Bronson Pinchot

We have to shout out this gorgeous Jonathan Tunick arranged performance of the song from Broadway’s Putting It Together in 1999. Ruthie’s entire vocal line but especially at 0:49 – 1:00 is ::chef’s kiss:: This number is so lovely.

19. Julian Ovenden

What a voice! Julian puts this stunning old school crooner quality to the Sondheim tune. He really takes off with that clap at 3:09. That magnificent orchestra too is beautiful.

18. Telly Leung

Telly’s voice does. not. quit! So, so great. We love the quiet moments at 1:05. This is such a fantastic interpretation and we absolutely love 1:48 – 2:00.

17. Adam Driver

Remember when we all dropped everything when we heard Adam Driver was singing Sondheim in his Netflix film Marriage Story? Here’s why. Adam not only so authentically performs the number (and the rest of COMPANY’s characters’ lines) in the film that it still is wowing us. Act.Ing.

(Read more)

SPAIN: ‘NOVIEMBRE’: EXPLOSIVE MANIFESTO TAKES THEATRE TO THE STREETS ·

(Chris Wiegand’s article appeared in the Guardian, 4/24; Authentic and earnest … Óscar Jaenada in Noviembre. Photograph: Album/Alamy.)

Actors roam Madrid, springing provocative performances on passersby, in Achero Mañas’s vibrant faux-documentary

Can theatre change the world? Not, you suspect, if it’s a ticketed performance watched from a red velvet seat with a glossy programme and an ice-cream. The guerrilla theatre-makers in the 2003 Spanish film Noviembre, directed by Achero Mañas, have a 10-point manifesto for the revolution they’re staging on the streets. All their performances are free and available to all, they accept no private or public subsidies, and only original material is presented. If you’ve acted for TV or film then forget it – you’re banned from Noviembre.

The group is led by Alfredo (Óscar Jaenada), who arrives in Madrid from Murcia in the late 90s to attend drama school. Alfredo auditions with a piece he has created for a homemade marionette but comes to believe it is his fellow actors who are treated like puppets by their tutor, Yuta (played by veteran Argentinian theatre legend Héctor Alterio). He resents Yuta’s expectation that actors will divulge their most personal secrets in service of a performance. Damning that approach as group therapy, he drops out to seek a more spontaneous relationship with the audience, who he believes should interact with the performance, not sit in the stalls like statues.

Mañas presents the film as if it is a documentary, with older versions of the main characters appearing as talking heads, reflecting on the ups and downs of the company who live together in a squat that they aim to turn into a cultural centre. This is not a mockumentary – we are never invited to laugh at their exploits. If anything, the tone is earnest and the company’s performances are named, dated and shown in lengthy episodes with the older actors’ reflections alongside. The documentary format invites us to seriously appraise the art of their street theatre and implicitly suggests that the company has left a legacy.

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BROADWAY’S CAPITALIST MODEL ISN’T PERFECT, BUT HERE’S WHY IT WORKS, AND WHAT CAN BE FIXED ·

(Chris Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 4/22; Photo:  Aaron Tveit and Karen Olivo during a shutdown. Olivo has since left the cast. (Matthew Murphy via AP/AP)

The anti-capitalists are gunning for Broadway.

In a recent article in American Theatre, the editor Rob Weinert-Kendt opined that regional theaters had “fallen short in a lot of ways by following a similar, Broadway-focused industrial model.” In the same online magazine, Brandon Ivie, the associate artistic director of the Village Theatre of Issaquah, Wash., wrote: “I’m looking ahead with an understanding that capitalism is the real enemy.”

And in a recent Instagram video announcing her departure from the show “Moulin Rouge!,” the Broadway artist Karen Olivo advocated for actors dropping their affiliation with Actors Equity, the traditional labor union for theater workers, as part of a decommissioning of what she sees as a corrupt system.

 “The dream of making art?,” Olivo said, referencing Broadway. “The moment we stepped into this capitalistic structure, that went away.”

Did it, though?

Consider, for example, the moment when the first Black president of the United States, Barack Obama, attended the Broadway revival of “A Raisin in the Sun,” with the lead role performed by Denzel Washington, the leading Black actor of his generation. For anyone there that night, it was a stunning example of the capitalist sector of the American theater heralding racial progress and become part of a transformation that the author of the play, Lorraine Hansberry, surely could not even have imagined. Nothing quite like that ever has happened in the nonprofit sector.

Or consider the night at “Hamilton” when an entire cast of supremely talented, diverse actors summoned up the courage to directly address Vice President-elect Mike Pence, their guts and the size of their capitalistic platform immediately making headlines around the world and infuriating Pence’s boss, Donald J. Trump, who was just learning the power of Twitter. For anyone interested in progressive reforms or the activism of people of color, this was a night to remember. And it was capitalist down to the tips of its toes.

Or think about the remarkable artist David Byrne telling a rapt Broadway audience to “say their name,” a reference to all the Black lives lost to police shootings. And many hearing that for the first time.

What about the cast of “Dear Evan Hansen?” Were they not making art when they dramatized the pain of being a teenager struggling with the micro-aggressions of everyday life? What about the cast of “Hadestown,” when they found the political potency in Anais Mitchell’s lyrics to “Why We Build the Wall?” What about the artists behind “Moulin Rouge!,” anticipating the losses we were all about to share in the pandemic?

What about playing Jasmine in “Aladdin” and making a young person smile? Can you not produce an artistic act while working for the huge publicly held company known as Disney?

Sure you can. It is one thing to call for reforms in an industry, which, in all fairness, was certainly Olivo’s intention given that she was responding to the allegations against the producer Scott Rudin, whom an article in the Hollywood Reporter alleged had been a harsh and injurious boss. But it’s another to decry the one sector of the American theater that truly can support its artists so that they may live the kind of middle-class life that come so much easier to others.

The antipathy for the commercial sector of the theater, especially from the inside and often fueled by envy or elitism, is far from new. It was common in the 1990s for academics to look down on great commercial playwrights like Wendy Wasserstein, arguing without much evidence that working in a marketplace blunted their potential radicalism. And artists from the nonprofit sector long have railed against what they saw as compromises for popularity: Joseph Papp of the New York Public Theater famously hated the soppy Marvin Hamlisch song “What I Did For Love” in “A Chorus Line” and wanted it cut. Had that happened, far fewer people would have better understood the struggles of the dancer’s life. It was an entry point. It put a lot of dancers’ kids through college.

(Read  more)

 

‘WEST SIDE STORY’: THE REMAKE OF THE 1961 CLASSIC HITS THEATERS DEC. 10. ·

(Aaron Couch’s article appeared in the Hollywood Reporter, 4/25; Photo: Twentieth Century Fox.)

The first trailer for West Side Story danced its way to the Oscars on Sunday night.

Steven Spielberg’s remake of the 1961 classic stars Ansel Elgort as Tony and Rachel Zegler as Maria.

Spielberg directed from a script by his Lincoln and Munich writer Tony Kushner. West Side Story, which draws inspiration from Romeo and Juliet, originated as a 1957 Broadway musical written by Arthur Laurents with music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and concept, direction and choreography by Jerome Robbins. It tells the story of star-crossed lovers torn between two gangs, the Jets and the Sharks.

The 20th Century film wrapped in October 2019 and has been awaiting release after being delayed a year by COVID-19. It is now due out Dec. 10.

(Read more)

 

RARE PHOTOS OF LEGENDARY BALLETS RUSSES ON TOURS ABROAD ·

(Anna Sorokina’s article appeared in Russia Beyond the Headlines, 8/24; Photos above, credit: E. O. Hoppé; A.Botkin; The New York Public Library.)

The world glory of the Russian ballet started with these performances by Serge Diaghilev’s dancers.

At the beginning of the 20th century, impresario Serge Diaghilev organized regular tours of Russian artists abroad. The first performances were held in 1907-1908 in Paris under the title of ‘Saisons Russe’ (Russian Seasons) and included the operas ‘Boris Godunov’, ‘Prince Igor’, ‘The Maid of Pskov’ and ‘Ruslan and Ludmila’. In 1909, Diaghilev also included a ballet program in Saisons Russe, in which the dancers of the Mariinsky and Bolshoi Theaters starred. 

Poster for the Saison Russe at the Théâtre du Châtelet, 1909.

The following year, he decided to show only ballet performances and, in 1911, the impresario turned the seasonal tours into the itinerant ‘Ballets Russes’ company, based in Monte Carlo.

Ballets Russes in Seville, Spain, 1916.

The most important of Diaghilev’s achievements was the discovery of new musical names. Among his troupe were the most famous dancers of Imperial Russia: Anna Pavlova, Tamara Karsavina, Vaslav Nijinsky, Yekaterina Geltzer. Michael Fokine accompanied the troupe as a choreographer. The costumes were created by Léon Bakst and Alexandre Benois and the composer for early programs was Igor Stravinsky.

Ballets Russes during the rehearsal: at the piano on the right is composer Igor Stravinsky, and standing is Michael Fokine. In the center is ballerina Tamara Karsavina.

The season of 1909 opened in the Parisian Théâtre du Châtelet with the five performances by Fokine: ‘Le Pavillon d’Armide’ (The Pavilion of Armide) with Pavlova and Nijinsky, ‘Polovtsian Dances’ (a scene from ‘Prince Igor’), dance suite ‘Le Festin’ (The Feast), romantic ballet ‘La Sylphide’ (The Sylph), and ‘Cléopâtre’ (Cleopatra) ballet. All the premieres were welcomed by the audience with great enthusiasm and Russian ballet became a world known brand. 

Serge Diaghilev and friends. // Ballets Russes in London.

The 1910 and 1911 seasons were also held in Berlin and Brussels. It started with Fokine’s new ballets: ‘Carnaval’, which the maestro considered his best work, ‘L’Oiseau de feu’ (The Firebird) with Tamara Karsavina, Scheherazade, Giselle, and ‘Les Orientales’ (dances from various ballets).

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IRELAND: DRUID’S NEW PRODUCTION EXPLORES THE MIND AND IMAGINATION OF EAVAN BOLAND ·

(Deirdre Falvey’s article appeared in the Irish Times, 4/20; One of Frances Kelly’s paintings, a portrait of her daughter Eavan Boland as a young girl. It features in the poster for Druid’s Boland: Journey of a Poet.)

Performance piece edited by Colm Tóibín will livestream one year after the poet’s death

It’s morning in California for Colm Tóibín, with sun streaming in the window; Garry Hynes is in Dublin as the dullish day ends. Technology enabling the conversation will also allow streaming of Druid Theatre’s latest project, Boland: Journey of a Poet, a new theatrical production about poet Eavan Boland, edited by Tóibín and directed by Hynes, towards the end of April, one year after Boland’s death.

Their locations are serendipitously appropriate, as Boland’s life and work had one foot in Stanford and one in suburban Dublin. The production explores the mind and imagination of one of Ireland’s great poets, melds her life and her work, as she did herself, “in the large, uncharted space between the lyrical and the political” as Tóibín describes.

Hynes and Druid were “looking at poetry, at a time where I think there’s a great need for the people to connect” and asked Tóibín to curate a series of poems over the 20th century. What started as one production – Coole Park Poetry Series of 10 actors reading 10 poems, from Austin Clark to Paula Meehan, broadcast during St Patrick’s Festival and more outings to come – grew into a second project.

Tóibín talks about “the two volumes of autobiographical essays, which are remarkable, which throw extraordinary light on the poetry, and on the life”.

“Slowly it emerged that, actually you could make a piece from that, using the poems and using the prose, and that they could throw light on each other, and you could make a narrative.” You could do that, said Colm. Could you do that, asked Garry. They both laugh now.

He came at it from a point of knowing Boland, having spent two periods at Stanford (in 2006 and 2008), where she led the writing programme, as well as return visits and many events and festivals, including Kilkenny, together. In Stanford, “she would call my office and say Colm, can I come up for a minute. We just talked poetry. She had an astonishing knowledge of what was happening in American poetry, and in Irish poetry too”.

She knew the poets personally, knew each poem: “I got an education from her. Hearing the voice I knew from the radio, in different contexts. I really found her tremendously good company as well. Very, very funny. She ran the programme and had an astonishing amount of power, which she used judiciously and kindly.”

(Read more)

 

“SIX GUN JUSTICE” WITH PAUL BISHOP PODCAST: ROBERT DWYER & AUSTIN WRIGHT ON THEIR BOOK: ‘THE SHERIFF’ (FROM TWODOT BOOKS) ·

Listen

Hang out around the Six-Gun Justice water cooler for another Six-Gun Justice Conversation segment.  Co-host Paul Bishop talks with Western writers Austin Wright & Robert Dwyer, whose debut Western novel, The Sheriff, was released in April.

 

View The Sheriff on Amazon 

Reviews

I think that THE SHERIFF by Robert Dwyer and Austin Wright has a chance to be judged one of those rare modern Western fiction classics. The authors somehow manage to be both traditional and surprising on every page. … The town of Three Chop, grizzled Sheriff John Donovan, assorted outlaws radiating real menace, women just as desperate and cunning as any of the menfolk—there’s damned fine storytelling here.– Jeff Guinn, New York Times bestselling author of The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral―And How It Changed the American West

THE SHERIFF is the debut novel from authors Robert Dwyer and Austin Wright, and a strong debut it is. There are definite echoes of the traditional Western here but a more literary sensibility to the writing and plotting. It’s a bleak but impressive yarn and well worth reading if you’re looking for a Western that’s a bit offbeat while retaining a fondness for what’s gone before.– James Reasoner, New York Times bestselling author

About the Authors

Robert Dwyer is a history buff with an abiding interest in the West, which looms large in the American psyche–a canvas for big stories and big ideas. He lives with his wife and dog in Alexandria, Virginia.

Austin Wright started watching John Wayne movies with his dad before he was old enough to talk–and he’s been hooked on Westerns ever since. He lives with his wife, son, and daughter in Annandale, Virginia.

Read their interviews on Stage Voices:

Part 1 

Part 2