Monthly Archives: October 2021

‘GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH’ CIRCUS MAY RETURN WITHOUT ANIMALS · Oct 28th

(from Newsmax, 10/27; Photo: Philadelphia School of Circus Arts.)

Four years after the “Greatest Show On Earth” shut down, officials are planning to bring back the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus — without animal acts.

An announcement is expected sometime next year, according to Nicole Zimmerman, a spokesperson for Feld Entertainment Inc. of Ellenton, Florida.

The three-ring circus shut down in May 2017 after a 146-year run.

Costly court battles with animal rights activists led circus officials to end elephant acts in 2016. Without the elephants, ticket sales declined. Officials also blamed increased railroad costs, and the rise of online games and videos, which made the “Greatest Show On Earth” not seem that great anymore.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which was behind many of the protests, said it is thrilled with the concept of a circus without animal acts.

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‘EXCEEDINGLY RARE’ FOLIO EDITION OF SHAKESPEARE’S HENRY IV FOR SALE · Oct 25th

(Alison Flood’s article appeared in the Guardian, 10/25; Photo:  William Shakespeare Photograph: Stock Montage/Getty Images.)

An original fragment from the first folio, estimated to be worth up to $100,000, will be auctioned this week

An “exceedingly rare” fragment from Shakespeare’s first folio, comprising the whole of the play Henry IV Part One, is to be auctioned this week.

The play has been authenticated as an original fragment from Shakespeare’s first folio by Shakespeare scholar Eric Rasmussen. The first folio was published in 1623 and is the earliest collected edition of Shakespeare’s works. When Shakespeare died, in 1616, only 17 of his plays had been printed. Without the first folio, which collects 36 plays, 18 of his works, including Macbeth and The Tempest, might never have survived. The works were collated and edited by John Heminges and Henry Condell, two of Shakespeare’s actors and friends, and approximately 750 first folios were printed. Two hundred and thirty-three are known to survive today.

The fragment has been valued at $50,000-$100,000 (£36,000-£73,000) by Holabird Western Americana Collections, which will auction it on 29 October. Officially titled The First Part of Henry the Fourth, with the Life and Death of Henry Sirnamed Hot-Spurre, it consists of 13 printed antique paper pages and is one complete play in the two-part production of Henry IV.

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BROADWAY’S ‘PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’ PLOTS A CAUTIOUS RETURN TO THE STAGE · Oct 24th

(Jonathan Allen’s article appeared on Reuters, 10/24; Photo: Leading actors Ben Crawford and Meghan Picerno rehearse a scene during preparations to reopen “Phantom of the Opera” at New Studio 42 in New York, U.S., October 12, 2021. Picture taken October 12, 2021. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs.)

NEW YORK, Oct 24 (Reuters) – Meghan Picerno was back at work after 18 months of pandemic limbo, overjoyed to be singing and dancing again with her “Phantom of the Opera” castmates as they rehearsed for the return of Broadway’s longest-running show.

As the musical’s late October reopening neared, sometimes all Picerno could think about was making it to the first curtain call unscathed by the breakthrough COVID-19 cases that had sidelined vaccinated actors at other shows.

Outside long days in a chilly mirror-lined rehearsal studio near New York City’s Times Square, Picerno had put herself back on what she called lockdown.

“I’m a full-on monk now,” she said during a rushed lunch break between back-to-back run throughs.

She knew her job came with risks of exposure. Playing the show’s heroine Christine required Picerno to kiss two co-stars daily and to sing full-throated love songs with them unmasked and at close range.

“Hopefully, none of us have it, because if one of us have it, we all have it,” she said.

The crowded Broadway theaters, vital to the city’s tourism industry, were the first places closed by the New York government as the coronavirus began to ravage the state. Word of the abrupt shuttering came during a “Phantom” matinee at the Majestic Theatre on March 12, 2020, as some cast and crew themselves were falling sick.

Now, after an unprecedented shutdown, the theaters are among the last workplaces to reopen. Their return this fall is viewed as a test of the city’s efforts to restore some new sense of normalcy.

Reuters watched as the “Phantom” company prepared for its return. The pandemic left unmistakable marks.

Within a few weeks of the show going dark, COVID-19 had claimed the life of a beloved dresser, Jennifer Arnold, who had been with the show for more than three decades.

After protests filled U.S. streets last year in outrage at the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, by a white police officer, newly unemployed Broadway workers pushed the industry to make overdue changes to increase racial diversity in theater companies.

In August, “Phantom” producers announced they had cast the first-ever Black actor to play Christine since the show opened on Broadway in 1988. The actor, Emilie Kouatchou, would make her Broadway debut as an alternate for Picerno.

For the returning cast, there were tweaks to lyrics and staging to learn, making it more straightforward to cast non-white actors in principal roles. The entire company was required to be vaccinated and twice a week went to get their noses swabbed at a nearby theater lobby repurposed as a temporary coronavirus testing site.

Picerno said she was happy to embrace whatever was needed to get back on stage.

In the dark days of 2020, living back in North Carolina with her parents and claiming unemployment benefits, she said she “almost felt like a failure.” She sang her part every day to keep it fresh in her mind until the singing made her too sad and she stopped.

Emotion again overcame her on the first day reunited with her castmates in late September. Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber had swung by the studio to deliver a pep talk to the cast before they sang through the familiar score.

Picerno’s singing dissolved in tears during the love duet “All I Ask of You.”

“Sing along! Help her!” the conductor urged the masked chorus, whose voices carried Picerno until she regained her composure.

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CHICAGO REVIEW: ‘OTHELLO’ AT COURT THEATRE HAS ALL THE CHILL OF THE LAST YEAR, PACKED INTO A SHAKESPEARE TRAGEDY · Oct 21st

(Chris Jones’s article appeared in the Chicago Tribune, 10/19. Photo: Kelvin Roston, Jr. and Amanda Drinkall in “The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice” at Court Theatre in Hyde Park. (Michael Brosilow photo / HANDOUT)

When theater historians seek to know the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the arts in Chicago, the wisest heads will pay some attention to Court Theatre’s 100-minute cutting of “The Tragedy of Othello.”

It won’t be because this production of the Shakespearean tragedy celebrates the pleasure of being back together, as we’ve all heard in curtain speeches in recent weeks elsewhere. There is nothing whatsoever joyous about this chilly, fractured take on “Othello,” a conception that has a dystopian sensibility running through its core.

The show was conceived when it seemed likely that capacity in theaters would remain limited, so just 81 seats are being sold for each performance. Much of the auditorium at the University of Chicago is unused and is covered in a cloth, even as people are seated, masked but without being socially distanced, in a section of the theater.

If this was not a conscious commentary on the shared experience of the last 18 months, then it sure was permeating the subconsciousness of the co-directors, Charles Newell and Gabrielle Randle-Bent.

Some of the audience is seated on the stage in swivel chairs, isolated even from their most immediate companions, rocking and swaying like nervous competitors in a quiz show. Much the same could be said for the conceptions of the characters in what is typically William Shakespeare’s most intimate tragedy.

Most of the time here, they appear to be consumed by their inner thoughts and trapped by barriers of their own construction on John Culbert’s set, a design that wants to embrace not being a design at all. They watch each other as if at a sad and sculptured remove; the stylized movement makes it appear as if they are no longer alive, at least in the usual humanistic sense. The sensuality — this typically is Shakespeare’s most sensual play — is mechanical and cold.

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LESLIE BRICUSSE, SONGWRITER BEHIND GOLDFINGER AND WILLY WONKA, DIES AT 90 · Oct 20th

(Benjamin Lee’s article appeared in the Guardian 10/19;  Photo: Leslie Bricusse in 2005. Photograph: David Rose/Shutterstock.)

The Grammy and Oscar-winning songwriter, whose work drew acclaim on stage and on screen, has died

The Oscar and Grammy-winning songwriter Leslie Bricusse has died at the age of 90.

London-born Bricusse was known for writing the lyrics for the theme to James Bond adventure Goldfinger as well as songs for films including Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Doctor Dolittle.

His son Adam Bricusse announced news of his death on social media, saying he “passed away peacefully”. His close friend Joan Collins also posted on Instagram, paying tribute to “one of the giant songwriters of our time”.

Bricusse won a best song Oscar for writing Talk to the Animals from 1967’s Doctor Dolittle as well as one for best adaptation and original song score (later retitled best original score) for 1982’s Victor/Victoria.

Some of his best-known work comes from 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with Bricusse writing both Candy Man and Pure Imagination alongside Anthony Newley.

“On the next soundstage, they were shooting Cabaret,” Bricusse said of the production in an interview from June this year. “And I thought how wonderful it was. And I was a bit nervous about the amateur style of our show compared with the professionalism of Bob Fosse.”

Bricusse also collaborated with John Barry for the themes to Goldfinger and You Only Live Twice. His stage work included 1989’s Sherlock Holmes: The Musical and 1961’s Stop the World – I Want to Get Off with Newley. Their song What Kind of Fool Am I?, from the latter musical, made them the first Brits to ever win the song of the year Grammy in 1963.

The pair also wrote the song Feeling Good for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd, which was later made famous by Nina Simone. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1989.

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WEST SIDE STORY AT 60: THE DAZZLINGLY MODERN MUSICAL THAT’LL BE HARD TO BEAT · Oct 19th

(Guy Lodge’s article appeared in the Guardian, 10/18; Photo:  West Side Story: never had bodies in motion been used to shape and dictate a film’s own rhythm quite like this. Photograph: United Artists/Kobal/Rex/Shutterstock.)

With Steven Spielberg’s remake almost out, the 1961 original still feels thrillingly contemporary, a tough act to follow

It’s the opening credits that do it right away. Following three eerie whistles over a black screen, West Side Story explodes into a full screen of poster-paint colour – shifting from orange to red to magenta to royal blue – as Leonard Bernstein’s four-minute overture brassily clatters into action. Over the colour, a stark design flourish: seemingly random brigades of parallel vertical black lines, only coalescing at the overture’s end into the tip of Manhattan, viewed from the air, cuing a vertiginous bird’s-eye montage of New York City in motion. That chipper yet chillingly disembodied whistle returns; by the time we finally see a human face, six coolly riveting minutes has passed.

 

This whole title sequence – from the graphics to the aerial photography – was visualised by Saul Bass, the distinctive graphic designer then favoured by such aggressive stylists as Alfred Hitchcock and Otto Preminger. It still seems, perhaps even more than anything that follows in West Side Story, sleekly and breath-catchingly modern: a coup of expensive minimalism at the outset of a splashy Hollywood production. That was no accident: in 1961, United Artists set out for the film to be something bracing and new in the movie musical, an industry staple that was looking increasingly out of step with a youth culture turning toward rock’n’roll.

The previous two years had been rough ones for the genre. In 1958, South Pacific may have topped the annual box office while Gigi swept the Oscars, but since then, the only Hollywood song-and-dance films to prove even mild hits had been minor comedies, Disney cartoons or Elvis Presley vehicles. Hopes were high for West Side Story to put the gloss back on to the prestige musical – the 1957 Broadway musical had been a hit with critics and audiences alike – but the studio knew the usual style of overstuffed Technicolor spectacle wouldn’t cut it. The film had to be as propulsively dance-oriented as the stage show, yet expansive and kinetic as cinema. It had to honour the classically romantic roots of its source – this was a riff on Romeo and Juliet, after all – while Saying Something Significant about modern youth and urban society. It had to be family-friendly yet appealing to tearaway teens; it had to court Oscar voters and high-culture critics alike.

It was, in effect, strategised and focus-grouped to within an inch of its life, down to the unusual compromise made on the directorial front. Genius choreographer Jerome Robbins, whose work had been so integral to the stage show’s success, was hired to direct the musical sequences, despite having zero film experience. Industry journeyman Robert Wise was enlisted for the straight dramatic scenes, not despite his lack of musical experience but because of that: best known for stolid black-and-white dramas on stern subjects (he had recently been Oscar-nominated for the grim death-row biopic I Want to Live!), he was intended to bring some grownup gravitas to the exercise. Not that the producers were above naked populism when casting the leads: whether or not there’s any truth to the enduring rumour that Elvis Presley was approached to be the film’s Tony, teen-idol potential took precedence over musical ability: 23-year-olds Natalie Wood and Richard Beymer didn’t sing a note in the film, but couldn’t have lip-synched more prettily.

All of which makes West Side Story sound like a desperately over-calculated, even cynical exercise. Yet as it plays out, from that Saul Bass aesthetic masterstroke onwards, the film remains a blinder: somehow checking off each of those aforementioned, contradictory boxes, it’s formally electric, musically alive and emotionally pummelling, even as its dubbed leads trade in borrowed feeling. West Side Story isn’t unflawed, in ways the show wasn’t either: its overwriting of Shakespeare to lend proceedings at least half a happy ending, with Maria alive and distraught, can’t quite touch the frenzied melodrama of Romeo and Juliet’s dual-death fiasco, and there’s no getting round the fact that its sweet, doe-eyed leads are given a lesson in musical magnetism every time their older counterparts Rita Moreno and George Chakiris are allowed to burn up the frame. (That West Side Story won 10 Oscars, including two for Moreno and Chakiris, while Wood and Beymer weren’t nominated was a harsh way to stress the point.)

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REVIEW: IN ‘THE LEHMAN TRILOGY,’ A VIVID TALE OF PROFIT AND PAIN · Oct 17th

(Laura Collins-Hughes’s article appeared in The New York Times, 10/14; Photo:  From left, Adam Godley, Adrian Lester and Simon Russell Beale in “The Lehman Trilogy,” at the Nederlander Theater.Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times.)

The play, tracing the rise and fall of the fabled financiers, finally opens on Broadway after

Much of what happens in “The Lehman Trilogy” is invisible to the eye, which is not the way prestige drama usually works onstage.

Directed by Sam Mendes, this British import, which reaches across 164 years of American history to trace the family saga behind the fallen financial powerhouse Lehman Brothers, was a scalding-hot ticket during a brief prepandemic run at the Park Avenue Armory. Yet it offers almost nothing in the way of spectacle, and only the slightest of costume changes: a top hat here, a pair of glasses there.

In the captivating production that opened on Thursday night at the Nederlander Theater, it relies largely on an unspoken agreement between actors and audience — to imagine together, and let fancy crowd out fact.

Sort of the way that heedless investors looked right past all warning signs in the faith-based run-up to the stock market crash of 2008. Illusion is illusion, after all, and financial markets, like the theater, require a certain suspension of disbelief — though when the fantasy bursts in theater, the fallout is less ruinous. When investors halted their collective game of make-believe 13 years ago, mammoth financial firms like Lehman Brothers met their swift demise, and the world’s markets suffered the aftershocks.

“The Lehman Trilogy,” though, is not actually a number-crunching play; reports that Jeff Bezos took in a recent performance should not cause you to infer otherwise.

Written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Power, it is a vividly human tale, nimbly performed by three of the finest actors around: Simon Russell Beale, Adam Godley and Adrian Lester, who, in making his Broadway debut, has replaced the original cast’s Ben Miles. (I did not catch Beale, Godley and Miles at the Armory; it was too scarce a ticket, and too pricey.)

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RENA MATSUI TACKLES SHAKESPEARE IN AN ALL-FEMALE ‘JULIUS CAESAR’ · Oct 16th

(Nobuko Tanaka’s article appeared in Japan Times, 10/16/21.)

Rena Matsui plays the pivotal role of Mark Antony, a general and follower of the charismatic leader of the Roman republic, in “Julius Caesar.” |

Rena Matsui always knew she wanted to enter the acting world, and launching her career by performing in idol-pop groups was all part of her plan.

She started out as a member of the Nagoya-based SKE48 in 2008 before joining Nogizaka46 in Tokyo, becoming one of the top stars of Japan’s many all-female singing and dancing troupes. In 2015, she left both groups to dedicate herself to acting.

“I was determined to be an actor, so I decided to be an idol in order to get that chance,” she says in a recent video call.

Growing up in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture, Matsui developed an early interest in stage performances through her mother’s love of the Takarazuka Revue, a long-running all-female musical theater company.

“Then, when I watched a DVD of (playwright and director) Koki Mitani’s musical ‘Okepi!,’ which shows the goings-on and gossip between musicians in an orchestra pit, I was amazed by how great it was to explore the entertainment world by focusing on people who aren’t always in the spotlight,” she says.

“I realized that theater has room for unconventional ideas, and I wanted to be an actor who uses their own rich imagination to express intangible things on stage.”

Now Matsui, 30, is taking her acting career to new heights by tackling her first Shakespeare play, an all-female version of the Roman tragedy “Julius Caesar.”

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CONSTANT STANISLAVSKI (128) · Oct 14th

The words and wisdom of Constantin Stanislavski:

Much in creativeness is incumbent upon us all, the young and old, men and women, the gifted and giftless. All men are forced to put food in their mouths, to hear with their ears, to see with their eyes, to breathe with their lungs, and all actors without exception must receive creative food according to the laws of nature, must treasure what they receive in their intellectual and emotional memory, must rework the material in their artistic imagination, according to the well-known laws that are incumbent upon all, must give birth to the image and the life of the human spirit, and having lived them over, incarnify them naturally. (MLIA)

FORTY DAYS A SLAVE: SUZAN-LORI PARKS ON HER INCENDIARY NEW PLAY ‘WHITE NOISE’ · Oct 12th

(Alexis Soloski’s interview  appeared in the Guardisn, 10/12; Photo:  ‘I was basically ripping the face off of civilisation’ … Ken Nwosu as Leo and Helena Wilson as Dawn in White Noise. Photograph: Johan Persson.)

In a drama that taps straight into these angry, anguished times, a Black artist responds to a police beating by becoming his white friend’s ‘enslaved person’. Pulitzer-winner Parks explains why she rewrote sections to make it even harder-hitting

In the summer of 2020, following the murder of George Floyd, protests began in Washington Square Park, a pigeon’s flight from Suzan-Lori Parks’s New York apartment. Parks and her son went almost every day, marching and chanting and waving signs, helping America along in its overdue racial reckoning.

Parks, 58, a Pulitzer-winning playwright and in-demand screenwriter, has been doing this for decades, though rarely with so much cardboard and poster paint. Her work – lyrical, incantatory, bleak and bright – digs into what she has called, in her 1993 drama The America Play, “the great hole of history”, the exploitation and exclusion of Americans of African descent. So it’s no surprise that Parks has written precisely the play for this anguished moment, White Noise, which had its UK debut at the Bridge theatre in London this month. The surprise is that she wrote it years ago.

In 2014, Parks found herself in the audience at New York’s Public theatre, watching performances of her 1860s-set play Father Comes Home from the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3). In one scene, the play’s protagonist, named Hero, wonders about life after slavery. When white patrollers stop and ask him who owns him, what will he say? Parks knew that her next play would try to find an answer.

She finished White Noise two years later. Her most realistic work to date, it centres on four friends – two are Black, Leo and Misha, and two are white, Ralph and Dawn. One night Leo, who suffers from debilitating insomnia, goes for a walk. Police stop him and shove him to the ground before letting him go. Leo, an artist, has freedom. But he doesn’t feel free. And he no longer feels safe. So Leo comes up with a radical proposition: he wants Ralph to own him, for 40 days, and to offer him the security that a well-connected white man can provide.

‘Why do you have to go there?’ … Suzan-Lori Parks with the cast. Photograph: Johan Persson

“So, Ralph, bro, in exchange for this protection I’m talking about, I will be your enslaved person,” Leo says.

It’s one hell of a provocation, which Parks knows. “I was basically ripping the face off of civilisation!” she says, punctuating the words with an exultant, “Ha, ha!” White Noise strips away the well-meaning lies we may tell ourselves about freedom, about equality, about justice. It pushes its audience to ask how we can live with ourselves and each other when our current systems fail so many of us.

I meet Parks at a cafe near her apartment. She bounces up in boots, miniskirt and fuchsia hoodie, with the thick black glasses associated with brutalist architects and the energy of a stadium-packing motivational speaker. Erudite and irrepressible, she is a figure of great moral suasion.

White Noise namechecks Afro-pessimism, a philosophical orientation that sees anti-Black violence and exclusion not as an accident of civil society, but as one of its underpinnings. The drama traffics in this discourse, but pessimism has clearly never been Parks’s thing. She sees her plays as acts of Afro-optimism, not necessarily for their content but for how they may affect their audiences.

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