Category Archives: Current Affairs

TINA TURNER, ‘QUEEN OF ROCK N ROLL’, DIES AGED 83 IN SWITZERLAND · May 24th

(from Sky News, 5/24; Photo: AP.)

 

Tina Turner – one of rock’s great vocalists and most charismatic performers – has died aged 83, her spokesperson has confirmed.

In a statement, they said: “Tina Turner, the ‘Queen of Rock’n Roll’ has died peacefully today at the age of 83 after a long illness in her home in Kusnacht near Zurich, Switzerland.

“With her, the world loses a music legend and a role model.”

The US-born star was one of the best-loved female rock singers, known for her on-stage presence and a string of hits including The Best, Proud Mary, Private Dancer and What’s Love Got to Do With It.

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OF MICE, AND MEN: NEW ‘AN AMERICAN TAIL’ BRINGS FIEVEL TO THE STAGE · May 18th

(Colette Davidson’s article appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, 5/17; Glen Stubbe Photography/Courtesy of Children’s Theatre Company.)

May 17, 2023|MINNEAPOLIS

Fievel Mousekewitz’s immigration story begins like so many others – a menacing, outside threat. The packing of bags. A tumultuous voyage at sea.

But, as the name suggests, Fievel isn’t a person, he’s a mouse. And the threat is a band of cats.

Fievel’s tale – “An American Tail” – is a story of loss, hope, rebuilding, and family. It is a story shared by many Americans, some recently, some in generations past.

WHY WE WROTE THIS

A story focused on

HOPE

Generations of American kids grew up on the story of Fievel Mousekewitz. At a time when roughly a quarter of Americans are satisfied with immigration levels, a new play looks at what it means to come to America.

Now, the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis is revisiting the 1986 film classic in dramatic form, in a world premiere from Tony-winning playwright Itamar Moses and Obie-winning director Taibi Magar. The tale of Fievel and his Jewish family’s traumatic uprooting from 19th-century Russia – in what is now Ukraine – to the boroughs of New York City is one that members of Generation X will remember from the animated film and a new generation can learn from.

In the opening act, the family of mice sing, “There are no cats in America, and the streets are paved with cheese!” The puns are abundant, but the lessons are universal.

“America is a patchwork of arrivals, but how do we welcome each new wave?” says Mr. Moses in an interview. “There are threats. But if we can work together, a better version of ourselves is always somewhere out there.”

Ultimately, “An American Tail” harks back to an era when immigration was romanticized, not politicized, in films like “West Side Story” (1961) or “Coming to America” (1988). This February, a Gallup Poll showed that Americans’ satisfaction with the country’s level of immigration had dropped to 28%, its lowest in a decade.

“This is reaching back to a happier time, a vision of immigration when it was seen simply as a part of the way this country worked,” says David Itzkowitz, a St. Paul-based historian. “Now, antisemitism is back in the media. … Immigration has become a race issue.”

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MEDEA IN MID-AIR: HOW SYRACUSE’S GREEK THEATRE KEEPS THE CLASSICS ALIVE · May 16th

 

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 5/16, 2023; Photo: The Greek theatre in Syracuse. Photograph: Gaspare Urso’ )

Playing in the vast ancient amphitheatre, imaginative new productions of Euripides and Aeschylus find fresh nuance even in this huge space

How best to stage the great Greek classics? The fashion in Britain is for intimacy. But there are other alternatives, as I found on a visit to the ancient Greek theatre in Sicily’s Syracuse where everything is on a massive scale. The auditorium, carved out of a hillside, seats 5,000. The stage is 27 metres wide and 44 deep; acting, direction and design are correspondingly epic. Yet I discovered, in the two productions I saw, that psychological detail is still achievable even in this vast arena.

Seasons of the Greek classics began in Syracuse in 1914, continued spasmodically but only became annual events in this century. Scanning the records, you find that many famous directors, including Peter Stein, Luca Ronconi, Yannis Kokkos and Irene Papas, have worked there. Among the translators, the name of Pier Paolo Pasolini stands out. Each eight-week season blends a well-known title with others less familiar. This year Medea and Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound kicked off the programme, with Peace by Aristophanes and a multi-media spectacle about Ulysses still to come. After July, selected productions will go on tour around Italy.

This is all the impressive work of the Istituto Nazionale Del Dramma Antico (National Institute of Ancient Drama) but I was relieved to find that a respect for the past was matched by a regard for the present. On a basic level, non-Italian speakers are offered an earpiece translation and a text in English. But my first discovery at Medea was a brilliant essay in the programme-book by the play’s translator, Massimo Fusillo, which suggests that Euripides pioneered the use of the inner monologue allowing us to get inside the protagonist’s head. Fusillo argues that this leads ultimately to Macbeth, Milton’s Satan and modern TV series such as Breaking Bad and Gomorrah. The play’s director, Federico Tiezzi, goes further by saying he sees Medea as “a clash between an archaic society and a post-industrial society” and compares Jason to the “great boisterous Ibsen titans from John Gabriel Borkman to Torvald Helmer in A Doll’s House”.

All this is heady stuff but how does it work in practice? Tiezzi goes out of his way to stress the symbolic nature of the conflict in which Medea is told that she will be forced to leave Corinth never to see Jason or her children again. Medea initially sports a fearsome bird-like headpiece, her children wear fluffy rabbit-heads and Creon, the king of Corinth, a crocodile-mask. The female chorus, meanwhile, are blue-clad skivvies with pails and scrubbing-brushes. But the great revelation comes in the relationship between Medea and Jason.

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DAVID TENNANT TO PLAY MACBETH AT DONMAR WAREHOUSE · May 13th

(Chis Wiegand’s article appeaed in the Guardian, 5/5; via Pam Green; Photo: On tomorrow and tomorrow … David Tennant in a publicity shot for the Donmar’s forthcoming Macbeth. Photograph: Charlie Gray.)

The actor will take to the stage as the Scottish king in December, in the last production of the London theatre’s 30th-anniversary season

Hot on the heels of the news that Ralph Fiennes will play Macbeth in a tour of repurposed UK warehouses comes the announcement that David Tennant will also star as the Scottish king at London’s Donmar Warehouse.

It is the Scottish actor’s first Shakespearean stage role since he played Richard II for the Royal Shakespeare Company, on and off, from 2013 to 2016. In 2022 he was Macbeth in a two-part BBC Radio 4 broadcast. The Donmar production will be directed by Max Webster and will conclude the 30th-anniversary season for the London theatre, which was previously home to a banana-ripening warehouse.

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RUSSIAN POET GETS FOUR YEARS IN PRISON FOR RECITING VERSES AGAINST UKRAINE WAR · May 10th

(from Radio Free Europe, 5/10; Photo: Nikolai Daineko.)

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A Moscow court has sentenced a poet to four years in prison for publicly reciting verses condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Tver district court sentenced Nikolai Daineko on May 10 after finding him guilty of “inciting hatred and calling for anti-state activities.” Daineko, who agreed to cooperate with investigators, was arrested along with two other poets, Artyom Kamardin and Yegor Shtovba, in September after they presented their anti-war verses in public. Kamardin’s girlfriend has accused police of subjecting the poet to sexual violence during his apprehension. Kamardin and Shtovba will be tried separately. 

SHELTER UNDER THE BIG TOP: A MUSICAL ABOUT THE NAZI ERA · May 9th

(Philipp Jedicke’s article appeared on DW, 5/5; Photo: DW.)

“Waldo’s Circus of Magic and Terror” is about a fictional circus troupe during the Third Reich. This tale of humanity in inhumane times is told by disabled and non-disabled people.

British playwright Hattie Naylor had originally wanted to tell a very different story from the one currently touring successfully through Britain. Her initial plan was for a play based on the cult 1932 horror film “Freaks” by US director Tod Browning, a movie that had made a big impact on her.

“What’s really special about it is that disabled people are the heroes in the film,” said Naylor. But the copyright situation was problematic, and the deeper Naylor delved into the history of circuses of the early 20th century, the more a very different story formed in her imagination — one that would become the musical “Waldo’s Circus of Magic and Terror.”

During her research, Naylor encountered numerous stories of circuses that employed disabled people, both before and during the Nazi regime. She read about people of short stature working as acrobats and clowns, about Jewish circus directors, and about Adolf Althoff, a non-Jewish German circus director who took in the Bento family of Jewish acrobats, hiding them and giving them work. And Naylor learned how several people were able to save themselves from certain death in extermination camps with touring and connections with international circuses. 

Extermination of disabled people

During the Second World War, the Nazis murdered more than 250,000 disabled people. Disabled people were mercilessly persecuted or even turned in by their own relatives. They often met their deaths only after inhumane experiments were performed on them — as in the case of Lya Graf, a world-renowned short-statured circus star who perished in Auschwitz in 1941.

Naylor was especially horrified to read that the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseased Offspring” was one of the first enacted by Adolf Hitler just six months after he seized power in January 1933. In his racist fantasy of omnipotence, German children were to be “nimble as greyhounds, tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel.” That law was only the beginning.

Under the Nazi dictatorship, thousands of disabled or short-statured people and those with psychiatric illnesses were forcibly sterilized, with the aim of “keeping the German national body pure.” Those people were as undesirable to the Nazis as Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, non-conformist artists or political opponents.

The speed with which the measures were implemented in the 1930s convinced Naylor of the importance of telling these stories today. “I am really aware of the rise of fascism in Europe again, and in my own country, and very dubious national and international movements,” she said.

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THE GREAT WHITE BARD BY FARAH KARIM-COOPER REVIEW – RECLAIMING SHAKESPEARE · May 7th

(Arifa Akbar’s article appeared in the Guardian, 5/6; via Pam Green; Photo: Adjoa Andoh as Shakepeare’s Richard III. Photograph: Manuel Harlan.)

An inspiring analysis of Shakespeare and race restores his reputation as a playwright for all

There is a vivid moment in Farah Karim-Cooper’s new book where she reflects on the image of the nation’s pre-eminent playwright – how unfathomable he has seemed to artists and how his face has been conjured from a historical blur. She compares portraits and discerns a marked shift in the 18th century when he seems to become “more beautiful, symmetrical, and whiter in complexion”.

If visual art has hitherto seemed like a peripheral detail in the appraisal of his work, Karim-Cooper, a professor of Shakespeare studies, connects this paled image to a metaphorical whitewashing: the man we celebrate today is not the one who lived and worked in Elizabethan England but a reconstructed fantasy, built to serve as an emblem of white excellence and imperial Englishness.

Efforts to decolonise Shakespeare have been fiercely contested in the past and as co-director of education at the Globe theatre, Karim-Cooper navigated her own storm when she organised a series of webinars on anti-racism in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. Far from being cowed by the experience, she has produced a book-length study of the bard through the lens of race theory.

It is a thorough analysis but also a kind of love letter. Karim-Cooper felt an instant connection to Shakespeare at the age of 15, during an English lesson on Romeo and Juliet. But in order to love him, she argues, we have to know him fully, and not only his genius but the darker aspects of his legacy.

Karim-Cooper’s broader sociopolitical scope makes us see certain lines and characters afresh

It is a clever deployment of Shakespearean wisdom on how to love without a distorting “fancy bred in the eye”. The great white bard of the title is just that type of idealised cultural construct, she suggests. “I am a foreign, brown woman – and I feel seen and heard in Shakespeare’s plays,” Karim-Cooper asserts and this chimes with her book’s broader aim: to restore the swan of Avon as a playwright for all.

Close readings of the texts produce concrete examples of racial prejudice, antisemitism and colonial subjugation in works such as Othello, The Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and The Tempest. Some of this is familiar, but Karim-Cooper’s broader sociopolitical scope makes us see certain lines and characters afresh. She also bypasses charges of unfairly applying 21st-century definitions of racism and white supremacy by calibrating her analysis to the values of the Tudor era, or subsequent centuries.

We are taken from original stagings in black- and brown-face to the trauma carried in roles such as Othello for contemporary Black actors. Karim-Cooper makes some rather creative connections between Shakespeare’s world and ours: a discussion on inter-racial couples such as Othello and Desdemona and Titus Andronicus’s Aaron and Tamora segues into an analysis of the present day ambivalence towards Prince Harry and Meghan Markle; she draws on the cultural theorist bell hooks’s idea of political resistance through self-love, hailing Aaron’s eloquent defence of his blackness (“Coal-black is better than another hue / in that it scorns to bear another hue”) as “the first ever black power speech”.

Historians including Miranda Kaufmann and David Olusoga have supplied ample examples of diversity in Tudor Britain, and Karim-Cooper sees Shakespeare as holding a mirror to this society, with his plays interrogating live issues around race, identity and the colonial enterprise. Her critique is at its most absorbing and original when she shows how complicated his approach was. “Shakespeare often challenges us to hold two contradictory views simultaneously – it was how his mind worked,” she writes, and demonstrates how figures such as Shylock and Aaron were both defined by stereotypes as well as undermining them. Her arguments, cumulatively, come to feel essential and should be absorbed by every theatre director, writer, critic, interested in finding new ways into the work.

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***** ‘CYMBELINE’ REVIEW – SHAKESPEARE’S KNOTTY ROMANCE IS A FABULOUS FAREWELL FOR DORAN · May 4th

(Mark Lawson’s article appeared in the guardian, 5/4;Photo:  Peter De Jersey as Cymbeline. Photograph: Ellie Kurttz.)

Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Departing artistic director Greg Doran reinvigorates this tale of a royal family in crisis with clarity and intelligence

The president of the Royal Shakespeare Company, King Charles III, may be bemused by the company premiering, pre-Coronation, a play about an English king in a contentious second marriage and in which an “oath of loyalty” becomes an issue. Republican mischief seems unlikely: Cymbeline was scheduled as the RSC farewell to departing artistic director Greg Doran, who is finally staging the only Shakespeare play to elude him.

As a second leaving present, Doran has published a tremendous textbook-memoir, My Shakespeare, explaining how rehearsals start with the cast paraphrasing each line in modern speech, sealing meanings to be revealed in verse. That must have been tough with Cymbeline, a very late play with knotted poetry and a plot so convoluted that some productions add an onstage narrator.

A triumph for Doran’s method is that there is never doubt about who is or pretending to be whom. And his scholarly attention to text is shown by an unusual division into three sections. In The Wager, the exiled Posthumus accepts in Italy a creepy challenge that his England-held wife Imogen will not succumb to an attempted seduction by nobleman Iachimo. The second section, Wales, features the sex bet’s consequences, comic and gruesome, around a Milford Haven cave. The War somehow coheres the bizarre last six scenes where, through human confusion or divine intervention (dazzling gilded design by Stephen Brimson Lewis), identities flip and the “dead” wed.

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TONY AWARD NOMINATIONS 2023: ‘SOME LIKE IT HOT’ DOMINATES, FOLLOWED BY ‘& JULIET,’ ‘SHUCKED,’ ‘NEW YORK, NEW YORK’ · May 4th

(From Variety, 5/3/2023; writing and compilation by Rebecca Rubin, Brent Lang, and Marc J. Franklin.)

“Some Like It Hot,” a jazzy re-imagining of the classic comedy film about two musicians on the run, dominated the nominations for the 2023 Tony Awards, which were announced on Tuesday, with 13 nods.

It was followed closely behind by “& Juliet,” “Shucked” and “New York, New York,” which scored nine nominations apiece. All of these productions will vie for best musical honors, facing off against one of the year’s most acclaimed shows, “Kimberly Akimbo,” the story of a teenager who has a medical condition that causes her to age rapidly. “Kimberly Akimbo” is up for eight prizes, including for supporting performers Bonnie Milligan and Justin Cooley, as well as for Victoria Clark’s turn in the title role.

The Jessica Chastain-led revival of a stripped-down “A Doll’s House,” Tom Stoppard’s sprawling “Leopoldstadt,” and the political satire “Ain’t No Mo’” were the most-nominated plays, with six nods each. It’s an important moment of recognition for “Ain’t No Mo’,” which was embraced by critics, but struggled to find its audience, closing last winter after a total of just 28 performances.

But “Ain’t No Mo’” isn’t the only production that faced fierce commercial headwinds. The annual awards show, honoring the best of Broadway, is unfolding as the theater industry is still clawing back from more than a year of COVID-related closures and the chilling impact that had on tourism in New York City, the lifeblood of the business. Winning a Tony could turbocharge the box office of a show like “Some Like It Hot” or “Shucked.”

Despite the challenges, there have been hits, such as an acclaimed re-imaging of “Parade” with Ben Platt (picking up six nominations) and “Sweeney Todd” with Josh Groban brandishing a razor as Fleet Street’s demon barber (eight nominations). And don’t forget “Funny Girl” with Lea Michele subbing in for original star Beanie Feldstein (which is ineligible because it opened last season). Michele may not be getting a Tony, but she did announce Tuesday’s nominations with “MJ” star Myles Frost. 

Among the other major categories, best musical revival will be a race between “Parade,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Into the Woods” — which transferred from New York City Center to Broadway to become a late summer hit — and, in a surprise, Lincoln Center’s critically derided revival of “Camelot.”

“Ain’t No Mo’” and “Leopoldstadt” are up for best play alongside “Between Riverside and Crazy,” “Cost of Living” and “Fat Ham,” which won last year’s Pulitzer Prize for drama. Best revival of a play nominees include “A Doll’s House,” “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window,” “Suzan Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog,” and “August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.”

Several major Hollywood actors were recognized for their stage work this season, including Chastain, Jodie Comer for “Prima Facie,” Samuel L. Jackson for “”The Piano Lesson” and Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II for “Topdog/Underdog.”

But there were some notable omissions, as well. Laura Linney was overlooked even as her “Summer 1976” co-star Jessica Hecht was recognized, LaTanya Richardson Jackson was snubbed for directing “The Piano Lesson,” and Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan for “The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window” were left off the list of honorees.

See the full nominations list, supplied by the Tonys, below:

Best Play

Ain’t No Mo’

Between Riverside and Crazy

Cost of Living

Fat Ham

Leopoldstadt

Best Musical

& Juliet

Kimberly Akimbo

New York, New York

Shucked

Some Like It Hot

Best Revival of a Play

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson

A Doll’s House

The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window

Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog

Best Revival of a Musical

Into the Woods

Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot

Parade

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Best Book of a Musical

& Juliet
David West Read

Kimberly Akimbo
David Lindsay-Abaire

New York, New York
David Thompson & Sharon Washington

Shucked
Robert Horn

Some Like It Hot
Matthew López & Amber Ruffin

Best Original Score (Music and/or Lyrics) Written for the Theatre

Almost Famous
Music: Tom Kitt
Lyrics: Cameron Crowe & Tom Kitt

Kimberly Akimbo
Music: Jeanine Tesori Lyrics: David Lindsay-Abaire

KPOP
Music & Lyrics: Helen Park & Max Vernon

Shucked
Music and Lyrics: Brandy Clark & Shane McAnally

Some Like It Hot
Music: Marc Shaiman
Lyrics: Scott Wittman & Marc Shaiman

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog

Corey Hawkins, Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog

Sean Hayes, Good Night, Oscar

Stephen McKinley Henderson, Between Riverside and Crazy

Wendell Pierce, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play

Jessica Chastain, A Doll’s House

Jodie Comer, Prima Facie

Jessica Hecht, Summer, 1976

Audra McDonald, Ohio State Murders

Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical

Christian Borle, Some Like It Hot

Harrison Ghee, Some Like It Hot

Josh Groban, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Brian d’Arcy James, Into the Woods

Ben Platt, Parade

Colton Ryan, New York, New York

Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical

Annaleigh Ashford, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Sara Bareilles, Into the Woods

Victoria Clark, Kimberly Akimbo

Lorna Courtney, & Juliet

Micaela Diamond, Parade

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Play

Jordan E. Cooper, Ain’t No Mo’

Samuel L. Jackson, August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson

Arian Moayed, A Doll’s House

Brandon Uranowitz, Leopoldstadt

David Zayas, Cost of Living

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play

Nikki Crawford, Fat Ham

Crystal Lucas-Perry, Ain’t No Mo’

Miriam Silverman, The Sign in Sidney Brustein’s Window

Katy Sullivan, Cost of Living

Kara Young, Cost of Living

Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical

Kevin Cahoon, Shucked

Justin Cooley, Kimberly Akimbo

Kevin Del Aguila, Some Like It Hot

Jordan Donica, Lerner & Loewe’s Camelot

Alex Newell, Shucked

Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical

Julia Lester, Into the Woods

Ruthie Ann Miles, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Bonnie Milligan, Kimberly Akimbo

NaTasha Yvette Williams, Some Like It Hot

Betsy Wolfe, & Juliet

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SIBERIAN ACTOR FLEES RUSSIA AFTER SLASHING WRISTS ON STAGE · May 3rd

(From Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 5/2/2023. Photo: Daily Express.)

An actor from a theater in Russia’s Siberian region of Buryatia, who in March slit his wrists while on stage to protest the firing of the company’s artistic director over his stance against Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, has left the country.

Artur Shuvalov of the Russian Drama Theater in Buryatia’s capital, Ulan-Ude, on May 2 confirmed to RFE/RL reports saying that he left Russia fearing for his safety.

Shuvalov said he is currently in an unspecified post-Soviet nation and plans to move to another country after he manages to arrange the trip of his wife and his child to his current location.

On March 29, Shuvalov cut his wrists with a knife at the end of a play in front of a live audience, saying he and his colleagues have been under pressure for a year over their attempts to get back the theater’s artistic director, Sergei Levitsky, who was fired last year for openly condemning Russia’s ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Shuvalov’s wife, Svetlana Polyanskaya, who worked as an actress at the same theater, resigned in March after coming under constant pressure from management for her stance on Levitsky’s reinstatement.

Since Levitsky was fired, the theater’s actors have demanded local authorities reinstate him and have conducted different forms of protests, including the removal of the symbols of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine from the theater’s facade and raising awareness of the situation in local media.

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