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    Great Stage Acting Shines Through, Even From a Laptop Screen

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater ReviewGreat Stage Acting Shines Through, Even From a Laptop ScreenThe Lessingtage theater festival, held online this year because of the pandemic, shows some of Europe’s finest performers, in classic plays by Brecht, Schiller, Ibsen and others.In “Mary Stuart,” which premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in October, eight cast members perform from isolated pink cubes in Judith Oswald’s corona-friendly set.Credit…Arno DeclairJan. 28, 2021MUNICH — When it comes to recorded theater, great acting translates to video much better than elaborate productions with complex concepts or intricate sets. So when the Thalia Theater, in Hamburg, Germany, asked 10 European playhouses to send their best shows for an online edition of the Lessingtage, an international festival held every January, by and large the theaters privileged accomplished performances over virtuosic stagecraft.The result, “Lessingtage 2021 Digital: Stories from Europe,” is a wide-ranging survey of contemporary European theater that casts a spotlight on some of the continent’s finest stage actors. At a time when few people are allowed to travel — and even fewer theaters to open — the chance to discover new and recent stage works from the Iberian Peninsula to Russia feels particularly vital.While a few of the “Lessingtage Digital” productions debuted during the pandemic, the majority of the work on offer is already several seasons old, giving online viewers the opportunity to discover productions whose live runs may have already ended.One of the newest, and best, of the bunch is Anne Lenk’s stylish and focused staging of “Mary Stuart,” which premiered at the Deutsches Theater Berlin in October. Throughout the evening, the eight cast members perform from isolated pink cubes in Judith Oswald’s corona-friendly set. Yet there is nothing stilted or fussily formal about Lenk’s interpretation of Schiller’s historical tragedy.The cast, clad in Sibylle Wallum’s flamboyant costumes, is uniformly superb, alive to the emotional and political turmoil of the drama, and how they intersect. This holds particularly true for the production’s incandescent stars, Franziska Machens as Mary, fighting from her prison cell to stay alive, and Julia Windischbauer as her proud yet conflicted rival, Elizabeth.The two queens come face-to-face only once, in a climactic 10-minute showdown in which Mary, refusing to acknowledge Elizabeth’s superior rank, blows her one chance at salvation to savor a moment of triumph. In a production where great acting tumbled forth in an endless stream, this confrontation stood out for its raw, electric charge.Lenk’s flat aesthetic is also kind to the high-definition cameras, which capture the seething performances with unobtrusive directness.“Antigone in Molenbeek/Tiresias” combines performers from the Toneelhuis in Antwerp, Belgium, and the Danel Quartet, a French musical ensemble.Credit…Kurt van der ElstI was also impressed with how well another production, “Antigone in Molenbeek/Tiresias,” translated to the screen. This absorbing diptych of mythically inspired dramatic monologues for actresses — one old, one young — premiered around the same time as “Mary Stuart.” Directed by Guy Cassiers, the artistic director of the Toneelhuis in Antwerp, Belgium, the two parts of the evening are unified by the French musical ensemble the Danel Quartet performing Shostakovich string quartets via video feed.In “Antigone,” the author Stefan Hertmans transposes Sophocles’ tragedy to contemporary Belgium, where a law student, Nouria (Ikram Aoulad), embarks on a futile quest to retrieve the mortal remains of her brother, an ISIS fighter, from a forensics lab. Addressing the audience, Aoulad conveys her character’s pain and resolute sense of justice with both elegance and quaking rage.In “Tiresias,” the actress Katelijne Damen recites a blistering, dizzying poem by the young British poet Kae Tempest, a subversive retelling of the myth of the blind, gender-fluid prophet. Damen’s rendition of the virtuosic text is shot through with grace and wit. Especially impressive was how the Toneelhuis’ wide-screen camerawork (shot by Charlotte Bouckaert, who is also responsible for the set) succeeded in capturing the power of chamber theater.Stefanie Reinsperger, left, in the Berliner Ensemble’s production of “The Caucasian Chalk Circle.”Credit…Matthias HornThere was a similar intimacy to the Berliner Ensemble’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s “The Caucasian Chalk Circle.” The theatrical miracle of Michael Thalheimer’s fine-grained staging can be boiled down to two words: Stefanie Reinsperger.The young Austrian actress has been a member of the theater’s acting ensemble since 2017, and Grusha Vashnadze, the fierce survival artist at the center of Brecht’s late drama, was one of the first roles she stepped into at the house. As the peasant girl protecting an abandoned infant amid the horrors of war, Reinsperger pleads, howls and fights for herself with an intensity and pathos that is almost hard to bear. I was almost glad to have that raw experience mediated for me by a screen: Live in the theater, up close and personal, I don’t know if I’d have been able to take it.Eszter Onodi, left, in the Katona Jozsef Theatre’s produciton of “Nora — Christmas at the Helmers.”Credit…Horvath JuditOn the other hand, Eszter Onodi’s mesmerizing performance in “Nora — Christmas at the Helmers,” an update of Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” made me feel as though I were sitting in the audience of Budapest’s Jozsef Katona Theater, rather than watching alone from my living room. In her deceptively simple performance, Onodi strips away the character’s artifice to reveal unsuspected depths. The production’s young director Kriszta Szekely brings the protofeminist heroine crashing into the present day in a faithful reworking that hammers home the contemporary relevance of Nora’s plight, 150 years after the play’s scandalous premiere.In ensemble productions from Italy and Sweden, single virtuosic performances were less important than the symbiotic energy generated from large casts that brought their plays to life collectively.The most nail-bitingly exciting production of the festival was “Right You Are (If You Think So),” Luigi Pirandello’s 1917 farce, staged by Filippo Dini at the Teatro Stabile in Turin, about a group of villagers trying to learn the truth about a mysterious new neighbor.In Dini’s staging, the townspeople lounge around a grand, if decaying, apartment with moldings on the high ceilings and sheets covering the furniture. The 12-person cast forms a tight and dynamic unit and they get the tone and comic timing just right.Mattias Andersson’s production of “The Idiot” from the Royal Dramatic Theater of Stockholm.Credit…Roger StenbergMattias Andersson’s starkly contemporary production of “The Idiot” from the Royal Dramatic Theater of Stockholm, one of the festival’s co-producers, boasts an even larger cast than the Pirandello staging. This one of two stage versions of Dostoevsky’s novel at the festival: The other is a largely wordless expressionist pantomime for four physical actors from the Theater of Nations in Moscow, is the event’s wild card.The epic Swedish show is anchored by David Dencik’s fragile and fearless performance as Prince Myshkin, who finds himself hounded by the denizens of Russian society, high and low, after his release from a Swiss sanitarium.Even though the props look like they’re from Ikea and the large cast sits idly onstage for much of the evening, this production manages to paint a vast societal canvas populated with damaged and emotionally fraught characters who speak to us across centuries and languages.When the festival lineup was announced, I was struck at how many works by canonical authors had been selected — far more than is common at European theater festivals these days. After soaking up the Lessingtage’s 10 productions, I wondered why this should have come as any surprise.Schiller, Ibsen, Brecht and Pirandello created some of the stage’s richest and most complex characters. What greater pleasure could there possibly be than watching some of Europe’s finest stage actors breathe fresh life into them — even from the remove of our computer screens?Lessingtage 2021 Digital: Stories from EuropeStreaming online through Jan. 31; thalia-theater.de.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Stephen Colbert Is Thrilled to Have a President With a Plan

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBest of Late NightStephen Colbert Is Thrilled to Have a President With a Plan“Yesterday, President Biden announced a dramatic change to America’s Covid plan: There is one,” Colbert said on Wednesday.Stephen Colbert is optimistic that by Halloween, “the hottest costume is going to be sexy normal people saying hello. They’re sexy, because they can touch hands.”Credit…CBSJan. 28, 2021, 2:33 a.m. ETWelcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night’s highlights that lets you sleep — and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We’re all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now.Plan B(iden)“Yesterday, President Biden announced a dramatic change to America’s Covid plan: There is one,” Stephen Colbert said on Wednesday night.Late-night hosts shared their enthusiasm about Biden’s promise that vaccination production and distribution will be ramping up.“That means February 2 — next week, Groundhog’s Day — Punxsutawney Phil can come out of his burrow and get vaccinated and stay within six feet of his shadow.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“On his first day in office, the president signed an order requiring masks in federal buildings and on federal lands. Then on his second day, Biden signed another order mandating masks in airports and on many planes, trains, ships and buses. And then on the third day, he just yelled ‘Let’s get loud!’ and took the rest of the day off.” — SAMANTHA BEE“The most exciting news: The federal government is buying enough additional doses to vaccinate 300 million Americans by the end of the summer. So next Halloween, you know the hottest costume is going to be sexy normal people saying hello. They’re sexy, because they can touch hands.” — STEPHEN COLBERT“Fortunately, some states have recently changed their laws so more people are eligible to give shots. In New York, for example, that list now includes pharmacists, dentists and podiatrists. But still no-late night hosts, which is weird, considering how I’ve been consistently injecting giggles into the soul of America for five years now.” — SAMANTHA BEEThe Punchiest Punchlines (The Number Two Test Edition)“China has rolled out an anal swab coronavirus test, saying it’s more accurate than the throat method. It’s more accurate, but it’s still being called the number two test.” — JIMMY FALLON“So this is what they meant when they said the pandemic was finally starting to turn around.” — JAMES CORDEN“You know what? There’s a point at which I would rather just have the coronavirus.” — TREVOR NOAH“The plus side is with testing like this, you might not even need a vaccine. You just tell people, ‘Hey, we’re not having lockdowns, but every time you leave your apartment, some stranger’s going to shove a Q-Tip up your butt.’ We’ll be done with corona in, like, two weeks.” — TREVOR NOAH“They’re saying that the science shows that these swabs are more accurate than other forms of swab. The only trick is finding the right position to hang your butt out the window of your car.” — JIMMY KIMMEL“And for even more accuracy, they do a nasal swab and an anal swab until they touch in the middle.” — JIMMY FALLON“We wanted to test people that way here at Television City, but CBS pooh-poohed it.” — JAMES CORDENThe Bits Worth Watching“Jimmy Kimmel Live” celebrated the 50th birthday of Guillermo, Kimmel’s beloved parking lot security guard turned onscreen sidekick.What We’re Excited About on Thursday NightTerry Gross, the host of NPR’s “Fresh Air,” will appear on Thursday’s “Tonight Show.”Also, Check This OutThe actress Cloris Leachman in 1974. She won accolades and an Academy Award for her dramatic work, but comedy was her forte.Credit…George Brich/Associated PressThe late Cloris Leachman will be remembered for a lengthy film and TV career, from “The Last Picture Show” to “Malcolm in the Middle.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Little Island Announces Resident Artists

    @media (pointer: coarse) { .at-home-nav__outerContainer { overflow-x: scroll; -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch; } } .at-home-nav__outerContainer { position: relative; display: flex; align-items: center; /* Fixes IE */ overflow-x: auto; box-shadow: -6px 0 white, 6px 0 white, 1px 3px 6px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.15); padding: 10px 1.25em 10px; transition: all 250ms; margin-bottom: 20px; -ms-overflow-style: none; /* IE 10+ */ […] More

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    Gregory Sierra, Actor Known for His Sitcom Work, Dies at 83

    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }What to WatchBest Movies on NetflixBest of Disney PlusBest of Amazon PrimeBest Netflix DocumentariesNew on NetflixAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyGregory Sierra, Actor Known for His Sitcom Work, Dies at 83Often cast in ethnic roles, he saw his career take off in the 1970s as a recurring character on “Sanford and Son” and a regular on “Barney Miller.”Gregory Sierra in an episode of the Emmy Award-winning sitcom “Barney Miller.” He played a detective for two seasons on the show, set in a Greenwich Village police station.Credit…ABC, via PhotofestJan. 26, 2021Updated 7:03 p.m. ETGregory Sierra, a character actor who navigated easily between comedy and drama but was best known for his supporting roles on the sitcoms “Sanford and Son” and “Barney Miller,” died on Jan. 4 at his home in Laguna Woods, Calif. He was 83.His wife, Helene Sierra, said the cause was stomach and liver cancer.Lanky and balding, Mr. Sierra started out in Hollywood in the late 1960s and early ’70s taking modest parts — including on the sitcom “The Flying Nun” and the secret agent series “Mission Impossible,” as well in as the 1970 film sequel “Beneath the Planet of the Apes.”With his Puerto Rican background, Mr. Sierra was often cast in ethnic roles, including Latinos, Italians and Native Americans.In 1972, during its second season, he joined the cast of “Sanford and Son,” one of Norman Lear’s many groundbreaking sitcoms, in the recurring role of Julio Fuentes, a junk dealer who lived next door to Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx), who also had a junkyard with his son, Lamont (Demond Wilson), in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. He stayed until 1975.Julio tried hard to befriend Fred but was the frequent target of his insults.“Why don’t you go do some work in your yard,” Fred tells Julio in one episode. “Go take a bath. Go milk your goat.”“I did that all this morning,” Julio says.“Why don’t you go back to Puerto Rico?” Fred says.“I come from New York City and I can live in any of the 50 states I want,” Julio answers.“Why don’t you try Alaska?” Fred responds. “That’s a state.”Mr. Sierra left “Sanford and Son” to become a member of the original cast of “Barney Miller,” the Emmy Award-winning sitcom starring Hal Linden set in a police precinct in Greenwich Village. As Detective Sgt. Chano Amenguale, Mr. Sierra earned particular praise for a 1975 episode which he was emotionally devastated and nearly broke down after killing two gunmen.After two seasons, he left “Barney Miller” when he was cast as the star of an ensemble comedy, “A.E.S. Hudson Street,” about an emergency service hospital in Manhattan. He played a doctor in the series, which made its debut in 1978.In his review, The New York Times’s television critic John J. O’Connor described “A.E.S. Hudson Street” as “silly, often downright stupid and occasionally insultingly tasteless.” But, he added, “With Mr. Sierra around to hold the absurdities together, it should not be written off to quickly.”ABC canceled it after five episodes.Mr. Sierra with Redd Foxx, seated, and Demond Wilson in an episode of “Sanford and Son.”Credit…NBC, via PhotofestMr. Sierra was also part of the original cast of “Miami Vice” in 1984, as the commanding officer of the detectives played by Philip Michael Thomas and Don Johnson. But he left after four episodes; his character was assassinated after he decided to leave the series. “He did not like Miami and some of the people he worked with,” his wife said by phone. “He gave up a lot to leave the show.”Gregory Joseph Sierra was born on Jan. 25, 1937, in Manhattan and grew up in Spanish Harlem. His parents abandoned him when he was young, and he was raised by an aunt.In addition to his wife, Mr. Sierra is survived by his stepdaughters, Kelly and Jill, and a step-granddaughter. His first two marriages ended in divorce.After serving in the Air Force, Mr. Sierra went with a friend to an acting school audition in Manhattan. Mr. Sierra was not there for the audition, but after performing an improvisation with his friend, it was he and not his friend who got into the school.He later toured with the National Shakespeare Company and appeared as the King of Austria in “King John” at the New York Shakespeare Festival (now Shakespeare in the Park) in 1967.He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1960s and maintained a prolific acting pace for 30 years, largely in supporting roles.One of his most riveting characters appeared in a 1973 episode of “All in the Family.” His character, Paul Benjamin, was a Jewish vigilante who tried to protect the home of Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), whose front door has been covered with a swastika. Mr. Sierra infused the character with humor and self-assurance.Believing that the ignorant, bigoted Archie has been the victim of anti-Semitism, Paul tells him — to his confusion and consternation — “You sure don’t look Jewish.”“Well there’s a good reason for that,” Archie says. “I ain’t Jewish.”The swastika, it turns out, was meant for a Jewish neighbor with a similar address. Moments after Paul leaves the Bunkers’ house, he is killed by a car bomb.Mr. Sierra’s most recent credited role was as a screenwriter in “The Other Side of the Wind” (2018), Orson Welles’s long-delayed movie about a movie director (John Huston), which was filmed in the 1970s but not released until 2018.In 2009, Mr. Sierra returned to the stage after 40 years as a British police officer in a production of “See How They Run” at the theater at Laguna Woods Village, the retirement community where he lived.“He hadn’t been onstage for a very long time, so he was a little nervous,” John Perak, who directed Mr. Sierra in that production, said by phone. “I said, ‘Greg, don’t be afraid, it’s not a big deal.’ He came prepared and did very well.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Review: Road-Tripping with Frankenstein’s Monster in ‘Maery S.’

    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyReview: Road-Tripping with Frankenstein’s Monster in ‘Maery S.’Sibyl Kempson’s unruly audio play takes Mary Shelley and her famed creation from old England to contemporary America. Bigfoot shows up, too.Dee Dorcas Beasnael provides the voice of Mary Shelley, among other characters, in the audio play “The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.”Credit…via Abrons Arts CenterJan. 26, 2021In a monster throwdown, I’ll always rep Count Dracula over Frankenstein’s creature. But that’s not to say I don’t give Mary Shelley props for her creation; she turned a horror story into a philosophical inquiry into the nature of existence, the monkey’s paw of scientific discovery and the consequences of playing God. Her monster may not have fangs, but he’s more frightful for the ways he mirrors the dark nature of humanity.In Sibyl Kempson’s “The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.,” an experimental, four-part radio play presented by the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr & Perf. Co., the woman often called the mother of horror and science fiction is resurrected and transmuted in a rambling epic that is conceptually unique but too often wearyingly opaque.“Maery S.,” which was commissioned by Abrons Arts Center and the Chocolate Factory Theater, begins with a scholarly presentation: a rummaging through Shelley’s keepsakes — yes, “securely conferred” and “vouchsafed” — and a discussion of various definitions of “gothic” in literature, architecture, music.Then, via diary entries, we hear from Shelley (Dee Dorcas Beasnael, who also voices Shelley’s half sister Fanny and stepsister Clarie) — a freewheeling young woman ready to embark on a vagrant life of camping, travel and reprehensible gallivanting with a young married poet named Percy.That part is true, but “Maery S.” unravels its own fictions, strung through with anachronisms and modern language. Faster than you can say “Frankenstein,” the play transports Shelley to other places and times, including America between the 1970s and 2000s, where she road-trips in a pickup truck with the monster she dreamed up in her 1818 novel.That’s not all: Her Bill-and-Ted-esque excellent adventure is interspersed with accounts of sightings of Bigfoot and Sasquatch, voiced by Victor Morales and Crystal Wei with the fearful solemnity of a campfire story.“I’m juggling a lot right now, OK? Everything’s mixed up,” Shelley concedes at one point. Well said.A collage of images that inspired Kempson’s purposefully anachronistic production.Credit…Sibyl KempsonKempson, who wrote and directed, is no stranger to wildly postmodern, genre-defying work, and here her Shelley is prismatic, existing, as she says, in the “space between known and unknown.”So she recalls how Natasha Richardson played her in a 1986 psychological thriller, and speaks as a historical figure, a contemporary scholar and a sexually liberated witch-goddess (Hecate, Iris, Medusa and others are named).Kempson’s feminist politics are provocative, as is the way the play’s structure enacts a central theme of “Frankenstein” itself. Dr. Frankenstein created the monster, Shelley created Frankenstein, and Kempson re-creates Shelley out of a mishmash of details, some real, but many fictional.Traveling with the monster (a world-weary Brian Mendes), this Shelley proclaims how she “makes and unmakes” the world. Such moments of feminist self-actualization are riveting; for me they recall the slippery identities of the women in the work of Adrienne Kennedy and the bold declarations of the female characters in Jaclyn Backhaus’s “Wives.”But all of the juggling is tiring; nearly four hours long, “Maery S.” gets to feel like a chore (Beasnael’s self-conscious voice performance is no help). Kempson’s idiosyncratic shifts in setting and tone (and even accents; the male Romantic writers get especially dandified affects) help keep things lively, but only when they don’t function as belabored diversions.Case in point: the songs by Graham Reynolds, which range from sleepy folk-rock to campy pop, go on for too long. However, Chris Giarmo’s sound design, especially in the first two parts, beautifully complements the gothic themes: a feverish cascade of notes on a piano, and the feral groaning and blubbering of an unnatural creature among the chirping crickets on a dark night.Shelley wrote a monster of a novel, and Kempson has followed with a monster of a play, large and lumbering. It’s an ambitious act, but in the electric moment of a project coming to life, something sputters and flounders, perhaps even coming apart at the seams. Just ask Dr. Frankenstein — and the woman who birthed him.The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes of Maery S.Through May 15; abronsartscenter.org.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More