Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Tony Awards to Announce Prizes in June at Radio City Music Hall

      by

      The 75th ceremony, honoring plays and musicals staged on Broadway, resumes its traditional calendar after a few years of pandemic disruption.This year’s Tony Awards will take place on June 12 at Radio City Music Hall as the theater industry seeks to settle in to some sort of new normal following the enormous disruption of the coronavirus pandemic.The ceremony — like the one last September that coincided with the reopening of many theaters after the lengthy lockdown — will be bisected, with one hour streamed by Paramount+, followed by a three-hour broadcast on CBS that is likely to be heavy on the razzle-dazzle.The Tonys, which honor plays and musicals staged on Broadway, are an important moment for the theater community because the awards are valued by artists and because the event serves to market the art form and the industry. The awards, formally known as the Antoinette Perry Awards, are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing.This year’s ceremony — the 75th since the Tonys were established in 1947 — will honor shows that opened between Feb. 20, 2020, and April 28, 2022. That unusually long eligibility window includes the 15 months when all theaters were shut down to protect public health. (Last year’s Tony Awards ceremony was a much-delayed event that considered only the reduced slate of shows that managed to open before the pandemic cut short the 2019-20 theater season.)The nominators, for the first time since 2019, will have a robust slate of options to consider in all categories.This season features nine new musicals, including the fan favorite “Six”; the critical darling “Girl From the North Country” (which opened one week before theaters shut down); the Michael Jackson jukebox musical, “MJ”; and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “A Strange Loop” (which arrives next month).In the play category, this season brought a record number of works by Black writers, the best reviewed of which were “Clyde’s,” by Lynn Nottage; “Pass Over,” by Antoinette Chinonye Nwandu; and “Skeleton Crew,” by Dominique Morisseau. They will face stiff competition from “The Lehman Trilogy,” a widely hailed exploration of the rise and fall of Lehman Brothers written by Stefano Massini and adapted by Ben Power.The musical and play revival categories are strong as well.Many of the contenders have yet to open. Because of concerns about when audiences would return in large numbers, and then the arrival of the Omicron variant, numerous producers opted to open as late as possible in the season: 16 shows are still to open before the eligibility period closes.The nominees are to be announced on May 3, determined by a nominating committee made up of about 37 actors, theater administrators and others with a close knowledge of the art form but no financial involvement in the eligible shows.Then voting will take place, electronically. There are about 800 Tony voters, many of whom work in the industry and some of whom are employed by or have invested in nominated shows; they can only vote in categories for which they have seen all the nominees, and there are a few specialized categories in which only some voters are allowed to vote.The show, directed by Glenn Weiss, will air live nationally, with the streaming portion starting at 7 p.m. Eastern and the broadcast portion (which will also be streamable) starting at 8 p.m. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Theater

      Review: ‘The Chinese Lady’ Casts a Long Look at Hate

      by

      Lloyd Suh’s play is a riff on the arrival of the real Afong Moy, possibly the first woman from China in the United States, and a lens on contemporary racism.Afong Moy is known as “The Chinese Lady,” but really she is just a girl — 14 when she arrives alone in New York in 1834, brought by a pair of merchant brothers who struck a deal with her father in China to put her in a museum for two years, on display.Possibly the first Chinese woman in the United States, she is marketed as a curiosity. Crowds pay to ogle her as she brews tea, eats with chopsticks and walks around the room on her bound feet. It’s a performance of cultural identity, and she is happy to enact it — enthusiastic, even, at the start. Cheerfully naïve, unsuspecting of the world’s cruelty, she views herself as an educator, fostering understanding.“Thank you for coming to see me,” she says to her gawkers, who are also us: the audience at the Public Theater, watching Lloyd Suh’s play “The Chinese Lady,” a moving and often sharply funny riff on the story of the real Afong Moy, traversing 188 years of American ugliness and exoticization in 90 swift, heightened minutes. A two-hander, it hopes with all its battered heart that we will, by the end, see Afong in her full humanity, and through her see this nation with clearer eyes. But it is not optimistic.“The Chinese Lady” was first staged in New York in 2018, when Ralph B. Peña directed a profoundly affecting, smaller-scale production for his Ma-Yi Theater Company at Theater Row, on 42nd Street. That was of course before the pandemic — before an American president scapegoated an entire population by calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus,” and before physical attacks on people of Asian descent became an ever-present threat in New York and across the country.Peña’s current Barrington Stage Company-Ma Yi production, presented by Ma-Yi and the Public, retains the same gorgeous cast, with Shannon Tyo as Afong and Daniel K. Isaac as Atung, her cynical, deadpan interpreter. (Cindy Im and Jon Norman Schneider play the roles at some performances.) On Junghyun Georgia Lee’s gilt-framed set — simpler and more capacious than the one she designed for Theater Row — the show is more anguished, more mournful, more urgent than before, and sometimes that makes it heavy-handed.History is told through the eyes of Tyo’s character, Afong Moy, who arrives in the United States to be on display at a museum.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesTyo and Isaac’s chemistry, though, has only deepened. In their bickering, their loneliness, their not-quite-solidarity, they remain entirely winning and occasionally devastating. (From here, proceed with caution if you haven’t seen the show.)When they are cut loose from each other, after decades of symbiosis — and years at a P.T. Barnum museum — there is no more forlorn sight than Atung alone, a tiny cog in Barnum’s exploitative machine.Long gone by then are the glamorous days when Afong toured to far-flung American cities and met a president — “your emperor, Andrew Jackson,” she calls him, to us. (If that’s an endearing misunderstanding of his title, it’s also a pretty accurate read on his expansionism.) In a revolting re-enactment, we watch him touch her foot: a cowboy barbarian looking down on her even as he sexualizes her.Afong, for all her childlike naïveté when she first arrived, has always been hungry for knowledge of the United States. She speaks of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Manifest Destiny; the Chinese men building the railroad out West; the people who were already living on these lands in 1492. She finds the country fascinating, and its self-mythologizing wildly overblown.It is not the place where she thought she would spend her life; she believed she would return to her family, not make a home in a place where she is not sure she belongs. When she realizes she will have to do that utterly on her own — breaking out of the box where American culture wants to keep her, under its hostile gaze — she becomes a roiling force of indignation and self-determination.That happens in the play’s penultimate scene, and Tyo absolutely kills it. So it’s unfortunate that the final scene undermines her with ill-conceived design.As Afong recounts horrific 19th-century acts of brutality against Chinese Americans, projections (by Shawn Duan) that had been subtle and mostly static throughout the show start flashing historical headlines and illustrations, then news coverage of contemporary anti-Asian attacks.The impulse is understandable — to make utterly clear that Chinese Americans, long the targets of racist violence, are still menaced as outsiders in their own country. But the intimate power of Suh’s text and Tyo’s performance would have made that connection potently on their own.The production’s final, upstaging image is a wall of disembodied eyes: a digital crowd, creepy and cold. It’s meant, presumably, to expand our sympathy into the wider world. But whatever moral reckoning the play sets in motion occurs between Afong — living, breathing avatar of generations — and the audience. Yet the lights go dark on her.We do, by the end of the play, fully see Afong Moy. In that last moment, let us look.The Chinese LadyThrough April 10 at the Public Theater, Manhattan; publictheater.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

    • 113 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Review: In ‘Jane Anger,’ Michael Urie Shines as Shakespeare

      by

      Talene Monahon aims to give Shakespeare his comeuppance in this comedy at the New Ohio Theater.In “Jane Anger,” a new comedy by Talene Monahon, everyone is fed up with the endless waves of sickness and quarantine. The year is 1606, and we are in England, which is enduring another outbreak of the plague. But for one man, a late-career William Shakespeare, there are graver concerns: writer’s block.Portrayed as a vain, out-of-touch celebrity by Michael Urie, Shakespeare struts and frets about the dozens of plays his rivals must be writing, angrily tossing the contents of his chamber pot out his window and onto the street below. In an effort to revitalize his career, he settles on adapting “King Leir,” claiming his version — with a slightly different spelling — will be “naturally superior because of the language and the dialogue and the general vibes.”Another (fictional) obstacle to his livelihood lurks outside, one that this uneven play, which opened on Monday night at the New Ohio Theater, clumsily tries to imagine could be his legacy’s true downfall: Jane Anger, a former lover seeking to strike a bargain with him in order to have her proto-feminist pamphlet published.This one-act work — whose full title is “The Lamentable Comedie of Jane Anger, that Cunning Woman, and also of Willy Shakefpeare and his Peasant Companion, Francis, Yes and Also of Anne Hathaway (also a Woman) Who Tried Very Hard” — creates a tidy blend of the past and present. Social and comedic sensibilities converge to highlight the pervasiveness of misogyny and the differing chances of survival across class lines in times of disease. Billed as a “feminist revenge comedy,” this workshop production, first developed online last October, succeeds at creating smart, lightly absurdist humor, but misses the mark in its attempt at a revisionist redemption.It doesn’t help that the play is mostly dedicated to its two male characters: Shakespeare and his servant, Francis (a show-stealing Ryan Spahn). Described as having “the off-putting air of an aged eunuch,” Francis is an unkempt, overeager fan of the writer and his occasional sexual overtures read less as genuine pining and more like a fan’s willingness to ingratiate. Urie (at the top of his game) and Spahn are a longtime couple, and their chemistry lends their characters’ farcical setups an easy, endlessly watchable flow.Amelia Workman as the title character in the play.Valerie TerranovaThough their dynamic is appealing, it takes up most of the play’s run time, practically swallowing the production whole, and leaving little room for the play’s women to make much of an impact.In creating Jane, Monahon (“How to Load a Musket”) has some fun compounding fact and fiction. Jane Anger is the, most likely pseudonymous, name of the author of the first English-language essay to defend womanhood, released in 1589. Here, she is revealed to be the “Dark Lady” about whom Shakespeare wrote a couple dozen sonnets, now working as a cunning woman, a type of medieval folk healer who also developed spells to counter witchcraft.As Jane, Amelia Workman plays up the double meaning of this cunning woman by delivering an arched eyebrow that rivals Joan Crawford’s. But in trying to explode the Western canon through her own feminist intervention, suggested in the first of Jane’s many fourth-wall breaks, Monahon ultimately fails to give Workman much to chew on other than audience-pandering quips. (She’s aided by Joey Mendoza’s set, a medieval apartment with a central window through which she must hoist herself, and Nic Vincent’s lighting, which brightens to involve those present in Jane’s queries.)We know Shakespeare’s behavior is sexist, so why didn’t Monahon address her critiques directly to the men onstage, in true, anachronistic fashion?Not all is lost, however. Monahon is clearly a gifted comedy writer, and a sweet stage presence, too. She shows up, late in the play, as Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare’s neglected wife. Monahon giddily mines comparisons between her character’s earnestness and her modern namesake, and her sharp writing blends Shakespearean lowbrow humor with contemporary concerns. Under the direction of Jess Chayes, the production has a liveliness that the exceptional cast runs away with, delivering Monahon’s mile-a-minute gags with zest.Jane AngerThrough March 26 at the New Ohio Theater, Manhattan; newohiotheatre.org. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      ‘Cabaret,’ Starring Eddie Redmayne, Leads Olivier Award Nominees

      by

      A revival of the 1966 musical, with Jessie Buckley as Sally Bowles, is up for 11 awards at Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.LONDON — A revival of “Cabaret” that has been a topic of conversation here for its sky-high ticket prices as much as its stellar cast dominated the nominations for this year’s Olivier Awards — Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys — that were announced on Tuesday.The musical secured 11 nominations including a nod for best musical revival, as well as for best actor and actress in a musical for its stars Eddie Redmayne and Jessie Buckley.Its prominence was perhaps unsurprising given the acclaim “Cabaret” has received since opening last December in a production that transforms the West End’s Playhouse Theater into a seedy nightclub straight out of 1920s Berlin.Audiences enter the show through the theater’s backstage corridors, and can even have a preshow meal once inside, partly explaining why tickets cost up to 325 British pounds (or about $420).Matt Wolf, reviewing the show for The New York Times, called it “nerve-shredding” for its portrayal of a world on the verge of Nazism. Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph called it “2021’s kill-for-a-ticket theatrical triumph,” suggesting readers “dig like your life depended on it into your pockets” to pay for a ticket.Even with such praise, “Cabaret” faces stiff competition in the musical categories, especially from a revival of Kathleen Marshall’s 2011 Broadway production of “Anything Goes” at the Barbican, which secured nine nominations including for best musical revival and a best actress nomination for Sutton Foster as Reno Sweeney. Foster won a Tony in 2011 for the same role.Sutton Foster has been nominated for an Olivier for her role in “Anything Goes.”Peter Nicholls/ReutersIn the nonmusical categories, the nominations are led by “Life of Pi,” Lolita Chakrabarti’s adaptation of Yann Martel’s best-selling novel telling the story of a boy stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger. That play, at Wyndham’s Theater, has secured nine nods, including a best supporting actor nomination for the seven puppeteers who bring the tiger to life.“Life of Pi” was also nominated for best new play, where it is up against “2:22: A Ghost Story,” a haunted-house thriller that was at the Noël Coward Theater, “Cruise,” a tale set in London’s Soho in the ’80s (that was at the Duchess Theater), and “Best of Enemies,” James Graham’s play about the rancorous 1968 TV debates between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal that was at the Young Vic.One of the most highly contested categories is likely to be best actress in a play, where Cush Jumbo is nominated for her performance as Hamlet at the Young Vic Jumbo is up against Emma Corrin, nominated for her role in “ANNA X” at the Harold Pinter Theater, the singer Lily Allen for “2:22: A Ghost Story” and Sheila Atim for a revival of “Constellations,” at the Vaudeville Theater.The winners will be announced in a ceremony at the Royal Albert Hall in London on Apr. 10. More

    • 100 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Interview: Exploring far flung lands with Lulu Raczka

      by

      Writer Lulu Raczka on reworking of the classic Gulliver’s Travels for a new younger audience

      The Unicorn Theatre is inviting us on an epic, exciting adventure for ages 7+ this Easter, in the somewhat surreal world of Gulliver’s Travels. This production is a radical reimagining of Jonathan Swift’s 1726 satirical novel. Just like in the original we get to look at our world from new perspectives, but now we have a whole host of new and interesting ways to do so. Everything Theatre asked writer Lulu Raczka tell us a bit more about what to expect.

      So Lulu, in this production Lemuel Gulliver is recast from an 18th-century, average man, who encounters strange lands and peculiar people after being shipwrecked, to a 21st-century girl who desperately wants to escape her home life. They seem radically different. How can such an old novel give insight into our modern world?

      Jonathan Swift wrote a book in which a man travels through multiple societies that are very different from his, and from which he is very different. Some value intellect above all, some strength: in some Gulliver is giant and powerful, in some tiny and insignificant. All of these different societies make us reflect on our own – what do we value, and what should we value? And what’s our place within the world? Are we powerful? And if we are, what do we do with that power? Though the specifics are different, the fundamental questions Swift asks are as important in the 21st Century as they were in the 18th. In terms of making Gulliver a teenage girl, we thought that as anyone can ask these big questions, and everyone should, why not make our Gulliver more reflect the young people we were making the show for?

      Are you still planning to take your audience to new and extraordinary places, like in the book, seeing the world differently?

      We have been very ambitious, and tried to put most of the book on stage! So through the unbelievable talent of the cast and design team, we’ll see Gulliver be giant amongst the Lilliputians, be tiny in Brobdingnag, chat to the mathematicians and scientists in Laputa, and be the only human amongst the Houyhnhnms, the sentient horses. Hopefully after this, the audience will see the world a little differently!

      You have a great team of creatives on board and I’m particularly excited to experience the sound design by the amazing Ringham brothers. How has it been working with such diverse talents? Have you found new possibilities have emerged from these interesting collaborations?

      The show would never have been possible without such close collaboration with the design team, most of whom have been on board since the first morning of the first workshop. Though it’s always true that collaboration is necessary to create great theatre, usually the script is written first, with the design teams hired later; and sometimes the writer doesn’t interact with the design team at all. This couldn’t happen here. Jaz and I needed to know what was actually possible, so before a word was written we were planning with Rosie, Jess, Ben, Max and Jack, and now continue that with Owen, Josh and Jack. This is such a great way to work – and I hope I’ll be able to do it more in the future!

      The show was delayed for ages by the pandemic, so it must feel great to be finally getting it on stage. Has it changed much since it was originally devised? Has anything unexpected emerged from the pause?

      It hasn’t changed that much really, except for one scene. There’s a section in the book in which Gulliver interacts with famous people from the past, and so in our show, our Gulliver talks to Winston Churchill. The scene was always condemning him, but the conversations that have occurred in the last few years about racism, and how we discuss it, made us rethink how we went about condemning him. It’s not a massive change, but a very important one.

      We’re promised laughter, playfulness and invention, all of which are great reasons to see the show, but apart from being a fun entertainment for the Easter hols, is this a production that challenges young audiences to think about particular themes?

      I think underneath all the silliness there’s some pretty big themes. The book asks big questions about how we relate to the world around us, and about the kind of world we want to live in, and I hope our show has brought these thoughts alive. In our show we’ve added a framing device of Gulliver entering the world of the book to escape a difficult situation at home, so we’re also asking questions about the function of storytelling, and the place of imagination.

      What do you hope that the audience members will take away from their experience?

      I hope they think about all the big ideas, but I also hope they have fun on the bus home wondering what they’d do if they were really, really tiny.

      Thanks so much to Lulu for taking time to chat with us. We’ll be reviewing the play soon, so watch this space to find out more about it!

      Gulliver’s Travels is a Unicorn Production, and is playing now until Saturday 16 April. Tickets start from £8 for under 18s, and £14 for adults. Further information and booking via the below link. More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      The Flea Theater, Experimenting Again, Walks a New Tightrope

      by

      Back from the brink of extinction, the Off Off Broadway fixture is testing a new structure that gives artists the autonomy they demanded.Since its inception in the mid-1990s, the Flea Theater has positioned itself as a haven for experimentation, an unpretentious home for risk-taking and for young actors eager to get their start.But for years, discontent simmered beneath the surface.Actors were frustrated by the fact that the theater asked for lots of work with no pay; Black artists felt mistreated even while working on shows meant to center Black experiences; artists felt exploited, intimidated, voiceless.In 2020, the bad feelings bubbled over when an actress who had performed at the Flea, Bryn Carter, published a letter detailing her experiences, pointing out what she described as elitist, racist and soul-crushing encounters and attitudes.When the reckoning at the organization collided with the pandemic shutdown, the survival of the Flea became uncertain.“What we’re doing is driven by our mission,” said the Flea’s artistic director, Niegel Smith, right, with Hao Bai, the show’s lighting, projection and sound designer.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesBut now, the Off Off Broadway nonprofit theater is fighting to come back — this time with a new hybrid structure built to give complete artistic autonomy to a group of writers, directors and actors that has spoken out against the old Flea. That group, now known as the Fled Collective, is being given funding by the Flea to stage its own programming in the theater’s TriBeCa space. In addition, the Flea will produce shows of its own, but now all actors will be paid and there will be a focus on work by “Black, brown and queer artists.”The first Flea-produced show at the theater in two years, “Arden — But, Not Without You,” took the stage last month and just extended its run.But major challenges, chiefly financial, remain. When the organization’s longtime producing director, Carol Ostrow — a target of much of the criticism — retired following calls for her ouster, about half of the Flea’s board members followed her out the door. The departures resulted in a loss of trustee donations and fund-raising that depleted the organization’s $1.5 million budget by about a third, said Niegel Smith, the organization’s artistic director.Dolores Avery Pereira, a leader of the Fled Collective, which is trying to build a new future within the reconfigured Flea, said she is not discouraged.“I believe that the money will come,” she said. “I choose my artistic freedom every time.”When the Flea was born in 1996, the founders, who included the theater couple Jim Simpson and Sigourney Weaver, viewed it as a passionately edgy alternative to the commercial imperatives of Broadway.From its beginnings, the Flea was seen by aspiring actors as a place they could exercise their talents without needing to present a long résumé or a fancy degree at the door.“If you didn’t go to Juilliard or Yale or Brown, this was a place you could start,” said Adam Coy, a Fled leader who joined the Bats, the Flea’s resident acting company, in 2017.The first Flea-produced show at the theater in two years, “Arden — But, Not Without You,” during rehearsals in January.Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe new iteration of the Flea pushes the parameters of that kind of experiment a good bit further in its effort to dismantle traditional hierarchies — think autocratic impresarios — that have long ruled over theater spaces. In its push to democratize the production of works, the Flea is echoing the sorts of demands heard in theater communities across the country over the past two years as the pandemic’s threats to the industry and urgent calls for racial equity have spurred collective organizing among artists.But to pull it off under new financial constraints, the Flea’s leaders have had to reckon with the reality that its output may not match what it had been in the past, especially now that all actors will be paid. (In March 2020, for example, the Flea had 13 employees; it currently has two.)“We do a whole lot less now, and we’ll probably do a whole lot less for a long time,” said Smith, who is one of few Black artistic directors at New York City theaters. “But at least what we’re doing is driven by our mission.”The issue of pay for actors had been kicking around the Flea for years. Some recalled receiving no payment except a single stipend of $25 or $75 after spending weeks in rehearsals, on top of a requirement to spend several hours a month doing unpaid labor around the theater.The issue became particularly frustrating to actors when the Flea opened a new three-theater performing arts complex in TriBeCa which cost an estimated $25 million in 2017. As the Flea was transitioning to the new building, the phrase “pay the Bats” appeared written on the walls of its old theater, said Jack Horton Gilbert, who had been a member of the Bats for about five years. Beyond the question of surviving in New York, the lack of pay focused attention, critics said, on the demographics of who could afford to work for free.Leaders of the Flea have said that, going forward, they intend to employ a more democratic vision of artistic creation that gives actors, writers and other creatives greater voice in productions. Nina Westervelt for The New York Times“By not paying actors, the diversity of the company suffers because the people who can actually be around and invest are privileged,” Carter, who had been part of the Bats troupe, wrote in her June 2020 letter. “Many actors of color have not felt welcome or safe in your doors.”Much of Carter’s criticism was directed at Ostrow, who she said had mistreated her, generally was patronizing toward Black creatives and did “not know how to speak to Black people.” Once, she said, Ostrow had touched her hair without permission. Another time, she said, Ostrow had mixed up a Black lead actor and her understudy.Flea leaders apologized. Ostrow wrote Carter in June 2020 to say that she was “accountable for the behavior that you describe” and was “deeply sorry.”Later that month, a group of artists with the Flea posted a letter on social media condemning the theater for, among other things, creating a culture of “intimidation and fear.” The letter cited a case in which Black artists who took issue with a “trauma-centered” season of works about race were told, the critics said, that they could be replaced; it also repeated the concerns about expecting actors to work for free.“We have seen these same artists paid to cater your events and galas, rather than for their creative work,” the letter said.Members of the Fled Collective met in the Flea Theater in TriBeCa to plan their first season.Christopher Garofalo In response, the Flea’s leadership declared it would pay all artists for their work and said the theater needed to “reckon with the intersection of racism, sexism and pay inequity.”Later that year, the artists’ collective delivered demands to the Flea’s board, which included involving artists of color in planning the season, making sure there was board representation from their ranks and getting rid of Ostrow.In November 2020, Ostrow, who had been working without a salary for years, announced her retirement. Soon after that, five members of the board resigned, Smith said, resulting in a loss of about $475,000 in annual contributions. (Ostrow and her husband, the board member Michael Graff, had been major funders: the couple was listed as having donated more than $500,000 to the Flea’s new building.)Neither Ostrow nor her husband responded to requests for comment.Relations only soured further when the board, in what it said was a cost-saving measure, decided to dissolve its resident artist programs, including the Bats, infuriating the artists’ collective that had worked for months to try to shape an organization that they would be willing to return to.In a statement posted to social media, the artist group, now operating as the Fled, made a bold appeal to the Flea to “hand over the keys.” In a statement to New York Magazine days later, Simpson and Weaver threw their support behind the idea.Later on, Smith shocked Pereira when he told her that he and the board would be willing to explore actually transferring the property in TriBeCa to the Fled.Artwork by Carrie Mae Weems, one of the creators of “Arden,” in the rehearsal space. Nina Westervelt for The New York TimesThe agreement that was actually struck was more modest, but still extraordinary. The Flea, which continues on as a nonprofit, will still own the building. But the Fled, which is made up of about 100 artists, will operate there under a three-year residency, whose costs will be underwritten in part by the Flea. The theater will also provide production and marketing support.Separately, the Flea is producing its own content, like “Arden,” which was funded by a collection of grants. “Arden” includes sculpture and video by the visual artist Carrie Mae Weems, music by the multi-hyphenate artist Diana Oh, as well as improvisational song by the choreographer Okwui Okpokwasili and the designer and director Peter Born.Smith’s own segment of the show addresses the Flea’s recent turmoil head on, something he felt was necessary to do in the first work under the Flea’s new mandate.Wearing a white robe and no shirt, Smith walks around the stage of the small black-box theater in a ritualistic trance, muttering — and eventually shouting — the phrase “this place is fraught.”“This place has held oppressive structures fueled by coercion and ambition,” he says in the show.Some artists say they are still skeptical that an organization with the same artistic director can truly start anew. Others are simply uninterested in performing, or even sitting in the audience, at the Flea again after their personal experiences there.“I just moved on from wanting to be involved in any way in that space,” Carter said, noting that she nonetheless supports the Fled’s work.The leaders of the Fled, which plans to host its first developmental workshop at the Flea in May for a play by Liz Morgan, are unsure whether it will go beyond the three-year contract. The goal right now is to hold the Flea to the promises it has made and to create a model for an effective artist-led theater collective, said Raz Golden, one of the Fled’s leaders.“It hasn’t been easy,” Pereira said. “But it’s a relief to be at the art-making part.”Kirsten Noyes contributed research. More

    • 125 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      Tony Walton, Award-Winning Stage and Screen Designer, Dies at 87

      by

      He worked with the directors Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning three Tony Awards and an Oscar for “All That Jazz.”Tony Walton, a production designer who brought a broad visual imagination to the creation of distinct onstage looks for Broadway shows over a half-century, earning him three Tony Awards, died on Wednesday at his home in Manhattan. He was 87.His daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, whose mother is Julie Andrews, said the cause was complications of a stroke.In more than 50 Broadway productions, Mr. Walton collaborated on designing the sets (and sometimes, the costumes) with directors like Mike Nichols, Bob Fosse and Jerry Zaks, winning Tonys for “Pippin,” “The House of Blue Leaves” and “Guys and Dolls.”He also worked in film, where he shared the Oscar for the art and set decoration of Mr. Fosse’s “All That Jazz” (1979); years earlier, Mr. Walton designed the interior sets and the costumes for “Mary Poppins” (1964), starring Ms. Andrews, to whom he was then married.Mr. Walton’s television work included “Death of Salesman” (1985), which starred Dustin Hoffman, Kate Reid and John Malkovich, for which he won an Emmy.Before the opening of his final Broadway show, “A Tale of Two Cities,” in 2008, Mr. Walton described his process of conceiving a production’s design.“These days, I try to read the script or listen to the score as if it were a radio show and not allow myself to have a rush of imagery,” he told Playbill. “Then, after meeting with the director — and, if I’m lucky, the writer — and whatever input they may want to give, I try to imagine what I see as if it were slowly being revealed by a pool of light.”Mr. Walton with Julie Andrews and their daughter, Emma, in 1963.Associated PressDonald Albrecht, the curator of an exhibition of Mr. Walton’s theater and film work at the Museum of the Moving Image in 1989, told The New York Times in 1992: “He never puts a Walton style on top of the material. He comes from within the work out.”Mr. Walton worked with Mr. Zaks on many Broadway shows, including “Guys and Dolls,” a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” and “Anything Goes.”“I started directing because I liked working with actors,” Mr. Zaks said in a phone interview. “I had no appreciation for what a set could for a production. Tony pushed me to visualize the different possibilities that might be used to create a set.”For the 1986 revival of John Guare’s “The House of Blue Leaves,” about a family in Sunnyside, Queens, on the day Pope Paul VI visited New York City in 1965, Mr. Zaks recalled what Mr. Guare wrote in the actor’s edition of the play.“He referred to Manhattan as Oz to the people who lived in Queens,” Mr. Zaks said, “and out of that he came up with a set that always had Manhattan in the distance.”In his review in The New York Times, Frank Rich described the impact of Mr. Walton’s set as a “Stuart Davis-like collage in which the Shaughnessys’ vulgar domestic squalor is hemmed in by the urbanscape’s oppressive brand-name signs.”Four years later, Mr. Zaks added: “I said, ‘Tony, we could do ‘Six Degrees of Separation’ with two sofas and a Kandinsky.’ He said, ‘Trust that, believe that,’ and he made me a better director.”The double-sided Kandinsky hung over the two red sofas on the stage in the play by Mr. Guare, about a mysterious young Black con man.Anthony John Walton was born on Oct, 24, 1934, in Walton-on-Thames, England. His father, Lancelot, was an orthopedic surgeon. His mother, Hilda (Drew) Walton was a homemaker.Ann Reinking in the 1979 film “All That Jazz.” Mr. Walton shared the Oscar for art and set decoration on the film.Museum of Modern Art Film Stills ArchiveHe traced his love of theater to a night during World War II when he was 5 or 6. His parents had just seen the musical “Me and My Girl,” he said in the Playbill interview, and “they had paper hats and little hooters — and had obviously had a few bubbles to cheer them along the way — and they woke my sister and me up and taught us ‘The Lambeth Walk.’”His interest in the theater blossomed at Radley College, which is near Oxfordshire, where he acted, directed and put on marionette shows. After serving in the Royal Air Force in Canada, he studied art and design at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. While there, he was a part-time actor and stagehand at the Wimbledon Theater.After graduating in 1955, he moved to Manhattan where he got a job sketching caricatures for Playbill. His first significant theater project in the United States was an Off Broadway revival of the Noël Coward musical, “Conversation Piece” in 1957.Four years later, after commuting to London where he designed productions for various shows, he was hired for his first Broadway play, “Once There Was a Russian,” set in 18th-century Crimea; it closed on opening night.His next show, the original production of “A Funny Thing,” ran for more than two years, and used his idea to project various sky images onto a curved screen across the stage.For the next 47 years, he toggled between musicals, comedies and dramas like a 1973 Broadway revival of Anton Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.” For one of its stars, Lillian Gish, he had designed an eggplant-colored dress that she rejected, telling him that “Russian peasants only wore beautiful pastel colors,” according to Ms. Walton Hamilton. “He said, ‘Of course, Miss Gish,’” she said, then he had it dyed one shade darker with each subsequent cleaning.On the set of “The House of Blue Leaves” at the Lincoln Center Theater in 1986. From left: Christine Baranski, Swoosie Kurtz and John Mahoney.Brigitte LacombeIn the 1990s, he began directing at the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan, the Old Globe Theater in San Diego, the Goodspeed Opera House in East Haddam, Conn., and the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor in New York, which his daughter helped found. At Bay Street, he was also the production designer of a 2003 revival of “The Boy Friend,” which was Ms. Andrews’s directorial debut.Mr. Walton also illustrated the 12 children’s books about Dumpy the Dump Truck, and “The Great American Mousical,” that were written by Ms. Andrews and Ms. Walton Hamilton.“Tony was my dearest and oldest friend,” Ms. Andrews, who met Mr. Walton when she was 12 and he was 13, said in a statement. “He taught me to see the world with fresh eyes, and his talent was simply monumental.”In addition to his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Genevieve LeRoy-Walton; his stepdaughter, Bridget LeRoy; five grandchildren; his sisters, Jennifer Gosney and Carol Hall; and his brother, Richard.In 1989, Mr. Zaks recalled being uncertain about the type of hotel for the setting for the farce “Lend Me a Tenor.” Mr. Walton sketched one that had a Victorian style, then another, more compelling one, with an Art Deco design.“The beauty of the Art Deco sketch just blew me away,” he said, “and I knew right away that when things got amok onstage, when people started slamming doors within a beautiful piece of Art Deco architecture, it would be much funnier.” More

    • 100 Shares179 Views

      in Theater

      Interview: 50 Years of the Orange Tree Theatre

      by

      Laura Irwin, Curator of Richmond Museum’s exhibition celebrating Fifty Years of the Orange Tree Theatre

      So Laura, this exhibition celebrates 50 years of the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond. Can you tell us a bit about how it came about?

      It was really the brainchild of one of the Museum’s former Trustees, who is also a Patron of the Orange Tree Theatre. I began in post this time last year when sadly both organisations were closed to the public due to the pandemic, so when they reopened after the best part of 18 months it seemed a really good opportunity to celebrate the resilience of cultural institutions like ours.

      The more I worked on the exhibition, the more I discovered the similarities between our two organisations. Not only are we two independent charitable and cultural institutions in Richmond, but I realised how theatres and museums as places are alike in being intrinsically tied to physical space, physical objects and physical interaction. There’s a sense of the here and now, with an emphasis on ‘the real thing’; the authentic.

      We conducted around twenty oral history interviews with a selection of writers, actors, directors, staff and people involved at the Orange Tree over the years, and this greatly informed the exhibition’s content. Some of these people were there from the very beginning such as Sam Walters and Auriol Smith, who founded the theatre in 1971. Others have been involved more recently such as the actors Liz Heery and Peter Davison, who are Orange Tree Ambassadors and Youth Theatre parents.

      Richmond has a long history of theatres, but the Orange Tree is unique in being in the round. Have you discovered other significant features about it through your research? 

      From the interviews, there’s been an overwhelming sense of the Orange Tree as a family institution, and in particular an extension of Sam and Auriol’s living room! Staff members are incredibly affectionate, and many have done every single job going, above and beyond the call of duty; maybe being roped in as an extra at the last minute, or sourcing a grand piano for that same evening. Often staff have stayed much longer than they originally thought they would.

      The Orange Tree is actually said to be London’s only permanent theatre in the round, and that format stems from the theatre’s origins in a room above the Orange Tree pub, which first hosted its initial incarnation as the ‘Richmond Fringe’. The round space really lends itself to a sense of togetherness, intimacy and community, and from the very beginning in that pub room the audience were able to be very close to the actors and stage, just as they are today. The Orange Tree’s Artistic Director, Paul Miller, describes this gathering together as like the oldest form of storytelling, going back centuries.

      The Theatre has a reputation as a ‘writer’s theatre’, with the focus often on the text itself in productions, so staging and costume are generally pared back to let the script shine through. It’s especially well known for the combination of reviving old and forgotten plays, from writers such as Harley Granville Barker and Terence Rattigan, whilst championing new writers like Martin Crimp or Vaclav Havel, and more recently the acclaimed modern playwrights Alistair McDowall and Zoe Cooper.

      Tell me a bit about the founding of the Orange Tree in that pub room, and what changes it has had over 50 years.

      ‘Richmond Fringe’ as it was then known founded was in 1971 by Sam Walters and his wife Auriol Smith. Sam was an actor and director, and Auriol an actress. They felt the need for a local, independent theatre venue outside of the West End and invited theatrical friends and former colleagues to help choose a suitable space. The group went on a pub crawl – well, two actually! – to find it, and eventually settled upon the upstairs room of the Orange Tree pub. And it really was just a room, with no stage, no backstage space, no seating or any of the normal trappings. Without artificial lighting, shows were performed at lunchtime in the daylight, and very nearly in the round.

      During my research I came across the now infamous story of the company’s first performance, Go Tell It on Table Mountain. Sam and friends had been expecting a handful of audience members to show up, but there were over 100 waiting to get in to the first performance, so he had to ask them to go for a pint in the pub downstairs and come back later, when they would perform it again. Shows were regularly oversubscribed from then on, with queues around the block and everyone clamouring to get in

      The first big change came in 1975 with a refurbishment to the pub. It became a licensed theatre, with fire exits, church pews and an office-cum-dressing room. Later, in 1991, they moved to the current venue, and formally established the space as in the round.

      Sam Walters retired in 2014 after 42 years at the helm, by which time he was longest-serving Artistic Director of a British Theatre. But Paul Miller then arrived and put his own stamp on things: some brave new productions such as Pomona and An Octoroon were incredibly successful and perhaps brought in a new crowd. The theatre’s ethos remained, however, with its focus on writing, the in the round format, and community.

      It’s not all been easy going though. The theatre lost all its Arts Council funding on Paul Miller’s very first day, so that was challenging! When the pandemic hit, the theatre really had to draw on its creativity, introducing live-streaming shows and then offering productions for socially-distanced audiences once it re-opened.

      You are going to be talking to the Richmond Local History Society about the exhibition next month, in conversation with Paul Miller. This sounds like a great opportunity to extend the reach of the Orange Tree’s story! How does it feel bringing local heritage and a leading edge, contemporary performance space under the same umbrella? 

      Great! We have a lot of similarities and this a wonderful opportunity to crossover our audiences, some of whom may not have visited the other venue. Interestingly, we discovered in interviews about the Orange Tree’s heritage that the Museum’s current location was for a short time even considered as a potential new venue for the theatre in the late 80s, and their offices were, for a while, across the road from the Museum in one of the buildings I can see from my office, so we have close historic ties too!

      Is it fair to say that both the Museum and the Theatre play important roles in the community?

      Absolutely, and they are just natural partners. The theatre was really pioneering in community work, setting up an education and participation programme back in the early 80s. They took musicals into old people’s homes for singalongs, and in 1982 one of its trainee directors Antony Clark set up workshops to bring Shakespeare into schools. This is still done as Primary Shakespeare, for pupils who may never have been to the theatre before. It also has its Youth Theatre, which is going strong.

      The Orange Tree had to raise £750,000 in the late 80s/early 90s in order to move into its current home, and it’s a testament to its place in the local community that this was achieved through raffles, fundraisers and donations.

      Similarly the Museum offers the community a chance to learn about its local history and see real objects. We run family workshops, outreach activities like talks, handling objects and summer fairs, as well as being supported by a team of around 25 volunteers, most of whom are locals.

      Together we are running a learning and community programme to accompany the exhibition including curator tours, family workshops in school holidays involving storytelling and Arts Award summer schools where students will have chance to visit behind the scenes at the Orange Tree before participating in arts and crafts activities at the Museum.

      There are so many different artefacts, images and interviews in the exhibition; do you have any favourites?

      The incredibly realistic rabbit’s head from An Octoroon and the Cthulhu mask from Pomona are both extraordinary artefacts, and it’s exciting to have them here, not just because they are so cool, but also because it’s not every day that we get to display something like them in the Museum’s showcases.

      I was particular happy to find a few images from The Room at the pub in its early days, complete with church pews, ‘do not disturb’ signs and makeshift storage. And then the interviews are all so fascinating, particularly those with behind the scenes staff like the Technical Manager and Wardrobe Supervisor, and a former Theatre Manager talking about how ‘the show must go on’; sewing hems at midnight, converting the stage to a swimming pool, a garden and growing real flowers onstage, trying to find enough seats to cram as many people in as possible.

      We’ve also had some wonderful memories about audience interaction from Sam Walters and the actress Clare Moody, which are well worth a listen.

      The exhibition is running until 31 August – will there be a life for it afterwards? 

      We have just released an online version, which will give it a whole new life, beyond the physical collection, and importantly will give further access, allowing people to listen to the interviews from home.

      There’s a possibility that the Royal Holloway Archives, where the Orange Tree Theatre’s archive material is currently kept, will be able to acquire audio interviews. All the material they hold will eventually all be catalogued, digitised and made available online for future researchers

      And our fabulous partnership with the theatre will, of course, continue. The Orange Tree are running their 50th anniversary season throughout the year, so check out their website for plays and events.

      Many thanks to Laura for taking the time to chat with us.

      The Museum of Richmond’s Exhibition OT50: Fifty Years of the Orange Tree Theatre runs until 31 August and is free to attend. https://www.museumofrichmond.com/whats-on/

      It is also available online here.

      Laura Irwin will be in conversation with Artistic Director Paul Miller for the Richmond Local History Society on Monday 14 March. Tickets are free to members, and non-members can pay £5 to attend. Book via the below button. More