Theater

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares139 Views

      in Theater

      Arthur Kopit, Whose ‘Oh Dad’ Shook Up the Theater, Dies at 83

      by

      A three-time Tony nominee, he first became known for avant-garde works, many of them christened with rambling titles, that sparked spirited reactions.Arthur Kopit, the avant-garde playwright who thrust Off Broadway into a new era with the absurdist satirical farce “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad” and earned Tony Award nominations for two wildly different plays, “Indians” and “Wings,” and the musical “Nine,” died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 83.His death was announced by a spokesman, Rick Miramontez, who did not specify the cause.In 1962, when “Oh Dad, Poor Dad” opened at the 300-seat Phoenix Theater on East 74th Street, American popular culture was shifting. Julie Andrews was between the idealistic “Camelot” and the wholesome “Mary Poppins”; Lenny Bruce, the hot comic of the moment, was known for what came to be called “sick humor.” Broadway was dominated by “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” and “A Man for All Seasons.”Along came a 24-year-old playwright with a script about an older woman who liked traveling with her virginal adult son and her husband’s preserved corpse. The New York Times critic, Howard Taubman, had reservations — he called it “funny” and “stageworthy” but “nonsensical” — but it won the Drama Desk Award (then the Vernon Rice Award) and even transferred to Broadway for a few months in 1963.There was often vehement disagreement about Mr. Kopit’s work. Before “Indians” (1969) — a dreamlike production that positioned Buffalo Bill Cody as the first guilty white American liberal and prominently featured his 19th-century Wild West show — arrived on Broadway, there was a production in London, where critical reaction was decidedly mixed. The script included the rape of one Native American and the casual murder (for sport) of another.Clive Barnes, writing in The Times, called the Broadway production, starring Stacy Keach, “a gentle triumph” and praised Mr. Kopit for “trying to do something virtually no one has done before: the multilinear epic.” But Walter Kerr, his Times colleague, compared it to “bad burlesque.”John Lahr, writing in The Village Voice, summarized “Indians” as “never less than scintillating” and called it the “most probing and the most totally theatrical Broadway play of this decade.” “Indians” received three Tony nominations, including for best play.Mr. Kopit professed a very specific social conscience. “I’m not concerned in the play with the terrible plight of the Indians now — they were finished from the moment the first white man arrived,” he told a London newspaper in 1968. “What I want to show is a series of confrontations between two alien systems.” Many saw parallels to the Vietnam War, then at its peak.When Mr. Kopit returned to Broadway a decade later, his subject could not have been more different. “Wings,” which opened at the Public Theater in 1978 and moved to Broadway the next year, followed the journey of a 70-year-old woman (played by Constance Cummings) having a stroke and reacting to it with fear, determination and kaleidoscopic verbal confusion. As The Washington Post reported, when the main character is asked to repeat the sentence “We live across the street from the school,” she replies, “Malacats on the forturay are the kesterfacts of the romancers.”Mr. Kopit in 1999. “When I wrote a play,” he once said, “I found that I lost myself as Arthur Kopit and I just wrote down what the characters said.”Jack Mitchell/Getty ImagesRichard Eder of The Times called “Wings,” which had been inspired by the post-stroke rehabilitation experiences of Mr. Kopit’s stepfather, “a brilliant work” — “complex at first glance,” he wrote, “yet utterly lucid, written with great sensitivity and with the excitement of a voyage of discovery.”The play was nominated for three Tonys. Ms. Cummings won the Tony and Drama Desk awards for best actress and an Obie for her performance.Mr. Kopit discovered his gift for writing plays almost by accident. In a 2007 interview with The Harvard Gazette, the official news outlet of his alma mater, he looked back at his initial reaction when he switched from short stories to scripts. “I was having a lot of trouble with the narrative point of view,” he recalled. “When I wrote a play, I found that I lost myself as Arthur Kopit and I just wrote down what the characters said. I wasn’t anywhere in the play, and I liked that.”Arthur Lee Koenig was born on May 10, 1937, in Manhattan, the son of Henry Koenig, an advertising salesman, and Maxine (Dubin) Koenig. His parents divorced when he was 2, and his mother’s occupation was listed in the 1940 census as millinery model. He took on his stepfather’s name after his mother married George Kopit, a jewelry sales executive.Arthur grew up and attended high school in Lawrence, an affluent Long Island community. He was already writing by the time he left Harvard in 1959 with an engineering degree. As he began a graduate fellowship in Europe, he heard about a Harvard playwriting contest. He wrote, entered and won the $250 prize with “Oh Dad,” which he said he never believed had any commercial potential.Mr. Kopit was at first fond of wordy, rambling titles. “Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma’s Hung You in the Closet and I’m Feelin’ So Sad” even had a subtitle: “A Pseudo-Classical Tragifarce in a Bastard French Tradition.” He followed that success with a collection of one-acts, including “The Day the Whores Came Out to Play Tennis,” set at a suburban country club. “On the Runway of Life, You Never Know What’s Coming Off Next” was another early work.His last Tony nomination was for the book of the musical “Nine” (1982), based on Federico Fellini’s film “8½.” That same year, he adapted the book of Ibsen’s “Ghosts” for a Broadway revival. More

    • 138 Shares149 Views

      in Theater

      What Makes ‘Follies’ a Classic? 7 Answers and 1 Big Problem.

      by

      Fifty years ago, Stephen Sondheim and James Goldman exploded the Broadway “concept” musical by conjuring the bittersweet reunion of aging showgirls.It was supposed to be a murder mystery: two couples, four motives, one gun. What it became was a different kind of mystery entirely: a musical that got prominent pans, alienated much of its audience and lost most of its investment — yet survived.Not only is “Follies,” which opened on Broadway on April 4, 1971, still here 50 years later, trailing a string of revivals, revisals and gala concerts, but it is also now recognized as the high-water mark of the serious “concept” musical, that genre in which form and function are brought into the tightest possible alignment. The score, by Stephen Sondheim, is a marvel and a minefield of layered meanings. The sets make comments. And in the original staging, by Harold Prince and Michael Bennett, even frivolity had to serve a purpose.Not that there was much frivolity in James Goldman’s script; the gun disappeared but the two couples were still floridly dysfunctional. Both wives had been showgirls in the Weismann (think Ziegfeld) Follies at the end of its run of annual extravaganzas in the years between the World Wars. Both had been in love with Ben, a Stage Door Johnny with big ambitions. But Phyllis was smart enough to nab him; they are now wealthy, unhappy sophisticates. Sally — romantic, conventional — got Ben’s feckless pal Buddy; never for one moment in the 30 ensuing years has she been happy with the trade-off.Ghostly showgirls wander through the ruins of a theater in the 2017 London revival.Johan PerssonDuring a Follies reunion at the decrepit Weismann Theater, on the night before it will be razed to make room for a parking lot, the two couples meet up and promptly disintegrate. As they do, their past selves appear alongside them as living characters. At the same time, former stars of the Follies relive memories and stumble through old numbers, magically ventriloquized from Broadway’s past in the Sondheim songs.As the ghosts crowd in, the couples’ tangled history is unearthed, bringing them to the point of a group nervous breakdown in the form of a 30-minute mini-“Follies” of their own. To see them collapse, dissolving into a fantasy world accompanied by a Golden Age score, is to see American optimism collapse along with them.But its big canvas is not the only reason “Follies” remains important. (See seven more reasons, and a caveat, below.) In its seriousness and cleverness, in its matching of style to substance, in its use of a medium to comment on itself, it has hardly ever been bettered. In any case, ambitious musical theater would never be the same; we would not have “Fun Home” or “Hamilton” or “Dear Evan Hansen” without “Follies” hovering behind them, the most beautiful ghost of all.1. A requiem for nostalgiaThe ensemble of older actors with their younger counterparts hovering above in the 2001 Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times “Follies” is about two lousy marriages. Mucking around among their mind games and betrayals, it more readily recalls midcentury drama than anything in the musical canon. (Imagine “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” staged by Busby Berkeley.) But it’s also about the lousy marriage of American ideals and American reality, a union of near opposites polished and preserved by the shellac of nostalgia.The brilliant concept was to use the two stories to inform each other, letting the Faulknerian past that is “not even past” intrude upon the present. So Sally’s ghost makes love to Ben while his makes love to her; later, she sings a torch song that sounds as if it’s from 1941. The reunion, if it reunifies one couple, destroys another. Even the songs we love are dangerous. That paradox is crystallized in “One More Kiss,” warbled by an ancient Viennese soprano while her younger self casually tosses off its coloratura. “Never look back,” the lyric warns. “Follies” is what happens if you do.2. In praise of older womenThe ghosts of Follies past that live in the theater had to be both ethereal and imposing. Casting was done among Las Vegas showgirls who were already six feet tall before their enormous headdresses turned them into giants. Even so, a Who Was Who of middle-aged and older women stole the show: Dorothy Collins, 44; Mary McCarty, 47; Yvonne De Carlo, 48; Alexis Smith, 49; Fifi D’Orsay, 66; and Ethel Shutta, 74, among them. Though cast for the kick of nostalgia their names elicited, they made survival itself seem vital and sexy, as Smith’s high-stepping Time magazine cover demonstrated.3. Copies that improved on the originalsBernadette Peters performing the now-standard “Losing My Mind” in the 2011 Broadway revival.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAll of the performative songs in “Follies” — the ones sung as if they were real numbers from the past — are pastiches, sampling Harold Arlen (“I’m Still Here”), George Gershwin (“Losing My Mind”), Irving Berlin (“Beautiful Girls”), Sigmund Romberg (“One More Kiss”) and many others. With this catch: In almost every case, they are better crafted and richer than their templates. Which makes their salute to the past a wonderfully complicated, and sometimes cruel, gesture.4. A number for the agesTerri White, center, as Stella Deems leading “Who’s That Woman” in 2011 with (from left) Elaine Paige, Florence Lacey, Colleen Fitzpatrick, Jan Maxwell, Peters and Susan Watson.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesStella Deems, an old-school belter, had a specialty “mirror” number in the Follies. Now, at the reunion, she and six alumnae of the chorus line, including Phyllis and Sally, try to perform it, even though the dance (as one of them puts it) “winded me when I was 19.” Soon you see why, as the choreography, which at first involves simple poses and mirroring gestures, turns into an exhausting tap extravaganza, courtesy of Bennett. But the mindblower comes halfway through, when strange shards of spinning light emerge from the dark behind the panting, middle-aged women. These are the ghosts of their former selves: glamazons in mirror-encrusted costumes performing the number tirelessly and perfectly.By the time the real and the remembered choruses merge in a thrilling finale, the idea of mirroring has taken on a larger meaning. “Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord, Lord!” Stella sings in wonder and horror at the person she sees in her looking glass. “That woman is me!”5. ‘I’m Still Here’De Carlo — a movie star of the ’40s and ’50s but Lily Munster to everyone thereafter — had the biggest name in the cast yet one of the smallest roles. She needed a showstopper; the one Sondheim originally wrote wasn’t working. During tryouts in Boston, he replaced it with “I’m Still Here,” a five-minute number that catalogs with tart good spirits a showbiz life (based on Joan Crawford’s) in which you “career from career to career.” It could not have been staged more simply: De Carlo basically just stood downstage and let it rip. Still, it was (and remains, in the many interpretations since) a knockout, driving home the point that long-term professional survival, and maybe emotional survival as well, is often a matter of inoculating oneself with failure.6. The fabulousnessAt $800,000, “Follies” was a very expensive show for its time, but you saw where the money went. Boris Aronson’s set, which exploded into lace and froufrou for the final sequence, was technically complex; Florence Klotz’s costumes were among the most sumptuous seen on a Broadway stage since Ziegfeld himself. And with all the major roles doubled by “ghosts,” the cast was huge: 47 performers, not including understudies and standbys.“Nearly everything that could cause a Broadway musical to go over budget did,” says Ted Chapin, now the president of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization but then Prince’s apprentice — and the author of “Everything Was Possible,” a memoir of that experience. “If it were produced today, I would imagine it would log in at close to $30 million.” Alas, that’s a sum no one would spend on such a chancy show, which means we’ll never see its like again.7. That posterDavid Edward Byrd designed the poster for the original production.PhotofestIn 1971, the graphic artist David Edward Byrd was best known for his rock posters, including one for the original Woodstock and one for Jimi Hendrix. But he’d started designing for theatrical productions as well, and when an “aesthetic argument” led Prince to ditch one of his Art Deco-inspired sketches, Byrd came up with the now-famous face of “Follies”: an impassive beauty with flowing Technicolor hair and a branching crack from chin to brow. (The face was based on Marlene Dietrich’s, in a photo from “Shanghai Express.”) To Byrd, it represented the end of an era, but it also conveyed, with powerful concision, the crackup of an American fantasy of endless tranquillity. And, not incidentally, made a Broadway show seem as cool as Woodstock.8. Then again …“Follies” is brilliant and “Follies” is a mess. It bowls me over perhaps more than any other musical, yet I have never been fully satisfied with it intellectually. Look beneath the unparalleled packaging — the score, costumes, casting, staging — and you find a lot that doesn’t add up. As Frank Rich noted in his 1971 Harvard Crimson review, it’s “a musical about the death of the musical” — a wonderful paradox but one that undermines the experience. If musicals are dead … is this one too?Sometimes — even when Carlotta sings “I’m Still Here” — the vaunted concept seems a bit opaque. (If it’s about her own life, how could it also be her Follies number?) And don’t look too closely at the main characters, either; spouters of self-conscious dialogue, they are only fully believable when they sing. For that, Goldman usually gets the blame — but if so, he should also get credit for providing the armature for everyone else’s epochal achievement. It may be about the death of musicals, but “Follies” pointed the way to bringing them back to life. More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in Theater

      Setting the Stage Once Again for Shakespeare, and Live Theater

      by

      With coronavirus restrictions easing in England, several venues have plans to give classic plays new life.LONDON — Shakespeare is coming back, and I can’t be the only person who has missed him.There are signs of renewed activity at Shakespeare’s Globe, and talk of at least one star-studded production that is, after many delays, scheduled to be performed — can you believe it? — live. This comes after a year of a pandemic that has affected in various ways what has, and hasn’t, been staged, with Shakespeare a particular casualty.Understandably so. Amid a theatrical state of affairs dominated by Zoom and a brief return of live performances of small-scale shows in London that came to an abrupt halt in mid-December, the logistics of Shakespeare have seemed pretty daunting. How do you accommodate a writer whose capacious narratives depend on size, scope and dimension in these strange, socially distanced times? It’s far easier to return to the two-character environs of, say, “Love Letters” or “The Last Five Years,” to name just two titles that could be (and were) easily married to coronavirus rules.A lining of sorts to this bleak cloud came in the form of theatrical archives. With playhouses less inclined to revive Shakespeare, recordings of past productions were made available, giving theater fans a new chance to see or revisit notable performances. Shakespeare’s Globe, the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theater were among the venues in Britain that drew upon a sizable back catalog. The Globe reported an increase of nearly 500 percent in its video-on-demand GlobePlayer service.What better chance was there to be reacquainted with the National’s thrilling 2018 production of “Antony and Cleopatra,” which remains among the few productions of this play in my experience with an Antony, in Ralph Fiennes, worthy of his Cleopatra, the sinuous Sophie Okonedo. The R.S.C.’s extensive archive offered up a 2015 “Othello” that, in a first for that company, cast a Black actor, Lucian Msamati, as Iago, opposite Hugh Quarshie as Othello; the result was both riveting and revelatory.The actress Rebecca Hall, right, rehearsing opposite Luisa Omielan for an online presentation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by Hall’s half sister, Jenny Caron Hall.But it wasn’t until the start of this year that theatermakers appeared to find a way to present Shakespeare afresh, even if the same few titles seemed to be under consideration. (My visions of numerous anxious Hamlets subjecting their best “To be or not to be” to the vagaries of YouTube went unrealized.) Sam Tutty, who won an Olivier Award for the West End production of “Dear Evan Hansen,” widened his range in a newly conceived “Romeo and Juliet” that was streamed online in February. In accordance with pandemic-era requirements, the play was filmed with the actors in isolation for the most part, then joined up in the editing. For all its best intentions, this approach just couldn’t deliver the reactive thrill that comes from performers sharing a scene in real time and space.The Royal Shakespeare Company offered the tech-intensive “Dream,” which filleted the multiple plot strands of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” into a brief if ambitious exercise in interactivity that was arresting to look at but didn’t reveal much about the oft-revived play itself. The result may have suggested new ways of looking at Shakespeare, but it didn’t help us hear him anew.A direct contrast was the rehearsed reading this past Wednesday of the same play, directed by Jenny Caron Hall, whose father, Peter Hall, founded the Royal Shakespeare Company and was Laurence Olivier’s successor running the National Theater. As might be expected from such a lineage, Jenny Hall’s emphasis on her starry reading of the play via Zoom lay very much with the text, which looked to be in safe hands at a rehearsal I eavesdropped on the previous week: It helped, of course, to have doubling as Titania and Hippolyta the supremely accomplished Rebecca Hall, Jenny Hall’s younger half sister, who brought clarity and a welcome playfulness to some of Shakespeare’s most ravishing verse. (Rebecca Hall played Viola in her father’s final production for the National, a mortality-inflected “Twelfth Night,” in 2011.)Jessie Buckley and Josh O’Connor as the young lovers in a coming screen version of “Romeo and Juliet.” Behind them is Lucian Msamati as Friar Laurence.Rob YoungsonLooking ahead, audiences have every reason to anticipate a marriage of sumptuous visuals and textual expertise from a new screen version of “Romeo and Juliet.” For this heavily cut rendering of the play, Simon Godwin, the director of the National’s “Antony and Cleopatra,” is refashioning on film a production that had been intended for the National stage. The change means that the leads, Josh O’Connor and Jessie Buckley, will be joined by a heady lineup that includes Tamsin Greig, Adrian Lester, Deborah Findlay and Msamati — deft Shakespeareans all. (This “Romeo and Juliet” will air on Sky Arts in Britain and PBS in the United States.)As for breathing the same air as the actors, even through a mask, that enticement draws nearer daily. Shakespeare’s Globe has announced a mid-May reopening, albeit with a capacity of up to only 500 in a popular auditorium that can hold as many as 1,700. The coveted standing places that allow the so-called Globe groundlings to jostle one another, and on occasion the actors, will be replaced by seats; a lack of intermissions will further limit unwanted contact. The idea is to return to normal practice, assuming restrictions ease as the summer season continues.Not to be outdone, the West End’s most recent Lear, Ian McKellen, is opening his deliberately age-blind Hamlet in a repertory season that will include “The Cherry Orchard” and is due to start at the Theater Royal Windsor, west of London, on June 21.That’s the very day long earmarked as the end to the social restrictions in England that have been in place to varying degrees since March 2020.Will these productions go ahead, returning actors and spectators alike to the mutual discourse and interplay upon which the theater thrives and that no degree of technical finesse or Zoom-era sophistication can replace? As ever, time will tell. But the London theater seems poised for action, and the readiness, as Shakespeare knew so well, is all. More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      Pat Collins, Tony Award-Winning Lighting Designer, Dies at 88

      by

      She sought to move audiences with her lighting in shows like “The Threepenny Opera,” “I’m Not Rappaport” and “Ain’t Misbehavin’.”Pat Collins, a Tony Award-winning lighting designer and a Broadway mainstay whose work was seen for nearly 50 years in plays, musicals and operas, died on March 21 at her home in Branford, Conn. She was 88.The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Dr. Virginia Stuermer, her partner of 64 years and her only survivor.Ms. Collins, who won her Tony for Herb Gardner’s “I’m Not Rappaport” in 1986, was the lighting designer for more than 30 other Broadway productions, among them “The Threepenny Opera,” “Ain’t Misbehavin’” and “Doubt,” which earned her a Tony nomination.“Her lighting was like her personality: She was nervy and intelligent but with a sensitive side,” John Lee Beatty, a Tony-winning scenic designer and frequent collaborator, said in a phone interview. “She really blossomed in tech rehearsals; she loved to create on the spot.” He added: “She could do conventional lighting, but she also wanted to try everything.”Ms. Collins brought an autumnal palette to “I’m Not Rappaport,” about two irascible and inseparable octogenarians who meet on a Central Park bench, and the darkness of looming death to a 1989 production in Baltimore of “Miss Evers’ Boys,” David Feldshuh’s play about the federal government’s withholding of treatment for syphilis to poor Black men. In a 2002 revival of Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This” at the Union Square Theater, she transformed figures onstage into what Ben Brantley of The New York Times called “ambiguous silhouettes.”She also worked at regional theaters throughout the United States and with opera companies in New York, San Francisco, Santa Fe, London, Paris and Munich — always using light to establish moods, create the illusion of time passing and indicate where the audience’s attention should be on the stage.“Lighting has everything to do with how you feel and how things affect you,” Ms. Collins told The Post-Star in Glens Falls, N.Y., in 1975. “Almost everyone has had the aesthetic experience of being moved by seeing light filtered through trees in the forest. Multiply that by one thousand and you’d have some idea of the constant subliminal effect lighting has on us.”The musical “Ain’t Misbehavin’” on Broadway. It was one of more than 30 Broadway productions for which Ms. Collins designed the lighting.Alamy Stock PhotoMichael Chybowski, a lighting designer who worked with Ms. Collins on two productions at the Alaska Repertory Theater in the 1980s, said of her: “She understood the point of the show and made sure that you saw it. Whether it was portentous events in ‘An Enemy of the People’ or the sheer fun of ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’,’ her light reflected and communicated that.”Mr. Chybowski recalled the lighting design that Ms. Collins devised for “An Enemy of the People,” Ibsen’s political drama about a scientist who tries to save his town from water pollution but becomes a scapegoat.“She went into the studio, worked at my drafting table for four hours, drew up the plan and went off to the airport,” he said. “I said, ‘It can’t be that easy,’ but we put on the show, and it was the most beautiful show we did in my five years at the theater.”Patricia Jane Collins was born on April 3, 1932, in Brooklyn to Jerry and Alta (Hyatt) Collins. Her mother worked in a law firm; her father left the family when Pat was very young.Ms. Collins attended Pembroke College in Brown University, where she studied Spanish and joined a campus drama group. After graduating, she spent a year at Yale Drama School — where she met Dr. Stuermer — but felt it was a waste of time. She went to work instead as a stage manager at the Joffrey Ballet, and then as an assistant to Jean Rosenthal, a top Broadway lighting designer, at the American Shakespeare Festival Theater in Stratford, Conn.Ms. Collins won a Tony for her work on Herb Gardner’s “I’m Not Rappaport” in 1986. She also designed the lighting for a 2002 Broadway revival with Ben Vereen, left, and Judd Hirsch.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesMs. Collins worked as a stage manager, among other jobs, in the 1960s but did not hit her stride until Joseph Papp, the founder and director of the New York Shakespeare Festival, hired her to design the lighting for productions of “The Threepenny Opera” at Lincoln Center in 1976, which earned her a Tony nomination, and at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park in 1977.“She had fixed somebody else’s show, and he offered her ‘Threepenny,’” said Mimi Jordan Sherin, a lighting designer and longtime associate of Ms. Collins’s. “That put her on the map, and she never stopped working after that.”For all that she worked on Broadway, she spent much of her time away from it, designing lighting at regional theaters, including Ford’s Theater in Washington, Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, Berkeley Repertory Theater in California, the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles and the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn.For the Hartford Stage Company’s production of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline,” Malcolm Johnson of The Hartford Courant wrote admiringly of “the ever-changing light patterns” that Ms. Collins had created with “mirror images and stars and moons and comets.”Ms. Collins, who began listening to opera on radio at age 9, designed lighting for productions at the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House in London and the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. She also conceived the lighting for Lar Lubovitch’s production of “Othello: A Dance in Three Acts” at the American Ballet Theater in 1997.Ms. Collins conceived the lighting for Lar Lubovitch’s production of “Othello” with the American Ballet Theater in 1997.Andrea Mohin/The New York TimesHer other Broadway credits include “The Heidi Chronicles,” “The Sisters Rosenzweig,” “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” “Good People,” “Orphans” and “Execution of Justice,” for which she won a Drama Desk Award in 1986.Mr. Beatty recalled being in London one year when Ms. Collins had a double bill of work there — Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” and a performance nearby at the English National Opera.At “Into the Woods,” he said, “the curtain goes down, the music starts” and the lighting was “bright and simple, like the world’s biggest flashbulb had come on. Whoa, in your face!”“There was a certain joyfulness to that,” he added. “Then, she was down the street, doing an esoteric opera, challenging that director to think out of the box. It was perfect Pat.” More

    • 100 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      Theater to Stream: ‘Broadway Backwards’ and Starry Readings

      by

      Among the offerings are a well-matched double bill, Ute Lemper’s tribute to Marlene Dietrich and a virtual revival of Michel Legrand’s musical “Amour.”Theater audiences have become more like movie fans and television bingers: They can settle in for a double bill. Before the pandemic, they might have scheduled a matinee and evening performance back to back, but there were those pesky hours to kill in between. Now it’s possible to simply queue up a couple of streaming shows and hit play.A natural pairing this month combines two engaging autobiographical shows written by gifted actors looking back on their childhoods. Round House Theater of Bethesda, Md., is presenting Colman Domingo’s “A Boy and His Soul,” which played Off Broadway in 2009. Domingo, who portrayed the bandleader Cutler in the film adaptation of “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” looks back at his connection to music and family while growing up gay in the 1970s and ’80s in Philadelphia. This new production is the first major one in which he himself does not appear, with Ro Boddie taking on the role. Through Apr. 18; roundhousetheatre.orgAcross the Potomac River, in Arlington, Va., Signature Theater is presenting “Daniel J. Watts’ The Jam: Only Child.” Under Lileana Blain-Cruz’s direction, Watts (who played Ike Turner in “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical” on Broadway) recalls growing up with his single mother in the 1980s and ’90s. The title refers to fruit spread, but sound and music energize the show, with DJ Duggz spinning onstage and acting as Watts’s occasional sidekick. Through May 7; sigtheatre.org‘Broadway Backwards’Along the lines of MCC Theater’s beloved “Miscast,” in which stars perform songs they would never get to sing in real shows, this Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS annual fund-raising series features gender-reversed performances. This year’s concert mixes new numbers — hold on to your hats during the opener with Stephanie J. Block, Deborah Cox and Lea Salonga — with ones from previous editions, featuring the usual array of starry participants. Through April 3; broadwaycares.org‘Inside the GPO’The GPO of this docudrama title refers to the General Post Office in Dublin, which was central to the 1916 Easter Rising of Irish Republicans against British rule. Created as a centennial commemoration, Fishamble’s production takes place at the actual GPO, which in 1916 had been occupied by the rebels for several days. The company is now streaming a remastered digital version in partnership with various Irish organizations around the world, including the New York Irish Center. April 1-5; newyorkirishcenter.org‘What the ___ Just Happened?’The monologuist Mike Daisey returns to the stage in a new piece livestreamed from the Kraine Theater in New York — in front of an in-person, fully vaccinated audience. The title (you can guess which word was omitted) neatly encapsulates many people’s stunned take on the past year. April 2; frigid.nycClockwise, from top left: Debbie Allen, Heather Alicia Simms, Alicia Stith and Phylicia Rashad in “Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous.”via Spotlight on Plays‘Angry, Raucous and Shamelessly Gorgeous’The Spotlight on Plays series has pulled off a fun feat with its latest reading, the first time the sisters Debbie Allen and Phylicia Rashad have acted together since the PBS movie “The Old Settler” 20 years ago. Rashad plays a grande dame of the stage, and Allen is her friend and director, in this 2019 comedy by Pearl Cleage (“Blues for an Alabama Sky”). April 8-12; broadwaysbestshows.comOne Year of Play-PerViewWhen many theatrical institutions curled up into the equivalent of a fetal position in March 2020, some people got to work. Among them was the enterprising reading series Play-PerView, which is celebrating its one-year anniversary with a mix of new and old works. In the first category is “Babette in Retreat” by Justin Sayre, who in the past year has been cultivating a high-camp sensibility in a steady stream of comedies like “Drowsenberg,” “When Sunny Went Blue” and “The Ducks.” There should be some choice bon mots and slapstick for Becca Blackwell, Nathan Lee Graham (as the title character), Randy Harrison (“Queer as Folk”), Bradford Louryk and Mary Testa. April 10-14; play-perview.comRandy Harrison, left, and Scott Parkinson in “Cockfight Play.”via Studio Theater‘Cockfight Play’Randy Harrison also takes on the lead role of John in Studio Theater’s fully staged digital production of Mike Bartlett’s “Cockfight Play.” (The actual title is just one word, so use your deductive skills). John is in a relationship with M (Scott Parkinson) when he falls in love with W (Kathryn Tkel). “Love?” a startled M says. “She?” Bartlett’s deceivingly simple premise explores the vagaries of romantic attraction, and the director David Muse makes good use of a split screen to overcome the actors’ need to maintain their distance. Through Apr. 18; studiotheatre.orgThe cast of an online revival of Michel Legrand’s musical “Amour,” presented by Art Lab and ShowTown Productions.via Art Lab‘Amour’Michel Legrand’s only Broadway musical was a flop, running for only 48 performances in 2002 — which is a shame because the poetic, surrealistic “Amour,” in which a civil servant realizes he can walk through walls, has plenty of the gorgeous melodies you’d expect from the French composer. Now, Art Lab and ShowTown Productions are presenting a revival starring Derrick Baskin (a Tony Award nominee for “Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations”), Drew Gehling (“Waitress”), Kara Lindsay, Adam Pascal, Christiani Pitts and Rachel York. It is high time “Amour” gets some love. April 2-4; stellartickets.com‘Period Piece’Don’t expect costumes of yesteryear. This project, conceived by Susan Cinoman, has enrolled an impressive roster of playwrights — among them, Ngozi Anyanwu, Bekah Brunstetter, Lisa D’Amour, Kirsten Greenidge, Lauren Gunderson, Theresa Rebeck, Sarah Ruhl and Caridad Svich — to create monologues about periods. The works, directed by Karen Carpenter (“Love, Loss, and What I Wore”), are spread over three evenings, and each has a unique cast; participants include Geneva Carr, Judy Gold, Julie Halston, Jessica Hecht, Mia Katigbak, Beth Leavel, Lauren Patten and Julie White. April 12, 19 and 26; periodpieceplay.com‘Hype Man: a break beat play’This play with music by Idris Goodwin revolves around the relationship between a white M.C. (Michael Knowlton) and his Black hype man (Kadahj Bennett). Their friendship goes from complicated to adversarial as they react differently to a case of police brutality, while their beatmaker (Rachel Cognata) is stuck in the middle. The show ran in New York in 2018, but Company One’s version, presented by the American Repertory Theater, is freshly urgent, considering the past year’s debates around policing and the appropriation of historically Black art forms. April 8-May 8; americanrepertorytheater.orgUte Lemper in “Rendezvous With Marlene.”Russ Rowland‘Ute Lemper: Rendezvous With Marlene’One night in 1988, Marlene, as in Marlene Dietrich, phoned her fellow German chanteuse Ute Lemper, then starring in a production of “Cabaret” in Paris. The two women chatted for hours. Three decades later, Lemper wrote and starred in a cabaret tribute that dives into Dietrich’s life and songs. The York Theater, which hosted the show in 2019, is presenting a virtual version that was filmed at the beloved East Village boîte Club Cumming. April 8-10; yorktheatre.org More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in Theater

      Review: In ‘Crowns, Kinks and Curls,’ Getting to the Roots of Black Hair

      by

      Keli Goff’s series of vignettes feature Black women recounting how their hair affected their school lives, relationships or careers.I have 4b hair that remained virgin hair, mostly styled in box braids and cornrows with extensions, until I was 13, when I got my first relaxer. My scalp has known chemical burns, hot comb burns, curling iron burns, flat iron burns and the unrelenting throbbing that comes with hours of tight root-wrenching braiding. I got my big chop at 21 and have been natural — years of T.W.A.s and twist-outs and wash ‘n’ go’s — ever since.Do you get what I’m saying, or am I speaking another language?I’ve written about my hair before, and every time I do I’m well aware of the vocabulary, which I’m sure is unfamiliar to many non-Black readers. Though it’s not just a matter of terms or phrases: Black women often encounter unprovoked opinions and wrong assumptions from employers, strangers — even family and friends — about what their hairstyle says about their professionalism, their social status or their relationship to Blackness.The personal, cultural and political implications of Black hair are at the root of the well-meaning but less than inspired “The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and Curls.” (And yes, pun definitely intended.)Written by Keli Goff and produced by and filmed at Baltimore Center Stage, “Crowns, Kinks and Curls” is a series of vignettes, each one featuring a Black woman recounting how her hair affected her school life, relationships or career. The piece channels the spirit of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls,” though the writing, albeit earnest, is far less poetic.The actresses Stori Ayers, Awa Sal Secka and Shayna Small embody all of the fictional women, donning different do’s to do so. (Nikiya Mathis handled the eclectic mix of hair and wig designs.) Most of the scenes are monologues, though occasionally two or three women meet, say, in the office of a mostly white law firm, where an older straight-haired lawyer named Sharon (Ayers) berates a younger one, Ally (Sal Secka), for wearing her hair in braids: “I’m sorry, I can’t let you meet a major client looking like this.”Gaby (Small), with sleek face-hugging Josephine Baker-style finger waves, recalls her mother’s distress that she cut her “good hair” for her wedding day, showing how hair reflects the generational trauma held by some Black women. Wanda (Ayers), in bouncy mocha and champagne blonde curls, recounts how an ex-boyfriend reproached her for pressing her natural hair for an interview, illustrating how “authentic Blackness” is often policed even within the Black community.And so every tale has its moral, none of which should be new to any Black woman. They certainly weren’t for me, a woman who has had white people make awkward comments about my hair, ask questions and even ask to touch my crown in admiration.Which is to say “Crowns, Kinks and Curls” excited me more conceptually than it did in its actual execution, which was all perfectly serviceable, from the performances to Bianca LaVerne Jones’s staging, to Dede Ayite’s set, with a big, puzzling backdrop of large flowers.Scenes span recent history, some taking place during the Obama Administration and others referencing former President Trump and 2019’s Crown Act against hair-based discrimination. These glimmers of vibrancy underscore the timeliness of the topic, given how the social consciousness of Blackness has shifted since the Obama era.In one humorous monologue, Sal Secka, wearing an Afro pony — ethereal and exquisitely cloudlike — plays a woman named Adaora who has accompanied her biracial daughter to see the royal wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and cheer on the Black princess.In a somber scene, two unnamed women (Sal Secka and Ayers) unwrap and unpin their hair in silence, as “Strange Fruit” is sung offstage; they are preparing to go to a funeral for a Black husband and son unjustly killed. It’s the one sequence in which hair is not so explicitly the topic of discussion, but rather is powerfully positioned as part of a larger expression of the Black experience, particularly at this moment in history.In a somber scene, Stori Ayers unwraps and unpins her hair in silence.Diggle/Baltimore Center StageThe show’s program includes a brief timeline of the history of Black women’s hairstyles and hair practices, referencing enslaved women’s use of head wraps and braids before enduring the Middle Passage, along with the work of hair pioneers like Madam C.J. Walker and George E. Johnson Sr. There’s so much to be mined in the history of Black hair that “Crowns, Kinks and Curls” feels like it has missed opportunities to go further — or even incorporate real stories.Why not use the smart, funny and vulnerable voices of real Black women? Why not devise scenes that are more than neatly prepared monologues?And because it is a rarity to see Black women talking about their Black hair onstage, what I saw only made me hungry for more: I wanted to see more Black women of different shades, in not only wigs and weaves but also their own natural ‘fros. I was disappointed, in scenes where women were supposed to be wearing natural hair, to see false approximations.I believe this very capable show — which had a creative team entirely comprising Black women, to my utter delight — can be more. I hope it happens if and when it’s staged in person, as it’s the kind of work I both want and need to see, as a Black female critic and as a Black woman writing about an art form that too often fails people of color.So as I undid my own head of flat twists this weekend in preparation for a much-needed trip to the salon, this earnest request crossed my mind: more Black women, and more (and more and more) of those curls.The Glorious World of Crowns, Kinks and CurlsThrough April 18; centerstage.org More

    • 113 Shares99 Views

      in Theater

      NEWS: The Roaring 20s: A New artist development programme

      by

      Our wonderful friends at LUNG Theatre have teamed up with Harrow Art Centre to offer 12 young people an opportunity to apply for their new development programme. The programme is packed full of help and guidance from people within the arts industry, and will culminate in a scrtach night where you can showcase your work.

      The full programme will allow the 12 successful applicants to have:

      10 online masterclasses with industry leading creatives and professionals working in the arts. These masterclasses will be in everything from writing, directing, producing and multi-disciplinary arts.Space and support to make their own piece of work for a scratch night at Harrow Arts Centre.£125 to spend on their artistic development.A silver arts award.

      Applications are currently open to anyone aged 18-25 who is not in full time education or employment or training. The deadline for applications is midnight on the 31st of March.

      The Roaring 20s will be facilitated by Qasim Mahmood (Actor with The Royal Shakespeare Company, Birmingham Rep and BBC’s Doctors) and Blanche Fitzgerald (Participation Programmer at Harrow Arts Centre)

      Qasim Mahmood said: What stops people from underrepresented backgrounds achieving in the arts is a lack of opportunity and advice. This project is bridging that gap and opening up the world of theatre to everyone.

      Blanche Fitzgerald added: Harrow Arts Centre is thrilled to be partnering with LUNG in this exciting next stage of theatre making for over 18s. This is a programme centered around making the world of theatre more accessible and opening participants eyes up to the host of opportunities within the industry. If you’ve wanted to try out theatre but haven’t yet taken the plunge, this is the programme for you!

      There is a taster session Monday 29 March at 6pm, details here

      More information is available on LUNG’s website here

      Everything Theatre is always happy to support schemes such as these and we’ll be very excited to see how the successful applicants get on. Maybe we will see you at the scratch night later in the year. More

    • 150 Shares199 Views

      in Theater

      New York Theaters Are Dark, but These Windows Light Up With Art

      by

      The Irish Repertory Theater is streaming poetry readings, and Playwrights Horizons and St. Ann’s Warehouse are showcasing art dealing with race and injustice.Like many cultural organizations, the Irish Repertory Theater in Manhattan has streamed pandemic programming on its website.But a few days ago, the theater added a new sort of broadcast to its repertoire, setting up two 60-inch screens in windows that face the sidewalk, installing speakers high up on the building facade and airing a collection of films that show people reading poems in Ireland, London and New York.On a recent morning, Ciaran O’Reilly, the Rep’s producing director, stood by the theater on West 22nd Street, gazing at the screens as they displayed Joseph Aldous, an actor in Britain, reading “An Advancement of Learning,” a narrative poem by Seamus Heaney describing a brief standoff with a rat along a river bank.“These are not dark windows,” O’Reilly said. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”In the past year, theaters and other performing arts institutions in New York have turned to creative means to bring works to the public, sometimes also injecting a bit of life into otherwise shuttered facades. Those arrangements continue, even as the State of New York has announced that arts venues can reopen in April at one-third capacity and some outdoor performances, like Shakespeare in the Park, are scheduled to resume.The panes of glass, though, have provided a safe space. Late last year, for instance, the artists Christopher Williams, Holly Bass and Raja Feather Kelly performed at different times in the lobby or in a smaller vestibule-like part of the building in Chelsea occupied by New York Live Arts. All were visible through glass to those outside.Three more performances by Kelly of “Hysteria,” in which he assumes the role of a pink-hued extraterrestrial and explores what Live Arts’ website calls “pop culture and its displacement of queer Black subjectivity,” are scheduled for April 8-10.The Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day’s photographs of sculptures are on display at Playwrights Horizons.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesAnother street-level performance took place behind glass last December in Downtown Brooklyn, where the Brooklyn Ballet staged nine 20-minute shows of select dances from its “Nutcracker.”The ballet turned its studio into what its artistic director, Lynn Parkerson, called a “jewel box” theater; chose dances that kept masked ballerinas socially distanced; and used barricades on the sidewalk to limit audiences.“It was a way to bring some people back to something they love that they enjoyed that they might be forgetting about,” Parkerson said in an interview. “It did feel like a real performance.”She said that live performances were planned for April and would include ballet members in “Pas de Deux,” set to Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Gavotte et Six Doubles,” with live music by the pianist Simone Dinnerstein.Pop-up concerts have been arranged by the Kaufman Music Center on the Upper West Side, in a storefront — the address is not given but is described on the center’s website as “not hard to find” — north of Columbus Circle.Those performances, running through late April, are announced at the storefront the same day, to limit crowd sizes and encourage social distancing. Participants have included the violinist Gil Shaham, the mezzo-soprano Chrystal E. Williams, the Gabrielle Stravelli Trio and JACK Quartet.St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn is displaying Julian Alexander and Khadijat Oseni’s “Supremacy Project,” public art that addresses the nature of injustice in American society.The word “supremacy” is superimposed on a photograph of police officers in riot gear, and there are images by Michael T. Boyd of Sandra Bland, Elijah McClain and Emmett Till.And at Playwrights Horizons in Midtown, the Mexican-American artist Ken Gonzales-Day is placing photographs of sculptures of human figures in display cases, encouraging viewers to reckon with definitions of beauty and race. Those displays are part of rotating public art series organized by the artist, activist, and writer Avram Finkelstein and the set and costume designer David Zinn.The aim, Finkelstein said in January when the series was announced, was to display work that “makes constructive use of dormant facades to create a transient street museum” and to “remind the city of its buoyancy and originality.”O’Reilly, at the Irish Rep, said the theater heard last year from Amy Holmes, the executive director of the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation, who thought the theater might provide a good venue to air some of the short films the organization had commissioned to make poetry part of an immersive experience.The series being shown at the theater, called “Poetic Reflections: Words Upon the Window Pane,” comprises 21 short pieces by the Irish filmmaker Matthew Thompson.“These are not dark windows,” said Ciaran O’Reilly of the Irish Repertory Theater. “They are lit up with poetry, with music, with the words of actors who are performing.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesThey show contemporary poets reading their own works as well as poets and actors reading works by others, including William Butler Yeats and J.M. Synge, and were produced in collaboration with Poetry Ireland in Dublin, Druid Theater in Galway, the 92nd Street Y in New York and Poet in the City in London.“I think there is something special about encountering the arts in an unexpected way in the city, especially an art form like poetry,” Holmes said.The readers in the films include people who were born in Ireland, immigrants to Ireland, people who live in Britain and a few from the United States, like Denice Frohman, who was born and raised in New York City.Frohman was on the theater’s screens on Tuesday night, reading lines like “the beaches are gated & no one knows the names of the dead” from her poem “Puertopia,” when Erin Madorsky and Dorian Baker stopped to listen.Baker said he saw the films playing in the window as symbolizing a “revitalization of poetic energy.”Madorsky had regularly attended theatrical performances before the pandemic but now missed that connection, she said, and was gratified to happen upon a dramatic reading while walking home.She added that the sound of the verses being read stood in contrast to what she called the city’s “standard” backdrop of blaring horns, sirens and rumbling garbage trucks.“I think it’s wonderful,” she said. “There’s something so soothing about her voice, it just pulled me in.” More