Stage Voices

MARGARET EDSON: ‘WIT’ (REVIEW PICK, NY)

 

(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Times, 1/28.)

Cynthia Nixon’s gaze has its own grammar. Playing a terminally ill English professor in the inescapably moving new revival of Margaret Edson’s “Wit,” the 1999 Pulitzer Prize winner for drama, Ms. Nixon seems to construct perfectly composed, illuminating and surprising thoughts with her sky-blue eyes — the kind of thoughts that if you saw them in print would make you stop and savor and reread.

It’s not that Vivian Bearing, Ms. Nixon’s character, doesn’t possess a sharp and eloquent tongue. She is, please note, an esteemed and intimidating scholar of the metaphysical poetry of John Donne. But the eyes are what first hook and then hold you through this immaculately staged 100-minute journey through the final months of one woman’s life. And while the eyes are usually in agreement with the weighty, exquisitely arranged words Vivian speaks, they also hint at something more profound, which both eludes and informs her intelligence.

(Read more)

http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/01/27/theater/reviews/cynthia-nixon-in-wit-at-manhattan-theater-club.html?hpw

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NICOL WILLIAMSON, REST IN PEACE (1936-2011)

 

(Bruce Weber’s article appeared in The New York Times, 1/26.)

Nicol Williamson, a Scottish-born actor whose large, renegade talent made him a controversial Hamlet, an eccentric Macbeth, an angry, high-strung Vanya and, on the screen, a cocaine-sniffing Sherlock Holmes — and whose querulous temperament could make his antics as commanding as his performances — died on Dec. 16 in Amsterdam, where he had lived for more than 20 years. He was 75.

The cause was esophageal cancer, his son, Luke, said Wednesday on the Web site nicolwilliamson.com. “He didn’t want any fuss made over his passing,” Luke Williamson said in an e-mail, explaining the delay in reporting his father’s death. “He was not interested in publicity.”

Mr. Williamson was rarely described as dull, sometimes as uncooperative, more often as unpredictable or tempestuous.

(Read more)

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/26/theater/nicol-williamson-a-mercurial-actor-is-dead-at-75.html?_r=1&hpw

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LET US NOW PRAISE TYRONE GUTHRIE

 

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 1/24.)

Who is the most influential British director of modern times? Peter Brook revolutionised our notion of the empty space. Peter Hall has shown what permanent institutions can achieve. But arguably the greatest legacy comes from Tyrone Guthrie (1900-71) – even if his name is scarcely known to a younger generation. Even to label Guthrie as "British" is slightly misleading, since he once dubbed himself "a very Irish sort of Anglo-Scot". But this six-foot-five giant of a man was not only a great director: his unceasing campaign for the open stage has left its mark on theatres all over the world.

Although he worked at London's Old Vic from 1933 to 1939, Guthrie wanted to get away from traditional proscenium theatres. His first great adventure in open stages came in 1948 when he directed Lyndsay's Satire of the Three Estates at Edinburgh's Assembly Hall of the Church of Scotland, as part of the newly formed Edinburgh festival: those lucky enough to have seen it still talk of the production's flamboyant pageantry. In 1952 Guthrie was invited to create a Shakespeare festival in a tent in Stratford, Ontario, which led to the building of a magnificent thrust theatre when the festival became a permanent fixture. A TV programme about the Canadian Stratford inspired an eye specialist thousands of miles away in Chichester to set about creating a similar structure in Sussex. And so the story rolls on: the Sheffield Crucible, the aptly-named Guthrie theatre in Minneapolis and the new Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon – all owe their shape and style to the vision of this peripatetic missionary.

(Read more)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/jan/24/g-for-tyrone-guthrie

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BURT BACHARACH MEMOIR TO HARPER

(from Lunch Weekly, 1/24.)

83-year-old winner of three Academy Awards and eight Grammys, Burt Bacharach's ANYONE WHO HAD A HEART, covering his professional success and personal difficulties, written with Robert Greenfield, to Jonathan Burnham and Claire Wachtel at Harper, for publication in November 2012, by Amy Schiffman and Brian Lipson from Intellectual Property Group (World).

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GOB SQUAD’S KITCHEN (YOU’VE NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD) (REVIEW PICK, NY)

 

(Charles Isherwood’s article appeared in The New York Times, 1/23.)

“Is that gluten free?” asked a woman behind me, in response to an offer of peanut butter on toast offered by one of the cast members of “Gob Squad’s Kitchen (You’ve Never Had It So Good).” Before the show begins, the audience is invited to take a tour of the stage cum movie studio where it will be performed.

“There’s no such thing as gluten in the 1960s,” came the answer, delivered with a smile and just a little bit of British cheek.

The movie studio on the stage at the Public Theater, where this smart, goofy and surprisingly moving show is playing through Feb. 5, is a makeshift mockup of Andy Warhol’s Factory, or at least the filmmaking component of it, around 1965. Nobody had heard of the evils of gluten back when that turbulent decade was beginning to swing, and Warhol was churning out movies almost as quickly as he was slapping down silk-screens. Probably nobody at the Factory had heard of the evils of amphetamines either.

(Read more)

http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/theater/reviews/gob-squads-kitchen-inspired-by-warhol-at-public-theater.html?hpw

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‘NEW YORKER’ THEATRE LISTINGS, 1/30 PLAYDECK

 

OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

Please call the phone number listed with the theatre for timetables and ticket information.

 

CARRIE

MCC Theatre presents a reworking of the 1988 musical, with a book by Lawrence D. Cohen (who adapted Stephen King’s novel for the 1976 De Palma film), music by Michael Gore, and lyrics by Dean Pitchford (“Fame”). Starring Marin Mazzie and Molly Ranson; Stafford Arima directs. Previews begin Jan. 31. (Lucille Lortel, 121 Christopher St. 212-352-3101.)

 

CQ/CX

A young black New York Times reporter is accused of plagiarism and tries to clear his name, in this drama by Gabe McKinley, presented by Atlantic Theatre Company. David Leveaux directs. In previews. (Peter Norton Space, 555 W. 42nd St. 212-279-4200.)

 

HOW I LEARNED TO DRIVE

Norbert Leo Butz and Elizabeth Reaser star in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Paula Vogel, from 1997, a dark story following an affair between a girl and her uncle. Kate Whoriskey directs. In previews. (Second Stage, 305 W. 43rd St. 212-246-4422.)

 

IONESCOPADE

York Theatre Company presents a revival of this 1974 musical, with music and lyrics by Mildred Kayden, a composite of the works of Eugene Ionesco. Bill Castellino directs. In previews. (York Theatre at St. Peter’s, Lexington Ave. at 54th St. 212-935-5820.)

 

LOOK BACK IN ANGER

Sam Gold directs John Osborne’s seminal play from 1956, set in England in the fifties, in which a young working-class man rages against middle-class values. The cast includes Adam Driver. Presented by the Roundabout Theatre Company. In previews. (Laura Pels, 111 W. 46th St. 212-719-1300.)

 

PSYCHO THERAPY

Alex Lippard directs a new comedy by Frank Strausser, about a woman who takes up couples therapy with her fiancé and her ex-boyfriend. In previews. Opens Jan. 29. (Cherry Lane, 38 Commerce St. 212-352-3101.)

 

RUSSIAN TRANSPORT

Janeane Garofalo stars in a new play by Erika Sheffer, about a Russian family in Brooklyn who welcome an uncle who has come to pursue the American dream. Scott Elliott directs the New Group production. In previews. Opens Jan. 30. (Acorn, 410 W. 42nd St. 212-239-6200.)

 

RX

Kate Fodor’s romantic comedy follows a woman who enters a drug trial for a pill that is purported to end her depression and then falls in love with her doctor. Ethan McSweeny directs the Primary Stages production. In previews. (59E59, at 59 E. 59th St. 212-279-4200.)

 

THESE SEVEN SICKNESSES

The Flea presents this five-hour play (with breaks for dinner and dessert, served by the performers), written by Sean Graney, which combines new versions of Sophocles’ seven surviving plays in a meta-narrative about chance, fate, and the human condition. Ed Sylvanus Iskandar directs. In previews. Opens Jan. 29. (41 White St. 212-352-3101.)

 

WIT

Cynthia Nixon stars in Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play from 1995, about a poetry professor undergoing experimental cancer treatment. Lynne Meadow directs the Manhattan Theatre Club production. In previews. Opens Jan. 26. (Samuel J. Friedman, 261 W. 47th St. 212-239-6200.)

 

YOSEMITE

At the Rattlestick, Pedro Pascal directs a new play by Daniel Talbott, in which three siblings head to the Sierra Nevada in an attempt to outrun their past. In previews. Opens Jan. 26. (224 Waverly Pl. 212-868-4444.)

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/events/theatre/2012/01/30/120130goth_GOAT_theatre#ixzz1kKW50FOt

 

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NICHOLAS WRIGHT: ‘TRAVELLING LIGHT’ (REVIEW PICK, UK)

 

(Michael Billington’s article appeared in the Guardian, 1/18.)

Some dramatists are prey to a governing obsession. Others turn their hand to a variety of subjects. Nicholas Wright, who in the past 12 months has given us plays about Terence Rattigan and the Duchess of Windsor, is emphatically one of the latter, and in Travelling Light he has come up with a love-letter to the movies and an appealingly intelligent evocation of the Jewish folk culture that formed the basis of American cinema.

(Read more)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2012/jan/19/travelling-light

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MOVIE: ‘CAROL CHANNING, LARGER THAN LIFE’ A FILM BY DORI BERINSTEIN

 

Ethel Merman passed on the original Hello, Dolly! because she was tired of living her “life in a dressing room.”  Instead, for over 5000 performances, Carol Channing lived there.  If you are just catching up with the latest installment of her life, after Channing’s 2002 memoir Just Lucky I Guess, which took her four and a half years to write, you’ll find that at ninety plus, she has remarried and lost a husband (her birthday is also this month).  She tells us that she has just recently found out that her mother was Jewish (in the autobiography, we learned that her dad had African-American blood).  On talk shows, in the past, she usually discussed her parents with regard to their family life as Christian Scientists.  About her son, who was left in boarding schools—and for whom she made Ethel Waters an adopted grandmother (see yesterday’s blog for ‘Suppertime’)--or her previous husband, who had sex with her only twice in four decades--we don’t get much, not that you’ll hear her complain.  Debbie Reynolds, interviewed for the documentary, breaks down almost immediately (she also suffered a husband who left her with nothing); the Dolly “waiters” are devastated by the loss of one of their number to AIDs.  You might even find yourself becoming ridiculously nostalgic as you hear “Put on Your Sunday Clothes” or another Herman or Styne standard (interviews here include those with Loni Anderson, Tyne Daly, Betty Garrett, Jerry Herman, Angela Lansbury, Bob Mackie, Chita Rivera, Lily Tomlin, Tommy Tune, Barbara Walters, and JoAnne Worley, among others). Channing herself goes unfazed—she’s onto her next cue; the only analysis she’s interested in is how to play the moment, not the past.  Like Dolly herself, who continued to talk to her husband after his death, Channing isn’t much interested in tragedy. She’s better for theatre than for film (Marge Champion tells us that she was too “big” for the camera) or even life.  Somebody will undoubtedly provide a fuller assessment one day, but, for right now, console yourself with what’s on display here--like the classic joke about strawberries Channing tells TV host Gene Shalit, who is completely tickled pink.

Releases in LA, 1/20; opens in NY, SF, Expansion, 2/3  

© 2012 by Bob Shuman. All rights Reserved.        

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BOY, COULD I USE A SHOW TUNE: ETHEL WATERS SINGS ‘SUPPERTIME’ BY IRVING BERLIN

 

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TOLSTOY/HARRIS: ‘THE KREUTZER SONATA’ (REVIEW PICK, UK)

 

(Dominic Cavendish’s article appeared in the Telegraph, 1/12.)

Tolstoy claimed he wrote his novella The Kreutzer Sonata (1889) in order to show the way carnal passion - whether inside or outside marriage - distracts man from the higher things in life.

In Nancy Harris’s arrestingly fine adaptation, though, first seen at the Gate in 2009 - and now revived ahead of a New York run - you swiftly grasp why it was banned by the Russian authorities: whatever moral one might draw from its portrait of a man driven to murder his wife by obsession, jealousy and disgust, the dominant motif is the debauchery of male sexual appetites and the suggestion that there’s no release from their torments. Reaching into dark recesses of human behaviour, it draws a comfortless existential vision from a macabre case.

(Read more)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/9010243/The-Kreutzer-Sonata-Gate-Theatre-review.html

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