PATRICK STEWART AND IAN MCKELLEN ON LOVE, ACTIVISM AND RETURNING TO THE WEST END

(Stephanie Rafanelli’s article appeared in the Evening Standard, 9/1; via Pam Green.)

Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen sit in two identical velvet thrones — the stately King and King of British theatre — every now and then reaching between them to tenderly clasp one another’s hand in the way that couples do. It’s a hot summer’s day; I meet them in McKellen’s airy townhouse overlooking the Thames at Limehouse after rehearsals for their new West End production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land. The scene off stage now has a different register: something akin to if they were cast in a tender romance.

‘I know that I’m in a love affair with Ian,’ Stewart declaims, statesman-like and pit-bull trim in a white shirt and snug J-Brand jeans, after a sip of Sancerre. Next to him, McKellen — sinewy, artfully dishevelled in a grandad shirt and silk pashmina — waves a glass of lemon vodka in the air. ‘What I love about Patrick is that he’s so predictably myself. I think we are the same person. If Patrick comes into a rehearsal room and says, “Look, look…” I know what it’s going to be about.’ He pats Stewart’s arm affectionately and says to him: ‘So it’s actually because you’re a narcissist and who you’re in love with is yourself,’ adding, as an aside, ‘Mind you, I think Derek Jacobi is trying to be the third at the party.’ Stewart laughs, his chest a big booming speaker.

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Oct 2, 2016 3:49:15 PM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events

GARRY WILLS: GULPING DOWN SHAKESPEARE

(Wills’s article appeared in The New York Review of Books, 9/25.)

Should we take our Shakespeare in a gulp or in separate driblets? There are advantages to either course. His first audience had to take him in single plays, as they were conceived and put on. But we have his large body of work, and some plays are cross-referential, especially the plays of dynastic ups and downs around the British crown. The history plays beg for some consideration as a whole, and so sequences of them are now mounted by troupes in a single season, or in weekly or daily sequence. The disadvantage of this common practice, for the two groups of four most often linked for joint consideration, is that there is no way to guarantee that the same audience will be able to attend all the separate days of performance.

In its year-long, two-part series, the Chicago Shakespeare Theater has tried to solve this problem by showing three plays in a single day (running six hours with a dinner break, the procedure followed for some lengthy Wagner operas). The normal groups of four cannot be crammed into such a program, and heavy cutting must be indulged even to get three in. The first part of the group’s history gulp, called “Foreign Fire,” was in the Spring season, giving us Edward III, Henry V, and Henry VI, Part One (reviewed in these pages last May). The second gulp, “Civil Strife,” comes now to open the Fall season, presenting Henry VI, Parts Two and Three, and the ever-popular Richard III.

Photo of Garry Wills: nndb.com

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Oct 1, 2016 11:35:14 AM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events, Shakespeare, Theatre Reviews

MICHAEL CRISTOFER: ‘MAN IN THE RING’ (SV PICK, CHI)

(Hedy Weiss’s article appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, 9/29.)

Boxing, that most primal if ritualized form of human conflict, has been the subject of countless plays and movies. And while I confess to being repelled by the real-life horror and brutality of the sport, its translation into theater is often thrilling and compulsively watchable.

The latest entry into the high-stakes competition for this fearsome roped-in stage is Michael Cristofer’s “Man in the Ring,” now in its world premiere at Court Theatre. It is a stunner — a fierce, poetic, profoundly tragic tale based on the true story of six-time world champion Emile Griffith. And it features volcanic but uncannily fluid direction by Charles Newell and his magnificent cast.

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a vvreview, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Oct 1, 2016 11:16:59 AM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events

MICHAEL FEINGOLD: VACANCIES FOR THEATRE VISIONARIES (PART II)

(Feingold’s article appeared on Theatermania, 9/16.)

Once upon a time, a young actor met an older playwright. That story might have many possible outcomes, but on this particular occasion, its results were extraordinary. The young actor's name was James Houghton, and he was cast in a play by Romulus Linney, at a grungy off-off-Broadway theater. Like many before him, he found Linney's playwriting of great interest, and wondered why this distinguished writer, with productions on Broadway and in other notable venues to his credit, had so little public recognition that he was still working in a do-it-yourself showcase mode, focusing his own lights and folding his own programs.

But unlike those who had previously pondered that cultural question, Jim Houghton decided to do something about it. He scraped up some money — his actress wife had just done a dishwashing-detergent commercial, which helped — and put on, not a single production, but a season of plays by Romulus Linney, in, improbably, a Japanese calligraphy center on Bond Street. Some critics came, who knew the value of Linney's plays from previous encounters; I was one. A small public came. A reputation was launched. And suddenly there was a company, named Signature Theatre, which had a newly established tradition: to celebrate a different American playwright each year, by presenting a full season of his or her works, old and new. Traditions can be born very quickly, especially if everyone thinks they're a great idea.

Photo: Michael Feingold/Village Voice

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Sep 30, 2016 5:27:35 PM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Writing

'VOICES THAT DESERVE TO BE HEARD': WHEN THEATRE ART MEETS ACTIVISM

(Lyn Gardner’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/30.)

Political plays about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are repeatedly failing to reach American theatres. The US playwright Naomi Wallace is doing something about it – by setting sail for Gaza

It’s seldom, if ever, that a piece of theatre changes the world. But it can challenge the way we think about it and provide a forum to do so. As Simon Stephens observed in his Working Diary: “I don’t think that theatre has ever been more important. In a world dislocated and disengaged by technology, it is the one forum in which we are encouraged to sit next to people we have never met before and look in one direction and share a live experience that exercises our brains and our sense of aesthetic. It is necessarily a mirror to ourselves. The responsibility of the artist is to decide what that mirror will show and how it will allow the light to fall.”

That’s true, but it’s rare to come across a piece of theatre, such as Chris Thorpe’s Confirmation, which really makes you question what you think. Or a show that so enrages you that it sends you back out into the world determined to actually do something. The urge to feel “useful and not just decorative” – as someone put itduring the 2008-09 Gaza war – is a strong one for increasing numbers of theatre-makers, for whom art and activism are entwined. Their lives, politics and practice are one and the same, feeding into each other. Unlike previous generations of political playwrights who saw their plays as a means of excavating the state of the nation and the world, these are artists for whom making theatre and being involved in politics are intrinsically related and for whom direct action can be part of their artistic practice.

Photo: Naomi Wallace/American Theatre

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Sep 30, 2016 4:57:33 PM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events

ISHINHA SET FOR STUNNING FINAL SHOW (JAPAN)

(Andrew Eglinton’s and Mika Eglinton’s article appeared in the Japan Times, 9/27.)

Performing on deserted beaches and in villages, temples, dockland warehouses and urban railyards, few theater companies can have traversed the range of landscapes and settings that have inspired Osaka-based Ishinha.

Yet though journeys real and imagined have been key themes in Ishinha’s recent works, with the death of its founder and artistic director, Yukichi Matsumoto, in June at age 69, its members have decided the company, too, has sadly run its course.

Next month, however, with Matsumoto presiding in spirit, Ishinha (meaning “revolutionary or radical change”) will perform its final piece, titled “Amahara” (“Heaven Field”), in the grounds of the eighth-century Heijo Palace in Nara.

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Sep 29, 2016 12:58:46 PM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events

AGNES NIXON, CREATOR OF ‘ALL MY CHILDREN’ AND ‘ONE LIFE TO LIVE,’ DIES AT 93

(Cynthia Littleton’s article appeared in Variety, 9/28; via Pam Green.)

Agnes Nixon, known as the grande dame of daytime drama for creating, writing, and producing soap operas including “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and “Search for Tomorrow,” died Wednesday in Rosemont, Pa. She was 93.

Nixon had been suffering complications from Parkinson’s disease, the New York Times reported.

The prolific producer was highly regarded as a pioneer for women in television who transformed the traditional soap opera by weaving real-world issues into her shows. Nixon famously modeled the fictional Pine Valley setting of “All My Children” on the suburban region where she lived outside Philadelphia. She kept her home base there even as the TV production company she ran with her husband, Robert Nixon, expanded.

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Sep 29, 2016 12:50:14 PM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events

‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM’ AT BORD GAIS ENERGY THEATRE, DUBLIN

(Peter Crawley’s article appeared in the Irish Times, 9/29.)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream ★★★★ Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin

Where are we now? Shakespeare’s comedy of escape, transformation and radically fickle desire always whisks its misaligned young lovers away from the suffocating court into a moonlit forest of meddling fairies, where anything seems possible.

desire always whisks its misaligned young lovers away from the suffocating court into a moonlit forest of meddling fairies, where anything seems possible.

In this fantastically raucous treatment from Lyric Hammersmith and Filter Theatre – veering between freewheeling improv, original verse and blistering live music – we find a more contemporary playground.

The enfolding white walls of Hyemi Shin’s set may make playful allusions to Peter Brook, but directors Sean Holmes and Stef O’Driscoll are far more likely to charge through them. As beer cans and pop-up tents jostle with spandex costumes and suggestively sprayed arcs of enchanting “love juice”, the libidinous celebration of the play looks giddily familiar. We’re at a music festival.

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Sep 29, 2016 12:48:49 PM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events, Theatre Reviews

JENNIFER KIDWELL AND SCOTT SHEPPARD: ‘UNDERGROUND RAILROAD GAME’ (SV PICK, NY)

(Ben Brantley’s article appeared in The New York Time, 9/26; via Pam Green.)

Our “safe word” for today is “Sojourner.”

Those three syllables are the gift of Teacher Stuart and Teacher Caroline to their fifth-grade students in Hanover, Pa., to be used in moments of distress during an especially adventurous history project. “Sojourner,” boys and girls, is what you say when you find yourself way outside your comfort zone and need to take a break.

It’s a fairly, uh, safe bet that you will find yourself tempted to cry “Sojourner” on many occasions before the end of “Underground Railroad Game,” the in-all-ways sensational play that opened on Monday night at Ars Nova. Just don’t expect anyone to have mercy on you.

As you may have gathered from its title and its safe word (which refers to the 19th-century African-American abolitionist Sojourner Truth), “Underground Railroad Game” is about slavery. More specifically, this lacerating comedy from the Lightning Rod Special troupe in Philadelphia is about finding ways to speak to one another about an unspeakable American institution a century and a half after its official end.

Visit Stage Voices Publishing for archived posts and sign up for free e-mail updates: http://www.stagevoices.com/. If you would like to contribute a review, monologue, or other work related to theatre, please write to Bob Shuman at Bobjshuman@gmail.com .

Sep 28, 2016 5:05:33 PM | Commentary, Current Affairs, Events, Theatre Reviews

‘THE NEW YORKER’ THEATRE LISTINGS, 10/3

OPENINGS AND PREVIEWS

BATTLEFIELD

BAM's Harvey Theatre

Three decades after his epic version of “The Mahabharata,” Peter Brook stages this hour-long piece (co-directed with Marie-Hélène Estienne) drawn from the Sanskrit poem. Through Oct. 9.

Monologues, Scenes, Reviews, Commentaries, One-Act and Full-Length Plays, Interviews, and Events from the World of Theatre

Current Affairs

October 02, 2016

October 01, 2016

(Wills’s article appeared in The New York Review of Books, 9/25.)

September 30, 2016

(Feingold’s article appeared on Theatermania, 9/16.)

(Lyn Gardner’s article appeared in the Guardian, 9/30.)

Political plays about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are repeatedly failing to reach American theatres. The US playwright Naomi Wallace is doing something about it – by setting sail for Gaza

September 29, 2016

(Andrew Eglinton’s and Mika Eglinton’s article appeared in the Japan Times, 9/27.)

September 28, 2016

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