Amazing how Bill T. Jones’ work looks and feels as fresh as ever in his company’s 25th year. Serenade/The Proposition, at the Joyce through last Sunday, takes inspiration from Abraham Lincoln, whose bicentennial approaches. The performance combines Jones’ elegant choreography, spoken text, and live chamber orchestra and singer in a rich, luminous hour-long work.
At its heart is the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company, which although constantly evolving, always thrills with a heady chemistry arising from a combo of strong individuals. Paul Matteson, a perennial warm presence in the dance world, traces Lincoln’s virtues with his gentle motion, noble bearing, and willingness to aid others. The company members periodically strike unique poses to form a “spine” bisecting the stage, regrouping before bursting apart in individual phrases—a neat metaphor for the united and sometimes disunited states of America. read more
Robert Wilson’s brand of theater art was seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music as early as 1969. Forty years after his debut there, Wilson’s work returned to BAM this month with a vivid of Heiner Muller’s Quartett, a 1981 reworking of the 1782 novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It opens with an almost 10-minute long tableau that introduces all five characters—Muller’s play calls for only two actors, but Wilson, like when he first staged the work back in 1988, adds three other actors who don’t speak—followed by the Marquise de Merteuil (played by Isabelle Huppert) reciting in breakneck speed (and in French!) what sounds like a letter to her former lover, Valmont (Ariel Garcia Valdes).
The rest of the play unfolds with Wilson’s now-familiar design: minimal sets, a few Parzival Chairs, some sleek, Samurai-esque costumes, and intense, deeply hued lighting changes. read more
In our busy daily lives, we don’t often have the opportunity to be immersed in anything outside of the regular stuff… I mean transported, outlook altered, mood changed. I sampled a couple of cultural experiences offering such a chance this week, Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson’s Heaven at PS 122 which closed Oct 3 and Kurt Hentschläger’s Zee at 3LD Art & Tech Center.
As the audience entered, the tightly bunched group of performers walked very slowly around the periphery of the stage, quietly demanding all attention. Everything was white—the marley, the curtains that lined the walls, the columns (with pleated skirts around their bases), the dancers’ costumes, crafted of quilted fabric with Ace bandage accents. White lace even trimmed all of the industrial audience chairs. Lenore Doxsee designed the superb lighting; Emmett Ramstad the costumes; the two with Thorson designed the visual setting. read more
It’s hard to view Strindberg’s Miss Julie—even Patrick Marber’s updated After Miss Julie—in light of today’s values. The tragic weight of the play stems from the fact that after two people of a difference social class make love, their world is turned upside down.
Today, a quickie with someone below you in social status is not a shocker, but an exercise in branding—a step on the celebrity ladder of success. In our world of sex tape “scandals” and Levi Johnson posing for Playgirl (one year after standing on the podium of the Republican National Convention next to Sarah Palin) how can we seriously buy the morning-after angst of Julie and her father’s valet? Regardless of whether its set when Miss Julie was written (1888 Sweden) or updated in Marber’s version to 1945 England, the only dramatic question for modern audiences is: will she text her snooty friends and brag about shagging the help—or whether he’ll slip the news to the Post or TMZ in the hopes of a long career of snogging rich debutantes? read more
A Steady Rain, which recently broke the weekly record for highest grossing play in Broadway history, is simply a Chippendales show for women (and men, I suppose) who like to like to watch two hunks show off their brains as well as their muscles. (For those New Yorkers whose internet has been out of service for the past month, A Steady Rain stars James Bond and Wolverine—Daniel Craig and High Jackman—as two ethically challenged Chicago beat cops.)
Keith Huff’s two-hander is a serviceable piece of theater. I hesitate to call it a play since it’s basically two monologues, intercut without much style or grace. (The production values are top notch at least: the moody lighting courtesy of Hugh Vanstone, the ghostlike sets by Scott Pask, not to mention John Crowley’s sure-handed direction.)
The plot is solid but feels more like the draft of a pilot for new Primetime cop show (CSI: Chicago, anyone?). Both men tell their side of the story concerning a wild evening that begins with a blind date and bullet hole in 52-inch plasma screen. read more
I want to say that words fail to describe Miguel Gutierrez’s latest work at DTW, Last Meadow, because it is humbling to think about its sheer scope, even more so to reduce it to a bunch of words after watching one performance. And yet, even though it is foremost experiential, there is a generous amount of structure to deliberate as well. It meanders, barrels ahead, stops for breaks, flows lyrically, evolves, and devolves over the duration of its packed 90 minutes.
Gutierrez somehow creates work that you feel in your gut and your heart, and at the same time your brain works feverishly to process the layers of text, subtext, examination of the performance form itself, and endless experimentation with the powerful, often overlooked areas of sound and lighting. The loose pretexts for this show involve James Dean’s films, the father figure in America, as America, and confusion as “a potentially transformative, sensory-enlivened state,” per the program. Gutierrez has never lacked for ambition, and at first glance, these topics would seem far too large and disconnected to allow for any cohesion whatsoever.
And yet Gutierrez links the opening scene ramblings of a depressed Cal, Dean’s character in East of Eden (the amazing Michelle Boulé in a tour de force performance), with his own straight-laced father character by means of his own long, rambling monologue whispered into a mic. read more
The summer of 2009 was the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock and the end of the sixties. It was also a short summer in New York City. Storms and gray skies reigned over the city for much of the months of June, July and August; but for those still hoping to let the sun shine in a little longer (figuratively or metaphysically) there is one way to reheat the memories of summers’ past: the current Broadway revival of Hair.
Set during the infamous “Summer of Love” of 1967, Diane Paulus’ staging of the Tony-winning musical by Galt MacDermot, James Rado and Gerome Ragni, has a giant sun painted on the back of the theater wall and it is hard not to be warmed by its rays which are metaphorically brought to life by the classic songs and a young, energetic cast.
The legendary original production of Hair began at the downtown Public Theatre in 1967 and then went to Broadway the following April where it ran for four years; this production debuted last summer in Central Park before re-opening on Broadway in March. read more
Over 1300 performances by 200 some-odd companies took place as part of this year’s New York Fringe Festival. The two plays I want to mention (presented on a double bill) are The Lover and Ashes to Ashes, both by Harold Pinter. They were presented at the Fringe as a double bill, cheekily called “Pinter Pair.” Both plays feature dysfunctional couples and so they make a cute couple that display nicely Pinter’s themes (alienation, inability to communicate) and the evolution of his style in dealing with them (The Lover is an early work, Ashes to Ashes a later piece).
Ashes to Ashes is, in fact one of Pinter’s final works, by my count his penultimate original drama. Unlike Celebration (his last play) Ashes to Ashes shares the distant, hazy impressionism of Pinter’s Moonlight (written three years earlier.) It is a play that is of interest that never truly becomes interesting. The couple in the Ashes to Ashes, Devlin and Rebecca, have an undefined relationship and indeed too much is undefined in the play. Pinter’s wit, his ability to make our ears prick up, to make an audience believe something is going to happen—it’s all there in Ashes to Ashes. Except by the time the play ends we’re still waiting.
Director Patrick McNulty does a serviceable job with Ashes (last seen in NYC at Lincoln Center’s Pinter Fest in 2000) but it’s his selection of Pinter 1962 shocker, The Lover (not to mention his direction of it) that made this performance noteworthy. read more
Last summer season, the Public Theater paired Hamlet with the musical Hair—which subsequently went to Broadway and won the Tony for Best Revival. This year, the Delacorte played host to another Shakespeare classic, Twelfth Night, paired with another bawdy piece: the Greek drama The Bacchae, scored with new music by Philip Glass. Alas, this Bacchae is not likely to transfer or win any awards. JoAnne Akalaitis’s concept has some interesting and ambitious notions, but they never quite fuse with the text or the performances. The result is a sluggish 90-minute show that feels much longer. (And which inspired numerous walkouts on the evening I attended—the first time I’ve witnessed that in years of attending the Delacorte). read more
Thornton Wilder passed away almost 35 years ago, but he’s still a popular commodity Off-Broadway. His 1938 play Our Town can be currently seen in David Cromer’s production running at the Barrow Street Theater—plus Our Town also features prominently in the new drama, Next Fall (a production by Naked Angels, playing at the Peter Jay Sharp Theater through Saturday night).
It was announced last week that the Cromer revival of Our Town—which opened in February—has been extended through next January. This is good news, not just since it’s a fine production of a classic play, but because it shows that despite the cries of shrinking attention spans and shrinking budgets, good Off-Broadway theater still is finding an audience. read more
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