The next few months on the New York stage are going to be hot! I’d even venture that they’re going to be hottt! Just look at this lineup: Jane Fonda, Kathleen Turner, Susan Sarandon, Will Ferrell, Jeremy Irons, Angela Lansbury, Maggie Gyllenhaal—and for the thespian freaks huddling over in the corner, we have Janet McTeer, Simon Russell Beale, Sinéad Cusack, Denis O’Hare, Lili Taylor, Geoffrey Rush. Yes, they’re all going to shine at the theater in the coming months. In what? Oh, who cares about that!
As much as theater in America likes to think of itself as a somehow “purer” artform than film, it shares with its screen relative a general disregard for the director as auteur. Above-ground plays and movies are both advertised on the strength of their cast—and if it’s a no-name cast, then on the fact that it’s by Shakespeare or Chekhov. I know I’m making a gross generalization here, but generally speaking, New Yorkers don’t get excited by the announcement of a transgressive director’s new project or rumors about a radical reimagining of a classic work. Oh sure, word of mouth often leads to lines around the block for an innovative production with no glittery names attached—in the past few months, this happened to the National Theatre of Scotland’s Black Watch at St. Ann’s Warehouse, Soho Rep’s production of Sarah Kane’s harrowing Blasted and Les Freres Corbusier’s video-game-inspired musical extravaganza Dance Dance Revolution. But when it comes to advance buzz, it’s all about the actors—and so it is with what we’re expecting from 2009 so far. read more
I’m not sure at what point in Manhattan’s past the term “uptown” became interchangeable with “upscale,” and “downtown” was joined at the hip with “hip.”
But one thing that has happened as cross-cultural borders get fuzzier is that we are seeing so-called “uptown” performers—musicians you’d have expected in the past to see only at places like Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center—now appearing in club settings where food and liquor are served. One new such event is the Monteverdi Coronation of Poppea being staged by Opera Omnia from August 21 to 27 at Le Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street. Opera Omnia’s Wesley Chinn has chosen this more casual pub venue, where perhaps younger concertgoers will go with a group of friends in place of a standard bar night.
Also this week, the renowned Emerson String Quartet is performing—literally and figuratively—both uptown AND downtown. The quartet’s members are violinists Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer, violist Lawrence Dutton, and cellist David Finckel. Their downtown evening at Joe’s Pub on Wednesday, August 20, features a … read more
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