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
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
The revival of Arthur Miller’s 1947 play All My Sons, currently on Broadway, has been dividing critics. Some praised director Simon McBurney’s approach, which eschews the strict naturalism so beloved on the Great White Way in favor of a certain stylization, while others disliked the production for pretty much the same reason (though they tended to word their objections along the lines of, “I can’t feel for the characters”).
I fall squarely in the first camp—if you happen to be in the New York area, this is one of the finest nights at the theater you can find—and one of the reasons is that in addition to its aesthetics (this is a starkly designed but very elegant show), the production offers a point of view on the material. In other words, McBurney is no mere illustrator: He’s thought about the play and gives us his interpretation of it; it’s then up to us, the audience, to argue about whether or not we buy his reading. Sure, interpreting material is what directors are meant to do, but watching All My Sons, I was reminded of how rarely it actually is the case.McBurney, for instance, is very smart about when happens onstage when someone’s talking. read more
Ten years ago, it might’ve been a stretch to imagine that Bill T. Jones would be the driving force behind a potential Broadway hit, even if it had been Fela!, about the life and music of political activist and musician Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. Jones was of course a major figure in the dance world, but his work reflected interests often polar opposite to those driving Broadway – intellectual, socially probing, formally experimental or refined. Sure, there were plenty of pop and prosaic elements in the mix, but it was not about commercial appeal.
In Fela!, which he directed and choreographed (and co-wrote with Jim Lewis), and after receiving a Tony for his work on the hit Spring Awakening, Jones has found the sweet spot in between, although his involvement in the project began as a hired choreographer. read more
If you want proof that the the borders of classical music just keep getting more porous, you need look no further than Three Lost Chords, a one-hour show that has been playing at the offbeat little Zipper Theater on Wednesdays and Sundays since March 23. The Zipper is a tiny space in the garment district big enough for perhaps 75 audience members, who sit in vinyl two-seaters from 1950s-era buses; adjacent to the theater there’s also the funky Zipper Tavern with twinkly lights and shabby-chic furniture like slip-covered loveseats and wooden chests. Not your ordinary opera venue.
This macabre/funny/over-the-top trio of short monologue operas with music by Lance Horne and libretto by Mark Stephen Campbell, directed by David Schweizer, had a run at the Zipper in January and is now back for a brief reprise. The composer—who also plays piano in this one-hour show—studied with Milton Babbitt and David Del Tredici at Juilliard, and he cites some of his influences John Lennon, David Bowie, Fiona Apple, Benjamin Britten, and the Captain & Tennille (!). He also has a band, Lance Horne and the One-Night Stands .
The three singers in the show each portray a character based on short stories: Franz Kafka’s A Hunger Artist (about the predicament of a man who hates food), Muriel Spark’s The Girl I Left Behind (about a young woman struggling with a strange kind of memory loss), and Edgar Allan Poe’s well-known A Tell-Tale Heart. Nathan Lee Graham, with a resume that is a mix of television and movie roles, Broadway, and classical, portrays Kafka’s hunger artist, while Michael Slattery (Poe’s guilt-plagued murderer) and Caroline Worra (the woman trying to remember what she is missing) are both well established in the classical universe. read more
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