Theater

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Casting Announced for Ethan Hawke's A Lie of the Mind

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 3:57 PM

A Lie of the Mind
The cast of an upcoming revival of Sam Shepard's 1985 play A Lie of the Mind by The New Group, which is to be directed by Ethan Hawke, was announced today. According to ArtsBeat, the cast will include Josh Hamilton (who starred in Hawke's previous directorial effort, 2007's Things We Want), Marin Ireland (whom our own Dan Callahan called "one of our finest young theater actresses" in his review of After Miss Julie), Deirdre O’Connell (of the extended Paywrights Horizons show Circle Mirror Transformation), and three other actors you're more likely to remember for their film roles: Alessandro Nivola, Frank Whaley and Maggie Siff (from season one of Mad Men). The play, about a man who thinks he may have murdered his wife during a fit of blind rage, begins previews on January 29.

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Could Esther Be the Hit that Keeps City Opera Afloat?

Posted by Henry Stewart on Thu, Nov 19, 2009 at 9:44 AM

Esther
Right now, New York City Opera desperately needs some hits. Like a minor league ballpark across the street from Yankee Stadium, New York’s junior opera company makes its home in Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater, next door to the Metropolitan Opera House. Living in the literal shadow of world-famous, world-class opera makes attaining distinction hard enough for the company, founded in 1943 as a populist alternative to its then-elitist counterpart. But, recently, it has fallen on particularly hard times: the company’s already tenuous position in the city’s cultural radar suffered when, due to renovations to the Koch, it offered no staged productions last season (only a handful of concerts at Carnegie Hall). The economic collapse led to a severely slashed budget—there will only be five productions this season, in contrast to the Met’s 26—which consequently led to the abrupt resignation earlier this year of the incoming artistic director, who was to be the company’s Peter Gelb. Revenues fell while expenses climbed.

And yet the company has managed to put a season together, to re-emerge as a contender in 2009-2010. But its future remains uncertain. And so, in its struggle for survival, City Opera is trying to strike a careful balance this season between popular repertoire favorites and more distinguishing fare; the company generally separates itself, or tries to, from its higher-profile competitor across the plaza in its embrace of neglected classics, up-and-coming singers, and modern composers—especially Americans. So, while the company will produce Don Giovanni up until around Thanksgiving and Madame Butterfly in the spring, it’s also currently staging a revival (which opened on November 7) of the late Hugo Weisgall’s Esther, which City Opera premiered to critical acclaim in 1993. New York opera enthusiasts have been waiting ever since to see it again. And surely, City Opera is counting on them to come in droves—because they need them now, more than ever. Esther looks like the company’s secret weapon. In case of emergency, break it out.

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Monday, November 16, 2009

?uestlove Recruits Jay-Z, Will and Jada Pinkett Smith as Producers on Fela!

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 4:57 PM

Fela!
Earlier this month ?uestlove, the drummer and producer from The Roots, was reportedly doing everything in his power to get Jay-Z to come on board as a producer of the Broadway musical Fela!, based on the life and music Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti (on which ?uest is an associate producer).

Today, ArtsBeat reports that not only Jay-Z, but also Will and Jada Pinkett Smith have signed on as lead producers of the show, which is choreographed and directed by Bill T. Jones and opens a week from today at the Eugene O'Neil Theater. Not only will that make for an especially star-studded opening night, but this is also the biggest Broadway show I can think of in recent memory to be presented by mostly African American producers, which is rather awesome.

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The Depressing, Deadly Serious From the House of the Dead

Posted by Henry Stewart on Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 11:35 AM

From the House of the Dead
All told, women sing fewer notes than would fit on a line or two of staff paper in Patrice Chereau's production of Leos Janacek’s From the House of the Dead (1927), a punishing portrait of masculine misery. After all, women in opera, when they’re not wiling, often signify beauty, hope, or a reason to live. And there’s not a lot of that going around here.

Adapted from The House of the Dead, Dostoyevsky’s Siberian dispatch about pre-Soviet prison camps, the Czech composer’s final opera, sung in his native tongue, is unremittingly bleak in sound, as is every aspect of Chereau’s toast-of-Europe production (which uses a tenor in a role usually sung by a mezzo-soprano) now at the Metropolitan Opera: haggard men in Communist-colored clothing smoke and shuffle blankly, penned in by 30-foot-tall gray walls, usually coming to life only to quarrel and brawl over bits of bread like citypark pigeons. (The production marks the long-awaited Met debut for Chereau, best known for his 70s Ring cycle and avant-garde films like Gabrielle.) These men are desperate to survive, despite their desperate, unsurvivable circumstance; they often move, when they can move at all, like scurrying cockroaches frightened by a switched-on light.

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Behind the Scenes at Vanity Fair's Addams Family Photo Shoot

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 4:55 PM


As I mentioned last week, the Addams Family musical isn't coming to Broadway until March 2010, but opens in Chicago tomorrow. Our one lonely commenter, john, can hardly wait: "And the originality of Broadway goes on..." Indeed! Well, Vanity Fair has posted this behind-the-scenes video of their Addams Family photo shoot, in which the stars discuss their love of the franchise's various iterations and their characters while they're having their makeup done. It's about as interesting as this sort of thinly-veiled promotional thing gets. (CultureMonster)

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Cirque du Soleil Wants to Make Michael Jackson Musical

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 11:08 AM

Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal
Well, this should come as no surprise after Cirque du Soleil's Beatles and Elvis Presley stage musical-acrobatics-circus spectacles (Love and Viva Elvis), but the Hollywood Reporter (which was just sold, btw) reports that the Montreal-based employer of Olympic gymnasts is doing everything in its power to get the folks in charge of Michael Jackson's estate to sign off on a Las Vegas musical based on the late King of Pop's music and choreography.

Cirque is still working on getting the Elvis show up and running, but after it opens they'll be sitting down with the Jackson folks to hammer out a deal. HR states the obvious: "The money involved is said to be astronomical." In other "Michael Jackson musical experience" news, AEG Live, the group behind the This Is It concert series, wants to take that show out on the road—you know, the show that essentially killed Jackson and wouldn't really make any sense without its focal point.

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The 39 Steps Stepping Off-Broadway

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 10:20 AM

The 39 Steps opening title
In September it was announced that The 39 Steps, the Broadway comedy based on the eponymous Alfred Hitchcock film, would be closing on January 10, 2010 after almost three years and nearly 800 performances, by which time it would be the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway in the last seven years. Yesterday ArtsBeat reported that talks are underway for 39 Steps to transfer to the New World Stages complex, which recently became home to Avenue Q after a similar Off-Broadway transfer.

39 Steps' lead producer Bob Boyett explained that the idea was sparked by the puppet show's move: “We think what (producer) Kevin (McCollum) did with Avenue Q was brilliant, and we hope to follow.” And with the recent news that Toxic Avenger is closing on January 3, there's a nice big 499-seat theater at New World Stages that should fit The 39 Steps perfectly—it's currently being performed in the 597-seat Helen Hayes Theater.

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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Composer Posts Two Scrapped Songs from Upcoming Betty Boop Musical

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 9:38 AM

Betty Boop
Big names in Broadway theater have been working on a stage musical version of the vintage 30s cartoon Betty Boop for at least seven years already, and the composer who was initially hired to write music and lyrics recently posted a couple of songs he wrote for the musical to his blog, revealing in the process that a whole different version of the production almost came into being back in 2003. On his blog, Jason Robert Brown (who wrote music and lyrics for Parade and Songs for a New World among others) discusses the original treatment for the musical by Pulitzer-winner David Lindsay-Abaire, how he came up with two songs based on that book that got him the job and how the whole thing fell apart overnight and the entire creative team was eventually replaced. For legal reasons he doesn't name the musical, but it's pretty hard to miss when you listen to his treatment for the main theme.

Now the Boop musical is slated for a late 2010-early 2011 Broadway opening, with Canadian pop composer David Foster writing the music and lyrics, and a book by Oscar Williams and Sally Robinson. Hopefully they're keeping the original scenario, which had Betty running for mayor of New York City (she's got my vote). (Playblog)

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Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Denzel Washington Starring in August Wilson Revival Next Year on Broadway

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 4:58 PM

Denzel Washington on Broadway
Denzel Washington might be a huge, multiple Oscar-minted Hollywood star, but he'll be stepping into some big shoes next spring when, according to ArtsBeat, he takes to an as yet unspecified Broadway stage in the role of Troy in a revival of August Wilson's Fences. When the play premiered on Broadway in 1987 it won a Pulitzer and a Tony, and starred James Earl Jones as Troy. That original production was a commercial and critical success, running for over 500 performances.

The play follows a conversation between two friends who are garbageman, one of whom (Troy) is an ex-baseball player who confronts his boss about a company policy that prohibits black men from driving garbage trucks. Between this news and Abigail Breslin in The Miracle Worker, Broadway producers seem to be doing their best to keep the star power (and therefore, in theory, the revenue) at a maximum. Denzel last appeared on Broadway as Brutus in a critically panned, commercially successful production of Julius Caesar in 2005.

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Toxic Avenger Closing Off-Broadway, Contaminating Toronto Next

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 1:39 PM

The Toxic Avenger at New World Stages
After almost ten months and 300 Off-Broadway performances at the New World Stages, the latest (there have been several) musical adaptation of the classic low-budget Troma horror comedy The Toxic Avenger is closing and heading out on the open road. The show has already begun previews in Toronto, and will end its New York run on January 3, 2010.

By most accounts a great show, it's also served as something of a testing ground for superhero musicals like the upcoming Spider-Man musical (which, by the way, is definitely happening and has cast its Peter Parker).

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Green Day Musical Headed to Broadway

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 10:48 AM

American Idiot
Green Day's rock musical American Idiot is closing on Sunday after an extended run at Berkeley Rep, but the show's producers are already plotting their next move: yesterday they posted a casting notice for an upcoming Broadway production. Playbill reports that there's still no schedule or theater for the new production, and that the casting notice doesn't necessarily mean that original cast members won't return for the Broadway run.

The lead producers Tom Hulce and Ira Pittelman were also behind another very successful Broadway rock musical (maybe you've heard of it, it's called Spring Awakening), so the move to the big stage doesn't come as much of a surprise. Of course, it's hard to say whether or not Broadway audiences will shell out $75-a-ticket to be mocked in musical form.
(photo credit: mellopix.com)

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Friday, November 6, 2009

Big Meeting Today to Contemplate Squashing Spider-Man Musical

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Fri, Nov 6, 2009 at 11:04 AM

Spider-Man Musical
Two of the execs behind the embattled Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark Broadway musical spoke to ArtsBeat yesterday, explaining that all the production and artistic big-wigs (including director Julie Taymor and, maybe, composers and lyricists Bono and The Edge) will be meeting in Manhattan today to discuss the production, its planned February 25 debut and the whole big mess of financial problems it's run into since lead producer David Garfinkle dropped out.

They're expected to push that first preview date back some, and Taymor will likely ask that the first rehersals be postponed until the New Year, so that all the technological wizardry of, you know, web-slinging around a theater can be worked out. The weekly operating cost of the show has been projected to hover somewhere between $700,000 and $1 million, which basically means the show would need to run, sold out, for like a year before it made any profit. While we wait on the results of this mysterious meeting, let me just say that I'm all for stage spectacles, but certain things were just not meant to be plays.

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Thursday, November 5, 2009

First Photo of Broadway's Addams Family

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Nov 5, 2009 at 4:43 PM

The Addams Family on Broadway

Yep, that's the first cast photograph of the upcoming Addams Family Broadway musical, which begins previews on March 4, 2010 at the Lunt-Fontane Theater after a run in Chicago. The shot by Mark Seliger is due to appear in the December issue of Vanity Fair, but showed up on the production's website today and was quickly pounced upon by theater bloggers. The musical adaptation was written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice with music and lyrics by Andrew Lippa, and stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth (as Gomez and Morticia) along with Kevin Chamberlin (Uncle Fester), Jackie Hoffman (Grandmama), Zachary James (Lurch), Adam Riegler (Pugsley) and Krysta Rodriguez (Wednesday). I keep thinking that's Seth Green as Grandma Addams.

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Monday, November 2, 2009

Public Theater Announces 2010 Shakespeare in the Park

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 1:58 PM

Delacorte Theater in Central Park
After splitting its summer of '09 bill at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park between Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Euripides' The Bacchae, the Public Theater announced today that its 2010 outdoor productions will be alternating performances of The Merchant of Venice and The Winter's Tale with the same cast. This is the first time in almost twenty years that the Public's Central Park plays will feature a rotating rep program for all eight weeks, as opposed to the two 4-week runs they've produced lately.

Though the plays haven't been cast yet, Daniel Sullivan will direct Merchant and Michael Greif will helm Winter's Tale. Sullivan directed Twelfth Night last summer and Manhattan Theatre Club's recent Broadway production of Accent on Youth, while Greif's most recent work at Shakespeare in the Park was Romeo & Juliet in 2007 and he directed the current Broadway production of Next to Normal. Previews of the two Shakespeare plays begin previews on alternating nights June 9 2010 and continue through August 1. Casting the part of Shylock should be interesting.

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Broadway Forgets Brighton Beach Memoirs

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Nov 2, 2009 at 11:49 AM

Brighton Beach Memoirs closes on Broadway
Theater bloggers were all besides themselves over the weekend after the announcement that the Broadway revival of Neil Simon's Brighton Beach Memoirs at the Nederlander Theater would close yesterday, only one week after opening and less than one month after its first performance. By most accounts, the sequel to Simon's Broadway Bound (ha! the irony), was very good, and Garrett Eisler at Playgoer went so far as to call it the "best American play on Broadway" (take that, David Mamet).

After Patrick Healy's piece in the Times two weeks ago explaining that a few star-studded plays were skewing the numbers in an otherwise lukewarm, musical-driven Broadway season, most have concluded that the absence of significant star power is what precipitated Brighton Beach's demise. All of which basically confirms the sad fact that, much like blockbuster movies, Broadway relies more on spectacle and celebrities than critics and public opinion for its (financial) success.

(photo credit: Janna Giacoppo)

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Thursday, October 29, 2009

Backlash from Disability Advocacy Group on Broadway Keller Casting

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 3:47 PM

The Miracle Worker
Following very closely on yesterday's announcement that Abigail Breslin will make her Broadway debut as Helen Keller in a revival of The Miracle Worker at Circle in the Square next year, the advocacy group Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts has stated its opposition to the casting decision. The group, rightly but hopelessly, makes a habit of protesting the casting of non-disabled actors as disabled characters. Most recently, the group organized protests when New York Theater Workshop didn't audition any deaf actors for the part of a deaf character in an upcoming production of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

In the case of The Miracle Worker, the production company behind the Broadway show wanted a star from the get-go, and there was never a question of casting a deaf or blind actor in the part of Keller, who cannot hear or see. Lead producer David Richenthal explained the predictable financial reasons to ArtsBeat:

It’s simply naïve to think that in this day and age, you’ll be able to sell tickets to a play revival solely on the potential of the production to be a great show or on the potential for an unknown actress to give a breakthrough performance. I would consider it financially irresponsible to approach a major revival without making a serious effort to get a star.

Which is both exactly what you'd expect from a Broadway producer and very naïve in its condescension to Broadway audiences.

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Little Miss Helen Keller: Abigail Breslin Starring in Miracle Worker on Broadway

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Thu, Oct 29, 2009 at 10:03 AM

Abigail Breslin
In what seems like less of a stretch than Scarlett Johansson playing a 17-year-old, Culture Monster reports that 13-year-old Abigail Breslin will play young Helen Keller in an upcoming Broadway revival of William Gibson's The Miracle Worker at the Circle in the Square Theater.

The production, which opens on March 3, 2010, marks the 50th anniversary of the play's Broadway debut, for which it won a Tony. This production may also boast the youngest pair of stars of any Broadway show ever, with Breslin sharing the bill with Allison Pill, who'll be 24 when the show opens. Pill appeared most recently in the original production of Neil LaBute's reasons to be pretty at MTC in 2008 and was nominated for a Tony for her performance in The Lieutenant of Inishmore back in 2006.

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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Theatre 80 St. Marks Lives On!

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 3:43 PM

theatre 80 St. Marks
Many feared that with the departure of the Pearl Theatre Company for bigger, swankier digs at Midtown's City Center, Theatre 80 on St. Marks near First Avenue—one of the largest and most celebrated downtown theaters—would never reopen, at least not as a performance space. Then, last spring, owner Lorcan Otway promised that the theater would continue to host performances and, harkening back to its original incarnation, movies.

Today, Playgoer posted a letter from Otway with an update on the space's situation. Theatre 80 will continue to serve as a performance space on a temporary rental basis, and they

are installing high definition projection with a 12 by 28 foot retractable screen, set far back on the stage, so that the sight lines and image will be a great improvement from my father’s day. We will have film on occasion, though our primary focus will be live theater.

The upcoming schedule hasn't been revealed yet, but will include musicals, dance and opera.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Scarlett Johansson To Play 17-Year-Old Brooklynite on Broadway

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Tue, Oct 27, 2009 at 3:10 PM

A View from the Bridge poster
Yesterday ArtsBeat reported that Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber had been cast as the leads in a Broadway revival of Arhur Miller's A View from the Bridge, to begin previews on December 28 at the Cort Theater. The play is about an Italian American longshoreman (Schreiber) who lives in Red Hook with his wife and orphaned 17-year-old niece (Johansson)—no word yet on who will play the wife, though an abandoned film adaptation a few years back was rumored to have Johansson and Frances McDormand cast as the female leads.

Johansson, who'll be 25 when the show opens, will be making her Broadway debut, while Schreiber earned a Tony for his last stage role in the 2005 revival of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Ross. The only film version of Bridge is Sidney Lumet's elusive and inexplicably French-language Vu du pont (1962).

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Sex and the City Becomes Stage Serial Cedar City Falls

Posted by Benjamin Sutton on Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 4:30 PM

Cedar City Falls
The Times interviewed four of the ladies behind Sex and the City over the weekend about their new stage serial Cedar City Falls, whose fourth episode runs tomorrow night at the Cell Theater (at 7pm and 9:30pm) before moving to Galapagos Art Space in Dumbo for the next four episodes every Tuesday in November. The soap-y comedy about the residents of a small Midwestern town marks Liz Tuccillo, Cindy Chupack, Elisa Zuritsky and Julie Rottenberg's first collaboration since the end of SATC in 2005, and features a rather impressive cast of TV and theater vets, as well as a strong set of guest stars (just like a real TV show!).

The relatively bare-bones staging of the serial—for which all the actors are donating their time and the $18 admission is very affordable given the talent assembled—makes you wonder what the writers want to do with this series. Could this be a way of audience testing a new show, the beginnings of a years-long live soap, or just some friends trying out a new format for the fun and challenge of it?

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