Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Mon, May 20, 2013 at 11:38 AM
Quagmires and the Known Knowns, a song cycle about the Iraq War by composer Marie Incontrera, has its world premiere tomorrow at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO. The Brooklyn Art Song Society's first commission draws its text from political speeches. We spoke to Incontrera about the war, art song, and the benefits of living in Bay Ridge.
Art song doesn't seem like the most popular style these days. Why art song? Art song is an intimate way to get words across. I'm interested in it because the song form is so popular these days, and most pop-music listeners don't realize that the song form has roots in classical music. It's also really challenging to fit something like a political speech into song form; it forced me to be really concise and straightforward about my message.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Thu, May 16, 2013 at 11:39 AM
When I saw Golden Boy on Broadway last year as press I was so moved that I went and bought myself a ticket to see it again before it closed. I especially wanted to see a particularly affecting moment near the end, in which the main character is in tears, slumped on the floor, his lover draped around him weeping, and he assesses how his entire life has been a failure. I waited with goosebumps on the edge of my seat for this scene as it approached, and right as it came around the woman-next-to-me's cellphone started buzzing, and she started fiddling with it to read the text message she'd just gotten. It was distracting, took me right out of the action on stage, and ruined what would be the last time I'd ever see one of my favorite things. Well, thanks, lady.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Tue, Apr 30, 2013 at 11:21 AM
I cut this out of the paper and taped it to my wall. Srsly.
Good Work Was Actually Recognized The default attitude toward awards shows should be that they reward only the popular (eg., Grammys) and the middlebrow prestigious (eg., Oscars). That's not so easy to say about the Tonys, too; I mean, they do only honor a slim amount of the theater performed in New York, and it's the often least challenging/most tourist-friendly at that. But the Tonys ain't suckers, either; the disastrous Spider-Man musical was famously snubbed. And today the Tonys gave eight nominations, the most for any play, to last year's revival of Golden Boy, which was like the best damn thing I ever saw. (I saw it twice. I don't know if I've ever seen anything twice.) For a production that was firing on all cylinders, it's great to see not only the director and some cast members recognized, but also the sound designer, the lighting designer, the costume designer, etc. [photo]
A dozen strangers stand touching a pick-up truck, and the last one to remove his or her hand gets it for free: that’s the premise of Hands on a Hard Body, a new musical based on a 1997 documentary but wisely set today; in these recession-scarred times, with so many so desperate for any kind of leg up, there’s never a question as to why the contestants would be so unwilling to let go.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 9:00 AM
In their greatest work, Carousel, Rodgers and Hammerstein boldly melded the American musical comedy with the European tragic opera, crafting something serious and sad that wasn't meant to play a house fancier than any on Broadway. Last week, it made it to Lincoln Center, though, Avery Fisher to be exact, where the New York Philharmonic performed a semi-staged production filled with some of the top singers of opera and musical theater—it was, I would wager, the definitive Carousel, featuring the kind of orchestral performance that elicited howling ovations, the sort of singing that floods your body and tries to bust back out through every pore.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 12:45 PM
It's a behanding in Biloxi! In Kneehigh's adaptation of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale "The Girl With No Hands," set in the Depression-era American South, a father accidentally trades his daughter to the devil, who insists he chop off her hands because they're too clean, and then intervenes to ruin her life for many years to follow. Ultimately it's a girl power story, in which a woman finds the strength to fight back against the man who abuses her, but this is a dark show (at St. Ann's Warehouse until St. Patrick's Day), its happily-ever-after hard-won: it's filthy, it's muddy; there's a scene in which a War Horse-ish deer puppet has its eyes torn out and then its tongue, each accompanied by a howl and a gore-evoking red ribbon. But it's also bawdy, boisterous and buffoonish—delightful!—full of folksy blues, singing and dancing, and lovable actors speaking straight to the audience. It's a very physical production with a Peter and the Starcatcher-style inventiveness: a woman does a handstand and gets her backside slapped like a bass; an actress spins around her father's shoulders, getting as tossed about like an acrobat; simulated sex ends with a New Year's Eve popper.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Mar 1, 2013 at 12:00 PM
Benjamin Britten's A Turn of the Screw, at BAM through Saturday, involves a governess, a house in the country, and a pair of sweet children. But only a sucker would expect things to go well—Britten signals from the beginning that something isn't right, the expository introduction accompanied by ominous music. There are no major-chord resolutions; expect something sinister.
The 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard remains both an open wound and a black hole in Laramie, Wyoming. It's a source of unimaginable pain for those involved, to the point that many push back against having to deal with it even while the magnitude of what happened continues to prove inescapable. The aftermath of the anti-gay hate-crime—the criminal process, media frenzy, soul searching and horror—were all recounted meticulously in The Laramie Project, a landmark theatrical work comprised of interviews with Laramie residents. Now here is The Laramie Cycle (at BAM through February 24), which pairs a new staging of Project with Ten Years Later, a visit back to the city and the key players to see what has changed since the killing. But where the “project” of the first title hinted towards progress, an earnest attempt to understand how such an event could occur by examining the culture of the town and its attitudes toward homosexuality, the “cycle” of the full work hints at a dead end: even 10 years later the attack looms large, and the push away from it is just as strong.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Wed, Feb 20, 2013 at 9:50 AM
It's a Shakespeare comedy that's truly boffo: Theater for a New Audience's lively, fresh, merry and musical production of Much Ado About Nothing (at the Duke on 42nd Street through April 6) is the funniest thing you can see right now on a New York stage. Credit goes first to director Arin Arbus, every year establishing herself more firmly as the city's foremost interpreter of Shakespeare. Her productions are plain, with sparse sets, few props, and no heavy conceptions; but they're deceptively traditional, subversively novel. Her emphasis is on Text, the essence and the basics, and in it her performers find something breathing, something laughing, quivering and violent.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 11:35 AM
City Opera's production of Thomas Adès's blue and boozy Powder Her Face (at BAM through February 23) is a bit... risque. Take for example the moment in the first half when two dozen men emerge in the bedchamber of the famously promiscuous Duchess Margaret Campbell (a stellar Allison Cook): roughly 24 butt-naked men pile like clowns out of every door, stage wing, and piece of furniture until they crowd the stage; director Jay Scheib wanted to fit more, but there's no more space. As these men mill about, Campbell seduces a waiter and performs fellatio on him, hitting a (muted) high note as she does so. Throughout the opera, there's more coitus, lovers in bed before and after—more than you usually see at the opera house, at least.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 10:25 AM
Soldier Songs by David T. Little, who lives in New Jersey but works out of Brooklyn, had its full-production premiere at the Prototype Festival last month; based on interviews with veterans, the song cycle-as-opera traced the arc of the American military experience, from kids playing with G.I. Joes and teens with video games to the horrors of combat. The most moving moment for me came toward the end with a piece called "Two Marines." It's narrated by a parent notified that his son has been killed in combat by a pair of soldiers with a letter from the president (like the movie The Messenger). It begins as a dirge, moves into something more chaotic, with a screeching violin to represent the narrator's mental state, before settling into a transcendent and devastating repetition: "bring me back my son."
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Feb 1, 2013 at 11:00 AM
When the Brooklyn Philharmonic announced its 2012-2013 season in the fall, it included three ambitious orchestral concerts, like a program called "A Brooklyn Legacy of Music and Film." But our hometown Phil has canceled two of those concerts and moved the final one to a larger venue—BAM. "It's a few things," board member Tim Gilles told me. The most basic: "we've made good progress to fiscal sustainability, but we're not there yet," he said. "It doesn't happen overnight." But smaller, more specific problems upended the season as well.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:55 AM
BAM recently won on eBay a 1931 letter from the director of The Brooklyn Forum to then-former Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, asking him to participate in a discussion called "Does American Need a Political Re-alignment?" Written on Brooklyn Forum/Academy of Music letterhead—listing BAM's address, 30 Lafayette Avenue—the bottom of the letter indicates it's under the "Auspices [of the] Kings County Socialist Party." The discussion was to feature a former-assistant secretary of state, a Socialist former-member of the legislature, and the famous American philosopher John Dewey.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 9:00 AM
Performances start tomorrow at 59E59 of Brooklynite Paul Bomba's first fully produced play in New York, The Man Under, an "urban love story" set in the city's subway tunnels. We caught up with Bomba—also an actor, the managing and producing director of Animus Theatre Company, and a subway explorer—to ask him about the best tunnels in the city, and his other favorite places in Brooklyn.
What neighborhood do you live in? After theatre school, I needed a place that was cheap and close enough to my people in Brooklyn. I grew up in Gravesend, and my parents are still out there, so I got this place in Borough Park with some friends. They've since left, but I'm still out there, about four years now... About half way between Avenue U and the city.
Big Daddy Pollitt's house may be situated on 28,000 acres of the richest land this side of the Nile valley, but the audience gets the sense it's a swamp—chocked and overgrown, heavy with a wet heat that begs to be peeled off and shed forever. The fog that settles seems less an evening mist than a Stygian presence, the ultimate stage for a play that begins with a lie about death being avoided and ends with a lie about life being created. A new revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof sounds like the kind of thing that’d be more prestigious than incendiary, pairing a familiar play with a bankable star (Scarlett Johansson) and counting on the innate quality of the work and workers to carry it into drama. But unlike its slack Broadway neighbor Glengarry Glen Ross, this update taps into something primal and raw. It still feels vital.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 9:00 AM
Playwright Amy Herzog's new play, The Great God Pan, opened yesterday at Playwrights Horizons. An earlier play, 4000 Miles, was an Off-Broadway hit and a favorite of critics, including our own. Earlier this month, the New York Timesawarded her its Outstanding Playwright Prize for After the Revolution. She lives in Brooklyn, so we asked her about all her favorite spots around town.
What neighborhood do you live in? I've lived in the north part of Park Slope, close to Flatbush, for about four years. I originally came because a close friend with an amazing apartment was moving, and I jumped at the chance to live on the top floor of a beautiful brownstone for rent that was so far under market that I felt guilty about it. The karma hit me back a year and a half later when the owners sold the building. By then I was hooked on The Slope.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 9:00 AM
Gene Pittman
The Brooklyn-based percussion quartet So Percussion is a powerhouse in the new-music scene, known for its work with composers like Steve Reich, Evan Ziporyn, and many many more. Tomorrow, they begin the first of four performances of their new show Where (we) Live at BAM, part of its Next Wave festival. We caught up with member Jason Treuting to talk about the show, the music scene in Brooklyn, and what Brooklyn sounds like.
Has So Percussion always been based in Brooklyn? We moved here in 2004, I think. We were based in New Haven while we were doing grad school at Yale at the school of music and had our studio there for a while. I moved to Brooklyn in 2003 and we all scattered a bit for a minute until we could move our studio to Greenpoint. We are in our second studio there but have been a Greenpoint group since then.
We spent 2012 watching live performances—plays, musicals, operas, classical concerts, dance shows, literary readings—wherever we could find them: in Broadway theaters, in the stacks of the Grand Army Plaza library, in a crowded Crown Heights bar, in Central Park, in an old concert hall in Boerum Hill, and everywhere in between. These were the best things we saw, and the companies, actors, organizations and events you should look out for in 2013. [photo]
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Dec 7, 2012 at 9:00 AM
The production of Golden Boy that opened yesterday, directed by Bartlett Sher, is so perfect in every way—costume, set, performance, direction, script—it's a shock that the play hasn't been on Broadway in 70 years. Hopefully this revival (through January 20), perhaps the best thing I've ever seen on a stage, will help it take its rightful place alongside the great works of 20th-century American drama. This is the kind of work no one writes anymore—it's epic, with three acts and 19 roles, a grand drama about all things: business, love, beauty, violence, family, the whole fucking modern human condition top to bottom, front to back. Allegorically, it attacks the whole fucked up system, the entire goddamn world; at its heart is the conflict between art and war, personified in the unlikely hero: Joe Bonaparte, as good a boxer as he is a violinist, an angry kid forced to choose between making music and throwing punches.
Posted
by Henry Stewart
on Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 9:00 AM
Jim Baldassare
In movies like Funny Games and Cabin in the Woods, the writers grapple with their obligations to their characters—like, is it immoral to hurt them? Maybe if you spend your days writing fiction this can become a pressing concern. But to me it seems insane. Who cares about fictional characters? They're fictional! Yet the same theme preoccupies Alicegraceanon, a new play by Kara Lee Corthron (developed with and directed by Kara-Lynn Vaeni) in which three semi-related literary and historical figures grapple with their characterhood: Alice, of Wonderland fame; Grace Slick, lead singer of Jefferson Airplane; and Anonymous, the hero of Go Ask Alice, the faux diary chronicling a teenager's descent into drug-addicted ruin. (Was anyone ever so naive as to believe it was really real?)
