When Daniel Day-Lewis won the Screen Actors Guild award for his leading role in “Lincoln” – having already won a slew of other awards for it as well as an Oscar nomination — I wondered why he is just a screen actor. Why has he never been on a Broadway stage? Has he ever been on a New York stage at all?
I soon got my answer:
Natalie Chernicoff (@n2natalie): He hasn’t appeared onstage since an unfortunate real-life “Geoffrey Tennant in Slings & Arrows” incident in London. Collapsed in the middle of a scene. Sobbed uncontrollably and refused to return onstage. Later explained that he’d seen the ghost of his own father in the scene where Hamlet’s father’s ghost appears to Hamlet, who Day-Lewis was playing.
Jonathan Mandell: Was this before or after Slings and Arrows?
Natalie Chernicoff 1989 — Well before. Inspiration for the TV show, perhaps?
Rose Ginsberg @MsEnScene
oh my god Daniel Day Lewis is Geoffrey Tennant??
Elissa Goetschius (@egoetschius)
He hasn’t done theater since. The Gertrude in that production was Judy Dench. (I did a paper on it in college.)
You can read about it in Richard Eyre’s published diary, National Service.
Jonathan Mandell: Why is he more likely to see his father’s ghost on stage than in a movie?
Nella Vera @spinstripes
Because it’s live, there aren’t retakes, you are in the moment, in the darkness, no one yells CUT.
Diep Tran @diepthought Wonder if Kushner can compel him to give it another go
This week in New York theater:
January 21, 2013
Jordan Roth has become principal owner of Jujamcyn Theaters (owner of 5 Broadway houses) , buying out partner Rocco Landesman, recently retired head of the National Endowment for the Arts. AT 37, Roth is the youngest theater owner on Broadway.
David Hare chose theater over film: “you’re less at the whim of stupid people” though playwriting is “a harrowingly lonely life.”
Has anybody actually ever read the telephone book on stage? There seems to be an audience for it.
There’s a New York Neofuturists play called “Shot in The Dark” in which Bill Coelius read from the phone book. He only read one name at random, and looked in the audience to see if he/she was present
SCTV did a nice sketch based around the idea.
Yes. A show at the Edinburgh Fringe a few years back that had guest comedians do just that.
Man of La Mancha composer Mitch Leigh, 84, is now a real estate developer, creating a new community
right next door to Six Flags Great Adventure” in New Jersey, Jackson Twenty-One, “America’s only arts-sports residential community”
Should he rewrite Man of La Mancha? My take:
I am I, Don Quixote, The landLord of La Mancha, My manager calls and I go,
And the wild winds of Teaneck/ Will carry me onward,
Oh whithersoever they blow
Onto Passaic I go
This is my Quest to ladle on tar
In all my new driveways, for all the new cars
To fight for air rights
Without riders or clause
To be willing to take you to court
Without any real cause
22
Jekyll and Hyde, with Constantine Maroulis and Deborah Cox will begin on Broadway April 5th at the Marquis Theater, and open April 18th, for a 13-week run
Broadway Week, 2-for-1 tix to everything from Annie to Wicked (Only Lion King sold out) tonite through Feb 7
Starting today, until Feb 10th: 20at20 $20 tix to Off-Broadway shows. List of shows
Today they’ve renamed 44th Street and Seventh Avenue Manilow Way, but Barry Manilow cancels his Broadway performance due to bronchitis.
Are there ads for Lucky Guy EVERYWHERE in print and online, or is this just because there are cookies on all my devices (& reading matter)?
23
Tuck Everlasting, musical based on 1975 kid book, Andrew Keenan-Bolger and Carolee Carmello, aims for Bway after Boston run this summer
She was born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero.
She first appeared on Broadway 60 years ago in Can-Can. She’s in her 16th Bway show now, Drood.Happy 80th Birthday, Chita Rivera.
Which is more shocking,that Chita Rivera is 80 or Rita Moreno is 81? >A century and a half of pure talent, still hoofing it!)
Manilow on Broadway canceled again tonight on doctor’s orders, but the singer promises to perform tomorrow, the opening
24
Ian McKellen teaming up with Patrick Stewart in Pinter’s No Man’s Land AND Beckett’s Waiting For Godot on Broadway Fall 2013!!
The musical Bare will close at New World Stages on Sun ,Feb 3,after 21 pre & 65 reg performances. A cast album is in the works
Barry Manilow still sick. Tonight, which would have been opening night, has been canceled, along with Friday and Saturday.
I’ve reviewed two plays for Backstage in the last few days that share much in common — The Living Theatre’s “Here We Are” a theater piece about anarchists through the ages, and the Slant Theatre Project’s “The Steadfast,” a play about American soldiers through the ages — except their politics.
Patriotism, Anarchy and Art: Can you enjoy theater you don’t agree with politically?
25
David Mamet shores up his conservative cred w/a pro-gun essay (which reads EXACTLY like The Anarchist)
We Will Rock You, musical w/ 24 songs from Freddie Mercury’s band Queen, going on US tour & reportedly may stop on Broadway. Fifteen
million have seen it in 17 countries. I saw We Will Rock You in Toronto. It sort of does wtih Queen what Mamma Mia does with ABBA.
26
25 years ago today, Phantom of The Opera opened on Broadway.And it’s still there,the longest-running show in Broadway history.
Phantom has given 10,390 + reg. performances. Moose Murders gave just 1, considered the worst show in Broadway theater. BUT….
Just like Carrie last season, Moose Murders is getting an Off-Broadway revival. Jan 29-Feb 10 Connelly Theater (220 E 4th St.)
Theater community ( minus Mamet) supports today’s March on Washington for Gun Control
The Perfect American, Philip Glass’s new opera, depicts Walt Disney as racist, despotic and megalomaniacal
Dan Stevens (@ThatDanStevens) 100th performance of The Heiress this afternoon! [Heiress closes Feb 9th]
27
Screen Actors Guild Award 2013 winners
Dick Van Dyke got a lifetime achievement award best-known for his TV sitcoms, is a veteran of 4 Bway shows, most notably the original Bye, Bye Birdie.
From Daniel Day-Lewis acceptance speech:
When I was prowling around the idea and wondering whether I could take the risk of doing it, for some reason the guiding principle of the Hippocratic Oath kept nagging at me: First do no harm. And with that modest but important ambition, I set out.
And then it occurred to me that it was an actor that murdered Abraham Lincoln. And therefore somehow it’s only fitting that every now and then an actor tries to bring him back to life again.
