Didn’t Broadway just end? Yet here it is again.
Yes, Ann and I’ll Eat You Last are both closing next Sunday, with Lucky Guy (July 3rd) and The Assembled Parties (July 28th) soon to follow. But the first show of the 2013-2014 Broadway season opens in just a few weeks, and this past week saw lots of news about the season, from Neil Patrick Harris, Angela Lansbury, Frank Langella, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Faith Prince, and Carol Kane….among others.
Summer is officially upon us, which means summer theater festivals. Shakespeare in the Park is in full swing — literally — and so is Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, thanks to an exercise in surrealism by the New York City Department of Transportation. (See “19” below):
This Week in New York Theater
June 17, 2013
Neil Patrick Harris will be back on Broadway,in Hedwig and the Angry Inch,Spring 2014. “I’m ecstatic and terrified to be stepping into Hedwig’s heels”
The Mad Fashionista @madfashionista: OMG, that is wonderful. I hope they keep the uber-sleazy vibe the original production had.
Dueling Romeo and Juliets: Elizabeth Olsen and Finn Wittrock will star in the CSC production of “Romeo and Juliet” in September — the same time as the one on Broadway with Orlando Bloom and Condola Rashad.
Happy to see that four plays on Broadway went up in attendance: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike spiked by more than seven percent, followed by The Assembled Parties, The Nance, The Trip To Bountiful.
Tony Bump:11 shows grossed more than a million dollars last week, six from 2012-13 season. In order: Kinky Boots,Motown, Lucky Guy, Matilda, Cinderella,Pippin
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Maggie Gyllenhaal to star as pregnant adventurer in new play “The Village Bike” part of MCC Theater’s 2013-14 season.
After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need the most” Philip Pullman, billboard near New Victory Theater
“Starting at age 5 I always thought I was a legend” – Christopher Durang said, accepting his OBA (Off-Broadway Alliance Award) for Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike
“Off Broadway keeps us young. it’s unfiltered,raw a little dangerous”~ Kristine Nielsen, honored as an Off-Broadway “legend”
Surveying his readers about the Tonys, Ken Davenport found favorite part was opening number; most hated was The Rascals
Most frequent suggestion:
“Include actual scenes from the Best Play and Best Play revival nominees”
L-I-S-T-E-N Tony Awards
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New York City’s Department of Transportation has demanded that the Drilling Company start paying for parking spaces and buy auto insurance (!) when it performs “Shakespeare in the Parking Lot” which it has done for 17 summers in a municipal lot on the Lower East Side.
The name is an obvious spoof on Shakespeare in the Park, but the Shakespeare is for real, although spiced with some street-smart whimsy: Last summer, if you recall, when archeologists announced the discovery of the bones of the actual Richard III in a parking lot in Great Britain, The Drilling Company announced that Shakespeare In The Parking Lot would be presenting Richard III in their parking lot.
Julie Haverkate in her blog Critical Confabulations picks an appropriate passage from the Bard as comment:
For I can raise no money by vile means.By heaven, I had rather coin my heartAnd drop my blood for drachmas than to wringFrom the hard hands of peasants their vile trashBy any indirection. — Brutus, Julius Caesar; Act IV, scene 3
Faith Prince, veteran of 11 Broadway shows, is doing a 12th: She’ll be the third Miss Hannigan in the current production of Annie on Broadway, starting July 19
Cameron Mackintosh is reportedly planning the Broadway revival of Oliver!, He is also reviving Miss Saigon and Barnum in Great Britain, and aiming those for Broadway too
The New Group season will feature new plays: The Jacksonian by Beth Henley (Crimes of the Heart), in October: Intimacy by Thomas Bradshaw (Job), January
The arts aid in maintaining health, and now healthcare organizations (primarily hospitals) are partnering with arts organizations
James Franco, critic. James Franco, a kind of Superman of arts and culture, now adds critic. He reviews the new Superman movie (and disses Spider-man)
My review of The Comedy of Errors
Is it an error to move “The Comedy of Errors” from Ancient Greece, where Shakespeare placed this early play of his, to upstate New York in the 1940’s? That is the setting of director Daniel Sullivan’s Shakespeare in the Park production, starring Jesse Tyler Ferguson and Hamish Linklater as two pairs of identical twins cast into a slapstick sea of mistaken identity….How else could he have worked in Lindy-Hopping dancers in two-tone shoes? The swing dancers take charge of the stage around a jazzy juke box before the play begins, and execute Mimi Lieber’s electrifying choreography in-between every scene….All this has nothing whatsoever to do with Shakespeare’s plot or characters, but they are a welcome diversion – by which I mean, both a detour and an amusement.
Full review of The Comedy of Errors
James Gandolfini, ‘Sopranos’ Star, Dies at 51: I’m an actor. I do my job and go home.
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Frank Langella will play the title role of King Lear first at the Chichester Festival in Great Britain, then at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, January 7 – February 9, 2014
Funny, touching “Dear Teen Me” by Broadway performer and author Tim Federle, who fell in love with Jesus (straight lead in Godspell)
On why Jesse Tyler Ferguson LOVES Shakespeare in the Park, even when audience in ponchos “look like a Klan meeting” =
Video glimpse (“montage”) of Big Fish, with Norbert Leo Butz. It’s opening October 6
Always…Patsy Cline with Crystal Wowersox, which was aiming for August opening on Broadway, has been postponed.
My review of The Explorers Club
Nell Benjamin’s “The Explorers Club” is stuffed with a deadly cobra,an errant guinea pig, a woman explorer rejected for membership in the all-male club, an “archeo-theologist” who studies the “science of the Bible,” a seductive deadly plant, and an Irish would-be assassin who is killed and used as a coat-rack.
Benjamin, it must be said, is not an elderly British playwright who traffics in the peculiar, farcical national brand of humor that on occasion skirts the edge of offensive. She is an American playwright, the co-composer and lyricist of “Legally Blonde” who in this often very funny play traffics in the peculiar British brand of humor that skirts the edge of offensive.
Full review of The Explorers Club
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Angela Lansbury says she’ll be back on Broadway in the Fall in revival of Enid Bagnold’s 1955 play The Chalk Garden.
A physicist and a dancer were paid $10,000 to find a connection, one of seven artist/scientist pairs. And they did
A theater artist collaborating with a psychiatrist on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder theater piece for The International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
Kelli O’Hara on being pregnant while performing in Far From Heaven: “She goes crazy kicking in the same moments every night.” Full interview with Kelli O’Hara
Michael Feingold defends The Great God Pan and The Flick — or rather attacks the peple who didn’t like them
Dear Mr. Feingold:
Annie Baker’s The Flick was many things. But “terse” was not one of them.
How about some respect for theatergoers? Must you question their intelligence or upbringing when they disagree with you on a show?
Alyssa Dyksterhouse @Adyksterhouse Everyone is entitled to like what they like. The challenge is to accept and honor that.
SeekingTheExit @blackoutpete Just because someone likes something doesn’t mean it’s good. The reverse applies as well. : )
Jonathan Mandell @NewYorkTheater So attack the bad show, not the people who like it.
Aaron Sorkin (West Wing, etc.) lets slip to Vanity Fair that he’s writing the book to a new Broadway musical, but won’t say what.
Savion Glover’s STePz: Tap Dancing Away From Broadway
It is easy to claim Savion Glover as the best tap-dancer of his generation. Who else is there?
He was a child prodigy and an exciting Broadway performer, debuting on Broadway at age 10 in “The Tapdance Kid,” nominated for a Tony at age 16 for “Black and Blue.” At 19, he played Young Jelly in “Jelly’s Last Jam,” and at 22 won a Tony for “Bring In ‘Da Noise, Bring In ‘Da Funk,” which he both choreographed and starred in… {But he] hasn’t been on Broadway since “’Da Funk” ended 14 years ago.
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In Times Square last night, the guy with the “I Need Money for Weed” sign reportedly stabbed his rival with the I Need Beer” sign in the head with a pen. (I just pray that the rivalrous violence between the Times Square weed guy & beer guy won’t spread to the Elmos.)
Happy (gasp) 60th birthday, Cyndi Lauper, fun-loving girl who now shows her true colors as a new reigning queen of Broadway.
Happy 64th birthday, Meryl Streep, last on Broadway (gasp!) 36 years ago but regularly on stage to raise $ for The Public Theater.
Actor Roger Rees and playwright Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) have been a couple since 1982. Where they live:
The Associated Press will be reducing its coverage of Off-Broadway, dance and opera coverage,part of “a dispiriting trend”
Ironically, the AP critic Mark Kennedy interviews Jim McCarthy on how live entertainment makes you a better person
A live event “drives the dullness out of your life, stirs your personal creativity” & makes you “more interesting”
New project for James Franco: Start reviewing Off-Broadway plays.
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Hot actors Billy Magnussen, JaimeCepero et al don’t have to strip for Oklahoma Rising benefit cabaret at Laurie Beechman Theatre tonight
200 Broadway performers WILL be stripping tonight at (sold out) #Broadway Bares XXIII benefit at Roseland
Creativity
1. Creativity–>Anxiety ~ Kierkegaard. The more creative a person, the more anxious.
2. Malcolm Gladwell on how creativity is fueled by failure — mistakes, miscalculations & delusions.
Cher sings every part in West Side Story
