‘Romeo and Juliet” opened on Broadway last week (my review below), the first of two shows opening on Broadway in September; this week there’s The Glass Menagerie. There will be six shows on Broadway in October, and (depending on how you count) nine in November. Broadway 2013-2014 Season Guide
Off-Broadway, I review filmmaker Ethan Coen’s first full-length play, “Women or Nothing,” and Mike Daisey’s 29-episode monologue, “All The Faces of The Moon” There is too much else coming up Off-Broadway to provide statistics. Off-Broadway Fall 2013 Guide
There is still time to enter the contest for Free tickets to A Time to Kill: What courtroom drama (real or fictional) would you like to see dramatized on the stage?
What celebrities would look like as regular people (In order in the video: Britney Spears, Jay Z and Beyonce, Rihanna, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, Jennifer Aniston, Johnny Depp, Miley Cyrus, Tom Cruise, Madonna, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, David and Victoria Beckham)
The Week in New York Theater
Monday, September 16, 2013
Lottery for free tix each night of Sting’s 10 benefit concerts @publictheaterny September 25-October 9. The concerts are tied to the release of his new album, “The Last Ship,” which is in turn connected to his new musical “The Last Ship,” which is aiming for Broadway in the Fall 2014, with a book by John Logan (Red) and Brian Yorkey (Next to Normal)
Becoming Dr. Ruth begins Oct 11 Westside Theater
Dr. Ruth Westheimer @AskDrRuth I can’t wait to see “Dr Ruth” up on a theater marquee.
Into The Woods Film: 1. Sondheim will write a new song for it. 2. Lilla Crawford (from Annie) will play Little Red
James M Iglehart, so terrific in Memphis, will play the genie in Aladdin.
Joining Carrie Underwood in NBC’s Sound of Music: Audra McDonald, Laura Benanti, and Christian Borle. It will air on December 5.
Ethan Coen, whose first full-length play, Women or Nothing, is running at the Atlantic Theater Company through October 13, clearly has no plans to give up his filmmaking career with his brother Joel; their 16th feature film, Inside Llewyn Davis, will be in movie houses in December. About his playwriting, Coen told the Associated Press: “It’s recreational. It’s part-time. I’m a play hobbyist. I’m a gentleman playwright.”
But would a gentleman write a play about a lesbian couple planning to trick a man out of his sperm?
Women or Nothing has none of the blood or violence or bizarre visuals that characterize much of the Coen Brothers’ films, fromFargo to Blood Simple to No Country For Old Men. It is a slight, blunt and improbable comedy full of one-liners, which could easily have been tightened from its 100 minute running time (with an intermission) to the length of one of his previous one-act plays. But then there’d be less time to laugh.
Full review of Women or Nothing
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The Old Friends at Signature, the new Horton Foote play with Betty Buckley, Lois Smith, Veanne Cox, Hallie Foote et al, has been extended through October 13
The entire cast of Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 will transfer to a tent at 45th and 8th for 14-week run starting September 24
If you haven’t yet gone to Comet, here are three songs from the show (performance + printed lyrics)
Exciting new Public Theater “Drama Club” series readings:
1. Kia Corthron’s Life by Asphyxiation, read by Wendell Pierce,Oct. 20
2 Tony Kushner’s Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy read by Rachel Maddow & Elizabeth Marvel Nov 3
3.Thornton Wilder’s The Long Christmas Dinner read by Lisa Kron,discussed by Wilder nephew et al Dec 10
Bryan Cranston plays LBJ in All The Way at American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, aiming for Broadway.
Take CBC Books Walter White/Shakespeare quiz: Who said it, Breaking Bad’s Walter White or Shakespeare?
e.g.
1 Heaven is my judge
2 What’s done cannot be undone
3 I’ll find a way to massacre them all
Walter White or Shakespeare villain?
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Daniel Curry, actor in the cast of “Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark” injured August 15, is suing to inspect equipment he suspects malfunctioned. The suit says he’s had “severe and permanent bodily injury” and reportedly undergone “surgeries and amputation
Here Lies Love to transfer to Hotel Pennsylvania near Penn Station, says NYP. Great musical about Imelda Marcos
Smash veteran Wesley Taylor and Mitch Jarvis are seeking $50,000 on Kickstarter to fund the second season of It Could Be Worse, their online series.
I have mixed feelings about this campaign –mostly because he keeps on using “it’s” wrong
Wesley Taylor (@WesTayTay) “IT’S” a good thing I’m not raising money to be a grammar teacher, eh? Don’t have mixed feelings. We’re good storytellers:)
The Dallas Morning News, which has had no full-time arts critic since 2006, hires a professor to write art reviews 20 hours a week
Terry Teachout @terryteachout Can they write compellingly for a general audience? If not, it won’t work–and I suspect that most of them can’t.
Patrick Wilson hints in an interview he’ll be returning to do his first Broadway musical in a decade. (He starred in Oklahoma) “My wife and I both love doing theater,” he says. But a Broadway schedule “is hard when you have little kids.”
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Two new biographical musicals are aiming for Broadway:
All That Glitters, about Liberace, starring Richard Kline
Roy Rogers by Marshall Brickman
Quiz:What do Cyndi Lauper, Sheryl Crow,John Mellencamp, Tori Amos,Edie Brickell,David Byrne,Fatboy Slim, & Elvis Costello share?
Adam Gale @ArgoTheatricals They all hooked up with Harvey Fierstein?
All those singer-songwriters have created, or are in the process of creating, new works for the stage.
Top 10 anticipated shows Fall 2013 (3 lists!) from Maxamoo. (On all 3: Betrayal & Little Miss Sunshine)
Romeo and Juliet 2013 by @girlposts
j:lol where r u romeo
r:wana come over?
j:cant
r:y?
j: idk parents
r: lets kill ourself
j: lol k
Bloom and Condola Rashad are certainly appealing performers, and Leveaux’s “Romeo and Juliet,” the 36th production of Shakespeare’s tragedy on Broadway but the first in a quarter of century, actually has much else to recommend it. It is visually striking….There is nothing terribly wrong with this “Romeo and Juliet,” but there is little that is especially thrilling, or deeply moving, or thematically coherent.
Full review of Romeo and Juliet
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Cast recording of Far From Heaven with Kelli O’Hara and Steve Pasquale in stores November 12.
Mike Daisey and the Art of Meandering. My review of All The Faces of the Moon
“For you this is a singular experience. To me, this is my 13th opening night in a row,” Daisey said near the beginning of That Hideous Strength, arms stretched out, dressed all in black, with a trim black beard. Next to him was a new painting – one of the 29 that Larissa Tokmakova is creating specifically for the show, a new one for each monologue. This one looked like an angry nun looming over a roaring lion.
Daisey spent the first 10 minutes or so talking about the philosophical implications of this show that he was doing. I started to drift.
I thought of Johnny Carson, who was host of the Tonight Show for 30 years. Yes, near the end there he wasn’t appearing every weekday, and he probably always had weekends off, but he came up with maybe 6,000 monologues without anyone thinking of him as a cutting-edge artist.
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Actor Bobby Steggert on coming out:
“If people don’t want to hire you because of their altered perception of your sexuality, they’re probably not the people you want to be working with in the first place. They lack imagination. And isn’t imagination the point of it all?”
Barry Manilow’s Harmony, about the Comedian Harmonists — the half-Jewish, half-Gentile singing group that was a huge hit in 1930’s Germany.
