RIP Robin Williams, Lauren Bacall. Fringe Fun: Taylor Swift and The Marx Brothers. Week in New York Theater

Death was an unfortunate theme this week, with the passing of two performers , Robin Williams and Lauren Bacall, as comfortable on stage as on screen.

We are midway through the 18th annual New York International Fringe Festival. I review three Fringe shows — including the first-ever revival of the first-ever Marx Brothers Broadway musical — and a fourth that probably should have been in the Fringe. I also review two comedies Off-Broadway about sexual/inappropriate behavior.

Lin-Manuel and Tom Kitt win an Emmy for their Tony song, Bigger. Remember it? Video of it below.

I show videos as well of the last Broadway in Bryant Park concert for this summer — a sneak peak at On The Town, and songs from three-M shows: Matilda, Mamma Mia, and Motown.

Tickets go on sale starting today for Broadway Week. (The popular shows go quickly)

BroadwayWeek

The Week in New York Theater

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Thad Shafer as Taylor Lautner in The Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift
Thad Shafer as Taylor Lautner in The Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift

 

Fringe! Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift versus Taylor Swift’s Songs of Ex Lovers

Valentine's Day Set is "Taylor" MadeMaking art, and sport, out of Taylor Swift’s love life is far from original; the popular singer-songwriter has done so herself many times; it’s easy to argue that her career is largely built on songs about her brief relationships (and breakups) with mostly famous men. But “Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift,” one of the productions at the 2014 New York International Fringe Festival, sounded promising: Each of the seven monologues is written by a different female playwright, all portrayed by the same actor, Thaddeus Shafer, usually conversing with an unseen Taylor Swift.

I compare the depiction of her exes at the Fringe show with Taylor Swift’s songs inspired by those exes.

Full review of Seven Seductions of Taylor Swift

Four thoughts on creativity in the theater by Polly Carl after she attended a conference with neuroscientists

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Xavier Toby as a penguin giving a tour of NYC 100 years from now.
Xavier Toby as a penguin giving a tour of NYC 100 years from now.

Fringe! My review of 2014, When We Were Idiots. (Weird Walking Tour)

A hundred years ago, our tour guide was saying, New Yorkers were such idiots

that they stopped throwing away their garbage, and the city disappeared under a pile of rubbish, mostly coffee cups, stale cupcakes and hipsters.

Our tour guide, I should point out, is a penguin, and we, the tourists walking the streets and shops of the Lower East Side decked in fluorescent yellow-green vests, live in an environmentally sensitive society in the year 2114, visiting the recently excavated city that has remained unchanged in the century that has elapsed since 2014.

That’s the premise of the 90-minute comedy show/theater piece/walking tour created and conducted by Australian comic Xavier Toby (dressed as a penguin), who entitles it “2014: When We Were Idiots,” one of the 205 shows at this year’s New York International Fringe Festival.

Full Review of 2014, When We Were Idiots

JudyKaye

Judy Kaye, 10-time Broadway veteran, two-time Tony winner (Nice Work, Phantom) will be the next Fairy Godmother in Cinderella

 

Kathleen Chalfant to play Russian negotiator, originally a man’s role, in Lee Blessing’s A Walk in the Woods, Keen Company Sept-Oct

musicman

“76 trombones led the big parade…” 58 actors led by Laura Osnes and Santino Fontana at Transport Group’s one-night-only  Music Man.

robinWilliamscollage

RIP Robin Williams

 

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Noah Hinsdale, Griffin Birney, and Sydney Lucas
Noah Hinsdale, Griffin Birney, and Sydney Lucas

Alison Bechdel and Jonathan Lethem will talk about what it’s like to have their lives turned into musicals, with songs from Fun Home and the forthcoming musical Fortress of Solitude! October 27

That’s just one of a season of Public Forum readings and talks, which will feature Salman Rushdie, David Remnick, etc.

A Family Thing,about 3 estranged brothers,written by playwright and “Orange Is The New Black” writer/producer Gary Lennon, aims for Broadway in 2015

RichardChamberlain

Richard Chamberlain,80, has joined Bill Pullman, Holly Hunter in cast of The New Group’s revival of David Rabe’s Sticks and Bones

bacall1

RIP Lauren Bacall – A Life in Pictures and on Stage

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FindingNeverland

Finding Neverland,  based on movie about Peter Pan author JM Barrie and currently at the American Repertory Theatre, will open on Broadway in March

Costumedworkersunion

“We want to be treated with dignity and not as cartoon characters,” says man who dresses as a Penguin in Times Square every day. He is one of the costumed workers who have founded the Association of Artists United for a Smile to fight back against bad press.

BillyPorterplay

S. Epatha Merkerson and Lillias White are in the cast of While I Yet Live, play at Primary Stages written by Billy Porter Sept 23-Oct 21. While I Yet Live, says Porter, is “a love letter to my mother, my sister, & the women who raised me”

“Are there things about (sign) interpreting Shakespeare that are challenging? Yeah: understanding it”

Switcheroo: Love Letters is now going to be at the Brooks Atkinson, and Honeymoon in Vegas at the larger Nederlander Theater.

Elbow3

My review of Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter

It is easy to feel bewildered by a title that sounds as if it is translated from the Icelandic. But as it turns out, the dialogue and the lyrics sound that way as well. “Revolution in the Elbow etc.” is a bizarre enough new musical to be mistaken for an entry in the Fringe festival, except that no Fringe show has such an expensive set, nor such Tony-level talent, thanks to the more than a million dollars that has been invested in this unfortunate world premiere production at the Minetta Lane Theater.

Full review of Revolution in the Elbow of Ragnar Agnarsson Furniture Painter

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How to think like a critic – be invisible, watch and listen and feel. By @alisoncroggon

Given all that’s happening in the world, should theater be an escape from reality?

Broadway in Bryant Park

The last free lunchtime concert of the summer featured:

On the Town in Bryant Park stage

 

On The Town

Matilda

Motown

MammaMiainBryantPark

Mamma Mia

 

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Detail of Deaths in Shakespeare chart
Detail of Deaths in Shakespeare chart

Deaths in Shakespeare, A Handy Chart

Parade, the musical by Jason R Brown about the lynching of Leo Frank, is getting a one-night only  concert February 16 at Lincoln Center, with Brown as musical director.

Dame Diana Rigg, who will be on Broadway next season, is performing a play at the Edinburgh Fringe based on her collection of bad reviews. It’s called “No Turn Unstoned.”

A New York Times editorial *supports* the Times Square Elmos. Free speech is a right “even for furry monsters”

 

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Actor Edmund Kean collapsed on stage while playing Othello to his son’s Iago; his last words: “I am dying, speak to them for me.” Is there any better way for an actor to go than on stage? Some other examples

Phoenix The Play 2014 Julia Stiles James Wirt

In an unusual move,Jennifer Delia responds point by point to criticism of her direction of Phoenix

My review of Phoenix makes some of those criticisms to which she is responding.

When reporting on suicide, let’s adopt a “Robin Williams Rule”: stop speculating

Why there are 44 above-the-title + 100 more unbilled “producers” for Gentleman’s Guide (Answer: producer=investor)

What Patrick Healy doesn’t explain in his piece about the producers (investors) of Gentleman is whether they’ve made any money.

Sex With StrangersSecond Stage

My review of Sex with Strangers

Sex With Strangers,” a comedy about a coupling with complications, stars two performers – Anna Gunn, Bryan Cranston’s wife Skyler in “Breaking Bad,” and Billy Magnussen, the boy-toy Spike in Christopher Durang’s Tony-winning “Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike” – whose previous roles left such a strong impression that there was a question in my mind whether audiences could accept their portraying different characters.

Apparently so: The two-character play written by Linda Eason and directed by David Schwimmer (still best-known as the actor in Friends) is artfully constructed and well-acted, a hit with critics and with theatergoers as well; it has been extended through August 31st.

But are the characters they are portraying that different from their breakthrough roles? All four characters have something in common, and it has to do with love – or, more precisely, it has nothing to do with love.

Full review of Sex with Strangers

 

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The Marx Brothers and Beauty in I'll Say She Is
The Marx Brothers and Beauty in I’ll Say She Is

My review of I’ll Say She Is

In the first-ever revival of “I’ll Say She Is,” the Marx Brothers’ first-ever Broadway musical, Harpo honks once again; Chico puns, Zeppo courts; and Groucho, cigar in hand, says things like “I’m not so sheepish that you can pull the wool over my eyes.”

Full review of I’ll Say She Is

 

KATIE KREISLER, BRIAN AVERS in POOR BEHAVIOR

My review of Poor Behavior

Poor Behavior,” Theresa Rebeck’s comedy at Primary Stages, revolves around a basic question: “What is goodness?” The play begins in the middle of a debate on the subject by two characters who have drunkenly escalated their argument into insults, while their respective spouses sit in near silence. By the end of the play more than two hours later, we are meant to have explored the question dramatically by witnessing the behavior of the four characters over a long weekend in the country.

There is a superficial resemblance here both to Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and Yasmin Reza’s “God of Carnage,” both involving two couples, and both suggesting how thin the membrane of civilization. In “God of Carnage” two sophisticated couples, meeting to bring to resolution the squabble between their two warring sons, instead escalate the conflict in well-calibrated savage and hilarious ways.

The difference in “Poor Behavior” is that the couples have known each other for a long time, and the unfolding of their behavior is more convoluted and complicated – and less satisfying.

Full review of Poor Behavior

Rocky 11 Terence Archie and Andy Karl

Rocky ends its run

 

Author: New York Theater

Jonathan Mandell is a 3rd generation NYC journalist, who sees shows, reads plays, writes reviews and sometimes talks with people.

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