The startling political developments of late are being viewed through a theatrical lens, repeatedly.
A surprising number of professional commentators have invoked Shakespeare, sometimes awkwardly: “Nothing became his presidency like the leaving of it,” Nicholas Kristoff “paraphrased” Macbeth in his essay about Biden’s stepping down from his re-election bid, awkward because in the original line “Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it,” Malcom is talking about a character executed for treason.
In The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik devotes his entire essay on Biden’s departure, as well the Presidential race in general, to Shakespeare analogies, including the answer one Shakespearean scholar gave when asked which character most resembles the Republican nominee — “Dogberry, the clownish sheriff with the incompetent posse, in Much Ado About Nothing” But most often Gopnik quotes King Lear to compare him to Biden, such as when Lear curses his circumstances: “here I stand, your slave, / A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man.”
“This was all too evidently Biden’s emotional tone in these past weeks,” Gopnik comments. “When he announced to George Stephanopoulos, in an interview meant to recover his position, that he’s “not only campaigning” but “running the world,” the forced grandiosity of the wounded King was all too apparent.”
Then there was this item Sunday in the Times:
“At the start of a 3 p.m. performance of “Suffs,” a Broadway musical about the women’s suffrage movement, the audience began to chant “Kamala! Kamala!” The chant lasted for about a minute, said Alex Heckler, a Democratic delegate from Florida who attended the performance. Hillary Clinton, who on Sunday endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president, is a producer of the show.”
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
María Irene Fornés was a thirty-year-old aspiring New York painter visiting relatives in her native Cuba with her then-lover Susan Sontag, when she stumbled upon a cache of old letters. They launched her prolific and influential career as a playwright.
The letters were written to her great-grandfather in Cuba from a cousin living in exile in Spain at the end of the 19th century.
The play those letters inspired, “La Viuda,” is receiving its first-ever English translation, as “The Widow,” more than sixty years after its Spanish-language debut, in a first-rate production by a new Off-Broadway theater company. Full review
In repertory with:
A Hundred Circling Camps
In the summer of 1932, some 17,000 veterans and their families descended on Washington D.C. to demand the pay that Congress had promised them years earlier as a bonus for their service during World War I – but (in a budget compromise) didn’t plan to deliver the money to them until 1945. In the depths of the Great Depression, when many were jobless, homeless and hungry, the veterans couldn’t wait that long. They traveled from throughout the nation, called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, or Bonus Army, and set up several camps throughout the capital city.
It’s a little-remembered moment in American history that playwright Sam Collier attempts to dramatize in “A Hundred Circling Camps,’ a production of Dogteam Theater Project, a new Off-Broadway theater company.
The play needs work. Full review
Inspired by True Events
There is a moment in Ryan Spahn’s backstage play that leaves the characters screaming and the audience gasping, but also laughing at how shocking it is, fulfilling anybody’s expectations of a live theatrical horror.
But for the hour leading up to this moment, and for much of the twenty minutes or so following it, “Inspired by True Events” left me uninspired, despite all its attention to detail and occasional comedy. I kept thinking: What am I missing? Full review
The Week in New York Theater News
Three more Broadway shows have been scheduled with specific opening dates and venues for the Broadway 2024-2025 Broadway season.
“Redwood” will open February 13 at the Nederlander, starring Idina Menzel (who co-conceived the show.) She portrays a woman experiencing a life altering event that drives her far from everyone and everything she knows — winding up at the foot of the redwoods in Northern California.
“Boop The Betty Boop Musical” will open April 5 at the Broadhurst. A musical about the cartoon flapper from the 1930s: Betty’s dream of an ordinary day off from the super-celebrity in her black-and-white world leads to an extraordinary adventure of color, music, and finding love in New York City
“The Last Five Years” will open April 6 at the Hudson. With book, music and lyrics by Jason Robert Brown, the musical stars Nick Jonas and Adrienne Warren as two New Yorkers who fall in and out of love over the course of five years.
For more details and links check out the Broadway 2024-2025 Broadway season preview guide.
Broadway veteran Mandy Gonzalez (Nina In The Heights; Anjelica in Hamilton) will play Norma Desmond’ at select performances (once a week) in the new revival of “Sunset Boulevard,” , which opens at the St James Oct 20 (Nicole Scherzinger scheduled to play all other performances.)
The State of Broadway 2024 according to Ken Davenport
Jesse Cameron Alick, Annalisa Dias, Lanxing Fu, and Lauren Miller have been appointed co-directors of HERE Arts Center, succeeding founding artistic director Kristin Marting, who steps down this month. (American Theatre)
4 “Best Books of the 21st Century” for theater lovers
