“The American Revolution” launched last night (You can binge all six episodes online now or wait for the nightly broadcast.)
Revolution was also on stage last week in various ways. Series creator Ken Burns and Lin-Manuel Miranda talked about it together before hundreds of public school students. Off-Broadway, “Archduke” featured self-proclaimed revolutionaries. On Broadway, even “Oedipus” has been reconfigured so that the kind is now a modern politician who presents himself as the father of a new movement.
This comes at a time when, as Burns put it, there is “a sense that our divisions will somehow destroy us,” but he points out: “The story of the American Revolution is that we were as divided then as ever. “
A revolution can take different forms — or, perhaps, serve as a useful metaphor for all manner of resistance against state-sponsored oppression. In American Theatre Magazine, Gabriela Furtado Coutinho offers a lyrical survey of How to Survive a Dictatorship, the Theater Artist’s Way: Stories of resistance from perseverant 20th century theater makers around the world — at least one of them, she writes, “real, raw rehearsals for revolution.”
The Week in New York Theater Reviews
It’s early on Election Day, and Oedipus, populist candidate confident that he’ll be swept into office, makes two off-the-cuff public promises that will blow up in his face: He will release his birth certificate, and he will investigate the death of his predecessor Laius, whose widow, Jocasta, is now Oedipus’s wife.
In his modern adaptation of Sophocles’ 2,500-year-old play, writer and director Robert Icke makes two promises of his own to the audience, in a production now on Broadway that stands out for its exceptional cast, with performances of remarkable intensity by Mark Strong as Oedipus and especially Lesley Manville as Jocasta, making a much-welcomed Broadway debut. But Icke’s two implicit promises are largely at odds with one another.
Icke establishes from the start that the basic plot will be the same as Sophocles’, which virtually the entire audience already knows – Oedipus will discover he has unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, to his horror and Jocasta’s. But the details will be changed to fit modern times.
‘If I had to choose between being known while alive or being known while dead, I gotta go with dead,” says Gavrilo, the teenager who will soon assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand and start World War I. “Cause I’ll be dead forever. So that means: Remembered forever.”
But few in the audience “Archduke,” a play by Rajiv Joseph opening tonight at Roundabout’s Laura Pels theater, will have remembered the name Gavrilo Princip — or that of his co-conspirators, or know much about the complicated geopolitics that turned them into killers. Joseph is banking on our ignorance, because he has used the historical event to create an absurd black comedy that is neither historically accurate nor especially illuminating.
Watch starry Twelfth Night on PBS
The Week in New York Theater News
Rob Lake Magic with Special Guests the Muppets,” closed Sunday – two days after its official opening and two months earlier than planned. It was the Muppet’s (inauspicious) Broadway debut.
“Liberation” announces a three-week extension. It will now play through Sunday, February 1 at the James Earl Jones Theater
Sting’s 2014 musical “The Last Ship,” newly revised will play Met Opera, June 9-14, starring Sting. My review of The Last Ship on Broadway. The new production will feature a new book by Barney Norris and new and revised songs by Sting
Sean Hayes will star in “The Unknown” a solo play by David Cale, directed by Leigh Silverman at Studio Seaview, January 31-April 12, opening February 12. Desperate to cure his writer’s block, Elliott retreats to a remote cabin—only to discover he may not be alone
How Broadway Almost Went on Strike: Al Vincent Jr., executive director of Actors’ Equity, on what happened in the negotiation room and how close the actors and stage managers were to striking. (The Hollywood Reporter)
Leslie Odom Jr., Back in the Room Where It Happens: In “Hamilton,” no moment captures the actor’s emotional expansiveness, artistic breadth and vocal depth better than this number. (NYTimes)
Shakespeare By The Numbers: 64 violent deaths, 1,700 new words, 1,800 movie credits
Veterans on Stage, from Sophocles to Gershwin to Quiara Alegría Hudes
Sex With a Stranger: How Actors Do It Onstage: The experimental play “Good Sex” lets audiences in on the process, while giving its performers an unusual acting challenge. (NY Times)
Sketches of rummagers at the 34th edition of the Broadway Flea Market and Grand Auction (NY Times)
In Memoriam
Elizabeth Franz, 84, “whose vibrant portrayal of Linda Loman, the wife of the piteous title character in the 1999 Broadway revival of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” earned her a Tony Award — and high praise from the playwright…”
