Leave it to a Brit to find a (potential) solution to a problem that has long plagued the theatre community.[1]
Continue reading “Cameron Mackintosh (and Louis C.K.?) Say No to This”
Tag: A Crazy Mirror Showing Us Both in 5-D
I – and Now Tony – Told You So…
A majority of what I wrote regarding the disappointing current Broadway revival of Cats focused on its creative team having the lazy gall simply to re-stage basically their same work from the original 1982 production. I’m not going to take a page from their book and just re-hash what I wrote in that piece, but I did want to call your attention to this little bit of news:
ALL THE WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU: Please, Sir, I Want Some More
Neil LaBute has spent the majority of his career deconstructing the societal taboos that most people mindlessly adopt with nary a thought to their validity. With All the Ways to Say I Love You – the first play of MCC Theater’s 30th anniversary season, of which Mr. LaBute is the playwright-in-residence – he sets his sights on exploring the morality of the hot-button issue of teachers forging “inappropriate” relationships with their underage students. Those textual air quotes are basically the crux of the play: even though almost everyone would immediately write-off such a relationship as immoral and thus inappropriate, this one-woman show strives to understand the psychology that drove the female teacher at its center to engage in such near-universally agreed upon immorality. This understanding will hopefully elicit empathy for a visibly tortured soul whose perspective they never even considered, which has long been one of the foundational goals of drama since its origins in Greek tragedy.
Continue reading “ALL THE WAYS TO SAY I LOVE YOU: Please, Sir, I Want Some More”
CATS: Don’t Let the Memory Live Again
I spent much of the duration of the current Broadway revival of Cats pondering not what the felines prowling around on stage in front of me were doing but rather the Great White Way-wide implications of this production’s chosen tagline:
OCTOBER SKY: A Launch with No Landing
80% of all Broadway musicals fail to make money, which is only a fraction of the total number of musicals that fail to even make it to Broadway at all.
This statistic has absolutely nothing to do with the new musical adaptation of October Sky, currently playing a self-labeled pre-Broadway tryout at San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre, one of the most prestigious regional theatres in the world that has shepherded such recent fare as Bright Star, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to the Great White Way. Even so, I feel the need to open this review with this little factoid because it’s essential to understanding why October Sky exists, because almost nothing that audiences can actually see and hear on the Donald and Darlene Shiley Stage in this tolerable-at-best musical justifies its excessively familiar existence.
SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS (Theatre Capsule)
I know that I’m excessively late to this party, but holy cow I’d be surprised if I see five better plays this season than Small Mouth Sounds. It’s a prime example of what happens when you actually present the work of young, diverse voices – in this case, two women: playwright Bess Wohl and director Rachel Chavkin. Hopefully this boosts the careers of these two phenomenal talents in the same way that Circle Mirror Transformation enhanced the profiles of Annie Baker and Sam Gold (pretty lofty company!). If you can see it by Sunday, DO SO. If you can’t, I’m sure that it will – as it should – be produced in so many regional theatres all across the country in the near future. If it comes to your city, do yourself a favor and purchase a ticket – very few other plays in recent memory so encapsulate the special human alchemy of live theatre.
THE TRUTH Will Set You Free…or Not
French Playwright Florian Zeller burst onto the New York theatre scene this past season with the excellent Broadway production of The Father.[1] Though he’s been popular in London for a few years thanks to the excellent translations of Christopher Hampton,[2] the relatively young Mr. Zeller is a new, much welcomed commodity for New York theatregoers hungry for fresh dramatic voices. As such, when I found out another of his plays – also translated by Mr. Hampton – had recently transferred to the West End’s Wyndham’s Theatre after a successful run at the Menier Chocolate Factory, I made it a priority to see The Truth on a recent trip to London to determine whether Florian would be a one-hit wonder or a promising playwright to keep an eye on.
Write All Nite 