Quote of the Day

"Journalist may not use text produced by Amanda Peet for any purposes other than what is originally intended without securing the prior permission of Amanda Peet... Journalist agrees not to publish any quotes supplied by Amanda Peet in any manner without obtaining Amanda Peet's prior written consent."

-Amanda Peet (via her publicist) restricting interviews at the meet & greet for the upcoming B'way Barefoot in the Park revival.

And who said movie stars are the answer to saving theatre? Quoth the desperate theatre publicist: "As a rule, it's much harder to get press for a play than it is a movie or a television show, so you're happy to get press wherever and whenever you can." Indeed, the joke is the handlers don't realize all Broadway press is puffery anyway.

Michael Riedel has those and more amusing highlights from this Hollywood-meets-Broadway encounter. Including: "A correspondent for a Broadway Web site who was shooting some video of the 34-year-old Peet was ordered to stop because the angle of the shot had not been preapproved." Really, I don't even have a video camera. Honest.

Nadirs of Criticism

I have long suspected the theatre credentials of Times 2nd-stringer Neil Genzlinger. With his slick yet chatty prose--a lowbrow Anthony Lane, if you will--he may be easy and pleasant to read, but the style really does seem to cover up a lack of substance. Or should I say, lack of knowledge. He's a fine choice for the Times to send to cover kitschy schlock like Batboy. But faced with a rare revival of a complicated obscure classic the likes of Sor Juana de la Cruz's House of Desires, he is clearly out of his depth.

Typical, easy (in other words, lazy) remark from his review today:

The playwright was a nun and proto-feminist in Mexico, and there is perhaps some curiosity value in a play written by a woman in the late 1600's. The main lesson of this work, though, is that women were just as capable as men of writing forgettable, not very farcical farces.

This line may look good on the NYT Arts web page as a hook. We can't fault Genzlinger as a journalist, I suppose. But think for a moment how ignorant that is, not to mention offensive-- insulting not just to Sor Juana, to women, but to Times readers and theatre audiences.

Current interest in Sor Juana goes way beyond some nutty fringe "curiosity." As we continue to reassess the importance of Renaissance drama outside of Shakespeare, the contributions to the form from other cultures, and from women, has transformed the field in academia and by theatre artists. (The text of this production was originally commissioned for the RSC.) New York Times readers (the quintessential "cultural elite") deserve to know this. We have a right to expect their arts & culture critics to be up on things like that. After all, do we not look to them as some sort of "authorities" in their field?

Genzlinger doesn't even seem to care. His review today is embarrassing in so glibly mocking the play for being, well, "old" (he calls it a "corpse" that's "DOA") and not at all taking into account the possible shortcomings of a production in realizing a challenging text. From what I hear, first of all, the play is severely cut and I know of no previous endorsement of the proficiency of the company/artists involved. I know readers out there would agree with me that many inadequate stagings of, say, Twelfth Night and Midsummer Night's Dream might have led to momentary doubts about their author's worth--but thankfully we have centuries of production history and scholarship to counter that. Many today who pick up Goldoni's Servant of Two Masters may be baffled by the respect given to that silly slapstick-fest--until they see a brilliant recreation of its original context on stage, such as that offered by the late Georgio Strehler in his Arlecchino this past summer.

Look, I admit to not knowing this play. But when you hear that the author was a missionary nun in Mexico, don't you assume her intentions might not have just been to write a stupid sitcom? Perhaps there are good reasons House of Desires (or, in another translation House of Trials) has never caught on in the English-speaking theatre and perhaps its moment has passed. But such dismissal of potentially revealing material as junk is beneath any critic outside of Entertainment Weekly.

Quote of the Day

"It's time to redefine straight-to-video releases as a facet of legitimate distribution. If someone cannot foresee making money off of, say, Resnais's Not on the Lips, Akerman's Tomorrow We Move, or Rivette's The Story of Marie and Julien—all DVD'd in 2005—why should that negate their presence and accessibility? Projection is optimal, of course, but I'd be happier if more filmgoers stayed home with a crystalline digital Rivette or Sokurov or Iosselliani than donate their ten-spot to guaranteeing another brain-raping superhero franchise."

-V.Voice film critic Michael Atkinson on the future of Indie Film. (See here, scroll to bottom under heading "Get Rich or Die Trying." Part of December's Voice critics poll "Take 7", an annual must-read. As with the Obies, no one does anti-awards better than the Voice.)

I cite this not just for those concerned about the kind of films mentioned. This is exactly the kind of new thinking we need about the survival of all the performing arts, especially the drama, in the capitalism of the 21st century. I hope theatre artists and producers (and critics) will take a cue from approaches like this and throw out old assumptions, reimagine the conditions under which we operate. Obviously "straight-to-video" is not an option for live theatre. But smaller venues? Earlier curtain times? Less subscription-reliant?

As Netflix subscribers will tell you, all the best in exciting new (and classic) cinema is now even more affordable and conveniently available on DVD than theatrical releases could ever promise. How do we make serious theatre, good theatre, similarly accessible once again to those who actually want it? (As opposed to only those who don't really want it but use it for status or leisure.) Look no further for proof that cinema will continue to far outstrip theatre as the serious dramatic artform for current and future generations. It's the accessibility, stupid.

Shanley's latest

Interesting preview here of what is unfolding as a Shanley culture-wars triology, of which Doubt was just the beginning. Loved Doubt? Wait till you see Defiance...

The "Variety" Mess

Superfluities' George Hunka reports (by way of UK's The Stage) on the apparent disimissal of critic Matt Wolf as the London critic for Variety over a suprisingly public disagreement with his editor Peter Bart over Billy Elliot. After Woolf gave the show a thumbs-down, Bart--a man, let's face it, with a lot more experience in Hollywood than in theatre, to put it midly--went on the record in his own pages declaring:

Variety's critic greeted the show with a fusillade of words like 'maudlin' and 'lazy,' with Elton John's music described as its 'weakest link.' This caught me off guard, since, in my opinion, Billy Elliot will clearly rank as one of the best musicals of its generation. Not since the opening of The Producers has a show left its audience on such a high.

Gee, not since 2001? Sure that's not reaching too far back, Peter?

While the bullying of Wolf couldn't be any more baldfaced, I do feel compelled to wonder if Variety doesn't have a right to define itself as a very specific kind of trade publications, more concerned with commercial prospects and prognostications than serious aesthetic criticism? If Bart took the opportunity to reconsider why Variety has critics in the first place, then I could respect that. But if he's just going to replace Wolf with a hack toady who will be called a "critic" but just bow to Bart's own personal tastes (or, worse the tastes of the producers--let alone The Producers!), then this is very, very disturbing.

Is it that unimaginable that, one day, even the blessed New York Times--in its mission to promote B'way at all costs--could do the same to a critic?

Critics on Display

The latest in the American Theatre Wing's "Working in the Theatre" seminars (courtesy of Playbill):

The American Theatre Wing's "Working in the Theatre" seminars will continue on Jan. 19 with an afternoon devoted to theatre criticism.The noon-1:30 PM seminar will be held in the Elebash Recital Hall at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The Wing’s Howard Sherman will moderate the discussion, which will feature panelists Melissa Rose Bernardo, Entertainment Weekly; Michael Feingold, Village Voice; Elysa Gardner, USA Today; Michael Kuchwara, Associated Press; and Jeremy McCarter, New York Magazine....
The CUNY Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street. Tickets, priced at $10, are available by calling (212) 817-8215. (Wing members can reserve free of charge through the Wing.) Visit www.americantheatrewing.org for more information.

Nice lineup! If you can't show in person, you can always catch it on NYC Time Warner channel 75 (CUNY-TV) in the coming months' rotations.

Musicals & Music

The Sun's Eric Grode has a thoughtful overview today on the widening gulf between musical theatre and (good) pop music.

His big question, "Why is it that good rock songs make for bad musicals and vice versa?" recalls a very different (yet perhaps related) problem in film, namely: why is it movies made out of great books tend to be vapid and mediocre, while many of the great movies have been based on mere pulp and less respected literature? The universal message may be, beware when taking on source material already great in its own right.

Yes, more London

Janet McTeer as Schiller's Mary Stuart

The NYT Brit-ink continues to flow, in day 3 of Brantley's travelogue. And Playgoer eats it up.

I'm beginning to nod along with those comments coming in that the difference may come to more than economics. The stunning looking black-and-white Mary Stuart (pictured above) just betrays a refined and complex sensibility to the classics not on display on these shores. I believe it's harbored in the souls of many of our finest theatre practitioners. But maybe it is not nurtured by our institutions, our critics, perhaps our audiences and our funders, as well.

London, continued

The London dispatches continue as Mr. Brantley shares with us the benefits of his expense account. And you know what? I love it, really. My point about the NYT London coverage is not that it is odious to cover the Brit scene at all. Any reader of this blog knows Playgoer is at least as Anglophilic as they are. And pieces like this and this only reinforce why: London still enables a theatrical environment where adventurous artists are both putting on new work and reexploring classics at (to us) an astonishing rate. (What Brantley's been able to see in one week's visit there we would be lucky to see in one season here.)

Of course, a serious theatre page would cover more equitably New York, London, and the rest of America! That is my point. Now the Times might reply they review plenty (ok, some) "regional" shows. But let's face it: sending your critic up to Williamstown in the summer to review Gwynneth in As You Like It (as they did some years ago) is either just giving more ink to a celeb, or you're going at the behest of a press agent trying to engineer a Broadway transfer. What many of us would like to see in the paper of record is a critic writing up a major production in a LORT theatre done by serious artists and just saying "Gee, here's something I just thought it was really interesting." The Times, like the New York culture as a whole, still cannot see that the LORT network is not just "regional" but actually constitutes our "national theatre." It's where our best-trained and most talented actors, designers, and directors are working most of the year when they cannot find employment on Broadway or want to be paid more substantial Equity minimums than what they get in a downtown "showcase." For directors, such theatres may also be the only venues left for them to do something like The Wild Duck, which (see Brantley) may get a great new production at the Donmar in London, but it will be a while before the Roundabout touches it.

But what can we indeed learn from all this attention on London? Since the Times doesn't bother asking the question, let's consider this for a moment. In other words, why are they having this amazing season over there and we're still recovering from the cultural ink wasted on Blonde in the Thunderbird and In My Life? Is it something in the water there? Connecting to another recent post here (on Isherwood's bemoaning the dearth of rep companies in NYC), glancing across the pond reminds us of what we lose by not investing (and I use that word in all sorts of ways) in our theatre as a national resource. I have argued before against knee-jerk calls for a "national theatre"--but here is one really important benefit of such an institution: the fostering of a national repertory. In this way the theatre culture in the US (and especially NYC) really has been impoverished. In London they don't just "believe" in the classics. Institutions are funded and set up to be in continual production, mining not only their own national repertory but ours and much of the world's. (When you have to do a lot of plays, you do start reaching out.) I bet many Americans barf at the thought of restaging our "chestnuts" over and over--but in fact the British theatre is stronger for all its artists having done a gazillion "Midsummers". Every generation cuts its teeth on a body of work, may times at that. The fact that the RSC and RNT might stage 4 or 5 Hamlets in a decade means a constant reinvention of such plays. When that doesn't happen the classics do get stale and rusty, as they do here--like unused appliances buried in our basements.

And what about actors? Look, forget the question of are British actors just better. (And forget about the training issue. I would argue we have just as good training, in theory. Just fewer of our actors are getting it and able to make a career from it.) But an American director does have to envy the quality of the acting pool in London and how available it is. If you want to put on The Wild Duck in New York good luck finding the kinds of actors to pull off the subtleties required without resorting to "classical" stodginess. We have those great classical actors here, for sure. But you'll find those who have not gone out to the coast for pilot season are already in the new Roundabout show, getting paid lots more than the Equity minimum your little company can offer for a three-weekend run. Plus, you can't put them on Broadway, which is the only way they have a shot a career-enhancing Tony.

(Speaking of the L.A. effect, btw, an English actor once pointed out to me something earthshatteringly simple about the difference between US and UK acting careers: English actors don't have to choose as much between stage, tv, and film because it's all in one city. In fact some do some of each in the same day! The LA/NY dilemma many of our finest stage actors face jeopardizes the future of the acting pool increasingly every day. When's the next time you think we'll see Paul Giamatti on stage, for instance?)

The result in NY is you have fine, well-intentioned companies like The Mint and The Keen doing the lord's work in mining the repertory and rediscovering "neglected masterpieces"--but whenever I see their shows I am inevitably disappointed by the cheap scenery and generally mediocre acting, especially in such plays' crucial older roles. The ambition is there, the vision is there, but at some point the resources matter. This is the lesson I believe London can teach us. And so can many of our "regional" colleagues, where our best artists flock to do our classics justice.

And so I wish all the coverage of London would inspire efforts to emulate its successes. Instead, I fear, it only fosters inferiority complexes. And attempts at bad British accents.

Bullshit PR of the Day

Jeff Daniels is a fine actor. And he has walked the walk in theatre, founding and running his own Purple Rose company in Chelsea, MI, keeping the old Circle Rep. dream alive he started with Lanford Wilson et al back in the 70s. He also written plays for Purple Rose, including the 1996 Apartment 3A, now getting a NY premiere, off-off B'way. The play is described to the press as a "romantic comedy" and "ghost story." Sounds fine, but does it really need this reach for significance from the playwright:

"Given all the recent public debate about the importance of religion in our lives," Mr. Daniels said, "I think the play probably has more relevance now than it did when we premiered it."

Please, Jeff. I doubt the Bush theocrats make your apparent Blithe Spirit remake any more "relevant." I'll wait for someone to really write a play about that.

I feel sorry for those writers who feel pressured to inflate and distort classifications of their own work in order just to make it more marketable to the press. (Notice the NYT takes the bait, sure enough.) And maybe it's the press's fault. What's wrong with just a good romantic comedy?....The worst was back in Fall '01 to see how quickly playwrights, directors, and their press agents so glibly exploited 9/11 to sell their already-in-progress projects about relationship breakups and the like as "about loss--and you know, in a time like this...."

So much for a cheery start to the New Year!

Durangblog

Huffington Post has added Christopher Durang to its roster of celeb playwright-bloggers. (Along with Mamet, Baitz, and some lesser knowns, too.)

Here, Chris explains it all about Texas, God, and Intelligent Design. With an online outlet for these amusing ramblings, maybe he won't have to put it all into such rants posing as plays like Miss Witherspoon. Thank you, Arianna!

Oh, and Happy New Year.

Off-Broadway? Check!

Well, don't let it be said the NYT hasn't done an Off/Off-Off B'way year-end wrap. In case you thought you missed the article, you didn't. It's a "slide show"!

I guess those hip downtowners don't read.

The New York Times of London

Of course the Times year-in-review theatre pieces would focus on Broadway. Nor should a wrap-up yesterday of the year in London surprise us. (Hey, I love London theatre!) But taken together, one comes to a disquieting realization. The New York Times conceives of its theatregoing readers as more likely to go the West End than anywhere else outside of Times Square. And, sorry to say, that's probably true.

Leaving aside Off-Broadway and downtown (at least Brantley did include shows from that far afield), if the "nation's newspaper" cannot bother to even mention regional theatre in any of this coverage--let alone a "Best of Regional" piece in itself--then it has obviously given up on the very idea of "Amercian theatre." Especially when a good helping of the B'way coverage is British in origin anyway.

Yes, theatre is for jet-setters. Wherever the bucks are, there goes the coverage. As for "Flyover Country" you can read about that in USA Today, I suppose...

REVIEW: "Measure for Measure"

Measure for Measure
starring Mark Rylance
a production of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre of London at St. Ann's Warehouse (through January 1)
This may be an overstatement, but Mark Rylance is probably the greatest Shakespearean actor you've never heard of. (And I apologize for insulting the intelligence of those of you who do know him.) If you have heard of him it is as the artistic director of the "Shakespeare's Globe" theatre in London. Or perhaps he's crossed your radar as one of the most prominent Shakespeare deniers among active classical practitioners. (And a Marlovian no less, after all these years! Ugh)

What makes a Rylance performance so beguiling is in part how "anti-Shakespearean" he can be--that is, lacking in all the traditional "bad" connotations of that term, the bombast, the broad-brush emotions. Rylance is a master underplayer and, in roles that seem to demand the highest levels of verbosity, a virtuoso of inarticulateness. I remember my first Rylance encounter, 10 years ago, seeing his pre-Globe Henry V here in NY in a Theatre for a New Audience production at the little St. Clements Church. For most actors the pre-battle "St. Crispian's Day" speech is an obligatory chance for taking the stage with pyrotechnics. But Rylance dared to be different; he instead used it to further his interpretation of the character--that of a prince still discovering how to be a king, a boy how to be a man. I would say Rylance practically had been mumbling his way through the role up to this point--but that would belie his clearly masterful technique. He knows how to throw it away. In the "Crispian" we saw this mere lad (Rylance is a slight man, to boot) grow as he spoke, struggling through every line as he coined it fresh through his halting--yet thoroughly clear--speech patterns. Instead of the great king who condescends to his foot soldiers from on high, this Hal really was on their level, verbally at least, and one felt the obstacles he faced in winning their full confidence. And so the connection forged amongst them all was movingly real.

But onto the present. Now, New York has Rylance back, in triumph as it were, as the (departing) head of his own company. Playing the Duke in Measure for Measure--a problematic role in a problem play for sure. How to account for this protagonist who begins with a bold act of self-deposement for no apparent reason, and then proceeds to make life miserable for his subjects as he attempts to solve their problems from his secret perch as a badly-disguised monk! Rylance, once again, discovers truth through what's not said, playing uncertainty. He takes as a given the character flaws and misjudgments apparent to any reader of the play and incorporates them into a characterization all too human. His Duke Vincentio--rather than the automatically robust noble ruler many actors take the very name to imply--is an effete nebbish. It's clear this Duke, with his spectacles, high voice and meandering speech, has no real feel for the common people and perhaps this is what prompts his crazy scheme in the first place. He also makes for a very bad "Friar Ludovic"--clueless as to how to administer his expected rites and given to un-Christian violent outbursts before he barely catches himself. Embracing the Duke as a comic hero (many productions leave the low comedy to the whorehouse subplot and set off the main characters in a realm of higher drama), Rylance once again provides a fascinating and winning portrait of self-discovery--which is of course what Shakespeare has consciously written! He is described by his counselor Escalus as "One that above all other strifes contended especially to know himself."

This being a transported Globe production, the director, John Dove, has tried to replicate at least some of the conditions of that outdoor playhouse in the refurbished interior of St. Ann's Warehouse. (Jennifer Tiramani's adjusted set nicely shifts us from the Globe to a pseudo-replica of the famous Inigo Jones "Blackfriars" inner chamber--replete with candelabras--used by Shakespeare's company as well.) For all Rylance's deep and subtle interiority--he has probably succeeded more than any other contemporary actor in marrying Shakespeare and Strasberg--he also can shamelessly play to the crowd, as the logistics of the Globe would demand. And yet even this is totally in character. In the final scene (Shakespeare's best continuous 30 minutes of pure dramaturgical craftsmanship, for my money) Rylance and Dove take their cue from the public ceremonial aspects indicated in the script. Here is where the Duke is at his most mischievous, making the grieving Isabella suffer yet more humiliation just in order to set up her antagonist, Angelo, for an even bigger fall. In disguise, the Duke has been her ally, but now for much of the scene, as "himself", he renounces her in public. Rylance shows us the Duke as actor here, pulling the strings of the proceedings and manipulating public (that is, our) opinion, often to comic effect. Yes, the addled elitist of Scene One has now become, nay discovered himself as a master politician.

I dwell so much on Rylance because he really is the one reason to see this Measure for Measure. I did wish the rest of the production and the cast were up to his inventiveness. For those who have never seen a Globe production before there is certainly some value for the scholar and buff in seeing what they call "an original practices production" defined as "exploring clothing, music, dance and settings possible in the Globe of 1599 featuring an all male company." It is often an elegant and beguiling experience visually and aurally, with the live musicians placed historically-accurately in the set's rafters. But the all-maleness emerges as part of the problem in a play centered so much on sexual politics and particularly the plight of the violated Isabella. Of course, the male casting could have illuminated the issue by representing gender and sexuality in fresh ways (the way Declan Donnellan's famous As You Like It did a decade ago). But in Edward Hogg's performance, the production settles on an Isabella relegated to the most constricting cliches of over-corseted repression and religious righteousness, rather than showing (as Shakespeare heartbreakingly does) the cracks of her disillusionment. As a result, Isabella remains a cipher and a huge emotional void is left at the center of the play. This is a shame since in Liam Brennan he/she has that rare gift of a compelling Angelo to play against. Brennan's brogue (intentionally or not) lends some Scottish Presbyterian dryness to the role, making the marriage of Christian and bureaucratic fundamentalisms in the character very tangible. That he is an attractive Angelo (not an ogre), who visibly gives into his own forbidden sensuality, also adds potential if only his Isabella were not so one-dimensionally priggish.

So without mining the riveting serious plot at its core, this cannot be a fully successful Measure. (The low comedy didn't fare much better in my opinion, despite other--i.e. Isherwood's-- glowing reviews. The treacherous courtroom arraignment scene with all the "punks" I found slow and wandering. And even in a play about prostitution the ol' pelvic thrust/crotch grab delivery gets stale fast.) But the Duke is indeed the hero of the play and Rylance gives a star turn, even in his modest anti-star posture. It runs in Brooklyn until January 1, so if you can afford the $60--and you can get a seat down front or on the sides of the stage, preferably--go see this great performance by the unlikeliest of classical heroes.

UPDATE: click here for PBS Newshour's interview with Rylance with scenes from the production!

Quote of the Day

"True theatrical collectives - companies of actors and artists who repeatedly work together to hone their craft, establishing a cohesive aesthetic - remain a vital part of the European theatrical landscape. By contrast, the phenomenon is virtually nonexistent in the upper realms of New York theater, where the demands of the marketplace reign supreme and even the finest casts are assembled for a single production.
What we lose out on is what I found so transfixing in the productions mentioned: the singular ability of a unified company of actors to conjure a world that compels us with its truth, whatever the style or tone of the material. This is something different in kind from assembling an array of terrific performers for just one occasion."

- Charles Isherwood, using his Times year-end wrap up to confront the New York theatre on why it cannot match the ensemble work on display here in recent tours from Europe. Here here. But does he beathe word anywhere of funding? Dream on...

Ben Brantley's pseudo "best of" list is here.

Naughty Brits

Here I was looking forward this morning to learning about the history and context of that strange form, English "panto", when Alan Riding's NYT article morphed into this monstrosity. What the hell happened to this piece? As you'll see he spends the first paragraph actually introducing the stated topic, then starts rambling about those embarrassing Brits and their unique quality of "bathroom humor." (Riding has never seen South Park or a Farrelly brothers movie, I guess.) From there he gets to German deconstructionist-directors inserting sex acts into Mozart operas. Huh???

My impression was the Riding was some senior cultural correspondent. I guess his age and generation show in this. But one would hope experienced journalists could at least write coherently. Are his editors on vacation? Who can be trusted over there to write sensibly about the arts at all!

Bah humbug.

The New Off-Bway

Interesting--and even hope-lifting?--feature in today's Times about a few of the more enterprising Off-Broadway houses getting some ink. (Evidence: here's some ink about them!, saith the Times.)

Of course there are many "successful" small Off-Broadway shows. But one of these impresario sums up the problem nicely:

"If you're a theater owner, the dream is that you're the Westside Arts Center, and you have 'I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change' upstairs and 'Jewtopia' downstairs," Mr. [Jon] Steingart of Ars Nova said. "But for us that's a worst-case scenario, because then the 10 things that are in the queue that want to come in wouldn't get their chance."

I think we can all agree that particular scenario is "worst-case" all around, no?

I will second here that the downtown "Culture Project" is a real success story, and it's because it has carved out a real niche--unapologetic lefty activist theatre. Exonerated and Guantanamo (US premiere), for instance, were introduced here and had boffo runs for the faithful. Personally, I found both surprisingly tepid as political theatre--and as theatre. (Guantanamo ended up being a play about lawyers!) But who cares. People came in droves and used the theatre as a focal point of public discourse and outrage. (Yeah, yeah and then went to nearest wine bar to forget about it, whatever...) I do like how Allan Buchman, who runs it, expresses his mission: "I think of this as 'salon theater.' " Yes, a salon. Why do we always have to appeal to everybody?

One thing the article completely misses--and that may not be clear to an out-of-town reader--is that the examples are indiscriminately drawn from all over town. Robert Lyons, the mastermind of the downtown hotspot Ohio Theatre (in the heart of deep Soho) is asked whether he feels "competition" from the very-near Bloomingdale's 59E59, specializing in Terrence McNally and various nostalgia-acts. Duh! Lyons's audience wouldn't be caught dead in squaresville, and the uptown Daddios are not going to cab down to a sidestreet in Soho for a night of Sarah Kane done by naked foreigners ( to choose but one example of their varied programming). A little context, please.

In fact the success of nice middlebrow smaller spaces doing something other than "Jewtopia" is newsworthy, so I'd like to see an article on that. There's been no problem getting the hipsters to drop in and take a chance on new theatre. No news there. But will the Bloomingdales set take a chance on anything not already endorsed by the NYT. Or that isn't that inexplicable juggernaut I Love You You're Perfect Now Change? (click at your own risk)

Let the "Awards" Begin

Playgoer doesn't really see the point of "10 Best" lists in the theatre--especially when one is expected to do it twice a year! (At year's end and then "season's" end. Tony-time, that is.)

But I'm happy to link to others' wrap-ups. New York Magazine gets us started with some safe, yet not egregious picks, and (Obie-style) eschews the usual categories. NYM critic Jeremy McCarter follows up with a brief thoughtful essay and a tribute to the deserving New Group.

Shall we start our own? Submit your nominations to the comment box...

Mamet on Williams

A professor of mine once laid out a symple psychological formula: what A says about B tells you more about A than it does about B.

In that spirit, I heartily recommend this "revealing" assault on Tennessee Williams (particularly Night of the Iguana from David Mamet. If you don't like Mamet, your feelings will only be confirmed. And there's nothing here that hasn't been said about Williams (especially late Williams) before.

But it's quite a credo, of what Mamet is about. Sample: "If the dialogue does not advance the objective of the character, then why would he say it?" And: "The suggestion that a drama is 'poetic', then, should not be a post-facto apology for the soporific, but rather an accolade to the mechanical purity of the dialogue."

Read on here for more on the struggle between two very different dramatist-poets. The minimalist and the maximalist.

Women Directors WHERE?

What to make of Sunday Arts & Leisure's "roundtable" on the plight of female directors on Broadway. Advocacy journalism? Or the business-as-usual myopic commercial focus posing as progressivism?

First, why the format. Is the Times afraid to have someone actually take a stand on this in a proper article? Or by just opening the microphone to four successful women and two status-quo men (how can their comments be expected to be anything other than defensive?)...is this just a pro-forma gesture to alleviate the flack for their condescending profile on playwright Sarah Schulman a few weeks back?

The editor's note makes this funny admission:

When Arts & Leisure asked half a dozen producers and directors why, a number of the respondents noted by e-mail that women have been responsible for some of the most successful shows on Broadway. As the producer Robyn Goodman said, "Maybe the question should be 'Why aren't more men directing the top grossing shows on Broadway?' Of the five top earners, three of them are directed by women: 'The Lion King' (Julie Taymor), 'Mamma Mia!' (Phyllida Lloyd) and 'The Producers' (Susan Stroman)."

Indeed. Why proceed with this piece, then!

For me, of course, the real issue is--yet again: why just Broadway? Look at the lead-in to the piece:

OF the 39 plays and musicals that opened on Broadway this year, 3 were directed by women (a husband-and-wife team directed a fourth, the short-lived "Blonde in the Thunderbird"). Of the 34 new shows in 2004, women directed 2. These are not particularly encouraging figures for those looking for the new female directorial voices. Many women can be found directing shows off Broadway and running regional theaters, but the best-known and biggest-budget venue has not been all that welcoming. (emphasis mine)

In other words... if it ain't on Broadway it don't count. Hey, how about those women running regional theatres? Hey, what about that far off land of Off-Broadway where one hears of women--nay, even black, brown and yellow folk--directing and producing their own work? How about an article (or roundtable, or conversation, or whatever) on that!

This reminds me a bit of debates about "the canon" in academia. Once you define visual art by its medium or genre you end up circumscribing, liming the profile/demographic of who the "artist" is. For instance, once you define visual art as "oils on canvas," or film as narrative Hollywood production... guess what: your artists end up being mostly white men of a certain class and cultural range. Notice how the diversity of theatre practitioners becomes clear when you diversify your definition of theatre practice. (That is, beyond Phantom and Rent.) Obviously--there's nothing genetically or even culturally stopping someone non-male, non-white, non-western from excelling in the forms dominated by the "dead white males." But if you're stumped about where all the women directors are... maybe you don't want to limit yourself to the old boys club of Broadway.

The constant justification privileging Broadway as simply American theatre's "best known venue" is revealed here for what it is: a self-fulfilling prophecy. Gee, how do Broadway shows--and their directors--get to be so "well known"? Could it be because people read about it more in the papers...?

Memo to NYT: considering that one of the 39 productions on Broadway in 2005 was "The Blonde in the Thunderbird"...you may want to reconsider your theatre coverage in general.
By the way, if you add In My Life, Good Vibrations, and Lennon, that accounts for 10% of the season right there!

Lahr

John Lahr this week covers two shows of particular interest to this blog (and its readers!): the Pinter plays and Touch of the Poet.

Definitely worth reading him on both, even if he's a bit noncomittal on the former (but provides excellent analysis) and downright blunt on the latter! (O'Neill fans be warned.)

coming soon...

Some surprisingly brave British drama for Broadway announced recently by optimistic producers. Yes, you may say, it's hardly brave to go Brit these days, but consider these titles:

The Homecoming. Pintermania may be here to stay for a while, it seems. And that's a good thing, no? Let's just hope the Glengarry team producing it doesn't cave to glitz again.

Journey's End. You may have read my rave of this play as seen at the Shaw Fesitival in Ontario last summer. Well now the London revival which sparked all the re-interest, may be coming our way. I suspect this trench drama's intensely detailed and moving portrait of disillusioned army officers will still have resonance in 2006 America.

REVIEW: A Touch of the Poet

A Touch of the Poet
by Eugene O'Neill
directed by Doug Hughes, starring Gabriel Byrne
Roundabout Theatre Company, at Studio 54

The payoff for Gabriel Byrne's casting in A Touch of the Poet lies, of course, in his brogue. Not that you'll hear it for more than two hours into the proceedings, for up until then Byrne is playing essentially a different character. His performance is an impressively schizoid rendering of this oddly compelling late creation of Eugene O'Neill--Major Cornelius ("Con") Melody: braggart, climber, victim of the American class system circa 1828. The arc of O'Neill's narrative requires Con to strut and plume his officer-class pretensions for most of the play, until his own foolhardiness and society's snobbery against his Irish upstart origins end up humiliating him to that point in tragedy where the hero will either redeem himself through self-mutilation or a really, really long speech. After watching Byrne play Con the "gentleman" for most of the evening (decked out in a flashy redcoat uniform, with an indeterminate accent of "class")--playing it with great and enjoyable relish, to be sure--both actor and character seem magically simultaneously liberated in this climax. Witnessing Byrne rip through these final pages with such maniacal fury, giving full voice to his natural sharp-edged mother tongue is a theatrical thrill. Ah, we say, this is why this man is playing this role. A great feeling in the theatre.

Byrne has more going for him than his accent, of course. But if the rest of his performance doesn't communicate all the complex depths O'Neill's nigh-impossible script seems to demand, part of the failing has to lie in the inexplicably tired production director Doug Hughes has constructed to house it. Hughes seems to give into all the potential pitfalls of the script: since people sit and talk a lot, for instance, he lays out two convenient sets of table-and-chairs down front so people can do just that, incessantly, and nothing else. Santo Loquasto presents us with an impressive amount of wood and a faux huge fireplace and chimney dead center stage, which, though non-working, still manages to suck up all the air on stage nevertheless. Nowhere in this dull setting and Christopher Akerlind's(surprisingly) generic lighting is any sense of atmosphere. I mean, how often to you get to realize the world of early America in 1828 rural Massachusetts? I focus on the externals of this production as typical of how Hughes and co. have stretched so little imagination in approaching script that demands to be interpreted. (And, sorry Doug, the live presence of a Uilleann pipes player isn't enough. It may please our ears but gets us no deeper into O'Neill's troubled Irish souls here.)

Unlike Ben Brantley, I lay the blame squarely at Hughes' feet more than the supporting cast. Byron Jennings is giving it all he's got as Con's sidekick, Jamie, and I found Dearbhla Molloy quite affecting in the problematic martyred role of his wife, Nora. (And kudos to Hughes for casting them both to be sure, and for sensing the benefits of Molloy's authentic Irishness.) Kathryn Meisle may be too young for the Yankee rich-bitch Mrs. Harford, but does exactly what the role calls for in a subtle and commanding way.... No, it is Hughes' squandering of these fine resources on a routine, perfunctory staging of a difficult play that is the regrettable story here. A Touch of the Poet may not be top-drawer O'Neill. (A curious digression for someone in the midst of his masterful late period of Iceman Cometh and Long Day's Journey.) But all the raw material is there for a memorable and searing evening of Irish tragedy by way of O'Neill's gloomy modernist mind.

One more parting note about the play--when Con made his final, blood-soaked final transformational entrance, rediscovering his repressed ethnic roots--it was hard not to think of August Wilson. The bullying masculinity, the forces of social discrimination, would all be equally at home in Wilson, too. Poet invites the comparison especially since it was O'Neill's first play in a projected cycle of his own (the eleven-play grandly titled A Tale of Possessors Self-Dispossessed). Perhaps not encouraged by his first installment (Poet was never even performed in O'Neill's lifetime) O'Neill abandoned it, burning all his notes and manuscripts save some fragments of More Stately Mansions. But compare the project itself to the similarly saga- and historically-minded August Wilson ten-play cycle on the African American 20th Century experience. Of course, its the dramaturgical vision I'm comparing more than the sheer form, but so many were the echoes for me in this play. Or, rather, the echoes were of that common forefather of both playwrights. When Con takes out his act of self-mutilation at the end on his poor horse, the reference was clearly to Ibsen, whose "Wild Duck" faced the same fate as a convenient symbol. Wilson may have claimed never to have read Ibsen. But, with his obsessive use of symbolic objects and blood and sacrifice, I maintain his death this year marked the passing of the last American Ibsenite. The first, of course, was Eugene O'Neill.

LA Theatre Scene

An informative hard-data piece on the status of small professional/regional theatre in a big city. Case study: Los Angeles. Yes, there is a serious theatre scene there, one I hope to hear more about once ex-Village Voicer Charles McNulty takes over next month at the LA Times.

Pinter Speaks

The link is up on the Nobel website to the video of the video of Pinter's long-distance (and hoarse and wheelchair-bound) acceptance speech. The wait may be long as the traffic is high, and I myself haven't been able to access it yet. Transcribed text is also available there, and from what I've seen so far, the speech seems anything but "phoned in." And, yes, it is mostly political, of the incendiary kind.

Here's a quick summary from today's Times, for the highlights.

In this sampling, am I alone in hearing the echoes of Pinter's late friend and comrade in arms, Arthur Miller?

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road [in the abuse of human rights]. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be, but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self-love.

Let the pile-on begin!

Same Old New Playwrights

I'm not sure what exactly the ultimate thesis of Charles Isherwood's latest Sunday think-piece is... but I applaud him for writing the kind of article on new plays long overdue at the Times. It's about time someone stood back and surveyed what kind of scene we have now for new American drama. Usually an article on "new plays" just concludes there are none, or talks about British imports. But Isherwood is right in reflecting upon what it means when a mediocre Richard Greenberg play at the Roundabout is the closest we get to a major American premiere.

If you haven't read the article yet, and you're not in New York, then this is an excellent primer for what's going on in the most elite ranks of our "new writing" here. A must-read, I dare say, for understanding at least a piece, some of the factors going into the life of our drama.

Isherwood is especially on target in addressing the role of "the big three"--Roundabout, Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center--in the producing of new American drama. (I would also add the Public Theatre as a "big 4th" to that list, though Isherwood keeps it separate. It may be downtown and not quite as rich, but equally active, influential, and just as huge an organization.) As I have said before, these non-profit behemoths constitute, like it or not, our de facto National Theatre. They are the closest we have--and are likely ever to have--to a subsidized, commercial free zone for serious theatrical work, for both revivals and new writing. The fact that none of them can afford to be remotely commercial free, though, bespeaks the problem.

I agree with Isherwood that these institutions are so risk-averse they cannot not do yet another Richard Greenberg play with yet the same directors. Funny thing is, I bet our colleagues in London would complain about the same syndrome with the National and Royal Court with writers like David Hare. However--at least the National has two other stages free when they're doing the new David Hare. It's encouraging the Roundabout has transformed their new smaller space (the Laura Pels) into a cozy venue for new work--unfortunately they've mostly used it for the same kind of mediocre work by already known writers (Paris Letter, McReele) we get plenty of on their mainstage. MTC also still has two small spaces in the old City Center building, but we just haven't heard much out of there recently. Ever since they bought up the huge Biltmore on Broadway (to directly compete with Roundabout's "American Airlines Theatre", it should be noted) they 've been consumed with the folly of trying to fill it with a new play anyone cares about. If only they stayed small and stuck to their mission. After all, both their two great "finds" of recent years--Proof and Doubt--started in their smaller spaces. There's a lesson there--and it's not just to pick new plays with one-word titles.

Let me play Devil's Advocate for a moment, though, and offer a counterargument to this point of Isherwood's:

the case of Mr. Greenberg's "Naked Girl" rankles. The presence of this slight, uninspired comedy on Broadway can only be ascribed to a lazy decision to stick with a branded product - the new Greenberg - even if the goods are shoddy. I could cite numerous other works, mediocre or worse, by other well-known playwrights that have peppered the slates of these companies in recent years.

Point taken. Obviously if there's a better play out there than Appian Way--and by all reports there must be--then that one should get the Roundabout's attention instead. (Let's not forget the Times's attention either, by the way. Isherwood, of course, is silent on the relentless free promotion "Arts and Leisure" gave to the show, in effect, pre-anointing it "the play of the season" sight unseen.).... But is there a case to be made that our theatre owes something to its major writers? Isherwood's phrase "the new Greenberg" makes me chuckle, in that it (consciously?) evokes echoes of tuxedoed 30's playgoers name-dropping "the new Philip Barry" or "the new Coward". Somehow, the prefix "the new..." can only come before artists who mass-produce new works like a machine; or maybe that's just another word for "professional"?

My rambling point here is... may we not want a theatre scene where we have playwrights around long enough to complain about "the new Greenberg"? One of the problems facing playwrights today is building a career, not just starting one. I think it's good for producers/theatre companies feel committed enough to a writer to produce his or her work even when it is not at their best. And I think it's awful, for instance, that Arthur Miller could not find an artistic home in New York at the end of his life--no matter how lame his late plays may have been, didn't we deserve to see them? Another example (though a very different writer!) is Christopher Durang, who I just took to task (see below) for putting forward a pretty weak script that's beneath him. Some might very well criticize Playwrights Horizons for staying loyal to Durang at all costs, when the slot could go to a better play by an unknown. But I would still counter that even when the play is as bad as Miss Witherspoon, we would still be a worse off theatre community if the Christopher Durang's and Wendy Wasserstein's (another pertinent example right now) were allowed to disappear. (Or just go to Hollywood.) We have so few playwrights left of real achievement, even if it is in their pasts.

The real problem is economics, of course. If Philip Roth writes a new book that stinks, it will still get published since, aside from his own remuneration and royalties, a book is a cheaper commodity than a theatrical production. And many will (rightly, I think) want to read it no matter how badly it stinks because it's "the new Roth" and American letters is better off having him active.

The obvious answer is this should not be "either/or". Something is really wrong with our theatre if we cannot produce both a new mediocre Durang or Greenberg play and a risky adventurous piece by a first-timer. But most theatre companies barely have the funds for one of those. And that's when it starts to matter that you'll sell more tickets or subscriptions to Durang than the unknown.

It's just gotten to be that small a pie...

Book ideas

I'd like to recommend George Hunka's recommendations for some theatre books for the holidays. (We all remember books, right?) Some new, some sorta new. Juicy titles for the theatre elitist.

REVIEW: Miss Witherspoon (Durang)

Miss Witherspoon
by Christopher Durang
at Playwrights Horizons

Christopher Durang, to my mind, is one of our last remaining great satirists of the stage. But his new play, Miss Witherspoon finds him a satirist without a target. Oh, there's a faint air of teasing about the culture of therapy and happy pills here and there; a whiff of New Age spoofing in the atmospherics of Emily Mann's production; even a late jab at that perennial Durang foe, Christian fundamentalism, by the end. But really what he's written is another one-woman monologue, here for one of his favorite actresses, Kristine Nielsen, channeling all kinds of rants and neuroses he's been working out for years. It's Laughing Wild again... but without the laughs.

Oh, I wanted to laugh, believe me. I came to the play with much good will, and sustained that through about the first half-hour. And Kristine Nielsen, as that charmingly neurotic put-upon Durang heroine once again, does a lot to get our laughs. But there's a point about halfway through this thin extended one-act where you realize Durang has nowhere to go. In a comedy about reincarnation, essentially, he sure enough falls into the trap of, well, repeating himself.

The premise is that Nielsen's character (not really named Witherspoon for reasons too complicated to go into right now) is so unhappy with modern American life that she wants out--and when faced with a surprisingly Hindu afterlife she fights any "return" to the death, as it were. Do we really need another set of wacky jokes about St Peter at the Pearly Gates? Didn't I see this in an old Looney Toons? More to the point--is this what we need Durang to be writing at this moment in time?

What's most disappointing (even if we allow Durang the folly of his premise) is how uninventive he is with it. The comic possibility would seem to be an endless variety of reincarnations, one more ludicrous than the last. (Let alone the potential for social satire that could ensue from such sketches.) But instead he sticks "Witherspoon" with some dreary scenarios--she's a baby, she's a dog, she's a neglected child of poor white trash--and then repeats them. But whatever plot there is is just an excuse on which to hang the monologues of Witherspoon/Nielsen (/Durang, really), which recall the "rants" we have loved from Laughing Wild and Beyond Therapy, but that's just the problem. They're the same rants. I notice a giant sucking sound of air leaving the theatre when Nielsen went--completely tangentially--into a riff on the crucifixion that seemed like outtakes from Sister Mary Ignatius. Now I'm not one to always complain about an artist repeating himself. (Hey, it ain't broke don't fix.) But here, it frankly seemed tired.

I'm surprised the play survived a preview process at the McCarter in Princeton (where Emily Mann's flat but adequate production here originated) and has actually gotten charitable reviews. (Like these major critics here and here.) That no one could apparently talk to Durang about the basic glaring problems of the play throughout two sets of previews is troubling. Again, I say this as a great fan, but I hope Christopher Durang can still write a play about something, or at least one that's really, really funny.

some readings

Some worthwhile reading today...

-I'm glad Ben Brantley has given his imprimatur to the Atlantic Theatre's fine staging of the Pinter "bookends" The Room and The Celebration. Get tickets here (if you still can)

-Former Royal National Theatre head Richard Erye reflects on his experience directing Hamlet in Ceaucescu's Romania, after a recent visit back to that country.

-And to those familiar with the grand old Wilbur Theatre in Boston (home to many great out-of-town Broadway tryouts of the past), our new "patrons" at Clear Channel are about to abandon it, to god knows what fate. Read it in the Globe here.

Wendy Wasserstein

Playbill posted this story Friday, so it is hardly breaking news by now in the theatre world that Wendy Wasserstein is currently hospitalized with very, very serious lukemia. Reports had been circulating, in fact, throughout the rehearsal process of her just-opened play Third, that she didn't look well and needed a cane to walk.

Playbill certainly makes the situation sound dire. If you know how, send some good karma her way. To boot, she is a single mom of a six-year old girl.

Pinter bows out of Nobel Speech

From the BBC:

Harold Pinter has been forced to pull out of the lecture given by winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature due to poor health. However, the Nobel Foundation said a lecture pre-recorded by Pinter will be shown on a big screen at their Stockholm academy on 7 December. The British playwright, 75, has been treated for cancer in recent years. He had already announced publisher Stephen Page will accept the prize on his behalf on 10 December. "His doctors have forbidden him to travel at this time," the Nobel Foundation said.

Some of us were really looking forward to that speech. And I'm sure others weren't...

REVIEW: SUPER VISION (Builders Association)

Super Vision
by The Builders Association and "dbox"
BAM Harvey Theater, Nov 29—Dec 3




I'd like to stand up for Super Vision, the new mixed media piece by the digital-friendly collective, the Builders Association at BAM. (It is also a collaboration with the group "dbox.") If the Times (and my company last night) are any indication, it will be dismissed as mere gadgetry. And I certainly thought that was true of their last effort the glib telemarketing- fantasy Alladeen. Which is why, perhaps, I was so taken with Super Vision--which presents a quite cogent series of what they might like to call "scenes of identity theft." With an improved sense of focus since Alladeen, three storylines show us familiar, yet effective, ways in which the mass collection and dissemination of personal data via fiber optics can impact our lives: a Ugandan born Indian businessman tries to hold up under the inspection of a series of INS officers, at different US airports, who all reveal a surprisingly exhaustive amount of personal information about him; a boho white suburban couple's dream house and upscale lifestyle is exposed as funded by the husband's exploitation of his young sun's identity to run up half a million dollars of virtual debt in unpaid credit cards; and a Sri Lankan young woman in New York explores a memory bank of her family's past (photos, documents, etc) via internet "cam" with her aging grandma back in the old country.

Nothing new may be said here about virtual identity and internet privacy, sure. But I did feel a powerful effect in watching the beleaguered traveler-character go through thumbprint, facial recognition, and retinal scans, with the full details of the digital imaging on display--as if we were witnessing a live dissection. (Or, is it "live" or is it theatre?) The little boy being cyber-abused by his own father is appropriately represented to us only digitally "on screen"--the interaction between the actors and this virtual child are sometimes chilling. For all the (by now) familiar nightmare scenarios, Super Vision finds some uniquely compelling--and appropriately technological--ways of visually representing/illustrating them.

And then there's the sheer technology itself. Again, if you're at all curious about the level of digital imaging possible in live theatre, it behooves you to go check this out. (And to really mix it up, you can catch William Dudley's cyclo-projections over at the other end of the artistic spectrum in the latest Andrew Lloyd Webber show.) Some say the huge screens and flashing lights overwhelm the mediocre, almost novice, acting. True, human emotions are not at the core here. But, still, I found Super Vision a memorable--and, yes, stageworthy--vision of the "artificial intelligence" of our age. And at a time when so little theatre turns a mirror on current society directly, I was glad to contemplate its breezy 70 minutes, even occasionally shuddering at the world being reflected back to me.

The Divine Sarah

...no, not Silverman.

The Jewish Museum has a real treat for Theatre History junkies. (And how many museum shows can you say that about?). "Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama" open tomorrow and runs all the way through April 02. Despite the lame title, the exhibit seems a terrific treasure trove:

The exhibition will illuminate the life and art of this remarkable performer through over 250 spectacular and rarely seen objects in all media—painting, sculpture, photography, costumes, stage designs, Art Nouveau theater posters and jewelry, her furniture and personal effects, as well as a recording of her voice and selected films in which she starred.

Film clips include excerpts from her gender-bending Hamlet, by the way.

Naturally, the draw for non-specialists is Bernhardt as Celebrity:

Among the most represented personages of her time, this extremely thin, frizzy-haired belle juive fascinated her contemporaries: she sat for many of the most fashionable artists of her time, was perhaps the most photographed woman in the world, and attached her name to products ranging from hair curlers to liqueurs.

Ah, the 19th century. When theatre was the movies and stage actors could command such attention. While we assume today theatre cannot possibly have the exposure and accessibility of tv and film, notice how it once did. Exhaustive (exhausting?) touring and culture-industry and advertising machinery did their part in making such a performer "accessible" to millions. So it's remarkable that even in "real" numbers someone like Bernhardt experienced a fame quite compatible to a Britney or Madonna.

Now Britney as Hamlet, there's a boffo idea...

Here's a review (full text online, for a change) from today's New York Sun.

False Alarm

According to Michael Riedel...

LOOKS like Britney Spears won't be making her Broadway debut in "Sweet Charity." Production sources say Mr. Britney Spears, Kevin Federline, pressured his wife to decline an offer to replace Christina Applegate in the musical after the first of the year. "The deadbeat husband wants her to stay out in L.A.," says a source.

Of course it was ridiculous for anyone to decry a slacking of standards in the brief Bitney bruhaha, considering she would be replacing Christina Applegate! What a falling off, indeed...

Scariest Headline of the Day

"Is Britney Spears Charity-Bound?"

Take a deep breath and read on if you dare...

(Then again, Britney & Broadway may be better suited for each other than ever...)

Quote of the Day II

"Both shows [Sweeney Todd and Jersey Boys] want to be perceived as hot tickets because there's a firm belief on Broadway that audiences flock only to shows that are hard to get into.
The late Peter Stone, who wrote the books to 1776, The Will Rogers Follies and Titanic, liked to illustrate this mantra with the following anecdote:
Two ladies sitting at the back of the house where Stone's hit My One and Only was playing noticed that the last row of the orchestra was empty.
One turned to the other and said, 'If I'd known I could have gotten seats, I wouldn't have come.' "

-from Michael Riedel's column in today's Post.

Ticket sales are evidence of what, again?

Quote of the Day

"Those raising ethical questions about the gift [of $100 million] to the Yale School of Music should first put the dollar amount in perspective. Private and corporate donors in America have to compensate for the government's negligible support of the fine arts. In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts gave out grants totaling just over $100 million. In France, in recent years, the state subsidy for the Paris Opera alone has averaged roughly the same amount."

- from Anthony Tommasini's excellent opinion piece about the recent anonymous mega-donation to fully fund all Yale music grad students. Of great import to all areas of arts training and funding.

Another highlight: "Though I live with a doctor, I get tired of hearing people go on about the arduous road medical students tread to their chosen profession: years of training, boot-camp internships, mounds of debt. Yes, yes. But at the end of that road, a definite reward awaits. Compare this with the slog faced by young musicians, who pursue advanced degrees with no guarantee that their schooling will lead to a paying position." Amen.

Happy Thanksgiving

Yes, 'tis true, Playgoer has already been on something of a hiatus this past week (as some have duly noted!). Academic duties have called, and even when I don't pick up they call again. And now some holiday down time is also required. But please do tune back in on December 1 for a resurgence in posting.

Meanwhile, some reading material...

- First, please check out, to your right, Playgoer's new, improved, and long-overdue Blogroll! (See between Theatre Must-Reads and Reviews.) Finally I have put together a list of other theatre/arts bloggers I am indebted to and genuinely enjoy visiting on a near-daily basis. (Hopefully they will be not be taking Thanksgving off!)

- A sobering report on the NY Cultural Affairs office's hearings on non-profit theatre.

- Jason Zinoman's Sunday profile of The Builders Association (see photo above) is a great introduction to the hyper growth of multi-media performance recently.

- The Great Feingold's review of the big revival of Albee's Seascape is probably the best place to start with that.

- For sheer time wasting, there's always plenty of dish at the All That Chat boards.

- And, finally, for the obligatory wacky news item, here's a man who claims to be in possession of fragments of Beethoven's skull.

Safe eating, all....

Chicago off-Loops get a break

One reason the Chicago small-theatre scene is so vibrant is the political work done, like this, to lobby city government and get structural/legal support. In this case, something as nitty-gritty as zoning codes and fire regulations. Of course, the city of Chicago sees theatre as a great cultural attraction. New York sees Broadway as a great commercial attraction, otherwise...

Quote of the Day

"The emergence of the practitioner-blogger has the highest potential significance for arts journalism. Many, perhaps most, of the greatest critics in history -- George Bernard Shaw, Virgil Thomson, Edwin Denby and Fairfield Porter come immediately to mind -- were also practicing artists. But with the growing tendency of mainstream-media journalists to think of themselves as members of an academically credentialed profession, the practitioner-critic has lately become a comparative rarity in the American print media. Not so on the Web, which is one of the reasons why readers in search of stimulating commentary on the arts are going online to find it."

-Terry Teachout, Dean of Theatre Bloggers

Read his special column on online arts criticism here. Great that even Wall Street Journal readers will see this. Will the Times ever pay attention?

Dolan takes on NYT

Happy to see Jill Dolan also fisking "Arts & Leisure"'s continuing trivilaization of issues important to today's theatre. Here she exposes the assumptions behind a recent profile of playwright Sarah Schulman and its inability to take her gender and sexuality seriously.

Whom to Believe?

Two critics today on Rinne Groff's Ruby Sunrise--one of Oskar Eustis's big premieres as new A.D. of the Public Theatre:

How many times has a movie or play lost you at the ending? Everything is chugging along just fine, and then the director cops out and squanders all the good will built up along the way.... By that logic, Rinne Groff's 'The Ruby Sunrise' should generate great word of mouth. It takes a long time, but the play eventually doubles back - turning two underwhelming plot threads into a knockout of an ending.

Eric Grode, NY Sun.

Rinne Groff's period drama about America's growing pains during the early years of television promises a payoff that doesn't quite arrive.

Charles Isherwood, NY Times

One thing's for sure. If you're a young playwright with a big premiere this week, you don't want Charles Isherwood reviewing your show! He skewered the talented Itamar Moses for his Bach at Leipzig this week and his tone with Groff today is no more encouraging. Of course--it's not the critic's role to be a cheerleader. I'm personally a fan of Bach but have not seen Ruby Sunrise. (Grode's review, truth be told, is hardly a rave either.) Maybe they're not great plays. But in age when we keep asking "where are the new playwrights", doesn't it behoove any reviewer (especially at the New York Times!) to show just a little more...interest in what the next generation is up to? And to give them a review that doesn't seek to taint them for the rest of their careers?

Tomlinson acted "Illegally" at CPB

Yes, the Inspector General has spoken. "Scathing!" says the Times.

Money quote:

...the report said that in the process, Mr. Tomlinson repeatedly crossed statutory boundaries that set up the corporation as a "heat shield" to protect public radio and television from political interference.
The report said he violated federal law by being heavily involved in getting more than $4 million for a program featuring the conservative editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal. It said he imposed a "political test" to recruit a new president. And it said his decision to hire Republican consultants to defeat legislation violated contracting rules.

The full report is here. Hopefully this will subside for a while the GOP's plans for takeover or demolition of PBS.

The New Look of Stage Design

The Times profile of Brit designer William Dudley and his work on Woman in White is a good introduction to what will surely become a more widespread use of "scenic projections." Dudley's work in this area may be new to New York--and it took an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical to bring it here!--but he's been at it for a while. (The Times, as always is behind the times.) I saw his magic at work three years ago in London for the Stoppard "Russian trilogy" The Coast of Utopia. Believe me, it's not just another gimmick. For better or worse, Dudley (and his colleagues in the field) have brought a new cinematic level to stagecraft. In the hands of a great director like Trevor Nunn, the results can be breathtaking and emminently theatrical. Once Disney gets a hold of it, however, who know...

August Wilson bonanza

Check out the latest American Theatre for a wealth of Wilsoniana. Including...

-an interview with Wilson by Suzan Lori-Parks, in a very moving context:
On the day of the interview, just an hour before I was scheduled to talk to him, I got a call from a friend telling me that Mr. Wilson had just announced to the press that he was ill and had been given only a few months to live. An hour later, when we spoke, my heart and mind were clouded with sadness. I could hardly keep from crying, but Mr. Wilson was clear, focused, funny and, as always, brilliant as hell.

- a reprint of his King Hedley II preface, outlining the goals of his entire 10-play project

- and in the print edition only(!), the complete text of the last play, Radio Golf

Also, check out AT's annual Theatre Facts report, on the state of professional non-profit theatre across America. (I hope to post some highlights here when I have a chance to digest.)

"Sweeney" must-reads

Two heavy-hitting reviews of Sweeney now available online:

John Lahr, in the New Yorker (rave)
Michael Feingold, in the Voice (thoughtfully ambivalent)

REVIEW: "HAMLET" at CSC

Hamlet Directed by Brian Kulick. Starring Michael Cumpsty. at Classic Stage Company (in previews) Hamlet does not strike one as an ideal audience-participation play, but in its wonderfully disorienting opening moments, Brian Kulick's production (at his Classic Stage Company) unexpectedly turns it into just that. Perhaps I'm indulging in a bit of a "spoiler" here (to avoid, skip down to the next paragraph). But, trust me, as soon as you give the usher your ticket and are directed to go not to your seat but to cluster with you fellow playgoers on the small stage area... you'll know something is up. Perhaps, like me, you will begin to fear the worst, based on memories of forced-audience- participations past. ("Let me guess, I'm playing the Norwegian ambassador, right?") But before you can think of an excuse to head back to the lobby--"Crash!" goes the sound and... blackout. Then: "Who's there?" A flashlight up in the seats (yes, the audience) hits the truly frightened face of Francisco, the nightwatchman, and all of a sudden we are in Elsinore. Not just in the castle, but outside, on the grounds, in the dark, gazing up at these shadowy figures on their improvised "parapet." The next shocker is when they swing their lights in our direction, seeking the ghost, who, sure enough, turns out not to be some generically "spooky" stage effect, but a grey bearded man of flesh and blood moving among us. Caught in the very same searchlight, we nervously back out of the way for this mysterious yet all too real and corporeal figure to brush past. If you're thinking "it's just an actor" then you'll be surprised at the unique chill you'll feel when you actually feel his overcoat grazing up against your arm. That the "realness" of it all doesn't detract a jot from the imaginary world of the play is, in short, the magic of theatre in action. I've often felt Kulick is a director of gimmicks. The curious "waterslide" to nowhere in his Twelfth Night in the park and the overly literal "scribes" of his CSC version of the "Mysteries" cycle. But I have to give him credit for a real inventive intelligence in this opening. In this scene of the supernatural, confusion of space is what it's all about, both blocking-wise ("He's here!" "He's there!") and philosophically (how do men and spirits cohabitate the stage convincingly). Kulick, appropriately, solves the problems by messing with our sense of space entirely. 

I won't say the inventiveness ends there. (You did sense a "but" coming, didn't you.) But it's telling that Kulick doesn't find a way to carry over that initial thrill and promise, other than turning the house lights back on and having his stage manager give us permission to finally take our seats to become a "proper" audience. How disappointing. Kulick continues throughout the evening to offer penetrating insights via staging and acting choices here and there. But there is not really a consistent tone. The tone that prevails the most would be the steady quiet baritone of actor Michael Cumpsty. A consummate Shakespearean craftsman with an expert technical instrument, Cumpsty offers an impeccable "reading" of Hamlet, in the best sense of the word. Nary a nuance is missed in his subdued yet highly specific communication of the play's language. But does he compellingly embody Hamlet? Not really. As to anyone familiar with his perennial appearances in Broadway British comedies, Cumpsty's a bit of a stiff--which serves him well in some roles, but it's not what we want from Hamlet. He gains force from his sheer physical presence; he's taller than almost everyone else on stage, and fills out his crisp modern black suits with imposing gravity. His is definitely an intellectual Hamlet (Hamlet the thinker over Hamlet the romantic hero) but still doesn't let us into his mind the way, say, Simon Russell Beale turned the soliloquies into alluring and highly personal thought experiments. In a word, cold. In that way he's found his match in Kulick, a defiantly and persistently cold director. (The two have collaborated often, most notably in a well-praised Timon Of Athens in Central Park.) The set is a clinical white box, complete with viewing "windows" on the side walls for audiences on the sides of the CSC "three-quarter" thrust space, as if they were observers at a police interrogation (or a hockey game, depending on how you see it). The costume color scheme is pure black and white all around, too, but where good guys like Hamlet, of course, wear the black and Claudius is a white-suited dandy. 

Speaking of Claudius, I'm sure some critics will be horrified by Robert Dorfman's giddily decadent usurper, but I was totally sold. Say what you want about his prancing and mincing (yes, he's a bit...fey) but it's also a fresh and thoroughly thought-through interpretation of a role so often taken for granted. Too often, it seems like Claudius is given to a second-rate "older statesman" journeyman actor who aims for authority but isn't the least bit menacing--prompting questions of why anyone fears or follows this lame "tyrant" to begin with. But Dorfman offers us a portrait in unabashed corruption. This Claudius is having such fun. Posing for the cameras in his opening scene, knocking croquet balls as Polonius vies for his indifferent attention, he exudes that Shakespearean motto by way of Mel Brooks, " 'Tis good to be the king." The self-satisfaction turns dark, of course, toward the end, in a pathetic display of Nixonian drunkenness, desperately swallowing the very wine he is about to poison! For everything Kulick and Cumpsty don't get about Hamlet (as usual, Ophelia was terrible), I did leave grateful for everything they do get out of it. Or, at least, for the amount of care and thought that have gone into the ideas and text itself. If you sit close in this intimate 200-seat theatre (I definitely recommend the first row) you feel almost privileged, as if at a private performance, where some highly skilled actors are setting this usually distant masterpiece right in your lap. Paring down the cast to nine (and the text to a fluid 2:45) this is definitely a "chamber" Hamlet, a dark thinkingman's melodrama about a very bad royal family. Considering how many bloated snorefest productions I have sat through--full of either dull "importance" or kneejerk iconoclasm--this was in many ways a breath of fresh air, even if that air is as chilly as on those parapets of Elsinore.

Shakespeare Denial Watch

I just caught up with Charles McGrath's NYT review (now firewalled) of the three recent major Shakespeare bios (Greenblatt, Shapiro, and Ackroyd) and, while he is no out-and-out Denier, he does seem to have no problem equating the fringe authhorship-conspiracy with bonafide scholarship:

A lot of Shakespeare commentary issues from the academic garret, where scholars are still fretting over questions of authorship, chronology and textual authenticity. And an almost equal amount emanates from the grassy knoll where the conspiracy theorists -- who believe that William Shakespeare was merely a front for the ''real author'' -- point knowingly to people like Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, the Earl of Oxford and the latest to be unmasked, Sir Henry Neville, a courtier who was actually a distant relative of Shakespeare.

"Almost equal amount"? Of what??? Is McGrath equating the level of scholarship to be found in legitimate textual peer-reviewed studies as in the newsletters and blogs of Oxfordians and
Baconites? Yes, those wacky professors. Studying Shakespeare, denying him, it all goes on in that same "academic garret."... And do note the plug for the "Nevillians"(?) and their latest "candidate."

McGrath, by the way, is no amateur "gentleman-reporter" like Wm. Niederkorn. Charles McGrath is the former editor of The New York Times Book Review.

Quote of the Day

"To find a new Sondheim show that made money on Broadway, you have to reach all the way back to "A Little Night Music" in 1973. 'Forum' and 'Night Music' duly noted, every other Sondheim show since 1973 — among them, 'Merrily We Roll Along,' 'Sunday in the Park With George' and 'Passion' — were financial disappointments on Broadway. The 1979 original, Tony-winning production of 'Sweeney Todd' returned only 50 percent of its $1.5 million investment on Broadway, says its producer, Marty Richards. A Sondheim show 'rarely becomes a marriage between the critics and the audience,' says a theater investor."

-Michael Riedel, in a terrific little survey of Sondheim-economics. Of course, the hook of the piece is how the new Sweeney may finally turn this fate around. Of course, it sure helps that the overhead is low.

Reidel might have also added that this string of commercial "failure" climaxed with Sondheim's only completely new musical of the last decade, Bounce--which could not find backing for a New York production at all! Maybe it's a bad show--but imagine a major American novelist not being able to get published??? At some level we have to support our greatest artists through their middling work. Otherwise they will stop creating.

The underlying question illuminated by this is, as always: why do we continue to entrust one of our most important artforms to an increasingly hostile marketplace?

PBS liberated!

Kenneth Tomlinson--Bush's man to make PBS "fair and balanced"--has resigned as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). Apparently in anticipation of some damning internal "Inspector General's Report" which may charge him with more wrongdoing than just ideological rigging. (Appropriately, I found the link on Crooks & Liars.)

I wish him an appropriately Gogol-esque end.

Hail the Philanthropist

I'm as happy as anyone for Oregon Shakespeare Fest's windfall of free software courtesy of a Microsoft-connected donor. But I've been puzzled all morning by what the Times angle is in running this story today. Celebrating regional theatre? Great! Educating us about the possibilities of technical advances in lighting on how it unleashes new artistic creativity? Interesting!

But then at the end of the piece you read this:

Mr. Schroeder [the donor], meanwhile, is still making the six-hour trip from the Bay Area every year. (One advantage of driving, he said, is that he and his wife can take their large, heavy espresso machine, set it up in their hotel room and serve coffee and bagels each morning to a group of friends who make the trek with them.)

Yes, this is we need in theatre coverage now: theatre as the enclave of the conspicuous- consumption elite. Thanks again, NYT.

When there's more info about latte's than letters in an article about a theatre company... you know what's up. It is the benevolent microchip millionaire, not the Bard, who is the true hero here. (Mr. Schroeder gets a photo, too.) Almost as if Oregon's--or Microsoft's--pr reps planted this story themselves. The story is basically the reward for the gift. This is what arts coverage is becoming, I fear, an extension of the old "society" page. Google the number of "arts" stories about fundraising & donor tributes and you'll see what I mean.

"Sweeney" up close

Very neat little "Audio Slide Show" on the new Sweeney Todd at the Times online. Just some gab from Lupone and Cerveris, with some interesting tidbits (like Sondheim wrote some new lyrics!). But worth it, most of all, for the vivid up close photos, really giving a sense of this stirring production. Words can only do so much justice.

Try clicking here, but if the javascript is giving you problems just find it on the Times theatre page under "Multimedia."

The Show That Will Not Die

The In My Life saga/trainwreck continues. Much to the glee, I may add, of Broadway-watchers like myself and The New York Times, who continues to offer this show the weirdest kind of non-publicity publicity. (Is Playgoer guilty of the same, you ask?)

Actually the motivation behind today's article seems to be to get back at the show for actually using Ben Brantley's slam in their ad! (Does "jaw-dropping whimsy run amok" sound like a rave to you?) Also, this bit of education on how advertising may not save a turkey like this, but still does make quite a difference:

The advertising blitz may be working, at least to an extent. According to figures provided by Mr. Brooks and Ed Nelson, the show's company manager, "In My
Life" showed markedly increased sales last week, compared with the previous
week, with daily box office totals ranging from about $35,000 (Nov. 1) to a peak
of nearly $85,000 (Nov. 3). By contrast, ticket sales on Oct. 24, just as the
advertising campaign began, were less than $5,000.

In other words, once you're on Broadway, can muster a $1.5 million(!) advertising budget, and attract all the free-media that thus ensues (see NYTimes)...you really can con people into seeing just about anything. (A retort to those who still equate ticket-sales in the theatre with genuine interest and inherent worth.)

Mike Leigh's latest

That idiosyncratic documentarian of modern British social history is back with two big openings--one in London (Two Thousand Years at the National); one in New York (a stateside premiere of Angela's Party at the New Group.

Read the latest profile of the master in the Guardian.

Q on the rocks?

"The idea that Vegas is Broadway West now seems premature." So says one of Michael Riedel's sources, based on the suprising underperformance so far of Avenue Q at Steve Wynn's Wynn Las Vegas hotel. Read the full story here. Is the material too racy for "real" America? Or just too smart for Vegas? (i.e. too much actual plot!)
Or there's this interesting theory:

One reason the show clicked in New York was that, from the very first preview, it had great word of mouth. But theater people who've looked closely at Vegas say word of mouth is hard to generate in a town made up of people who are just passing through. "There isn't a permanent population," says a Broadway producer.

Hmm. Says a lot for the value of a theatregoing community. But wait--how do you explain Broadway, then? No shortage of "passing-through" tourists there...

Best of RSC on CD!

Yes, the Royal Shakespeare Company finally had the bright idea to issue commercially some amazing recordings they've been sitting on all these years from some legendary (and some just damn good) Shakespearean performances. The CD's coming out now are really just "highlights".

Some day it would be nice to hear entire productions. No one believes in the visual importance of theatre more than yours truly, but I must admit I'm nostalgic for those old long playing LPs of entire plays. For some drama--Shakespeare, O'Neill--they make perfectly fine listening, as rendered by great actors.

Anyway, I'll highlight the products once they're available on Amazon. Meanwhile--thanks to Webloge--go ahead and click here for a listen.

Wagner, meet Wilson

...Robert Wilson, that is. Read here for the Times' Alan Riding's report from the controversial Paris reception to the first two installments of Wilson's "Ring" cycle there.

Personally, I feel that space aliens make a pretty good analog to the Valkyries. (Ok, so the caption says these are the "Rhinemaidens". Whatever.)

more Odd Couple

Interesting to read two of the heavy hitters of criticism on L'Affair Odd Couple: namely, my two "Deans," Michael Feingold and John Lahr. The former even hints at the end toward my own question about whether the state of Broadway itself may be to blame here...

The Feingold piece is only in the online Voice--one way they continue to reign in their print coverage of theatre. At least the website has given him some more opportunities, but, still, sad news that the cutbacks there are here to stay, and such fine pieces as his A. Wilson and Pinter tributes were not given the print exposure they deserved. Hey, new Voice Theatre editor Jorge Morales--do something about this!

Quote of the Day

Broadway theater ticket prices, breaking through a $100 ceiling established four years ago by "The Producers," are moving 10 percent higher, led by the hits "Monty Python's Spamalot," "Wicked" and "Mamma Mia!," which have pushed the charge for their best seats to $110 in the past month. Historically, price escalation on Broadway begins with the strongest shows and then spreads. Discussing the increase in top ticket prices, Jed Bernstein, the president of the League of American Theaters and Producers, a trade group, pointed out that...the explosion of technology-driven entertainment on the Internet and elsewhere has heightened the expectations of audiences. "Viewers expect a level of sophistication in their entertainment that didn't exist 30 or 40 years ago," he said. He added that the average price of a ticket is slightly above $60.
-from last Wednesday's "Arts, Briefly" column in the NYT. (emphases mine)

While you muddle over the merits of the various justifications, just note: the "average" Broadway ticket is now $60, apparently. And, as any visit to a box office window will show, that's hardly a "median." (Sixty is the very, very low end of the price spectrum. How many seats are actually less???)

So please quote that figure to anyone arguing Broadway is still needed to give plays "greater exposure"