Middlebrows in the Park?

An all-too-rare theatre piece in Slate timed to the opening of another summer of (quality-)free Shakespeare in Central Park. I kid. But read on for some interesting observations about the tradition.

Billy Elliot: The Dissent

From John Lahr, of all people. Anglophile and generally forgiving critic that he is, still cannot abide the new London (and, no doubt, B'way-bound) hit:

When a story gets at something elemental in the dream life of its audience—here it’s the longing to discover your desire and to seize your destiny—narrative vulgarities are often overlooked. This, it seems to me, explains how a show with a mawkish, melodramatic book, and without a single memorable melody or lyric, could have worked its way so deeply into the public imagination.

Ouch! (Take that, Brantley!) On that rare occasion Lahr doesn't like something, he can be ruthless. But the man's thorough intelligence and good taste is enough to raise doubts. (I mean, Elton John. What were we thinking...)

Napster saves Classical?

The BBC Beethoven downloads continue, with stunning implications. Herewith, read Norman Lebrecht on La Scena. Check out his lede paragraphs:

...When the first five symphonies of Beethoven went on-line in the opening week of this month, the Radio 3 website registered 657,399 individual downloads, a figure so immense it exceeded the annual sales of any classical record label and should, by rights, have qualified each of the symphonies for a slot in Top of the Pops.
Last night the BBC let loose the second tranche – from Pastoral to Choral symphonies – amid growing confidence that the demand for free Beethoven will cross the million mark, transforming the future of musical dissemination.

Could classical downloading possibly be less "evil" than pop-napstering, simply because there are fewer (yes, some) rights issues? Who will be the enterprising and forward-looking imressarios to seize on this?

The downloads themselves are here. (Warning: it's so popular it takes a while...)

Susan Glaspell

Here's a good promo piece on a new biography of Susan Glaspell. I heard the author lecture at NYU and it seems like not only the rescuing of a good playwright from obscurity, but a valuable window onto the world of expressionist American theatre "experiments" in the 'teens and 'twenties. And, not to mention, an example of a very significant woman writer in a field the histories have taught us was dominated by men.

PLAYGOER REVIEW: HECUBA

Hecuba
by Euripides
adapted & directed by Tony Harrison
starring Vanessa Redgrave
a Royal Shakespeare Company production
at BAM (closed 6/26)

I'll stand up for this production, despite the tepid critical response. Yes, it was a bit flat, and the political messages were both too blunt and too muddled at times. But I often sleep during Greek Tragedy stagings today and Hecuba kept me awake. (Sounds like a low standard, I know, but read on.) Tony Harrison--a poet and classical translator I've always admired and should be more known in the US--writes language that cuts like a knife; for all its idiosyncrasies and "anachronistic" flourishes (the free use of buzz words like "terrorist"--used against the Trojans-- and "coalition" to describe the Greek army) this is a superb spoken text that an audience can hang on every word of. And in the booming voice of Vanessa Redgrave and an unusually articulate and in-unison chorus, every word was heard, even in the notorious upper balcony of the BAM opera house. It is so hard to capture the Dionysian, physical energy embedded in these plays that I feel grateful to at least be able to enjoy the Apollonian elements and have a meaningful listening experience. Saying a production communicated a play as great literature is not always damning with faint praise.

But politics more than Great-Book-worship was clearly on the agenda for such radical animals as Harrison and Redgrave. The stunning set by Es Devlin (another Apollonian delight, see photo) presented you with an endless landscape of tents, evoking both the battlefields and refugee camps of recent wars. Devlin's costumes seem particularly Serbo-Croation, but much in text--and in the George-Bush-swagger and American r's of Darrel D'Silva's Odysseus--point to the conflict on our TV screens every night. Occasionally a line--like Hecuba's "Great power must use power wisely"--really cuts through. I liked Harrison's transformation of the chorus (always a problem in modern Greekdom) into an austere Brechtian commentator, even singing lines to interject into the main characters' dialogue; the Hanns Eisler-esque sprechtstimme of composer Mick Sands' odes serves this purpose well, especially when Harrison employs that old trick from the Brecht playbook, turning on the houselights, in a confrontational ode here delivered face out as "You'll have to pay!" Yes, even though this is a production originated in the UK and has toured elsewhere, the tone of Brits lecturing Americans was unmistakable. But, hey--who at BAM disagreed?

Other reviews:
NY Times
Village Voice
NY Post

The interactive "Glengarry"?

From a post on Broadway's uber-chatroom "All That Chat"... about a recent Glengarry performance, where one audience member took some umbrage at Mr Mamet's F-words:

"Watch Your Language, You Idiot"--Shouted out at Liev Schreiber last night, a
couple of minutes into the second act, by some misguided/naive theatergoer who
apparently had no idea where he was (perhaps at a town meeting) or what he had
come to see. And giving LS full credit for the script! The result, hundreds of
spinning heads and a 3 second glare from LS that was beautful to see.

Is this the prize audience the increasingly expensive Successful Broadway Play now attracts?

"Imagine...something awful"

...is what one of the San Fran. papers said about Lennon: The Musical in its tryouts. Michael Reidel has all the down & dirty about what promises to be a critics' feeding-fest in a couple of weeks. Look for it...

Personally, I'm waiting for Lenin: The Musical

Plays on Broadway: Curse of Success?

Variety has an interesting study of the "Average Paid Admission" figures for the recent season. The headline hails good news in that, overall, the ticket only went up 20 cents this year. But if you read the finer points, it's musicals that were kept in check. Plays went up!

Play fans, however, have reason to fret, as the APA for plays skyrocketed by a whopping $5.52, to $60.79, according to the league. This is largely attributed to just two shows -- the high-priced "700 Sundays" with Billy Crystal and "Julius Caesar" with Denzel Washington. But hits like "Doubt" and "The Pillowman" also helped pump average tix.

And there you have the "resugence" of the Drama on Broadway. Praised to the skies and priced out of range of the true theatrelover. The more successful and commercially viable plays on Broadway become, the harder it will be for many of us who care to see them. Who is being served here? (Don't assume the artists are getting their fair share of this intake.)

Producers cum laude?

Jesse McKinley's Sunday A&L piece on Hal Prince does provide interesting opportunity for reflection, on the changes in what a Broadway producer does. I certainly agree that the great "creative producers" of the past did some good for the American (commercial) theatre. But does Columbia University really need to feel responsible for endowing a program devoted to this?

...Mr. Prince has now teamed with Columbia University to establish a fellowship
program devoted to developing those "creative producers." The program...will
give student producers the chance to develop shows from scratch, culminating in
a presentation before potential investors.

How about providing funds for writers and/or directiors to create the work in the first place? The new Republican culture ministers at NEA & PBS should be happy that learning how to kiss up to "investors" is part of the new arts curriculum.

Also of note in the article--some growing frankness about how non-profits are increasingly responsible for developing the prize products of the commercial theatre.

What's Going on at the Signature? (and the Times, and with August Wilson?)

Hey, did you read that piece in the Times Thursday about the Signature's new August Wilson season? Well, guess what? It was wrong. See Playbill.com for the real story, which is that it's been delayed a whole year (not just half a year). So the Signature's mission of celebrating one master playwright a season will become just "highlights" from their faves.

(The other focus of the article, Signature's attempt at a $15-a-ticket season is notable, something Playgoer will follow up on.)

Unremarked upon, though, re: Wilson is... what about Radio Golf? As I understood it, the "climax" of the Signature season was to be the big NYC premiere (Off-Broadway, of course) of this, Wilson's "final" installment in his epic 20th-century cycle. Yes, it got tepid reviews in its Yale Rep premiere. But that bad??? The play certainly continues to live: this summer it travels to LA (at the announced at Baltimore's Center Stage for March, 2006. Hmm, just when it was originally supposed to open at the Signature. Has Wilson decided to hold out for another shot at Broadway? (Despite his perseverence there, it is less and less welcoming.)

Theatre journalists, get your sleuthing caps on. (And wake up, Grey Lady!)

Hat tip, Contrapositive

Regional Seasons: Steppenwolf

Some interesting announcements from Chicago's Steppenwolf. New plays by Mary Zimmerman and Don DeLillo(!). And yet another 4:48 Psychosis.

Fate of Classical?

Music, that is. As if in a conspiracy of anxiety, a slew of books are coming out this month offering post-mortems on classical music in America (if not the modern world, in general). Joseph Horowitz's generically titled Classical Music in America: A History of its Rise and Fall is reviewed in today's Times (unfavorably, but gives you the sense of it, at least). Mark Katz's Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music covers all genres of music, and even includes a CD of rare archival recordings! Robert Philip's unadorned title Performing Music in the Age of Recording also considers the technology impact, and the symbiotic relationship it has had with musicians. (Alex Ross in the New Yorker had a great overview of these last two books in the June 6 issue, no longer online, alas.)

A good prep for any of these books would be today's Times article by Anne Midgette on the business end of the problem for various symphony orchestras. Most telling, though--and unremarked upon--is the sheer size of concert halls. The lede of the article gloomily tells of the woes of the Chicago Symphony filling only 2,000 seats of its 3,000-seat summer venue. Hey, 2,000 seats! I'll take that in the theatre any day! Does no one consider the size of the "core" arts audience is just adjusting to smaller (but still sizeable and loyal) elite? And that maybe three thousand (!) seats is grotesquely too large for even a Wagner concert? (If you've been to one of these "festival" concerts and sat in the back listening to tinny amplification, you see the problems of attracting new listeners.)

Again, the profit-margin in non-profit will be the end of us...

Regional Theatre seasons: Wilma

The Wilma in Philadelphia has announced an interesting season for next year, including a Caryl Churchill double bill of the now-classic Cloud 9 and the new gem A Number. But especially intriguing to me is the scheduling of recent Tony-winner I Am My Own Wife in a "re-imagined" production. What exactly that means will have to wait, I guess, but it seems a smart move on playwright Doug Wright's part (who has tacitly approved through his association with the company). The original production, I felt, was so linked to Jefferson Mays's bravura performance that I really questioned the future legacy of the play. Not that the writing isn't good, but it simply begged the question: is the play viable without Mays, or without a Mays-imitator? It will be interesting to see if this staging involves more than one actor, for instance.

I posit that such an "open" view of the pervasive one-person play genre will be necessary if contemporary playwriting is to have a future not dependent on performance values. However, if you don't see any need for theatre to be literature at all, well...

Summer Season: Williamstown

Williamstown Theatre Festival (in the Berkshires) has announced its lineup. Not particularly flashy. But revivals of Bus Stop and Stoppard's On the Razzle might attract interest. Most notable--a rare non-student production of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls!

Quote of the Day

"There is already debate about whether 'Billy Elliot' will eventually move to Broadway. Certainly, it lacks the surface glitter and arch references to other musicals that now seem de rigueur for big Broadway hits. Instead of winking condescendingly at the sentimental clichés that drive its plot, it finds the eternal life in them. For all its conscious craftsmanship, it's the most unself-conscious musical in decades. Speculation has it that with its thick regional accents, local slang and period political references, 'Billy Elliot' may be too British for Broadway. A more alarming thought is that while this show forges a visceral connection with its audience in a way American musicals were once famous for, 'Billy Elliot' may simply be too full of real feeling for the synthetic Broadway of today."

-From Ben Brantley's review of the London premiere of the musicalized Billy Elliot. For those of us who have been fans of director Stephen Daldry ever since An Inspector Calls days, the hype is utterly believable, Elton John notwithstanding...

Anyone seen it already?

The Sunday Papers: Leisure & Leisure

Today's Times Arts & Leisure theatre section is particularly pathetic. This page (yes, now a single page) is one of the most important organs of theatre coverage in the nation. That they can't come up with more than a celebrity profile of Elizabeth Berkley (no matter how much irony Isherwood masks it with) and a pr-bought promo for a minor independent producing team (masking as a women's theatre collective)... well, it doesn't bode well for what we can expect from major-media arts coverage in the future. (Oh save us, Columbia Journalism!)

The full effect of the glossy superficiality of this is best gotten in the print edition. In the link above, see top two stories. The third, a love-letter to the Redgraves from the bite-sized "Directions" page, is the icing on the cake.

Then, to feel like a person with a brain again, read the Charles McNulty's Village Voice interview with Vanessa Redgrave (along with a multi-bite discussion of her upcoming Hecuba) for the kind of article we used to expect from theatre journalism.

Vegas Avant-Garde?

So much for the theatre renaissance in Sin City. The Vegas non-profit SEAT ("Social Experimentation and Absurd Theater") has folded after two years of offering Beckett, Shepard, and original works to an Off-Strip audience. Even Mamet and Bogosian were apparently too risky. Backstage has the (depressing?) story of what it takes to produce alternative non-commercial theatre in "real" America.

Lane Smith, R.I.P.

Too bad Lane Smith never came back to the stage after his praised performance in the original Glengarry (as the dupe, Link). I will always remember him, though, in the underrated ABC 1989 TV film of The Final Days. His was one of the best ever Nixon performances (even if not an exact impersonation).

While on the subject, my other favorite Nixon performance would have to be the loopy Rip Torn in the 1979 mini-series Blind Ambition starring Martin Sheen as John Dean. Neither of these films are currently out on DVD. If you're a Watergate freak, demand them!

(Amazon does show one used VHS copy of Final Days. So act fast.)

REVIEWERS ROUNDUP: The Constant Wife

Playgoer introduces a new feature summing up the notices from the dailies (and whatever else is available) for prominent openings. Look for the "RR" tag for a shortcut, with links, to what the critics are saying. Playgoer doesn't want to overvalue reviews, of course. But it is part of the game.

Apologies for lack of access to the pay-only sites. When will these rags understand--their reviews belong to the public!

Headline: Roundabout's revival of The Constant Wife, a 1926 comedy by Sumerset Maughm, did not get the review they wanted from the New York Times, but other dailies are strongly enthusiastic, even if in a nostalgia-kick vein. The play is a social comedy about adultery starring Kate Burton and Lynn Redgrave.

Charles Isherwood, NY Times: You know the Roundabout's collective heart sunk (does it have one?) at the early paragraph: "Broadway has been in the reupholstering business for a long time, but producers do not often forage deeply in the antiques fair of theatrical history for material as obscure as this to restore to the repertory." He's all over Kate, but basically dismisses the play for its "manicured language" while also accusing the production for distracting from the chatter with bits of physical farce. (Between this and Cherry Orchard Isherwood sure seems awfully pricly about physical comedy these days.)

Clive Barnes, NY Post: The Brit-born Barnes welcomes the old warhorse, but acknowledges it would seem a "dangerously old vintage" if not for director Mark Brokaw's "adroit new bottling." Brokaw and Burton save the day, for Barnes, overcoming overacting in the supporting roles (by Michael Cumpsty and John Dossett) and an "ugly" set of "Chinoiserie."

Howard Kissel, NY Daily News: Also finds new value in the play, "stimulating as well as enormously entertaining." Loves the set. Loves Cumpsty and Dossett. Gets extra points for fitting in the word "flibbertigibbet."

Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal: Online Journal is pay-only, so go see for yourselves if you subscribe. He does give away his lede for free on his ArtsJournal blog About Last Night,
basically praising the play as "Henrik Ibsen rewritten by Oscar Wilde."

Helen Shaw, New York Sun: Again pay-only. (Blast that NY Sun. Some of the best arts coverage in the city and yet so stingy!) So far, her lede also reflects some interest in Maughm's text, for its "rather refreshing view of the hoary institution" of marriage. (For more, just get out of the house and pay the 25 cents at the newsstand, I say.)

Anyone see this show for themselves yet? Hit "Comment"!

CORRECTION (1:30pm): Sorry, but I was mistaken earlier in saying the Times review was by Brantley. It's not. I have since amended.

the old Ludwig Van...

BBC has been revolutionizing Classical Music on the web by beginning to offer downloads of entire Beethoven symphonies. (Even on a cable modem, though, it took a really long time, just for the relatively short Symphony #1.) The whole Beethoven site they've set up is first-rate. Just the right balance between accessible and informed. It's ideal for the casual classical listener but still not dumbed down for the fanatic. A peek at high culture's future (or what it could be) on the web...