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Monday, October 12, 2009

    Features:

    [ P ]  ONSTAGE & BACKSTAGE: Durang and Rupert on Fire Island By Seth Rudetsky

    [ LASB ]  Company of Angels Celebrates 50 Years of "Trekking" New Theatre by Janet Thielke

    Actor Leonard Nimoy, famous for his role as Spock in the Star Trek series and films, recalls his involvement as a founding member of Company of Angels theatre in preparation to celebrate its 50th anniversary this Saturday

    [ B ]  What's Up, Justin Kirk? The Weeds Star Dishes About Nudity, Pot-Smoking and Playing The Understudy

    [ B ]  Q&A: He's a Soul Man! Memphis Lives in Headliner Chad Kimball

    [ B ]  Ragtime's Road to Broadway, Part 2: Portrait of the Stars

    [ B ]  Photo Op: Sneak Peek! Say Hello to the Jeromes of Brighton Beach Memoirs

    [ B ]  Photo Op: The Diva Delivers! Lea Salonga Wows the Crowd at Westchester Concert

    "Oleanna":

    [ B ]  Photo Op: David Mamet's High-Voltage Oleanna Explodes on Broadway

    [ P ]  PLAYBILL ON OPENING NIGHT: Oleanna - Teacher's Petting?

    [ P ]  PHOTO CALL: Oleanna Opens on Broadway

    [ LAT ]  Gold Derby by Tom O'Neil
    Can divisive 'Oleanna' unite Tony voters?

    [ THR ]  Oleanna -- Theater Review By Frank Scheck

    Mamet's polarizing drama of sexual politics remains timely but still doesn't ring true.

    News:

    [ P ]  David Powers, Broadway Press Agent, Dies

    [ IBDB ]  David Powers' Broadway Credits

    [ TM ]  Roger Rees to Bring What You Will to McCarter Theatre

    [ TM ]  Rod Gilfry to Star in Théâtre du Châtelet's Sound of Music

    [ P ]  From De Becque to Von Trapp: Gilfry Set for Sound of Music in Paris

    [ TM ]  Gregg Edleman, Harriet Harris, Debra Monk, Kate Shindle, Barbara Walsh et al. Set for NAMT's Festival of New Musicals

    [ P ]  NAMT Finalizes Casting for Festival of New Musicals and Songwriters Showcase

    [ TM ]  B.D. Wong, Clarke Thorell, Orville Mendoza, et al. Set for Rattlestick's Musical Mix 'n Mingle

    [ TM ]  Brits Off Broadway Announces Complete 2009 Line-Up

    [ TM ]  Lily Tomlin to Perform at NJPAC October 23

    [ TM ]  Ute Lemper to Perform at Berlin Wall Project Gala

    [ TM ]  Rickie Lee Jones, Jane Monheit, John Pizzarelli, et al. Set for Mahaiwe Performing Arts Center

    [ TM ]  Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Deborah Wilson Join Fake Radio Line-up

    [ TM ]  Bill Irwin to Appear at NYU's Maison Francaise Benefit

    [ TM ]  Bradley Cooper, Julianne Moore, Carey Mulligan to Be Honored at Hollywood Film Festival

    [ TM ]  NYMF's Street Lights Receives Concept Recording

    [ TM ]  Queen Latifah to Play NYC's Highline Ballroom

    [ TM ]  Barbra Streisand's Love Is The Answer 1 in Both US and UK

    [ P ]  Pioneer Theatre Company's Is He Dead? Marks Utah Premiere of Twain Play

    [ P ]  Huffman, Blackhurst and McKechnie Announced for 42nd Street Moon Lyricist Salons

    [ P ]  AFI to Honor Nichols with Lifetime Achievement Award

  • Posted by Tim Dunleavy at 7:04 PM | Item Link


      • [ TM ]  Con O'Neill to Replace Matt Lucas in West End's Prick Up Your Ears

      [ P ]  Con O'Neill to Replace Matt Lucas in West End's Prick Up Your Ears

      [ B ]  Con O'Neill to Replace Matt Lucas in London Prick Up Your Ears

      [ TM ]  Mike Nichols to Receive AFI Lifetime Achievement Award

      Features:

      [ LAT ]  Matthew Shepard's murder, 10 years later By Barbara Isenberg

      The creators of 'The Laramie Project' revisit the Wyoming city to assess lasting impact of the gay student's killing. Their updates are being performed Oct. 12 by 150 groups.

      [ LAT ]  Tim Robbins, Actors' Gang stand up to tough times By Reed Johnson

      The economy's slow, but Actors' Gang says show will go on

      [ TM ]  Kate Baldwin Gets Her Irish Up By: Brian Scott Lipton

      The Finian's Rainbow star discusses her character, working with Cheyenne Jackson, and her new CD.

      [ AP ]  Black helmet hair in place, Judith Ivey stars as Eppie Lederer, aka Ann Landers By Leanne Italie

      How do you turn a twangy Texas blonde into a stylish, Midwestern media superstar?
      It's all about the hair.

      [ NY ]  Broadway Bound

      Meet the new Eugene Jerome, Neil Simon's alter ego in the Brighton Beach Memoirs revival. His name is Noah Robbins, he's 19, and he just moved to New York.

      [ NY ]  Regular Guys By Emma Rosenblum

      Eric Stonestreet and Jesse Tyler Ferguson on their show, Modern Family.

      [ LAT ]  Culture Monster
      Flora Laney Thornton, L.A.'s musical benefactor

      [ CFR ]  Everett Quinton Joins Cast of "Macbeth in Close-Up" Film; Kickstarter Fundraising Ongoing

      In Gorilla Rep's first film, it's the explosive combination of physical proximity to truly intense acting that sets this "Macbeth" apart.

      [ CFR ]  5 Questions I've Never Been Asked: Steve Hayes

      "Something a straight man might assume...might seem ridiculous to a gay man or vice versa," says the out gay actor Steve Hayes of his comedy partner, straight Tom Cayler.

      [ CFR ]  From the Blogroll XIII: "Chrysanthemum Tea" Edition

      Selections from the 140-plus blogs of The Clyde Fitch Report blogroll, with commentary.

      "Oleanna":

      [ OOB ]  Oleanna - Review by Matt Windman

      Doug Hughes' excellent Broadway revival starring Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles thrives on speed, intensity, and psychological subtlety. Though the play is still likely to divide audience members and make many feel uncomfortable and angry, we can at least now view it with a degree of detachment.

      [ TB ]  Oleanna
      Review by Matthew Murray

      Who's the victim? Who's the aggressor? Who cares? All three questions, in roughly equal proportions, flood Doug Hughes's new revival of Oleanna at the John Golden, making this Broadway bow of David Mamet's most controversial and viscerally exciting play into a pedestrian mess.

      [ BR ]  'Oleanna' revival changes emotional tug of war BY ROBERT FELDBERG

      There's such a thing as being too nice. Which is the major problem with the revival of "Oleanna" that opened Sunday night at the John Golden Theatre.

      [ NY1 ]  Review: "Oleanna" By: Roma Torre

      The best thing about "Oleanna" is that it forces us to think about some very heavy subjects. But this frustratingly flawed play is a disappointment because Mamet the "A" playwright is delivering "C" work.

      NYMF Reviews by Matthew Murray:

      [ TB ]  All Fall Down

      There's only so much that even the most gifted artists could bring to life in a show that revolves around a question so shallow and inherently undramatic.

      [ TB ]  Academy

      If Mercurio can unite the best elements of Faust and With Glee with his own unique moralistic outlook and musical voice, Academy could end up as both a good show and a valuable learning experience.

      Other Reviews:

      [ LAT ]  Culture Monster
      Review: 'American Idiot' at Berkeley Rep by Charles McNulty

      "American Idiot" translates Green Day's generational angst into a moody theatrical fantasia. If it doesn't spin an entirely satisfying yarn, its roar is still irresistible, even when the object of protest remains elusive.

      [ TB ]  The Contrast
      Review by Cindy Pierre

      No matter which "goods" you are apt to side with, The Contrast will titillate you.

      [ TM ]  The Playboy of the Western World
      Reviewed by: Adam R. Perlman

      Sean McNall gives a thoroughly convincing performance in the Pearl Theater Company's uneven revival of J.M. Synge's well-known comedy.

      [ LAT ]  Culture Monster
      Theater review: 'Noel Coward's Brief Encounter' at American Conservatory Theater by Charles McNulty

      This ingenious multimedia import from Britain, now receiving its U.S. premiere at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, pays homage to the movie by translating the romantic fable into a playfully eccentric language that fuses theater, music and film in a most delightfully populist fashion.

      [ DMN ]  Review: Autobiographical 'Road to Qatar' proves a bubbly tour of creating a musical By LAWSON TAITTE

      [ NYer ]  Swash and Buckle by John Lahr

      A heroic "Hamlet" and musings on mortality.

      [ NY ]  Drama Rush By STEPHANIE ZACHAREK &DAN KOIS

      The season's October boomlet, from Hamlet to Princess Leia.

      News:

      [ TM ]  Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, et. al. Featured on RSC's Essential Shakespeare CD Set

      [ V ]  Tab Hunter set for tell-all doc By MICHAEL FLEMING

      Actor to bare H'w'd secrets in film

      [ P ]  Change Comes to a Chicago Family in High Holidays World Premiere at Goodman; Cast Announced

      [ P ]  Big River, Promises, Promises and State Fair Set for Stages St. Louis Season

      [ P ]  Finnegan Will Be New Williamstown General Manager

      [ P ]  The :nv:s:ble Play, Set in a Downsized Workplace, to Premiere in Philadelphia

      [ P ]  Stephen Gateley, Pop Star and West End Performer, Dies at 33

      [ TM ]  Stephen Gately Dies at 33

    • Posted by Tim Dunleavy at 12:02 PM | Item Link


        • This morning's Peter Filichia:

        [ TM ]  Hamlet in New York and New Jersey

        Very soon after the lights came up on the new Hamlet at the Broadhurst, I thought I was going to like it quite a bit.

        This morning's news:

        [ P ]  Laura Michelle Kelly and Christian Borle Sweep Into Mary Poppins Oct. 12

        [ P ]  County of Kings Opens Off-Broadway at the Public Oct. 12

        [ P ]  How to Be a Good Italian Daughter Opens Off-Broadway Oct. 12

        [ P ]  The Last Smoker in America Lights Up at NYMF Oct. 12

        [ P ]  McKechnie Choreographs Cross That River, Beginning at NYMF Oct. 12

        [ P ]  Mitchell Hosts Broadway Inspirational Voices Concert; Bean, Lewis, McElroy and More Sing

        [ P ]  Laramie Project Sequel Plays Throughout U.S. on Oct. 12

        [ P ]  Tony Winner Salonga Offers Special Performance to Benefit Filipino Typhoon Victims Oct. 12

        [ P ]  Birdie's Doyle Is Part of Oct. 12 Life Times Concert at the Duplex

        [ P ]  Bean Joins Miranda at Birdland Oct. 12

        [ NYT ]  From Cabaret to Kanye, Songs of Glee Are a Hit, by Edward Wyatt

        Cast recordings from the show Glee accounted for 10 spots on the iTunes top 200 and four on the Billboard Hot 100.

        This morning's features:

        [ NYT ]  New Musicals, From Fledgling to Full-Fledged, by Anita Gates

        This year's New York Musical Theater Festival brings a surprising number of highly polished productions giving it their all in mostly small, slightly out-of-the-way theaters.

        [ P ]  Today in Theatre History

        This morning's reviews of Oleanna:

        [ NYT ]  He Said, She Said, but What Exactly Happened?, by Ben Brantley

        The revival of David Mamet's play, which pits the excellent Bill Pullman against the luminous Julia Stiles, often seemed slow to the point of stasis.

        [ NYP ]  Slash and Burn, by Elisabeth Vincentelli

        Watching this play today is like watching something made during the Red Scare of the '50s. Oleanna speaks volumes not only about an era dominated by the shared paranoia of conservatives and lefty activists, but also about its creator's id. And what surged from Mamet's brain is the closest Broadway now has to a slasher movie.

        [ DN ]  Oleanna fails to grab you, by Joe Dziemianowicz

        During every scene change, vertical shades on John's office windows are lowered dramatically, as if to underscore a question asked by John and Carol 20 times in 75 minutes: "Do you see?" The two never actually do, and that divide between the sexes is worth exploring. But Broadway's Oleanna, which wants to provoke, has effectively been reduced to an inside joke—the blinds leading the blind.

        [ USA ]  Oleanna revival: Just as relevant, provocative now, by Elysa Gardner

        As the controversy now surrounding David Letterman reminds us, the debate over what constitutes an abuse of power between a male authority figure and a female subordinate isn't going away. And the gripping new production of Oleanna that opened Sunday at the Golden Theatre reinforces how tricky and multilayered that issue can be.

        [ AP ]  A bruising Oleanna tackles political correctness, by Michael Kuchwara

        The linguistic pyrotechnics of playwright David Mamet are on full display in the bruising Broadway revival of Oleanna, which opened Sunday at the Golden Theatre. It's Mamet's incendiary take on the consequences of political correctness—specifically involving sexual harassment—and how language helps to facilitate the battle.

        [ BLOOM ]  Stiles Brings Mamet's Explosive Oleanna to Broadway, by John Simon

        David Mamet wrote Oleanna in 1992, when the country was in the throes of the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill controversy, which he transposed into academia. An Off-Broadway hit back then, the play now makes its Broadway debut in a revival starring Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman that has lost none of its power to provoke.

        [ BS ]  Reviewed by David Sheward

        Douglas Hughes reconsiders David Mamet's explosive two-hander about sexual harassment, and with powerhouse performances from Julia Stiles and Bill Pullman, it's more than just a one-sided battle.

        [ V ]  Reviewed by David Rooney

        There are key phrases in David Mamet's Oleanna that in their banal simplicity reveal as much about the two adversarial characters and their corrosive dilemma as all their heated verbiage combined. For frustrated student Carol, it's "I don't understand." For her heedless professor John, it's "I can't talk right now." And both of them favor multiple variations on "Do you see?" Miscommunication more than gender politics is the central issue in this incendiary 1992 two-hander, and that gulf is exposed with bristling conviction by Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles. But Doug Hughes' meticulously calibrated production can't correct the imbalance of a manipulative play that only feigns impartiality.

        [ TM ]  Reviewed by Dan Bacalzo

        Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles bring out a number of nuances in David Mamet's provocative two-hander.

        [ CU ]  Reviewed by Elyse Sommer

        David Mamet's miscommunicating student and professor still get people stirred up about their Rashomon-like power play.

        This morning's other reviews:

        [ NYT ]  Every Dickens Character You Never Saw Takes a Bow, by Neil Genzlinger

        Anyone ever tortured by a Charles Dickens novel will find lots and lots to laugh at in the parody Penny Penniworth.

        [ BS ]  Lorenzo, reviewed by Ruthie Fierberg

        The authors of this biography of Mozart's librettist attempt to combine opera with musical theatre and get a mix of sour and sweet notes.

        [ BS ]  The Assembler Dilator, reviewed by Mitch Montgomery

        A welcome experiment in sensation that provides powerful jolts of light and noise.

        [ V ]  The Playboy of the Western World, reviewed by Sam Thielman

        Irish scribes from Brian Friel to Martin McDonagh have been writing variations on J.M. Synge's 1907 Playboy of the Western World for decades, but the venerable comedy rarely gets a Gotham staging. In almost any form, it's a show worth seeing, and the Pearl Theater's deliberately unshowy production hits several of the play's high notes. Helmer and new Pearl a.d. J.R. Sullivan sometimes confuses fidelity with blandness, and his leads aren't yet quite sure of themselves, but several good supporting perfs find the populous play's wonderfully mean-spirited heart.

        [ V ]  Children of the Night, reviewed by Phil Gallo

        Kiss Me Kate goes Goth in the Katselas Theater Company's world premiere production of Scott Martin's bloodless tuner Children of the Night. The intriguing tale of Dracula author Bram Stoker's life behind the scenes in the London theater and his frustrating relationship with actor Henry Irving provide sufficient drama, but Martin's musical style and book are smothered in the dust of '70s Brit tuners. One-note characters and cliched dialogue leave the actors with few choices to make, though refreshing perfs from fine singer Teri Bibb and giddy Gibby Brand suggest some of the material has potential.

        [ V ]  Never Land, reviewed by Bob Verini

        Is Never Land Utopia, the place where dreams are born (as Peter Pan once sang)? Or is it a euphemism for miserable reality—what Hamlet called this sterile promontory? Evidence for both is vividly provided in Phyllis Nagy's 1998 fantasia on cultural and psychic displacement, now enjoying its U.S. premiere under her direction. The dense, textured script is no cakewalk for either producer Rogue Machine or the audience, but many will find it worth visiting.

        [ CU ]  The Royal Family, reviewed by Elyse Sommer

        This A-cast revival of the 1927 Ferber/Kaufman hit is sure to thrill anyone yearning to re-experience a bygone era.

        [ CU ]  Come Back, Come Back, Wherever You Are, by Simon Saltzman

        It isn't at all unexpected that the still vital and vigorous Arthur Laurents would eventually turn his attention in his dotage to a play about love, loss, and how one copes with them.

        [ CU ]  Inherit the Wind, reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge

        Kevin Spacey adds star power to this classic courtroom drama.

        [ CU ]  Mother Courage and Her Children, reviewed by Kevin Quarmby

        As theatrical experience, the National's production of Mother Courage and Her Children is often brazenly, outrageously adventurous. Ultimately, though, its message becomes muddied in the blood and grime which it so forcefully and noisily depicts.

      • Posted by Matthew Murray at 5:03 AM | Item Link


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