Superfluities Redux
On culture and theatre, by George Hunka
A new journal for theatre minima and organum posts exclusively can now be found here.
Thursday, 27 March 2008
Beware the Gods Who Judge and
Love:
F. Murray Abraham and Mark Linn-Baker in Almost an Evening
(See entry for 29 March)
Photo: Ari Mintz
UPDATE: Tomorrow (Friday) night, 28 March, the Metropolitan Opera will Webcast the final live performance of Tristan und Isolde this season. Says the email:
Deborah Voigt and Ben Heppner, originally slated to star in all six performances of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde this season, are scheduled to sing together on Friday night. Illness has prevented them from taking the stage together until this final Tristan of the season, conducted by James Levine. To celebrate their very first full performance together – anywhere – of this epic opera, the Met will stream the performance live on its website.
The performance begins at 7.00pm Eastern time; click here to access the Webcast.
Between posts on this blog, I've been scurrying around, reading a few others. For a cross-Atlantic look at the "value of theatre" discussion, take a look at Chris Wilkinson's precis in today's Guardian; and Mark Armstrong spotlights what appears to be an off-hand but ill-advised comment about American playwrights and their significance, whatever that means, from the new director of artistic development at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Jerry Patch. Of interest, in a dour sort of way.
There's about two months left in the official 2007-2008 theatre season; then comes the theatre festival season, which isn't the same thing but tends to get just as hectic. But there's life in the old girl yet, as a highly selective, prejudiced look at a few upcoming productions, along with other items of interest, will attest:
Saturday, 29 March: Fans of the Coen brothers may wish to consider Almost an Evening, three short plays by Ethan Coen, currently running through 1 June at the Theatres at 45 Bleecker. Like some of his films, the descriptions of the plays at the Web site are coy ("Someone waits somewhere for quite some time," goes the entire synopsis for Waiting; in Debate, we're told, "Cosmic questions are taken up. Not much is learned"), but with a cast that includes F. Murray Abraham, Mark Linn-Baker, Mary McCann and Joey Slotnick, one can hope for at least a bright diversion.
Sunday, 30 March: Alison Croggon takes some time off from theatre blogging and presiding over the land of Pellinor with the online publication of her latest chapbook of poems, Torque. "And, as all poetry ought to be, it's free," she notes. You can download Torque, in .pdf format, here, at the Ahadada Books Web site.
Monday, 31 March: The Segal Center welcomes Steven Cosson and Michael Friedman of The Civilians, who will discuss their new historical cabaret Paris Commune, opening at The Public Theatre for a three-week run beginning on 4 April. The show was developed from primary source materials about the 1871 working class uprising. Daniel Gerould moderates tonight's discussion, which begins at 6.30pm; excerpts from the show are also promised. Admission is free; the Segal Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue at 34th Street.
Tuesday, 1 April: Order up your tickets for God's Ear, Jenny Schwartz's 2007 play about a family coming apart at the edges following the death of a child, which moves to the Vineyard Theatre with director Anne Kauffman and many of the cast of last year's New Georges production intact. God's Ear opens on 9 April and runs through 18 May. My review of the New George's premiere – positive, with just a few reservations – is here. And the text of the play is also available, published by Faber & Faber.
Thursday, 3 April: A party follows tonight's 8.30pm opening of Annie Dorsen's Democracy in America at PS122, 150 First Avenue. Okwui Okpokwasili, Philippa Kaye and Anthony Torn perform a show devised from purchases made by the public via a Web site earlier this year. Can money buy happiness – or, at least, an engrossing evening at the theatre? We'll find out.
Friday, 4 April: Downtown theatre types know him better as an impassioned publicist for Richard Foreman, the Blue Man Group and others, but give Manny Igrejas his due as a playwright himself tonight. His Kitty & Lina at manhattantheatresource, 177 Macdougal Street, looks at the relationship of two New York women, one a wide-eyed actress and the other an immigrant from Portugal. It runs through 26 April.
Posted at 8.22 pm in /Openings
Permanent link to this story
Thursday, 27 March 2008
The Break-Up and The Happy Sad
The Break-Up by Tommy Smith and The Happy Sad by Ken Urban. Directed by Sherri Kronfeld. Set design: John McDermott. Sound design: Brandon Wolcott. Light design: Ben Kato. Costume design: Erin Elizabeth Murphy. With The Bats: Felipe Bonilla, Havilah Brewster, Jane Elliott, Pete Forester, Tom Lipinski, Stephen O'Reilly, John Anthony Russo, Annie Scott and Ronald Washington. Running time: 75 minutes, no intermission. At The Flea Theater, 41 White Street. Reviewed at the 24 March performance. Runs 6 March-7 April 2008. Ticket and schedule information at TheaterMania.
Seven young New Yorkers cope with loss and love in Ken Urban's short entertaining comedy
Only disconnect:
Stephen O'Reilly and Annie Scott
in The Happy Sad
(Photo: Joan Marcus)
In Ken Urban's short new comedy, a "musical" of sorts written for The Bats, the young resident company at the Flea Theater, seven young men and women from across a range of careers and sexualities pair off, break up and get together again as slowly they come to terms with adult life as a series of losses and momentary pleasures. Beneath their La Ronde-like pairings and departures, they also discover that they so far lack a language for the melancholy that affects them: not the poetry of everyday speech but the poetry of The Hallmark Company just touches their sadness. But it is a comedy, and there's light here in most of the relationships, even those that fail, and so some hope.
I don't want to claim too much for the play – it's a relationship comedy, tentative love among the ruins of popular culture, an American comic genre that may have begun with David Mamet's Sexual Perversity in Chicago and continues on with Chris Shinn's Other People (everybody in New York seems to have one of these plays in them; I've even done one myself), and Ken's entry here is winning and entertaining, not least because of the attractive and earnest cast. Among the standouts are Annie Scott's bi- and cheerfully- curious Annie, Stephen O'Reilly's wounded and tentative Stan and, especially, Havilah Brewster's Mandy. As the only one of the characters sexually inactive through the play (and coping with the death of a parent), Mandy is on the edge of realising an adult life of solitude and frustration; Brewster catches her fear and terror quite memorably. Ken's simple songs, performed here a capella, have an affecting schoolyard innocence, especially a trio rendered by the three women in a health-club sauna.
The simple production in the small downstairs theatre at the Flea by Sherri Kronfeld is effective, if a little prop-happy: once again, the audience is prompted to admire the touches of naturalistic authenticity in what is, essentially, a bare-stage show (look! real salt-and-pepper shakers!), a disheartening trend that detracts from the stars of the production, which should be the language and the performers. That said, a word for Erin Elizabeth Murphy's costume design, too, which brings a little more style and panache than usual for a contemporary play.
The evening is preceded by a ten-minute curtain-raiser, Tommy Smith's The Break-Up. Like Aaron, I have nothing to say about it.
Posted at 9.07 am in /Notices
Permanent link to this story
