Superfluities Redux
A Theatre Surrounds a City:
Vienna's Burgtheater
Superfluities Redux |
A Theatre Surrounds a City: |
|
Monday, 01 December 2008 Night PlannerMy nights and days are rather full at the moment. Keeping up with theatre and drama for me is an effort these days of reading; I'll write about Titus Andronicus quite soon. But there are three current and upcoming productions to look forward to. First, at BAM, Ivo van Hove (who last visited New York in October 2007 with NYTW's production of The Misanthrope, my review here) is presenting his stage adaptation of John Cassavetes' Opening Night tomorrow through 6 December. Van Hove's Misanthrope, too, borrowed elements of its concept from Cassavetes' wild explorations of characters in extremis; in this show, van Hove and Cassavetes document the slow nervous breakdown – and stunning redemption – of a stage actress, played by Gena Rowlands in the original 1977 film. While contemporary film has often inspired contemporary theatre artists, this inspiration has usually come from more commercial work. Van Hove (like Jay Scheib) conducts instead theatrical explorations of more contemplative film techniques, such as those of Bresson, Antonioni and Cassavetes. Tickets available via the BAM Web page for the show. Second, a rare U.S. production of a recent Edward Bond play will take up residence on 42nd Street this week, among the Disneyfied musicals which are the usual fare on that boulevard. Bond's Chair, a radio play from 2000, will be directed by Robert Woodruff and star Stephanie Roth Haberle as Alice, "whose single kindly gesture of bringing a chair to a soldier waiting for a bus leads to the unimaginable." It's not your average holiday spectacle. The show opens this Friday, 5 December, and runs through 28 December, a production of Theatre for a New Audience; tickets here. (The text for Chair can be found in volume eight of Bond's collected plays.) Finally, an opening of a show my recommendation of which should go without saying: Red Bull Theater's production of Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women, adapted and directed by the Red Bull's artistic director Jesse Berger, begins previews next Tuesday, 9 December, at 8.00pm. Tickets here. Posted in /Openings |