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Theater Review - 'The Late Henry Moss' - A Sam Shepard Play at the 45th Street Theater - NYTimes.com

Dead or Alive, He’s From the Universe of Sam Shepard

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Neil Simon’s ‘Second Avenue’ Hits Home on West End - NYTimes.com

LONDON — The West End revival of Neil Simon’s “Prisoner of Second Avenue” had not even opened this month when its producers extended its run by two weeks, saying ticket demand was high. It was a far cry from the last outing of a Simon play on his home turf, Broadway: The fall revival of “Brighton Beach Memoirs” closed a week after opening because of poor box office.

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Theater Review - 'Twelfth Night"

In Case This Wasn’t Clear, It’s All About the Mattress

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That’s Life: ‘Come Fly Away’ to Close - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

“Come Fly Away,” the Broadway musical that married the choreography of Twyla Tharp with the music of Frank Sinatra, announced it will close at the Marquis Theater on Sunday, Sept. 5. The show will have played 26 previews and 187 regular performances. A national tour is scheduled to open in Chicago next March.

The show’s grosses climbed after it opened in March, hitting a peak of $918,318 in the final week of April. But they have declined steadily since then. Last week the show grossed $574,485 and sold about half of the 1,611 seats in the Marquis.

The musical received mostly positive reviews when it opened, with Charles Isherwood hailing it in his review as “a major new work of pop dance theater.” Ms. Tharp was nominated for a Tony for her choreography, but the award was given to Bill T. Jones, the choreographer of “Fela!”

Earlier this year Mr. Isherwood and Alastair Macaulay, the Times’s chief dance critic, engaged in an online dialogue about the merits of the show.

“Come Fly Away” is Ms. Tharp’s third all-dance Broadway musical. “Movin’ Out,” set to the music of Billy Joel, was a smash hit and ran 1,303 performances on Broadway. The Bob Dylan-themed “The Times They Are A-Changin’ ” closed after a bout of scathing reviews and 28 performances.

via artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com

‘Our Town’ to Close

Nothing lasts forever in Grover’s Corners — and nor does any production of “Our Town,” Thornton Wilder’s play about life and loss in that fictitious New Hampshire community. On Tuesday the producers of the critically acclaimed Off Broadway production of “Our Town” — the longest running in the play’s 72-year history — announced that the show would hold its final performance on Sept. 12, more than a year and a half after its run began at the Barrow Street Theater.

David Cromer, the director of the production, will reprise his performance as the Stage Manager for the last three weeks of the run, starting Aug. 24. Helen Hunt (“As Good as It Gets”) is playing the Stage Manager through Sunday; from Aug. 3 to Aug. 22, Michael McKean (of last season’s “Superior Donuts” on Broadway) will play the character, as he did earlier this summer.

Four other actors have also played the Stage Manager during the course of the production, which began preview performances on Feb. 17, 2009, and opened that Feb. 26.

Mr. Cromer’s “Our Town” became the longest-running production of the play with its record-breaking 337th performance on Dec. 16, 2009, at the 199-seat theater in the West Village.

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New version of 'On a Clear Day You Can See Forever' to get a staged reading - NYPOST.com

The Broadway graveyard is full of flops that had great scores and bad scripts.

An outstanding example is the 1965 musical "On a Clear Day You Can See Forever."

The score -- music by Burton Lane, lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner -- is melodic, witty and whimsical; the title song became a standard when Barbra Streisand recorded it for the 1970 movie.

But Lerner's original story -- about extrasensory perception, reincarnation and transmutation -- is as loony as he was (more on that in a minute).

As one critic wrote, "What Mr. Lerner should have worried about was not another life but a better idea."

via www.nypost.com

'Bachelorette' starring Tracee Chimo and Celia Keenan-Bolger is sinfully funny - NYPOST.com

Bachelor parties gone wild have gotten lots of stage and screen time. But if Leslye Headland's wickedly comic play is any indication, bachelorette parties are more fun.

Not that the girls in "Bachelorette," part of Second Stage Theatre Uptown's series, are enjoying themselves all that much. Set in a lavish hotel suite reserved for bride-to-be Becky (Carmen M. Herlihy), the play depicts the increasingly dissolute goings-on of her supposed friends and hangers-on.

There's the bitterly jealous Regan (Tracee Chimo), whose boyfriend has yet to pop the question; blond party girl Katie (Celia Keenan-Bolger), who wastes no time getting seriously wasted; and Gena (Katherine Waterston), who, when she's not snorting coke, tries to keep Katie reasonably conscious.

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'The Lieutenant of Inishmore' gets the blood going - latimes.com

John Lehman washes off prop blood on stage at the Mark Taper Forum following "The Lieurtenant of Inishmore." (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

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See Rock City & Other Destinations

Watching Transport Group's new musical "See Rock City & Other Destinations" is like flipping through a friend's vacation snapshots. Some are eye-catching, some are moving, and some leave you with that "I guess you had to be there" feeling. This patchwork tuner is composed of short vignettes revolving around tourist attractions and the emotional sustenance a handful of sightseers hopes to gain from visiting them. Director Jack Cummings III delivers an innovative environmental production, and the seven-member cast limns its multiple roles with urgency and wit, but Adam Mathias' book is uneven. About half of the sketches land with precision, but the rest miss the bull's-eye, either by a few degrees or several target rings. Also, in an annoying and unnecessary convention, the actors read stage directions to set the scenes and occasionally comment on the action. However, the score is solid, featuring Brad Alexander's fresh, unfamiliar music and Mathias' surprising lyric choices.

The evening begins with the audience standing along the walls of the Duke on 42nd Street. The theater is empty, apart from a large scaffolding and a three-piece band. Just before curtain time, the actors set out lawn and beach chairs for the audience, and the scenes start. The most successful piece is a short sketch featuring three estranged sisters who are scattering their father's ashes from a cruise ship in Alaska's Glacier Bay. Mamie Parris, Sally Wilfert, and especially the magnificent Donna Lynne Champlin convey years of subtext in a few minutes. The squabbling siblings finally come together while performing a half-forgotten childhood song.

In the cute opening scene, Parris lends Southern charm and emotional depth to a South Carolina waitress without turning her into a Dixie stereotype. Wilfert is simultaneously caustic and coy as a single woman suppressing the urge to flirt with a stranger at the Alamo. Ryan Hilliard delivers a moving performance as her stroke-ridden grandfather, and Jonathan Hammond is shyly winning as the object of her desire. A solo scene featuring a UFO enthusiast spending the night in the desert outside Roswell, N.M., is too predictable, but Stanley Bahorek endows the geek with goofball sweetness.

Bahorek and Bryce Ryness bristle with adolescent testosterone as a pair of Dalton kids playing hooky at Coney Island. They vigorously put across a ballad of braggadocio that features infectious rock rhythms and Mathias' best verses. But the broadness of their macho posturing too obviously foreshadows their suppressed mutual sexual attraction, which manifests itself during a ride in the haunted house. Their sequence could do with some cutting as well.

The evening finishes with an underdeveloped segment featuring Champlin as a nervous bride and Hammond as a mysterious tour guide offering a hidden side of Niagara Falls. Cummings' clever staging saves this slight piece: Set designer Dane Laffrey's scaffolding is shifted around the space to suggest the rugged terrain at the falls.

R. Lee Kennedy's lighting, which employs everything from video-camera illuminations to fluorescent tubes stretched across the floor, imaginatively sets the various scenes. If the authors work on the weaker pieces, "See Rock City" could end up as a solid tourist attraction.

Presented by Transport Group at the Duke on 42nd Street, 229 W. 42nd St., NYC. July 25–Aug. 8. Tue.–Fri., 8 p.m.; Sat., 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m. (Additional performance Wed., Aug. 4, 2 p.m.) (646) 223-3010 or www.new42.org. Casting by Alan Filderman.

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‘Nervous Breakdown’ Musical Lines Up Its Women (and Men) - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

The cast of the musical adaptation of Pedro Almodóvar’s “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” will include a few well-known Broadway stalwarts – and will not include at least one well-known newcomer who had been previously connected to the project. On Monday, Lincoln Center Theater said that Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Sherie Rene Scott, de’Adre Aziza, Danny Burstein, Mary Beth Peil and Nikka Graff Lanzarone will be featured in the musical, which is adapted from Mr. Almodóvar’s absurdist 1988 film about the intertwining love lives of a group of men and women. Not on that roster, however, was Jessica Biel, the “7th Heaven” and “A-Team” star, who was thought to be headed for a starring role, according to reports in the spring.

Bartlett Sher (“South Pacific,” “Light in the Piazza”), who is directing “Women on the Verge” for Lincoln Center Theater, said at that time that he could not confirm any casting decisions. A representative for the theater company said on Monday that Ms. Biel would not be in the cast, and that additional casting would be announced in the weeks ahead.

The musical, which features a book by Jeffrey Lane and music and lyrics by David Yazbek, will begin previews at the Belasco Theater on Oct. 2 with an opening night set for Nov. 4.

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Almodovar's 'Women on the Verge' will go musical - NYPOST.com

A musical based on Pedro Almodovar's 1988 farce "Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown" is coming to Broadway.

Lincoln Center Theater announced casting for the production Monday. It will begin previews Oct. 2 and open Nov. 4 at the Belasco Theatre.

Almodovar himself recently returned to "Women on the Verge" in his 2009 film "Broken Embraces." That movie followed a filmmaker making a film very much like "Women on the Verge," a Madrid-set story about the intertwining and dramatic lives of a group of women.

The musical's book is by Jeffrey Lane, music and lyrics are by David Yazbek and Bartlett Sher will direct. The cast will include de'Adre Aziza, Nikka Graff Lanzarone, Patti LuPone, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Mary Beth Peil and Sherie Rene Scott.

via www.nypost.com

Theater Review - 'See Rock City and Other Destinations' - Brad Alexander and Adam Mathias’s Musical at the Duke - NYTimes.com

A tangled pile of beach chairs towers in the center of the Duke on 42nd Street, where the friendly but unremarkable new musical “See Rock City & Other Destinations” opened Sunday night. Audience members were milling about uncertainly in the smoke-filled auditorium before the performance I attended, eyeing the pile warily. Nobody could tell if this impressive assemblage was a sculpture or a challenge.

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NY Review: 'Freud's Last Session'

Playwright Mark St. Germain adds to the popular genre of "what if" literature with "Freud's Last Session," a compact 75 minutes of bristling intellectual debate between the father of psychoanalysis and a young C.S. Lewis, before he gained fame as a religious philosopher and author of "The Chronicles of Narnia." St. Germain has previously explored this type of speculative history in plays like "Camping With Henry and Tom" (which details an imaginary meeting between Henry Ford and Thomas Edison) and "Ears on a Beatle" (two FBI agents listen in on John Lennon). A few weeks before Freud's death in 1939, when he was living in London after fleeing Hitler's Germany, the great man received a visit from an unnamed Oxford professor. St. Germain imagines this unknown caller to be Lewis, a passionate convert to Christianity after years of atheism. The two spar over the existence of God, the nature of sex, and the meaning of life. It's a stimulating argument, and St. Germain gives equal weight to both sides, never allowing the high-minded talk to descend into a contest between talking heads.

The production is a transfer from the Barrington Stage Company in Massachusetts, where I saw it during one of its two successful engagements last summer in the theater's tiny studio space. Martin Rayner and Mark H. Dold have more room to maneuver on set designer Brian Prather's faithful re-creation of Freud's study, including the famous analyst's couch. Director Tyler Marchant and his two-man ensemble have maintained the intensity they achieved in the more intimate Barrington space. If anything, the connection between the actors has grown deeper. You can sense that each respects the other—both the performers and the characters.

Rayner's Freud projects the irascible fury of a master intellect nearing the end of his powers while rising to meet a worthy opponent. Freud was dying of oral cancer, which had eaten away the roof of his mouth. Though he had to be fitted with an uncomfortable prosthesis, he still enjoyed his daily cigar. "It's the only form of sex left to me," he quips. Rayner endows the master psychiatrist with a painfully real physical life. Every movement costs him, and you can hear the agony in his raspy voice. Dold has grown more subtle in Lewis' heartfelt pleading for his faith. Lewis appeals to reason rather than emotion with his carefully arrived at points. His compassion for Freud's chronic condition is etched on Dold's face as the great doctor calls on the Oxford don to remove the painful prosthesis. It's a moment of profound intimacy in a near-perfect gem of a play. My only quarrel with St. Germain's work is his slight penchant to give in to obvious maneuvering. It's not credible that Freud and Lewis, who have just met, would resort to using details of each other's personal lives to score intellectual points.

This work could easily have been a dry history lesson, but thanks to a thoughtful script, sensitive direction, and heartfelt performances, "Freud's Last Session" is worth a visit.

via www.backstage.com

Elaine Stritch and Other Matrons of ‘Night Music’ - NYTimes.com

AS conceived by Ingmar Bergman in “Smiles of a Summer Night,” the long-retired courtesan Mrs. Armfeldt whom film audiences met in 1955 was not quite the creature we know as Madame Armfeldt in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler’s latter-day operetta “A Little Night Music.” Mrs. Armfeldt, Bergman writes in the screenplay, is “a very small lady,” first discovered in a very large room, sitting in her bed, which is also enormous, amusing herself with her morning solitaire. There she receives a fateful visit from her actress daughter, the glamorous, fraying Desirée.

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'Robin and the 7 Hoods' revives Cahn and Van Heusen tunes - latimes.com

For all their accolades, Cahn and Van Heusen lack a single Broadway hit -- their "Skyscraper" (1965) and "Walking Happy" (1966) faded fast --that showcases their sassy lyrics and engaging pop melodies.

Until now.

"Robin and the 7 Hoods," opening Friday at the Old Globe, is a celebration of Cahn and Van Heusen at their catchiest, the score a late '50s-early '60s swing-a-thon. "Come Fly With Me," "(Love Is) The Tender Trap," "Come Blow Your Horn," "My Kind of Town (Chicago Is)," "All the Way," "High Hopes," "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" and more — a veritable soundtrack for the Rat Pack of the early 1960s: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop and Peter Lawford.

Of course, songs alone do not a good musical make. A story that entertains, acting that engages, and dancing that leaves 'em gasping in the aisles would be helpful.

Enter Casey Nicholaw. The 48-year-old director-choreographer of "Robin and the 7 Hoods" is the man charged with generating all those components and bringing them together with the music.

To that end, he and his 23-member cast have been working hard since June 1 in basement rehearsal space at the Old Globe complex. Spend time there and good luck keeping up as Nicholaw darts into a line of dancers to tweak a step that wasn't quite there or hurries off to block a scene so an actress' shrieks will work to peak comic effect.

He caps off each creative interaction by saying a variation on "OK, that was great — I have just a couple of notes to go through with you," and then the work busily resumes.

In the last few years, this focus and energy — manifestations of a confident creative sensibility — has propelled Nicholaw onto the short list kept by the theater management set who evaluate directing and choreographing skills. At the Ahmanson, during the run-up to "The Drowsy Chaperone" (2005) and "Minsky's" (2009), Center Theatre Group Artistic Director Michael Ritchie got a close-up look and admired what he saw.

"At the early meetings and first rehearsal, Casey articulated absolute clarity of vision," said Ritchie. "And then, as the work went forward, I witnessed someone who was never negative or a martinet — he generated an atmosphere of openness and collegiality in the room, and built on that to set a high level of expectation for those working for him.

"As long as I'm in this job, the Center will happy to be part of any project Casey wants to work with us on."

via www.latimes.com

From ‘Wicked’ To A Much Smaller Stage

Gregory Maguire, whose novel “Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West” became the basis for the mega-hit Broadway musical “Wicked,” has dipped into the fairy tale universe again to write his first-ever play. It’s short, like its subject.

“The Seven Stage a Comeback” (think Snow White’s seven diminutive compadres) is part of  “Grimm,” a show that stitches together short plays by Boston-based playwrights, all inspired by Grimm fairy tales. The endeavor was put together by Company One, a resident company at the Boston Center for the Arts, and plays there through Aug. 14.

Mr. Maguire, who has written more than two dozen novels for adults and children, including “Son of a Witch” and “Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister,” said he was intrigued by the idea of seven men with a female child growing up in their midst. “Just because they were dwarfs doesn’t mean they were neutered,” Mr. Maguire said in an interview. “If they had more complexity what would they make of the story?”

The play is a more colloquial and action-packed version of his story by the same name, which appeared in the 2000 anthology “The Wolf at the Door,” a collection of re-imagined fairy tales by a variety of writers.

Company One, a small Boston company, approached Mr. Maguire to participate in the project. His contribution is broken up into three sections, at the top of each act and at the show’s conclusion.

Among the other six playwrights in “Grimm” are Lydia R. Diamond (whose adaptation of Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye” has played around the country) and Marcus Gardley, one of the writers of  “On the Levee,” which just finished a run at LCT3, Lincoln’s Center’s program for new directors and playwrights. Mr. Gardley’s “Half-Handsome and Regrettable” spins off of the Hansel and Gretel story.

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'Freud’s Last Session' - Freud and C. S. Lewis Debate Faith in Mark St. Germain’s Play - NYTimes.com

With Faith on the Couch and Freud on the Case

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Man of Steel steals hearts

DALLAS -- While Bono, The Edge and Julie Tay mor have been twisting and turning in that web of a mess called "Spider-Man, Turn Off the Dark," the Dallas Theater Center is soaring with a long-forgotten show about the Man of Steel.

"It's a Bird . . . It's a Plane . . . It's Superman" flopped on Broadway in 1966, but down here in Big D, it's a hit.

Kevin Moriarty, the theater's artistic director, staged a bright and airy production of this snappy old musical that's pleased critics, sold plenty of tickets and caught the attention of the Broadway crowd.

via www.nypost.com

The Irish... and How They Got That Way

A combination of primary documents—letters, journal entries, and newspaper reports—paints a grim picture of the lives of Irish men and women during the 19th century in the first half of Frank McCourt's "The Irish…and How They Got That Way." These spoken-word passages are augmented by a host of songs that range from jaunty to dour, from familiar ("Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ra" and "Erie Canal") to relatively obscure ("Shores of Amerikay"). As the subjects covered in the words and music include the Irish potato famine and the bigotry and hostility that accompanied the arrival of Irish immigrants in America, it makes for some somber theatergoing. Though the second act includes many true crowd pleasers (including four by George M. Cohan), there's an overall one-note reserve to the evening, which inspires respect and admiration but never total enjoyment.

Theatergoers' distance from the piece stems not only from the material but also from Charlotte Moore's largely static staging. While there is some exuberant choreography from Barry McNabb, the performers, more often than not, are stationary on the stage, where set designer Shawn Lewis has piled high a panoply of steamer trunks and old suitcases. Ultimately, the overall effect is that the show often feels like a lecture that's supported by song.

Thankfully, the performers often lighten and enliven the material, particularly Ciarán Sheehan, who uses his gossamer Irish tenor to blissful effect, not only in the ubiquitous "Danny Boy" but also in the little-known "Skibbereen." Similarly, whenever Gary Troy takes center stage, his impish way with a song (and dance) thoroughly beguiles. And though Kerry Conte and Terry Donnelly provide merely solid work, pianist and musical director Kevin B. Winebold gives the show comic flair, particularly as he leads the company in "No Irish Need Apply," in which humor and bitterness blend terrifically, vividly illuminating the duality of the Irish spirit.

Presented by and at the Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 W. 22nd St., NYC. July 22–Sept. 5. Wed.–Sat., 8 p.m.; Wed., Sat., and Sun., 3 p.m. (212) 727-2737 or www.irishrep.org.

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‘Anything Goes’ Returns to Broadway in March - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com

Reno Sweeney has a Broadway theater and performance dates. Roundabout Theater Company announced on Wednesday that its revival of “Anything Goes,” starring Sutton Foster (“Thoroughly Modern Millie”) as the spunky singer Reno, will begin preview performances on March 10 at the Stephen Sondheim Theater (formerly Henry Miller’s Theater) and open on April 7. Kathleen Marshall is directing the Cole Porter musical, which will feature a new book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, based on the original book by P.G. Wodehouse, Guy Bolton, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse.

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The Battle of Stalingrad

In the opening image of "The Battle of Stalingrad," the puppet-theater piece by Georgian writer-director Rezo Gabriadze, now in a return engagement at Lincoln Center Festival 2010, a peaceful, melancholy face emerges from a mound of sand, followed somewhat delicately by its corpselike body. The ghost methodically recovers tokens—a flag, a helmet, a cross, a star—and presents them to us before returning to a seemingly endless slumber. This brief but memorable scene anticipates the structure of the 90-minute performance to follow. From the sands of a forgotten history, half-remembered stories and dreamlike fantasies vanish as quickly as they appear, leaving behind the awesome responsibility of remembering.

"The Battle of Stalingrad" commemorates the battle that altered the course of World War II, leaving over 1.8 million dead and its eponymous city demolished. Rather than deliver a historical account of the battle, Gabriadze offers a series of fantastical vignettes. An aging Kiev handyman compares human restlessness to the ever-agitated amps and volts of electricity. A young soldier tries to halt his beloved's wedding to another man. In the one recurring plot, a horse and his lover (also a horse) seek a moment of bliss amidst growing chaos. They find it in death, as do each of the characters, snuffed out at the end of their scenes like candles after a séance. More abstract sequences—boat masts and soldiers' helmets cross the stage like phantoms—along with the sounds of battle and occasional Russian folks songs add to the sense of the evening's slippery transience.

Just as a funeral depends for its full effect on knowledge of the deceased, so "The Battle of Stalingrad" will stir most those with a relationship to the real event, whether through their own memories or family lore. Many audiences in America, where Stalingrad is not as well remembered as Normandy or Iwo Jima, may feel disconnected. But the shock of war and the transience of life are universal themes. On top of that, the company's first-class puppetry would be memorable regardless of the subject. Fragile yet remarkably expressive, the puppets' physicality is the perfect medium for Gabriadze's blend of the vital and the vanishing.

Presented by Rezo Gabriadze Theatre as part of Lincoln Center Festival 2010 at the Clark Studio Theater, Rose Building, 165 W. 65th St., 7th floor, NYC. July 20–25. Tue. and Fri., 7 p.m.; Wed. and Thu., 6 and 9 p.m.; Sat. and Sun., 3 and 7 p.m. 212-721-6500 or www.lincolncenter.org

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