Tuesday, November 29, 2011

December WishList


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Griffin Theatre @ Theatre Wit
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The Tony Award-winning musical that change musical theater on Broadway forever in its first made in Chicago production. A groundbreaking fusion of morality, sexuality, and rock & roll that celebrates the unforgettable journey from youth to adulthood.
Through Jan 8.

 

Circle Theatre
bakers
A provincial French town suffers from the absence of a bakery and the lack of good gossip. When a new baker arrives with his much younger, very beautiful wife, the town immediately seizes on the idea that she will leave him, leading to unexpected consequences for everyone. A charming musical by the creator of Wicked, The Baker’s Wife has developed a loyal following for its lush score featuring the song “Meadowlark.”
Through Jan. 22.



Elizabeth Rex
Shakespeare Theatre
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Artistic Director Barbara Gaines brings her masterful hand to this contemporary play reimagining Shakespeare's time. On the eve of the beheading of her court favorite and rumored lover, the Earl of Essex, Queen Elizabeth was entertained by a royal command performance by Shakespeare and his company. Upon this obscure historical fact, one of Canada's most acclaimed playwrights, Timothy Findley, imagines this daring and original drama. Longing for distraction, the Queen visits the acting troupe's lodgings, where she finds the actor who plays Shakespeare's leading ladies. In their passionate confrontation, the actor and the Queen come to shocking revelations about sexuality, identity and love.
Through Jan 22.


Mary-Arrchie Theatre
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Escaping their lives in Manhattan , former college buddies Matt and Davis take off to the Netherlands and find themselves thrown into a bizarre love triangle with a beautiful young prostitute named Christina. But the romance they find in Europe is eventually overshadowed by the truth they discover at home. Written with an unflinching poetic beauty, Red Light Winter is a play of sexual intrigue that explores the myriad and misguided ways we seek to fill the empty spaces inside us.
Through Dec 18.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

ARTonNews: Sondheim Wins Tribune's Literary Prize

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This was the second time I have been in the presence of the great Stephen Sondheim. My first was on March 24, 2004, my sister’s 25th birthday. She & I attended a limited-engagement production of Sweeney Todd at the Met. We got to the theatre a little too early so decided to walk around. Standing near the second balcony’s bar, we saw a grey-haired familiar face talking to a blond-haired familiar face. We were confident the blondie was Marie Friedman; so, we decided the best course of action was to go confirm this was Friedman, which confirmed that we had stumbled upon the presence of Sir Sondheim himself. My sister and I talked to him for about 3-5 minutes. It was amazing, but I have no recollection what any of us said. So this time I tried to take better notes.
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His Partners: Prince V. Lapine
The dynamics of his relationships with his artistic partners was the first conversational point of note. He expressed an open detachment towards the musicals he worked on before collaborating with James Lapine on Sunday in the Park with George. Prior to working with Lapine, Sondheim collaborated with Hal Prince whose writing had a Brechtian influence-base & was less emotionally substantial than Sondheim required. He found a resonance with Lapine’s emotional openness. Sunday in the Park with George was his first musical to premiere at an Off-Broadway venue, which exhibited to Sondheim the difference in attentiveness & intention of the Broadway & Off-Broadway audiences. He discussed how the dissatisfied Broadway audience member will leave at intermission, whereas the Off-Broadway theatre-goer pursues productions with a more appreciative & open mentality (I couldn’t agree more).

Children Will Listen
Sondheim said this song from Into The Woods was originally a segment of an original, longer The Second Midnight & its’ purpose was to clearly state that this is a musical about parent/child relations. In cutting The Second Midnight down, Children Will Listen couldn’t be left on the cutting room floor & had to become its’ own number. Sondheim has consistently stated that children & art are the only legacies worth leaving on earth; in a parallel statement, Sondheim acknowledged the necessity of honoring one’s parent(s) in the face of their loss, both in their mistakes & the honorable legacies left behind. I was surprised at Chris Jones boldness in asking Sondheim outright about his notoriously dysfunctional relationship with his mother. That topic led to the natural inquiry as to Oscar Hammerstein’s influence as an adopted parental figure. Sondheim said that he absorbed liberal training through parentally through osmosis but that Oscar Hammerstein served much more as tutor than pseudo-father-figure.
 
His Most Difficult Lyrics
Maria from West Side Story, Tony’s soaring love ballad that he sings moments after meeting Maria. He discussed the difficulty in expressing simplicity without appearing dull and/or trite; the older writer has written more and trusts that simplicity is ok because it is a result of careful crafting & editing of the text. As with all writing, sweat is what makes it work. As with cooking, reduction takes time. The goal is for the text to contain nothing distracting or extraneous, which all adds up to the necessity of editing. In regard to the conversational tendency of his lyrics, Sondheim acknowledged how the natural rhythm of the dialogue influenced the melody.

The Promise of The First Line
One pressure he discussed (and directly credited as a Hammerstein influence) was the promise that a musical’s first line demands. He dissected the opening line of Sweeney Todd [“Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd”] as an example as a line over which he labored. His explanation for this specific phrasing communicated 3 imperative aspects of the impending musical:
  1. Attend the tale…” immediately indicates an invitation to experience a period piece.
  2. The fact that it is referred to as A Tale indicates a sense of dissonance from reality. This is a story & the audience needs be prepared for a tall tale, not the expected serious plot-line a period piece infers.
  3. Alliteration of the T sound subconsciously prepares the audience for a bouncy rhythmic evening.
The Porgy & Bess NY Times Letter
Sondheim recently wrote a letter to the New York Times in response to an article revealing plans to revamp the classic 1935 opera into a Broadway hit called The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess. Plans for the contemporary production include manufacturing a backstory for Bess and an altered ending. Chris Jones asked Sondheim where the harm was in experimentation. His quick & impassioned response was that they changed the story; there is merit in re-examining the text, but not in rewriting the story. It expresses a condescension towards the piece if the director feels the text is inadequate & requires alterations in order to produce it. He referred to Richard Jones’ London production of Into the Woods that both he & Lapine loved because it had nothing to do with their original production. It was a completely re-imagined Into the Woods, but one that adhered to and respected the text.
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Monday, November 7, 2011

A Behanding at Spokane @ Profiles Theatre

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I love Martin McDonagh. I saw The Lieutenant of Inishmore on Broadway & The Pillowman at Philadelphia’s Wilma Theatre. I have never seen a play from The Leenane Trilogy, but they have received enough acclaim to get props without my first-hand endorsement. The McDonagh I know creates an authentically heightened alternative world, presents a sincere farce that is genuinely funny, and uses heightened metaphors to create an authentically parallel world. This McDonagh tried to write from an American perspective and lost a lot of the qualities I had grown to love about his writing: this humor lacked a smart subtlety & was quipper than his previous writings. From the audience, there was genuine laughter as well as nervous laughter, but neither of these indicated a presence of genuinely humorous writing. McDonagh’s signature is his use of satirical but severely upfront violence with the purpose of transferring the play’s underlying moral. Somehow, he always makes the insane approachable, but that tendency was lost on this script & it just seemed bizarre without a direct intent. The play’s conflict centered around Carmichael, a degenerate trying to track down his hand that was stolen & semi-torturing a young, weed-dealing couple who claimed to have his hand for the dealing. The repeated sentiment that tortured Carmichael was the image of his attackers waving goodbye to him with his own hand. I had to assume this metaphor’s purpose was to communicate a commentary on the great loss of wanting something back that rightfully belongs to you. I do like that theme, but I remain unsure if that was McDonagh’s intended thought-provocation; that uncertainty does not speak well towards the quality of the script.

The Players
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The quality of the cast made up for the flaws of the script. As Carmichael, Darrell W. Cox created & committed to a well-rounded but still intriguing central character. I saw him at Profiles in last season’s reasons to be pretty, and was very pleased with the complete & necessary physical transformation he made from that role. The ability to physically transform is a necessity for a member of an acting troupe, and I appreciate that Profiles is aware incorporating that reimagining into each production. As Marilyn & Toby, the weed-dealing couple held prisoner by Carmichael, Sara Greenfield & Levenix Riddle exhibited perfectly nuanced energy, excellent interaction with the text, and cleverly communicated comedic ability. As the front desk clerk Mervyn, Eric Burgher provided clean moments of punctuation during the overall production. His character unfolded throughout the script more than the others, and he was smart & subtle about delivering plot-punctuating moments of realization. This was a strongly cast ensemble piece with no weak link who acted with unadulterated commitment to their roles, and their performance quality alone makes this a show worth seeing.
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Thursday, November 3, 2011

November WishList


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The Annoyance Theatre
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Entrails and one-liners fly when fiction's master sleuth and history's most elusive criminal go toe-to-toe in this black comedy set in the foggy slums and extravagant parlors of Victorian London. When a bored, out-of-work Sherlock Holmes is pitted against Jack the Ripper in a battle of wits, he's thrilled to be on the hunt. But even the seasoned pro is in over his head as he realizes that everyone is a suspect...and appearances are rarely what they seem in this bloody whodunnit.
Wednesdays through Nov 30


Point of Contention Theatre Co. 
@ Prop Theatre
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All the Girls Love Bobby Kennedy follows the story of college student Grace Bailey and her experience of the turmoil of the late 1960’s. At that time, for many people Bobby Kennedy was the embodiment of optimism. Here, Kennedy appears as the hopeful side of Grace’s conscience and just the thing she needs to break free of the status quo. While hope builds and life-changing choices are being considered, a war rages on the other side of the world, and one gun shot at a hotel in California is about to stun a generation.
Weekends through Nov. 20


Chicago Dramatists
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A humorous, dark, but ultimately uplifting look at what happens when a young man turns back the hands of time to save the life of his friend from the violence of dealing drugs
Through Dec. 4
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