THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Monday, July 23, 2012

FROM: Kelly Guiod, Michael Strassheim, Emily Meagher Michelle Farabaugh, Jennifer Laski, Erica Israel

PAGES: 30, including this page

Political Sex Scandals Onstage, in 'Tail! Spin!' - NYTimes.com

JULY 19, 2012, 2:47 PM Political Sex Scandals Onstage, in ‘Tail! Spin!’

By ERIK PIEPENBURG When politics and sex meet it makes for great political theater. This summer they'll be theater when Mo Rocca ("CBS Sunday Morning"), Rachel Dratch ("Saturday Night Live") and Sean Dugan ("Smash") take the stage in "Tail! Spin!" -- a verbatim recitation of steamy e-mails, texts, interviews and Twitter messages that surfaced during recent political sex scandals. The show, created by the NPR contributor Mario Correa, is scheduled to play five performances, from Aug. 11-16, at the Kraine Theater as part of the 2012 New York International Fringe Festival.

Directed by the Tony nominee Dan Knechtges ("Lysistrata Jones"), "Tail! Spin!" focuses on the sexual transgressions of four American politicians: Mark Sanford, the former governor of South Carolina who admitted to having an affair with a lover he had met while on vacation in Argentina; Larry E. Craig, a former Republican senator from Idaho who was caught in an undercover sex sting; and two former United States congressmen, Anthony Weiner of New York, who resigned over lewd online behavior, and Mark Foley of Florida, who resigned after he was caught sending sexually explicit texts to teenage Capitol Hill pages. The cast will portray some 30 different roles, including members of the media and the politicians' paramours and relatives.

Two other cast members are still to be announced.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 19, 2012

An earlier version of this post misspelled the last names of the writer Mario Correa and the director Dan Knechtges.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/political-sex-scandals-onstage-in-tail-spin/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:21:15 AM] Skirball Center Announces New Season - NYTimes.com

JULY 19, 2012, 2:00 PM Skirball Center Announces New Season

By ERIK PIEPENBURG The Belgian theater company Ontroerend Goed, the minimalist composer Terry Riley and the Australian dance company Circa are among the performers in the 2012-13 season at the N.Y.U. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts.

Mr. Riley and other musicians and composers, including John Zorn and Lou Reed, will be among the participants in a three-night festival of film and music from the Joshua Light Show, an event founded by the multimedia artist Joshua White that features music played in front of psychedelic projections. Skirball's other musical offerings include performances by the ukulele player Jake Shimabukuro and the Black Arm Band, a group of aboriginal musicians from Australia.

Ontroerend Goed, which had a hit at the 2010 Under the Radar Festival with "Once and for All We're Gonna Tell You Who We Are So Shut Up and Listen," returns to New York with "Audience," a multimedia work that questions the divide between viewer and performer. Other theater productions include "Not by Bread Alone," a multisensory work from Tel Aviv's Nalaga'at Theater, a deaf-blind acting company, in which performers bake and break bread with the audience; and "The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer," a one-man puppet show from the creator-performer Tim Watts that was named the Outstanding Solo Show of the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival.

Dance offerings include Circa's "Wunderkammer," a blend of circus and acrobatics, and performances by Mummenschanz; Monica Bill Barnes & Company; and the dancer Paul White in Meryl Tankard's "Oracle."

More information is at nyuskirball.org.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/19/skirball-center-announces-new-season/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:14:45 AM] Announces Fall Season - NYTimes.com

JULY 20, 2012, 3:17 PM Baryshnikov Arts Center Announces Fall Season

By DANIEL J. WAKIN "La Douleur," a French theater piece based on the diaries of the writer Marguerite Duras and directed by Patrice Chereau, will come to the United States as part of the fall season at the Baryshnikov Arts Center, the organization announced. The play stars the prominent French actress Dominique Blanc and includes the collaboration of the choreographer Thierry Thieû Niang. It will be staged in French with projected titles in English. The season, which will run from Sept. 20 to Dec. 15, includes an appearance by the Bolshoi Puppet Theater in its United States debut, performing an adaptation of "Kholstomer: The Story of a Horse," a short story by Tolstoy. The center also will have musical and dance performances. The choreographer Doug Elkins will bring his dance company for performances of his work based on Shakespeare's "Othello" set to Motown music. Other choreographers featured at the center will include Raimund Hoghe and Malavika Sarukkai. The St. Luke's and International Contemporary ensembles will perform musical programs.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/baryshnikov-arts-center-announces-fall-season/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:15:46 AM] Fall Slate Is Set for 59E59 Theaters - NYTimes.com

JULY 22, 2012, 7:27 PM Fall Slate Is Set for 59E59 Theaters

By ADAM W. KEPLER 59E59 Theaters has announced that it will present the New York premiere of a revival of Stephen Schwartz's musical "Working" beginning Dec. 1 as part of its fall season. Based on the 1974 nonfiction book of the same name by the oral historian Studs Terkel, this version of "Working," which had a run last year at the Broadway Playhouse in Chicago, includes two new songs written by Lin-Manuel Miranda ("In the Heights"). Casting has not been announced.

The season will start on Sept. 5 with "Fly Me to the Moon," a new comedy written and directed by Marie Jones ("A Night in November") about two social workers who face a moral dilemma when a man in their care dies after winning a horse racing bet. That is to be followed by, among others, "A Twist of Water," written by Caitlin Montanye Parrish ("The View From Tall"), from Nov. 1 through Nov. 25, and "The Outgoing Tide," written by Bruce Graham ("Any Given Monday"), from Nov. 7 to Dec. 16.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/fall-slate-is-set-for-59e59-theaters/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:17:36 AM] Women's Project Has New Plays for Its New Home - NYTimes.com

JULY 22, 2012, 7:35 PM Women’s Project Has New Plays for Its New Home

By PATRICK HEALY "Jackie," a play by the Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek that dissects the life and legend of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, will have its North American premiere this winter at the new Off Broadway home of the Women's Project, the producing artistic director, Julie Crosby, said. The theater company, now 35 years old, which produces plays written and directed by women, will mount "Jackie" and two other shows for its 2012-13 season at City Center Stage II, which the Pearl Theater Company vacated this year to move to the old home of Signature Theater Company.

The first show will be "Bethany," written by Laura Mark and directed by Gaye Taylor Upchurch, a dark comedy about morality set in an American exurb where home foreclosures are spreading. The production, a world premiere, is scheduled to run Jan. 11 to Feb. 17.

"Jackie," which will be directed by Tea Alagic ("Aliens With Extraordinary Skills") from a translation by Gitta Honegger, is set for Feb. 24 to March 31. Ms. Crosby described the play (a monologue by the onetime first lady) as "a disturbing exploration of submission, power and the hypocrisy of everyday life." The stage works of Ms. Jelinek, an Austrian playwright and novelist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2004, are infrequently produced in the United States, and one-woman shows like "Jackie" are rare for the Women's Project given Ms. Crosby's preference for shows that are deeply theatrical and not confessional.

The third play is "Collapse," by Allison Moore and directed by Jackson Gay, a comedy about crumbling structures and relationships that was inspired by the 2007 collapse of the Interstate 35 W bridge over the Mississippi River in Minneapolis. The production, a New York premiere, will run April 7 to May 19.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/womens-project-has-new-plays-for-its-new-home/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:12:58 AM] New Music Inspired by Beckett Plays - NYTimes.com

JULY 22, 2012, 7:21 PM New Music Inspired by Beckett Plays

By ADAM W. KEPLER The Cygnus Ensemble has announced that it will perform new musical compositions based on the works of Samuel Beckett, to be paired with three of his one-act plays in a new production, "Sounding Beckett."

The plays, "Footfalls," "Ohio Impromptu" and "Catastrophe," are to be directed by Joy Zinoman with a cast including Ted Van Griethuysen, Philip Goodwin and Holly Twyford. Each play will be followed by new musical pieces inspired by the plays and written by the composers Chester Biscardi, Laura Schwendinger, David Glaser, Laura Kaminsky, John Halle and Scott Johnson.

The production will run Sept. 14 to 23 at the Off Broadway theater .

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/new-music-inspired-by-beckett-plays/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:18:23 AM]

Love Loses Its Balance at This Dacha - The New York Times

July 22, 2012 THEATER REVIEW | '' Love Loses Its Balance at This Dacha

By BEN BRANTLEY

Love has no dignity — no, not a shred — in the Theater Company’s glorious “Uncle Vanya,” which runs (and lopes and dances desperately) only through Saturday at City Center. In Tamas Ascher’s heart-bruising production, part of Lincoln Center Festival 2012, people who reach out to touch someone are likely to find their balance in jeopardy. An attempted kiss can trip them up as effectively as any banana peel, while gentle caresses somehow turn into body slams that knock over their recipients like ninepins. Eros makes klutzes of us all, it seems, and no one is immune.

Surely, though, we can except that ravishing, patrician blonde, the one who seems sheathed in ice. You just know that she’ll keep her cool and stay on her feet, no matter how hot and bothered everybody else becomes. But no, goddess though she may be in the eyes of her admirers, Yelena, played by the Oscar-winning actress , is subject to the same brutal pull of mortal gravity as everyone else.

See how she falls. See how they all fall.

Mr. Ascher, a Hungarian director who has seldom worked in English before, has delivered what may be the most profoundly physical, and physically profound, interpretation ever of this 1897 play, which Chekhov disarmingly subtitled “scenes from provincial life.” Working with a cast that dares to spend most of its time onstage somewhere way out on a limb, Mr. Ascher solves the eternal Chekhov conundrum that often brings strong directors to their knees.

Are these bleak portraits of hope-starved lives meant to be farce or tragedy? Mr. Ascher’s version says, as persuasively and organically as any production I know, that the answer is both. Life is a tragedy because it’s so farcical. And like many of the characters onstage you may find yourself making noises that could mean you are laughing or crying. And you realize just how fine a line there is between the responses.

It was part of Chekhov’s genius to elicit this paradox from the environment where we feel both most comfortable, most trapped and most vulnerable: the place we call home. “Uncle Vanya” is an especially apt production for the dead of summer, the season when families hole up together in isolation. Such proximity is known to breed intimacy and irritation, and expose love and hate, in equal measures. Throw an exotic houseguest or two into the equation, the kind who rouses sleeping dogs and says what’s usually unspoken, and you’re at a dangerous tipping point.

That’s where the world of “Uncle Vanya” is poised when it begins. The pompous, gout-ridden professor Serebryakov (John Bell) has taken up residence with his much younger wife, Yelena (Ms. Blanchett), at the country estate overseen by Sonya (Hayley McElhinney), his daughter from an earlier marriage, and Vanya (), his brother-in-law.

A tedium, verging on desolation, infuses this particular corner of provincial life. As designed by Zsolt Khell http://theater.nytimes.com/...2/07/23/theater/reviews/uncle-vanya-with-cate-blanchett-at-city-center.html?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:11:37 AM] Love Loses Its Balance at This Dacha - The New York Times

(set), Nick Schlieper (lighting) and Paul Charlier (sound), this home, which suggests a run-down dacha of the mid-20th century, is saturated in summer somnolence. The air is weighted with the drone of flies and muffled, scratchy music from an old record player or portable radio.

It’s the soggy, paralyzing atmosphere that often comes before a storm. Even talking seems like an effort, never mind actually moving. A festering annoyance seems to possess everyone onstage — including the dashing alcoholic doctor, Astrov (), who’s come to see the ailing professor, and Maria (Sandy Gore), Vanya’s bluestocking mother. Emotional explosions are only a provoking cough, yawn or misfired joke away.

“Uncle Vanya” has been adapted by Andrew Upton (Ms. Blanchett’s husband, and co-artistic director at the Sydney Theater Company) into a gritty, spontaneous-sounding vernacular. But the words, though they’re spoken with conviction by a uniformly brilliant cast that also includes Jacki Weaver as an ancient nanny and Anthony Phelan as a pathetic hanger-on, aren’t the most important elements. (This is fortunate, since the cast isn’t always as audible at City Center as it was when I saw this “Vanya” at the Kennedy Center in Washington a year ago. Some theatergoers may wish for supertitles. )

For while the characters talk a lot — about Chekhovian staples like the corrosive effects of time and jealousy and laziness — they rarely really listen to one another. When Astrov speaks about never being able to love anyone, Sonya, who adores him, doesn’t hear his words. She’s grinning, with a radiance that makes you want to weep, from the memory of a recent moment of companionable physical contact. Surely that clumsy hug offers reason to hope?

Moments of physical contact are almost always blundering here, as if people don’t know the rules for connecting, though you never doubt that connection is what they long for more than anything. An entire complex relationship is established through the ways in which Vanya and Yelena paw at each other in irritation and affection and (in Vanya’s case only) something like love.

And even when two people are unconditionally, magnetically attracted to each other — as Astrov and Yelena are — they don’t know what to do with their bodies. There has seldom been a clumsier, sadder or more fiercely passionate (not to mention acrobatic) kiss than the one shared by Ms. Blanchett and Mr. Weaving in the final scene.

That’s as close to any kind of consummation, of love or hopes or ideals, that “Uncle Vanya” allows. These people find comforting physical repose only when they become children again and seek solace in the lap of old, ever-accepting Marina, the nanny.

Otherwise they’re a jittery lot, at least when they shake off their ennui. They’re forever pacing, dancing, wrestling with the air, burying themselves under blankets, shooing one another away like flies. In this production there’s no question as to what stirs them into restlessness. It’s the presence of Yelena, whose pure physical exquisiteness inspires people to fantasize about a world less squalid.

The irrefutable fact of Ms. Blanchett’s uncommon loveliness has never been better used. I had never realized before how much “Vanya” is about the disruptiveness of sheer beauty. Clad in glacially chic ensembles that bring to mind Hitchcock heroines (Gyorgyi Szakacs is the costume designer), this Yelena suggests a Keatsian object of beauty, sufficient unto itself. Except that she’s human, which means that she’s awkward and ambivalent and falling all over those long legs of hers like a baby giraffe.

http://theater.nytimes.com/...2/07/23/theater/reviews/uncle-vanya-with-cate-blanchett-at-city-center.html?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:11:37 AM] Love Loses Its Balance at This Dacha - The New York Times

This Yelena, by the way, is one of the liveliest participants in the donnybrook that is the play’s climax, in which the weapons of choice include both a pistol and a bouquet of “sad, full” autumn roses. That scene is as rowdy and demented as anything out of a Marx Brothers movie and as unutterably despairing as a choral lament from Sophocles.

Uncle Vanya

By Anton Chekhov, adapted by Andrew Upton; directed by Tamas Ascher; sets by Zsolt Khell; costumes by Gyorgyi Szakacs; lighting by Nick Schlieper; music and sound by Paul Charlier; dramaturge/interpreter, Anna Lengyel. A Sydney Theater Company production, presented by the Lincoln Center Festival, Nigel Redden, director, in association with City Center. At City Center, 131 West 55th Street, ; (212) 721-6500, lincolncenterfestival.org. Through Saturday. Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes.

WITH: John Bell (Serebryakov), Cate Blanchett (Yelena), Sandy Gore (Maria), Hayley McElhinney (Sonya), Anthony Phelan (Telegin), Richard Roxburgh (Vanya), Andrew Tighe (a Laborer), Jacki Weaver (Marina) and Hugo Weaving (Astrov).

http://theater.nytimes.com/...2/07/23/theater/reviews/uncle-vanya-with-cate-blanchett-at-city-center.html?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:11:37 AM] Theater Talkback: A Chorus of Voices - NYTimes.com

JULY 12, 2012, 12:28 PM Theater Talkback: A Chorus of Voices

By BEN BRANTLEY Have you heard from the members of the chorus lately? Sure you have. They're the ones who huddle in the office cafeteria, speculating on how long that arrogant new boss will last. Who sit before giant screens in sports bars lamenting the fall of a once mighty pitcher. Who post comment after comment on the Internet, knowing and fatalistic, about why Tom and Katie were destined to fail as a couple.

They have also been hanging out on amphitheater and proscenium stages for 2000 years or so, speculating on how long that arrogant new king will last, lamenting the fall of a once mighty warrior and commenting ad infinitum about the marital troubles of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, or Jason and Medea. And while you may think of them, in this formal capacity, as Attic anachronisms, choruses are still very much with us in the theater, though they don't always identify themselves as such.

I was made newly aware of the enduring presence of these rhythmic kibitzers last month during three weeks of play-going in London, an experience that encourages patterns to emerge and blur and multiply in your mind. I first became fully conscious of them on this trip in an expected context, a revival of a bonafide Greek tragedy: Sophocles' "Antigone," directed by Polly Findlay at the National Theater.

As is often the case in modern-dress versions of ancient classics, the chorus was doing its best to pretend they were just your everyday characters in a play. Ms. Findlay's production was set in a contemporary war room, and she had divided the choral lines among actors portraying military and office personnel.

Speaking Don Taylor's simplified, de-poeticized new translation, they sounded like those know-it-all buttinskis who can be found in pretty much any workplace. And I couldn't blame the embattled king Creon (Christopher Eccleston) for losing his temper with them as they nattered on about the ways of destiny and of men with swollen egos and hot heads.

This presentation offered an effective means, though, of making the chorus register for latter-day audiences as the chatty (if exceptionally eloquent) Joe Schmos they would have been to Athenian audiences of long ago. (My favorite variation on this approach: Deborah Warner's "Medea," seen on Broadway in 2002, in which the chorus showed up as a group of tabloid-devouring celebrity stalkers.)

After this "Antigone," I started to see choruses everywhere: in the form of the gossiping, cabin-fevered soldiers in John McGrath's "Events While Guarding the Bofors Guns"; in the story-telling South Africans in the charming Peter Brook adaptation of Can Themba's short story "The Suit"; in the fatuously babbling Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, reimagined as student deconstructionists in the "The Rest Is Silence," a highly condensed and fragmented version of "Hamlet."

Choruses, of course, were mostly out of fashion by the Elizabethan age. But there is, famously and troublingly, a character who bears the weighty name of Chorus in "Henry V," which I saw at Shakespeare's Globe Theater. That's the person who begins the play by asking for "a muse of fire" to help http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/theater-talkback-a-chorus-of-voices-2/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:30:09 AM] Theater Talkback: A Chorus of Voices - NYTimes.com

the speaker do justice to the epic tale about to unfold.

Though not singular in Shakespeare (think of the scene-setting prologue for "Romeo and Juliet"), the device is still unusual enough to have modern directors scrambling for a way to justify and contextualize its presence. Most often, in recent years, Chorus is represented as some sort of purple-prose-spewing journalist, perhaps a stern television commentator à la Edward R. Murrow (as in Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film).

Dominic Dromgoole's spirited, even-handed and easily digested production for the Globe strips the Chorus of any semblance of objectivity or omniscience. In this Elizabethan-dress version, the Chorus (played by Brid Brennan) is a good ole gal, a matron in a bonnet who joins the common throng of humanity between her soliloquies. The Chorus becomes one of us, a bewildered face in the crowd doing its best to - hoping desperately to -- accept the ennobling official take on a bloody war but not quite buying it.

The "Henry V" Chorus has a practical reason to be, as well. It provides expository shortcuts as the play's soldiers and politicians travel across nations, making elaborately wrought war and peace. This narrative framework also lends a Homeric quality to the proceedings: the sense of a great tale being unfolded through the ages, reminding us of how gossip, repeated and embroidered upon, becomes the stuff of myth.

That's the function of the chorus - a singing chorus, in this case - in Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler's "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," which has been revived by Jonathan Kent at the Adelphi Theater. Mr. Kent relocated the story from the Victorian age to the Great Depression. And as the ensemble urgently asks us to "attend the tale of Sweeney Todd," its members bring to mind a down-and-out horde of the jobless conjuring up the spirit of Joe Hill. In this context, Sweeney becomes a sort of hard-times hero, out to avenge the working classes.

But the production that for me came closest to capturing what I (presumptuously) imagine to be the original spirit of the classical chorus was set in the West Germany of four decades ago. That was the Old Vic revival of "Democracy," Michael Frayn's great, multilayered portrait from 2003 of the rise and fall of the charismatic politician Willy Brandt.

In "Democracy," though, everyone's the chorus, including the leading characters. In some of the most euphonious dialogue written during the past century, Mr. Frayn's scrapping, endlessly ambivalent spies and statesmen blur the lines between people acting in character and (somewhat) distanced narrators. They chronicle both verifiable chains of events and unverifiable motives and attitudes.

For "Democracy" is ultimately a mystery play, in which the central enigma is human identity itself - a puzzle that only expands and deepens when set upon a world stage. Paul Miller's production at the Old Vic isn't the glittering jewel that the original staging at the National Theater was.

But as in Shakespeare, the language, if spoken clearly and with the proper emphases, casts its own spell. And listening to "Democracy" is like listening to a symphony of voices - internal and external - in which everyone belongs to a universal, uncomprehending chorus, forever pondering the unknowable creatures that we all are.

When you think about it, the choruses of ancient Greek tragedy are startlingly modern in their

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/theater-talkback-a-chorus-of-voices-2/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:30:09 AM] Theater Talkback: A Chorus of Voices - NYTimes.com

philosophizing. A lot of what they say ultimately comes down to: "We can't understand why things happen, or change them after the fact; we can only reflect on the inevitable patterns we see."

They don't propel the action or intervene in moments in crisis; they are like most of us so much of the time, bystanders offering speculative commentary that doesn't do anyone much good. You can imagine Oedipus and his ilk agreeing with the words of one Ralph Rackstraw, a sailor who loved above his station in Gilbert and Sullivan's "H.M.S. Pinafore." Listening to the ensemble of his fellow sailors echoing his own words, he sings, "I know the value of a kindly chorus/But choruses yield little consolation."

You'll notice that "Sweeney Todd" and "Pinafore" aside, I've stayed away from the choruses of musicals and operas, which we're more willing to accept as a theatrical convention. But all sorts of playwrights throughout the ages, as different as Brecht and Thornton Wilder, have adapted choruses to their own latter-day purposes. What are some of your favorite examples?

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/12/theater-talkback-a-chorus-of-voices-2/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:30:09 AM] A Dissolute Brechtian Poet - The New York Times

July 22, 2012 THEATER REVIEW A Dissolute Brechtian Poet

By JASON ZINOMAN

The new theater Jack in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, is wallpapered in aluminum foil. Even the tree underneath a lovely skylight is silver. Watching a noisy, frenetic production of Brecht’s “Baal” inside this space is like being inside a Jiffy Pop popcorn pan.

Only a few blocks away from the new Barclays Center, Jack is a storefront theater with promise. Alec Duffy, the artistic director of the ambitious troupe Hoi Polloi, helps run the space and directed this inaugural show.

Evocatively designed by Mimi Lien, the production makes a more convincing argument for the space than the play.

“Baal,” Brecht’s first play, is the work of a young playwright, a sprawling yet static portrait of a dissolute poet who corrupts everything in his path. It appears to be trying to shock, but almost one century after it was written that’s a difficult task. In 2000 Jim Simpson gave the play a Beat flavor at the Flea Theater. Mr. Duffy aims for a more abstract staging that has the vibe of experimental theater in the 1960s. It is blunt, angry and indulgent.

As Baal, Jason Quarles stumbles forcefully, often half-clothed, around the room where most of the audience stands, nearly tipping people over. As he moves from one sexual conquest to another, his furious physicality is the most alive thing in a production that has trouble gaining momentum. A loud drumming escalates the energy, and sex scenes are staged with scowls. The directorial choices are too on the nose, however, to startle. The cast surrounding this seductive, destructive title character moves through the audience chaotically, making few striking stage vignettes.

The front door of the theater remains open, blurring the lines between the play and the rest of the world. At one point a honking horn interrupted the loud, screeching sound effects. I don’t think it was part of the show, but it felt perfectly in the spirit of it.

http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/theater/reviews/brechts-baal-hoi-polloi-at-jack-in-brooklyn.html?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:19:57 AM] New York Musical Theater Festival Report: 'Baby Case' - NYTimes.com

JULY 18, 2012, 4:47 PM New York Musical Theater Festival Report: ‘Baby Case’

By ANITA GATES The New York Musical Theater Festival, better known as NYMF, has made a few good decisions this year. That includes moving the event to summer, squeezing all the productions into one convenient neighborhood and presenting Michael Ogborn's "Baby Case," directed by Jeremy Dobrish.

Celebrity-centered crimes that flared into media sensations weren't quite so run-of-the-mill in 1932, when the 20-month-old son of the aviator and national hero Charles A. Lindbergh was kidnapped from the family's New Jersey home and found dead two months later.

The kidnapping makes just the kind of dark, unlikely subject that composers working in the spirit of Kander & Ebb like to tackle. This production has rousing songs, big voices, stylish staging and choreography, first-rate lighting and handsome period costumes. And framing it with the radio bulletins of Walter Winchell (Michael Thomas Holmes), the celebrity-gossip king of his day, was a smart idea.

The show's only real problem is a certain amorphousness. It's not clear whether this is a meant to be courtroom drama, media satire, soap opera or something else altogether. And it's not immediately clear whether our sympathies should lie with Lindbergh (Will Reynolds), the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and his wife, Anne (Anika Larsen), or with Bruno Hauptmann (Mr. Reynolds again), who is accused of -- and possibly framed for -- the crime.

"Baby Case" continues through Sunday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, 480 West 42nd Street, (212) 352-3101, nymf.org.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/18/new-york-musical-theater-festival-report-baby-case/?hpw&pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:32:24 AM] New York Musical Theater Festival Report: 'Re-Animator the Musical' - NYTimes.com

JULY 19, 2012, 6:09 PM New York Musical Theater Festival Report: ‘Re-Animator the Musical’

By CATHERINE RAMPELL Move over, Dr. Frankenstein and (Suddenly) Seymour. A new mad scientist is camping up musical theater, and he's determined to steal the spotlight at any cost.

He is Herbert West, a creepy medical student who learns how to bring corpses back to life in "Re- Animator the Musical."

This tuneful adaptation of a 1985 cult horror movie is big on laughs and even bigger on blood. The first four rows of the theater, in fact, are designated as the "splash zone," where audience members are offered ponchos for protection.

And trust me, they need the covering, given the gallons of red corn syrup this wily cast gleefully gushes, spurts, spews and sprays.

The New York Musical Theater Festival production is an import from Los Angeles, and its bona fide B- movie pedigree shows in inventively funny special effects by Tony Doublin, John Naulin, John Buechler, Tom Devlin and Greg McDougall, and in costumes by Joe Kucharski. One particularly ghastly highlight involves a man carrying around his severed head.

That head belongs to the spindly, sonorous Jesse Merlin, who shines as a lecherous medical school professor. He is matched by the brilliant Graham Skipper, who somehow seems to blink no more than two or three times during his 90-minute performance as the crazed and sleepless Herbert West.

Mark Nutter's pert lyrics and spooky music blend seamlessly into a book (by Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon and William J. Norris) that borrows heavily from the original screenplay. And if you ever wanted to see Norm from "Cheers" (George Wendt) do the "Thriller" dance, now is your chance, thanks to sparse but witty choreography by Cynthia Carle. The rapid-fire direction is by Mr. Gordon (who wrote and directed the movie, too).

The production is heading to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe next month. But if Herbert West has anything to say, hopefully it will rise again in New York sometime soon.

"Re-Animator the Musical " runs through July 22 at PTC Performance Space, 555 West 42nd Street; (212) 352-3101, nymf.org.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 20, 2012

An earlier version of this post included the wrong first name for a character in the show. The medical student is named Herbert, not Herman, West.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/.../19/new-york-musical-theater-festival-report-re-animator-the-musical/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:33:26 AM] New York Musical Theater Festival Report: 'How Deep Is the Ocean?' - NYTimes.com

JULY 20, 2012, 7:00 PM New York Musical Theater Festival Report: ‘How Deep Is the Ocean?’

By KEN JAWOROWSKI In "How Deep Is the Ocean?" Rob, a pool cleaner with a troubled marriage living on the New Jersey shore, becomes a hero when his new chemical concoction is found to cleanse the polluted sea. His discovery is soon sabotaged by a rival who covets his fame and his wife, leading to a few standard misunderstandings - and the few standard jokes that come with them - on the way to the eventual happy ending.

While the plot is implausible, that's not an insurmountable problem in musical comedy. But the book (by Pia Cincotti) is likewise uninterested in satire, allegory or anything other than using the story as a slow- moving vehicle to deliver the next eager-to-please moment.

Similarly, the music and lyrics (by Peter Cincotti, a noted crooner and pianist who is Pia's brother) can be catchy, but the variety of tone and subject is sometimes disappointing - the first time Rob sings an ode to chlorine is enough to spark a smile. The 10th or 12th mention of his love for the substance, however, is enough to make you grit your teeth.

Still, even as it passes up juicy chances for smarter humor, this moderately entertaining show, directed by Jeremy Dobrish and Gina Rattan, holds a few surprises. A special guest (best not to reveal it here) helps deliver its sharpest moment, and overall, the cast of 13 sings and acts well. Eric Leviton, as Rob, is a satisfying performer with skilled comic timing, while Aaron Ramey and LaVon Fisher-Wilson are impressive in supporting roles.

"How Deep Is the Ocean?" wraps up as expected, content to have delivered a few chuckles. Like an old pal who does nothing but grin, the show may have you wishing for racier friends.

Through July 27 at the Theater at St. Clement's, 423 West 46th Street, Clinton; (212) 352-3101, nymf.org.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/...7/20/new-york-musical-theater-festival-report-how-deep-is-the-ocean/?pagewanted=print[7/23/2012 9:34:37 AM]

Maybe 'Maybelle' for Broadway - Entertainment News, Legit News, Media - Variety

Posted: Fri., Jul. 20, 2012, 3:56pm PT

Maybe 'Maybelle' for Broadway White to star in musical at Bay Street

By GORDON COX

A new musical about the life of R&B great Mabel Smith, "Big Maybelle: Soul of the Blues," will play a tryout run at Long Island's Bay Street Theater this summer in a production toplined by Lillias White.

Sag Harbor company Bay Street produces the world preem along with Broadway vet Martin Richards ("On the Twentieth Century," "La Cage aux Folles," the original "Chicago," "The Life") and the Gilead Company. Tuner is targeting a Broadway transfer that could materialize as early as this winter, if all goes according to plan.

Paul Levine writes and directs the show, which draws its songlist from familiar blues tunes including "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" and "Candy." In the musical, Smith, who recorded under the name Big Maybelle, tells the aud her life story from the Ohio rehab facility where she died.

At Bay Street, thesps Eric Brown and Kiku Collins will co-star alongside White, who won a Tony for her stint in 1997 tuner "The Life." The four-week engagement begins previews Aug. 7 with an official opening night set for Aug. 11.

No exact plans for future life for the show have yet been locked in.

Contact Gordon Cox at [email protected]

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056878?refcatid=15&printerfriendly=true[7/23/2012 9:38:42 AM] West back at Sheffield - Entertainment News, International News, Media - Variety

Posted: Fri., Jul. 20, 2012, 12:26pm PT

West back at Sheffield Actor to star in 'My Fair Lady' revival

By DAVID BENEDICT

LONDON -- Dominic West ("Appropriate Adult," "The Wire") will play Henry Higgins in a major U.K revival of "My Fair Lady" at the revivified regional house Sheffield Crucible opening in December.

Helmed by a.d. Daniel Evans, who directed West in the 2011 Crucible production of "Othello," the production of Lerner and Loewe's tuner will also star Carly Bawden ("The Umbrellas of Cherbourg") as Eliza. Designed by Paul Wills with lighting by Tim Mitchell and choreography by Alistair David, the production previews Dec. 12 for a seven-week run, with a Dec. 18 opening.

In further legit casting news, Mark Gatiss (BBC/Masterpiece Theater's "Sherlock") will play King Charles I in the world preem of "55 Days," Howard Brenton's drama about the events leading up to the king's execution in 1649. The production runs at London's Hampstead Theater Oct. 18 - Nov. 24.

Also in London's fall season, Pip Carter will play the British poet Edward Thomas and Shaun Dooley play U.S. poet Robert Frost in the world preem of "The Dark Earth and the Light Sky" at the Almeida Theater. Written by Nick Dear (NT's "Frankenstein,") the bio-drama investigates the effects of their friendship on the brink of World War One. Helmed by Richard Eyre ("Notes on a Scandal") and designed Bob Crowley with lighting by Peter Mumford, the production runs Nov. 8- Jan. 12, 2013.

Contact David Benedict at [email protected]

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056861?refcatid=19&printerfriendly=true[7/23/2012 9:37:33 AM] Erica Whyman joins RSC - Entertainment News, Legit News, Media - Variety

Posted: Fri., Jul. 20, 2012, 1:19pm PT

Erica Whyman joins RSC Exec tapped deputy artistic director

By DAVID BENEDICT

Erica Whyman has been appointed as the first deputy artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Appointed by incoming a.d. Gregory Doran, who takes over from Michael Boyd in September, Whyman joins the RSC in January after seven years in the joint post of a.d. and chief exec of Northern Stage. She will lead the revitalization of the Other Place, the RSC's experimental studio space in its Stratford-upon-Avon home. She will also direct productions and play an active role in forging new artistic collaborations.

New Perspectives, another Midlands-based U.K. legit company, is also undergoing regime change. Jack McNamara has been appointed a.d. after Daniel Buckroyd left the company to become a.d. of the Mercury Theater, Colchester.

Contact David Benedict at [email protected]

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056862?refcatid=15&printerfriendly=true[7/23/2012 9:39:46 AM] 'Green Acres' heading to stage - Entertainment News, EXCLUSIVE, Media - Variety

Posted: Sun., Jul. 22, 2012, 12:18pm PT

'Green Acres' heading to stage Broadway-aimed musical under development

By GORDON COX

"Green Acres" is looking to move back to New York, with a new Broadway-targeted musical version of the 1960s TV series in the works from legit and film production company Hemisphere Two and Richard L. Bare, who helmed more than 165 episodes of the show.

Bare said he has penned an initial draft of the book; Richard Chapman ("Simon and Simon"), one of the principals of Hemisphere Two, and E. Jack Kaplan are onboard to rewrite. In Bare's draft, the storyline of the musical picks up as if it were another episode of the series.

No composer, lyricist or director is yet attached to the project.

Hemisphere's Pam Laudenslager -- who has been on the producing team of Rialto outings including "La Cage aux Folles," "The Norman Conquests" and "The 39 Steps" -- negotiated the deal to produce the musical with Bare and Phil Goldfine, who, under their banner Acres of Green, had previously acquired the lit rights to "Green Acres" from the estate of the show's creator, Jay Sommers. (Colleen Lober is also part of Hemisphere Two, along with Laudenslager and Chapman.)

No timeline for the brewing stage production has yet been mapped out.

The TV series "Green Acres" starred Eddie Albert as a man who marries big-city gal Eva Gabor and moves her to his farm, where they contend with their bumpkin neighbors, and ran for six seasons on CBS.

Contact Gordon Cox at [email protected]

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118056898?refcatid=4154&printerfriendly=true[7/23/2012 9:36:32 AM]