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Sondheim's 'Marry Me a Little' Returning to New York - NYTimes.com AUGUST 2, 2012, 3:09 PM Sondheim’s ‘Marry Me a Little’ Returning to New York By LARRY ROHTER "Marry Me a Little," a Stephen Sondheim musical that hasn't been performed in New York in 25 years, will begin the Keen Company's 2012-2013 season next month. The Off Broadway production, with previews beginning at the Clurman Theater Sept. 11 and an opening night set for Oct. 2, includes songs that, producers say, have never been performed on a New York stage before, most notably "Rainbows," from an as yet unmade film version of "Into the Woods." Last staged in New York in 1987 in a brief revival by the York Theater Company and seen more recently in regional theaters, "Marry Me a Little" is the story of two lonely people yearning for love, who happen to be residents of the same Brooklyn apartment building and unaware of each other. Conceived by Craig Lucas and Norman Rene, it is a revue without dialogue and draws on songs that were cut from other Sondheim works, among them "Follies," "Company" and "A Little Night Music." "Marry Me a Little" will be directed by Keen's artistic director, Jonathan Silverstein, who will also be overseeing the second production in the company's season, a revival of A.R. Gurney's drama "The Old Boy," from 1991. That production is scheduled to begin performances in February 2013. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/sondheims-marry-me-a-little-returning-to-new-york/?pagewanted=print[8/3/2012 9:46:06 AM] Hoffman to Direct in Coming LAByrinth Theater Season - NYTimes.com AUGUST 1, 2012, 4:29 PM Hoffman to Direct in Coming LAByrinth Theater Season By LARRY ROHTER The return of the Academy Award winner Philip Seymour Hoffman to the director's chair is one of the highlights of the 2012-2013 season of the LAByrinth Theater Company, announced Wednesday. Mr. Hoffman, who won the Oscar for best actor for his performance in "Capote," will direct "A Family for All Occasions," a new comedy by Bob Glaudini, in the spring of 2013 for LAByrinth, with which he has been associated since the mid 1990s. Also on the schedule is a new play by Stephen Adly Guirgis, one of LAByrinth's artistic co-directors, scheduled for the summer of 2013. Mr. Guirgis's previous work includes "The ____________ With the Hat," nominated for several Tony Awards, and "The Last Days of Judas Iscariot." LAByrinth's season begins with another new play, "Radiance," written by Cusi Cram and directed by Suzanne Agins. All three productions will be performed at the Bank Street Theater. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/01/hoffman-to-direct-in-coming-labryinth-theater-season/?pagewanted=print[8/3/2012 9:46:48 AM] Spitzer's Parents Give $4 Million to Public Theater - NYTimes.com AUGUST 2, 2012, 2:13 PM Spitzer’s Parents Give $4 Million to Public Theater By CAROL VOGEL The Bernard and Anne Spitzer Charitable Trust, founded by the parents of the former New York governor Eliot Spitzer, have given $4 million to the Public Theater. The money will go toward the theater's free Shakespeare in the Park productions as well its capital campaign to revitalize its downtown home at Astor Place, a $40 million renovation of the building that houses five theaters and Joe's Pub and is nearing completion. The gift, which was announced on Wednesday night by the theater's executive director, Patrick Willingham, is the Spitzers' first donation to the theater. Over the years their trust has supported a variety of projects including the Bernard and Anne Spitzer School of Architecture at City College, the Hall of Human Origins at the American Museum of Natural History and a stem-cell research project at Columbia University. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/02/spitzers-parents-give-4-million-to-public-theater/?pagewanted=print[8/3/2012 9:47:33 AM] Stubbing Out a Habit to Make Room for a New One - The New York Times August 2, 2012 THEATER REVIEW Stubbing Out a Habit to Make Room for a New One By CATHERINE RAMPELL “The Last Smoker in America” has the spark of a smokin’-hot new musical, but a soggy book keeps it from ever fully igniting. In a world where smoking has been outlawed, Pam (the euphonious Farah Alvin) struggles to quit puffing. Her perky, sanctimonious neighbor Phyllis (the vocally lithe Natalie Venetia Belcon) is determined to keep Pam and Pam’s husband, Ernie (a hangdog John Bolton), on the straight and narrow — or ship them off to smokers’ prison. But while smoking has been fetishized and criminalized, other vices go unchecked. Each of the characters has displaced a smoking-related neurosis with another self- or socially destructive addiction, like energy drinks, Bible thumping, or in one particularly inspired touch, Riverdancing. Peter Melnick’s pop-rock score is terrific, with multiple catchy melodies that will stick in your head like peanut butter. Bill Russell’s lyrics have their moments too, particularly in the deliciously tasteless songs “If It Feels This Good” and “I Wanna Call You — .” The script — also by Mr. Russell, Tony-nominated for his book and lyrics to “Side Show” — is the critically weak link. The plot is piecemeal, composed of disjointed vignettes about different characters’ vices and superfluous dream sequences. Some of the core comedic premises passed their expiration date a decade or so ago, including an extended joke in which the family’s (white, suburban, middle-class) teenage son tries to convince everyone that he’s a black man from the ghetto. Characters’ actions don’t always make sense, and neither does whatever moral the show seems so desperately to be preaching. Many of the book’s flaws have been papered over with what appears to be suitcases of cash thrown at this production. Fabulous costumes (by Michael McDonald) spring up every few minutes. But bling, exploding robots, a colonial marching band and assorted prop gags can plug only so many plot holes. The actors are uniformly strong, and certainly sell the show with every break dancing, melismatic, rubber- faced ounce of talent they have. Their hyperactivity is largely a credit to Andy Sandberg, the show’s director and producer, who here employs smoke and mirrors, quite literally, to great effect. http://theater.nytimes.com/...ews/the-last-smoker-in-america-at-westside-theater-upstairs.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[8/3/2012 9:51:06 AM] Climbing in the Ring With Himself - The New York Times August 2, 2012 THEATER REVIEW Climbing in the Ring With Himself By NEIL GENZLINGER Perhaps you are among the millions of Americans who have muttered, “If I hear one more aging celebrity trying to make a buck by spinning his youthful debaucheries and misdeeds into a redemption story, I’m going to bust him in the nose.” If so, you might want to stay away from the Longacre Theater. The guy doing just such a spin job on the stage there could punch you back in a way that your face would not soon forget. He’s Mike Tyson, the former heavyweight boxing champion, and his one-man show, “Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth,” which opened Thursday for a run through Aug. 12, is among the odder spectacles Broadway has seen in a while. Mr. Tyson, 45, is doing little more than relating his well-publicized life story, and, under Spike Lee’s direction, he’s doing so with a clumsiness startling to see on a Broadway stage (and at a ticket price that tops out at $199). Yet that incongruous, almost childlike Tyson charm pokes through occasionally and makes you momentarily forget how ham-handed and manipulative the show is. Sure, we should save our accolades for the many people who have transcended difficult beginnings without abusing drugs, racking up a rape conviction and biting off a piece of another guy’s ear. But by the end of “Undisputed Truth” you may at least be willing to grant that it would be swell if Mr. Tyson has finally found a nondestructive way to exist in the world. The show, written by Mr. Tyson’s wife, Kiki Tyson, is mostly aimed at Mr. Tyson’s fans, alluding to rather than detailing the signature events in his life in a way calculated to draw whoops of support from the audience (which on Tuesday night obliged enthusiastically). But it’s a lazily structured biographical tour even for that audience. Mr. Lee, who attached himself to the show after a version of it appeared in Las Vegas in April, has not brought to it the dramatic ebb and flow of his best movies. No one point is particularly higher or lower than any other, and some personal milestones, like Mr. Tyson’s initial winning of a championship in 1986, are skipped entirely. There are overly long stretches in which Mr. Tyson trashes Robin Givens, his former wife; Mitch Green, a boxer with whom Mr. Tyson had an out-of-the-ring altercation in 1988; and the boxing promoter Don King. There is a strident denial that he raped a Miss Black America contestant in 1991, a crime for which he served three years in prison. And there are awkward efforts to wring sympathy out of the deaths of three people who Mr. Tyson tells us very little about: his mother, his sister and one of his children. Mr. Lee does nothing to help Mr. Tyson set up these should-be-poignant moments; they materialize without warning in the midst of the otherwise jaunty, lighthearted, profane narrative, and the audience is supposed to adopt instant somberness.

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