'True Blood' Star Will Play Stanley in 'Streetcar' - NYTimes.com JUNE 14, 2013, 1:16 PM ‘True Blood’ Star Will Play Stanley in ‘Streetcar’ By ALLAN KOZINN Joe Manganiello, whose buff physique has been amply displayed as a werewolf on HBO’s “True Blood” and as a stripper in the film “Magic Mike,” will wear (and take off?) the most famous T-shirt in American theater when he plays Stanley Kowalski in Yale Repertory Theater’s production of “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Portraying Blanche DuBois will be René Augesen, who has appeared at the Public and Lincoln Center Theaters. Mark Rucker is directing the production, which opens Yale Rep’s season on Sept. 20 and is scheduled to run through Oct. 12. The season, which had already been announced, also includes “These Paper Bullets,” an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing,” with music by Billie Joe Armstrong of the band Green Day and plays by Caryl Churchill, Dario Fo, Marcus Gardley and Meg Miroshnik. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/.../06/14/true-blood-star-will-play-stanley-in-streetcar/?ref=allankozinn&pagewanted=print[6/17/2013 11:03:39 AM] Of Shakespeare and Superheroes - The New York Times June 13, 2013 THEATER REVIEW Of Shakespeare and Superheroes By BEN BRANTLEY There’s enough plot in Eric Rosen and Matt Sax’s “Venice,” the action-flooded new musical at the Public Theater, to fill a whole year in a Marvel comics series. Though it borrows some of its story from Shakespeare’s “Othello” and much of its tone from apocalyptic movie blockbusters like “The Dark Knight Rises,” this tale of a once-and-future civil war still seems to translate into two-dimensional panels as you watch it. You can imagine thought bubbles rising from the characters’ heads, as they brood in ways idealistic and dastardly in a devastated city of tomorrow still steeped in a suffocating past. This is true even when they’re wailing like Bruno Mars or rapping like Nicki Minaj. They also often speak in urgent, public-bulletin-style declarations that help fill us in on recent events, like: “Willow Turner is missing ... We have reason to believe she is headed for the city.” The news is most entertaining when it’s broadcast by a serious joker identified as Clown MC, who delivers the dish rap-style in “Venice,” which was previously staged in Kansas City and Los Angeles and opened on Thursday night as part of the Public’s valuable Lab series. First seen with a laptop composing this show’s opening lines (which are projected on the walls around him), Clown MC would also seem to be the guy pulling the strings in the story. This is fitting, since he is played by Mr. Sax, who wrote the show’s score and, with Mr. Rosen, its lyrics. (Mr. Rosen, the show’s director, did the book.) A man of improbably elastic face and form, Mr. Sax, who in 2008 starred in the one-man show “Clay” (created with Mr. Rosen), is an original voice and presence, a rapper from the suburbs who regularly morphs from self- conscious square to wriggling, blissed-out Slinky. You can feel the joy he takes in summoning the characters into being as “Venice” begins, assessing the actors with sly and shy glances as they appear onstage. When he shows up toward the end of the first act as the host of a spectacularly doomed wedding party, he’s so electrified that you expect him to short-circuit. He brings to mind a kid who has created an elaborate fantasy universe out of objects in his bedroom, and has come to believe this world is a hundred times more real, not to mention exciting, than the daily routine at home and school. Unfortunately, the creatures that spring from this teeming imagination are, to outsiders, about as lifelike as toy soldiers. Though the cast includes a bevy of attractive and seasoned young performers — including Jennifer Damiano (“Next to Normal,” “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark”) and Leslie Odom Jr. (late of “Smash") — their skills don’t always mesh with Mr. Sax’s sensibility. Chanting in propulsive rhyme, for instance, comes naturally to very few of them. They are also burdened with an unwieldy tale to tell, unassisted by the special effects that Hollywood can be relied on to provide as plot-hole-concealing camouflage. “Venice” is both the show’s title city — a town shattered by terrorism 20 years earlier and now controlled by a military-industrial complex — and the title http://theater.nytimes.com/...er/reviews/venice-by-eric-rosen-and-matt-sax-teems-with-action.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print[6/17/2013 11:02:37 AM] Of Shakespeare and Superheroes - The New York Times character, a clean-cut Che Guevara type portrayed by a subdued Haaz Sleiman. Venice Monroe is a child of rape, born to a freedom-fighting mother (who appears as a sorrowful but inspiring ghost, played by the charismatic Uzo Aduba) who would surely have won the Nobel Peace Prize if it existed in this unspecified future. She, like most of her generation, was wiped out in the terrorist attack. (No, I don’t know who the terrorists were. Will you let me get on with this, please?) The survivors include the lovely Willow Turner (Ms. Damiano), the daughter of Venice’s dead president, who has grown up away from the city in the Safe Zone and is betrothed to Theodore Westbrook (Jonathan-David), the inheritor of the aforementioned military-industrial complex. But she really loves Venice (the man), whom she remembers from their shared childhood, and intends to marry him in a ceremony that would reunite a divided nation (or city-state, or whatever). Not everybody wants this to happen, though, including Venice the man’s half-brother, Markos Monroe (Mr. Odom), a conniving military malcontent who is married to a love-starved woman named Emilia (Victoria Platt). Though Markos occasionally erupts into Iago-like utterances that suggest that he, too, is a creature of motiveless evil, we know why he’s bad. Mom liked Venice (the boy) best, and it still rankles. The cast also includes Claybourne Elder as Michael Victor, the straight-arrow aide and friend to Venice (the man and the city), whose story arc looks as if it might parallel that of Cassio in “Othello,” until ... well, it’s deflected by the arrival of a seductive pop diva named Hailey Daisy, zealously played by Angela Polk, who doesn’t really have much reason to be here, except that she’s the only performer who matches Mr. Sax in verve. I was very sorry when she walked into that bomb, or gunfire, or whatever it was. The production has been designed with a “Mad Max”-meets- “Max Headroom” sensibility by a formidable team that includes Beowulf Boritt (set), Clint Ramos (costumes), Jason Lyons (lighting) and Jason H. Thompson (projections). The music, overseen by Curtis Moore and played by an onstage band, isn’t very different from what you’d hear on most mainstream radio stations. Chase Brock’s funky, “Riverdance”-style choreography is kind of fun, especially as executed by Mr. Sax. Though Mr. Odom doesn’t have the strength of malice that a first-rate villain requires, he makes sweetly insinuating music in his falsetto range, and has one of the show’s best songs, the revenge-survival anthem “Last Man.” Ms. Damiano’s clarion voice is always a pleasure to listen to, though her Willow, partly inspired by Shakespeare’s Desdemona, is otherwise short on defining characteristics. Still, what’s a leading lady to do when she has to sing lines like “I’m still, the calm ahead of the storm/I feel the dark ahead of the dawn”? At such moments we need Mr. Sax’s Clown MC, who is missing in action for far too much of the second act, to swoop in and rescue us from banality. It’s remarkable how many clichés you’re willing to forgive when they’re tumbled together in a nonstop rap rant, delivered by a performer like Mr. Sax, who gets high on his own delirious rhymes. Venice Book by Eric Rosen; music by Matt Sax; lyrics by Mr. Sax and Mr. Rosen; additional music by Curtis Moore; choreography by Chase Brock; directed by Mr. Rosen; sets by Beowulf Boritt; costumes by Clint Ramos; lighting by Jason Lyons; sound by Acme Sound Partners; projections by Jason H. Thompson; music supervisor, orchestrator and vocal arranger, Mr. Moore; dramaturge, Doug Wright; music director, Jim Abbott; music http://theater.nytimes.com/...er/reviews/venice-by-eric-rosen-and-matt-sax-teems-with-action.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print[6/17/2013 11:02:37 AM] Of Shakespeare and Superheroes - The New York Times production by Mr. Sax, Mr. Moore and Joshua Horvath; production stage manager, Kelly Glasow; associate artistic director, Mandy Hackett; associate producer, Maria Goyanes; general manager, Steven Showalter; production executive, Ruth E. Sternberg. A PublicLab production, presented by the Public Theater, Oskar Eustis, artistic director; Patrick Willingham, executive director, by special arrangement with Kansas City Repertory Theater and Center Theater Group. At the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village, (212) 967-7555, publictheater.org. Through June 30. Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes. WITH: Uzo Aduba (Anna Monroe), Jennifer Damiano (Willow Turner), Claybourne Elder (Michael Victor), Jonathan-David (Theodore Westbrook), Leslie Odom Jr. (Markos Monroe), Victoria Platt (Emilia Monroe), Angela Polk (Hailey Daisy), Matt Sax (Clown MC), Haaz Sleiman (Venice Monroe) and Emilee Dupré, Semhar Ghebremichael, Devin L.