Frank Langella to Play 'King Lear' at Brooklyn Academy - Nytimes.Com

Frank Langella to Play 'King Lear' at Brooklyn Academy - NYTimes.com

JUNE 20, 2013, 12:41 PM Frank Langella to Play ‘King Lear’ at Brooklyn Academy

By ALLAN KOZINN Frank Langella will follow in the trans-Atlantic footsteps of Ian McKellen and Derek Jacobi, playing the title role in “King Lear” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in a production imported from Britain.

BAM will present the Chichester Festival Theater’s staging of “Lear” in the Harvey Theater from Jan. 7 to Feb. 9, starring Mr. Langella, a three-time Tony winner. The production, which is directed by Angus Jackson, the company’s associate director, will first run at the Minerva Theater in Chichester from Oct. 31 to Nov. 30.

Mr. McKellen played Lear at BAM in a Royal Shakespeare Company production in 2007; Mr. Jacobi starred in the Donmar Warehouse staging there two years ago.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/...3/06/20/frank-langella-to-play-king-lear-at-brooklyn-academy/?_r=0&pagewanted=print[6/21/2013 10:23:16 AM]

Disabilities and Drama in an Irreverent Mix - The New York Times

June 20, 2013 THEATER REVIEW Disabilities and Drama in an Irreverent Mix

By ANITA GATES

In a waiting room full of actors, a handsome guy recognizes an attractive woman. In Neil LaBute’s mini-drama “Call Back,” Brad (Jonathan Todd Ross) knows he has met Denise (Mary Theresa Archbold) before, but can’t remember where — or her name. It turns out that they shared a lot more than a casual conversation.

“Call Back” is a definite highlight of the Theater Breaking Through Barriers company’s “Still More of Our Parts,” an evening of six very short (about 10 minutes each) premieres about disability. Mr. LaBute’s piece is a real stretch for that category, unless it includes male-pattern emotional handicaps, the author’s specialty. But “Call Back” technically qualifies because some of the actors in the waiting room are in wheelchairs.

The rest of “Still More of Our Parts” deals much more directly with characters who have physical disabilities and fulfills its mission with an appealing combination of irreverence and poignancy. Founded in 1979 as Theater for the Blind, the company casts both able-bodied actors and artists with disabilities in its productions.

Tonya Pinkins, the Tony Award-winning actress (for “Jelly’s Last Jam”), is the celebrity attraction, playing a Hollywood manager in “Supernova in Reseda,” Jerrod Bogard’s inventive work about a terminally ill actor (Lawrence Merritt) who desperately wants to be part of the In Memoriam segment of next year’s Oscars telecast. Ms. Pinkins brings star power and contagious energy to the role; Mr. Bogard contributes a wacky plot twist.

Bekah Brunstetter’s “Forgotten Corners of Your Dark, Dark Place” is a bit of a puzzle. It seems undecided about whether to lampoon feminist sexual self-examination workshops or treat them sympathetically. There are some lovely performances by four actresses in wheelchairs (Christine Bruno, Shannon DeVido, Jamie Petrone and Ann Marie Morelli). Ms. DeVido is a gifted comedian who can get a laugh just by taking a bite of a potato chip while the leader is talking.

Ms. DeVido is also in the evening’s second-strongest offering, “Good Beer,” by Samuel D. Hunter, who wrote last season’s critically acclaimed Off Broadway hit “The Whale.” “Good Beer” is about a couple on a first date. She was honest online about her disability; he was not. It takes a versatile performer to make a comment like “Why don’t we just be a cripple and a handless freak?” both playful and deadly serious.

http://theater.nytimes.com/...er/reviews/neil-labute-and-samuel-d-hunter-offer-plays-about-disability.html?pagewanted=print[6/21/2013 10:24:35 AM] Fourth Grader Disappears; Exotic Quest Ensues - The New York Times

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June 20, 2013 THEATER REVIEW Fourth Grader Disappears; Exotic Quest Ensues

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

“Bureau of Missing Persons,” a new play by Lila Rose Kaplan, is sprinkled with bits of absurdity and magical realism and other charms. But the whimsical frills ultimately do not make up for the underwritten characters, who remain disconnected from one another and ultimately from the audience too.

Angela (Maren Bush), a former schoolteacher, has suffered a mental breakdown after losing one of her fourth graders on a class trip to the zoo.

Unable to leave her home for over a year, she is badgered by her stuffy, uncompassionate husband (the elbow- patched Ryan McCarthy), a professor whose academic work is littered with passive-aggressive references to his frustrated personal life; her caricature of a critical mother (a be-pearled and French-twisted Pamela Shaw), who wants more than anything else for Angela to comb her hair and put on a dress and some lipstick already; and Patrice (the pixielike Lucy DeVito), a mystical interior decorator who likes to read the obituaries and crush autumn leaves with her bare hands.

In dreamlike sequences that exist somewhere between unwitting delusions and deliberate imaginings, and in which the realness of any and all characters is constantly in doubt, Angela bonds somewhat haphazardly with a kindergarten teacher (an ingenuous Neimah Djourabchi) who says his wife is missing. They go on an improbable adventure that takes them to an abandoned cave in Moscow.

The whole play feels a lot like improv actors playing the game “Yes, And” — in which one character states a plot development or premise that is totally outlandish, and the others have no choice but to accept the assertion and build on it.

This plot framework, which can stunt character development, nonetheless works enchantingly well from a production design perspective: every major surface of the set (by Moria Sine Clinton, who also created the costumes) is a giant green chalkboard, and the actors frequently draw on it to create new set pieces — window curtains, a fireplace, a pot of stew, jungle vines. Sometimes the chalked additions are supposed to be real and sometimes not, but usually, as with everything in this disorienting show, they are somewhere in between.

http://theater.nytimes.com/...eater/reviews/bureau-of-missing-persons-a-play-by-lila-rose-kaplan.html?ref=theater&_r=0&pagewanted=print[6/21/2013 11:08:57 AM]