THE MORNING LINE
DATE: Friday, June 17, 2016
FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh
PAGES: 13, including this page
Boneau/Bryan-Brown will close each Friday at 2:00pm beginning June 17 and continuing through September 2.
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June 17, 2016
‘Wicked,’ the Movie, Coming December 2019 By Michael Cieply LOS ANGELES — Years in the making, a screen version of the Broadway musical “Wicked” has finally been scheduled for release by Universal Pictures, for Dec. 20, 2019.
Stephen Daldry, who will direct, has flirted with the project since at least 2012, and at one point appeared poised to make a version for release this year. Hollywood has long had its eye on the show, which tells the Wizard of Oz story from the viewpoint of its witches.
The writer Winnie Holzman, who is credited with the book for “Wicked,” and its lyricist-composer Stephen Schwartz, are collaborating on a script for the film, of which Marc Platt will be a producer. Mr. Platt and Universal Stage Productions are among the producers of the long-running musical, which had its premiere in San Francisco in 2003.
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June 17, 2016
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June 17, 2016
Review: Pun Like an Egyptian Comic Strip in ‘The Tomb of King Tot’ By Ben Brantley
Confining life to four pen-and-ink panels won’t keep the demons at bay. The three-dimensional world has a willful way of creeping into and subverting the two-dimensional comic strip at the center of “The Tomb of King Tot,” the sweet and spiky new tragicomedy by Olivia Dufault, which opened on Tuesday night at the Wild Project as part of Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks festival. The same invasive process could be said to be the ruling dynamic of this latest offering from the inventive author of “Year of the Rooster,” the 2013 cult hit presented from the perspective of a jittery bird bred for cockfighting. As directed by Portia Krieger, with sets by Carolyn Mraz, “King Tot” the play is often hard to distinguish from the comic strip of the same name, which is penned by an insular and obsessive New Englander named Jane Haley (Annie McNamara). Ms. Dufault’s characters, like those drawn by Jane, at first come across as paper-thin and too precious by half, summoned into existence for the sake of punch lines that usually take the form of seriously lame puns. These seeming stick figures provide an instant, Cap’n-Crunch-flavored nostalgia rush for those who grew up devouring the funny pages along with their cereal every morning and now feed their addiction as grown-ups by watching Adult Swim and “The Simpsons.” Like such animated television fare, “King Tot” exists in a precisely regulated, self-contained universe, with its own laws of physics, geography and anatomy. The five pitch-perfect cast members assembled here often suggest how Homer and Marge, or the fretful souls of a Roz Chast illustration, might function if they were translated into flesh and blood. This is true, even — and especially — of Ms. McNamara’s bendy-bodied, bespectacled Jane, whose expressions and postures exude the effect of deft, single-stroke line drawings of antic attitudes frozen in midgesture. At times, she seems far less fluid than her beloved fictional creations, King Tot (Bianca Crudo), a tantrum-prone 9-year-old ruler of ancient Egypt, and his long-suffering and devoted slave, Horemheb (Nick Choksi). It is these two who open the play, moving among the three comic-striplike windows that form the back of Ms. Mraz’s rendering of Jane’s living room. They have jointed puppet bodies (Tilly Grimes did the costumes) and converse in dialogue that is typically an elaborate, shaggy-sphinx setup for the thudding joke of the final frame. Those jokes are truly terrible. (Example: Tot tells Horemheb he would like a new set of shoes to be made from the bodies of slaves. What would they be called? “Mandals.”) But they are sources of endless delight to Jane, who is first discovered rolling with merriment — in the aisle of the theater – as she admires what she hath wrought.
You don’t have to look far for Jane’s immediate sources of inspiration. The same performers step out of the frame to morph into the other residents of Jane’s home. Ms. Crudo doubles as Jane’s perverse, demanding 16- year-old daughter, Atlanta — who gets her thrills from the toxicity of the permanent markers she uses to adorn her body — while Mr. Choksi rematerializes as Porter, Jane’s too-obliging doormat of a partner. True to her artistic breed, Jane spends more time with her imaginary family than her real one, especially once she receives a letter announcing she is a finalist for the coveted Chuckling Willow, “the single most important award for cartoonists in all of Eastern New England.” It is given by the venerable Lionel Feather (Brad Bellamy), “the laugh master of New Hampshire!,” and puts Jane in direct competition with her devious frenemy, Kissy Candida (Carmen M. Herlihy). So far, so cute, right? Or as Kissy, who drops in on Jane unexpectedly, squeals in pleasure: “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. So much whimsy!” But whimsy, it turns out, comes in black as well as brighter hues. Soon the shadow of darkest tragedy falls over Jane’s world. (It assumes the physical form of spilled ink.) Ms. Mraz, who is great at finding visual equivalents for Jane’s assorted fancies, comes through big time here. Jane responds by digging ever deeper into her work and ignoring the solemn social duties that life has thrust upon her. “The Tomb of King Tot” is no longer the lighthearted strip it once was, though. Its tone becomes increasingly morbid, and imagery from the Egyptian Book of the Dead starts to play a significant role. Animating an artist’s work to mirror her (or his) life is by no means uncommon in theater. (The Tony-winning musical “Fun Home,” adapted from Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, comes to mind.) Ms. Dufault’s variation on the theme, however, is strikingly bold and assured. The sensibility that shapes both her play and Jane’s comic strip are pretty much identical. Even this work’s signal tragic event is drawn with the fey, absurdist details of comic-book ontology. A naked corpse, for instance, is discovered wearing Tweety Bird socks, and a truck at the scene of the crime is festooned with a sticker showing a Celtics mascot urinating on the Statue of Liberty. Such descriptions may cause you to echo, less gleefully, Kissy’s cry about “so much whimsy.” But this production makes a case for whimsy as a filter both for shutting out and eventually coming to terms with an unforgiving world and one’s unforgivable self. All religions that allow people to press on through this old vale of tears are ultimately personal. “King Tot” suggests that packaging such beliefs in a dopey comic strip doesn’t make them any less useful, improbable or profound.
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June 17, 2016
Review: ‘Seen / By Everyone’ Repurposes Your Social Media Words By Laura Collins-Hughes
The writing credit on “Seen / By Everyone,” the new show from Five on a Match at Here, may come as something of a surprise. According to the program, it’s “written by you.” Did you have any idea how productive you were being with your time? Well, O.K., your contribution may depend on whether the creators of the show plucked your words from social media and repurposed them in their script. Conceived by Amir Darvish and Meg MacCary, “Seen / By Everyone” is a found-text collage about our disembodied online lives, with an emphasis on love and mourning. But the show — directed by Kristin Marting and created by Matthew Cohn, Mr. Darvish, Ms. MacCary, Enormvs Muñoz and Jen Taher — too often feels swamped by the surfeit and shallowness of its source material. There are multiple strands of story here, some clearer than others: a band of mourners, a couple (Rolls Andre and Ms. Taher) whose breakup has turned furious, a lost young woman (Alesandra Nahodil), one man (Mr. Darvish) who is forever looking for love, another (a warm and funny Mr. Cohn) who finds it and exults. Seeming like a much-diluted descendant of the plays of Charles Mee, the show aims for a kind of surreality. Karaoke is involved, to fine effect, and striking mirrored masks (by Oana Botez). There is also, of course, the occasional breathtaking display of oblivious narcissism, the kind we seem most capable of when actual human contact is removed from the equation. The production is largely unable, though, to breathe life into snippets of texts written — quickly, sloppily, breezily — in the chill isolation of cyberspace. Put into people’s mouths, the words tend to come across as that much more distant, particularly in live monologues that we see on video screens, hearing the audio in real time, with the images awkwardly following a beat or two behind. (Video is by Ray Sun Ruey-Horng.) The isolation and disconnection of the digital age are part of the point, of course, and the set (by Christopher Heilman) reinforces that feeling, all hard surfaces and wide-open expanse, so no one ever has to get too close. Yet watching the performance can feel like reading a Twitter feed: So many voices, so many words, but rarely a thought of much consequence or meaning. A21
June 17, 2016 Ann Morgan Guilbert, Known for ‘The Dick Van Dyke Show,’ Dies at 87 By The Associated Press Ann Morgan Guilbert, the actress best known for playing the next-door neighbor Millie Helper on“The Dick Van Dyke Show” in the 1960s, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 87. The cause was cancer, her daughter Nora Eckstein said. On “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” one of the most acclaimed comedies in television history, Ms. Guilbert was the perky pal of Laura Petrie, played by Mary Tyler Moore, and the wife of Jerry Helper, a dentist, played by Jerry Paris. In the 1990s she was a regular on the sitcom “The Nanny,” on which she played Fran Drescher’s feisty grandmother, Yetta. She was in Nicole Holofcener’s 2010 movie “Please Give,” a Sundance Film Festival selection, and on the HBO series “Getting On.” Most recently she appeared on the CBS comedy “Life in Pieces.” She had extensive theater credits, including productions of “The Matchmaker,” “Arsenic and Old Lace,” “Waiting for Godot,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “Harvey.” In 2005 she appeared on Broadway in the comedy “A Naked Girl on the Appian Way,” which starred Jill Clayburgh and Richard Thomas. Ms. Guilbert began her career in a musical variety act created by the composer Billy Barnes, which toured throughout California. In 1959, “The Billy Barnes Revue” opened in New York at an Off Broadway theater and then moved to Broadway. One of its fans was the actor, writer and producer Carl Reiner, who remembered Ms. Guilbert when he was assembling the cast for “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Ms. Guilbert was born on Oct. 16, 1928, in Minneapolis. She graduated from Stanford University’s Department of Speech and Drama, where she met the producer and actor George Eckstein. They married and had two daughters, who survive her: the actress Hallie Todd and Ms. Eckstein, a writer, actress and acting teacher. She and Mr. Eckstein divorced in 1966. She later married the actor Guy Raymond, who died in 1997.
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June 17-19, 2016
June 15, 2016
The Broadway Channel Goes Over The Top on Apple TV, Roku, Fire TV
Courtesy of the Broadway Channel
By Gordon Cox
The Broadway Channel — the video content brand affiliated with online ticket seller and news outlet Broadway.com and with producer-presenter Broadway Across America — is expanding its reach to televisions with a new over-the-top channel on Apple TV, Roku and Fire TV.
The OTT channel gives TV audiences on-demand access to Broadway.com videos, including the outlet’s regular lineup of news segments, talk shows (“One on One,” “Show People,” “Side by Side by Susan Blackwell”), fan-question sessions with stage talent (“Ask a Star”) and documentary shorts about actors (“Character Study”) and designers (“Building Broadway”). About 15 to 20 new videos will go up weekly.
The channel isn’t set up to accommodate the ticketing transactions that are central to Broadway.com’s business model, but the OTT content nonetheless serves as marketing for the stage fare on sale via Broadway.com’s website and mobile apps.
It also helps promote shows that will eventually tour to Broadway Across America’s national network of road presenters, which boast about 265,000 season ticket subscribers in total.
The move into the OTT space marks the latest expansion for the Broadway Channel, which already plays in New York hotel rooms and on in-flight airline screens, and recently created a half-hour special, “Broadway.com Presents At the Tonys,” that CBS aired in 27 markets last weekend.
Broadway Channel, Broadway.com and Broadway Across America are all part of the John Gore Organization, the theater corporation that recently rechristened itself following several years operating under the name Key Brand Entertainment.
June 16, 2016
Off Script: 'Daredevil' Star Charlie Cox Plays Six Characters (With Eyesight) in 'Incognito' The actor bounces back from a botched 'Star Wars' audition with the off-Broadway play, foam-rolling and brunch in Brooklyn.
By Ashley Lee
In the off-Broadway play Incognito, Daredevil star Charlie Cox plays six characters, and all of them have their eyesight.
“It’s been really fun to look people in the eye,” Cox, who plays the blind lawyer-turned-superhero in the Netflix series, laughs to The Hollywood Reporter. “I had gone to an audition — one of those things that are super secretive and they don’t tell you, but I’m pretty sure it was for the Han Solo reboot— and halfway through it, the casting director stopped me and said, ‘Why aren’t you looking at me?’ I realized I had gotten into a habit of not making eye contact, because the only thing I had done for two years is play someone who is blind. I never got invited back, probably because they couldn’t figure out why I was acting like a complete idiot.”
After a few days of rehearsing for the Manhattan Theatre Club’s brain-teasing play — penned by Constellations’ Nick Payne, staged by Doug Hughes and running through July 10 at New York City Center
— "I was fine, since I of course use my eyes in my everyday life. The interesting thing now will be if it’s hard to go back to playing blind again.”
Cox, 33, goes Off Script to talk losing his memory onstage, playing an Englishman again and indulging in his new pre-show superstitious.
What drew you to Incognito? I’ve been looking for an opportunity to do a play; I last did one in 2010. It’s such a wild journey — you spend almost the entire time being utterly confused, and then suddenly, it all makes sense. As an actor, I saw it as such a challenge.
What have you given up to play this role? Eating. I’m just not hungry before 7, and by the time I get home, it’s too late to eat, so I just won’t.
What time do you wake up on a show day? For a matinee day, I get up before 9, make breakfast and get on the subway as fast as I can; it takes me 40 minutes to get to the theater from Williamsburg. If I get here ten minutes early, there’s a really good coffee shop across the road called Tisserie.
What’s something special in your dressing room? Someone sent me an Irish keyring, and I thought it was strange. I’m not Irish. But the next day, the keyring that holds my keys broke.
Any pre-show rituals? I share a dressing room with Morgan [Spector], and I had been having knee pangs during the first two weeks of the show. He showed me how to use a foam roller, and though I’m fine now, it’s become a superstition.
You’re onstage the entire show. What goes through your mind when you’re “sitting out” of a scene? It’s really annoying when you need to pee. There were a couple of shows where I sit down after the first two scenes, and I’m like, “Oh shit.” And what’s happening now is, because I know the play so well, I’ve noticed I’ve started mouthing their lines. I’ve gotta stop doing that.
What do you do on your day off? My one rule is to not go into Manhattan. I really don’t want to take the subway on my day off, but I can totally meet up for brunch if it’s in Brooklyn.
What’s your toughest scene? I find Henry, who is losing his memory, so endearing. When he has to ‘reset’ — suddenly he’s not there, and he acts like he’s seeing the woman he loves for the first time in a long time — I want those moments to be truthful. He’s based on the real Patient H.M. and the English pianist Clive Wearing who would greet his wife like he hadn’t seen her in twenty years, and she had to go along with it because it was the best way to not confuse him even more. Cumulatively, we get the sense of how much this man loves his wife, which makes his story quite heartbreaking. And it’s nice to play an Englishman again; I’ve been playing an American for the last two years. I get a lot of his speech patterns and mannerisms for free. A16
June 17-19, 2016