The Morning Line
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THE MORNING LINE DATE: Tuesday, January 3, 2017 FROM: Melissa Cohen, Michelle Farabaugh PAGES: 36, including this page C3 December 26, 2016 ‘Hair’ to Have 50th Anniversary Party at La MaMa By Ryan Burleson “Hair,” the musical that voiced a generation’s antiwar passions, will celebrate its 50th anniversary at La MaMa on Jan. 21 with a night of storytelling and performances by original and revival cast members. Those confirmed from the 1968 cast include Natalie Mosco; Allan Nicholls; the Rev. Marjorie Lipari; and Dale Soules, who now plays Frieda Berlin on “Orange Is the New Black.” They will be joined by, among others, André De Shields, who counts his appearance in a 1971 Chicago production as the official start of his career. The anniversary event will feature personal stories from the creators Galt MacDermot and James Rado, who will be celebrating his 85th birthday. And a demo of the song “Hair,” performed by Mr. Rado, Mr. MacDermot and their collaborator, Gerome Ragni, who died in 1991, will be played publicly for the first time. Attendees will also hear live performances of “Aquarius,” “Donna,” “Frank Mills” and “The Flesh Failures (Let The Sun Shine In),” and they’ll view rarely seen photos from the private collection of the “Hair” producer Michael Butler. Mr. Butler; an original cast member, Walter Michael Harris; and Antwayn Hopper, who performed in the 2009 Broadway revival of the show, will make appearances via video. “Hair” first appeared in October 1967, at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, before migrating to Broadway. The anniversary event, presented as part of La MaMa’s Coffeehouse Chronicles series, will be moderated by Chris Kapp and directed by Michael Gamily, with educational outreach by Arthur Adair. Admission is free with a suggested donation, and advance reservations are required, at lamama.org. C2 December 29, 2016 ‘Hester Street’ to Be Adapted for the Stage By Andrew R. Chow The playwright Sharyn Rothstein is writing a stage adaptation of the 1975 film “Hester Street,” which starred Carol Kane in a breakout Oscar-nominated performance and is the latest in a wave of classic films to move to the stage. “Hester Street” was adapted by Joan Micklin Silver from the 1896 novella “Yekl” by Abraham Cahan, and follows a young Jewish immigrant struggling to assimilate on the Lower East Side. Richard Eder’s review in The New York Times made several references to the film’s play-like quality. “The effect of seeing “Hester Street” is that of seeing a familiar play,” he wrote, also noting that the movie’s street scenes looked “like a stage set.” Ms. Rothstein’s most recent play, “By the Water,” appeared at the Manhattan Theater Club in 2014 to positive reviews. She has a personal connection to the story of “Hester Street.” “My great-grandmother came to America alone as a 16-year-old girl and raised her family just north of Delancey Street,” she said in a statement. “It’s a story as old as our nation and just as relevant today.” The producers Michael Rabinowitz and Ira Deutchman plan to stage readings in 2017 with the goal of moving the project to Broadway. Stage versions of “Dead Poets Society” and “Terms of Endearment” recently ran in New York, and an adaptation of “Dog Day Afternoon” is in the works. December 25, 2016 C1 December 24, 2016 C2 December 27, 2016 2 January 1, 2017 C2 December 29, 2016 5 January 1, 2017 C2 December 23, 2016 Review: ‘Kevin!!!!!,’ a Multimedia Sendup of ‘Home Alone’ By Andy Webster It takes audacity and energy to satirically sabotage a holiday film as revered as the 1990 comedy “Home Alone.” But in “Kevin!!!!!,” a multimedia sendup at the People’s Improvisational Theater, the troupe Recent Cutbacks displays plenty. The players know the terrain: Previous productions from the group have spoofed the “Lord of the Rings” movies and the “Jurassic Park” franchise. “Home Alone” offers a target even more ripe for mockery, and as directed by Kristin McCarthy Parker, the company does a pretty thorough job in one breathless hour. “Kevin!!!!!” employs video, puppets and action figures, as well as actors, to tell its familiar story, about a boy abandoned by his vacationing family and left to defend a suburban home from two klutzy burglars. (Here, Natalie Rich plays Marv, the Daniel Stern role, while Sonia Mena portrays Harry, the Joe Pesci part.) Much of the frenetic action takes place on a small onstage table with video cameras aimed at it. There, cast members, some turned away from the audience, manipulate figurines, homemade puppets and, yes, a nutcracker for scenes projected on a screen. At other times, bigger puppets occupy the larger stage, particularly for Kevin (the Macaulay Culkin role, here Nick Abeel) and the thieves. Providing bite-size musical chestnuts of the season is a talented choir comprising Sarah Godwin, Evan Maltby, Richard Sears and Michelle Vo, with Ms. Godwin especially impressive. The affection here for “Home Alone” is palpable — it helps to know the original — and largely devoid of malice. The show doesn’t really have to go there; the movie’s script (by John Hughes) approaches self-parody. When Kevin brings his mother to heel for having forgotten him (while his father gets off scot-free), “Kevin!!!!!” reveals just how much of a dated artifact “Home Alone” actually is. C2 December 23, 2016 Review: Peering Behind the Whimsically Ghoulish ‘Gorey’ By Elisabeth Vincentelli It’s usually wise to avoid assumptions based on an artist’s work. Actors so convincing as violent psychos go home to minivans and soccer lessons. Gilbert & George’s paintings can be provocatively outré, but they live routine lives in their conservative suits. Not so Edward Gorey, who was almost as eccentric as his ghoulishly humorous drawings, with their mysterious black-clad ladies, long-suffering children and ominous menageries. This admirer of “The Golden Girls” and Balanchine had a predilection for fur coats, Converse sneakers and cats. The offbeat illustrator proves a rich subject for a play, and the writer-director Travis Russ’s “Gorey,” from the Life Jacket Theater Company at the Sheen Center, does his archly kooky world justice. Subtitled “The Secret Lives of Edward Gorey,” the show focuses on the man rather than the artist. Mr. Russ’s decisive idea is to have three actors portray him at various stages of his life: Phil Gillen is Gorey in his 20s, fresh from Harvard; Aidan Sank picks him up in his mid-30s, at peak Oscar Wildean flamboyance; and Andrew Dawson gives us a man in his 70s who’s made peace with his regrets. The three constantly interact with one another, a lovely way to suggest Gorey’s inner questioning and the evolution of his sensibility through the decades. The set, by Mr. Russ and John Narun, is inspired by Gorey’s Cape Cod home, which he bought in 1979 and where he lived until his death, in 2000. It is a nostalgic jumble of portfolios, books, old typewriters and record players. (We hear a few of the pop songs he was crazy about.) Billed as a “fantasy memoir,” the play intermingles flights of fancy and such slightly dramatized Gorey quotations as “I am fortunate in that I have always been terribly undersexed.” This “confirmed bachelor” never had a relationship, and while the two younger avatars sometimes express longings for love, however drolly, Mr. Dawson’s elderly Gorey seems philosophical about a life alone, but not lonely. Gorey, as ever, forged his own path. C6 December 27, 2016 Review: Hey, Eb, 3 Christmas Spirits Would Like to Chill With You By Laura Collins-Hughes Poor old Ebenezer Scrooge, saddled with that sharp and ungainly first name. Even if he weren’t bitterness and ill will incarnate at the start of “A Christmas Carol,” those four unfriendly syllables would serve as a warning to his fellow human beings, and maybe the occasional spirit: Approach with caution. But when the ghost of Jacob Marley pays an evening visit to Scrooge in Blessed Unrest’s “A Christmas Carol,” a Dickens adaptation by Matt Opatrny, this unusually benevolent Marley calls him Eb, as a good pal might. To Fred, Scrooge’s insistently festive nephew, he is Uncle Neezer. And Belle, the squandered love of Scrooge’s life, refers to him as Ebbie. A humanizing warmth flickers through this stripped-down, six-actor “A Christmas Carol,” at the New Ohio Theater, where J. Stephen Brantley is a delightfully sour, unreformed Scrooge, a man who bares his teeth in place of a smile. On Christmas Day, after the ghosts have persuaded him to change his ways, he is endearingly tentative in his efforts to transform. It’s the in-between that gets tricky in this production, which feels a little saggy in this wide-open and bare playing space. Blessed Unrest specializes in physical theater, and a full-company dance number to Lady Gaga’s “Applause” is an energetic high point. But, too often, the action is strangely far away, and there is a deadening effect to the script’s insistence on emphasizing social injustice even more than Dickens does in his original story. Directed and choreographed by Jessica Burr, the show does include some lovely performances. Joshua Wynter brings an ease to both Marley and the merry Mr. Fezziwig, Scrooge’s long-ago boss, while Nathan Richard Wagner gives a gentleness to Bob Cratchit and a teasing flirtatiousness to Mrs. Fezziwig. Many other roles lack that vividness, though, and there is never a sense of a world firmly created. One thing this show succeeds at cleverly, however, is telling a ghost story in a way that won’t frighten any children in the audience.