In This Play Festival, There Are No Second Acts - the New York Times

THE MORNING LINE

DATE: Tuesday, June 4, 2013

FROM: Michael Strassheim, Emily Meagher, Michelle Farabaugh

PAGES: 21, including this page

Sting to Release a New Album in September - NYTimes.com

JUNE 4, 2013, 12:01 AM Sting to Release a New Album in September

By JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR. Sting will release an album of new songs next fall, his first full-length LP of original material since 2003’s “Sacred Love,” his publicist said.

The album, “The Last Ship,” grew out of the songwriting Sting has been doing for a musical of the same name, which the producers hope will run on Broadway in 2014. That play is set in a shipyard in Wallsend, England, near where Sting, born Gordon Sumner, spent his youth.

“The Last Ship” will contain several songs used in the musical, as well as a few others Sting wrote for the play but decided not to include. It will be released on Sept. 24 by a consortium of three labels — Cherrytree, Interscope and A & M Records.

Sting, 61, has been working on the musical for nearly three years, collaborating with the writers John Logan (“Red,” “Skyfall”) and Brian Yorkey (“Next to Normal”). It is a homecoming story set against the backdrop of the decline of the shipbuilding industry in Newcastle during the 1980s. The show will be directed by Joe Mantello, the actor and director best known for “Wicked” and “Other Desert Cities.” It had a closed-door workshop and presentation in May for theater producers and other potential investors.

One of the best rock songwriters of his generation, Sting has a string of 17 Grammy Awards to his credit for songs like “Every Breath You Take,” “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and “Brand New Day.” But in recent years he has been in a prolonged writing slump. Since releasing “Sacred Love,” he has released greatest-hits compilations and a few unusual recording projects: an album of covers of a Renaissance lute master in 2006, a holiday album in 2009 with a few originals and a symphonic album in 2010 with orchestral arrangements of his previous work.

The songs on “The Last Ship” were written to advance the play’s plot, and so they hew to story-telling needs. The title song is a waltz-time folk tune, heavy with Christian imagery and told in a Northern English dialect. It freights the launching of the last ship from the yard with spiritual significance. Another song, “And Yet,” is a jazzy funk number, sung from the point of view of a sailor arriving in his home port and wondering about a woman he left behind. “Dead Man’s Boots,” meanwhile, is a tense dialogue between a father who works in the shipyard and a son who wants to do something else with his life.

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/04/sting-to-release-a-new-album-in-september/?pagewanted=print[6/4/2013 10:11:47 AM]

In This Play Festival, There Are No Second Acts - The New York Times

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June 3, 2013 THEATER REVIEW In This Play Festival, There Are No Second Acts

By NEIL GENZLINGER

Ensemble Studio Theater’s annual one-act-play marathon is always entertaining and rich in solid performances, but each of the bills — Series A, B and C — often has one play that stands out. For Series B this year it’s “A Sunrise in Times Square,” by Sharr White (“The Other Place,” on Broadway). The play may be no better written than others on the program, but the marvelous performances by Julie Fitzpatrick and Joseph Lyle Taylor carry it to another level.

Ms. Fitzpatrick, an underappreciated gem of an actress who knows how to give depth to quirky characters, is the skittish Madeline, who lives nervously in a Times Square apartment and seems afraid of just about everything that defines New York. Mr. Taylor plays a fire safety inspector who volunteers to look over her apartment to set her mind at ease. Both characters are delightfully awkward, and watching them find and occasionally grope their way to a mutually supportive moment is achingly enjoyable.

But “Sunrise” is hardly the only reward here. “The Favor,” by Leslie Ayvazian, is another fine two-hander built on awkwardness. Ralph (Grant Shaud) is reluctant to carry out the odd request made of him by his wife, Ellen (Janet Zarish): She wants him to go into the next room and give her dying mother a kiss. And not just a peck on the cheek.

“It has to have something to it,” she tells him, enough to make her mother think the kisser is someone from her distant past.

“Something Like Loneliness,” by Ryan Dowler, is the most inventive piece of writing on display. Upstairs- downstairs neighbors (Jane Pfitsch and Chris Wight) in an apartment building meet when he comes by, asking to acquire the sound of her orgasms, which he can hear through the thin ceiling. In Mr. Dowler’s world, sounds are captured in food storage containers, and with them, fragments of past relationships. The two proceed to engage in the oddest Tupperware party ever, with the sounds they barter revealing hopes and disappointments.

“Daddy Took My Debt Away,” by Bekah Brunstetter, the opener, finds humor and pathos in the world of maxed-out credit cards. The piece is a little thin but has some wit to it, and the three actors, Emma Galvin, David Gelles and Jonathan Randell Silver, give it zest.

“Waking Up,” by Cori Thomas, presents cancer stories from two very different women, one American (Amy Staats) and one African (Lynnette R. Freeman). A lot of buttons are pushed here, but the performances are heartfelt.

http://theater.nytimes.com/...-act-festival.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1370355028-WKwkKF885HMpyDyVOJdLnQ&pagewanted=print[6/4/2013 10:10:58 AM] In This Play Festival, There Are No Second Acts - The New York Times

“Love Song of an Albanian Sous Chef,” by Robert Askins, which concludes the program, is sloppy and silly and features talking food. By this point, though, you’ll already feel well filled.

http://theater.nytimes.com/...-act-festival.html?_r=0&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1370355028-WKwkKF885HMpyDyVOJdLnQ&pagewanted=print[6/4/2013 10:10:58 AM]