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The New York Sun 08/21/2006 09:58 PM

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NEWS FASO SEES VACUUM IN LEADERSHIP OF New York Sun Blogs Home It Shines For All National STATE REPUBLICANS Two-Day Vehicle Ban in Foreign By JACOB GERSHMAN Baghdad The Republican candidate for governor of New York, John Faso, said yesterday that the state August 18, 2006 03:52 PM Editorial Pages Republican Party is suffering from a leadership void and is doing... Out and About Blog New York Fund-raising for Israel Business August 21, 2006 06:02 PM Sports Sandwich Success Story New York Sun Forums Obituaries Starts With ‘Lenny' Chu By DAVID LOMBINO Have something to say? Weather The ranks of sandwich royalty Join The New York Sun Past Editorials started with the Earl of... Forum. Click Here It Shines for All RSS Columbia-Educated FEATURES Doctor Will Argue He Had Arts & Letters To Help Al Qaeda Entertainment By JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN On The Town The Columbia University- educated doctor charged with... Out & About Food & Drink General Ya'alon To Photo Gallery Rachel Papo The Mark Morris Dance Group performs a dress rehearsal for Return Home Amid Style ‘Mozart Dances’ at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival on Speculation Knickerbocker Wednesday. Set to three works for piano, it takes place in front of By ELI LAKE Calendar backdrops painted by Howard Hodgkin. Joy Goodwin reviews the TEL AVIV, Israel — With Prime Real Estate show’s world premiere. Read more... Minister Olmert's government... Careers Crosswords Editorials Writer Profiles Hillary and the Park Travel Senator Clinton stepped into a Age on Stage Brooklyn neighborhood fight... CLASSIFIEDS Theater Careers BY DANA GORDON The Andrew Young Affair At age 81, Alvin Epstein is an actor from Online Extras Real Estate The news that the civil rights whom one can reliably expect great Automotive leader Andrew Young had... things. Case in point: his performance Notices earlier this summer in the Actors' Opinion Merchandise Shakespeare Project's production of "King Services Lear" at La MaMa. What Mr. Epstein brought to the stage was Five Years On BY MARK STEYN Pets a... One way to measure how the The Lunch Profile Financial By PRANAY GUPTE world has changed in these NY Sun Jobs ‘Flute' Wins The Heart Giving youths a boost: last... Yellow Pages BY JAY NORDLINGER "My thing is developing the young Sephardim of View Last summer, the Salzburg Festival featured Graham Vick's Display Ads production of "The Magic Flute," and a strange one it was. Targeting Air Traffic today," Nina Avidar BY AMNON RUBINSTEIN Weiner says. Place A You've heard of Alaska's "bridge to nowhere"? This production Read more... Classified had a staircase to nowhere, and an old-folks home, and many The plot failed: cooperation How To other curious... between the security services... Advertise Morris and Mozart, Together at Last China Says ‘Shut Up' BY KIN-MING LIU Dance Defense Secretary Rumsfeld can BY JOY GOODWIN now stop pretending he... For Mark Morris, a choreographer fiercely loyal to his music, the choice of score is momentous. So Mr. Morris's announcement The Big Apple's Most New York Active Thoroughfare that "Mozart Dances," his first evening-length work for his own By MICHAEL STOLER company in years, would be set to three back-to-back Mozart Egg Rolls, A Shady Spot, Just west of the heart of piano... And a Snorer Times Square is "an EMT Diary avenue of commerce More Arts+... BY EUGENIA KLOPSIS that rivals all north-south Bronson and I are deciding what thoroughfares in the Big Sports Apple"... to eat on one of our rare... Read more... After an Easy Weekend, U.S. Prepares for First Real Test Record Numbers of Basketball Scaffolds Spur Cottage BY JOHN HOLLINGER Industry in Corporate So far, so good. After opening the World Advertising Championships with two convincing BY RUSSELL BERMAN victories this weekend, the U.S. Record high numbers of Photo Gallery basketball team has established itself as scaffolds across the city may be http://www.nysun.com/ Page 1 of 2 Age on Stage - August 21, 2006 - The New York Sun 08/21/2006 09:58 PM

Search our Archives keywords... August 21, 2006 Edition > Section: Arts and Letters NEWS New York Sun Blogs Home Printer-friendly version Email this article It Shines For All National Have your say in the NY Sun's interactive Arts Forum. Two-Day Vehicle Ban in Foreign Baghdad August 18, 2006 03:52 PM Editorial Pages Age on Stage Out and About Blog New York Theater Fund-raising for Israel Business August 21, 2006 06:02 PM Sports By DANA GORDON New York Sun Forums Obituaries August 21, 2006 Have something to say? Weather At age 81, Alvin Epstein is an actor from A D V E R T I S E M E N T Join The New York Sun Past Editorials Forum. Click Here whom one can reliably expect great It Shines for All things. Case in point: his performance RSS earlier this summer in the Actors' FEATURES Shakespeare Project's production of Arts & Letters "King Lear" at La MaMa. What Mr. Online Extras Entertainment Epstein brought to the stage was a On The Town sensibility — culled from a 60-year Out & About career in the theater — that gave him Food & Drink freedom to create what was essentially Photo Gallery a new King Lear. It was truly avant- Style garde Shakespeare, and it was true to The Lunch Profile Shakespeare. Knickerbocker By PRANAY GUPTE Giving youths a boost: Calendar "The opportunity itself to do King Lear is "My thing is developing Real Estate special," Mr. Epstein said. "Aside from the young Sephardim of Careers Hamlet, and maybe even more so than today," Nina Avidar Crosswords Hamlet, the biggest hurdle that an actor Weiner says. Read more... Writer Profiles can put up in front of himself is to play Travel the king. An old saw about Lear is that A D V E R T I S E M E N T to play him you have to be old enough CLASSIFIEDS to understand him, and by that time Careers you're too old to do it.You haven't the physical stamina." Real Estate Automotive Such thinking, however, was thoroughly The Big Apple's Most Notices disproved at La MaMa. Mr. Epstein Active Thoroughfare Merchandise By MICHAEL STOLER created the feeling that he did not Just west of the heart of Services embody Lear, but he went beyond. In a Times Square is "an Pets way, he disembodied Lear. Lear as avenue of commerce Financial Epstein as Lear. that rivals all north-south NY Sun Jobs thoroughfares in the Big Apple"... Yellow Pages A performance of this caliber doesn't Read more... View come along often.Which makes it worth Display Ads asking: What are the advantages of age Place A onstage? What does an octogenarian Classified bring to the stage that a matinee idol How To cannot? In part, the answer is easy: Advertise Experience. Cast in the premiers of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in 1956 and "Endgame" 1958, Mr. Epstein has, simply put, been around. He served as the artistic director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis. Between the late 1960s and 2004, he acted, Photo Gallery directed, and taught at the Yale Repertory Theatre, and then at the American Repertory With A.L. Gordon Theatre at Harvard, in addition to creating roles on Broadway and off. Was your photo taken at the San Francisco Ballet at Lincoln Center? But how did that experience manifest itself in Mr. Epstein's Lear? What understandings did View Photos... he draw on to yield such a rich, textured treatment of this 400-year-old play? The answers are not to be found in Cliffs Notes.

For many years, Mr. Epstein did not care much for "King Lear." "The play has become like the hull of a very old ship covered with barnacles," he said. "You don't see the hull anymore — only the barnacles: accumulated, predigested ideas, among them a star turn for a big ego and a bellowing voice. In Shakespeare's time it was a brand new play. No traditions had grown around it yet." An Open Letter to Continued Günter Grass By DANIEL JOHNSON 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next » "You have admitted after 60 years, that you belonged to the Waffen http://www.nysun.com/article/38267 Page 1 of 2 Age on Stage - August 21, 2006 - The New York Sun 08/21/2006 09:59 PM

Search our Archives keywords... August 21, 2006 Edition > Section: Arts and Letters NEWS New York Sun Blogs Home Printer-friendly version Email this article It Shines For All National Have your say in the NY Sun's interactive Arts Forum. Two-Day Vehicle Ban in Foreign Baghdad August 18, 2006 03:52 PM Editorial Pages Age on Stage Out and About Blog New York Theater Fund-raising for Israel Business August 21, 2006 06:02 PM Sports By DANA GORDON New York Sun Forums Obituaries August 21, 2006 Have something to say? Weather [Continued from page 1 of 4] A D V E R T I S E M E N T Join The New York Sun Past Editorials Forum. Click Here It Shines for All Mr. Epstein knows from Lear tradition. RSS He has played the Fool opposite Orson FEATURES Welles as the king and Gloucester Arts & Letters opposite F. Murray Abraham in the title Online Extras Entertainment role. He also played the Fool in Hebrew On The Town with Habima, the national theater of Out & About Israel, in the early 1950s. Food & Drink In order to break away from those Photo Gallery traditions, the actor imagined what the Style play was like when Shakespeare wrote The Lunch Profile By PRANAY GUPTE Knickerbocker it. Quick with ferocious action, the work Giving youths a boost: Calendar overflows with meaning on emotional, "My thing is developing Real Estate familial, political, and mythical levels. the young Sephardim of Careers But, Mr. Epstein argues that "Lear" today," Nina Avidar Crosswords wasn't written about a monumental Weiner says. Writer Profiles figure. Read more... Travel A D V E R T I S E M E N T "It was written about a real old man. The play is mythological in scope CLASSIFIEDS through the role's completeness, but Careers domestic in its constant connection to Real Estate truth," he said. "Shakespeare had a Automotive piercing knowledge of human nature: The Big Apple's Most Notices The play is about real people, with Active Thoroughfare Merchandise faults, riddled with doubts. Lear makes By MICHAEL STOLER Just west of the heart of Services a terrible mistake and pays the price." Times Square is "an Pets avenue of commerce Financial Describing Shakespeare's language, Mr. that rivals all north-south NY Sun Jobs Epstein sheds light on what thoroughfares in the Big characterizes his own approach to Apple"... Yellow Pages theater: "The intense compression of Read more... View Display Ads ideas and emotions into very shapely Place A and short phrases that travel like music. Classified How can I put this big thought into as How To tight a little box as I can — say the most Advertise with the least amount of words?"

His approach is akin to what Beckett did in creating his works; he pared away all the extra. Photo Gallery Mr. Epstein accomplishes this through an instinct for clarity, in the elicitation of a word, the With A.L. Gordon crook of one finger, a bend of the neck, the tilt of the upper torso — movement emphasized Was your photo taken at and specific but also looking utterly natural; never overdone or underdone. the San Francisco Ballet at Lincoln Center? During his performance, the actor physically showed Lear's deteriorating state of mind in his View Photos... gradual languishing of stature throughout the play. From an erect king savoring his last moments of power, he becomes a crumpled, exasperated, thwarted father. From that, he devolves into a physically and mentally failing, but manically agile, figure who darts back and forth clad only in a diaper. He presses on, as a dying Pieta-like wraith and then to the horizontal stillness of death.

Continued « Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next » An Open Letter to Günter Grass By DANIEL JOHNSON "You have admitted after 60 years, that you belonged to the Waffen http://www.nysun.com/article/38267?page_no=2 Page 1 of 2 Age on Stage - August 21, 2006 - The New York Sun 08/21/2006 10:00 PM

Search our Archives keywords... August 21, 2006 Edition > Section: Arts and Letters NEWS New York Sun Blogs Home Printer-friendly version Email this article It Shines For All National Have your say in the NY Sun's interactive Arts Forum. Two-Day Vehicle Ban in Foreign Baghdad August 18, 2006 03:52 PM Editorial Pages Age on Stage Out and About Blog New York Theater Fund-raising for Israel Business August 21, 2006 06:02 PM Sports By DANA GORDON New York Sun Forums Obituaries August 21, 2006 Have something to say? Weather [Continued from page 2 of 4] A D V E R T I S E M E N T Join The New York Sun Past Editorials Forum. Click Here It Shines for All Mr. Epstein's ability to execute this RSS approach comes from a lifetime of work. FEATURES When he started acting, he had in mind Arts & Letters for himself a "completely different path" Online Extras Entertainment from the standard, naturalistic mid- On The Town century theater style. Strongly influenced Out & About by Edward Gordon Craig, the abstractionist theater innovator of the Food & Drink first half of the 20th century, Mr. Epstein Photo Gallery spent a year working with master Style choreographer Martha Graham, whom The Lunch Profile Knickerbocker By PRANAY GUPTE he admired for her "theatrical vision." Giving youths a boost: Calendar Her new language of movements that "My thing is developing Real Estate explored the capability of the body to the young Sephardim of Careers visually express psychological states today," Nina Avidar Crosswords drew him to her technique. Weiner says. Writer Profiles Read more... Travel His New York debut in 1955 was as a A D V E R T I S E M E N T mime, with the great Marcel Marceau (who had been Mr. Epstein's classmate CLASSIFIEDS in the famed mime school of Etienne Careers Decroux in Paris in the late 1940s). He Real Estate went on to play, in that same season, Automotive the Fool in Welles's "Lear," and Lucky, The Big Apple's Most Notices the slave, in "Godot," both roles that Active Thoroughfare By MICHAEL STOLER Merchandise demanded very physical, visual Just west of the heart of Services interpretations. Times Square is "an Pets avenue of commerce Financial But the connections between Mr. that rivals all north-south NY Sun Jobs Epstein, Beckett, and Shakespeare are thoroughfares in the Big Apple"... Yellow Pages not confined to a stringent attitude Read more... View toward physicality. Mr. Epstein added, Display Ads "the similarity of Shakespeare's view of Place A humanity to Beckett's is evident in Classified Lear's words when he ends up on the How To heath in a storm, decrying the human Advertise condition:

Poor naked wretches… That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm, How shall your Photo Gallery houseless heads and unfed sides, …defend you From seasons such as these?" With A.L. Gordon Was your photo taken at "And later, ‘Unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked Animal,'" Mr. the San Francisco Ballet Epstein said, adding that these are "phrases that also bring to mind the emaciated figures at Lincoln Center? sculpted by Alberto Giacometti, Beckett's friend.This scene is where the self-realization View Photos... occurs in Lear. Exposed to the indifferent cruelty of nature, Lear discovers the humanity he shares with other ‘poor naked wretches.' This from a raving, spoiled tyrant. What a change, what a turnaround of character!"

As a further example of this make-or-break moment in the play, he continued to recite, with obvious pleasure and without breaking the momentum in conversation,

Continued An Open Letter to « Previous | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | Next » Günter Grass By DANIEL JOHNSON "You have admitted after 60 years, that you belonged to the Waffen http://www.nysun.com/article/38267?page_no=3 Page 1 of 2 Age on Stage - August 21, 2006 - The New York Sun 08/21/2006 10:01 PM

Search our Archives keywords... August 21, 2006 Edition > Section: Arts and Letters NEWS New York Sun Blogs Home Printer-friendly version Email this article It Shines For All National Have your say in the NY Sun's interactive Arts Forum. Two-Day Vehicle Ban in Foreign Baghdad August 18, 2006 03:52 PM Editorial Pages Age on Stage Out and About Blog New York Theater Fund-raising for Israel Business August 21, 2006 06:02 PM Sports By DANA GORDON New York Sun Forums Obituaries August 21, 2006 Have something to say? Weather [Continued from page 3 of 4] A D V E R T I S E M E N T Join The New York Sun Past Editorials Forum. Click Here It Shines for All …Oh I have ta'en RSS Too little care of this. Take FEATURES physic, pomp, Arts & Letters Expose thyself to feel what Online Extras Entertainment wretches feel, On The Town That thou may'st shake the Out & About superflux to them And show the heavens more just. Food & Drink Photo Gallery These extraordinary passages during Style the storm on the heath are what Mr. The Lunch Profile By PRANAY GUPTE Knickerbocker Epstein calls "the most difficult scene for Giving youths a boost: Calendar an actor." The words are precise and, in "My thing is developing Real Estate the way of poetry, sufficient in the young Sephardim of Careers themselves, challenging the actor even today," Nina Avidar Crosswords to utter them. "But very often the Weiner says. Writer Profiles approach to it is stentorian: Just bellow Read more... Travel the words. Again, a culturally approved A D V E R T I S E M E N T misunderstanding of the play," Mr. Epstein said. "And you can't drown out CLASSIFIEDS Shakespeare's words with sound effects. Careers The actor is the heart of it. He has to Real Estate bring it off by invoking both the storm Automotive that is in his head and the terrific deluge The Big Apple's Most Notices that cannot be really happening on the Active Thoroughfare By MICHAEL STOLER Merchandise stage." Just west of the heart of Services Times Square is "an Pets And how does he accomplish this? avenue of commerce Financial "That's the mystery of acting.You can't that rivals all north-south NY Sun Jobs explain everything. Lear is not actually thoroughfares in the Big Apple"... Yellow Pages describing the storm; he is summoning Read more... View nature to do nothing less than destroy Display Ads the world and all the people in it," Place A Classified Blow, winds, and crack your How To cheeks! Advertise Rage, blow…. Strike flat the thick rotundity o' th' world, Crack nature's molds… Photo Gallery That makes ingrateful man. With A.L. Gordon Was your photo taken at With language so magnificent and a character so complicated, the challenge of taking on the San Francisco Ballet this role was transformative."During the run in Boston and New York, I became aware that at Lincoln Center? this play had become so meaningful to me that the idea that I was performing actions and View Photos... speaking words written by somebody named William Shakespeare seemed absurd," Mr. Epstein said, adding that the words seemed like his own. "My thoughts and my responses. Not that I was going mad, like the king, but the simulating of those things seemed to be coming from me spontaneously."

Is this what convincing acting should be? "Perhaps.The language has begun to feel so normal to me that it's not Shakespearean speech. It's the language of today, it's the language of what is happening right now." An Open Letter to Günter Grass Mr. Epstein will next perform an experimental program under the title "Who's Your Dada?" By DANIEL JOHNSON with the Wooster Group at the Museum of Modern Art on September 6, 7, and 9. "You have admitted after 60 years, that you belonged to the Waffen http://www.nysun.com/article/38267?page_no=4 Page 1 of 2