THE MORNING LINE DATE: Monday, December 3, 2012 FROM: Michael Strassheim, Emily Meagher, Michelle Farabaugh, Kelly Guiod Jessica Gordon, Adam Machart PAGES: 29, including this page Neil LaBute Will Write and Direct 'Reasons to Be Pretty' Follow-Up - NYTimes.com NOVEMBER 30, 2012, 3:26 PM Neil LaBute Will Write and Direct ‘Reasons to Be Pretty’ Follow-Up By PATRICIA COHEN MCC Theater has a reason to be happy: Its playwright-in-residence, Neil LaBute, plans to direct the premiere of his play "Reasons to Be Happy" for the theater next year. The new play is described as "companion piece" to Mr. LaBute's savage comedy "Reasons to be Pretty" and features the same four characters - Greg, Steph, Carly and Kent - though in different romantic pairings. No casting has yet been announced for the new play, which was reported by The Wrap. MCC's production of "Reasons to be Pretty" debuted at the Lucille Lortel Theater in 2008 before moving to Broadway the following year. Although the move uptown was short-lived, the production was critically acclaimed and nominated for three Tony awards. That play was billed as the third in a trilogy that included "The Shape of Things" and "Fat Pig," all of which centered around the subject of physical beauty. "Reasons to Be Happy," scheduled to run from May 16 to June 23, replaces a previously announced production of John Pollono's "Small Engine Repair," which has been delayed because of scheduling conflicts for the cast. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/...11/30/neil-labute-will-write-and-direct-reasons-to-be-pretty-follow-up/?pagewanted=print[12/3/2012 8:48:48 AM] Theater Prize Awarded - NYTimes.com December 2, 2012 Theater Prize Awarded Compiled by ADAM W. KEPLER Amy Herzog has won the 2012 New York Times Outstanding Playwright Award for “After the Revolution,” her Off Broadway play about a politically radical family. The award, which comes with a $5,000 prize, was created in 2009 to support an American playwright whose work recently received its professional debut in New York. Ms. Herzog dedicated the award to her extended family, which inspired the characters in “After the Revolution.” The work was produced by Playwrights Horizons in 2010. Previous recipients include Kristoffer Diaz for “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” Tarell Alvin McCraney for “The Brothers Size” and Dan LeFranc for “Sixty Miles to Silver Lake.” The selection committee included the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Edward Albee, James Lapine and Lynn Nottage; the Pulitzer finalist Richard Greenberg; and current and former editors for The Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/theater/theater-prize-awarded.html?pagewanted=print[12/3/2012 9:01:01 AM] Monty Python Sued Over ‘Spamalot’ Money - NYTimes.com December 2, 2012 Monty Python Sued Over ‘Spamalot’ Money Compiled by ADAM W. KEPLER The musical “Monty Python’s Spamalot” (with Michael McGrath, above left, and Tim Curry) has earned hundreds of millions of dollars on Broadway and abroad, but how some of that money should be distributed is in dispute, the BBC reported. Mark Forstater, a producer of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” the film on which “Spamalot” is based, is suing Monty Python members over royalty rights. Mr. Forstater argues that he has not been adequately compensated since the musical opened in 2005 on Broadway, where it grossed more than $175 million during its initial run. Three Python members, Eric Idle, Michael Palin and Terry Jones, are scheduled to appear in court in London. http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/12/03/theater/monty-python-sued-over-spamalot-money.html?pagewanted=print[12/3/2012 8:59:55 AM] War of Wills, Vocabularies and Virtues - The New York Times December 2, 2012 THEATER REVIEW War of Wills, Vocabularies and Virtues By BEN BRANTLEY They sure talk fancy in the clink these days. “The Anarchist,” the heavily embroidered slip of a play now at the Golden Theater, takes place in a women’s penitentiary, a setting that has been used memorably for many a lurid fiction. The show’s stars (and entire cast) are Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, performers celebrated for generating sparks onstage and on screen. And its author is David Mamet, king of the explosive expletive. Yet this 70-minute drama, which opened on Sunday night in a production directed by Mr. Mamet, is not lurid, spark filled or even expletive laden. “Anarchist” exists on the peaks of a philosophical Olympus where ideas on eschatology, etymology, phenomenology and, yes, criminology are exchanged by intellectual (if not moral) equals. As for its language, why — aside from one unfortunate outburst toward the end — it is as crisp and unsoiled as the sheets in a five-star hotel. While “Anarchist” portrays a notorious convict and the authority figure who controls her destiny, the relationship here feels less like one of jailbird and turnkey than that of a graduate student defending her thesis and a humorless visiting examiner. “Women Behind Bars” it ain’t. And Ms. LuPone and Ms. Winger must sink or swim in the thick sea of verbiage into which Mr. Mamet has thrown them. Ms. LuPone, a Mamet veteran, navigates these clotted waters like the freestyle champion she is. Ms. Winger, in her Broadway debut, mostly dog paddles. Mr. Mamet is of course best known for his testosterone-fueled plays about desperate, foul-mouthed men. These include “Glengarry Glen Ross,” which won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for drama and is currently playing in a revival at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater, just a few doors down from the Golden. I would love to set up the boys of “Glengarry” with the girls of “Anarchist” to see if they could understand a single word of one another’s languages. That’s because when Mr. Mamet writes about women, his vocabulary tends to take on a lot of extra syllables and to shed a lot of its vulgar snap. The last all-female play of his that I saw was “Boston Marriage” (staged in New York in 2002), in which the characters spoke like Oscar Wilde. In “Anarchist” they sound more like Roland Barthes. Now that I think of it, both plays strongly feature lesbianism, which might be worth discussing at some other point. But let us return to the loftier plane on which “Anarchist” conducts its dialogue. This is a show, after all, that in its opening minutes presents a dissection of the concept of patience, replete with linguistic shadings. Cathy (Ms. LuPone), who initiates this discussion, knows from patience. She has been in prison for 35 years, since being convicted in the killing of two police officers, while a member of a Weather Underground-type radical movement. http://theater.nytimes.com/...2/12/03/theater/reviews/david-mamets-anarchist-at-the-golden-theater.html?pagewanted=print[12/3/2012 9:04:36 AM] War of Wills, Vocabularies and Virtues - The New York Times During her long confinement Cathy has discovered God, she says. She has written a manuscript about her conversion, which she offers as evidence of her (pardon the term) good faith. Cathy, you see, is up for parole, and she must convince Ann (Ms. Winger), a warden cum parole officer (her title is never given), that she deserves her freedom. And so the debate begins. Wearing horn rims and a navy pantsuit, Ann has the severe air of a bureaucratic don who has done her research. She is armed with annotated manuscripts and files. (Amazing, isn’t it, how people in plays can always instantly find the exact passage they’re looking to quote?) She is fully prepared to spar with Cathy — the product of a rich family and illustrious schools — on semantic distinctions between “conscience” and “consciousness,” in English versus French. “Cut to the chase,” you might think. In fact the chase is afoot. From the beginning these women are engaged in a high-stakes war of wills, as well as ideologies, in which Cathy will use every weapon in her arsenal — intellectual, emotional and sexual — to acquire her freedom. You may suspect, however, that Ann has already made up her mind. And if you know Mr. Mamet’s politics, which he has never been shy about expressing, you know which way Ann leans. Mr. Mamet has always been preoccupied with words both as power tools and as camouflage. That’s true whether the language is lowdown (as in “Glengarry” and “American Buffalo”) or high-flown (as in “Oleanna”). This has often involved a certain verbal self-consciousness among his characters. But it has never been as acute as in “The Anarchist,” in which both women are especially aware of words as instruments of misdirection and what Cathy calls the opacity of human motives. Theatergoers must really furrow their brows here just to follow the basic arguments, never mind the layers of motivation woven into them. And without giving away too much, I think it’s fair to reveal “Anarchist” basically concludes that all those polysyllabic words mean nothing, when you come right down to it. Right is right, and wrong is wrong. When you reach the end of “Anarchist,” you may feel you’ve traveled an unnecessarily winding road to get there. Mr. Mamet’s avowed (and I think disingenuous) theory of acting is of the just-say-the-words school. It’s true that many of his scripts are so precisely cadenced, that just saying the words can take an actor a fair distance. That would seem to be the approach adopted here by Ms. Winger, whose excellent work in film ranges from her star-making performance in “Urban Cowboy” (1980) to “Rachel Getting Married” (2010).