Schimmel Center to Host Shakespeare's Globe's 'Hamlet' - NYTimes.com JULY 24, 2012, 3:15 PM Schimmel Center to Host Shakespeare’s Globe’s ‘Hamlet’ By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER A staging of "Hamlet" by Shakespeare's Globe theater will be among the attractions in the 2012-13 season at Pace University's Michael Schimmel Center for the Arts, which announced its line-up on Tuesday. "Hamlet," which is directed by Dominic Dromgoole and will run Oct. 2-7, will be the Shakespeare's Globe's third appearance at the center in lower Manhattan, following "Love's Labour's Lost" in 2009 and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in 2010. The more than 30-event season, which begins on Sept. 22, will also include an appearance by the Romanian gypsy brass band Fanfare Ciocarlia; a banjo summit featuring Béla Fleck; and a tribute to Woody Guthrie by Justin Townes Earle and guests. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/schimmel-center-to-host-shakespeares-globes-hamlet/?pagewanted=print[7/25/2012 9:41:17 AM] New York Musical Theater Festival Report: 'Swing State' - NYTimes.com JULY 23, 2012, 2:42 PM New York Musical Theater Festival Report: ‘Swing State’ By CATHERINE RAMPELL For many reasons, "Swing State" is an odd little show. It's a two-person, boy-meets-girl musical, except the boy is gay. It has a flip, political-sounding title, but the story is not a farce about elections but instead a drama about personal loss and childhood trauma. It's a musical about tolerance, but chiefly emphasizes tolerance of those who are openly intolerant. Bonnie is a born-again kindergarten teacher in Ohio hoping to save her students' souls as recompense for a great sin she committed before finding Jesus. She believes that sin (can you guess what it is yet?) is the cause of both her infertility and her chronic back problems. Enter Neil - an effeminate, New-Agey chiropractor fresh from Brooklyn - who manages to cure her spine as if he were the messiah himself. Neil meanwhile has baggage of his own. He grew up in Ohio, where he was bullied mercilessly for being a "sissy-boy." He has returned to the area because his mentor advised him that he could "heal" himself only by "healing" the enemy, or at least their back pain. As Bonnie, Morgan Weed accomplishes the impressive feat of helping a not-obviously empathetic Hell's Kitchen audience empathize with a "Christian nut job," as she is occasionally called. But then Dana Yeaton's book and lyrics grant Bonnie a much more nuanced and developed character arc than those offered to Neil (Jed Resnick). (Music by Andy Mitton is generally pretty, if sometimes generic.) Indeed, the show seems much more Bonnie's than Neil's, to a fault. In its painstaking efforts not to judge the Christian right, somehow the show places the onus to embrace "the other" disproportionately on Neil, and Bonnie mostly gets a free pass for her bigotry. Both leads, however, are psychically rewarded for perhaps an even graver sin: exploiting people in vulnerable positions - kindergarten students and patients - as a means to exorcise their own demons. "Swing State" continues through July 29 at the 45th Street Theatre, 354 W 45th St; (212) 352-3101, nymf.org. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/23/new-york-musical-theater-festival-report-swing-state/?pagewanted=print[7/25/2012 9:37:53 AM] New York Musical Theater Festival Report: 'Central Avenue Breakdown' - NYTimes.com JULY 24, 2012, 5:56 PM New York Musical Theater Festival Report: ‘Central Avenue Breakdown’ By ANITA GATES It is 1943, and the Los Angeles jazz scene is on fire. A lovely family of four arrives from small-town Mississippi, ready to start new lives far from Southern racism and, in the case of the men, pursue careers as saxophone players. It is easy to see why the festival invited "Central Avenue Breakdown," which was part of the 2011 lineup, to return. The show, which ended its run on Sunday at the Pershing Square Signature Center, is rich with lively, moving and often truly original music by Kevin Ray. Lyrics like "Woke up dead this morning," "I was born on Black Monday" and, in a gentler mood, "Martha, bring your love back to the light" create a haunting and convincing sense of place and time. That includes World War II, a stretch of thriving music clubs and a growing sense of outrage when white policemen visit with racist assumptions and billy clubs in hand. But the book, by Mr. Ray and Andrea Lepcio (with additional story contributions by Suellen Vance), needs major work. I did not see the 2011 production, but Ms. Lepcio joined the team only this spring, so it seems safe to infer that some revisions are already in place. There is a clear-cut plot; that's not the problem. William (Albert Christmas), the father, turns out not to be good enough for the big time. In case we have trouble understanding his audition scene, his son Jim (Rod Lawrence) announces, "Pop's not good enough." So Jim and his brother set out to make their names and do the family proud. Jim, the more innovative, has his own sound (we know this because he says, "I've got my own sound"), but Bill (Joshua Boone), the more traditional, gets ahead faster. Heroin addiction, rivalry over a beautiful and talented white singer (Rebecca LaChance) and two untimely deaths are added to build drama, but the dialogue just lies there, more like chapter titles than resonant action. Still, "Central Avenue Breakdown" manages a touching finale. The cast does a fine job. Juson Williams is particularly engaging as a powerful club owner. And the choreography - by Christopher Windom, who also directed - has its moments. At times it looks like an Isadora Duncan parody, but at others it is thrillingly exuberant. The strong parts of this show deserve to go on. http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/.../new-york-musical-theater-festival-report-central-avenue-breakdown/?pagewanted=print[7/25/2012 9:38:44 AM] Immigrant Led Astray in His New Home - The New York Times July 24, 2012 THEATER REVIEW Immigrant Led Astray in His New Home By ANDY WEBSTER The playwright and director Yoshvani Medina was born in Cuba, and judging from “Probation,” his engaging work presented by Repertorio Español at the Gramercy Arts Theater, he is consumed with ambivalence about that country. Throughout the play, essentially a dialectic between pro-Cuban and pro-American sentiments, Mr. Medina resists taking sides, wisely preferring to explore gray areas in each perspective. A prologue presents an unspecified but recent military skirmish in Cuba: A dying Fredo (Sandor Juan) extracts a promise from Pancho (Alfonso Rey) that he will take care of Fredo’s son, Freddy. A year later Pancho is in Miami, and Freddy (also Mr. Juan) and his pregnant wife, Yenny (Hannia Guillén), arrive to start a new life. Pancho sets up Freddy at a shady clinic engaged in Medicaid fraud; the wry, skeptical Yenny seeks employment as a standup comic. Freddy knows Pancho’s offer is suspect, but the money proves too tempting, and before long he has a house, two cars and the feds on his trail. When the authorities close in, he eyes a return to Cuba, but Pancho, the godfather to his son, tries to dissuade him. (“In Cuba, people have nothing,” he says. “Everything belongs to the government,” which prompts Freddy to retort, “And everything here belongs to the banks.”) Yenny, now a journalist and blogger, has ideas of her own. The production is in Spanish, which a new, unobtrusive captioning system translates, leaving non-Spanish speakers to savor Mr. Medina’s assured direction and the appealing cast. (Jorge Noa and Pedro Balmaseda’s stark, malleable set keeps the focus squarely on the actors.) Freddy, who is earnest but seducible, is eclipsed by the cynical Pancho, whose gruff observations can be hilarious, though their more heated exchanges verge on the didactic. Ms. Guillén’s character offers vital leavening, with monologues about sex and the lessons she’s learned in America; her blog is called I Live in Miami (and I Know Its Entrails). Unseen is Freddy and Yenny’s baby, Fred, part of a future generation fated to inherit the impasse between countries so close and yet so very far apart. http://theater.nytimes.com/2012/07/25/theater/reviews/probation-by-yoshvani-medina-in-spanish.html?pagewanted=print[7/25/2012 9:40:36 AM] Sherman Hemsley, Star of ‘The Jeffersons’ Dies at 74 - NYTimes.com July 24, 2012 Sherman Hemsley, ‘Jeffersons’ Star, Is Dead at 74 By MEL WATKINS Sherman Hemsley, the bantamweight comic actor who portrayed the scrappy, nouveau riche George Jefferson on the hit CBS sitcom “The Jeffersons,” died on Tuesday at his home in El Paso. He was 74. His death was confirmed by his agent, Todd Frank. He did not specify a cause. The Jeffersons were introduced as Archie Bunker’s Queens neighbors on “All in the Family” in 1971. George was conceived as a black version of Archie, as distrustful of white people as Archie was of black people (and almost everyone else). Although George’s wife, Louise, was frequently seen, George himself was mentioned but did not appear on camera until 1973: he was said to be unwilling to set foot in a white family’s house. (In reality, Mr. Hemsley was unavailable until then. Mel Stewart was seen as George’s brother, Henry, until Mr. Hemsley joined the cast.) The character of George Jefferson proved so popular that a spinoff series was developed.