theater

 

Kevin Spacey's Richard III lacks 'subtlety'? It wouldn't have bothered Shaw

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George Bernard Shaw saw nothing ill in Richard's unsubtlety, writing that this play’s protagonist was written to indulge, not restrict, the grand gesture. (“His incongruous conventional appendages … the conscience, the fear of ghosts, all impart a spice of outrageousness which leaves nothing lacking to the fun of the entertainment, except the solemnity of those spectators who feel bound to take the affair as a profound and subtle historic study.”)

I’m with Shaw on this, and thus with Mendes and Spacey, who offer at BAM a solution to what has often been called a problem play—and has even more often been cut down to something resembling Richard’s own physical self-appraisal: “deform’d, unfinish’d, sent before my time … scarce half made up.” More

By Seth Colter Walls

January 24, 2012 8:53 am

 

Deborah Stein and Suli Holum make HERE's production of 'Chimera' a tribute to stagecraft

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In creating Chimera, Stein and Holum upended this vertically organized way of working, choosing instead to adhere to a more horizontal, though no less meticulous, method. First of all, as writer (Stein) and performer (Holum), they would co-direct: in a sense, simultaneously co-authoring both text and performance from their vantage points on stage and off. (At a rehearsal I attended, the quirks of this style were evident as Holum, hidden inside her blocked location underneath the set’s kitchen sink, called the stage manager over to offer some notes.) But their unorthodoxy extended far beyond their own roles. More

By Alena Smith

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January 10, 2012 1:48 pm

 

David Hyde Pierce and Rosie Perez give dimension and hilarity to Molly Smith Metzler's 'Close Up Space'

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In the opening scene of Molly Smith Metzler's new play, Close Up Space, David Hyde Pierce is especially funny. As Paul, a longtime editor for a boutique literary firm, he gives his new intern Bailey a withering glance (and nobody does withering glances like Hyde Pierce) when she suggests that rather than taking pen to paper, he might work more "modernly" on a computer. You can imagine the look that made-up word elicits. More

By Mark Sullivan

December 20, 2011 4:54 pm

 

A trip back to 1955, for the liberation of the soul, takes an unexpected turn

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Playing a bundle of neuroses is the specialty of Marin Ireland, who played a similarly tightly wound character last year in Lisa Kron's In the Wake. But she channels her inner June Cleaver with surprising ease: Her shoulders drop, her posture straightens, and a calm expression spreads over her face. Katha doesn't quite become a Stepford wife, but only because she has chosen for herself to be the perfect housewife. More

By Mark Sullivan

December 8, 2011 2:39 pm

 

The non-cynical musical based on a movie: 'Once' transfers effortlessly to stage (as it will to Broadway)

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Hansard and Irglová's folk-rock ballads transfer effortlessly to the stage, and Enda Walsh has adapted John Carney's spare and effective screenplay without straying too far the source material. Walsh fleshes out a few of the minor characters, but it’s the Guy and the Girl who remain a little too lightly drawn. Hansard and Irglová's songs do all the heavy lifting—maybe not the worst thing in a musical. More

By Mark Sullivan

December 7, 2011 3:33 pm

 

Welcome to Bluebell Hill, Alan Ayckbourn's fascist regime/neighborhood, recreated for the stage in 'Neighbourhood Watch'

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Yes, there’s a familiar set of references here, one that should resonate with anyone who lived through the Bush era and years of absurd “orange alerts” in New York, or who's seen The Crucible. But Ayckbourn (who wrote The Norman Conquests and dozens of other comedies) isn’t trying to be Arthur Miller. This is a comedy, and not a vicious but a gentle one at that. More

By Wayne Hoffman

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December 7, 2011 10:04 am

 

John Hurt's so good in excellent 'Krapp,' his New York debut

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As unlikely as it might seem, this production marks Hurt's New York City stage debut. It's long overdue, but audiences couldn't have asked for a better introduction to his work. Hurt first played Krapp in a 1999 production in London, and by now he and the character seem indivisible. And the suitability of the actor for the role matters, as Beckett wrote the play as a monologue for the actor Patrick Magee, who died in 1982. More

By Mark Sullivan

December 7, 2011 9:34 am

 

In Ethan Coen's second act, an iconoclastic vision is traded in for small divertissements

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Coen's first Broadway outings may have had appeal for nostalgists who miss the kind of theater that flourished in the hands of Simon, Allen, May and, to a degree, Mamet and Neil LaBute. But what "Happy Hour" shows, more than anything, is how Coen's forebears on the stage managed their divertissements while creating worlds that were entirely their own. This is something that the maker of films from The Big Lebowski to Fargo to No Country for Old Men, who built his career on the screen with an uncompromising iconoclasm, might have been expected to ace.

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By Wayne Hoffman

December 6, 2011 9:57 am

 

Lip-synching Judy Garland should be a bore, but in the hands of 'N.E.A. Four' alumnus John Fleck it's profound

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In part of the show Fleck lip-synchs—both the songs and the banter—a bootleg recording of Judy’s drug-inflected 1967 concert at Cocoanut Grove, the nightclub in L.A.’s Ambassador Hotel, dressed in ordinary jeans and a T-shirt, sans wig or makeup. So he is neither singing Judy, like Rufus Wainwright, nor impersonating Judy, à la Tommy Femia. But he is channeling Judy, at her messiest, with a simple gesture here and a raised eyebrow there. He’s not going for realism, and he’s not going for laughs. He’s going for depth. And somehow, Fleck finds something new to mine in this much-mined tragic figure. More

By Wayne Hoffman

December 5, 2011 12:11 pm

 

A Capital anticipation list: Finite and Flammable, Maurizio Cattelan, Black Star, bowling, P.S. Eliot

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Each week, Capital's editors and writers will offer a list of the events, activities, releases and personal obsessions that we are looking forward to during the next week. Here is a list of our anticipations. More

By Joe Pompeo, Dana Rubinstein, J. Gabriel Boylan, Gillian Reagan, Reid Pillifant and Tom McGeveran

December 1, 2011 4:13 pm