February 16, 2011
Anyone who has seen Shine, Shakespeare in Love, Exit the King or most recently The King's Speech knows that everything Geoffrey Rush touches turns to gold, and his current theater engagement should be no exception. The Diary of a Madman, which opened last week for a one-month run at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, showcases Rush as Poprishchin, an unaccomplished civil servant living in 1830s Russia during the reign of Nicholas I. Based on a satirical short story by Nikolai Gogol, the play details the protagonist's descent into insanity as told through his diary entries: He suspects two dogs of swapping love letters and spies on their affair, believes himself to be heir to the Spanish throne and falls in love with his superior's daughter. If Rush's past performances offer any clues as to how he will play a man held captive by a rigid social structure and a debilitating mental state, it's a safe bet to expect brilliance. At 651 Fulton St., Brooklyn; 718-636-4100; bam.org.
Photo Heidrun Lohr
August 04, 2011
Summer theater started with a bang when the Royal Shakespeare Company set up residency in New York in July. It'll be capped off with a bang, too, as Oscar winner Cate Blanchett headlines the Sydney Theatre Company's performance of Uncle Vanya at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. from August 4 through 27. The company received enthusiastic reviews for its smash-hit production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 2009, and Blanchett was universally praised for her powerful portrayal of Blanche DuBois. Now she returns as Chekhov's enticing Yelena, who visits a distant farm only to become embroiled in a complex love affair. Australian reviews from the company's fall run suggest we're in for a treat. August 4-27, tickets from $59. 2700 F St. NW, Washington, D.C.; 202-467-4600; kennedy-center.org.
Before it's too late: Check these cultural events off your summer to-do list
Cate Blanchett and Richard Roxburgh in Sydney Theatre Company's Uncle Vanya. Photo courtesy of the Kennedy Center
January 26, 2012
Courtesy Signature Theater.
New York’s Signature Theater Company has long been known as a kind of playwright’s utopia, with a tradition of offering emerging playwrights intensive residencies and, more unusually, devoting entire seasons to the work of a single playwright. (The 2010-2011 season, for instance, staged only works by Tony Kushner, from a revival of his Pulitzer Prize-winning Angels in America to a new piece called The Intelligent Homosexual’s Guide to Capitalism and Socialism With a Key To The Scriptures.)
After 20 years of moving from theater to theater, the company is now opening the doors to its permanent home: the Signature Center, a 70,000 square-foot space on 42nd Street, in Manhattan, that was designed by Frank Gehry. The space features three theaters with various and flexible seating arrangements, all occupying the same level as the vast lobby and central plaza, which contains a café and a bookstore. “I wanted to create a space that celebrates and enhances the intimacy between the performer and the audience,” said Gehry, “while encouraging the innovation that Signature is known for.”
The new season kicks off January 31 in the new building (we hope the paint is dry!) with Blood Knot, which is by this year’s playwright-in-residence, Athol Fugard. A restaging of Edward Albee’s The Lady From Dubuque will follow on February 14. But first: a properly grand opening gala on January 30, where attendees can roam from theater to theater enjoying champagne, hors d’oeuvres and various performances. The VIP ticketholders especially are in for a treat: an intimate, pre-gala cocktail hour with honoree Edward Norton and Frank Gehry himself. Tickets from $1000; Single VIP tickets, $2500, VIP parties of ten, $25,000; 480 West 42nd Street, 212-244-7529; signaturetheatre.org.
June 14, 2012
Joseph Moran
Public Theater’s Shakespeare in the Park—the annual performances of the bard’s work staged at the Delacorte Theater in New York’s Central Park—is one of the most cherished summer cultural traditions in the world. This year, as the icon turns 50, there is even more to celebrate, and the Public Theater’s gala on June 18 will do just that.
The highlight of the evening is a reading of Romeo and Juliet starring Meryl Streep and Kevin Kline, 50 years to the day after Shakespeare in the Park’s first-ever performance at the Delacorte, which was The Merchant of Venice on June 18, 1962. Other alumni, including Sam Waterston, Jeffrey Wright and Christopher Walken, will comprise the cast; Al Pacino, who appeared in 2010’s The Merchant of Venice, which ultimately went to Broadway and garnered him a Tony nomination, is the evening’s honoree.
“For 50 years the Delacorte Theater has been home to the greatest American actors, who have been able to hone their artistry in the most beautiful, democratic theater in the world,” says artistic director Oskar Eustis. “Romeo and Juliet will be a celebration of those actors—a joyous love letter to the Delacorte, to Central Park and to New York City.”
Shakespeare in the Park has delighted more than 5 million people and staged upwards of 150 productions during its lifetime. (This year, As You Like It continues through June 30, and the Stephen Sondheim musical Into the Woods runs from July 23 through August 25.) While it’s certainly a big year for it, the Public’s downtown home at 425 Lafayette Street is also gearing up for a major milestone: a substantial renovation to its 158-year-old building wraps up this fall. June 18; ticket prices start at $1,500; 212-539-8547; shakespeareinthepark.org; publictheater.org.
August 03, 2012
Marie Godeau and Alexandra Zelman-Doring. Photo by Adolfo Doring
The Flea Theater hosts a three-week run of Act Before You Speak, a new production of Hamlet by Throes Theater company (opening August 3). The 70-minute play, written for two women (who remain silent throughout) and a violin, distills the words of the original down to their composite emotions—grief, love, revenge, madness. (Hedvig Claesson directs the production, with an original score composed by Jirí Kaderábek and Mahir Çetiz.) Each scene wraps itself around a single quotation from Shakespeare’s work, seeking to crack open and expose the organs of the text, bending physics so socks become skulls and the entire story of Hamlet occurs in six distinct encounters with six different characters. We sat down with the stars of the play, author and actress Alexandra Zelman-Doring and actress Marie Godeau.
Q: What was the inspiration for the play?
Alexandra Zelman-Doring: It developed organically from work in the theater. Actions, encounters—we’re going for more universal elements. So we have Hamlet and his best friend, Hamlet and his mother. Today you find a lot of Shakespeare that’s all about the language, and you forget what’s physical.
Q: Would you be able to do this without music?
AZD: Well, I wouldn’t want to. Put it that way.
Marie Godeau: The music is so present, and the violinist [acclaimed composer and violinist Ana Milosavljevic] is constantly on stage. There are no blackouts, no curtains. There are some moments where she doesn’t play, but even in silence she’s present. And she scares people. She is the ghost, she is the narrator—perhaps the puppeteer.
Q: Shakespeare wrote his plays almost entirely as dialogue and speeches. Was there something about Hamlet in particular that called for silence?
AZD: Silence can be a way of speaking. He performs actions that speak as clearly as words, really. Because we’re going for clarity, it’s not supposed to be some super avant-garde you-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-is-going-on performance—it’s really not that. It’s very clear. It’s actually more simple even than the words. Actions can strike at the heart of something.
Q: Like music. Is it because actions don’t play games in the way that words can, through wordplay and double entendre?
MG: Of course there is double entendre and games with words. We do it every day with the way we carry ourselves and our bodies. There’s always duality in what we show and what’s really happening in the inner, inner self. But because that’s all we have onstage, because there are no words, it’s very bare. The audience sees everything.
AZD: We’re better at performing it than we are at speaking about it.
Through August 26; tickets, $20; The Flea Theater, 41 White St.; 212-226-2407; theflea.org.
