#i mean the woman is a respected playwright‚ theatre producer and director

[mariocki]

cutest iasip interview ever

[nikitasbt]

Taishō Trilogy of Seijun Suzuki

As a salaried director at Nikkatsu, Japanese filmmaker Seijun Suzuki has been making crime movies for decades. He has directed around 40 movies from 1956 to 1967, of which Tokyo Drifter and Born to Kill are considered the most acclaimed. In a later attempt to reignite his career after splitting paths with Nikkatsu and veer off to the new ways of expression and stylistics, Suzuki started working on surrealistic feature film Zigeunerweisen becoming the first part of unformal Taisho Trilogy: Zigeunerweisen, Kagero-za, Yumeji. The three films are not linked with any similarities in the plot but set in the same period of emperor Taisho ruling the nation. It was the time of 1920-1930s. All films resemble hectic dreams and bear unmistakable visual similarities. The films have been meant to create the new stylistics for Suzuki developing his old strife to produce the shots of supreme beauty to strike not less than Godard’s shots used to do. Taisho Trilogy is an example of films lacking the coherence, yet remaining unforgettable with their quixotic and wild visuality.

Zigeunerweisen (ツィゴイネルワイゼン) - 1981

From my point of view, the best way to get a glimpse in the Taisho Trilogy is to watch the last part of it Yumeji. The last film encapsulates all the achievements of the trilogy. Comparing with Yumeji, Zigeunerweisen is almost impossible to comprehend. The film employs riddles in abundance, and the hints given can unlikely help to solve quite a few of them. In a surrealistic way, Suzuki’s tale shows the relations between two former co-workers Nakasago (portrayed by Yoshio Harada) and Aochi (Toshiya Fujita) who developed affairs with the wives of each other (at some point, Nakasago even suggests to exchange the wives). The story is ambiguous and not very coherent as Suzuki doesn’t bother himself to show the things in any sort of logical way or order.

In fact, the film is set in several dimensions, and it never becomes clear whether Nakasago has died or not, and whether Koine and Sono (both played by gorgeous Naoko Otani) are the same women or two different. We don’t really get a clear idea of why Nakasago killed a woman and if he actually killed her or not. The behaviour of a spooky girl also remains mysterious and unclear.  Is she sort of ghost or she has bridged some spiritual connection with the world of death? We never learn it for sure. Moreover, we don’t even know where is the reality or dream or fantasy. Suzuki does his best to confuse the viewers with his surrealistic images and bizarre storytelling.

What we know for sure, is that Zigeunerweisen is the title of a vinyl record that Nakasago and Aochi used to listen. It has some gypsy tunes on it. Somehow, the record is used as the spiritual connection between Nakasago who dies and the outer world. Also, there are some references making to think Suzuki paints some ties with the political situation in Japan in the 1930s. The blind kids might symbolize of Japanese right forces getting insane prior to invading Manchuria (though, it is too obvious for Suzuki to be entirely sure that was an original intention). There is also a connection between the fact that Aochi is a German language professor, the relations of Japan and Germany and the title of record taken from German - Zigeunerweisen. And once again, this is just a guess as it never becomes clear what the author implied.

Suzuki uses Aochi as a sort of symbol of his audience: a confused man is trying to follow the story and understands very little from his friend’s behaviour. The ending is bizarre just like the whole movie, and we are left with no answers, as well as Aochi. However, giving the answers is not something the film has been made for. This is entirely visual work, and it is drastically important to pay attention to the shot, mise-en-scène, camera work and usage of light. Zigeunerweisen is a visually appealing film, and many shots are just like gorgeous paintings we enjoy. The matter of greatest importance for Suzuki was to fully realize and utilize his potential in elaborating the exquisite ways of artistic impressions. Making Zigeunerweisen, he made up his mind for creating a fresh visual language. He comes up with the material which is confusing, but it goes without a doubt Zigeunerweisen can be hardly compared to anything else. Watching Zigeunerweisen, at some point you realize there is probably no way to twig what is real and what is just irony, mockery, dream or fantasy. Nevertheless, the visual style is so solid and brilliant that it starts seeming the only way to accompany the frantic twists of the plot which remain spooky and incognizable just like the vinyl record or tunnel we see several times in Zigeunerweisen.

Kagero-Za (陽炎座) - 1981

The second film of Taisho Trilogy clarifies several points I remained dubious about after watching Zigeunerweisen and Yumeji. This trilogy is an example of substantially visual cinema where the logic and storyline are abandoned, in order to prioritize the importance of the mood and shocking stylistic beauty of the shots. Seijun Suzuki used to say “I make movies which make no sense and no money”, and this is true. Watching Zigeunerweisen, I was struggling to understand where do the twists of plot and expression lead and what is the idea behind it. Kagero-za or Heat-Hazed Theatre makes it transparent there was apparently something Suzuki implied, but it would remain incognizable as there are numerous ways to interpret the tale.

Kagero-Za is another psychological surrealistic tale in this trilogy. The plot is a formality as it never gets too clear. We follow the story of playwright Matsuzaki (portrayed by Yusaku Matsuda) who encounters his different mistresses, one of whom appears to be the wife of rich businessman Tamawaki (Katsuo Nakamura) who wants protagonist dead. Heroes pass away and appear again. In Zigeunerweisen I was still wondering what that supposed to mean, but with Kagero-Za I realized these are the actual fantasy ghosts who might bear symbolic meaning. The protagonists talk in one location, and in the next shot show up somewhere else. They jump from topic to topic, the dialogues are bizarre making both conversations and plot incoherent - though, this is something Suzuki has been trying to achieve.

Kagero-Za resembles a deranged dream or plot of a kabuki play. At some point, we actually see the events might be nothing but the new play of Matsuzaki who is seeking for the new story. We see awkward scenes on the theatre stage, and playwright observes them too. Perhaps, the whole story is like that - just a fantasy of Matsuzaki told in a surrealistic way.

What is Suzuki brilliant in is coming up with the fresh ideas of his shots. Dozens of shots require studying and might be considered art objects. The usage of vivid traditional paintings Suzuki employs is striking and spectacular, making the film’s visuality pretty impressive. Camera work and montage also follow the lead of Suzuki’s bizarre visual code. Again and again, Suzuki creates mise-en-scene of stunning beauty. The scenes and shots are often not linked to each other with any sort of explanation, but they are perfect with no respect to the story. Kagero-Za is not a film of non-linear plot and not a non-plot film either. It is an attempt to reject any sort of dictate created by traditional view on the films and necessity of coherent plot and background. Highly experimental and visually appealing work of Suzuki is meant to make neither sense nor money. But the aesthetics of Suzuki should be acclaimed as something rare and remarkable. This aesthetic will lead him to the third and last film of the trilogy Yumeji which I regard as the best part of Suzuki’s surrealistic Taisho films.

Yumeji (夢二) - 1991

The last film of Taisho trilogy in a very surrealistic tone tells a story of Japanese painter and poet Takahisa Yumeji (1884-1934) encountering several mistresses and his rival artist Gyoshu Inomura who is arguably more talented than Yumeji (portrayed by Kenji Savada). Throughout the account on the screen, we get a glance on the psychological and art struggles of the painter who is seeking the perfection and inspiration for his paintings.

The tantalizing tale is enhanced with numerous surrealistic forms, characters, images and entire scenes. It is also impossible to follow the stream of the tale before we get an idea we bump into the artistic fantasies of Yumeji, and the line between the death-life and reality-fiction is painted by Yumeji himself. The bizarre work of camera moving from the left to the right, and back again and showing the scenes with unusual composition and angles illustrate this far-fetched definition of different dimensions which unite and mix up in Yumeji’s mind. The story contains both surrealistic scenes and detective-like motif, though It is not entirely clear whether Wakiya (played by Yoshio Harada) has been actually murdered or not, and it is unclear if the whole story ever took place in the reality. The endless riddles bridge the gap between Suzuki and Buñuel with Robbe-Grillet.

What is certain is that the film tells about Yumeji’s perception of the art and women which are pretty much related in his life. There is no mood for art without passion Yumeji chases women with. He encounters the most beautiful ladies and seduces them, but he doesn’t love them in a human way. His fetish is about their postures, outfits, behavoiur is utilized for the ideas of paintings, and the women’s beauty for him is nothing but inspiration for art and poetry. He feeds himself on their boundless sexuality and allure like a vampire, and he is so addicted to their beauty that women, in fact, define his art. We see Yumeji is in the relationships with a woman who loves him, but the artistical mindset makes him seduce the other women as potential models or nudies.

Seijun Suzuki shows the gorgeous women and their perfect bodies in abundance to immerse himself and viewers in Yumeji’s fetish (and probably the director’s fetishism as well). The scenes with Tomoyo (played by Tomoko Mariya) and Hikono (Masumi Miyazaki) are charged with the enthralling sexuality the female protagonists radiate. They are frequently shot as the paintings, and this images strike with the boundless beauty Yumeji and the viewers fully immerse into. This is a very sexy and surreal fantasy which resembles Alain Robbe-Grillet’s L'Eden et après in an artistic way and Trans-Europ Express by the manner of storytelling. The usage of aggressive montage and dense colours reminds of the style of La Chinoise by Jean-Luc Godard.

To sum up, Yumeji is a set of fetish fantasies made like a collection of his paintings he could have possibly completed. Every shot is like a painting where mise-en-scene stuns with beauty and bizarre mesmerizing power. The story is hard to follow and riddles might be very confusing, but it can be interpreted in many ways. Yumeji is important and striking as an art object and surrealistic experiment, yet there is probably no way to delve too deep into the film: it is much better to enjoy the sophisticated shots and the beauty of Yumeji’s mistresses portrayed by Tomoko Mariya, Masumi Miyazaki, and Reona Hirota. The last but not the least thing is the usage of music. This is the film Shigeru Umebayashi has written his brilliant and sublime music theme Yumeji for. Later the same theme would find international acclaim after being remarkably used in the film of Wong Kar-wai In the Mood for Love.

[rndyounghowze]

An Evening of Online Plays Right in our Living Room Directed by Missouri S&T Theatre

By: Ricky and Dana Young-Howze

St. Louis, Missouri

It was a cool and rainy evening when Dana and I followed the Zoom link and joined viewers across the country to see "An evening of Online Plays"

Produced by Missouri S&T Theatre. One of our dear friends Erin Lane had one of her pieces in the bill of four 10 minute plays to be presented that night and invited us to come watch. This night of online theater, produced by Taylor Gruenloh and presented by Missouri S&T theatre students was our first time reviewing a Zoom Production and definitely will not be our last.

This was directed by two students of Missouri S&T's directing program. When classes were cancelled for Victoria Hagni and Madeline Lechner their professor Taylor Gruenloh knew that unless they actually produced a finished project it wouldn't feel as if the two students weren't getting the most out of their independent study. So they quickly changed gears and commissioned ten minute plays from four playwrights from my graduate program Hollins University that would work perfectly in a Zoom format. This livestream is that final result.

It's worth mentioning what Dana and I are looking for when we review a production produced on an online platform streamed out of people's homes. We of course are looking at the level of acting and the production value of the plays but we are also looking at how this new medium of performance is taken advantage of and how the artists worked within those constraints. We are definitely as much beginners at reviewing this as the artists are performing in it. We also know that these students were ramping up and learning for something completely different than pioneering a new artform so we empathize. So now that we know we're both adjusting to a learning curve let's get down to the nitty gritty.

We've decided to talk about the plays grouped by the director not in the order that they were presented and since these were brand new plays written just for the production we're reviewing the plays too.

First we're looking at the plays directed by Madeline Lechner.

De-Equalized by Amy Lytle is a play about two students Katie (played by Natalie Arnold) and Jordan (played by Adam Bateman) who are working on a group project while they are separated on spring break.

I'll admit putting this play up as the first play we see was a very eerie experience. Not just because it was about two students talking about a group project over Zoom but also because this was Dana and my first primer into what a Zoom production is. Seeing the screen jump back and forth between the two actors like it was cutting back and forth like in a movie was bizarre but I was immediately intrigued by the possibilities.

I was very impressed with the actors trying their hardest to emote to somebody that is not physically in the room with them. I felt like Arnold did a better job at this than her acting partner. I can only imagine having to not only keep myself cheated open for the audience but also knowing that my acting partner is a small post card sized picture on a screen. Also knowing that your performance depends on the connectivity of your device and the tilt of your camera is probably as big of a rush as tightrope walking. But because of this feeling of risk some of their emotions seemed to go stagnant. I needed to feel like this energy could travel eight hundred miles.

This could have been an acting problem but I definitely feel like some of this sits on Lechner's shoulders as a director. If the energy isn't shaking the rafters you definitely need to find ways to ramp your actors up. But we also feel like the playscript didn't give them higher stakes to begin with. Not everyone reveals family secrets doing homework. Also Dana never believed she was going to walk out on him which really did kill the stakes.

As for the play Dana noticed there was a lot of exposition about scholarship and financial aid that anyone watching a college show would know. We would hope that in a further draft the playwright would trust her audience more. I loved the idea of students finding out something about a friend that they didn't know before but also wish that the action had started way earlier. The play spent so much time on exposition I feel like the play didn't start until the eight minute mark and then they only had two minutes left. In a future draft I really hope this is addressed.

Also directed by Lechner was Breathe by Erin Lane a play about Dory (played by Raelyn Twohy) and Michael (played by Michael Ellis) two parents having to coparent while being separated and trying to calm each other down while also trying to appear strong for the other.

I love that this play made use of ANY kind of action and it was a great refresher from Lechner's previous piece. I still would have asked for much more. Also Dana got the sense that this play was supposed to have a lot of chaos in it but in her words it was "the calmest chaos she's ever seen". I agree. Especially if this is a play about getting the results of a test be it Covid-19, AIDS, pregnancy, or even strep I think you would feel a TAD more tense than that. This harkens back to what I said before about Lechner and getting energy out of her performers. As a director I will tell her you have to do whatever it takes to get that energy out of your cast because if we as an audience don't feel it we're gone. This was a great first outing and if I'm sounding tough it's because I feel she does have potential to do well in the future. Just get that energy in!

As for the acting it seemed that while Dana and I believed the Dad instantly we felt something was "held back" from us. We don't know if that was an acting problem or a writing problem. I am leaning heavily towards acting because of the several "I forgot my line" pauses and constant repeats of cue lines we normally see in high school productions. I personally think it must have been hard to show so much emotion just using your eyes and not having a full stage to work with but if these pauses normally just slow down a stage show on Zoom they felt like an eternity.

This play utilized my very favorite kind of exposition where everything we needed to know about the action was fed to us through something that we already knew. We all know that kind of back and forth between a Mom and Dad as they suss out parenting. But then you have this through the lens of long distance. Someone can't be home and now they have to trust someone else to get it done. This is the coolest kind of love story for me. However due to dropped lines and pauses I totally lost the part where Dory is a nurse and that she's taking a Covid-19 test. Dana had to tell me based on her scrubs. I hope that a future production of this play has the faster pace and the higher stakes it deserved.

Also a quick note: I know that no one is really pioneering Zoom set design just yet but I feel that I have to mention the black curtain behind Ellis's back. Dana and I have a running joke where we wonder if there is a "different play behind the curtain" that's more interesting than the one we're seeing. This presented a literal version of that for us where we spent more time wondering what was behind that curtain than listening to what he was saying. Out of love for these actors and with mad respect for what they're doing even if the curtain is hiding dead bodies we kinda hope it isn't there in the future. You guys rock and deserve better than that.

Next we'll be talking about the plays directed by Victoria Hagni.

In Scaramouch and Pinochle by Mike Moran we meet Lizzie (played by Megan Baris) and Bella (played by Haley Jenkins) two sisters who were separated when they were little and adopted by families across the country. Now they're reconnecting.

I loved that this play involved some action that fills up the camera frame and that Hagni gave the actresses some business to do such as painting nails and looking for things. If you think of the screen as your proscenium arch then you start to realize that you can utilize all of that space to tell your story.

Dana loves the use of props and the chemistry between the two actresses even though there were some moments that seemed like they were talking more at the screens than to each other. As you guys know I'm a sucker for puppets so even a sock puppet wormed it's way into my heart.

As for the script I feel like the realization about the Mom’s death and other family drama wasn’t "earned". There was no build up to it so I don't know whether it really happened or if our character was just lying. Where the chemistry between the actresses seemed natural the tense moments in the play didn’t seem natural. Overall it was a very cute play and with a couple more revisions it would be perfect.

In Folies a Deux/Pas de deux by Kevin D. Ferguson we meet Amanda Toye as Woman and Luke Goekner as Man. They are a couple with an interesting history and reconnecting after a long time.

I absolutely ADORED the use of the whole kitchen and room as a playing space. Having her start "upstage" at the counter and then moving the camera around as she moved dropped us into the world of the play. This was the first time that I forgot I was watching a Zoom play and just started watching the show. If I have to give one criticism to Hagni at all it is that I would have loved to see this kind of blocking in her previous piece.

I really commend the actors for really knowing their lines, really getting this blocking down, and committing to it. I mean somebody made cupcakes for this show! That's commitment.

Dana feels like this one was the most theatrical because it would definitely work on a stage AND online. This was the play that she absolutely believed with all her heart. I was totally pulled in. This is one of those plays that just make you want to sit in front of a computer and write a play.

The hardest part I'm going to notice about directing and writing for this medium is that you're simultaneously directing a theatre production and producing a movie. The actors aren't just actors they become directors of photography. The only difference between these plays and a movie is that a movie would be recorded for later and edited by someone else. I'm predicting that the most successful Zoom productions will be the ones that blur these lines. Is this naturalistic theatre or an indie found footage film. Who knows and who cares? Actors are not just emoting as if they're in the smallest of black box theaters but also thinking in terms of setups and dynamic camera angles. This is going to be a hard skill to master and in thirty or so years we'll be reading textbooks about the people who started this trend thinking about how we were all just figuring it out.

Also I'm looking forward to the day when we literally don't have the big pink elephant of COVID-19 in the room with us. Right now anytime you see a play livestreamed we all kind of know why it's not being presented onstage. So effectively even if the play doesn't explicitly say so it inherently is about this pandemic I know it's going to be at least a few years before this isn't the case but I will welcome it with open arms.

You have one more opportunity to see this production tonight May 9th at 7 PM Central Time. For those of you teaching theatre right now it might be an excellent tool or opportunity to talk about this evolving theatre climate. Follow this link right here and enjoy the show!

[charlottehopesource]

In just a few short years, Charlotte Hope's career has gone from strength to strength. Now starring in Almedia's production of 'Albion', she talks to London calling about the venue, a love of the theatre and cake.

London Calling: Thanks for speaking to us! Could you tell us a bit about Albion and the role that you play?

Charlotte Hope: It’s a play about family and what it means to be British. It’s about a woman, Audrey played by Victoria Hamilton, who buys an old English home and wants to restore it. I play her daughter Zara. They have a relationship I think a lot of people will understand, fractious but bound by bloodline. It’s a character study about a family and their relationships and how that disintegrates. I’m really excited for the audience to get to see it ’cause it’s magic.

LC: Have you performed at the Almedia before?

CH: No! I’ve been seeing plays here forever and I’ve always thought it was the pinnacle of theatre, so to be here on my third theatre job is… I’m pinching myself really. My boyfriend’s father gave me, when I was auditioning, his Almedia membership card as a kind of lucky charm: I’ve still got it! I’m just really excited to be a part of this place which is so well respected and produces such brilliant work.

LC: How is it working with director Rupert Goold?

CH: He’s amazing. I think he’s a brilliant director; he’s so intelligent. Everything he says is really spot on. He brings such clarity and specificity to every point, and that's exactly the way I like to work. I feel like I’ve learned more in a few weeks with him than I have in years. It’s no surprise the work he produces is so brilliant.

LC: You've performed on stage before, in a 2016 production of Buried Child, written by Sam Shepard. Did you notice a big change in the writing style from that play, written by a classic American writer and English playwright Mike Bartlett's writing in Albion?

CH: As an actress I always try to find the truth in whatever I’m saying. I think both of those playwrights are just so talented and such brilliant writers that for an actor it’s a total gift. In that sense they haven’t seemed hugely dissimilar to me so I’ve approached it in the same way.

LC: Is theatre something you’d like to do more of going forward then compared to film?

CH: I love it all! I’ve done a year now of lots of theatre and its been a total joy. This rehearsal process just means I get to practice acting every day, and I feel like I’m getting better which is really exciting for me as an actress. I’d love to go back and do more film and TV as well. But, at the moment, I feel totally at home here, which is a really magic thing for an actor, because so often we feel so adrift.

LC: Do you go to the theatre a lot and what are some of your highlights?

CH: Yes. I just thought [The 2017 production of Federico García Lorca play] Yerma was so brilliant. Billie Piper is kind of an idol of mine, I think she’s electric and amazing; I could see that show over and over again. She’s a great role model for me.

Are you a Londoner? What are some of your favourite places to go eat or go hang out?

CH: I go to the same places the whole time. No imagination! The Camberwell Arms, in Camberwell, has some of the best food I’ve eaten in London. Every weekend, when we say, ‘where shall we eat this weekend?’ I inevitably always end up there. They had this amazing caramelized pecan and brown sugar ice cream last week that I’ve been dreaming about ever since. I’m also obsessed with this cake shop Konditor and Cook which has something called a curly wurly cake which is a staple of my diet. When I was at uni, I would buy a whole cake and take it back to Oxford and eat it through the week ’cause I thought it was the best thing ever. I’ve got a sweet tooth!

LC: Are there any books, or albums or exhibitions, something you’ve seen recently that you’ve really enjoyed.

CH: I’m really obsessed with The National’s new album Sleep Well Beast; I’m seeing them play next week and I’m super excited about that. And I thought Lorde’s album was totally amazing, so I’m seeing that next week too. I really love live music. I’m always going to as many gigs as I can.

Charlotte Hope stars in Albion at the Almedia, Almedia Street N1 1TA from the 10th of October to 24th November 2017.  Tickets from £10

[newyorktheater]

Andre De Shields in Hadestown

Tom Glynn-Carney as Shane Corcoran, center, The Ferryman (in-between Fra Fee as Michael Carney, and Conor MacNeill as Diarmaid Corcoran)

(l-r) Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk in The Band’s Visit

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 with Josh Groban i

Daveed Diggs, Okieriete Onaodowan, Anthony Ramos and Lin-Manuel Miranda in Hamilton 2015

Disgraced

Fun Home with Gabriella Pizzolo and Michael Cerveris

Then She Fell

Detroit

Tracy Letts and Amy Morton in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, opening on Broadway October 13, 2012

The Motherf**ker With the Hat

The Orphans Home Cycle

As 2019 is coming to an end, leaving many of us worn down , it might be more rewarding to express gratitude for favorite New York shows that opened not just this year but for the decade as a whole. As in my normal top 10 New York Theater list each Thanksgiving, the choices are of course subjective; these were MY favorite in each year. But this list is also particularly arbitrary. Why go year by year as I do below, rather than rank my ten favorite overall since 2010? And why ten years? What’s so special about a period of time we don’t even know what to call — “the tens”? The two halves of the decade were distinctly different time periods, certainly politically. But these past ten years also happen to be a time in which I have been seeing as much theater in New York as I can as a critic – and for that I am grateful.

2010

The Orphans Home Cycle

by Horton Foote

“How can human beings stand all that comes to them?” Horace Robedaux asks in “The Story of a Family,” the last play of “The Orphans’ Home Cycle,” which I saw just as the decade began. In the play, it is 1918 and people are dying of influenza at home or in combat overseas, but the question underlies Horton Foote’s entire nine-play cycle. And the answer, after nine hours watching an ensemble of some two dozen actors presenting 26 years in the life of Horace Robedaux and his extended family, is: They just do.

Horton Foote, who is best known as the Academy Award-winning screenwriter of “To Kill A Mockingbird” and “Tender Mercies” and who died in 2009 at the age of 92, had written the plays that make up “The Orphan’s Home Cycle” at different times some three to four decades earlier. They are inspired by the story of his father, and by his birthplace, the small Texas town of Wharton, which he renamed Harrison. Director Michael Wilson trimmed the plays to an hour apiece, put them in chronological order and grouped them into three parts, “The Story of A Childhood,” “The Story of A Marriage,” and “The Story of A Family.” The producers had plans to bring the show to Broadway, but this never happened.

2011

The Motherfucker with the Hat

by Stephen Adly Guirgis

Jackie and Veronica have been a couple since the eighth grade, even after he became an addict and a drug dealer and went to prison. He’s out, newly sober, and in love. She remains an addict, but has a good job in a salon.
They are about to have sex when Jackie notices a man’s hat on the table…and the hat isn’t his.
If all this sounds grim, it isn’t. This first scene, exuberantly foul-mouthed, was so hilarious and touching that it was almost thrilling.

“The Motherf**ker with the Hat” (as it was commonly referred to)marked the Broadway debut (and so far only Broadway play) by Stephen Adly Guirgis, who four years later won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Between Riverside and Crazy” (which was presented Off-Broadway.) The play was about people on the margins of society reaching for love and stability. It featured a cast, especially Bobby Cannaval and Elizabeth Rodriguez, who combined an authentic-feeling energy and rhythm from the streets with a mastery of stage technique.

2012

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Detroit,

Then She Fell

I made three top 10 lists in 2012, which either means that it was an especially good year for theater, or I was just drunk with the power of creating my first Top 10 lists.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Its fourth Broadway production opened 50 years to the day after the first Broadway production, and was a hit…palpably, to the guts. The original “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” caused a sensation, and that was true as well of the Steppenwolf Theater Company’s production, transferred intact from Chicago, directed by Pam MacKinnon (Clybourne Park) and starring Tracy Letts and Amy Morton, the Pulitzer-winning playwright and Tony-nominated star, respectively, of “August: Osage County.”

Detroit

This play by Lisa D’Amour takes place in a suburb of what is probably Detroit, but it could be any run-down first-generation suburb that began with hopefulness and street signs named after Nature. It is one of the few shows on a New York stage in 2012 to address the effects of a faltering economy, and, while grounded in reality, it was also funny, dark and surreal,  with a spot-on cast. Amy Ryan and David Schwimmer played a couple just hanging on who befriend new next-door neighbors Sarah Sokolovic and Darren Pettie who are even worse off.

Then She Fell

Tthe Third Rail Projects’ immersive take on Lewis Carroll debuted in 2012 but I didn’t get around to reviewing it until 2016

Shout out as well to These Seven Sicknesses, playwright Sean Graney’s adaptation of all seven of Sophocles’ surviving plays—Oedipus, In Trachis, Philoktetes, In Colonus, Ajax, Elektra and Antigone —performed by the Bats, the resident company of The Flea and directed by  Ed Sylvanus Iskandar, and Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike — neither of which, inexplicably, made any of my lists.

2013

Fun Home

A remarkable musical based on Alison Bechdel’s graphic memoir about her childhood with a father who was secretly gay is a work of theater that is inventive, entertaining, in places exhilarating, and almost inexpressibly heartbreaking. It moved to Broadway in 2015 and won the Tony Award for Best Musical

My Top 10 for 2013

2014

Disgraced and The Invisible Hand

by Ayad Akhtar

Amir is a successful, hard-charging corporate attorney in New York working for a largely Jewish law firm. He has angrily rejected the Islamic religion of his childhood because of attitudes like his mother’s, changed his name so it is not recognizably Muslim or Pakistani, and married a white woman – not a Jew but a blonde WASP, who inadvertently sets into motion the two plot lines that explode at a dinner party with another couple. Althought it won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, there are plenty of people who didn’t care for “Disgraced,”  seeing it as too much like a lecture, too cynical or too contrived.  But this first play by a major new voice on the American stage managed to be both dramatically satisfying and politically important, confronting us with our assumptions and pieties about the culture clash that is defining our era. “Disgraced” is a play that sparked conversation even among those who didn’t like it.

With “The Invisible Hand,” at New York Theatre Workshop, the playwright is in some ways even more daring, turning the story of a kidnapped American banker in Pakistan into a lesson in economics and morality.

My top 10 for 2014

  2015

Hamilton

In my third review of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hip-hop opera about the life and times of the Founding Father whose face is on the ten dollar bill, I  wondered as it was opening on Broadway whether it had already reached the point in the life of a Broadway hit when “any individual opinion no longer matters. It’s a hit because it’s a hit, and people go because it’s a hit; those who don’t like it are likely to blame themselves.”

“Hamilton” is unquestionably a phenomenon. It’s the first Broadway show in a while to spread so widely into the larger culture. It thrust creator Lin-Manuel Miranda into stardom. But all this doesn’t change what I see as the ways that the show was groundbreaking, and remains breathtaking.

My top 10 for 2015 

  2016

Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812

This sung-through musical adapted from a “scandalous slice” of “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy was on my list of top 10 in 2013, when it had moved from the Off-Broadway theater Ars Nova to a circus tent in the Meatpacking District. I was struck from the get-go by its catchy songs and by its cutting-edge stagecraft.

I list it as my favorite in 2016 because in its move to Broadway starring Josh Groban, it didn’t change much. Its staging came very close to the kind of immersive theater that’s been intriguing theatergoers all over the world – everywhere but Broadway, until now.

The musical was a collaboration among three emerging theater artists who have now fully emerged – composer Dave Malloy, director Rachel Chavkin and set designer Mimi Lien. All of them have an already impressive track record  — and promise groundbreaking work to come.

  My top 10 for 2016

  2017

The Band’s Visit

The plot of this delicate adaptation of an indie Israeli film by Eran Kolirin hardly seems the stuff of Broadway musicals: An Egyptian police band gets lost on its way to performing at an Arab cultural center in Israel, and winds up spending a single night in an isolated desert town; one of the best songs is “Welcome to Nowhere.” But this show, which transferred from Off-Broadway, hit the spot thanks to David Yazbek’s exquisite Middle Eastern score and delicious lyrics, a spot-on cast led by the incomparable Tony Shalhoub and Katrina Lenk, and a book by Itamar Moses that was both doleful and droll. We fall in love with the characters, almost all of whom harbor an underlying sadness.

My top 10 for 2017 

  2018

The Ferryman

by Jez Butterworth

By the time “The Ferryman” has ended, we have been treated to a breathtaking mix of revenge action thriller, romance, melodrama, family saga, and a feast of storytelling – ghost stories, fairy stories, stories of Irish history and politics, stories of longing and of loss. Jez Butterworth’s play about farmer Quinn Carney and his sprawling, colorful family is rich, sweeping entertainment — epic, tragic….and cinematic. Its underlying themes (such as the wages of hatred) also add heft to what seemed merely to be the most thrilling play of the Broadway season.

  My top 10 for 2018

  Shout out to To Kill A Mockingbird, which I saw the month after I made the 2018 list, and which I didn’t review until recently.

  2019

Hadestown 

What made Hadestown most thrilling when it opened Off-Broadway in 2016 remained when it opened on Broadway this year – the delightful score, which mixes sweet and sexy folk, rocking jazz, and exquisite blues. And there are some improvements, most notably the expansion of the role of Hermes as narrator, performed to perfection by the great André De Shields, who commands the stage from the get-go

  My top 10 for 2019: Hadestown, The Inheritance, Fires in the Mirror, White Noise, Oklahoma!, The Lehman Trilogy, Hamnet, Novenas for a Lost Hospital, and two hybrid theater pieces/pretend museums – The Black History Museum and The Museum of Dead Words

          Top 10 New York Theater of the Decade to Be Grateful For As 2019 is coming to an end, leaving many of us worn down , it might be more rewarding to express gratitude for favorite New York shows that opened not just this year but for the decade as a whole.

[dramatistsguild]

DG National Report: Atlanta 
by Pamela Turner

@dramatistsguild

Jo Howarth (Noonan) was a beloved and highly-respected Atlanta-based actor who was also an important role model for other, particularly women, theatre professionals. As her close friend, actor-writer Topher Payne put it, “she was the comeback kid” – a woman who left a blossoming acting career to raise children and then returned as an “over-forty” to face the “double headwinds of age and gender.” But she made it work, with accolades and awards including recognition in 2015 as one of Atlanta’s ten best local actresses. Despite that, Howarth would lament to her husband Patrick Noonan about the insecurities of finding roles for “older women” and the sense that her career might soon be over. His response that people would continue wanting to work with her because she was “a professional who respected what it means to be an actor” was borne out by the mixture of momentous grief and high praise that poured out when she passed away unexpectedly in June 2015, at the age of 58.

Out of this devastating loss, Patrick Noonan was determined to find a way to remember and honor his wife of 30 years. The result is The Jo Howarth Noonan Foundation for the Performing Arts and the first of what is intended to be an annual Mojo Fest of commissioned new work “with substantial roles for older women.” The non-profit foundation is also more broadly “dedicated to promoting and celebrating women theater artists over the age of 40.” In talking about this foundation, Noonan mentioned that “what Jo brought to a project or conversation was life experience(s).” So it made sense to start something that provided both “the work –not just roles but good roles” and “the richness of stories about older women.” The intended future of the foundation and Mojo Fest is ambitious: they hope the yearly commissions will develop a pool of good work that will be in demand across the country and become a treasured source “for a great selection of plays.” Noonan intends to nudge this along with outreach to actors and artistic directors.

With all of the excitement generated by the first Mojo Fest event last March, it was especially gratifying to see a strong presence by Guild members. Jill Patrick is a member (and former Managing Artistic Director of Working Title Playwrights) and served as producer for the Fest. Sherry Camp Paulsen, Penny Mickelbury, and I wrote three of the five commissioned ten-minute plays presented as staged readings and the evening reading was a pre-existing full-length script by Margaret Baldwin. The other two commissioned playwrights were Suehyla El-Attar and Payne. Patrick reported that Out-of-Box Theatre AD Carolyn Choe has decided to produce all of the ten-minute pieces later in the year.

The commissioned pieces were required to have the primary character be a woman over 40. The result was five plays with all-female casts of diverse ages. The directors were all women as well and nearly as diverse in age as the casts. As Paulsen remarked, “Working exclusively with women on a project about women was exhilarating. A spirited shorthand developed between us as we rehearsed and revised the script.” She also mentioned that the reading and feedback session made her realize what her play (set in a Nordstrom’s Lingerie Department) was really about and immediately changed the title from Catch and Release to TMI. That seemed especially appropriate with a play about a straying husband and “the technological age gap between baby boomer and millennial women.”

Guiding the feedback was DG member Daphne Mintz, who made her own discovery. “In prep for moderating the talkbacks…I focused on finding both shared and unique themes pertinent to what I could only describe as the predicament of being a woman. When this phrase entered my head, I bristled… But as I focused on how these plays fit into the [foundation] mission…the term took hold. If being a woman is something to celebrate, to honor…there must be challenges resulting in both victories and failures associated with that condition.”

More info: https://www.johowarthnoonan.org/

pturner@dramatistsguild.com

Actors and playwrights in Mojo Fest. Photo credit Patrick Noonan

Sherry Camp Paulsen. Photo credit Larry Paulsen

Jo Howarth Noonan in The Flying Carpet Theatre Company’s 2010 production of The Medicine Showdown

[londontheatre]

Shakespeare could be said to be the most abused playwright. His plays have been performed a million different ways. In two years I’ve seen six performances of Romeo and Juliet and four of Midsummer Night’s Dream and each one has been completely different to the other. However, when you look at the prose of a Shakespeare play, there is always the possibility to use them and move them around to produce a completely different outcome. Not sure exactly what I mean? Then nip down to the Hope Theatre where Golum is staging I Know You of Old.

Based on Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ the play is set in a chapel where a lace draped coffin is sat waiting for the funeral tomorrow. The occupant of the coffin is Hero who collapsed and died when, at the altar, her fiance Claudio (Conor O’Kane) denounced her as a wanton woman. Now although he feels so much sorrow and guilt that he may have wronged the woman he loved. This guilt is made worse by the accusing figure of Hero’s sister Beatrice. It seems the only person that Claudio can turn to for support is his companion, follower, and BFF the well-known playboy Benedick (David Fairs). Benedick tries to cheer up his friend but nothing works until Claudio sees the interaction between Benedick and Beatrice. Even though the two of them fight and spit at each other, like two cats warring over a piece of fish, Claudio decides that to atone for his actions, he will bring these two people together so that love can flourish for at least one of the sisters.

Writer David Fairs has taken Shakespeare’s original text and twisted it to produce this new story of the lives of Hero, Claudio, Benedick and Beatrice. And, as an idea, it works surprisingly well. The play itself is very modern in its setting. Claudio calls Margaret on his phone, there is an iPad with a half finished letter etc. Again, this works well and I have to give a massive bit of praise to Director Anna Marsland for using real candles rather than those battery operated ones that no matter how hard you try look fake. In fact the degree of realism was extremely good, so when Benedick is looking at a video on his phone, it was genuinely there for him – and audience members in the right seat – to see. The audience were ranged either side of the stage area and from where I was sitting, this meant occasionally missing an entrance or reaction when two people were at opposite ends of the room. A minor thing but slightly irritating

The three actors were good in their roles and Connor O’Kane has the most wonderful set of expressions. His grief over Hero’s death is etched in every line of his visage and then, in the comedy moments, he changes again. His face, when Benedick breaks into a Cher song was an absolute picture. There was a nice relationship between all three actors but I think most praise has to go to Sarah Lambie for her portrayal of the haughty, but sometimes awkwardly flirty, Beatrice. Finally, David Fairs definitely has the makings of a great physical comedian especially when he tries to hide.

I Know You of Old is a fascinating example of what can be done by taking timeless text and moving it to change not only the context but also the story itself. Writing it must have been such fun and it would be interesting to know how the creative process worked. Overall, I think it worked pretty well. I did think it was a tad too long and the ending took me a bit by surprise with its intensity in what had been, up to then, a light-hearted romp in many ways. A Shakespearean purist would probably be choking on his mead at what I Know You of Old but they would be mistaken. This is a respectful treatment of the Bard’s words proving the timelessness and fluidity of the text are its greatest achievements.

Review by Terry Eastham

GOLEM! presents I Know You Of Old, an even more radical return to their adaptation approach after 2016’s Macbeths, also at The Hope Theatre, looking for justice for missing or sidelined characters in Shakespeare’s plays.

Hero is dead. The night before the funeral, the strange circumstances of her death hang in the air – are the rumours about Hero to be trusted? At her coffin, the eye of the storm, her fiancé Claudio is wracked with grief and guilt. When Hero’s sharp-tongued cousin Beatrice arrives, closely followed by notorious playboy Benedick, Claudio sees a way to atone for former wrongs and do one last thing for Hero – he will bring this prickly pair together.

Using only Shakespeare’s original text, David Fairs re-orchestrates Much Ado About Nothing into a new, alternative dark comedy, directed by Anna Marsland, Resident Director of the National Theatre’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time.

Cast: Claudio Conor O’Kane Benedick David Fairs Beatrice Sarah Lambie

Creatives: Producer GOLEM! Director Anna Marsland Writer David Fairs

GOLEM! presents I KNOW YOU OF OLD from MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Author: DAVID FAIRS and WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE Director: ANNA MARSLAND At The Hope Theatre, Islington, N1 1RL

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