Archive for theater
Sixty-six years old and still packing a punch
Posted by: | CommentsAbove: A scene from ATC’s production of “The Glass Menagerie”
It’s the final weekend for Arizona Theatre Company’s acclaimed production of Tennessee Williams’ earth-shaking 1944 drama, The Glass Menagerie.
This is a don’t-miss production, so do your best to grab a remaining ticket or two.
It’s amazing how great art can continue to speak to us decades after its creation. Centuries later is one thing — by that time, the noise has filtered out and all that’s left is the bell-like sound of the work’s final meaning. But decades are the real test. Changes in fashion — verbal, visual and sentimental — are merciless, and what in 1944 seemed radical and powerful could easily feel unremarkable in 2010. Not so the early plays of Tennessee Williams. Go and see for yourself.
Last-minute romance
Posted by: | CommentsNo video is yet available of Ballet Arizona’s Sleeping Beauty. Above, to give a taste of the company’s excellence: Natalia Magnicaballi in Ballet Arizona’s La Sylphide a few years back.
I’ll let the print media tell you, as I assume they will, about Ballet Arizona’s lush and energetic production of The Sleeping Beauty; about how Ginger Smith danced Aurora Thursday night like a sunbeam lighting up a landscape; about Roman Zavarov’s astonishing knack for staying aloft at the exact height of a jump; about how Natalia Magnicaballi’s Lilac Fairy owned the stage at Symphony Hall by dint of her seemingly easy musicality and presence. Certainly they’ll tell you that, and if they don’t, well, I just did.
That’s the good news: Phoenix has a production of this treasured, damned-difficult-to-produce ballet to rival that of any city our size and a good many considerably bigger.
The bad news: You waited too long to get those ever-so-romantic tickets to the Valentine’s Day performance of The Sleeping Beauty and now it’s SOLD OUT! (You might be able to catch a couple tickets for the performance tonight, Feb. 13.)
Luckily for you, there are about a gazillion other Valentine’s Day-appropriate events where you can take your sweetie to curry the intimacy you so desire. Okay, Sleeping Beauty would have been No. 1 to that end, but you blew it, so make the best of your situation and choose from the following:
I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change (Mesa)
The title says it all. This Off-Broadway musical hit explores the craziness of relationships, ca. Now. The Valley perennial is in its fourth production.
Gypsy (Peoria)
There’s life in the old girl, and more romance than you might recall if all you know is the movie version. Oh yeah, and there’s stripping – not exactly romantic, but in the right direction.
Madama Butterfly (downtown Phoenix)
If tragic love somehow fulfills your emotional need and gets her or him in the right mood, you can’t do better than Puccini’s classic about love to die for.
The Play About the Naked Guy (Phoenix)
Here’s a wild card: Stray Cat’s production of a play that pits commerce against art. Commerce wins, I guess, since the play is marketed partly on the basis of the very nudity-as-sales-device it satirizes. Not your traditional Valentine’s Day date, but who said we have to be traditional?
Of awesomeness, geeks, and breaking the mold
Posted by: | CommentsJason Robert Brown sings “Being a Geek” from 13
Not many casts of musicals get kudos from the guy who wrote the songs. But on Sunday night, Jason Robert Brown pronounced the Valley Youth Theatre production of his show, 13, to be “awesome.”
“I see many productions of 13 around the country,” Brown went on to qualify, “and not a lot of them are awesome.”
I saw VYT’s 13 opening night, and I have to agree with its songwriter.
Brown was in Phoenix at the invitation of Valley Youth Theatre artistic director Bobb Cooper, who smartly decided to mount the Arizona premiere of this dazzling show about coming into adolescence, despite the fact that the original Broadway production closed in 2009 after only a brief run. Go figure.
13 tells the story of 12-year-old Evan Goldman, whose happy life in New York is disrupted by divorce. He suddenly finds himself in Indiana, where he is forced to confront his own sense of worth in the face of cliques and peer pressure. The song “Being a Geek,” sung above by Brown in a YouTube clip, sort of sums it up.
Brown not only attend the opening, but gave a concert of his songs Sunday at the Herberger, performing numbers from 13, Parade, Songs for a New World and a show that must qualify as one of the best and most original musicals all time, The Last Five Years. I confronted Brown backstage after the concert with the words, “Broadway songwriters are not supposed to be terrific singers, pianists and entertainers,” to which he shrugged and modestly replied, “I broke the mold.”
13 runs through Feb. 13.
Back to normal?
Posted by: | CommentsPATTI LUPONE in “Gypsy”
Now is the time of year when we all pretend we really liked the fact entertainment has been dominated for nearly a month by holiday fare. We smile when we say Nutcracker, we exult in A Christmas Carol, we sing Hallelujah for Handel’s Messiah, but we silently thank the deity of our choice or the coming of January.
Of course, some of us like to keep the seasonal flame alight. If you’re a holiday hanger-on, you may want to catch The Phoenix Symphony’s annual, traditional New Year’s Eve Gala: Viennese waltzes, Auld Lang Syne, and a flute of champagne. You may even wish to hear those Christmas carols one last time – I don’t blame you, they are like nothing else we hear the rest of the year. If so, check out the last two nights of Copperstate Dinner Theater’s Christmas Jukebox, an interactive event in which you choose the holiday tunes you want to hear.
On the other hand, if you’re ready to say goodbye to the holidays and hello to the middle of the theater/music/dance season, your Phoenix Symphony event of choice won’t be the New Year’s Eve Gala, it’s be the Symphony’s premier pops event of the 2009-2010 season: Broadway goddess Patti Lupone in concert Saturday, Jan. 2. ASU Gammage is also offering a sudden change-up from Christmas in the form of that chestnut of the Great White Way, Annie.
After this weekend, though, it’s back to normal – and a pretty good normal it is, too, with appearances by comedian Jason Alexander, jazz singer Dennis Rowland, the Ying Quartet and Marvin Hamlisch, plus productions of Ain’t Misbehavin’ and August” Osage County – and that’s all before Jan. 15. As usual, check out ShowUp.com to get a jump on planning your cultural month.
From films to musicals
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A scene from Little House on the Prairie, the musical
Rachel Portman is used to writing music for the movies. The 49-year-old British composer has scored more than 50 movies, including Chocolat, Cider House Rules, The Lake House and Emma, which in 1996 won Portman the first Oscar for Best Original Score ever awarded a female composer.
She’s still writing music that helps tell a story, but instead of notes to backdrop spoken dialogue, Portman is composing music to be sung. Operas and musicals are her new world.
“I come from crafting subtle musical cues for film,” says Portman by phone from London.
“In the movies, music has a supporting role.”
But on stage, sung music moves plot forward, exposes characters, delineates themes. In Little House on the Prairie, the musical based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s famous novel (which plays through Sunday at ASU Gammage), she supplies music that fulfills a double, and seemingly contradictory, purpose:
“In a musical, the songs step out of the drama, even though they’re still part of it. Bizarrely, it seems to work. It’s the most amazing form, because you’re stepping into the spotlight each time, but you’re also moving the drama forward, making the audience feel something has happened.”
Before Little House, Portman composed an opera based on Antoine Saint-Exupery’s famous children’s novel. Of the difference between opera and musical, Portman notes:
Musicals are driven by commercial interest, operas aren’t. That gives the composer a lot more freedom in opera. In an opera, it’s up to the composer and librettist to decide everything. With a new musical, there’s all sorts of input from directors and producers. I come from working in films, and in film, you want your pieces of music to disappear as gently as possible. You let the music slide away. In musicals, that kind of training was no help at all. It’s all about how the songs ends, so as to make the audience applaud.”
Despite the challenges of the form, the musical has taken Portman away from film, at least for the present. Her next project is another musical – on a subject she’d rather not discuss until all the production details are in place.
George is Dead, but traveling the country
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There was a time, not so very long ago, when Broadway-bound plays and musicals stopped briefly in Boston or Philadelphia on their way to New York. A month or six weeks out-of-town, a little retuning, and a show was ready for the Wintergarden or the Music Box. In 1943 a show went into Boston called Away We Go!, and came out a month later with a few small changes and a new title: Oklahoma!
The process is a lot more complicated now. It’s not unusual for a play to go through many incarnations before getting to New York, traveling a lot further afield than Bean Town. And that’s good news for Arizona. George is Dead, the new play by Elaine May (screen credits: The Birdcage, Heaven Can Wait) was originally one of a set of three one-act plays done in San Francisco in 2006. Several rewrites later, it’s arrived as a full-length comedy starring Marlo Thomas and Don Murray, presented by Arizona Theatre Company. After a run in Tucson, George is Dead comes to Phoenix.
“One way or the other, I’m going to see the United States,” jokes Julian Schlossberg about his peregrinations as Elaine May’s producer.
“Elaine is a very special writer. We’ve always felt this was a terrific play but it needed to be developed in a way that prepares it for Broadway. That’s the ultimate goal.”
Getting there may require taking the long route, Schlossberg says, but it’s worth it for the sheer quality of the journey:
“When you’re dealing with someone like Elaine, you just hope you don’t become too smart for the room. Some people dumb down (to get laughs). Elaine couldn’t do that if she wanted to. She’s funny but never moronic.”
Schlossberg, whose credits range from TV to movies to the stage, considers himself a producer in a sense of the word now fading from view:
“Producing has become a very strange credit. These days, if you can write a check, you’re a producer. Still, in every show there’s a lead producer, and if he does his job well he will find the property, the director and the cast, and he’ll work with the writer and director to make sure there’s a certain vision of what’s trying to be accomplished.”
It’s the lead producer’s job to watch the play like a hawk to make sure the vision is fulfilled.
“If we go awry, I as the producer will say ‘Wait a minute, we’re off task,’ and call a meeting.”
The number of straight (non-musical) plays being done in New York has increased over the last few years, and Schlossberg believes he knows why:
“Because there are more and more major stars willing to go on stage, and while they can’t sing or dance, they can act. Marlo Thomas had a major hit TV series (That Girl in the ‘60s and ‘70s) but she went back to study with Lee Strasberg,” the famed acting teacher.
“All the really smart TV and movie actors go back to the stage. Henry Fonda did it. Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman, too. Without appearing before a live audience, an actor can become a caricature.”
Sex and the marine biologist
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Cathy Dresbach in Actors Theatre’s Boom
When you see the words, “Sex to change the course of the world,” what do you think of?
Yeah, me too.
But the marine biologist character in Boom, the newest production by Actors Theatre, means something very different when he posts an offer on Craigslist – and therein is the crux of the play written by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb.
Boom, first produced in New York last year, is the most widely done new American play of the current season, with nine productions nationwide in 2009-2010.
This gives pause to director Ron May, whose preferences are generally for less popular work.
“I’m not normally drawn to mainstream stuff,” says May, who is both director of patron services at Actors Theatre, and artistic director of the smaller Stray Cat Theatre.
May, 38, didn’t take Nachtrieb’s script to reflect the mainstream when he first read it last spring. Its story of a scientist convinced that the world is ending who snags a nymphomaniac journalism student with an Internet ad wasn’t exactly Neil Simon. Perhaps the unusual plot’s relatively wide acceptance is just one more indication that the world is catching up with itself.
“It’s tricky,” May says, when asked how he negotiates between an administrative job for one company, and being the artistic head of another.
“I do theater from the time I get up until I go to bed. There are actually worse situations to be in.”
At Stray Cat, May has directed such thins as The Laramie Project, A Clockwork Orange, Trainspotting, Fat Pig and Pulp.
“Stray Cat has a more indie sensibility than Actors Theatre. I can get away there with smaller, more intimate shows that wouldn’t play well in front of 300 people at the Herberger (where Actors Theatre performs).”
When he directs at Actors Theatre, May enjoys the luxury of a fully professional production. The rules permit Stray Cat only one Equity (union) actor per season; at Actors Theatre, Equity is the norm.
“It’s a great opportunity for me,” he says, “and I thank (Actors Theatre artistic director) Matthew Weiner for it.”
Mr. Franklin of Philadelphia
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David Lewis as Benjamin Franklin
David Lewis was an actor before he turned to playwriting, and now he’s an actor again – in one of his own plays. Mr. Franklin of Philadelphia, which runs today through Nov. 15, is a one-man exploration of the kite-flying Founding Father.
“I acted for many years, but at a certain point I let that part of my life go dormant,” says Lewis, an Arizona native with more than 30 years experience in the theater.
“I’ve always enjoyed writing, I just never really made the time to concentrate on it consistently. Several years ago I committed to writing a screenplay with a friend, and having gotten in the habit of writing on a daily basis, I started to finish a number of ideas that had been swirling around my subconscious. I have several plays of all shapes and sizes ready when the opportunity presents itself.”
With his wife Tot Long, Lewis formed a company called Sasha Productions and started to produce some of those plays. One was about Marilyn Monroe. Another concerned an aging painter and the model who reawakened his passion for art.
For his next play, he’s looked to the past and to a figure almost mythic – not to say a little frumpy by some standards. Why?
“He was certainly the most protean of our Founding Fathers—Jefferson not excepted,” Lewis says. “His ideas about self-reliance and thrift formed the backbone of the American middle class. Politically he was a much stronger supporter of democracy than many of his contemporaries. He also feared the power of the uneducated mob. So he believed fervently in an educated and enlightened electorate. All of these things are just as pertinent now as they were then. Plus, he had enough humor to leaven the serious stuff. It is an entertainment, after all.”
Lewis is cautiously optimistic about the Valley’s taste for new work. While admitting “the environment for anything new and different in Phoenix is treacherous, at best,” he also believes that “with four million people crammed into the Valley, there must be a few thousand who’d like to see something they haven’t seen before.”
What’s it like to memorize and deliver his own words?
“The chief advantage of acting a part you wrote is that you can feel free to edit it as you go along. If I forget a certain word or turn of phrase I’m sure the playwright won’t be too mad at me. As far as playing Ben Franklin, it wasn’t my intention when I started writing the play, it’s just how it worked out. I must say it is very nice to be back on stage after more than a decade off.”
High flying
Posted by: | CommentsIf you haven’t yet seen Arizona Theatre Company’s production of The Kite Runner because you’re wondering how they could possibly have transfered such a rich novel to the stage, you can go to YouTube and get a taste of how ATC did it. The clip above shows the opening of the play; go to YouTube and search “kite runner” / “Arizona Theatre” to find two others.
Would you please repeat that?
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Travel and Leisure magazine has rated American cities for their theater, and Phoenix/Scottsdale came in 28th out of 30. Only Miami and Honolulu were lower. (We fared just slightly better in the categories of classical music and museums/galleries.)
I can’t fault the magazine’s top ten — New York, Chicago, etc. — though I think Los Angeles (rated only 15th) deserves to be up higher. After that, I really wonder what’s going on with the editors, who seem to be laboring under the assumption there is an inverse relationship between warm weather and culture. Kansas City came in 12th. I lived in K.C. in the late ’80s and unless things have transformed on a massive scale, there is no way I’d trade Phoenix theater for Kansas City’s. Santa Fe pulled 21st place – ahead of San Diego! Santa Fe is an indispensable location for opera and chamber music, but the theater I’ve seen there is spotty in quality and the amount of it quite thin.
Let us know what you think. Click on the title of this entry and it will come up as a separate window, with space below to leave a comment. Feel free to say if you think T&L is dead wrong – or right.
