Archives for 2012

In today’s Wall Street Journal I review three productions currently on the boards at Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre: David Hare’s Skylight, Tom Stoppard’s Heroes, and Richard III. All are superior. Here’s an excerpt.
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Theater isn’t about theaters. You can see a great show in a living room–or a parking lot. The only thing that a good-looking performance space guarantees is a performance. But when a well-run company builds a well-designed new house, then uses it with taste and imagination, the plays that you see there will be all the more satisfying for being enacted in a space that sets them off in the way that a first-class frame enhances a first-rate painting.
Wisconsin’s American Players Theatre did just that in 2009 when it opened the Touchstone Theatre, a low-slung, elegantly simple 201-seat indoor house located a stone’s throw-and-a-half from the 1,148-seat rural amphitheatre where the company has been headquartered since 1979. Having spent three decades presenting Shakespeare and Shaw in the Up-the-Hill Theatre, APT wisely opted to use the Touchstone to broaden its repertory with modern fare. This summer’s offerings include David Hare’s “Skylight” and Tom Stoppard’s “Heroes,” two smartly written small-cast-single-set shows…
Mr. Hare’s unhappy lovers embody England’s latter-day class conflicts: Tom (Brian Mani) is a nouveau-riche Thatcherite entrepreneur with a boorish streak, while Kyra (Greta Wohlrabe) is a chastened idealist who has renounced her upper-middle-class background to teach poor children. But both characters are much more complicated than they look…
APT knows how to spot and cultivate up-and-comers, and Ms. Wohlrabe, who made her company debut last year, is a formidably gifted artist who, like Carrie Coon before her, oozes star quality. You can read her feelings off her face as easily as you can the temperature off a king-sized thermometer….
“Heroes,” Mr. Stoppard’s English-language adaptation of Gérald Sibleyras’ 2002 play about three World War I veterans who live in a French hospital for old soldiers, is wholly different in tone from “Skylight,” but no less moving in its quieter way. Next to nothing happens to this ill-sorted trio of decrepit comrades (played with great conviction by Paul Bentzen, John Lister and Jonathan Smoots). All they do is sit on a balcony, watch the world go by without them, and long to live out what’s left of their lives with such flair as they can muster between them. “One must strive a little for the epic,” says Gustave (Mr. Smoots), their querulous leader, knowing full well that his striving will be in vain. Yet here as in “Waiting for Godot,” after which “Heroes” is obviously modeled, the vanity of human wishes is made the subject of dark, bittersweet comedy….
Just a short walk up the hill from the Touchstone, APT is mounting a “Richard III” from whose unassuming yet comprehensive excellence a great many better-known theater companies could learn a thing or two…or three. Set in Edwardian times and staged with brutally lucid directness by James DeVita, it centers on James Ridge, who plays Shakespeare’s crippled monster of ambition as a snide, balding comedian with a strong resemblance to Fred Astaire who makes no secret of being delighted with his monstrosity–until his façade crumbles…
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Read the whole thing here.

“One should never make one’s début with a scandal; one should reserve that to give interest to one’s old age.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I’m thrilled to announce that Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, will be transferring directly from Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven to Philadelphia’s Wilma Theater, one of America’s top regional companies, where it will open on November 16 and run through December 2.
Needless to say, the Wilma is mounting the same production of Satchmo at the Waldorf that was first seen earlier this year at Shakespeare & Company and will be opening at Long Wharf on October 3. John Douglas Thompson is the star, Gordon Edelstein the director.
If you haven’t seen Satchmo, come. If you have, come again.
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Adriane Lenox leads the company of the 1999 Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate in Cole Porter’s “Another Op’nin’, Another Show”:

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

BROADWAY:

• Bring It On (musical, G, closes Jan. 20, reviewed here)

• Evita (musical, PG-13, most performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

• Once (musical, G/PG-13, all performances sold out last week, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

• Tribes (drama, PG-13, closes Jan. 6, reviewed here)

IN NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, ONTARIO:

• Misalliance (serious comedy, G/PG-13, far too talky for children, closes Oct. 27, reviewed here)

• Present Laughter (comedy, PG-13, closes Oct. 28, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN EAST HADDAM, CONN.:

• Carousel (musical, G, closes Sept. 29, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY OFF BROADWAY:

• The Train Driver (drama, PG-13, reviewed here)

“Those who never quote, in return are seldom quoted.”
Isaac D’Israeli, Curiosities of Literature

Tennessee Williams is interviewed by Bill Boggs:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday and Wednesday.)

“When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.”
Henry David Thoreau, journal entry, Jan. 13, 1857

Fifty-five years ago yesterday, Louis Armstrong gave an interview in which he spoke out publicly about Orval Faubus’ unsuccessful attempt to block the desegregation of the public schools of Little Rock, Arkansas. An uncensored version of that interview is one of the key scenes in Satchmo at the Waldorf, which opens on October 3 at New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre.
Long Wharf has just posted a TV ad for Satchmo at the Waldorf on YouTube. I thought you might enjoy seeing it: