Live Design: Blood Knot and Richard III

Off Broadway this week with an Athol Fugard revival and Kevin Spacey (pictured) before the curtain rings down on the Bridge Project at BAM this Sunday.

New York Theater News: Sons of the Prophet

Can't quite figure out the rave reviews for this one, but at least it wasn't written by an actor or a screenwriter. Too much of that around.

Phedre live

Emulating the Met and its popular operacasts, the UK's National Theatre has started NT Live, which kicks off here in the New York City area with live telecasts of Jean Racine's Phedre, as adapted by Ted Hughes and directed by Nicholas Hytner. Helen Mirren and Dominic Cooper (one of Hytner's History Boys, recently seen in Mamma Mia!) star. Sounds like something worth getting off the couch for.

From the PR:

"In the New York City area, screenings can be seen at Film Society of Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Director’s Guild Theatre, Cinema Arts Centre, Fairfield University (CT), Monmouth University (NJ) & the Shakespeare Theatre Company (DC).

The broadcast will also be shown on screens across the United States including the Mann Theatre in Hollywood, the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago and the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis and many more.

WHEN:
The launch of NT Live is Thursday, June 25.

Broadcasts in the New York City area include:
●The Director’s Guild Theatre – Thursday, June 25 at 7:30pm
●Monmouth University, NJ – Thursday, June 25 at 7pm
●Brooklyn Academy of Music – Thursday, July 9 at 7pm
●Film Society of Lincoln Center Walter Reade Theater – Monday, July 6 at 4pm and 8pm
●Fairfield University, CT – Saturday, July 11 at 2pm
●Shakespeare Theatre Company (DC) – Monday, June 29 & Monday, July 13 at 7:30pm
●Cinema Arts Centre (Long Island) – Friday, July 24 at 7:30pm

The press release says about Phedre (co-starring Margaret Tyzack): "Consumed by an uncontrollable passion for her young stepson and believing Theseus, her absent husband, to be dead, Phedre (Mirren) confesses her darkest desires and enters the world of nightmare. When Theseus returns, alive and well, Phedre, fearing exposure, accuses her stepson of rape. The result is carnage."

Coincidentally, I just saw Jules Dassin's 1962 take on the tale, a contemporized version featuring the toothsome Melina Mercouri and a miscast Anthony Perkins. An interesting try, prettily filmed in Greece, but this well-reviewed production should be more the thing.

Live Design: End-of-season wrap-up

The most production-heavy Broadway season since 1984 has come to an end, and I look at no less than eight revivals herein, including John Glover, Bill Irwin, Nathan Lane and John Goodman in Waiting for Godot at Studio 54 (pictured). Lots of awards nominees are among them; I'll be at the Drama Desks on Sunday night, mingling with the bold and the beautiful.

Byrne this

You have to take these dubiously sourced items (scroll down) with a grain of salt, but if there's any truth to it and Gabriel Byrne really thinks theater is dead I may have to pull him aside for a talking-to the next time I see him in my neighborhood. Good as he was in A Touch of the Poet some seasons back he must have known that odd play wasn't going to draw a younger crowd, so why diminish the accomplishment? He was aces in that and in Eugene O'Neill's A Moon for the Misbegotten and with luck we'll see him someday in Long Day's Journey into Night; he could be a definitive Tyrone. Before that, maybe he could satisfy his appetite for youth by going into Mamma Mia! or Shrek the Musical or something family-friendly; hey, if he's good, maybe the audience will grow up to follow him as he works his way through the O'Neill canon. Or maybe she should just sit down with his new In Treatment co-stars Hope Davis and Alison Pill, who have thriving theater careers, and get a good dose of the talking cure to chase away those Broadway blues.

Live Design: A package of plays

High season on and Off Broadway continues with plays galore, led by Yasmina Reza's smash God of Carnage (pictured), with Marcia Gay Harden, James Gandolfini, Hope Davis and Jeff Daniels at war with each other. And much more still to come before the Broadway season wraps up on April 30.

A modesty proposal

I took in a preview performance of Irena's Vow (pictured) yesterday at the Walter Kerr. A hit Off Broadway, it should be equally well-received when it opens tonight, judging by the tumultuous curtain call. Tovah Feldshuh, who plays the real-life Polish Catholic servant who sheltered 12 Jews in a Nazi commandant's home as the Holocaust raged outside her doorstep, then graciously ceded the stage to Irena's daughter, who spoke movingly of her mother and answered a few questions. (Be sure to ask her about the commandant's fate. It's a play in itself.)

Afterwards, I looked at the Playbill bios. Feldshuh's takes up most of a page, but I don't deny her the space. She's accomplished, and may very well add another Tony nomination (and perhaps a first-time win) and Drama Desk accolade to a string of awards. She's gone the distance in showbiz and it's OK for her to recount the miles.

Buy playwright Dan Gordon's entry gave me pause. It begins: "Dan Gordon (Playwright) is a master storyteller who creates indelible characters and relationships, which have afforded actors the opportunity to play some of their most unforgettable roles." It sticks in the craw. I'm sure that kind of self-salesmanship goes over well in Tinseltown, where arms are permanently out of joint from everyone's patting themselves on the back so much, but it's unseemly for Broadway. A simple record will suffice. And the bloviating is unearned. I'm pretty sure Denzel Washington puts The Hurricane, which Gordon wrote, fourth or fifth on his list of accomplishments--which is to say, far ahead of where the actors involved in The Assignment and Murder in the First probably list those forgettable credits. It's nice that he's keeping Josh Hartnett and Linda Gray employed but master storytelling doesn't necessarily factor in when remounting Rain Man and Terms of Endearment for the London stage. You've delivered the goods this time, so stick to the facts and get on with it.

I like Susan Sarandon's Playbill bio for Exit the King, another worthy show playing on the Main Stem in a good season for plays. This is it in its entirety: "Susan Sarandon (Queen Marguerite) is a mother, actor, and activist. She is very happy to be returning to Broadway for the first time since she appeared in the 1972 production of Gore Vidal's An Evening With Richard Nixon." Very classy. Learn from it.

Plays: Fonda, Nixon, Zombie

Jane Fonda returns to the stage in 33 Variations (pictured, with Susan Kellermann). (When I saw it, there was equal commotion over her frequent film co-star, Robert Redford, being in the audience.) Plus: Lynn Nottage's powerful Ruined, and a creepy solo show, Zombie, for the Live Design website. And Cynthia Nixon tries to stay calm, cool, and collected in the Roundabout production of Lisa Loomer's Distracted, for the New York Theater News site.

Chance encounter, plus Ferrell-Bush

The HBO film Taking Chance, which first aired last month, is its most-watched original production in five years, and I finally caught up with it. A taciturn Kevin Bacon plays the real-life Michael Strobl, a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer and Desert Storm veteran, who in 2004 escorted the remains of slain Iraq War soldier Chance Phelps to his home in Wyoming for burial. Phelps, a private first class, was 19 (he has posthumously promoted to lance corporal). Strobl's experiences on the road form a mosaic of grief for the young man and, by extension, his fallen comrades, which the movie presents to us in a movingly edited montage of reflective moments culled from the film (which runs a brief, and stately, 78 minutes). Upping the emotional ante, pictures and video footage of Phelps are shown as the movie ends. You won't come away unmoved.

But I question a recent Wall Street Journal editorial on the production, which suggested that this is the sort of Iraq War picture Hollywood should be making, not hand-wringing, hopeless flops like Stop-Loss and Lions for Lambs. I'd agree that those movies could be better, and I can't blame audiences for tuning out their gloom and doom. But there are some things they get right about the toll the war has taken on its combatants and its country, raising questions that fall outside the consciously apolitical scope of Taking Chance. It may be, too, that for most Americans this war is a TV war, and treatments of it are more suited for TV.

Or--and this is something conservative outlets are unlikely to consider, or support--it may that the war's absence from television, and specifically coverage of escorts and processions like the one depicted in the film, is the exact reason for its success. The Bush administration vetoed such news from the homefront, and to its credit the Obama administration is reversing those polices. As Taking Chance shows, it is neither tasteless nor exploitative for the media to take stock of our lost soldiers. The film, which Strobl co-wrote, opens the door on this "taboo" area, and as a nation we will be all the better for being able to see what this war is costing us every day.

For New York theater watchers, Taking Chance is notable for the many decorated actors in its supporting cast, including Julie White, Danny Hoch, Tom Wopat, Matthew Morrison, and, in a vivid scene, Tom Aldredge. Coincidentally this weekend, HBO telecast live the penultimate performance of Will Ferrell's You're Welcome America: A Final Night with George W. Bush, the record-smashing show that single-handedly salvaged the Cort's reputation as a flop house. I relished the prospect of Bush being taken down, but outside of a few inspired moments the show fell flat, and not just because filmed live performances tend to waver into static outside of the room.


As Ferrell's movies tend to do the production too often confused coarseness with humor, and the Bush onstage bore scant resemblance to the one we were stuck with for the better (or worse) part of this decade. On paper, and on Saturday Night Live, the affable frat boy dunce personae of Ferrell and Bush were evenly matched, but the show missed the scary part of Bush, which Oliver Stone's more considered (and funnier) W. got: He believed in everything he did, even when he delivered the latest bad news initiative with that nervous, unnerving smirk of his.

The Bush show did not end as Ferrell's Bush show did, with the president giving us the finger (a gesture partially obscured by a departing audience member); history be damned, he thought he had done well by his country. But Ferrell wants to drop the facade to let us to know what he thinks, or, more to the point, what he thinks his presumably liberal audience thinks of the departed president. (It's hard to see Ferrell getting exercised about anything.) In the show's weirdest and most uncomfortable moment, Ferrell-as-Bush stopped with the sophomoric jokes for a moment of silence for the victims of the Iraq War, a messianic gesture that was wrong-headed on numerous levels. If the right's sanctimony over coffins and funerals is finally at an end, I think the left should have to give up its smug superiority. As our new president counsels, we're all in this together.

Designing women

As Women's History Month begins, a reminder of a special exhibit, "Curtain Call: Celebrating a Century of Women Designing for Live Performance," showing through May 2 at the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center:

A collaboration with the League of Professional Theatre Women, this exhibition features works by 110 distinguished designers of scenery, costumes, lighting, props, and projections from various performing arts disciplines, including dance, theater, and opera, from the 1890s to the present. Including photographs, sketches, drawings, set models, costumes, performance videos, ground plans, and interviews with designers, augmented by public programs and educational workshops, it focuses on women designers as participants in the major artistic movements of the period, from experimental theater through the development of modern and, later, postmodern, dance. The exhibition also illuminates women’s roles in developing new technologies and materials for performance: for example, women took the lead in the new field of lighting design, from turn-of-the-19th-century experiments to the computerization of cues in the 20th century. The exhibition also investigates the connections among women designers and women-run businesses.

This exhibition is made possible in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

New York Theater News: Frost/Nixon

Just in time for the Big Event tonight. I don't think it's going to win anything--I suspect Mickey Rourke's somewhat exaggerated but irresistible "comeback" will deprive Frank Langella the chance to be the tenth actor to win both a Tony and an Oscar for the same part--but Frost/Nixon was better than I thought it was going to be, and it's too bad it's not doing much business. It's the sort of rock-solid, "grownup" entertainment that everyone says they want to see more of, then don't support--and a whole lot better than The Reader.

As for predictions, well, this is the first time in years I'm not filling out a ballot, and with the pressure off I hope to just sit back and enjoy the show--which will have to be mega-entertaining, to make up for the unexciting, crepe-hanging nominees. I've seen them all, and while the only one that pains me is The Reader, the rest are indicative of a blah 2008 at the cinema. Best to Hugh Jackman, a terrific Tonys host, and for the movies to get their mojo back this year once last year is commemorated.

Live Design: Year-end Broadway

Seen and Heard wraps another year with Matthew Risch and Stockard Channing (pictured) in Pal Joey, the Piven-less Speed-the-Plow, and a White Christmas that comes in just under the wire.

Henry Hewes Design Awards wins announced

Here are some awards I can get behind. Congratulations to the winners, all of whom did outstanding work.

"Five theater artists will be honored by the Henry Hewes Design Awards Committee during the presentation of its 44th Annual Awards at a Sardi's luncheon on Friday, December 12. Ninety-five theater artists were nominated for outstanding artistry in 62 productions presented during the 2007-2008 New York theater season.

The HHDA Committee named top honorees in four categories: Scenic Design, Costume Design, Lighting Design and Notable Effects. The Awards will be presented by Scott Pask, Clint Ramos, Natasha Katz and Kevin Cunningham, all of whom were 2007 honorees.

The Henry Hewes Design Awards celebrate work in venues on Broadway, Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway. All nominated designs must have originated in United States productions. The Hewes Design Awards Committee considered more than 200 productions when making its nominations. Those feted receive honoraria and citations at the luncheon. Originally known as the Maharam Awards at their inception in 1965, the Hewes Awards were later called the American Theatre Wing Design Awards in honor of the Wing’s support of the committee. They were renamed in 1999 for noted theater critic and advocate Henry Hewes, who created the awards and served as a board member of the American Theatre Wing until his death in 2006 at age 89.

Lincoln Center Theater's South Pacific and Atlantic Theater Company's Trumpery each received four nominations; six productions gained three nominations each and 15 others earned a pair. Past Hewes Design Award recipients David Korins and Howell Binkley led all nominees with four nominations each for their design work during the 2007-2008 season. Designers Mark Wendland and Donald Holder each received three nominations. A total of 11 artists received more than one nomination.

The Henry Hewes Design Awards Committee includes theater critics Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, chair; Dan Bacalzo; David Barbour; David Cote; Tish Dace; Glenda Frank; Mario Fratti; and Joan Ungaro.

The winners are:

Scenic Design

Mark Wendland: Next to Normal (Second Stage Theatre), Richard III (Classic Stage Company), Unconditional (Labyrinth Theater Company)

Costume Design

Katrina Lindsay: Les Liaisons Dangerueses (Roundabout Theatre Company)

Lighting Design

Donald Holder: Cyrano de Bergerac, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Roundabout Theatre Company), South Pacific (Lincoln Center Theater)

Notable Effects:

Jim Findlay and Jeff Sugg (projection design): The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island (Vineyard Theatre, pictured)

League of Independent Theater forms

This came in over the transom:

A team of prominent independent theater artists and producers proudly announce the creation of The League of Independent Theater, Inc. (LIT), a membership-based advocacy group and business league representing New York’s City Off-Off Broadway community.

The mission of LIT is to promote the economic and artistic interests of its members, ensuring that independent theater remains economically viable for its practitioners. The organization will advocate on behalf of the decades-old tradition of Off-Off Broadway theater.

Membership in LIT is open to any artist, company or technician working in theaters of 99 seats or less in New York City who can demonstrate participation in a minimum of three productions. Theater service organizations serving Off-Off Broadway are encouraged to apply.

Says LIT Executive Director John Clancy, an acclaimed director and Off-Off Broadway veteran who co-founded the New York International Fringe Festival: “I haven’t been as enthused and optimistic about an organization since the early days of the Fringe. Our members are entrepreneurs, business-savvy, and wildly creative. Our job is simply to harness that remarkable energy and effect real change in our territory.”

LIT’s priorities include:
1) Achieving substantive, meaningful changes to the Actors’ Equity Showcase Code to respond to the needs of the independent theater community.
2) Advocating for the establishment and preservation of Off-Off Broadway venues and rehearsal spaces, including lobbying for arts-friendly amendments to the building and tax codes and developing industry-enhancing relationships with real estate developers and interests.
3) Increasing funding from grant-giving organizations as well as supporting the campaigns of public officials who actively promote the independent theater community.

LIT is organized to qualify as a 501(c)(6) business league in order to engage in advocacy and lobbying for its members, without the lobbying limits applicable to 501(c)(3) organizations.

LIT’s Executive Director: John Clancy, Executive Artistic Director, Clancy Productions

LIT’s board of directors includes:
Paul Bargetto, Director, East River Commedia
Martin Denton, Executive Director, The New York Theatre Experience, Inc.
Shay Gines, Executive Director, The New York Innovative Theatre Foundation
Michael Goldfried, Director
Robert Honeywell, Co-Artistic Director of Brick Theater
Leonard Jacobs, Theater Critic, New York Press
Abby Marcus, Managing Director, Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company
John Pinckard, Producer
Moira Stone, Actor
Erez Ziv, Co-Founder/Managing Director, Horse Trade Theater Group

Fonda, stage right

I'll believe it when I see it--Annette Bening was a no-show last season--but Jane Fonda, a Tony nominee in the early 60s, is set to make her Broadway return in a new play by The Laramie Project's Moises Kaufman, 33 Variations, which bowed at Arena Stage and played the La Jolla Playhouse in April. The L.A. Times review was a bit of a hedge--"a beautifully wrought Lifetime special for philharmonic regulars"--but Fonda, a spiky 70, will at least be more comfortable up there than Julia Roberts or Katie Holmes. Maybe she can warm up by taking over from Estelle Parsons in August: Osage County; given plenty of Fonda family dysfunction to draw from, she'd kill in the part (seriously, if she gets the role of cantankerous Viola Weston in the movie, she'll win her third Oscar). Here she is the 1985 stage-to-screen adaptation Agnes of God.

Noises off

Theater die-hards are still debating the consequences of introducing microphones and amplified sound to the stage, a done deal it would seem to me here in the 21st century. But it could come undone if this Federal Communications Commission item is passed. Left to her own limited devices I'm not sure Katie Holmes can grate any more loudly than she does in All My Sons. From PR sent yesterday:

"Actors wear wireless microphones that transmit on frequencies soon to be compromised by consumer devices. Without publishing proposed rules and allowing public discourse, the FCC, pressured by leading technology firms, will vote on this issue on November 4, 2008: Election Day. The FCC’s own engineers’ report demonstrates that the technology in place to prevent interference is ineffective.

The Broadway League has asked the FCC to refrain from voting to approve new devices that will transmit in the “white space” radio spectrum, currently occupied by wireless microphones. Wireless microphones are an essential tool of the live performance industry, used in the daily operations of countless theatres and non-profit performance venues, sports arenas, and concert halls across the country.

These comments were filed in response to the FCC’s announcement that it will vote on an order potentially opening the white spaces to portable internet devices employing spectrum sensing technology intended to prevent interference with wireless microphones. However, a preliminary review of an FCC engineers’ report issued on October 15, 2008 demonstrates repeated failures of spectrum sensing to recognize wireless transmissions. While regulations that include reference to spectrum sensing technology would rely on unproven technology, the FCC may forge ahead and adopt new rules without allowing interested parties any prior opportunity to ensure the Commission took adequate steps to address the needs of all wireless microphone users.

Theatres in urban areas are at particular risk because the complex radio environment is beyond any measure of control. Not only is the quality of the performances at risk, but also the safety of all who work in these venues will be compromised. Accordingly, sound engineers will have no way to locate or report the source of interference should a portable device disrupt a live performance.

The Broadway League believes any action on this issue is premature. However, should the FCC go forward with new regulations at this time, they strongly urge the Commission to recognize incumbent white space users and, at the very minimum, employ basic protections to address the needs of Broadway. The Broadway League has been working with theatres across the country to help get the message to the FCC of the many consequences of a hasty decision. This week it also reached out to the Commission with an ad campaign (see attached) to help bring attention to the serious situation this premature vote creates.

The New York City Council recently adopted a Resolution urging the FCC to open a formal comment period on its engineers’ report before putting the issue to a vote and to allocate sufficient channels for current wireless microphone users.

Representative Carolyn B. Maloney echoed the City Council’s sentiments and said, “The FCC should not be trying to rush this decision out the door this way in the closing days of this administration without adequate public comment. This action puts the theatre industry at risk.”

Nina Lannan, chairman of The Broadway League, commented, “Broadway contributes more than $5 billion to the City of New York and generates the equivalent of 44,000 full time jobs. We must be assured that these devices work, not only for Broadway, but also for theatres across America too. Touring Broadway productions help infuse the nation’s economy with over $3 billion annually. “

Tom Viertel, producer, stated, “Our industry relies on clear, consistent wireless microphone transmissions. The Broadway Unions and Guilds have joined forces with us to demand notice and opportunity to be heard before any further FCC proceedings because our jobs and lives are on the line. Many groups, including the National Association of Broadcasters and Sports Technology Alliance, also oppose the FCC’s actions which threaten their ability to conduct businesses and employees’ livelihoods.”

Richard Pilbrow wins Wally Russell Award

The LDI trade show, in full swing this weekend in Las Vegas, is highlighted by today's presentation of the Wally Russell Award to the venerable lighting designer Richard Pilbrow, currently on Broadway with A Tale of Two Cities (pictured). As a former editor of Lighting Dimensions magazine (which has been made over into Live Design), I attended LDI from 1994-2000, and can't imagine a more fitting choice for this prestigious honor than the wise and witty Pilbrow. My feature on the musical's design will appear in the November issue of Live Design.

Plays: Horse sense

Revival fever continues on Broadway with Daniel Radcliffe, naked emotionally (and otherwise), in Equus. Plus: To Be or Not To Be: Not to be. And: The captivating Frank Langella in A Man for All Seasons.

39 Steps lively

The 39 Steps, which opened at the Roundabout's American Airlines, and is now at the Cort, will relocate to the Helen Hayes come January. I enjoy when Broadway shows roam all over town, which was commonplace in a bygone era but happens infrequently today. (I think the last was Chicago, but its multiple transfers have occurred over 12 years; The 39 Steps opened in January.) By all means go see it, but check first if it's on the move.

TKTS booth re-opens

Ten months after its "debut" in the film I Am Legend (where it's flanked by posters for long-shuttered shows), the new and improved TKTS booth has opened for business in Duffy Square. Stop by at 6:30 tonight for the star-studded gala opening. The addition of credit card purchases and a "Play Only" window are welcome additions to the 35-year-old concept, but whatever you do don't part with your shrinking entertainment dollar for To Be or Not to Be, now stinking up the Friedman/Biltmore.