terry t buzzed up: Lars Vilks: why some European artists are building panic rooms

3 seconds ago 2010-03-11T07:56:01-08:00

The Two River Theater Company in Red Bank, NJ will present the world premiere of Orestes a Tragic Romp, a modern adaptation of Euripides’ tragedy by Anne Washburn, March 23-April 11.

The show, which will officially open March 27, will be directed by Two River artistic director Aaron Posner. It will be presented as a co-production with the Folger Theatre in Washington, DC, where the play recently finished a popular run.

The cast will feature Jay Sullivan as Orestes, Holly Twyford as Electra, Chris Genebach as Menelaus, and Lauren Culpepper, Rebecca Hart, Marissa Molnar, Margo Seibert, and Rachel Zampelli as the chorus.

The creative team will consist of composer, co-music director and sound designer James Sugg; set designer Daniel Conway; costume designer Jessica Ford; lighting designer Tyler Micoleau ; and movement director Patty Gallagher.

Posner said in a statement, “Greek tragedy pretty much has it all. Huge passions, extreme situations, murder, madness, gods descending from on high… not to mention a singing Greek chorus. It has been an amazing journey putting all the pieces together to turn a 2,400 year old tragedy into a genuinely fresh, engaging, and entertaining play for a contemporary audience. I’m extremely pleased with what we have done.”

Washburn’s credits include The Internationalist, Apparition, The Ladies< Marathon, October/November, I Have Loved Strangers and The Communist Dracula Pageant.

The Two River Theater Company is located at 21 Bridge Avenue in Red Bank. For tickets, call (732) 345-1400 or visit trtc.org.

Bailiwick Chicago has announced its 2010 spring-summer season programming. The slate is set to include a reading of a new musical, the Chicago premiere of Joe DiPietro’s new play and Chicago’s first homegrown production of the Tony-winning musical Aida.

The concert readings of the new musical Bloom will take place April 16-17 at Chicago Center for the Performing Arts. According to Bailiwick, the show by Peter Foley, Matthew Heimer, Andy Siegel and Kevin Mayes “explores history’s first speculative financial bubble, the Dutch Tulip Mania. In the time of Rembrandt, rich and poor alike reach beyond their means to buy and sell tulips, bidding them up to ridiculous sums in a quest for wealth, power, fame and love. It’s a 17th-century version of our modern-day housing bubble, set to a baroque pop score.”

Elizabeth Magolius will direct with Brett Rowe providing musical direction.

Fking Men, by DiPietro (Memphis, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change), will begin previews June 18 toward a June 26 opening at Theatre Building Chicago. (The closing date was unspecified, but the play is expected to run into July according to Bailiwick’s website). The play, which will be directed by Tom Mullen, has had successful productions in London and Los Angeles, where its two-year run is ongoing. Inspired by Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, it follows ten “modern urban gay American males … from all walks of life as they negotiate the before and after of lust, love, betrayal and the pursuit of sex and emotional connectivity.”

Aida, featuring a Tony-winning score by Elton John and Tim Rice, will close the season beginning July 1, with opening night set for July 7 at American Theatre Company. (A closing date was not specified, but the production is set to run into August according to Bailiwick’s website). The compelling, pop-operatic romance set in ancient Egypt will be directed by Scott Ferguson and choreographed by Iega Jeff. Jimmy Moorehead and Robert Ollis will collaborate on the musical direction.

Kevin Mayes, Bailiwick Chicago’s executive director, said in a statement, “We are incredibly excited by the diversity of these projects, and are thrilled to be bringing them to Chicago audiences. This is our opportunity as the new Bailiwick to demonstrate our commitment to producing bold, adventurous programming and compelling stories with universal appeal, while nurturing new artistic partnerships.”

Bailiwick Chicago was formed when Bailiwick Repertory Theater closed in September 2009. The group, known as “the Collective,” is dedicated to upholding the former theatre’s mission ‘to tell stories that stimulate our audience and celebrate our diverse community, enhancing our understanding of ourselves and others.”

The Chicago Center for the Performing Arts is located at 777 N. Green Street. Theatre Building Chicago is located at 1227 West Belmont. American Theatre Company is located at 1707 W. Byron. For more information on the season, please visit bailiwickchicago.com.

Hollis Resnik and Margaret Anne Florence are mother and daughter in Arena Stage’s The Light in the Piazza, opening March 11 after previews from March 5 in Arlington, VA.

The Tony Award-winning musical by Craig Lucas (book) and Adam Guettel (music and lyrics), based on the novel by Elizabeth Spencer, is staged by Arena artistic director Molly Smith. This is a chamber version of the lush Broadway musical about a mother and daughter who are on vacation in Florence, Italy.

While Arena Stage builds its new home in Washington, DC, it is performing in borrowed DC-area spaces, including Crystal City, in Arlington, where Piazza glows. The run ends April 11.

Margaret Anne Florence (Clara) appeared in Off-Broadway’s The Fantasticks. Resnik is a multiple Jeff Award winner who starred in the national tours of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Thoroughly Modern Millie and Les Misérables. Regionally, she appeared in Grey Gardens (Northlight Theatre, Sarah Siddons Award), A Little Night Music, House of Martin Guerre (Goodman) and Always Patsy Cline (Apollo).

The Arena cast also includes Nicholas Rodriguez (Fabrizio Naccarelli), Mary Gutzi (Signora Naccarelli), Ken Krugman (Signor Naccarelli), Ariela Morgenstern (Franca Naccarelli), Jonathan Raviv (Guiseppe Naccarelli), Thomas Adrian Simpson (Roy Johnson), Drew Eshelman (Priest/Ensemble), Jennifer Irons (Tour Guide/Ensemble), Michael Vitaly Sazonov (Ensemble) and understudies Conrad Buck and Kate Guesman.

The creative team for The Light in the Piazza includes musical director Paul Sportelli, set designer Anne Patterson, costume designer Linda Cho, choreographer Parker Esse, lighting designer Michael Gilliam, sound designer Timothy Thompson, projection designer Adam Larsen and stage manager Susan R. White.

Here’s how Arena bills The Light in the Piazza: “While touring Florence with her mother, Clara meets by chance the handsome Fabrizio. As their tender romance blossoms, Clara’s mother struggles to conceal a family secret which may put an end to Clara’s happiness as well as to her own.”

Arena Stage in Crystal City is at 1800 S. Bell Street, Arlington, VA. Tickets may be purchased online at ArenaStage.org, by phone at (202) 488-3300.

CANBERRA (Reuters) –
More than 90 Australian authors signed a letter on Thursday protesting against China’s refusal to grant a visa to one of the country’s most celebrated novelists because he was HIV-positive.

Robert Dessaix, whose 1996 novel “Night Letters” dealt with the European travels of a man diagnosed with an incurable disease, was refused permission by Chinese authorities to attend the International Literary Festival in Shanghai on health grounds.

More than 90 other writers, including Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee and Booker Prize winner Thomas Keneally, who penned “Schindler’s Ark,” rallied to Dessaix’s support, demanding a public apology from Beijing.

“This was an act of discrimination that appears to be founded in fear or ignorance and is behavior unworthy of any nation that desires to be seen as enlightened and civilized,” the joint letter said.

“Mr Dessaix, an internationally published and acclaimed author, has been unjustly left out of the Australian government supported Writers’ Tour currently under way in China,” the group from The Australian Society of Authors wrote.

Dessaix, 65, is the author of the poetic “Night Letters” and “Corfu.” The first novel was based around letters written home from a Venice hotel room, pondering Italian history, philosophy and questions of human fate, including his own.

Dessaix’s autobiography, “A Mother’s Disgrace,” was published in 1994.

“I am not a threat. I don’t write on political issues. I feel I’ve been spat on,” Dessaix told The Age newspaper. “I live in Australia and I can come home to a civilized place where people care.”

Dessaix’s visa refusal follows strains with China over the arrest in Shanghai of an Australian mining executive and Canberra’s decision last year to grant a visa to a high-profile Chinese ethnic separatist leader.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

Arena Stage will present the world premiere of a play based on John Grisham’s earliest novel, “A Time to Kill,” as part of its 2010-2011 season, which will be its first at its new home, the Mead Center for American Theater in Washington, D.C.

Artistic director Molly Smith on Thursday will announce that Rupert Holmes’ adaptation of the legal thriller will debut in May 2011. Arena will present the production by special arrangement with producer Daryl Roth, who plans to take the show to Broadway.

Grisham, the king of the legal suspense novel, was a small-town Southern lawyer when “A Time to Kill” was published in 1988. It tells the story of a father in fictional Clanton, Miss., who takes the law into his own hands after his daughter is brutally assaulted. The father is black, most of Clanton is white. After he is arrested, a young defense attorney battles to save his life.

The book was made into a 1996 movie directed by Joel Schumacher and starring Samuel L. Jackson, Matthew McConaughey, Sandra Bullock, Kevin Spacey and Donald and Kiefer Sutherland.

Holmes is a playwright, composer and recording artist who wrote the Tony-winning 1985 musical “The Mystery of Edwin Drood.” He received two Tony nominations and a Drama Desk award for his work on the 2007 Kander-and-Ebb show, “Curtains,” and a 2003 Tony nomination for “Say Goodnight, Gracie.”

Besides “A Time to Kill,” Arena will add one other play to the 2010-2011 season: “Let Me Down Easy,” Anna Deavere Smith’s multi-character solo piece about life, death and the human body.

The rest of the lineup includes the world premiere of Marcus Gardley’s “Every Tongue Confess,” Lynn Nottage’s 2009 Pulitzer winner “Ruined,” Mary Zimmerman’s “The Arabian Nights,” a new play festival and an Edward Albee Festival featuring all 30 of the playwright’s works, anchored by “At Home at the Zoo” and the Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” starring Tracy Letts and Amy Morton.

–Karen Wada

Photo: John Grisham; Credit: Charles Sykes / Associated Press

blakelylaw buzzed up: Head of BCS fires back at Senators who sent letter (AP)

29 seconds ago 2010-03-10T20:05:26-08:00

No, I wasn’t afraid of becoming a cliché—the shopping-bag-laden theatergoer eager to consume some culture in a postprandial state of mind. But I will admit that the notion of spending an evening watching adults masquerade as longhair and shorthair varieties did strike me as faintly ludicrous.

Somehow the show’s T.S. Eliot pedigree — his “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” is the light-verse source from which these Persians, Calicoes and Siamese spring — wasn’t enough to counteract the work’s schlocky reputation for me. But though my taste runs to more challenging dramatic fare, I found myself purring in anticipation of losing my “Cats” virginity.

What struck me about the show (directed and choreographed by Richard Stafford, following Trevor Nunn’s original direction) is how little it demands of its audience. Diversion is dispensed without the harassment of plot — no mental exertion is required. Senses are tickled by special effects, dance routines that are a cross between Bob Fosse and London music hall, and a pastiche score that samples styles (Rod Stewart, Puccini, Henry Mancini) the way owners of finicky pets will try different brands of food to ensure their loved one doesn’t starve to death.

The show also has Eliot’s refined vocabulary (though slightly garbled acoustics made me wonder if “ineffable” was really “inedible”), a vivacious staging that lends a Vegas touch to the cast’s raucous aisle-roaming and a lilting sentimental blockbuster in “Memory,” a song that my YouTube research confirmed is virtually impossible to get wrong (though I’ll take Barbra Streisand’s version over Celine Dion’s any day). The cunning commercialism of the stagecraft is so Reagan-era, I half expected to find “Dynasty” on TV when I returned home.

While I’m clearly no expert in the “Cats” department, I’d call this production assured in a generic way. Anastasia Lange may not have Betty Buckley’s storied stage presence but her lovely voice fills the large house with a sinuous rendition of “Memory,” and the cadre of distinctive Toms surrounding her acquitted themselves in numbers that could admittedly use some tightening and fine-tuning. 
 
But the tackiness of some of the stage effects (flashing lights and fog, in particular) left me cringing. Snobbery isn’t the issue. Before I was a theater critic, I was the son of Broadway theatergoers who wouldn’t dream of missing a Webber spectacular. Until the acclaimed Lincoln Center Theater revival of “South Pacific” (coming to the Ahmanson this spring), “The Phantom of the Opera” was unquestionably my father’s favorite show. (“It’s no ‘Phantom’ ” was his version of a major thumbs-down.) 

There may be no accounting for taste, but instances of bad taste are still worth pointing out, if only to avoid others from following suit. Not that anyone can travel back in time and prevent “Cats” from ushering in an era of bloated musicals equipped with expensive aircraft or, even more grandiosely, a rampaging chandelier. 

Let’s look at the bright side, however: Without “Cats,” Broadway might never have welcomed “The Lion King,” a far more radically inventive kitty descendant. And compared with the vacuous jukebox craze that has held musical theater hedge-fund managers (euphemistically known as producers) captive for the last decade, Webber’s moonlight-filled animal husbandry can seem breathtaking in its originality.
 
OK, one last confession: I actually did see a portion of “Cats” ages ago in college, though I have only the blurriest recollection of the experience. For years, I assumed it was a kind of buried memory, a flickering trauma of the sort that Ingrid Bergman helped Gregory Peck retrieve in “Spellbound.”

Turns out, the incident was a lot more banal. A friend who worked evenings as a telemarketer flogging theater subscriptions received complimentary nose-bleed seats to the Winter Garden, the show’s longtime New York home. None of us having much interest in seeing “Cats,” we were a little reckless in the happy hour that preceded our theater jaunt. Long story short: The spectacle of grown-ups gallivanting in cat get-ups is positively hairball producing in a 20-year-old with a spinning head.

I’m pretty sure we fled before the first-act finale of “Memory.” But I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that we wound up serenading the feral denizens of the city as we stumbled in the wee hours to our beds. 

–Charles McNulty
 
Photos from the the National Tour of “Cats.” Credit: © 2008, G CREATIVE
 
 

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
Asher Edelman, a former corporate raider who became an art dealer, has been sued by Emigrant Bank for more than $3.1 million after allegedly defaulting on some loans, including one to buy a sculpture by Alberto Giacometti.

Emigrant tolerated Edelman’s “long history of late payments, missed payments, other defaults and collateral sales” in a relationship dating to 2006, before finally issuing a default notice on July 1, 2009, according to papers filed Tuesday with the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

The bank agreed to give Edelman more time to make good on his obligations, but he failed to do so, the papers allege.

Hope Tate, a senior banker for Emigrant Bank Fine Art Finance LLC, in an affidavit said Edelman obtained two loans and a credit line from Emigrant.

She said the funds included a $2 million loan for his purchase of Giacometti’s “Torse de Femme.”

Edelman now runs Edelman Arts, a gallery specializing in modern art, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“We’ve had a great deal of trouble with this bank for at least the last year,” said Tony Bellomy, a spokesman for the gallery. “I am sure we will have more to say after we review the papers.”

Before turning much of his attention to the art world, Edelman had in the 1980s been among the leading figures during the leveraged buyout boom.

He was among the people used to model the character Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone’s film “Wall Street,” people involved in making the 1987 film said at the time. Michael Douglas won an Oscar for best actor for his portrayal of Gekko.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel)