Last week I attended a performance of "Cock," a play by Mike Bartlett, directed by James McDonald and presented at the Duke Theater on 42nd Street in Manhattan. The prissy folk at the NY Times couldn't bring themselves to call the play by its given name, so they called it The Cockfight when they reviewed it. And, in fact, the producers have placed a picture of a fighting rooster on the cover of the Playbill, … <Read More>
Theater
“Closer Than Ever” Revival at York Theatre Company
The York Theatre Company at St. Peter's Church (Lexington & 54th Street in Manhattan) has been running a series of revivals of off-Broadway musicals. The current offering is "Closer Than Ever," a musical revue by Richard Maltby, Jr. and David Shire, which had an off-Broadway run in 1989 and generated a cast recording that has kept the show alive for those who know it. (I don't.) My regular theater-going companion was eager to see this, … <Read More>
Chimichangas and Zoloft – New Play by Fernanda Coppel
I attended a preview performance of "Chimichangas and Zoloft", a new play by Fernanda Coppel, at Atlantic Theater Company on May 30. It has opened since then, so I now feel free to comment about it, keeping in mind, of course, that I attended a preview while the production was still in the process of being prepared for its formal opening, so what I saw on May 30 probably differs from what is now being … <Read More>
“Storefront Church” – A New Play
Last week I attended a performance at Atlantic Theater Company of "Storefront Church," a new play by John Patrick Shanley, who directed the performance.
The premise is that a woman living in the Bronx has fallen behind on her mortgage payments and faces eviction from the house she owns. She has been allowing an itinerant minister, a refugee from New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, to use her ground-level storefront as a church, but after … <Read More>
A Week of Dramatized Biography
This past week I attended three productions that were dramatizations of the lives of real people. On Tuesday, I saw "The Columnist," a play by David Auburn about Joe Alsop, the syndicated columnist who wielded outsize influence in the 1950s and 1960s. On Thursday, I saw "End of the Rainbow," a play by Peter Quilter, about Judy Garland's December 1968 visit to London to perform a series of concerts in an attempted comeback from drug … <Read More>
“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” at City Center Encores!
I attended the Saturday matinee performance of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", the 1949 Broadway musical (Music by Jule Styne, Lyrics by Leo Robin, Book by Anita Loos and Joseph Fields, adapted from Ms. Loos's novel of the same name), semi-staged by New York City Center Encores! as the last show of their 2011-12 season. It was a brilliant closing for the season, because this is an absolutely lovely show and all the elements came together for … <Read More>
Theater/Concert Overload
I've just come through such a busy time of theater and concerts over the past two weeks that I've fallen far behind in writing about things, so herewith just a few capsule comments on each:
Leap of Faith. I saw a preview of this new musical by Alan Menken (music), Janus Cercone and Warren Leight (book) and Glenn Slater (lyrics), which was conceived as a vehicle for Raul Esparza. My theater-going companion and I are big … <Read More>
Pipe Dream, American Mavericks, and NOT a Midsummer Night’s Dream
It's been a very busy few days and I'm just getting around to noting several cultural events attended recently.
On Wednesday night, I was in Carnegie Hall for the second of a series of concerts by Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra with the collective title of "American Mavericks." Luckily, the one I ended up attending was the one with the piece I most wanted to hear: Henry Brant's orchestral version of … <Read More>
Another Weekend Culturefest: “Carrie”; Juilliard String Quartet; American Symphony Orchestra
Somehow the various series and subscriptions I have tend to intersect on weekends, and again I ended up attending three varied events over the last weekend in February.
On Saturday afternoon, it was the musical show "Carrie," a revival of a failed 1980s musical based on a novel by Stephen King, with music by Michael Gore, lyrics by Dean Pitchford, and book by Lawrence D. Cohen. The MCC Theater production was in its final days … <Read More>
A Culture Weekend in NYC – “Merrily We Roll Along” at City Center Encores, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, New York Polyphony at American Academy of Arts & Letters
Herewith a brief report on my very busy cultural weekend in New York City on February 11 & 12, 2012.
On Saturday afternoon, I attended New York City Center Encores' production of "Merrily We Roll Along," with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and original book by George Furth. As with every revival of this musical, which was unsuccessfully first produced in New York in 1981, tinkering has gone on. Since then Sondheim has written new … <Read More>