Stratford and Shaw Festivals, Summer 2010

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Theater

Published on Tuesday, 17 August 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

The Tempest
Written by William Shakespeare
Kiss Me, Kate
Music & lyrics by Cole Porter, book by Sam and Bella Spewack
(Tempest through September 12; Kate through October 30)
Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Stratford, Canada
stratfordfestival.ca

John Bull’s Other Island
Written by Bernard Shaw
The Doctor’s Dilemma
Written by Bernard Shaw
(John Bull through October 9; Doctor through October 30)
Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada
shawfest.com

Summer in Canada has much to recommend it, notably more bearable weather than hot, sticky New York. But Canada’s best are its theater festivals at Niagara-on-the-Lake and Stratford, as excellent actors and inventive directors combine for top-notch productions of great plays by Shakespeare, Shaw and others—with a musical or two thrown in.

The Stratford Shakespeare Festival gives preeminence to the greatest playwright in English (or any other language). And this summer’s star is our greatest living classical actor in English: Christopher Plummer unforgettably plays Prospero in The Tempest, and if Des McAnuff’s visually dazzling, sometimes too-clever staging doesn’t always let Shakespeare’s final masterpiece breathe, it at least lets Plummer—who enacted a monumental Caesar in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra on the same stage two summers ago—to crown a storied stage career.

Now a spry 80 years old, Plummer uses his lifetime of experience to plumb the depths of Shakespeare’s deposed duke turned magician on a magical isle with his teenaged daughter Miranda, orchestrating the play’s events to happen in his favor with the help of the sprite Ariel. If McAnuff’s staging drags during the usual overdone comic scenes featuring a drunken Trinculo and Stephano with the monstrous Caliban, there’s ample compensatory theatrical razzle-dazzle, including an enchanting opening image of Ariel descending to snatch Prospero’s magic book.

The cast is not nearly on Plummer’s level, with Peter Hutt’s dull Alonso and Julyana Soelistyo’s disastrous Ariel on the lowest rung. But Plummer controls the stage throughout, whether reacting angrily as he recounts his banishment to Miranda or playfully aiding her courtship with Prince Ferdinand: here’s an actor in complete command of his resources and who, like his character, relies on them to do his stage magic. Plummer has the rare ability to speak Shakespeare’s lines so trippingly off the tongue as to sound like everyday speech. And his final speech to the audience is as unbearably moving as only a great actor can make it.

Also at Stratford is Cole Porter’s classic musical Kiss Me Kate, based on Shakespeare’s early comedy The Taming of the Shrew. Happily, there’s little of director John Doyle's penchant for ruining musical theater works from Company to Peter Grimes. Porter’s songs, of course, are killers—“Wunderbar,” “So in Love,” “I Hate Men” and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” for starters—as are the women, led by firecracker Chilina Kennedy, who came from the Shaw Festival to become a star at Stratford with a booming voice and charm to spare. Likewise, there’s Monique Lund, a fabulously-talented comedienne with an operatic voice. Their leading men aren’t as memorable, but no matter: Kiss Me Kate is a keeper.

The Shaw Festival’s two namesake plays this summer are rarely done in New York. Christopher Newton has staged John Bull’s Other Island as if it was a fairy tale. That’s not far off the mark: Shaw’s beguiling (if dated) comic drama is about an Englishman who goes to Ireland for the first time with his Irish business partner and falls for the charms of the Emerald Isle—including the Irishman’s former gal. Newton wittily uses British and Irish music by Vaughan Williams, Arnold and Harty, and his actors—led by Shaw vet Benedict Campbell, typically debonair as the Englishman—lead the way to a frolicsome, if ultimately frivolous, 2-1/2 hours in the theater.

Uneasy laughs are plentiful in The Doctor's Dilemma, Shaw’s prescient black comedy about a doctor who must choose between two very different sick men to partake in a miraculous new treatment: a great artist who’s an awful human being or an elderly doctor as honest and humane as they come. Morris Panych’s production is hampered by the large Festival Theatre stage, which dwarfs the drawing-room intimacy of Shaw's philosophizing, and his “ironic” use of the Rolling Stones songs “Under My Thumb” and “You Can't Always get What You Want,” which smothers the beginning and end of each act. But the performances are top-notch, particularly Patrick Galligan as the perplexed physician and Michael Ball as his esteemed yet crusty colleague.

Ever Larger, The Fringe Fest 2010

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Theater

Published on Monday, 26 July 2010 05:49

Written by Brad Balfour

Featuring Orson Welles, Sarah Palin, Jay Leno, Marilyn Monroe,Harvey Milk and Bruce Vilanch, the largest multi-arts festival in North America, The New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), will present the 14th Annual one from August 13th - 29th, 2010.

This year, the festival will offer programming by 197 of the world's best emerging theatre troupes and dance companies in 20 venues in Lower Manhattan. Attendance at last year’s festival topped 75,000 people, making it New York’s fifth largest cultural event (just behind New York International Auto Show, Tribeca Film Festival, New York City Marathon, and New York Comic Con).

Among the nearly 200 productions being presented are 183 representing 18 US states including New Jersey, California, Chicago, Alabama, Connecticut, Minnesota, Texas and Louisiana, as well as 14 international productions representing 12 countries including Singapore, Italy, France, Ireland, Norway, India and Australia.

Some of the more unusual FringeNYC 2010 titles include:

• Jurassic Parq: The Broadway Musical
• Vinnie Vidicici
• T-O-T-A-L-L-Y!
• Pope! An Epic Musical
• Heterosexuals
• Good Good Trouble on Bad Bad Island
• The Battle of Spanktown
• Eternity in an Hour
• AK-47 Sing-Along
• Love in the Time of Swine Flu

One noteworthy “trend” among the 197 productions could be labeled as “Muslim tales.”

From India, the festival offers A Personal War: Stories of the Mumbai Terror Attacks, a documentary drama based on interviews of people who experienced this monumental event.

Norway’s controversial Muslim comedienne Shabana Rehman (best described as a combination of Margaret Cho and Karen Finley) premieres her tale of immigration For Kingdom and Fatherland.

Other titles include Headscarf and The Angry Bitch, Driving the Saudis, Abraham’s Daughters, Flesh-Light Stories, and Shaheed: The Dream and Death of Benazir Bhutto.

Shakespeare also makes a strong showing with numerous productions of and inspired by the Bard. These include:

• MacChin: The Lamentable Tragedie of Jay Leno (the Scottish play with a late-night TV twist)
• Hamlet Shut Up (a silent re-telling)
• Getting Even with Shakespeare (five of the Bard’s tragic heroes meet in a bar)
• Orson Welles’ Julius Caesar: The Death of a Dictator
• Hamlettes Richard 3 (set in a punk post-nuclear wasteland)
• As You Like It

In addition to the previously mentioned appearance of Jay Leno, several other noteworthy public personalities also show up on the stages of FringeNYC 2010 -- in spirit only, of course. These include:

• Sarah Palin (Picking Palin)
• Morrissey (William and the Tradesmen)
• Harvey Milk (Dear Harvey)
• Joe DiMaggio (Marilyn Monroe: Wouldn’t It Be Fascinating)
• Katherine Hepburn (Just in Time - The Judy Holliday Story)

And, in a year ripe with LGBT theater on and off Broadway, FringeNYC adds over two dozen more entries. Direct from Singapore, Ah Kua Show tells the personal story of author and activist Leona Lo, that country's most prominent transsexual. Confessions of a Mormon Boy star Steven Fales returns with his latest exploration of gay Mormons, Missionary Position. The Five Lesbian Brothers’ hit Off-Broadway The Secretaries, a comedy about a cabal of murderous office workers, gets a revival by TOSOS. And in both Veritas and The Twentieth-Century Way, little-known episodes of homophobia in American history are explored.

Other titles include

• Friends of Dorothy: An Oz Cabaret
• Jen and Liz in Love
• Open Heart
• Miss Magnolia Beaumont Goes to Provincetown

Additional highlights of the festival include:

• Shine: A Burlesque Musical, a musical about an infamous downtown burlesque theatre and the misfits who try to save it from demolition... or worse, respectability.
• Stripes: The Mystery Circus, a comedy about an audition that goes comically awry.
• Cookie and A Matter Of Choice, full productions of two new plays by hot up-and-coming indie playwright Chad Beckim.
• Platinum, a revival of a 1978 Broadway musical by Bruce Vilanch, Will Holt and Gary William Friedman.
• Ruby Wilder, a hit Chicago drama that tells the story of a murder from 3 different pints of view including that of the victim and the murderer..
• Trick Boxing, in this international hit from Minnesota, a 1930’s apple seller is fooled into becoming a prize fighter.
• South Pathetic, Jim David’s solo comedy about a ramshackle community theater.
• In Loco Parentis, a drama about the relationship that blossoms between a teacher and a student grieving the death of her mother.
• Evan O’Television in Double Negatives, an absurdist video-ventriloquism comedy.
• The Swearing Jar, a comedy about lies between married people.

In November 2007, FringeNYC was honored by Mayor Michael Bloomberg with the Mayor's Award for Arts & Culture “for its phenomenal leadership in showcasing the best and boldest theater and performance by both established and emerging artists.

The New York International Fringe Festival is renowned for presenting work that reflects the excitement and energy of the contemporary theater world - locally, nationally and abroad.”  Previous recipients of the award include Woody Allen, Celia Cruz, Stephen Sondheim, Wynton Marsalis, The Tribeca Film Festival, Mark Morris, The Public Theater, Chita Rivera, and Edward Albee.

In 2010, many of New York City's most prominent downtown performance venues will host productions from around the globe as part of FringeNYC. Past participant venues, ranging in size from 50 to 700 seats, include Lucille Lortel Theater, SoHo Playhouse, Players Theater, Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, Cherry Lane Theatre, Actors Playhouse, Barrow Street Theater, Minetta Lane Theater, P.S. 122, and The Village Theater. FringeNYC is a production of The Present Company, under the leadership of Producing Artistic Director Elena K. Holy.

In 1997, New York City became the seventh US city to host a fringe festival, joining Seattle, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Houston, Orlando and San Francisco.

In its first 13 years FringeNYC has presented over 2100 performing groups from the U.K., Canada, Poland, Ireland, Japan, China, Singapore, Germany, the Czech Republic and across the U.S., prompting Switzerland's national daily, The New Zurich Zeitung, to declare FringeNYC as “the premiere meeting ground for alternative artists.”

The festival has also been the launching pad for movies (WTC View) and even a TV show (‘da Kink in My Hair) as well as numerous Off-Broadway and Broadway transfers, long-running downtown hits, and regional theater productions including 

• Urinetown
• Never Swim Alone
• Debbie Does Dallas
• Dog Sees God
• 21 Dog Years
• Krapp 39
• Dixie’s Tupperware Party
• Silence! The Musical
• Matt & Ben
• The Irish Curse
• 666
• Abraham Lincoln’s Big Gay Dance Party

FringeNYC shows run 2pm - midnight weekdays and noon - midnight on weekends.

Tickets are $15 in advance beginning July 23 by calling 866-468-7619 or at www.FringeNYC.org; $18 at the door, subject to availability.

Discount passes for multiple shows ($70 for a Fiver Pass, $120 for a Flex Pass good for 10 shows, and $500 for an all-you-can-see Lunatic Pass) are also available.

For more information visit: www.FringeNYC.org

FringeNYC
The Present Company
520 Eighth Avenue, Ste. 311
New York, NY 10018

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
212-279-4488
212-279-4466

undergroundzero: a festival of theater artists

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Parent Category: Other Festivals

Category: Theater

Published on Friday, 23 July 2010 20:27

Written by Bree Rubin

Now in its fourth year, undergroundzero: festival of theater artists, is a three-week event running from July 6th to 25th, 2010, that showcases innovative talent in experimental theater. Presented by East River Commedia at PS122 (150 1st Avenue at 9th Steet), the artists invited to be in the festival are asked to present a piece of their own choosing, creating a unique experience "where risk-taking is encouraged and expected."

The festival was created to weave a "flying repertory" of highly creative and fearless theatrical experimentation. Artists both local and international are given free-reign to shape each affair to the limits of their inspiration.

This year's artists include several of the festival's past favorites, as well as many new faces. Doris Mirescu's trilogy ode to German director, Rainer Werner Fassbinder --From Dawn til Night (The Earth is Uninhabitable like the Moon) -- is the multimedia final chapter. The second part won the 2009 undergroundzero Best Production Award.Local director Anna Brenner -- winner of the 2009 festival's Audience Choice Award -- presents Are We Here Yet?, which establishes five characters struggling to make connections with people and with their own distinct Americanness.

There is a wealth of talent coming from abroad to the festival, as well. The Adventures of Alvin Sputnik: Deep Sea Explorer is a musical, one-man micro-epic puppet show about love and a pending apocalypse performed by its Australian creator Tim Watts. Actor John Wesley Zielmann channels quintessential pop artist Andy Warhol in the German piece Forever Art, directed by Johanna Zielinski.

In addition to many full productions, the festival invites spectators to participate in in-progress works and discussions with artists as well as conversational mixers with all involved. Each Tuesday brings a "meta-theatrical talk show" called commonground, and every Friday heralds a late-night dance party hosted at the P.S.122 venue.

Tickets ($20) can be purchased by visiting PS122.org or by calling (212) 352-3101. The special "PS122 Passport" allows purchasers to see five shows for $55, and holders enjoy various discounts and benefits at East Village area community partners and businesses.

for festival performance schedules and more information go to: www.ps122.org/performances/undergroundzero_2010.html 

undergroundzero:a festival of theater artists
July 6-25, 2010
PS122 - 150 1st Avenue at 9th