by | Mar 28, 2018 7:38 am | Comments (0)
Grease 2 to Reagan-era rage. Love taboos to iPhones.
To plan this year’s Satellite Festival for the Yale Cabaret, playwright Jeremy O. Harris and dramaturg Amauta Marston-Firmino — both in their second year at the Yale School of Drama — dived first into the Cab’s 50-year history.
Continue reading ‘Satellite Festival Goes Back For The Future’
by | Mar 27, 2018 7:40 am | Comments (1)
Joan Marcus Photos
James Udom and Eboni Flowers.
In the opening scene of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Father Comes Home from the Wars, Parts 1, 2 & 3, a series of characters, all black slaves in Civil War Texas, hold out their palms and extend their thumbs horizontally, squinting at the horizon. Even though standing on dry land, they are navigators, measuring the imminence of the sunrise and their position relative to the north star. The gesture, which becomes a motif, holds a poignant double meaning in Parks’s three-act drama. In the scene, they are measuring the time before one of their number must decide whether to join the Confederate army as his master’s servant or disobey him and face the consequences.
by | Mar 14, 2018 7:58 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Forget March Madness. In Connecticut right now, March is Mystery Month. Up at Hartford Stage through March 25, Agatha Christie’s beloved sleuth Hercule Poirot is solving The Murder on the Orient Express, while over in Norwalk until March 18, The 39 Steps, a comedy-mystery based on an espionage thriller, is playing at Music Theatre of Connecticut.
And at Long Wharf Theatre, Baskerville, Ken Ludwig’s adaptation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mystery The Hound of the Baskervilles, runs through March 25. There seems to be statewide agreement that we need fun to divert us from the weather while still getting us out to the theater. And it’s no secret that mystery has draw.
by | Mar 12, 2018 7:50 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Fifteen New Haven high-school students brought playwright August Wilson’s characters to life in an August Wilson Monologue Competition on Friday evening. Before they started, James Bundy, artistic director at the Yale Repertory Theatre, reminded the audience that a little bit of themselves might be in Wilson’s plays.
The self-taught playwright, Bundy said, spent a lot of time just listening to people talk. “The people who are in his plays are people he heard from sitting in coffee shops.” In town, that meant Atticus and especially Book Trader on Chapel Street. If you stop into Book Trader, Bundy said, “You’re sitting where he listened to New Haven.”
Continue reading ‘August Wilson Mined For Comedy, Turns Up Gold’
by | Mar 2, 2018 8:50 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photos
Brandon Oliveras and Catherine Sigg.
Two people go to their high school reunion. Could be 15 years, 20 years, since they saw each other last. They strike up a conversation. Start to hit it off. They share a dance. A connection is forming. But they never dated in high school. Didn’t have a crush on each other. As it turns out, they didn’t know each other well at all. Which is why, when they sing to each other, they don’t sing to each other about the good old days.
“I’m glad you didn’t know me in high school,” they sing.
Continue reading ‘Wilbur Cross Goes ... Back To High School?’
by | Feb 23, 2018 9:16 am | Comments (0)
Pearce and Moggridge.
A strong wind blew inside the rehearsal space at Long Wharf Theatre, making Dr. Watson and Sir Henry lean into it.
“And hat,” said director Brendon Fox. A member of the crew tossed a hat through the air in front of the characters, who were looking for and found a certain Dr. Mortimer, who might have some information they needed.
“We’re lookin’ for a woman with the initials ‘L.L.’!” Sir Henry shouted into the wind. “What?” Dr. Mortimer shouted back. “We’re looking for a woman!” Watson shouted. “So am I! I’m tired of being single!” Dr. Mortimer shouted.
Continue reading ‘Long Wharf Mystery Lets The Crowd See The Strings’
by | Feb 20, 2018 8:46 am | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Pettway and Riggins.
Damon is a drug dealer and a robber, but a scholar too. He reads academic treatises in his spare time, it turns out. It’s enough to surprise former revolutionary Kenyatta Shakur. First they trade street talk. Then they trade ideas. Shakur has been out of the fight for decades. “We need soldiers like you out here now,” Damon says.
Then they start talking about Nina. Kenyatta’s estranged daughter. Damon’s girlfriend. Nina has letters that Kenyatta and her mother Ashanti wrote to each other while Kenyatta was in prison, letters that a lot of academics want to get their hands on now that Ashanti has passed. Letters that Kenyatta wants even more than they do. Problem is, he needs to somehow reconnect with Nina to get them, and there’s a lot of hurt in the past to get through first.
by | Feb 8, 2018 8:59 am | Comments (0)
Yale Opera is putting on a production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Magic Flute at the Shubert Theater from Feb. 16 to 18. The music will be unchanged. It will be sung in the original German. It’s just that almost everyone in the cast will be robots.
by | Feb 7, 2018 8:50 am | Comments (0)
Damn that Stephen Sondheim, always timely.
Last year, when Yale Rep plucked the composer’s Assassins from mothballs, audiences couldn’t help but feel a contemporary edge to the 1990 musical, considering the political hostility of the moment and that show features figures remembered in infamy. Indeed, during a talk by Sondheim at the theater shortly before opening, an audience member remarked that the timing of the musical’s re-staging seemed eerie. It was a touchy moment, but Sondheim handled it well, taking a deep breath, before defusing the topic.
by | Feb 5, 2018 1:22 pm | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photos
The cast of Field Guide.
In the opening scene of Field Guide — at the Yale Repertory Theatre now until Feb. 17 — a young woman delivers a series of awkward jokes in a standup routine that is more of a meta routine. Among the “jokes” is the announcement that she owns no property and is about to lose both her health insurance and her income stream.
In light of this revelation, her mock standup, and much of the performance that follows it, resembles an exercise in playful cynicism. Hannah speaks for a generation that has become adult in an America uninterested in protecting its former children, for whom an adaptive strategy is to hurl droll comedy into the void.
by | Jan 31, 2018 4:45 pm | Comments (0)
Linked In
Margaret “Penny” Mason.
A trial lawyer with experience investigating sexual misconduct claims will help Long Wharf Theatre figure out how an alleged sexual predator and harasser was able to run the joint for so long.
Continue reading ‘Penny Mason Called To The Scene At Long Wharf’
by | Jan 31, 2018 8:41 am | Comments (0)
Passion, the musical by Stephen Sondheim with book by James Lapine, has the distinction of having had the shortest Broadway run of any Tony-winning musical. It’s been seen as Sondheim’s most personal piece, and, in the view of third-year director Rory Pelsue, who is directing a production as his thesis show at Yale School of Drama, the work is “utterly unique.” It evokes the Gothic and the Romantic, both with capital letters, and “can make you feel alive in a cynical, dissolute time.”
by | Jan 30, 2018 1:18 pm | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Office Hour opens with a short scene that primes the audience to anticipate a terrifying event — a shooting at a university — and then delays that event as long as possible. In playwright Julia Cho’s astute hands, though, that delay becomes the point: It is the trauma we bring to the play, not the fear it invents, that she is asking us to examine.
Continue reading ‘“Office Hour” Stares Down The Barrel Of School Shootings’
by | Jan 25, 2018 8:53 am | Comments (1)
Paul Bass Photo
Borenstein Wednesday at Long Wharf Theatre.
The scene: At a regional theater, a sexual misconduct scandal has just exploded. The artistic director, handsy and foul-mouthed, has exited the stage for good, and the steady, behind-the-scenes manager finds himself trying to hold up his life’s passion from the fallout. As the curtain rises, all the stage’s lights shine on one man, emerging from the wings, stepping, deliberately, toward the expectant audience.
Long Wharf Theatre produces a lot of social-issues dramas like that on its stages. On Wednesday the drama was playing out in real life on Sargent Drive, as Joshua Borenstein stepped into the spotlight. It was time to draw on all he’d been learning.
by | Jan 24, 2018 4:02 pm | Comments (1)
As of Wednesday afternoon, Albertus Magnus College no longer officially honors Gordon Edelstein, who as of Tuesday evening no longer serves as artistic director of Long Wharf Theatre.
by | Jan 24, 2018 8:51 am | Comments (2)
Gordon Edelstein.
The show will go on at Long Wharf Theatre without disgraced Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein.
by | Jan 22, 2018 6:52 pm | Comments (4)
Wellesley, Arts Paper
Board chair Pappano (at left): Switching roles. Edelstein (at right): On leave for alleged sexual misconduct.
New Haven’s arts world had its Harvey Weinstein moment Monday — and a woman steeped in combatting the “second-class status” of women was called on to take charge.
by | Jan 10, 2018 1:21 pm | Comments (0)
On Tuesday night, actors Kerry Warren, Jackie Chung, and Jeremy Kahn sat in the atrium of the Wilson branch of the New Haven Free Public Library on Washington Avenue, talking about a kid who scared them.
It wasn’t just the menace in his creative writing. It wasn’t that he wasn’t doing well in his classes either. It was that they couldn’t connect to him. They were worried the student might shoot them. Kahn was worried that he might be first.
Continue reading ‘Theater Breaks The Ice To Talking About Violence’
by | Jan 4, 2018 4:20 pm | Comments (5)
Melissa Bailey Photo
Fussiner.
Two men, Tommy and Petesy, stand on a stage. They’re side by side, but an ocean apart. Tommy’s a boxer in New Haven who’s taken a couple punches. Petesy is a tall man whose life in Belfast, Northern Ireland has made him smaller. They’re cousins who grew up seeing each other now and again. But they’re writing each other now because they’ve both lost a son to violence, and neither of them knows exactly how to go on.
Continue reading ‘Two Teachers Face History —& The Grief After Violence’
by | Dec 13, 2017 2:11 pm | Comments (0)
T. CHARLES ERICKSON PHOTO
Francesca Fernandez MacKenzie and Sohina Sidhu in “Death of Yazdgerd.”
T. CHARLES ERICKSON PHOTO
Shadi Ghaheri, who directed the production.
I went to see Death of Yazdgerd at the Yale School of Drama in the same way I’ve gone to see all other artistic productions by Iranian expats in the last thirty years – for support, not inspiration. For us, exiles, going to such events is a form of community service. More than anything else, we go to allay the pangs of nostalgia, not to experience art.
So imagine my surprise when, after nearly two hours, I walked out of the theatre positively energized and perfectly inspired. Rather than engage in some form of charitable act, I had seen a genuine work of beauty.
by | Dec 8, 2017 4:47 pm | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photo
Haynes, at center in photo, in a scene from Native Son.
Jerod Haynes lost some of his friends to the streets of Chicago. He reflected on that when reprising the lead role of Bigger in a revival of Richard Wright’s Native Son, which is currently playing — and sparking raw conversation and reflection — at Yale Repertory Theatre.
by | Dec 5, 2017 1:34 pm | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photos
Wolkowitz and Skybell.
Who are the chosen?
by | Dec 4, 2017 1:21 pm | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus photos
The cast of Native Son.
Just minutes into Yale Repertory Theatre’s kinetic production of Native Son — adapted by Nambi E. Kelley from the novel by Richard Wright — a woman has been smothered in her bed and a man is on the run. And he never stops running.
Continue reading ‘Yale Rep’s “Native Son” Hits The Ground Running’
by | Nov 30, 2017 8:49 am | Comments (0)
Shadi Ghaheri, a third-year director at the Yale School of Drama, once told me she doesn’t like to direct “new plays.” I reminded her of that comment when talking to her about her thesis project, Death of Yazdgerd, by Bahram Beyzai, which runs Dec. 5 – 9 at the Iseman Theater on Chapel Street. The play dates from 1979, so could be called “new” compared to a classic. Beyzai’s play, Ghaheri pointed out, “is a masterpiece and is the equivalent, at least in its themes, of something like King Lear.” So, while the play is relatively new, the story is very old.
Or is it?
by | Nov 16, 2017 2:10 pm | Comments (1)
Cara McDonough Photo
Terreace Riggins and Tenisi Davis Rehearsal for Topdog/Underdog.
The room in Erector Square on Peck Street that houses Collective Consciousness Theater seats 60 at the most, and that’s pushing the limit. Its small size means that during a show audience members — sitting on folding chairs, with the front row just a few feet from the stage — are incredibly close to the actors. And each other.
Continue reading ‘Erector Square’s “Underdog” Theater Has BIte’