How Reuven Kept Kosher — & The Limelight
by | Jan 27, 2017 9:30 am | Comments (1)
Russell: Apple didn’t fall far.
Stanley Tucci understood what Joey Russell’s son was trying to ask him: To be his onstage “Shabbes goy.”
Theater
Feminism, Un-Whitewashed
by | Jan 27, 2017 8:51 am | Comments (1)
The first time Imogen asks William Shakespeare to write her into Much Ado About Nothing, it isn’t clear if he knows exactly what she means. A hot, nearly-white light falls around her shoulders, highlighting a spray of red hair and two dark, unmoored eyes that sprout from her skull. He laughs, shrugs his shoulders, slouches anew over his parchment, and lifts his quill.
Maybe It’s Not The End
by | Jan 20, 2017 8:58 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson
Dennehy and Cathey.
There’s a pantomime routine at the beginning of Endgame, the Samuel Beckett dramatic masterpiece now playing at the Long Wharf Theatre until Feb. 5, in which a man named Clov — who is physically unable to sit down — checks the state of affairs outside the two high windows in the back of the single room where the play takes place. He needs a ladder to be able to see out the windows. He places the ladder under one of the windows, climbs the ladder with difficulty, checks outside, gets down, starts walking to the next window. Turns and sighs. He has forgotten to bring the ladder with him. He gets the ladder, places it beneath the next window, climbs it with difficulty, checks outside again, gets down. Starts walking away. Turns and sighs, louder. He has forgotten the ladder again.
New Haven Lights Up The Trump Night
by | Jan 19, 2017 8:20 pm | Comments (1)
Paul Bass Photos
Long Wharf’s Borenstein counts down.
On the eve of what many New Haveners consider the inauguration of a dark era in America, hundreds filled the plaza outside the Shubert Theatre to blast one last communal beacon of hope.
Collective Consciousness Theater Climbs “Mountaintop”
by | Jan 18, 2017 11:22 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Riggins and West in “The Mountaintop.”
The fluorescent overhead lights were still on in Collective Consciousness Theater, in Erector Square. Actor Terrence Riggins was seated at a desk on the set for The Mountaintop. Fellow actor Malia West was standing in front of him. Neither of them were in costume yet, and West had a decidedly anachronistic plastic water in her hand. But as soon as Riggins and West fell into character, running through a scene late in the play, their voices changed, taking on a stronger Southern accent. Their body language shifted. They became the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Camae, a maid at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. It was 1968, and it was King’s last night on earth, and in The Mountaintop, he was working on a speech.
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Westville Welcomes Madame Thalia
by | Jan 16, 2017 3:03 pm | Comments (1)
Zohra Rawling was racking her brain, trying to explain all of the things that a recent beau had been doing to make her feel that special, warm tingly feeling from her nose to her toes, that flutter within her chest and stomach.
“I could say bella bella even / say wunderbar,” she sang. “Each language only helps me tell you/ how grand you are!”
Cello Marries Folk
by | Jan 13, 2017 9:58 am | Comments (0)
“Ah!” “What?” and “Whoas!” pierce the air as cellist Wes Swing told Café Nine about his recent cello travails.
Womanhood, Or Something Like It
by | Jan 13, 2017 9:00 am | Comments (0)
Elli Green Phoros
Kevin Hourigan, Courtney Jamison, Jakeem Powell, Moses Ingram, Erron Crawford, and Amandla Jahava.
From almost the very beginning of In The Red and Brown Water, which plays at the Yale Cabaret from Thursday through Saturday night, our protagonist Oya is running.
Locomotive arms lift and lower themselves behind her. Feet become percussive instruments, hammering into the stage. From all sides of her body comes a deep, collective breath, actors throwing themselves into movement as if to will her forward. It’s the only consistency of which she is totally sure as her muscled legs fly, trying to transport her to another life.
Long Wharf Digs Into “Endgame”
by | Dec 21, 2016 9:05 am | Comments (0)
Kimberly Shepherd Photo
Dennehy and Cathey in rehearsal.
The man in the chair can’t stand up. The man nearby, standing up, can’t sit down. They can’t go outside. There’s nothing there.
In the room with them are two trash cans. None of them leave. Can’t or won’t, it’s unclear. But they don’t.
All they really have are their words. And from the pen of Samuel Beckett, the Nobel Prize-winning playwright, novelist, theater director, and poet, what words they are.
“Seven Guitars” Strikes The Right Chord
by | Dec 7, 2016 3:00 pm | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photos
The actors march onto the stark stage in silence. They turn and face the audience and still don’t say anything, not until all have taken their positions. Then August Wilson’s language — incantatory and rich with life — bursts into the theater.
We learn that the five people on stage are returning from a funeral, reconvening in the backyard of a house in Pittsburgh. As they keep talking, it seems clear that they could be doing something else, or anything at all, dressed in their funereal finest. Maybe one could be loosening his tie. Maybe someone could be putting up coffee, or getting out beers.
But they don’t do anything; they just stand there. And it works.
The Art Of The Steal
by | Dec 1, 2016 9:09 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photos
Lage and Rooth.
“There are three things that give you unconditional acceptance,” Larry “The Liquidator” Garfinkle tells the audience midway through Other People’s Money, on at Long Wharf Theatre now through Dec. 18.
One is dogs. The second is donuts. The third is money.
You Might Recognize The Main Character
by | Nov 22, 2016 9:03 am | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
The play’s director Marc Bruni, with the Donald Trump-endorsed published playscript.
In 1989 former businessman turned playwright Jerry Sterner penned a huge hit about a rapacious corporate takeover specialist, Larry “The Liquidator” Garfinkle, a fast-talking, donut-and-bagel-eating New Yorker who takes over the New England Wire and Cable Company. Popular among Wall Streeters, It even earned the endorsement of a rising young real estate mogul named Donald Trump, although he invested no money — not even other people’s money — in the production.
Regicides To The (Museum Collection) Rescue
by | Nov 21, 2016 3:59 am | Comments (2)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTOS
Regicides players Ian Alderman, left, Ruben Ortiz, right, Dana Astmann, background.
“There are spirits in this structure, and they are celebrating right now.”
So said an emotion-filled Robert Greenberg as he thanked an audience of friends and supporters who attended a special comedy performance this past Thursday of The Regicides to “help rescue New Haven’s tangible treasures.”
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Sexual Violence — And Hope — On Stage At Co-Op High
by | Nov 18, 2016 8:36 am | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Senior Rashae Reeves as Mama Nadi.
A girl has been sexually mutilated by a soldier’s bayonet and has a malodorous fistula. She can’t work as a prostitute and must sing for her survival.
Think a play with such a subject does not belong in a high school production? Think again.
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Writers, Griots Tellabrate
by | Nov 11, 2016 9:30 am | Comments (1)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Lesiga.
Nina Lesiga remembers when she realized that the chicken she was eating for Sunday dinner — a little tough and chewy, come to think of it — was in fact Vanya, once her grandmother’s favorite black-and-yellow plumed, softly cooing pet.
Thanks to a growing story-sharing initiative at the Institute Library, New Haveners now do too .
New Film Supports New Art For New Haven
by | Nov 8, 2016 11:00 am | Comments (0)
Poster for the film.
A new New Haven-based film, I Am Shakespeare (The Henry Green Story), not yet in its premiere phase, is slated to be screened at a Nov. 19 fundraiser.
The audience will not only get to see the film and participate in a talk-back with the film’s subject, Henry Green, and director, Stephen Dest; it will also be contributing to an exciting light installation project in New Haven by world-renowned artist Sheila Levrant de Bretteville.
Le Tre Fenici Usher In Halloween
by | Oct 27, 2016 8:15 am | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Rawling.
Standing in the middle of Lyric Hall’s intimate stage, soprano Zohra Rawling was having a perfectly normal Thursday afternoon conjuring spirits, her voice reaching the rafters and pushing upward to the roof. Oooo oooo ooo ooooooohhhoo, she sang, the first of three puppets appearing before her with neat, ruby red lips and a bone-white face. Ooooooo oooo, she continued. A few backstage cobwebs dissolved with the vocals.
Right on cue, stilt-walker-cum-ghost Allison McDermott teetered behind Rawling, waving her arms to the music. Another puppet appeared, and an opera got underway.
Long Wharf Takes On Police Brutality
by | Oct 20, 2016 4:56 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Jafferis and student.
In a quiet upstairs room at Long Wharf Theater, a group of students were getting Thanksgiving preparations underway, bowing their heads as they began a sort of prayer-cum-beatboxing. Aaron Jafferis, Hanifa Washington and Angela Clinton made chewing noises in 4/4 time. At Aleta Staton’s direction, they were riding that rhythm as hard as they could.
In “Scenes Of Court Life,” There’s No Escaping History
by | Oct 19, 2016 4:17 pm | Comments (0)
In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the prince’s advice to the players suggests that “the purpose of playing” is “to hold the mirror up to nature,” but we might wonder exactly what “nature” means there. Does it include political matters? Or something more essential?
Today, most of us — audiences, artists, critics — are aware that our “nature” is almost inextricably fused with our politics. Therein lies the purpose behind the arch and suggestive comedy of Sarah Ruhl’s Scenes from Court Life, or the whipping boy and his prince, now in its world premiere at Yale Repertory Theatre, directed by Mark Wing-Davey.
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The Sound Of Silence
by | Oct 14, 2016 8:15 am | Comments (0)
Elizabeth Green Photos
The cast-mid fight: Crowe-Legacy, Jamison, Kuo, Udom and Wainiqolo.
Just moments after a woman has screamed from the pain of childbirth, fists are flying. Limbs are lunging. On one end of the room, a grandmother emerges from her dreary shuffle to restrain the pregnant woman, one elbow cutting across her neck as the other swings back, ready to move into action. Just feet away, a father and son wrestle each other to the floor, alternating swings as they rotate around each other, grudging and violent planets in paternal orbit. Their bodies, seething with anger and distrust, fill the space.
Somehow, everything operates at a whisper. The whoosh of labored breath is the only guaranteed sound. They, these weary and wary fighters, know what we in the audience are still learning: If the woman screams again, it could cause an avalanche to come crashing down on their home, and their village.
“Meteor Shower” Walks On The Mild Side
by | Oct 11, 2016 12:20 pm | Comments (2)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Myrin and Brown.
Fans of comic actor, playwright, and humorist Steve Martin will no doubt find something to like in his latest play, now at the Long Wharf after a successful run at the Old Globe in San Diego. Meteor Shower, directed by Artistic Director Gordon Edelstein, bases its appeal on Martin’s celebrated gift for the non sequitur. There are jibes at the pretensions and insecurities of married couples, moments of uncanny or absurdist humor, ironically erotic scenes, actual pyrotechnics, and gestures toward an all’s‑well-that-ends-well faith in normalcy.
Martin’s approach works when it works, but viewers might find themselves wondering what purpose this walk on the mild side serves, beyond fitful amusement.
Dark “Incident” Unfolds On Chapel Street
by | Sep 28, 2016 8:14 am | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Fledgling director Smith and his stage manager, Megan Chenot
Earlier this year, as Donald Trump’s steamroller victories in the primaries were gathering an unstoppable head of steam, New Haven Theater Company actor J. Kevin Smith happened to catch a televised version of one of the canon’s most famous plays about the paralyzing fear and inaction that can result from a perceived all-encompassing political powerlessness.
New Voices Hit Long Wharf
by | Sep 9, 2016 8:19 am | Comments (0)
Courtesy Long Wharf Theatre
Miller, Mississippi, the new play by Boo Killabrew that opens Long Wharf Theatre’s second annual Contemporary American Voices festival this Friday evening, comes with a lot of baggage.
Two years before Killabrew even thought about bringing a work to New Haven’s Long Wharf Theatre, she had a problem.
Senior Memoirists Wow Long Wharf
by | Aug 30, 2016 10:16 am | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Onstage, Bertha Kahn recalls a childhood spent in Nazi Germany.
A kiss that convinces you the kisser will be your partner for life.
Your Bronx public school third-grade teacher’s very first words: “Open the windows. I can’t stand the smell here. You Jews, don’t you bathe?”
And this obituary notice recommendation for the fall of 2016: “In lieu of flowers, please don’t vote for Trump.”
Elm Shakespeare Makes “Midsummer” A Dangerous Caper
by | Aug 25, 2016 12:01 pm | Comments (0)
Mike Franzman Photo
Anthony Peeples as Demetrius, Stephanie Jean Lane as Helena, Anna Paratore as Hermia, and Evan Gambardella as Puck.
Elm Shakespeare Company’s production of William Shakespare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream — now playing in Edgerton Park until Sept. 4 — begins with yipping, barking, and marching, the first signs of a war between Greek soldiers and Amazon warriors that breaks out all over the set. That is, until the combatants freeze, comically, mid-swing, mid-yelp, almost mid-fall, so that an announcer can stride onstage to say the usual thanks and tell audience members to turn their cell phones off.
When she departs, the battle continues, just long enough for veterans of the play to realize that this is the battle in which Theseus (Dave Demke), now ruler of Athens, bests the Amazon Hippolyta (Tai Verley) in combat and then plans to make her his wife.
Both the noisy battle (which isn’t in the script) and its absurd interruption are a sign to the audience that this won’t be an entirely straightforward production of Midsummer. Some liberties, some chances, will be taken. Some interesting choices will be made. Will they pan out?
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