by | Jun 3, 2015 4:54 pm | Comments (0)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Sarah Holdren was in a theatrical pickle. It was midwinter in New Haven, the snow promised to last for at least another four months, and after successfully pitching a program to the Yale Summer Cabaret’s 2015 board, she found herself unsure of how exactly to make one of her old favorites — A Midsummer Night’s Dream — into something new and intrepid.
by | May 22, 2015 1:38 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
Wearing a hard hat because the crew was still assembling the set, Sound Resident Lindsay Wagner demonstrated some of the sound design for the Long Wharf’s staging this weekend of The Boy at the Edge of Everything, by Finegan Kruckemeyer. She looked toward the stage, where one crew member was up on a ladder that reached to the high ceiling of Long Wharf’s Stage II, adjusting a light. Another crew member was below him, checking his work.
“Sound!” Wagner called.
by | May 19, 2015 12:23 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
A cult has been identified in New Haven, thus far unknown to authorities. All we know of it is the following: This (above) is its emblem and name, Albean. At their weekly meetings, adherents have been sighted wearing long robes. At initiations the new acolyte strips to the waist — women can retain their bras — and the leader, a 30-something named Tyler, draws three black concentric circles on their naked torsos.
Whenever they speak to each other, on matters as trivial as announcing that a vaginal itch has finally been cured, the exchange concludes with the earnestly whispered words, “With love.”
Continue reading ‘New Haven Theater Company Receives The Words of Albean’
by | May 18, 2015 8:37 am | Comments (0)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
The Second Mrs. Wilson, now playing at Long Wharf Theater through May 31, is both timely and old-fashioned.
In the last few years of its first half-century, the Long Wharf Theater and its artistic director, Gordon Edelstein, have been doing their damnedest to revive a dying dramatic genre — the history play. One-person biodramas will never go away — they’re easy to produce and attractive for celebrities. But ensemble pieces based on true life events? Lavish period pieces reliant on real research? Revisionist histories? They don’t write ‘em like they used to.
by | May 15, 2015 4:12 pm | Comments (0)
Hooker eighth-grader Melissa Cisija was acting out again. Seated against a backdrop of her favorite possessions — a globe, rocking softly to and fro from its stony shelf, an eyeglass, and a fork, formerly known as a dinglehopper — she crossed her arms, shook her head, and glared at the audience before her.
“I just want to belong!,” she exclaimed.
by | May 13, 2015 3:24 pm | Comments (1)
Brian Slattery Photo
John Fisher, Mia Sinclair Jenness, Gabby Gutierrez, Mabel Tyler, Toni Harp.
“New Haven: Bigger than Los Angeles,” proclaimed Mayor Toni Harp.
Harp made the declaration at the Shubert Wednesday afternoon, explaining how the touring company for the Broadway hit Matilda is following the old-school pattern of opening its show at the New Haven theater before taking it on the road.
While in town, the play is expected to generate about $2 million in overall economic activity for the city, officials said..
“We’re excited from an arts and cultural standpoint,” Harp said. “We’re also excited from a dollars and cents standpoint.”
by | May 11, 2015 1:06 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Never in her life had Rachel Zwick gone into Home Depot — or any store — to buy a five-sixteenths combo wrench or five-inch floppy disks for sanders.
Continue reading ‘Co-Op Grad Scores Backstage “Matilda” Role’
by | May 6, 2015 1:11 pm | Comments (0)
Carol Rosegg Photo
Alfredo Narciso and Laurel Casillo.
Funny, fun to watch, and perceptive, Sheila Callaghan’s Elevada, directed by Jackson Gray and playing at the Yale Rep through May 16, is a play aimed at the young, but not so young — those who are still looking for fun and for meaningful relationships, those willing to be indulgent, even silly, but trying too for a certain gravitas. Set in a New York of virtual lives, life-threatening disease, recovery from addiction, and trying to connect, it’s a play about adults still trying to figure out what adult means well after college and well before middle age.
by | May 6, 2015 12:10 pm | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photo
Emily Zemba thinks her generation takes itself maybe a “little too seriously.” Phillip Howze admits that he has long had “a secret crush on musicals.” And “something clicked” — the spark of a new play — when Ryan Campell read Euripedes.
by | May 4, 2015 8:00 am | Comments (1)
C.A. Nolte Photo
Before he was roasted, Andy Sharpe stepped out of Joker’s Wild Comedy Club on Wooster Street for a cigarette. The interior of the club was dim, amber light filling the space everywhere except for the stage, where the spot light rested on an empty podium. Two rows of armless chairs lined the stage to the left, where the roasters would sit. A wicker chair with cushioned footstool, looking like a castoff from the set of Golden Girls, was positioned between the stage and the roasters’ bleachers. A few people milled about, ordering drinks.
by | Apr 15, 2015 1:59 pm | Comments (2)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
For Elizardi Castro, doing hard time as a Puerto Rican attorney in America may not have been nearly as challenging as being the only lawyer in a large, Puerto Rican family.
by | Apr 15, 2015 7:14 am | Comments (0)
America’s first black serial killer. A not-quite love song to a favorite purple and mercurial fruit that doubles as a touching and insightful narrative of family relations. A series of unfolding scenes in Clarkston, Washington.
Continue reading ‘Contemporary American Voices Arrive In Elm City’
by | Apr 9, 2015 3:29 pm | Comments (0)
Heather, a young teacher, is tidying up her desk at the end of a long school day when there’s a knock on the door. Corynn, a mother, arrives for her scheduled parent-teacher conference. Seems like a mundane situation.
Except that the 11-year-old boy, the subject of the conference, has recently killed himself.
Continue reading ‘Collective Consciousness Theater Unties “Gidion’s Knot”’
by | Apr 7, 2015 4:30 pm | Comments (0)
brownsville song (b‑side for tray) is a love poem of sorts to a certain way of life in a specific part of Brooklyn. There’s gang violence and drug dealing and less overt adversities, like getting through the school day or not losing your temper with your family. Kimber Lee’s script is earnest and hopeful.
by | Apr 2, 2015 2:54 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
“Every Day Be Sunday By and By,” Boston, White & Smith Co., 1881, from Beinecke’s James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection.
Published in 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin almost immediately was adapted for the minstrel show stage. Twenty-five years had to pass for the racial powers-that-be to allow an actual African-American actor, Sam Lucas, to replace the white actor playing Uncle Tom in that eponymous role.
Roll the clock ahead a century or so. A Broadway curtain rises and you see that the white, Jewish Loman family in a 1996 production of Death of a Salesman is all African-American.
Progress?
Continue reading ‘“Casting Shadows” Sheds Light On Race In Theater’
by | Mar 31, 2015 4:41 pm | Comments (0)
Carol Rosegg Photo
The Yale Repertory Theatre’s gorgeous revival of Bertolt Brecht’s 1944 play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed by Liz Diamond, finds the fun in what could be an off-putting work.
Continue reading ‘“Chalk Circle” Timelessly Timely — And Fun?’
by | Mar 27, 2015 1:05 pm | Comments (2)
Allan Appel Photo
Playing to a full house at the Shubert, Ammon Downer and Tanaiza Glass set the beat and a joyous tone for their talented crew of singers and dancers from the Edgewood School in “A Friend Like Me,” from the musical Aladdin.
Continue reading ‘Kids Sing Their Way To Victory At Shubert’
by | Mar 27, 2015 12:00 pm | Comments (5)
Fake Babies Photo
Unit G-2, aka “The Submarine,” before last week’s raid.
When I first came to Daggett Street Square in 2007, I was taken by its rambling hallways, its pulley-operated elevator. The building may not have been insulated, but it was insular. By that time, few live-work spaces remained in New Haven. There had been others — on River Street; in the Munniemaker cigar factory on State Street; at Chapel and Church, above what is now Gotham Citi — all now shut down.
Now we can add Daggett Street Square to the list: Last week officials ordered it cleared out.
David Lasala Photo
David Lasala.
by | Mar 25, 2015 2:20 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Montana Telman as Georgia Hendricks, leading the dancers.
Nearly three dozen actors, 20 student musicians, 12 techies, and a new all-student dramaturgy team have created a murder board in the lobby of Co-op High.
A murder board is a good thing. It’s all part of the school’s presentation of Curtains, a charming play-within-a-play backstage murder mystery musical comedy, as its all-school spring show.
by | Mar 20, 2015 12:22 pm | Comments (1)
Markeshia Ricks Photo
“You’re gonna hit one, two and then I’m going to swing,” Devonne “Da Bomb” Canady told Catrina Ganey. “Got it?” Ganey had it.
Continue reading ‘Leading Lady Discovers “B-Side” At Dixwell Gym’
by | Mar 19, 2015 3:05 pm | Comments (2)
When ConnCAT founder Erik Clemons first heard selections from brownsville song (b‑side for tray), he realized something very quickly: Even the smallest section of Kimber Lee’s masterfully true-to-life script lent itself to hours of discussions he was waiting to have.
The same was true for youth worker Steve Driffin, who immediately seized on the importance of sharing the play’s narrative — a young, precious and imperiled black life — with the New Haven community as necessary and therapeutic.
by | Mar 12, 2015 4:21 pm | Comments (1)
Allan Appel Photo
Wormser (left) with admirer and fellow poet David Leff.
The williwaw — an icy, mountainous wind that literally drove some GIs crazy during the Aleutian campaign in World War II — made a chilling and beautiful appearance in both words and music, alongside the propulsive verses of nationally known poet Baron Wormser, in a haunting evening of poetry at the Institute Library.
Continue reading ‘Williwaw and Wormser Blow Institute Library Away’
by | Mar 12, 2015 3:01 pm | Comments (0)
Paul Bass Photos
Mom, left, meets actress, right.
Catrina Ganey wanted to know what it’s like to lose a child to a random bullet. Tracey Suggs knew all too well.
Continue reading ‘Justus’s Mom Brings Leading Lady To Tears’
by | Mar 10, 2015 1:04 pm | Comments (0)
Brian Slattery Photo
“I saw that he was laying in the doorway with a bullet wound in his head. Then he went into convulsions. and then he was out.”
Continue reading ‘The Organic Truth, From Trayvon To “Tray”’
by | Mar 9, 2015 1:29 am | Comments (6)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
It may be time to call a moratorium on shouty dysfunctional family plays. This season so far the Yale Rep has given us Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ War and Dania Gurira’s Familiar. After the heartwarming season-opening fake-out of Our Town, Long Wharf Theater has presented Dael Orlandersmith’s Forever — which, though it’s a one-woman show, bristles with mother/daughter antagonisms. Now it’s putting on the current small-cast contemporary-setting darling of regional theaters nationwide, Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews.