by | Dec 11, 2014 3:58 pm | Comments (1)
Lucy Gellman Photo
Margaret Mann.
What happens when an unsuspecting Meetup group of cultural aficionados stumbles into the Institute Library on a cold and dreary night, hoping that someone will read a story to them?
by | Dec 9, 2014 10:04 am | Comments (0)
Sam Plattus Photo
MacCoy is a small-time drug dealer somewhere in Appalachia. Little Lady is the mother of his unborn child. They’re hot for each other and desperate to improve their lives. MacCoy’s uncle has a better thing going. So early in the play, Little Lady convinces “Mac” that they have to kill him and take over.
Sound familiar?
by | Dec 8, 2014 2:16 pm | Comments (1)
T. Charles Erickson Photo
Robbie Tann.
Picasso at the Lapin Agile, playing at Long Wharf Theatre now until Dec. 21, is written by Steve Martin, so let’s answer the first question you may have: Yes, it’s funny. It’s very funny. And its best jokes are the ones in which the subject is humor itself — how it works and why it sometimes doesn’t.
by | Dec 8, 2014 9:27 am | Comments (3)
Brian Slattery Photos
Winfred Rembert
It was expected that the Arts Council of Greater New Haven’s annual arts award ceremony, held at the New Haven Lawn Club on Friday, would be a celebration. It also ended up being one of unexpected emotion and depth.
by | Dec 3, 2014 9:50 am | Comments (3)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
Sometimes it takes a village. In the case of artist Tony Falcone and his commissioned pastel illustration honoring the 100th anniversary of the Shubert Theater, it took a team of “insiders.”
Continue reading ‘Shubert Celebrates Centennial With Public Art’
by | Dec 2, 2014 2:12 pm | Comments (0)
Joan Marcus Photo
War. Huh! What is it good for? Well, War—the new play by the hotshot young playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, getting its world premiere at the Yale Rep through Dec. 13 — is good for starting arguments.
by | Nov 28, 2014 12:54 pm | Comments (0)
DAVID SEPULVEDA PHOTO
Dest at NMS.
Many have heard of it, but ask someone for directions just around the corner from the Neighborhood Music School, located at 100 Audubon St., and very few will be able to tell you how to get there, according to drama department founder and instructor Stephen Dest.
by | Nov 28, 2014 12:52 pm | Comments (0)
Shubert Archives
Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady.
The same year the Shubert Theater opened, the Panama Canal was inaugurated, Babe Ruth debuted with the Boston Red Sox, Charlie Chaplin made his first appearance on film, and Harry Houdini performed stunts in New York City.
by | Nov 26, 2014 12:57 pm | Comments (0)
Bathed in flashing pink and green light was a pint-sized, shop-window ready Miss Pussycat — literally. Her head was on a mini mannequin popping out from behind a curtain. She appeared to cheers and loud, ringing claps from the audience. Someone waved a metallic baton. The warmup act, The Simple Pleasure, hopped up and down wildly in their gym shorts and tank tops, spraying sweat as they pumped their fists in anticipation. The DJ If Jesus Had Machine Guns perfected his single dance move of the night.
by | Nov 25, 2014 1:21 pm | Comments (0)
He’s conquered the space-time continuum! He’s aged not a bit! He’s as cute and disheveled as ever. He’s back and waiting for the world to recognize his genius, giving us the skinny on how energy equals mass times the speed of light. Squared.
by | Nov 20, 2014 2:55 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Co-Op students Arinze O’Kwuosah and Donijah Collier rehearse the run up to a sword fight.
“Put your point down and then bring it straight up,” Jim Andreassi said. “He’s a beautiful man. I don’t want to lose any of that.”
by | Nov 19, 2014 5:41 pm | Comments (0)
Christian Shaboo had ventured deep into the territory of “The Laughing Man.” Already he had relayed to the audience the man’s repeated triumphs against the nefarious Marcel Dufarge and his evil daughter; his cunning ways with the Paris sewer system; his facility in talking to animals. With one free hand, the actor wove The Laughing Man’s mask through the air, a layering of red poppy petals, waxy and pungent, appearing before the rapt audience as his fingers flitted to and fro.
by | Nov 18, 2014 5:18 pm | Comments (2)
“You’d never imagine that in this day and age, people would believe in psychics. But it’s big. They’re filling arenas.” So Mark Edward said to a packed house at the Institute Library for the latest “Amateur Hour,” where Edward worked his powers as a medium, then showed how most of it is a crock — and then, somehow, worked his powers again.
by | Nov 18, 2014 1:49 pm | Comments (0)
New Haven Theater Company
The idea behind the phrase “the blind leading the blind” is that without true faith a person is blind and anyone he leads or teaches will be led astray. Both will fall into the ditch. The phrase is apt for Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer, which finishes its run at the New Haven Theater Company this weekend.
by | Nov 12, 2014 4:09 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Kevin Smith, as Sharkey, and Peter Chenot as his maybe friend, Nicky in the New Haven Theater Co.’s production of “The Seafarer.”.
Not exactly looking forward to seeing certain relatives this holiday season? Irritated by that uncle who’s so certain about politics and love that when he hits the whiskey your ear is ringing with his 90-proof wisdom?
I have just the right pre-Christmas vaccine for you.
by | Nov 11, 2014 4:41 pm | Comments (0)
Allan Appel Photo
Akintunde Sogunro as Sly and Singleton as Lank debate the cost of buying a bar business.
Does Marvin Gaye’s voice sound more velvety on a 45 RPM or on that new-fangled eight-track machine?
That’s one of the central questions in a play set four decades ago in a struggling but deeply loyal black family during the racial rioting — and profiling — of the 1960s. Unfortunately, it’s anything but dated.
Continue reading ‘Motown And Profiling To “Play” At Erector Square’
by | Nov 3, 2014 9:16 am | Comments (0)
A little rain still couldn’t stop the dead from marching from downtown New Haven to Fair Haven.
by | Oct 31, 2014 10:55 am | Comments (0)
A mother devours her children. Yet washing them thoroughly and boiling them in a large pot of water may not have been the very best cooking method. They tasted just like mud pies and gave the poor old dear indigestion.
Continue reading ‘Gothic Shorts Creep Out Institute Library’
by | Oct 31, 2014 8:44 am | Comments (0)
WNPR
Remsen Welsh, a home-schooled 8th grader, plays the role of Rebecca Gibbs in the revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at Long Wharf Theatre, which closes Nov. 2. She is keeping a diary of the experience. This installment is from the day of a student matinee.
by and | Oct 20, 2014 10:38 am | Comments (0)
T. CHARLES ERICKSON PHOTO
After watching the new revival of Our Town at Long Wharf Theatre (reviewed here by Christopher Arnott), two Independent reporters — one who had repeatedly seen and read the play before, one who hadn’t — regrouped at Atticus Bookstore Cafe to hash out their divergent reactions. Excerpts of the conversation follow:
by | Oct 20, 2014 10:36 am | Comments (0)
T. CHARLES ERICKSON PHOTO
Robert Dorfman as Simon Stimson, leading a choir of “townspeople.”
Gordon Edelstein’s new Long Wharf Theatre production of Our Town is a magically normal, splendiforously matter-of-fact, divinely human interpretation of a world theater classic that, for all its self-consciously naturalistic tendencies, has a latter-day reputation of being formal and stuffy. This rendition, honoring the Long Wharf’s 50th anniversary, is mortal, moral and resplendently casual.
by | Oct 13, 2014 8:45 am | Comments (0)
JOAN MARCUS PHOTO
Rebekah Brockman as Thomasina Coverly.
Tom Stoppard writes for smart people really well. That means audiences as well as the characters in his plays.
In Arcadia—which the Yale Repertory Theatre is staging for smart audiences through Oct. 25 at the Yale University Theater, 222 York St. — Stoppard is dealing with true geniuses. One is the legendary British poet Lord Byron, who is never seen onstage but is on the minds of the main characters throughout the whole play. Another springs whole from Stoppard’s ingenious mind: a 13-year-old early-19th-century math prodigy named Thomasina Coverly, who doesn’t get the acclaim she deserves because of a series of circumstances, misunderstandings and chauvinistic assumptions. That sensitive plotl ine has made Arcadia a modern classic and one of the most produced of all Tom Stoppard’s plays.
Continue reading ‘The Rep Reclines On The Shores Of Arcadia’
by | Oct 8, 2014 1:55 pm | Comments (1)
Remsen Welsh, a home-schooled 8th grader, plays the role of Rebecca Gibbs in the revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town opening this week at Long Wharf Theatre. She is keeping a diary of the experience this installment is from “tech day,” the first day the actors move into the theater to check out the lighting, set, sound cues, and costumes.
The start of tech was filled with excitement … and the knowledge that it was going to be a long day.
by | Oct 7, 2014 1:06 pm | Comments (0)
Remsen Welsh, a home-schooled 8th grader, plays the role of Rebecca in the revival of Our Town opening this week at Long Wharf Theatre. She is keeping a diary of the experience.
I got an e‑mail last night before from the production stage manager notifying me that I would be called at 11:30 a.m. today. My mom and I headed out on our usual route, but because of the traffic going over the Pearl Harbor Memorial Bridge, my mom looked at me and informed me, “You’re probably going to be a little late. Can you text Michelle [the child wrangler] letting her know we’ll be a little late?”
Continue reading ‘A Little Late To Rehearsal—& A Little Wiser’
by | Oct 2, 2014 2:31 pm | Comments (0)
LWT
Long Wharf Theatre decided to make its revived version of Our Town look more like our town — in part by casting Myra Lucretia Taylor and others in roles once filled exclusively by white actors.