Stanley Kowalksi tossed one radio out the window without much of a wind-up, more a change of pace. He also shattered only one plate after Blanche called him a Polack for the umpteenth time.
When that happened halfway through the Yale Rep’s three-hour production of Tennessee Williams’s 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning playA Streetcar Named Desire, I realized I was still waiting for Joe Manganiello’s Stanley to become wild and crazy Marlon Brando, who starred as Stanley in the 1951 movie version.
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Allan Appel
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Oct 3, 2013 12:28 pm
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The popper has leukemia. The b‑boy, sickle cell disease. The nurse with headphones speaks only beat-boxingese. Is it any wonder the pediatric hematologist is having a hard time communicating?
Coming off a very successful season that included the unveiling of a major renovation, as well as critically acclaimed productions of My Name is Asher Lev, Clybourne Park, and Satchmo at the Waldorf, Long Wharf Theatre will start this season with a comedy.
Gordon Edelstein (pictured), the organization’s artistic director, spoke about The Underpants and the art of putting a season together. The following includes snippets of that conversation.
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Allan Appel
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Sep 19, 2013 9:54 am
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Allan Appel Photo
Director Scarpa at entryway to the English Market.
You walk by a basket of sepia photographs with their corners upturned, past racks of vintage clothing, furniture, and artifacts perfect for the era of the play.
But the Our Town the New Haven Theater Company is opening Thursday night at the English Building Market on Chapel Street uses none of them.
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Allan Appel
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Sep 17, 2013 1:28 pm
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Corkie Weinstein and Bertha Kahn, two of the “Snapshot” playwrights.
Sylvia Rifkin was taking a typing test at the V.A. Hospital in West Haven when JFK was assassinated. She wondered if she got the job with the doctor because of her typing skills — or because she cried so much and so well.
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Allan Appel
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Sep 12, 2013 2:59 pm
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Not long ago, actor Daniel White played the lovable dwarf Bashful, gracing Snow White’s innocence at a kids’ theater in Bridgeport.
He’s making his New Haven debut in quite a different role: A loose-cannon survivalist in a military uniform, a man with a penchant for booze, psychedelic mushrooms, domestic violence, and international killing.
Fortunately he’s got a pretty ex-stripper wife who keeps him vaguely under control. Oh, have I mentioned the miscarried fetus that she keeps in a jar in the garage?
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Allan Appel
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Aug 29, 2013 4:51 pm
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Thomas MacMillan Photo
(Theater review) When candidates go into a theater, it’s fair to expect drama. And if the advertising for it also looked a bit like a playbill for a prize fight, well, intellectual fisticuffs must be coming our way.
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Allan Appel
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Aug 21, 2013 3:32 pm
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When these young Montagues and Capulets face off against each other they’ll be flinging not only daggers and swords, but equally cutting lyrics from the likes of The Civil Wars, Taylor Swift, and Mumford & Sons.
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Allan Appel
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Aug 8, 2013 12:24 pm
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Playwright Gray with actor Peter Chenot.
A new playwright leaned over a large vase of day lilies. He took a look at the manuscript of his play held in the hands of an actor. The actor had marked up the script, as actors will do, with lime-yellow highlighter. They were about to begin.
“That’s crap,” the playwright said, pointing to one section. He was joking, of course. Or was he?
Campy theater — as in a play put on by summer campers — arrives downtown this weekend, straight from the funny pages: a production of You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown.
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Allan Appel
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Jul 11, 2013 1:48 pm
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The songs are the characters, and a musical trip down memory lane offers a reminder of a time when those characters crossed a racial barrier in America.
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Thomas MacMillan
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Jun 21, 2013 11:07 am
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Thomas MacMillan Photo
One of the hottest tickets in town brings New Haveners back 150 years to the era of the corset and a liberating invention called the bicycle — a trip that begins not onstage, but in a pre-performance journey down a steel-cage elevator through a 19th century tunnel.
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Allan Appel
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Jun 17, 2013 12:41 pm
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Allan Appel Photo
Jafferis in his make-believe elevator, and unstuck.
In writing a play about a man stuck in an elevator, Aaron Jafferis, who infuses his work with social-justice messages, faced a challenge: How to be a writer unstuck, so that imagination soars up to the higher floors while he stays true to himself and his values. Or, in other words, how not to leave art stranded on the bottom floor.
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Allan Appel
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Jun 11, 2013 1:51 pm
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Rizzo and Danihy of the Connecticut Critics Circle.
The genial gent with the glasses doesn’t look like a dinosaur, but the Hartford Courant’s Frank Rizzo is one: One of the last remaining full-time theater critics in Connecticut — and, to indulge in dramatic license, perhaps in the nation, the planet, the cosmos.
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Allan Appel
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Jun 11, 2013 12:40 pm
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Nicholas Avila as Caesar, Yashaira Leguisamon as Cassius, and Makhi Drummond as Cato.
A funny, kid-friendly 30-minute Julius Caesar has its debut and full run in a single performance Tuesday night at 6:30 at the Mauro-Sheridan School on Fountain Street.
