Theater

Week four has arrived! Here is this week's musical offering from Shakespeare in the Park's upcoming production of Love's Labour's Lost. The song is entitled "Jaquenetta," written by Michael Friedman

Who knew that Russians would be so hip this spring? The Encores! series just finished its season with a production of Rodgers and Hart’s gangsters-and-Russian ballet musical On Your Toes. And in successive evenings last week, my theatergoing buddy Bill and I saw Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812 and Nikolai and The Others, two shows that deal in very different ways with the mad passion for life and the simultaneous melancholy about how it will turn out that define the Russian character. My feelings about the shows are similarly mixed and since last Saturday's post was so paltry, I'm going to go on a bit longer than I usually do and wrap two reviews in one so that I can tell you about both of them. The buzziest of the two is Natasha, Pierre and The Great Comet of 1812, which gained some notoriety this past weekend when a writer for the "National Review" wrote about an altercation with another audience member that resulted in his smashing her cellphone and guards evicting him (click here to read his account of the incident). But even before that drama, Natasha, Pierre had a noteworthy run last year at Ars Nova and landed on several year-end bests lists. I’d skipped that earlier production, thinking that a technopop opera based on a tiny 70-page segment from Tolstoy’s gargantuan novel “War and Peace” sounded too precious. But, eager to see what all the fuss was about, I bought tickets the moment I heard that Natasha, Pierre was coming back. And the news that the producers would be setting up a tent in the Meatpacking District, outfitting it as a nightclub called Kazino and including a Russian-inspired meal in the $125 price of the ticket (we scored a discount) made the show sound even more enticing. The inside of the show's pop-up club turned out to be decorated with 19th century portraits (including a huge one of Napoleon, whose war with the Russians provides the backdrop for the novel and the musical.) Guests are seated at banquets along the red velvet walls or at tiny circular tables. The meal—thimble-sized glasses of borscht and vodka, some wilted raw vegetables, a few slices of tasty black bread, small bits of broiled chicken and salmon over a spoonful of pilaf and a plate of pierogi—wasn’t bad but it left me hungry for something more substantial (I raided the frig when I got home.) And I felt the same way about the show. It pivots around Natasha, a young noblewoman who is engaged to Andrey, an upstanding prince who is away fighting, and seduced by Anatole, a more profligate prince. The plot also includes the goings-on of a half dozen others, including the titular Pierre, a rich and well-meaning aristocrat who is ill at ease in Russian society. Their stories unfold right on the dining room floor, with the actors snaking their way around the tables and clambering up on the small platforms placed around the room. All of them are good but Phillipa Soo is particularly lovely as Natasha and Lucas Steele brings just the right amount of bad-boy sexiness to Anatole. But most of the praise has been directed at Dave Malloy, who adapted the book, composed the music, wrote the lyrics, orchestrated the score, and plays piano and accordion in addition to portraying Pierre (click here to read a Q&A with him. An eight-piece orchestra seated around the room provides the rest of the music—a mashup of techno, Russian folk tunes and emo ballads—and the musicians even join in a couple of the dance numbers, choreographed with great brio by Sam Pinkleton. The whole thing adds up to another of the immersive theater experiences that are packing in the young audiences producers crave and delighting critics who are equally desperate for something new. I’ve become a convert to immersion too (click here to read my review of David Byrne’s Here Lies Love) but, despite all the critical acclaim i

Theatres often seem to programme the same old repertoire. Tell us about the lost gems you would like the chance to see on stageIf you wanted to see Strindberg's Miss Julie over the last year, you would have been spoiled for choice, with productions popping up all over the country. And in Britain you're probably only ever a few feet away from a revival of A Midsummer Night's Dream or Alan Ayckbourn's A Chorus of Disapproval. Alan Bennett's The History Boys can currently be seen in both Sheffield and Colchester, and there is now a Piaf at the Octagon in Bolton hot on the heels of a revival at Leicester's Curve. Winslow Boys and Doll's Houses also seem to come in pairs.Given just how many plays are available to them (with more being written all the time) it seems astonishing that most theatres choose from such a small body of work. So tell us the plays – older or more recent – that you are longing to see and which you believe are well worthy of revival.TheatreWest EndLyn Gardnerguardian.co.uk © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

On entering the Centrespace Gallery, you are ushered into a small and intimate tent with what feels like old friends for an evening of reminiscence and tales. This clever use of space makes you feel completely relaxed and comfortable as the girls welcome you in with their friendly smiles and greetings. This closed space allows Ella and Nicki to really connect with their audience as they make you to feel as though they are speaking directly to you, by making eye contact with everyone in the audience at some point. The girls cleverly included the audience by passing around photos and cutting a peanut butter-flavoured ‘Hiker’s bar’ for us all to taste, making everyone feel connected and completely intrigued. They cleverly used everyday items as props, such as a large map of the parts of America they visited, string, desk lamps and many more household items which all fit perfectly into the space and the theme of the show. Their videos and phone recordings helped you to understand their experience and make you feel as if, in a way, you were experiencing their trip with them. The personal videos and photos also helped to make the show feel very intimate as it was clear that the girls were sharing their very special time with the audience. The use of miniature, hand-made props to set scenes, such as paper houses, trucks and gas stations, helped to fully build an image in the audiences’ minds of rural America, again helping us to feel as if we were experiencing it with them. All of the props can be seen as basic, but they were completely effective in making the show so successful and understandable, as they encouraged the audience to visualise what they were describing for us in a much broader scale. The use of gentle comedy, such as replicating the American presenter Bobo’s accent, helped to keep the show quite light-hearted in the dark environment, and helped to keep you engaged and focused throughout the evening. By ending the show with time for the audience to ask questions about their time hunting for Big Foot, the girls brought the show to a peaceful and perfect end as they cleared up any overhanging enigmas and resolved any confusion or misunderstanding. The questions also reminded you that this was a true life experience, all the stories and videos were real, which helped to make the show feel more exciting and powerful. This show could be seen as really basic, but it was most definitely an effective and successful piece of art. Wild Thing I Love You  is playing at the Centrespace Gallery until 23 May as part of Mayfest in Bristol. For more information and tickets visit the Mayfest website. The post Mayfest review: Wild Thing I Love You appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

There’s a lot that’s wrong with the world, isn’t there? War, hunger, pain… the list goes on. I could list all the things that are wrong, but I won’t because it would get tedious pretty quickly. All That Is Wrong manages not to be tedious despite listing tens and tens of things that are wrong with the world, but it does feel rather flat. Belgian company Ontroerend Goed bring their show to Mayfest after rave reviews in Edinburgh last year. Perhaps it has fallen victim to its own hype, but it didn’t do much for me. I wanted so much to like this show, to feel moved by or to have it provoke me. Instead, I found its refusal to engage head-on with any of the issues it raises to be frustrating and difficult to know how to take. It unsettles but to what point and purpose I am not sure. While the craving for resolution and a return to a cosy, safe world is a natural impulse – and one which the show resolutely refuses to give – it doesn’t feel as though this show undermines that impulse or examines our decisions to ignore suffering. It’s a deceptively simple premise: 18-year-old Kobe is trying to think about her place in the world, while grappling with the fact that the world is a scary and dark place. She writes “I” on the floor in chalk and from there works outwards, writing increasingly frantic, inter-connected words and abstract ideas down across the floor and eventually the walls. The idea, presumably, is that these things are too big to think about inside her head, so they spill out, accosting the audience, as Kobe tries to make sense of all the things that are wrong with the world. It’s an arresting image, and provides an effective visual representation of the confusion and depression that can come with trying to understand the world and fight against inequality and prejudice. Unfortunately, the piece doesn’t actually try to make sense of any of the things that are wrong, it just presents them to us. Without examining culpability (beyond promising to try not to buy Primark or Starbucks) or our place in this system, I found the piece frustrating in its scope. It feels rather like a lecture, and although it’s clear that there are no easy answers to the big questions about our world, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t at least try to find some. They won’t be definitive by any means, but it would make the performance feel less preachy and more engaging if it went further. Perhaps it’s all designed to make a point about futility, apathy and helplessness, but such abstraction leaves us demoralised rather than fired up. All That Is Wrong has powerful moments, mostly when Kobe offers us glimpses into a more personal sphere – she writes “thin” and then wipes it out and replaces it with “skinny”, before adding “not anorexic”, for example. The simple set design and projections don’t help, making it difficult to read everything she’s writing. In a piece essentially without dialogue, it’s irritating not to be able to read every word, especially when one of the things she lists as hating is “miscommunication”. It feels to me like this is a good idea that’s been over-stretched. At just over an hour, the piece needs to go further to justify the time taken, otherwise it’s just a rather bleak raft of things that are wrong without any commentary or content. All That Is Wrong was at the Arnolfini in Bristol as part of Mayfest. For information visit and Mayfest website. The post Mayfest review: All That Is Wrong appeared first on A Younger Theatre.

Brandon Victor Dixon may not have a long Broadway résumé, but he certainly has an auspicious one. After his Tony-nominated performance in the Oprah Winfrey-produced musical The Color Purple in 2006

“You haven’t read the Quran, but you’ve read a couple of sanctimonious British bullies and you think you know something about Islam?” Credit where credit is due (but be warned, this bit of praise will involve a spoiler), Nadia Fall’s production of Disgraced at the Bush Theatre contains one of the most brutally effective and well-staged pieces of stage violence I have ever seen and fight director Kate Waters ought to be commended for it. Too often we mock poorly executed scuffles without really taking into account how tricky it can be to make it convincing and here, it is so well done that the image seared itself into my brain, working its way into a dream I had that night! But to the play at hand – Ayad Akhtar won the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Disgraced and a quick scan of its key scene might suggest he played to his audience just a little. A lapsed Muslim lawyer and his white artist wife have friends over dinner, a black female law colleague whose partner is a Jewish art dealer and over fennel and anchovy salad, they explosively debate religion, politics and cultural stereotypes. But the play is more than just Pulitzer-bait, digging into just how deeply faith and upbringing shape our identities and how we carry them through life no matter how one might try to reinvent oneself. In their swanky Upper East Side loft conversion – Jaimie Todd’s design hitting the right notes of tastefully expensive yet vapid chic - Pakistani-American corporate lawyer Amir Kapoor and burgeoning artist Emily live a life of gilded charm. But when she pushes him to meet a family obligation by supporting the case of a local imam who may or may not be being persecuted unfairly, an irreversible crack is forced into the veneer of Amir’s carefully constructed American-dream-chasing persona and as it splinters with force, the collateral damage is considerable. That conflict comes mainly at the dinner table when a conversation meanders into the history of Islam and soon gets caught up in fierce debate as truisms are challenged, preconceptions analysed and unspeakable truths aired, not just on the lofty conceptual level but also on a personal and professional basis as the tangled web between this foursome is slowly revealed. Hari Dhillon makes a compelling case for Amir’s tug-of-war between head and heart, as something deep is stirred within him, and Kirsty Bushell is excellent as Emily, all liberal do-gooder and blithely unaware of the repercussions of so many of her actions. But though Akhtar’s ear for razor-sharp dialogue is undeniable, the plotting does end up feeling a tad schematic in the perfectly multicultural set-up and the visitors don’t feel as richly written. Sara Powell’s Jory is vibrantly performed but isn’t really given enough to do and though Nigel Whitmey’s marvellously antagonistic Isaac makes a strong impact, the trains of thought about the proclivities of the Jewish race are left frustratingly unexplored. And Fall’s attempts to imbue the scene changes with gravitas just give them a lengthy opaqueness that didn’t appeal to me. The pace of the play is otherwise just right though, stretching languorously on its designer sofa until the intensity ratchets up to create one of the most scintillating scenes of drama you will see all year. Recommended stuff. Running time: 90 minutes (without interval) Playtext cost: £3.50 Booking until 22nd June

Review of the Saturday, May 18 matinee performnce at the John Golden Theatre in New York City. Starring Sigourney Weaver, David Hyde Pierce, Kristine Nielson, Billy Magnussen, Shalita Grant and Liesel Allen Yeager. A new play by Christopher Durang. Directed by Nicholas Martin. 2 hours 30 minutes, including one intermission. Through July 28.Grade: AReview starts here

...and the awards keep coming in! The Off Broadway Alliance, the organization of Off Broadway producers, theaters, general managers, press agents and marketing professionals, announced the winners of the 3rd Annual Off Broadway Alliance Awards, honoring commercial and not-for-profit Off Broadway productions that opened during the 2012-2013 season. (Winners in GREEN) Best New Musical F#%king Up Everything Here Lies Love Murder Ballad Natasha, Pierre + the Great Comet of 1812 The Other Josh Cohen Best New Play Cock Disgraced Finks My Name is Asher Lev Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Best Musical Revival Closer Than Ever The Good Person of Szechwan The Last Five Years New Girl In Town Passion Best Play Revival All in the Timing Golden Child The Piano Lesson Talley’s Folly Uncle Vanya Best Unique Theatrical Experience Buyer + Cellar Ingenious Nature Jukebox Jackie Old Jews Telling Jokes The Old Man and the Old Moon Best Family Show Bunnicula Piggy Nation Show Way The Velveteen Rabbit Wanda’s Monster Legend of Off Broadway Honorees Christopher Durang A.R. Gurney Kristine Nielsen Daryl Roth Stomp Sigourney Weaver

Never let it be said that I won't give a show a second chance. I was considerably at odds with both critical and public opinion on the recent American Repertory Theater production of Pippin. The crowds went crazy and the critics did, too. Me, not so much. (Read my review.) I'm sorry, but I just found the production to be all flash and no substance. But then, that has always been the problem with Pippin, ever since Bob Fosse kicked composer/lyricist Stephen Schwartz and librettist Roger O. Hirson out of rehearsals and proceeded to mold the show into his nihilistic, pyrotechnical vision. But I was open to the possibility that I might simply have been a tad dyspeptic, or perhaps out-of-sorts, on the night that I saw Pippin in Cambridge. So when I got the invite to see Pippin again, I eagerly replied in the affirmative. The reviews for the Broadway production were no less rhapsodic, although there were a few holdouts, including Ben Brantley at the New York Times, and Terry Teachout at the Wall Street Journal. Well, after seeing the show again, I have to say that I still come down on the side of Ben and Terry. This Pippin is lively, bright, and loud, to be sure, but it still lacks any discernible meaning. For me, what we have here is the proverbial tale, full of sound and fury, yet signifying nothing. Again, one of the main problems with Pippin as a show is that it doesn't build, it meanders, particularly during a rather uneventful second act. Fosse hid the flaws with razzle-dazzle staging, and here director Diane Paulus and choreographer Chet Walker (working "in the style of" Fosse) pretty much just replicate the Fosse glitz, supplemented by some admittedly impressive acrobatics, supplied by Gipsy Snider of Les 7 doigts de le mains. But, again, what does it all amount to, besides audience-pleasing showboating? How do all the cast members bouncing around on green workout balls illuminate the meaning of "Simple Joys"? What's the point of having the two hand-balancers upstaging the action during the number "With You"? I'm as big a sucker as the next guy for whiz-bang production elements, provided, of course, they add something to the narrative. There did seem to be some changes to the production on the road from Cambridge to Manhattan. Some sequences genuinely seemed more fluid, while others seemed to produce more of an ebb in the flow of the production, notably the number "Extraordinary." I seem to recall that in Cambridge, this number simply featured the character Pippin climbing around the set and singing, but now we have a fully staged, overly busy, distractingly cutesy barnyard number, complete with folksy costumes and lots of focus-pulling stage business for the members of the ensemble. The number lacks focus, exacerbated by a whole lot of self-satisfied mugging on the part of the chorus. (I guess that's one of the dangers of filling your show with acrobats who can't act.)  As for the cast, I remain fully enamored of both the quirky Rachel Bay Jones, in the otherwise thankless role of Catherine, and the astonishing Andrea Martin as Berthe. Martin, quite deservedly, got a mid-show standing ovation after her masterful "No Time at All," which was somehow even more of a pleasure in New York than it was in Cambridge.  I have to say that Matthew James Thomas, in the title role, has become far more animated and sympathetic. Charlotte d'Amboise as Fastrada also seems more comfortable and self-assured, although neither performer has made the cross over into memorable. Patina Miller was out for this particular performance, but Stephanie Pope made for a more-than-adequate replacement as the Leading Player. In fact, I found Pope to have more presence and a more satisfyingly sinister bent than Miller did. Terrence Mann as Charlemagne remains marble-mouthed and mumbly, particularly during "War Is a Science." If anything, I understood even less of what he sang this time around. In