Going Up 1918 - Articles Page 2

Convulsive events happen. Sometimes they turn from considerable to colossal. The implications generally tend to take years to play out and, in worse cases, spiral into unpredictable and unintended consequences.

Throughout the short beginning of 21st century alone, Broadway has been dealt a number of blows in various ways and has always managed to find a way back. Read about them here!

In keeping with the evolving response to the current public health crisis, Upstream Theater is postponing their regional premiere of IPHIGENIA IN SPLOTT by Welsh playwright Gary Owen until next season. The play is now scheduled to run from October 9-25. If single tickets or a season passport were purchased, they will honor your ticket at that time.

The award-winning Equity professional East Lynne Theater Company turns 40 in 2020, and is proud to announce its 2020 Mainstage Season. As usual, it includes classic gems, a New Jersey premiere, and a radio-style show. This year's theme is 'Challenging Change.'

The first clue that ANASTASIA was going to be different than what I expected was a note on the title page reading, “Inspired by the Twentieth Century Fox Motion Pictures.” Plural? A savvy journalist, I quickly asked Siri to bring up the imdb page for “Anastasia”. Turns out Fox made ANASTASIA twice, the 1997 animated off-brand Disney princess movie and a 1957 film that scored Ingrid Bergman's second Oscar and marked Helen Hayes' transition to the big screen. And it turns out the musical version has more in common with LES MISERABLES and RAGTIME than BEAUTY AND THE BEAST. Gone is the hell-wizard Rasputin, his talking fruit bat sidekick, and the singing demon caterpillars. At intermission, I asked my third grade niece, Adalyn, how she was liking it. “It's awesome…it's real people, like no Beast or anything. No animals.” We decide that Disney staged musicals are great but more it's more impressive when you can achieve the magic without a story that departs from reality. ANASTASIA is historical fiction hypothetical. It poses a “what if…?” that a daughter of the last czar of Russia (The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna) escaped when the czar's family was executed in 1918. Rumors persisted for decades that Anastasia did, in fact, escape. In 2007, DNA testing confirmed the remains of all four Grand Duchesses were in the Imperial grave. In this version, Terrence McNalley's book follows Anastasia's rediscovery of her identity after surviving the attack on her family and sustaining some plot enabling amnesia. Renamed “Anya” she grows up and makes a life in post-Revolution Russia. Anastasia's grandmother, the Dowager Empress (in a staggeringly moving performance by Joy Franz) has fled to France and offered a cash reward for anyone escorting the rumored alive Anastasia to Paris. The wily duo Vlad (Edward Staudenmayer) and Dmitry (Jake Levy) pull a My Fair Lady style makeover on Anya to collect the Dowager's prize. They are pursued by Gleb (Jason Michael Evans). A Soviet officer drawn to Anya romantically but tasked with finding and eliminating the last Romanov. Anya's memory becomes somewhat coaxed back, but the Dowager has stopped seeing Anastasia claimants after too much heart-break from countless frauds. It sounds dark, but with high-tech digital scenery and inspired performances across the cast it is delightful. Stephen Flaherty (Music) and Lynn Ahrens (Lyrics), responsible for bringing us RAGTIME, ONCE ON THIS ISLAND, LUCKY STIFF, as well as the Oscar nominated songs carried over from the animated film. ANASTASIA is a perfect context for this pair. “Stay, I Pray You” (my favorite song of the evening) is evocative of RAGTIME's “New Music”. The two songs literally race my heart in a strangely specific way. My real test of a National Tour at Gammage is how fast I get the music playing in my car on the way home. At ANASTASIA I was already finding, “Stay, I Pray You” walking through the parking lot. The rest of the score is similarly haunting. Lila Coogan, as Anya/Anastasia, powers through the score with nuance, clarity, and passion. Tari Kelly, as Countess Lily, and Stadenmayer (Vlad) were Adalyn's favorite performances and I have to agree. This incredibly gifted pair take the “triple threat” designation (singer, dancer, actor) and go quadruple with the addition of flawless comic timing. The choreography by Peggy Hickey is masterful. It somehow combines inventive and traditional throughout and the ten-minute slice of “Swan Lake” infused into “Quartet at the Ballet” is the highlight of the second act. It's a fun-size version that gets an under-represented art form onto the plate. This kind of trope often means the plot putting the plot on hold. But here, it is the connective tissue between Anya, Dmitry, the Dowager, and Gleb as they each bring us up to speed heading into the show's climax. Ultimately, the show's success comes from applying a higher artistic standard to the “previously-animated-film-now-theatrically-staged” genre. It cashes in on the name draw of the 1997 film then gives the viewer something much more enriched than what they think they are coming to see.

Theatre Forty, in the Reuben Cordova Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. Theatre 40 is Beverly Hills' professional theatre company. The venue is located on the campus of Beverly Hills High School. There is ample free parking beneath the theatre, which can be accessed from the intersection of Durant and Moreno Drives.

Theatre Forty, in the Reuben Cordova Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212. Theatre 40 is Beverly Hills' professional theatre company. The venue is located on the campus of Beverly Hills High School. There is ample free parking beneath the theatre, which can be accessed from the intersection of Durant and Moreno Drives.

After a successful run at the Jermyn Street Theatre, Billy Bishop Goes to War transfers to the Southwark Playhouse on 13 March. I spoke to director Jimmy Walters about what made Billy Bishop special, and how he's managed to bring Bishop's story to life.

Some pieces of theater require your undivided attention because of some deep underlying message that the playwright doesn't want you to miss. This is not the case for MetroStage's return holiday engagement of Catherine Flye's Christmas at The Old Bull & Bush and that's totally ok. This British Variety Music Hall Entertainment is full of music, good performances, and some really corny jokes. In other words, it is everything you would expect from a show set in 1918 in Hampstead, London.

Perseverance Theatre, Alaska's professional regional theatre company, launches its 40th Anniversary Season this week with Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. The iconic American drama, featuring an all-Alaskan cast directed by Art Rotch, will play Oct. 5-Nov. 3 at the theatre in Juneau, and Nov. 9-25 at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in Anchorage.

Rarely produced in full, Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre (MET) presents the entirety of Horton Foote's nine-act  Magnus Opus “The Orphans' Home Cycle” running in repertory through November 18, 2018. This massive production utilizes over 30 veteran performers from across the Metro KC area in 64 roles throughout the expansive production.  

Bristol Old Vic today went on sale with its Winter/Spring 2019 programme, launching a new season of inspiring, cutting-edge and award-winning theatre, set to take Bristol by storm following its ground-breaking Year of Change.

Perseverance Theatre, Alaska's professional regional theatre company, launches its 40th Anniversary Season this week with Our Town, by Thornton Wilder. The iconic American drama, featuring an all-Alaskan cast directed by Art Rotch, will play Oct. 5-Nov. 3 at the theatre in Juneau, and Nov. 9-25 at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in Anchorage.

Yes, it's still the Leonard Bernstein centennial and what better way to celebrate than at the Glimmerglass Festival with WEST SIDE STORY. It remains a unique creation, the collaboration of four geniuses: Bernstein himself, of course, Jerome Robbins (choreographer-director), Arthur Laurents (book) and then-newcomer Stephen Sondheim (lyricist/co-lyricist). Directed here with a deft hand by Francesca Zambello, the Festival's Artistic & General Director, and choreographed by Julio Monge

The Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University is the proud recipient of a grant from the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation to support the Rural Arts Collaborative (RAC). Supported by the Foundation, students from Magnolia High School in Wetzel County, West Virginia will tour their immersive art exhibition, Where?, to Shepherdstown for an arts residency this month during the Contemporary American Theater Festival. The student artists will showcase and share their work with Eastern Panhandle residents and visitors.

The Old Vic is pleased to announce casting for The Greatest Wealth, curated by Lolita Chakrabarti and directed by Adrian Lester to celebrate 70 years of the National Health Service.

The NYTB REP program with a World Premiere by Richard Alston has now added encore performances of three of Jerome Robbins' rarely seen ballets: Septet, Concertino and Rondo, recently performed in sold-out shows in The Harkness Dance Festival 2018 at 92Y. The program will feature live music for all works.

The NYTB REP program with a World Premiere by Richard Alston has now added encore performances of three of Jerome Robbins' rarely seen ballets: Septet, Concertino and Rondo, recently performed in sold-out shows in The Harkness Dance Festival 2018 at 92Y. The program will feature live music for all works.

The NYTB REP program with a World Premiere by Richard Alston has now added encore performances of three of Jerome Robbins' rarely seen ballets

Particularly in light of the 2016 documentary I Am Not Your Negro, author and civil rights activist James Baldwin is garnering new attention and appreciation for his astute analyses of race, class, and sexuality in U.S. culture. Our reading group will take up his groundbreaking semi-autobiographical first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953). Attendees are invited to read this seminal text that brought mid-20th Century African-American literature out of the shadow of Richard Wright while deftly exploring the post-Civil War Great Migration, its southern roots, its religious inflections, and its generational tensions. The suggested edition is the most recent paperback (ISBN 978-0345806543). Traditional New Orleans fare of coffee and beignets at Muriel's Jackson Square with lively discussion to follow led by Festival favorite and Southern literary scholar Gary Richards. Seating is limited to 50 persons; pre-registration is required.

Today the Edinburgh International Festival unveils its 2018 programme. The International Festival runs Friday 3 to Monday 27 August. The event welcomes 2,750 artists from 31 nations to perform in Scotland's capital city and attracts visitors from all over the world, with audiences expected to travel from over 80 nations to be part of Edinburgh's global celebration of culture.

Lucy Noble is the Artistic and Commercial Director of the Royal Albert Hall, which is currently running a Women and the Hall programme. It celebrates the anniversary of the Representation of the People Act of 1918, which granted women the right to vote, and the Hall's continuing place in the women's movement.

SipFest, a new festival showcasing some of the coolest women theatremakers, has announced a lineup of multimedia works at different levels of development for an impromptu Wild Project takeover running March 7-14th.

BroadwayWorld reviewer Natalie O'Donoghue lists her top picks for the 2018 Glasgow International Comedy Festival.