Michael Dale - Page 60

In Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning musical SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE, the 'art of making art' can be less about applying paint to a canvas as it is about applying a signature to a check.

The tensest, most dramatic moments in director Anne Kauffman's premiere production of Adam Bock's A Life occur whenever designer Laura Jellinek's large unit set slowly rotates horizontally, like a rotisserie, to change locations. The loud extended creaking that accompanies every change sounds like something is about to snap and make the whole thing collapse.

Those who have lived through it may agree that war is hell, but for the central character of David Hare's 1978 drama, Plenty, the excitement of confusing, distracting and demoralizing the Germans in occupied France was a slice of heaven compared with living as a woman in post-war England.

Bright bursts of light imitating the effects of flash powder photography capture the opening and closing images of all three acts of director Jack O'Brien's raucously good revival of the classic 1928 comedy, THE FRONT PAGE.

While Jonathan Larson's RENT, his 1996 East Village adaptation of Giacomo Puccini, Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa's LA BOHEME, presents a romanticized look at bohemians living in poverty for the sake of their art, his TICK, TICK… BOOM!, now getting a superb Off-Broadway revival via Keen Company, is more of a reality check.

Despite a string of bad fortune that has kept them moving from venue to venue to venue, the genius director/choreographer Austin McCormick's Company XIV, with its distinct style mixing classical dance, burlesque, acrobatics and pop music presented in an erotic baroque fashion inspired by the courtly entertainments of France's Louis XIV, remains one of the most exciting performing arts companies New York has to offer.

Though solo performer Sarah Jones is rightfully celebrated for her exacting skills that quickly morph herself into a seemingly limitless collection of female and male characters of diverse ages, ethnicities, nationalities and personalities, she doesn't seem to get proper credit as a playwright.

'A New Version by Stephen Karam' is the way the text is described in the credits for director Simon Godwin's production of Anton Chekhov's 1904 classic THE CHERRY ORCHARD, now being presented by Roundabout. Words like 'translation' and 'adaptation' are noticeably set aside.

If you've ever sat down with a potential lover to have a serious talk about where your relationship is and how fast it's developing, you may be pursuing a lost cause, according to German physicist Werner Heisenberg's 1927 Uncertainty Principle.

Weird old people saying and doing outrageously inappropriate things have been a beloved comedy staple ever since the time Aristophanes handed a few zingers to the dirty old men and elderly activist women of LYSISTRATA.

It's been said that Irving Berlin was no fan of big musical spectacles, which is why he stopped writing songs for the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES and had the intimate Music Box Theatre built so that his work could be framed by smart revues that emphasized music and lyrics over glitz and showgirls.

It was thirty years ago when British director Peter Brook and BAM Executive Producer Harvey Lichtenstein first peeked inside what was left of the Majestic Theatre on Brooklyn's Fulton Street and deemed the crumbled remains of the elegantly ornate 1904 structure as the perfect venue for their landmark production based on the ancient Sanskrit epic poem, 'The Mahabharata.'

Given the basket of deplorables that have populated the oeuvre of playwright Neil LaBute, it should be of little surprise that the storyteller of his new solo play, All The Ways to Say I Love You, is a rapist, liar and adulterer who spends the hour-long performance playing the victim card.

The underappreciated art of sound design takes center stage in Simon McBurney's THE ENCOUNTER, a dramatization of Petru Popescu's book "Amazon Beaming" that comes off more as a demonstration of technological capabilities than engaging storytelling.

It takes a certain amount of moxie for a solo performer to begin his Off-Broadway show by looking into the audience and stating 'I am weird.'

Just as modern New York City evolved from a combination of immigrant societies that eventually mingled into one great metropolis, the major art form created by the city, the American musical play, evolved from a combination of stage entertainments these immigrant societies brought with them.

As part of The Public's dedication to community outreach, the Mobile Unit was created to bring high-quality productions of Shakespeare plays to people in prisons, shelters and community centers throughout the New York area.

With his quartet of dramas concerning the Apple family of Rhinebeck, New York now being followed by his trilogy-in-progress concerning their fellow Rhinebeckers, the Gabriels, you might say that Richard Nelson has written more Chekhovian plays than Anton Chekhov.

Long before the British invaded, Elvis swiveled his hips and Bill Haley rocked around the clock, the iconic vision of a rhythm and blues vocalist playing electric guitar was popularized in the 1940s by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel singer who crossed over into nightclubs with a hard-belting style that fused the secular with the sacred.

From Thanksgiving turkey to roasted corn on the 4th of July to a slice of birthday cake, we grow up associating food with familial bonding and the gathering of loved ones. When we seek a romantic partner, eating together becomes an important part of the mating ritual and when tragedy strikes, we offer food as comfort.