The agent and those who support her point of view are essentially arguing that the default casting for all roles is a white actor, and that only white actors are cast based on merit. In this formulation, any time a nonwhite actor is cast in a part, they're taking a role away from a more deserving white actor. That, of course, is BS. There's also the suggestion that only white actors are cast based on merit, and that whenever a nonwhite actor gets a part, it's due to tokenism/affir
EthelMae said: "This is exciting and I love Elaine May BUT, Miss Eileen Heckart was brilliant in this role originally and i think it will be hard to top that legendary perfirmance. That being said, I am excited to see this play again. Deserves to be seen by many more. "
Eileen Heckert is dead. If we stopped doing plays every time someone claimed they saw a legendary performance that couldn’t be topped, the canon would be empty. There are lots of people who didn
seymour krelborn said: "Peterson claims to be a champion of theater while doing everything in his power to antagonize and destroy it. He deletes comments that don't agree with his point of view and to top it all off, his "articles" are just poorly written."
Yes. He is thin-skinned and shady. A while back, he tried to get me to write for him (for free -- that was a hard pass). Then after I (cordially) disagreed with something he wrote, he deleted my comm
Jared is specifically written to be a white jewish boy from the suburbs. Not a great example there.
Not all Jews are white. But the character is way more defined as a nerdy gamer/computer whiz than anything else. Jared could easily be played by a person of color and not lose anything.
It's worth noting that BP only missed about eight or nine performances total (not counting her scheduled one-week vacation) during her entire yearlong run in GYPSY -- the majority of those performances just happened to be right around opening night. Riedel was already trying to sell the narrative that she was miscast and struggling so he pounced on them as proof to support his theory.
2018 Pulitzer Prize Apr 16
2018, 03:59:22 PM
I thought COST OF LIVING was the best play I saw last year and explored issues of disability and class that most theatrical works hardly touch. Its win makes perfect sense to me.
I interviewed Fleming last fall. Of course things could have changed, but she told me at that time that she was contracted through December 2018. It's likely that her contract includes time off for pre-scheduled concert appearances. I would be surprised if she left for good as quickly as August, though.
The New York Times review is really strange and equivocating. It seems like the critic wants to say that the show is worthwhile even though it's not very good. Obviously there are shows where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts, but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
I don't get it. The La Cage revival was so crazily overpraised, but I found nothing remarkable about Hodge's smirky, painfully sung performance. Fire and Air was a mess, and I couldn't figure out why Hodge was playing the role of a continental European impresario as if he were a closeted ballet teacher from the Midwest. And his production of Old Times managed to make a 70-minute play feel like it was five hours long.
I interviewed Georgia last week in connection to another musical she has in development right now (BIG RED SUN, which is premiering at 11th Hour Theatre Company in Philadelphia in May). She spoke very excitedly about this show. It is going to be produced at a theater in Alaska immediately following the DC engagement.
LightsOut90 said: "happened to be in Philly this weekend, Waitress was at the Forrest, no rush or student ticketing, very annoyed as it is a Shubert house."
The Kimmel Center sets the rush for Broadway Philadelphia shows. If there was no rush it's likely that the show was sold out or close to sold out. It was sold out the night I saw the tour.
Uranowitz is certainly slighter, which is physically in line with Michael Jeter, but I don't think Burstein would be considered a radical departure. And besides, the point of a revival/new staging is not to slavishly reconstruct the original.
