The Critic Revival 1925 - Articles Page 3

ENGAGING SHAW begins in England in 1897 in a comfortable cottage in Stratford, England, where Shaw hopes to complete his new play. As he engages in conversation with his friends, the happily married cottage owners, Beatrice and Sidney Webb, we learn Shaw is a notorious flirt and heartbreaker who enjoys romancing women, attracting them to him "like a moth to the flame." But it is soon apparent he is not particularly interested in sex, a fact reflected in his real life where he remained a virgin until his 29th birthday. It's the thrill of the hunt that is the main attraction for Shaw, thoroughly enjoying the effect he has on women as he pursues them, not in the keeping of them. In present-day parlance, he'd be considered a sexist cad. Beatrice sees an opportunity to deflect Shaw's interest in her (and hers in him) by inviting their wealthy benefactor Charlotte to visit, knowing when she meets Shaw, the financially challenged but famous Irish playwright and political activist, that sparks will fly.

The clash between a daughter's philanthropic idealism and her father's hard-headed capitalism is at the heart of George Bernard Shaw's witty and timely classic Major Barbara, which begins preview performances at The Armory on April 14, opens on April 20, and runs through May 13 on the U.S. Bank Main Stage.

The critically acclaimed Brits Off Broadway, host to the UK's most innovative and provocative theater in New York City, presented by 59E59 Theaters (Val Day, Artistic Director; Brian Beirne, Managing Director) returns from Wednesday, April 11 - Sunday, July 1. The single ticket prices range from $25 - $70 ($20 - $49 for 59E59 Members). Tickets to Brits Off Broadway go on sale on Tuesday, March 6 at Noon, with a special pre-sale for 59E59 Members beginning Tuesday, February 27 at Noon. Tickets are available by calling Ticket Central at 212-279-4200 or online at www.59e59.org.

The Leo Baeck Institute (LBI), a New York-based research library and archive that preserves millions of papers and books saved by German and Austrian Jewish refugees from the Nazis, will present a series of seven programs that mine the remarkable history of German-speaking Jewry for insight into present-day concerns ranging from gay rights to the Trump presidency.

Earlier this month at The Harvard Club, the New Yorker editor David Remnick was feted by The Dutch Treat Club. Remnick received the club's Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. Scroll down for photos!

Ocean State Theatre Company (OSTC), currently celebrating its fifth season in its comfortable stadium-style theatre in Warwick, presents Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee's Tony Award-winning play, Inherit the Wind, which will run at Ocean State Theatre from March 29 - April 16.

Ocean State Theatre Company (OSTC), currently celebrating its fifth season in its comfortable stadium-style theatre in Warwick, presents Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee's Tony Award-winning play, Inherit the Wind, which will run at Ocean State Theatre from March 29 - April 16.

How can we understand and contextualize new information challenging what we take for granted as scientific fact? Disinherit the Wind, a play of ideas by Matt Chait that asks us to view the wonders of science through a different lens, opens March 3 at The Complex on Hollywood's Theater Row.

How can we understand and contextualize new information challenging what we take for granted as scientific fact? Disinherit the Wind, a play of ideas by Matt Chait that asks us to view the wonders of science through a different lens, opens March 3 at The Complex on Hollywood's Theater Row.

Ocean State Theatre Company (OSTC), currently celebrating its fifth season in its comfortable stadium-style theatre in Warwick, is proud to announce casting for its production of Inherit the Wind by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, which will run at Ocean State Theatre from March 29 - April 16.

How can we understand and contextualize new information challenging what we take for granted as scientific fact? Disinherit the Wind, a play of ideas by Matt Chait that asks us to view the wonders of science through a different lens, opens March 3 at The Complex on Hollywood's Theater Row.

Join us for an evening celebrating the life and work of the late Judith Malina (June 4, 1926 - April 10, 2015), who was a regular participant and guest at many Segal Center evenings. Malina was a German-born American theatre and film actress, writer and director. In 1945, she became the student of the radical German political theatre director Erwin Piscator at The New School in New York. In 1947, with her husband and artistic partner Julian Beck (May 31, 1925 - September 14, 1985), Malina co-founded the highly influential The Living Theatre, a radical political theatre troupe that rose to prominence in New York City and Paris during the 1950s and 60s. Together they created legendary productions (The Brig, The Connection, Paradise Now, Antigone, Mysteries and Smaller Pieces, Frankenstein) until Beck's death.

Bill Canfield, Jr., a college student played by Buster Keaton, would rather play his ukulele than be captain of a steamboat, much to his father's disappointment.

In conjunction with a production of playwright Lorraine Hansberry's final work, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Goodman Theatre presents a Lorraine Hansberry Celebration (today, April 30, through June 5), curated by Goodman Resident Director Chuck Smith.

In conjunction with a production of playwright Lorraine Hansberry's final work, The Sign in Sidney Brustein's Window, Goodman Theatre presents a Lorraine Hansberry Celebration (April 30 - June 5), curated by Goodman Resident Director Chuck Smith.

The Off Broadway company, Always Love Lucy Theatre, has announced that it will present a bold new staging of George Bernard Shaw's PYGMALION, a classic tale of transformation, that will in this production spotlight the issue of Transgender identity - at a time when voices in support of trans rights are increasingly heard across the nation and the globe. The production will run 5 performances only, May 4 - May 8 at Theatre 54@ Shetler Studios, 244 West 54th Street, 12th Floor.

The company's producing artistic director Saima Huq will take on the role of Eliza/Elijah.

Royal Road Productions has announced the new cabaret show 'A Hanns Eisler Cabaret' of 'Eric Bentley's Brecht-Eisler Song Book,' a stunning collection of rarely performed songs by Austro-German composer Hanns Eisler today, March 31, 2016 at 9 pm at the Cabaret at Cafe Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, New York.

Royal Road Productions has announced the new cabaret show 'A Hanns Eisler Cabaret' of 'Eric Bentley's Brecht-Eisler Song Book,' a stunning collection of rarely performed songs by Austro-German composer Hanns Eisler on Thursday, March 31, 2016 at 9 pm at the Cabaret at Cafe Sabarsky in the Neue Galerie, 1048 Fifth Avenue, New York.

The Douglas Morrisson Theatre is excited to announce the third show in our Revelations Season: the witty and provocative MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION by George Bernard Shaw, the playwright of Pygmalion and Major Barbara.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1928) is widely regarded as not only one of the most important films from the silent era but a movie that proved film could also be art. On Sunday, January 17 at 7:30pm the cult-classic will be screened in VPAC's Great Hall, accompanied by The Orlando Consort's period medieval music-much of which was composed during Joan of Arc's lifetime--for a unique evening blending silent film with live music that bring the story of Saint Joan to life onstage.

Every Tuesday, eager cartoonists line up outside the office of New Yorker cartoon editor Bob Mankoff to show off their work. After he sifts through thousands of submissions, the magazine ends up buying and publishing about 15 each week. 

Boston, MA — Two of Boston's leading musical ensembles—the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera—unite onstage for a special concert honoring the great Pulitzer­winning composer Gunther Schuller (1925-­ 2015). Between them, these two organizations have a repertoire spanning a wide array of genres, and this program will offer the distinctive sound of Schuller's fusion of jazz vernacular with the symphonic and operatic world. Gil Rose will lead BMOP in two enjoyable narratives for all ages, Schuller's Journey Into Jazz and The Fisherman and His Wife, joined by Gunther's sons Ed Schuller (bass) and George Schuller (drums) as special guest artists, and Odyssey Opera, featuring Met Opera regular, mezzo-­soprano Sondra Kelly. Rounding out the program will be Schuller's sinfonietta work Games.

Boston, MA — Two of Boston's leading musical ensembles—the Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) and Odyssey Opera—unite onstage for a special concert honoring the great Pulitzer­winning composer Gunther Schuller (1925-­ 2015). Between them, these two organizations have a repertoire spanning a wide array of genres, and this program will offer the distinctive sound of Schuller's fusion of jazz vernacular with the symphonic and operatic world. Gil Rose will lead BMOP in two enjoyable narratives for all ages, Schuller's Journey Into Jazz and The Fisherman and His Wife, joined by Gunther's sons Ed Schuller (bass) and George Schuller (drums) as special guest artists, and Odyssey Opera, featuring Met Opera regular, mezzo-­soprano Sondra Kelly. Rounding out the program will be Schuller's sinfonietta work Games. Continuing its 20th anniversary season, BMOP is thrilled and humbled to be presenting works by Schuller, the orchestra's longtime collaborator and friend. “There was no more prodigious and passionate master of the musical 20th century in America than Gunther Schuller,” says Gil Rose, Artistic Director, Founder, and Conductor of BMOP and Odyssey Opera. “He was American music making at its best.” Ranking among the most eclectic of his generation or any other, Schuller combined jazz and classical music in new ways. In the 1950s, Schuller's revolutionary, hybrid style became know as “Third Stream,” and entered the classical music mainstream. Schuller served as President of the New England Conservatory, where he established a successful degree-­granting jazz program, from 1967-­1977. He made his home in Newton, MA, and passed away on June 21, 2015 in Boston at the age of 89. Opening the program is Schuller's Games (2013)—written at age 90—for wind quintet and strings, offering a lighthearted, rapid-­??fire amalgam of ideas, rhythms, and tongue-­in-­cheek quotations that is a classic display of the composer's trademark nimbleness and wit. The organic fusion of contemporary classical music and modern jazz that characterizes the Third Stream is front and center in Journey Into Jazz (1962), a strong aesthetic statement about the porous nature of musical boundaries and the shared fundamentals of good musicianship. In the manner of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf, Journey Into Jazz features a narration by famed jazz critic and author Nat Hentoff that tells the story of a young classically-­trained trumpeter who evolves into a jazz improviser and, ultimately, an artist with his own, individual sound. BMOP is thrilled to welcome Gunther's sons Ed Schuller (bass) and George Schuller (drums) as guest artists for this special tribute performance. Audiences can listen to BMOP perform Journey Into Jazz on BMOP/sound's eponymous recording of 2008. Of that disc, Gramophone wrote “Under Gil Rose's caring direction, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project and stellar instrumental soloists give performances that are not likely to be surpassed for some time.” Also on the program is another work of Schuller's that centers on narrative, the one-­act opera The Fisherman and His Wife (1970), which received its first performance by the Boston Opera Company under the direction of Sarah Caldwell. With a libretto by John Updike, the work is derived from the German fairy tale popularized by the Brothers Grimm and is appealing for all ages. A simple fisherman (performed here by tenor Steven Goldstein) is convinced by his wife (performed here by mezzo-­soprano Sondra Kelly) to ask for more and more favors from a great fish he has captured and thrown back into the sea. When the wife asks to play God, she and her husband are reduced to their original poor state, having learned some lessons along the way. About BMOP The Boston Modern Orchestra Project (BMOP) is the premier orchestra in the United States dedicated exclusively to commissioning, performing, and recording music of the twentieth and twenty-­first centuries. A unique institution of crucial artistic importance to today's musical world, BMOP exists to disseminate exceptional orchestral music of the present and recent past via performances and recordings of the highest caliber. Founded by Artistic Director Gil Rose in 1996, BMOP has championed composers whose careers span nine decades. Each season, Rose brings BMOP's award-­??winning orchestra, renowned soloists, and influential composers to the stage of New England Conservatory's historic Jordan Hall in a series that offers orchestral programming of unmatched diversity. The musicians of BMOP are consistently lauded for the energy, imagination, and passion with which they infuse the music of the present era. For more information, please visit BMOP.org. About Odyssey Opera Founded in 2013 by Artistic Director/Conductor Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera presents adventurous and eclectic works that affirm opera as a powerful expression of the human experience. Its world-­??class artists perform the operatic repertoire from its historic beginnings throughlesser-­??known masterpieces to contemporary new works and commissions in a variety of formats and venues. Odyssey Opera sets standards of high musical and theatrical excellence and innovative programming to advance the operatic genre beyond the familiar and into undiscovered territory. Odyssey Opera takes its audience on a journey to places they've never been before. For more information, please visit odysseyopera.org.

'Eric Bentley's Brecht-Eisler Songbook,' the debut CD from soprano actress Karyn Levitt, will be available from Roven Records today, October 30.