Actually 2017 - Articles Page 8

HELLO DOLLY first landed on Broadway in 1964, and the current (2017) revival, playing at Providence Performing Arts Center through March 8, won the Tony Award for Best Revival and Best Actress for Bette Midler. While those who have nostalgia for this show will no doubt think it's fun, the uninitiated may find themselves wishing for a few of the less memorable songs to be traded for more robust character development. Not unlike the recent revival of Miss Saigon, which tried to win new audiences by actually casting Asian actors to play Asian roles and by spending a tremendous amount of money on technical wizardry; this revival of Hello Dolly went all out on sets and costumes, presumably to distract from mostly forgettable songs and a book that is bloated, dated and not nearly as charming as it thinks it is.

The Mark Taper Forum will be the site of August Wilson's JITNEY's Los Angeles stop on its national tour, beginning November 22, 2019. Ruben Santiago-Hudson directs this 2017 Tony Award winner for Best Revival of a Play. I grabbed the chance to pose a few questions to Nija Okoro, who plays Rena in JITNEY.

On Friday evening, Atlanta Lyric Theatre, in a display of pure bravura, opened their 40th Anniversary Season with the regional premiere of the musical War Paint, a new tuner with a book by Doug Wright, music by Scott Frankel, and lyrics by Michael Korie that tells the story of the rise and fall of two of the cosmetics industry's most notable trailblazers, Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden.  The musical opened on Broadway in 2017 to lackluster reviews and played only 269 performances before shuttering, even with two of Broadway's biggest divas, Christine Ebersole and Patti Lupone, at the helm.   There's a reason for this.  War Paint has what I like to call Sleepless-in-Seattle Syndrome when I'm talking to a group of juiced-up creative writing students.  That's a story that, like the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film, has this problem:  the characters don't share enough time together in scenes to generate the type of tension needed to sustain interest over the course of the story.  The musical places too many limitations on itself by remaining true to the real-life story which includes the fact that Helena Rubenstein and Elizabeth Arden didn't actually know each other in real life and ends up painting a stage where the two principal characters are separated by an imaginary wall that can't ever be scaled, not even emotionally, and not even by the most talented actors.  But Atlanta Lyric, with their artistic director, Mary Nye Bennett, an absolute mega-talent in the role of Helena Rubenstein, and gorgeous scenic by Stephanie Polhemus, manage to offer up an excellent evening at the theater under the direction of a capable Susan G. Reid. 

Inua Ellams's Barber Shop Chronicles returns to London after a tour around the world to play the Roundhouse in Camden for a limited six-week run. The play had an overwhelming success at the National Theatre back in 2017, and David Webber has been part of the cast since its inception. We caught up with him ahead of their new opening to hear about the tour, its reception overseas, and why the play is so successful.

Paula Vogel's Indecent is actually about another play, Sholem Asch's 1906 play, God of Vengeance. At curtain, stage manager Lemml (TJ Lancaster) introduces the troupe, which has been waiting, frozen, in chairs along the back wall. The troupe, all who play multiple characters, is comprised of Paul Cereghino, Zoe Farmingdale, John Flack, Katie Karel, Judi Mann, and Tim Schall, along with musicians Alyssa Avery, Kris Pineda, and Jack Theiling. The year is 1906 and the characters are passionate theatre artists from Warsaw, Poland, committed to the success of Jewish-Yiddish playwright Asch's play about the daughter of a brothel owner who falls in love with one of her father's prostitutes. Controversial? Yes, but Asch dreams of seeing Jewish stories on every stage in every language in what was to be a Yiddish renaissance, and that includes creating stories based on people who might not otherwise have a voice.

It's that time of the week, theater lovers! With the weekend set to kick off at any moment - personally, we like to consider Thursday morning at 12:01 a.m. the official start of the weekend (that's directed primarily to the Dowager Countess of Grantham who quite clearly didn't understand what actually constitutes a 'weekend') - so we are back with a few suggestions of our own to help make your job easier. There are some new shows opening, others which are continuing their runs and still more which will be winding up their slate of performances this weekend!

What makes a Broadway theatre? Technically any venue with 500 seats or more, located along Broadway in New York City's Theatre District is a Broadway theatre, and the art that is produced in these special places is widely considered the highest form of theatrical entertainment in the world. Today, forty-one theatres are technically Broadway houses, each with their own rich history. Below, we're giving you the scoop on the life of every one of them!

Actress/director.producer Odalys Nanin presented her award-winning Frida: Stroke of Passion at Casa 0101 in February of this year to great acclaim. The play bowed originally in 2017 at the Macha Theatre and ran for 3 months. The Casa 0101 engagement was made possible by a grant from the Eastside Arts Initiative. Kahlo wrote the play and directs, produces and stars in it as Frida Kahlo. She will have a fundraiser in August and September so she and her team can continue their programming in 2020 and hopefully acquire a new space. In our interview she talks about her success and points to the difficulty in mounting good theatre in Los Angeles. How did your run of Frida go at Casa 101?

The Trials of Oscar Wilde returns for an exciting UK tour - this fascinating production, co-written by Merlin Holland, Oscar Wilde's own grandson, and John O'Connor tells of what actually happened during Wilde's trials, drawing on the original transcripts.

Currently a welcome, much-lauded presence in each city it visits, the top-notch first national tour of the multi-award-winning 2017 Broadway musical COME FROM AWAY---currently enchanting audiences at OC's Segerstrom Center for the Arts in Costa Mesa through February 17---is just the kind of timely show our splintered nation needs to experience right now: a heartwarming, winningly-presented collection of true stories that showcase the unvarnished beauty of human kindness and, ultimately, the absolute best examples of selflessness and generosity that seem rare these days. COME FROM AWAY is also a genuinely entertaining, enthusiastically rousing, and beautifully-staged theater piece that overflows with amiable grace, appealing music, and swiftly-paced criss-crossing stories that capture your attention right from the get-go.

The Crossing and Donald Nally have won the 2019 Grammy Award for Best Choral Performance for their recording of Lansing McLoskey's Zealot Canticles. The award was presented yesterday, February 10, 2019, at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. This marks the Philadelphia new-music choir's second consecutive Grammy in the category, previously winning the 2018 Grammy for Gavin Bryars' The Fifth Century with PRISM Saxophone Quartet on ECM. The Crossing's recording of Thomas Lloyd's Bonhoeffer (Albany 2016) was nominated for the 2017 Grammy in the same category.

Kinetic Element, a band based in Richmond, Virgina (USA) that finally made a mark in the prog world in its tenth year in 2016 by performing at ROSfest and Terra Incognita, and in 2017 at Progtoberfest, has been through some changes in the last couple of years. Sporting a new guitarist and vocalist, and venturing into vinyl for the first time, they composed and recorded their third studio album, “The Face of Life,” during 2017 and 2018. The band, founded and led by veteran multi-keyboardist Mike Visaggio, after breaking into the genre with their first album “Powered by Light” in 2009, garnered acclaim from around the progressive rock universe with their 2015 release of their second band album, “Travelog.” They began becoming known for their epic pieces,containing spiritually uplifting lyrics and symphonic style arrangements following in the footsteps of the founders of the style like Yes and Genesis, as have other great bands like Transatlantic, Knight Area, Frost, Also Eden, and others like them. Reviewers have said that while they can clearly hear the influences, Kinetic Element has molded them into something uniquely their own.

It's a whole new year with a whole new slate of fabulous theater coming to Seattle and the surrounding areas. So many exciting shows ready to thrill and astound us, make us laugh and cry. And so, I thought I'd let you in on the Top 10 shows coming up that I'm most excited about (actually 11 since I couldn't narrow it down to 10 but 'Top 10' sounded better) in chronological order.

For the last five years, an average of 5 million families have chosen to tune into the Netflix New Year's Eve countdowns and according to new research from Netflix, 77% of U.S. parents actually prefer to stay in than go out for the biggest bash of the year.

Multi-award winning actor Bill Nighy, best known for his work in beloved films including Their Finest,The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Pride, Hot Fuzz, Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows and of course Love Actually joined leading Off-West End venue, Omnibus Theatre in South London, to celebrate it's 5th birthday today.

To open their 30th season, intrepid nomadic #TCTheater company Frank Theatre is bringing us THE VISIT in the Minnesota Transportation Museum. This is actually the second play I've seen in this unique and super cool venue (see also Wayward and Mission's co-production of GHOST TRAIN). Both plays are set (at least partly) in a train station, so the museum is a perfect location. Filled with vintage train equipment and displays (which you can wander through before the show and at intermission), the museum is fascinating but also kind of dark and creepy and cold, and smells a little like a garage. Which is the perfect atmosphere for Swiss playwright Friedrich Durrenmatt's absurd 'tragicomic' play. This is a very Frank play, with a huge and talented cast and great commitment to the highly stylized design and tone of the play.

Do you know what the nickname of September 13 is? It is called the "Roald Dahl Day," a holiday dedicated to the beloved storyteller, Roald Dahl. Out of his amazing books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, The BFG, James and The Giant Peach, Royal Shakespeare Company had chosen Matilda as its next big musical project. MATILDA was first premiered on West End in 2011, following with a Broadway premiere in 2013. Since then, this show has been produced in several English-speaking countries. However, in 2017, a rumor began to spread that they were having their first non-English speaking country production. Everybody was excited to find out which country took the honor. Finally, in August 16th, 2018, the first non-English speaking production of MATILDA had its first premiere in LG Arts Center of Seoul, South Korea. 

National Theatre Live is the true intersection of film and theatre (and affordable too)-they take shows from London's West End and broadcasts them in movie theaters all across the county. NTL is the closest thing audiences have to experiencing the feeling of actually sitting in the theater. 

Taped during the 2017 London engagement, the Christopher Wheeldon directed and choreographed Tony-winning musical AN AMERICAN IN PARIS comes to movie theaters in the United States on September 20 and 23. The live capture, distributed by Trafalgar Releasing, features the original Broadway stars in the critically acclaimed musical, which is inspired by the Oscar-winning 1951 MGM film of the same title. To get the scoop on the musical and the film, we chatted with Wheeldon about it.

Taped during the 2017 London engagement, the Tony-winning musical AN AMERICAN IN PARIS comes to movie theaters in the United States on September 20 and 23. The live capture, distributed by Trafalgar Releasing, features the original Broadway star Leanne Cope reprising her role in the critically acclaimed musical. To get the scoop on the musical and the film, we chatted with Cope about it.

San Diego Repertory Theatre announced today that DeLeon Dallas (REP's Honky) and Emily Shain will star in its upcoming production of Actually by the award-winning playwright, Anna Ziegler.

The New Orleans Ballet Association kicks off its 2018-2019 dance season at the Mahalia Jackson Theater on September 22 at 8 p.m. with the awe-inspiring DIAVOLO | Architecture in Motion. As top 10 finalists last summer on the NBC hit TV show, 'America's Got Talent,' DIAVOLO wowed millions of viewers by pushing the limits of dance as extreme sport and defying gravity with breathtaking, daredevil movement on a huge playground of oversized architectural structures. Simon Cowell raved, 'the set pieces are incredible and really, really clever. I am actually gob smacked. It is that good!' Since becoming a TV sensation, the company has been entertaining legions of new fans and selling out live performances.

"My Name is not Actually Maria" is a multidisciplinary devised ensemble theater piece that seeks to investigating the phrase "and then I never saw them again." Using Craigslist missed connections ads and verbatim stories as source material, this piece blends movement, text, music, and technology to create a dream land of opportunities lost. It is a search for something that disappeared while your back was turned. Dreamy, ethereal and haunting, it is performed to a mix of contemporary music and soundscapes. The work is conceived by Allie Marotta and devised by Cucumber Dogs in association with Sitting Shotgun. It is co-facilitated by Marotta and Fernando Moya Delgado. Movement is directed by Delgado.

It was on September 23, 2008 that Blitzen Trapper, after putting out three albums on its own label, released its fourth full-length album, Furr, via Sub Pop. At that time, it was a record that captured exactly where the band's frontman, Eric Earley, found himself, both literally and metaphorically, geographically and existentially. Not that the Portland-based musician actually remembers much about the creation of the record's 13 intriguing, spellbinding songs. Or, more specifically, what its songs actually mean, either now or then. Instead, Furr, stands as a kind of tribute and elegy to the city that inspired it, but that, a decade later, no longer exists.

After an incredible tour in 2017, "Mystery Science Theater 3000" announces the MST3K Live 30th Anniversary Tour featuring, for the first time in 25 years, original host and MST3K creator Joel Hodgson back in the red jumpsuit as Joel Robinson. Alongside new MST3K host Jonah Heston (Jonah Ray), Joel, Jonah and the Bots will bring new movies and all new riffs and sketches live to the stage across U.S. cities this fall. The MST3K Live 30th Anniversary Tour kicks off October 9 in Portland, ME and hits 29 cities to perform 42 shows across the U.S. Tickets for all dates go on sale Friday, June 8 via AXS.com and local venue box offices.