If you have time for it: please take a look on my pictures.
I have an account on Flickr and now a wordpress-website.
Here are the links:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/69248448@N06/sets/
(I hope it works)
The blog can be find here:
Auf den 2.Blick
Enjoy and let me know what you think !
Samstag, 10. November 2012
Changes at Victory Gardens (again)
Chris Jones was reporting it : Jan Kallish will leave VG at the end of the november. He was the first one.
A slightly different view has Hedy Weiss from the "Sun-Times":
A slightly different view has Hedy Weiss from the "Sun-Times":
Jan Kallish exiting Victory Gardens Theater
Last Modified: Oct 26, 2012 11:14AM
Jan Kallish, who has served as executive director of the Victory Gardens Theater since 2009, and helped oversee a major period of transition at the organization, will be leaving her position at the end of November. General manager Chris Mannelli will assume her duties while the board conducts a search for her successor.
“It is just time for me to think about the next 20 years of my career,” said Kallish, who, before arriving at Victory Gardens held many major posts. She served as executive director of Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre (1997-2003), where she oversaw a major renovation of the landmark building, created a home for the Joffrey Ballet and an international roster of dance companies, and launched the Ovations! Concert Celebrations of Great American Musicals series. Kallish also has credits as a theatrical producer (“The Color Purple,” both on Broadway and in its first North American tour, and “A Catered Affair,” also on Broadway). She also served as a consultant to Matthew Bourne’s NewAdventures (U.S. tours of “Edward Scissorhands” and “Car Man”), and, from 2006 to 2007, was CEO of the Nederlander Broadway venture in Beijing, where she oversaw operations for the first licensed performing arts joint venture in China, and oversaw renovations plans for Shanghai Majestic Theatre.
At Victory Gardens (where Kallish acknowledged things were sometimes “bumpy” during the transition), she welcomed a new artistic director, Chay Yew (who took over following the retirement of Dennis Zacek), opened and dedicated the Richard Christiansen Studio Theater at the company’s home in The Biograph, and produced the world premiere of “The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist play that grew out of Sandy Shinner’s Ignition series, and eventually moved to New York.
Under Kallish’s leadership, Victory Gardens acquired significant new funding and increased corporate, foundation and individual giving, and it built many new initiatives to attract young and diverse audiences to the theater.
“I don’t have any specific ‘next job’ yet,” said Kallish. “But I know that whatever I do will be both creative and entrepeneurial. That’s what I like to do; grow things. And as that line in ‘The Color Purple’ puts it: ‘When one door closes another opens’.”
Copyright © 2012 — Sun-Times Media, LLC
Dienstag, 23. Oktober 2012
Update
I'M so sorry about the lack of my postings. Maybe you interested in this website:
http://mytheatermusings.blogspot.de/
Click here
http://mytheatermusings.blogspot.de/
Click here
Sonntag, 2. September 2012
Chicago - 2008
THEATER REVIEW: "Eurydice" (★★★) runs through Nov. 9 at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.; Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Tickets: $20-$48 at 773-871-3000 and www.victorygardens.org. Lee Stark is Eurydice, left, and Jamie Abelson is Orpheus.
If you are getting married any time soon, you might want to take in Sarah Ruhl’s “Eurydice” at the Victory Gardens Theater. And not just for its heroine’s shrewd observation that a wedding is just for a father and a daughter, and will inevitably leave all other parties adrift and afraid.
This beguiling little play manages, all at once, to be a love story, a reckoning of the tough choices love always demands, and a primer on how to deal with the loss of someone you loved so terribly much—be they lover, parent or child.
Unlike some other updated dramatic takes on classical mythology, this 90-minute retelling of the Orpheus myth obeys its own quirky rules, keeps its metaphors manageable and effects a very delightful simplicity. The sourcing myth helps.
Imagine that someone close to you has died. Imagine further that someone has offered to return that person to you, on the condition that you do not look back as you walk away from the afterlife from which you’re pulling her. Would you be able to stop yourself from checking she is there? Doesn’t the very existence of your love require you make sure she’s safe?
Ah, the paradoxes of antiquity. They still give you shivers.
“Eurydice,” the object of a series of rapturous, career-making, East Coast reviews in 2006 following a production at Yale Rep, was seen very early in its life at Piven Theatre, on the then-unknown playwright’s native North Shore. I damned it with faint praise. And while I have various excuses for that review, I surely missed the nascent power of the play. I figured that out a couple of years ago, but the new production at Victory Gardens convinced me again of this play’s honest beauty.
That’s not to say that this is a perfect production. This is one of those shows that need a whimsical environment and the kind of fluid staging that Lookingglass Theatre or the Goodman are known for. There’s certainly the attempt here, in a production team-directed by Sandy Shinner and Jessica Thebus and designed by Dan Ostling. Some of the time it works beautifully. Other times it feels like you’re watching the work of two directors who aren’t quite on the same page. And while I’m generally a huge fan of Ostling’s designs, the appeal of the ugly, brown, pock-marked walls eluded me.
On opening, the show seemed overly jittery and jumpy. Even after a year at the Biograph, Victory Gardens still doesn’t look comfortable from a production management standpoint. That needs fixing, pronto.
But the best scenes here are very powerful. The most emotionally reachable performance comes from the terrific Joe D. Lauck, who plays Eurydice’s father and whose love for his daughter seems to flow out into the theater in great waves. Once she settles down after an overly cutesy first scene, Lee Stark is very appealing in the title role—and has a quirky, Ruhl-like quality that helps when you’re starring in a Ruhl play. Jamie Abelson is an honest, likable Orpheus, albeit one needing a bit more fight. And character actors like Beau O’Reilly and William J. Norris are in fine fettle.
Clearly, everybody in the production understands the play. They just need to settle down and unlock the raw emotions of the text. I’d give it a week or two before you go, but if you’ve not seen “Eurydice,” I wouldn’t miss the chance.
RECOMMENDED FOR YOU
http://leisureblogs.chicagotribune.com/the_theater_loop/2008/10/ponder-the-impo.html
Samstag, 25. August 2012
Demnächst in Berlin
In der nächsten Zeit gibt es in Berlin zwei Stücke, die ich bereits in London gesehen habe.
Beide waren mehr als toll und ich bin nicht sicher, ob ich mir in deutsch ansehen will.
Das erste Stück wäre "War Horse". Ich muss zugeben, dass ich nicht alle Dialoge verstanden habe, ein Grund also das Stück anzusehen.
Wer das Stück nicht kennt, hier gibt es ein paar Infos.
War Horse
Auf unserer Silvester-Reise nach London haben Marja und ich in diesem Jahr "End of the Rainbow" gesehen.
Gestern habe ich nun ein Plakat zu diesem Stück gesehen. Ehrlich gesagt, in London war es einfach perfekt. Es geht um Judy Garland und das in deutsch? Ich weiß nicht so Recht?
Infos zum Stück hier
Mal sehen was ich machen werde ?
Beide waren mehr als toll und ich bin nicht sicher, ob ich mir in deutsch ansehen will.
Das erste Stück wäre "War Horse". Ich muss zugeben, dass ich nicht alle Dialoge verstanden habe, ein Grund also das Stück anzusehen.
Wer das Stück nicht kennt, hier gibt es ein paar Infos.
War Horse
Auf unserer Silvester-Reise nach London haben Marja und ich in diesem Jahr "End of the Rainbow" gesehen.
Gestern habe ich nun ein Plakat zu diesem Stück gesehen. Ehrlich gesagt, in London war es einfach perfekt. Es geht um Judy Garland und das in deutsch? Ich weiß nicht so Recht?
Infos zum Stück hier
Mal sehen was ich machen werde ?
Sonntag, 22. Juli 2012
"Sister Act" in Hamburg
Ab und zu muss es auch einmal ein Musical sein. Schade nur, dass es so teuer ist.
"Sister Act" liegt in Hamburg in den Endzügen, im August macht man hier Schluß.
Es war unterhaltsam, nicht zu lang.
Am Tag danach habe ich eine Henry Moore Plastik "gefunden". Sie steht in einem kleinen Park in der Rothenbaumchausee.
"Sister Act" liegt in Hamburg in den Endzügen, im August macht man hier Schluß.
Es war unterhaltsam, nicht zu lang.
Am Tag danach habe ich eine Henry Moore Plastik "gefunden". Sie steht in einem kleinen Park in der Rothenbaumchausee.
"Frau Müller muss weg" in Dresden
Hier eine Inhaltsangabe:
Frau Müller muss weg
Frau Müller muss weg
Komödie von Lutz Hübner, Mitarbeit: Sarah Nemitz | Regie: Barbara Bürk | Uraufführung am 22. Januar 2010 | Kleines Haus 1
Die besorgte Elternschaft der Klasse 4 b hat die Klassenlehrerin Frau Müller um einen Termin gebeten, offenbar scheint es Probleme in der Klasse zu geben. Die Kleinen stehen gerade an einem entscheidenden Punkt ihrer schulischen Karriere, wird sich doch am Schuljahresende zeigen, wer den Sprung ins Gymnasium schafft – und wer eben nicht. Und so sitzen fünf entschlossene Erwachsene auf Kinderstühlchen zwischen Kastanienmännchen, Laubgirlanden und Kuschelecken, bereit, dem Feind ins Auge zu sehen. Denn für die Eltern ist längst klar, wer die Schuld an der Misere trägt – die erfahrene Lehrerin Sabine Müller scheint den pädagogischen Anforderungen seit einiger Zeit nicht mehr gewachsen zu sein. Dass das Problem nicht bei den Schülern zu suchen ist, davon ist jeder der Anwesenden überzeugt. Ihre Kinder sind alle ganz besondere kleine Persönlichkeiten, die ab und an spezieller Förderung bedürfen und die nicht etwa einfach Spätzünder, faul, unkonzentriert oder einfach mathematisch unbegabt sind. Die Fronten in diesem Kampf sind klar.
Lutz Hübner: „Am Elternabend zeigt sich, wie solidarisch eine Gesellschaft wirklich ist und wie sie mit Erfolg und Niederlagen umgeht. Da werden keine Gefangenen gemacht und keine Konzessionen. Wessis haben was gegen die Lehrerin aus dem Osten, Ossis finden die Westkinder völlig verzogen, soziale Vermischung schön und gut, aber doch nicht in der Klasse meines Kindes! Und weil an Elternabenden nicht nur Eltern um ihre Kinder kämpfen, sondern auch immer die Eltern für sich selbst, ist man sich im Vorfeld des Treffens einig geworden: Es geht darum, die blöden Bälger irgendwie durchzukriegen! Frau Müller muss weg!“
Lutz Hübner ist einer der meistgespielten deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsdramatiker, seine mehrfach preisgekrönten Stücke werden international gespielt. In seinen Jugend- und Familienstücken zeichnet er mit großem Gespür für Komik lebensnahe Figuren, die den Abgründen des Alltäglichen ausgeliefert sind. Die meisten seiner Stücke wurden in der Regie von Barbara Bürk uraufgeführt, die auch „Frau Müller muss weg“ im Kleinen Haus auf die Bühne bringen wird.
Dauer der Aufführung: 1 ½ Stunden, keine Pause
Die besorgte Elternschaft der Klasse 4 b hat die Klassenlehrerin Frau Müller um einen Termin gebeten, offenbar scheint es Probleme in der Klasse zu geben. Die Kleinen stehen gerade an einem entscheidenden Punkt ihrer schulischen Karriere, wird sich doch am Schuljahresende zeigen, wer den Sprung ins Gymnasium schafft – und wer eben nicht. Und so sitzen fünf entschlossene Erwachsene auf Kinderstühlchen zwischen Kastanienmännchen, Laubgirlanden und Kuschelecken, bereit, dem Feind ins Auge zu sehen. Denn für die Eltern ist längst klar, wer die Schuld an der Misere trägt – die erfahrene Lehrerin Sabine Müller scheint den pädagogischen Anforderungen seit einiger Zeit nicht mehr gewachsen zu sein. Dass das Problem nicht bei den Schülern zu suchen ist, davon ist jeder der Anwesenden überzeugt. Ihre Kinder sind alle ganz besondere kleine Persönlichkeiten, die ab und an spezieller Förderung bedürfen und die nicht etwa einfach Spätzünder, faul, unkonzentriert oder einfach mathematisch unbegabt sind. Die Fronten in diesem Kampf sind klar.
Lutz Hübner: „Am Elternabend zeigt sich, wie solidarisch eine Gesellschaft wirklich ist und wie sie mit Erfolg und Niederlagen umgeht. Da werden keine Gefangenen gemacht und keine Konzessionen. Wessis haben was gegen die Lehrerin aus dem Osten, Ossis finden die Westkinder völlig verzogen, soziale Vermischung schön und gut, aber doch nicht in der Klasse meines Kindes! Und weil an Elternabenden nicht nur Eltern um ihre Kinder kämpfen, sondern auch immer die Eltern für sich selbst, ist man sich im Vorfeld des Treffens einig geworden: Es geht darum, die blöden Bälger irgendwie durchzukriegen! Frau Müller muss weg!“
Lutz Hübner ist einer der meistgespielten deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsdramatiker, seine mehrfach preisgekrönten Stücke werden international gespielt. In seinen Jugend- und Familienstücken zeichnet er mit großem Gespür für Komik lebensnahe Figuren, die den Abgründen des Alltäglichen ausgeliefert sind. Die meisten seiner Stücke wurden in der Regie von Barbara Bürk uraufgeführt, die auch „Frau Müller muss weg“ im Kleinen Haus auf die Bühne bringen wird.
Dauer der Aufführung: 1 ½ Stunden, keine Pause
Source: http://www.staatsschauspiel-dresden.de/home/frau_mueller_muss_weg/
Absolut sehenswert. Das Stück wird in vielen Städten Deutschlands aufgeführt, aber nun ist ja erst einmal Sommerpause.
Wir hatten außer dem Theater noch Zeit für die Stadt Dresden und was soll ich sagen, sie lohnt mehr als einen Besuch.
Hier ein paar Impression von einem verregneten Wochenende im Juli 2012.
Hier ein paar Impression von einem verregneten Wochenende im Juli 2012.
Dienstag, 7. Februar 2012
Alex Jennings in "Collaborators" and "The Art of Habit"
I'm watching "Whitechappell" right now and Alex Jennings was in it.
You can find more fotos on Facebook. Everybody seems to have fb these days :)
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150367633373857.350975.107334993856&type=1
I saw him during my London trip 2012 in this play.
Collaborators
A new play by John Hodge (screenwriter of Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, The Beach).
4 STARS 'Dream casting of Alex Jennings as Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale as Stalin... A truly tremendous double act which thrills, chills and makes you laugh out loud - even though you know you shouldn't.' Daily Telegraph
4 STARS ‘Collaborators is fresh and energetic, with a thick, throbbing vein of grotesque humour.’ Evening Standard
4 STARS ‘Rare and special… An absurdly fantastic view of Stalin, and it’s seriously funny.’ The Times
I really like it. Very interesting play, alot of information about Bulgakow, Stalin and the Soviet Union in the "old" days.
Here is waht the National Theatre website says:
Moscow, 1938. A dangerous place to have a sense of humour; even more so a sense of freedom. Mikhail Bulgakov, living among dissidents, stalked by secret police, has both. And then he’s offered a poisoned chalice: a commission to write a play about Stalin to celebrate his sixtieth birthday.
Inspired by historical fact, Collaborators embarks on a surreal journey into the fevered imagination of the writer as he loses himself in a macabre and disturbingly funny relationship with the omnipotent subject of his drama.
Killing my enemies is easy. The challenge is to change the way they think, to control their minds. And I think I controlled yours pretty well. In years to come, I’ll be able to say: Bulgakov? Yeah, we even trained him. He gave up. He saw the light. We broke him, we can break anybody. It’s man versus monster, Mikhail. And the monster always wins.
John Hodge’s blistering new play depicts a lethal game of cat and mouse through which the appalling compromises and humiliations inflicted on any artist by those with power are held up to scrutiny.
Alex Jennings (The Habit of Art) plays Bulgakov and Simon Russell Beale (London Assurance), Stalin.
You can find more fotos on Facebook. Everybody seems to have fb these days :)
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150367633373857.350975.107334993856&type=1
Anyway back to Alex Jennings. He was great in a great play.
Second play I saw with him. The first one was "Te Art of Habit". Very different from this one but also good. "The Art of Habit" was on the big stage, "Collaborators" was in "The Olivier". Small theatre, the stage was kinda in the middle so everybody had a good look :)
This is a good blog about Alex Jennings - http://alexjennings.blogspot.com/2011/11/collaborators-pictures.html
Mittwoch, 11. Januar 2012
Three Days in May
I think this one was very good and very interesting history wise.
I just read this article more about my own opinion later.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENTJANUARY 11, 2012
True, or False?
By GRAHAM STEWART
London
When in 2002 the BBC organized a viewers' poll to find the "Greatest Briton," there was some surprise that William Shakespeare managed only fifth place but none that Winston Churchill came out on top. The legacy of the British Empire, which at its peak stretched over a quarter of the world, went unrecognized: None of the soldiers and governors that created it made the top 100.
Keith Pattison
Warren Clarke as Winston Churchill in 'Three Days in May.'
It may seem contradictory that Britons appear to regard their country's imperial legacy with indifference while lauding the memory of a 20th-century statesman who believed so passionately in it. Yet enduring admiration for Churchill is based not on a balanced assessment of his 62-year parliamentary career. Rather, it rests primarily upon his determination for Britain to fight on against Nazi Germany in May 1940. With France on the verge of capitulation, Italy joining the fray on Germany's side, Stalin honoring his nonaggression pact with Hitler and no sign or even likelihood that the U.S. might enter the conflict, the chips were hardly stacked in Britain's favor when Churchill made one of the greatest gambles in history. The result was incontrovertibly his country's "finest hour," and by prolonging the conflict made the eventual Allied victory over Nazism possible.
Now London's theatergoers are being treated to a dramatic exploration of the making of that fateful decision, Ben Brown's "Three Days in May," which is billed as revealing the extent to which there was actually a "wobble" at the top. Did Churchill and his colleagues fleetingly consider a negotiated peace with Hitler? Might this be the moment that theater finally succeeds in reversing Churchill's "V for victory" hand gesture, rudely flicking it back at the great man in the British equivalent of the American single-finger salute?
Thus far, deference-free dramatists intent on toppling Britain's wartime prime minister from his pedestal have met with little success. There was a minor fuss in 1967 when the National Theatre's production of Rolf Hochhuth's "Soldiers" was canceled, though it ultimately made it to the London stage the following year. Mr. Hochhuth's efforts to indict Churchill for permitting the bombing of German cities got lost amid the play's absurd contention that the 1943 plane crash that killed Gen. Władysław Sikorski, the Free Polish leader, was actually a hit job ordered by Churchill. Mr. Hochhuth was influenced in peddling this nonsense by his friend David Irving, the sometime historian and now prominent Holocaust denier. Liberals who supported the "Soldiers" production in 1967 would probably be less keen to be seen promoting Mr. Irving's conspiracy theories nowadays.
It may also be doubted whether there is much demand for a revival of Howard Brenton's "The Churchill Play" (1974). In it, Mr. Brenton sought to pin his perception that Britain was heading toward a police state on what he regarded as the invidious myth of Churchill's greatness and the lie of British wartime unity.
The creator of "Three Days in May," Mr. Brown, shows himself to be very different from Messrs. Hochhuth and Brenton. Rather than treat a dead statesman as a useful dummy with which to practice the ventriloquism of modern discontents, the playwright has limited himself to bringing dramatic illumination to past events he has troubled himself to properly research.
Some may wonder whether the effort to accurately portray five aging men sitting around the War Cabinet table makes for great theater, though the reviews have generally been favorable. For the most part, this attempt to render truth rather than make-believe on a West End stage certainly deserves to be applauded. The accusation that the playwright has revealed nothing of substance about the political power-play between Churchill and the senior members of his cross-party coalition government that could not have been gleaned from the work of any serious historian writing on the subject during the past 30 years misses the point. The fact that the play's depiction of events has surprised critics and public alike ably demonstrates how good drama reaches audiences that even excellent historians struggle to touch.
At the heart of those War Cabinet discussions and of Mr. Brown's script is the divide between the resilient prime minister and his foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. The latter—seeing the peril Britain is in if it fights on without allies—argues that an appeal should be sent to Mussolini to see if he can broker an agreement with Hitler that would allow Britain to extract itself from the war—which had started in September 1939—on terms that would not compromise its fundamental sovereignty.
The seeming prospect of almost the entire British Expeditionary Force being wiped out or taken prisoner as the German Army advances toward the English Channel weighs in Halifax's favor. With the two Labour Party members of the War Cabinet prepared to fight on but politically out of their depth, Churchill realizes that he has to appear to take seriously his foreign secretary's proposal not only to prevent Halifax's damaging resignation but also that of Churchill's predecessor as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who is still in the War Cabinet and as leader of the Conservative Party could bring the government down and sue for peace.
Having read the critical War Cabinet minutes and also the private papers of its participants, I can verify the basic accuracy of Mr. Brown's portrayal. Necessarily, he has had to invent the dialogue in two tête-à-têtes Churchill has with Halifax and Chamberlain. I was not convinced that in reality Chamberlain would have conceded to Churchill that signing the Munich Pact with Hitler in 1938 was an error—a point upon which Chamberlain remained stubborn in his diary and family correspondence despite the policy's ultimate failure.
Elsewhere, however, Mr. Brown presents an authentically nuanced picture of Halifax's not dishonorable reasoning for seeking the soft option. Most compellingly paradoxical of all, this play demonstrates how it was that the old appeaser, Chamberlain, ended up playing such a pivotal role in supporting Churchill's insistence that "nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished."
Not only does "Three Days in May" end up showing, once again, Churchill's greatness in the moment of deadliest peril, but it even demonstrates how those among his colleagues who wobbled were far more complex than the well-worn caricatures would have us believe. Given the constraints of dramatic representation, that is no small achievement.
Mr. Stewart is the author of "Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry"(Overlook).
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com
I just read this article more about my own opinion later.
ARTS & ENTERTAINMENTJANUARY 11, 2012
True, or False?
By GRAHAM STEWART
London
When in 2002 the BBC organized a viewers' poll to find the "Greatest Briton," there was some surprise that William Shakespeare managed only fifth place but none that Winston Churchill came out on top. The legacy of the British Empire, which at its peak stretched over a quarter of the world, went unrecognized: None of the soldiers and governors that created it made the top 100.
Keith Pattison
Warren Clarke as Winston Churchill in 'Three Days in May.'
It may seem contradictory that Britons appear to regard their country's imperial legacy with indifference while lauding the memory of a 20th-century statesman who believed so passionately in it. Yet enduring admiration for Churchill is based not on a balanced assessment of his 62-year parliamentary career. Rather, it rests primarily upon his determination for Britain to fight on against Nazi Germany in May 1940. With France on the verge of capitulation, Italy joining the fray on Germany's side, Stalin honoring his nonaggression pact with Hitler and no sign or even likelihood that the U.S. might enter the conflict, the chips were hardly stacked in Britain's favor when Churchill made one of the greatest gambles in history. The result was incontrovertibly his country's "finest hour," and by prolonging the conflict made the eventual Allied victory over Nazism possible.
Now London's theatergoers are being treated to a dramatic exploration of the making of that fateful decision, Ben Brown's "Three Days in May," which is billed as revealing the extent to which there was actually a "wobble" at the top. Did Churchill and his colleagues fleetingly consider a negotiated peace with Hitler? Might this be the moment that theater finally succeeds in reversing Churchill's "V for victory" hand gesture, rudely flicking it back at the great man in the British equivalent of the American single-finger salute?
Thus far, deference-free dramatists intent on toppling Britain's wartime prime minister from his pedestal have met with little success. There was a minor fuss in 1967 when the National Theatre's production of Rolf Hochhuth's "Soldiers" was canceled, though it ultimately made it to the London stage the following year. Mr. Hochhuth's efforts to indict Churchill for permitting the bombing of German cities got lost amid the play's absurd contention that the 1943 plane crash that killed Gen. Władysław Sikorski, the Free Polish leader, was actually a hit job ordered by Churchill. Mr. Hochhuth was influenced in peddling this nonsense by his friend David Irving, the sometime historian and now prominent Holocaust denier. Liberals who supported the "Soldiers" production in 1967 would probably be less keen to be seen promoting Mr. Irving's conspiracy theories nowadays.
It may also be doubted whether there is much demand for a revival of Howard Brenton's "The Churchill Play" (1974). In it, Mr. Brenton sought to pin his perception that Britain was heading toward a police state on what he regarded as the invidious myth of Churchill's greatness and the lie of British wartime unity.
The creator of "Three Days in May," Mr. Brown, shows himself to be very different from Messrs. Hochhuth and Brenton. Rather than treat a dead statesman as a useful dummy with which to practice the ventriloquism of modern discontents, the playwright has limited himself to bringing dramatic illumination to past events he has troubled himself to properly research.
Some may wonder whether the effort to accurately portray five aging men sitting around the War Cabinet table makes for great theater, though the reviews have generally been favorable. For the most part, this attempt to render truth rather than make-believe on a West End stage certainly deserves to be applauded. The accusation that the playwright has revealed nothing of substance about the political power-play between Churchill and the senior members of his cross-party coalition government that could not have been gleaned from the work of any serious historian writing on the subject during the past 30 years misses the point. The fact that the play's depiction of events has surprised critics and public alike ably demonstrates how good drama reaches audiences that even excellent historians struggle to touch.
At the heart of those War Cabinet discussions and of Mr. Brown's script is the divide between the resilient prime minister and his foreign secretary, Lord Halifax. The latter—seeing the peril Britain is in if it fights on without allies—argues that an appeal should be sent to Mussolini to see if he can broker an agreement with Hitler that would allow Britain to extract itself from the war—which had started in September 1939—on terms that would not compromise its fundamental sovereignty.
The seeming prospect of almost the entire British Expeditionary Force being wiped out or taken prisoner as the German Army advances toward the English Channel weighs in Halifax's favor. With the two Labour Party members of the War Cabinet prepared to fight on but politically out of their depth, Churchill realizes that he has to appear to take seriously his foreign secretary's proposal not only to prevent Halifax's damaging resignation but also that of Churchill's predecessor as prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, who is still in the War Cabinet and as leader of the Conservative Party could bring the government down and sue for peace.
Having read the critical War Cabinet minutes and also the private papers of its participants, I can verify the basic accuracy of Mr. Brown's portrayal. Necessarily, he has had to invent the dialogue in two tête-à-têtes Churchill has with Halifax and Chamberlain. I was not convinced that in reality Chamberlain would have conceded to Churchill that signing the Munich Pact with Hitler in 1938 was an error—a point upon which Chamberlain remained stubborn in his diary and family correspondence despite the policy's ultimate failure.
Elsewhere, however, Mr. Brown presents an authentically nuanced picture of Halifax's not dishonorable reasoning for seeking the soft option. Most compellingly paradoxical of all, this play demonstrates how it was that the old appeaser, Chamberlain, ended up playing such a pivotal role in supporting Churchill's insistence that "nations which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished."
Not only does "Three Days in May" end up showing, once again, Churchill's greatness in the moment of deadliest peril, but it even demonstrates how those among his colleagues who wobbled were far more complex than the well-worn caricatures would have us believe. Given the constraints of dramatic representation, that is no small achievement.
Mr. Stewart is the author of "Burying Caesar: The Churchill-Chamberlain Rivalry"(Overlook).
Copyright 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit
www.djreprints.com
Samstag, 7. Januar 2012
"Legally Blonde" in London - 2012
Finally back in London. Last play of the trip was the musical "Legally Blonde". You might ask why ? We attended the Olivier Awards 2011 and this musical won - awards and the sympathy of the people. It was so great to see the winning actress.
I thought it would be a good end to see something funny and entertaining - so Legally Blonde was in the schedule.
The half price tickets costs still 40 euro.
everybody in the audience was excited , specially the young girls. Of course everybody knows the story and so he fun began.
Instead from the original actress (she won the Olivier Award) is now a other girl Elle. In my experience is she too old - sorry.
ans I guess not so energetic but after while you get use to her and the musical.
Looking back I cant remember a hit song. Some songs are more fun than the others, but no - no real hit here.
ANway here is a review from Michael Billington (The Guardian) - but from 2010
Legally Blonde the Musical
Savoy, London
3 / 5
It is, of course, preposterous: an LA fashion student conquers Harvard law school and becomes a courtroom star. But, for all its absurdity, I found this Broadway musical infinitely more enjoyable than the 2001 Hollywood movie on which it is based.
Legally Blonde the Musical
Savoy,
London
Until 23 May
Box office:
0844 871 7687
It is a piece of pure pop-kitsch that, in Jerry Mitchell's production, exists on a level of bubble-headed fantasy that has no connection with reality.
For those who have missed the movie franchise, the premise is simple enough. Elle Woods is a fashion merchandising major suddenly dumped by her beau who wants someone more "serious".
So, clutching her little chihuahua, she gains entrance to Harvard law school, where she is initially mocked for her pink outfits and ditzy style.
But, after reading a book or two, she's accepted as an intern by a top lawyer who's defending a fitness guru in a murder trial.
Using her fashion expertise to crack the prosecution case, Elle is transformed into an American equivalent of George Carman.
Even allowing for the goofiness of the story, there are things that stick in the craw.
Although the score by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin improves as it goes along, it begins with a screeching evocation of sorority life that made me think back wistfully to the seductive choric opening of a 60s show like Bye Bye Birdie.
Heather Hach's book also patronisingly assumes that Harvard professors are gullible jerks and its students militant snobs.
And the story's fashion fetish is pushed to ridiculous lengths: there's a bizarre moment when Elle's one postgrad friend is given a makeover in which his perfectly decent cords are swapped for a trendy, loose-fitting suit that makes him look like the skeleton in someone's closet.
That's unintentionally absurd. But where the musical succeeds is in heightening the story's comedy.
The sub-plot, in which Elle comes to the aid of a lovelorn manicurist, is much sparkier than in the movie: partly because the hand-merchant is turned into a woozy Celtic romantic and partly because her stud-like rescuer, who show-stoppingly announces: "I've got a package", is sufficiently Irish to justify an outbreak of Riverdance.
Even the silliness of the courtroom scene is enhanced by having the sexual preferences of the defendant's pool guy turned into a big production number with everyone inquiring: "Is he gay or European?"
Sheridan Smith as Elle is also far more vivacious than Reese Witherspoon. Smith is perky, trim, and sings and dances excellently.
But her true star quality lies in her sense of mischief, which I first noticed when she was a teenager appearing with the National Youth Music Theatre.
Blessed with the long upper lip of a natural comic, Smith sails buoyantly through the show with a radiant smile as if warning us not to take it too seriously.
Even the character's transformation from Bel Air princess, claiming "Simon Cowell is our neighbour", to judicial wizard is played less as if it were a feminist statement than a piece of haphazard make-believe.
Mitchell's choreography also gives the show a lift and there is good support from Alex Gaumond as Elle's campus ally, Jill Halfpenny as the messed-up manicurist, and Chris Ellis-Stanton as the hilariously macho messenger boy.
It's worth adding that the producers, breaking with first-night custom, invited critics to a choice of previews.
I can only report that the predominantly female audience with whom I saw the show seemed to be having a whale of a time and did not give a damn about the fact that the musical is little more than a nonsensical fairytale.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
x
x
x
My resumee:
nice, entertaining but not a must see.
I thought it would be a good end to see something funny and entertaining - so Legally Blonde was in the schedule.
The half price tickets costs still 40 euro.
everybody in the audience was excited , specially the young girls. Of course everybody knows the story and so he fun began.
Instead from the original actress (she won the Olivier Award) is now a other girl Elle. In my experience is she too old - sorry.
ans I guess not so energetic but after while you get use to her and the musical.
Looking back I cant remember a hit song. Some songs are more fun than the others, but no - no real hit here.
ANway here is a review from Michael Billington (The Guardian) - but from 2010
Legally Blonde the Musical
Savoy, London
3 / 5
It is, of course, preposterous: an LA fashion student conquers Harvard law school and becomes a courtroom star. But, for all its absurdity, I found this Broadway musical infinitely more enjoyable than the 2001 Hollywood movie on which it is based.
Legally Blonde the Musical
Savoy,
London
Until 23 May
Box office:
0844 871 7687
It is a piece of pure pop-kitsch that, in Jerry Mitchell's production, exists on a level of bubble-headed fantasy that has no connection with reality.
For those who have missed the movie franchise, the premise is simple enough. Elle Woods is a fashion merchandising major suddenly dumped by her beau who wants someone more "serious".
So, clutching her little chihuahua, she gains entrance to Harvard law school, where she is initially mocked for her pink outfits and ditzy style.
But, after reading a book or two, she's accepted as an intern by a top lawyer who's defending a fitness guru in a murder trial.
Using her fashion expertise to crack the prosecution case, Elle is transformed into an American equivalent of George Carman.
Even allowing for the goofiness of the story, there are things that stick in the craw.
Although the score by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin improves as it goes along, it begins with a screeching evocation of sorority life that made me think back wistfully to the seductive choric opening of a 60s show like Bye Bye Birdie.
Heather Hach's book also patronisingly assumes that Harvard professors are gullible jerks and its students militant snobs.
And the story's fashion fetish is pushed to ridiculous lengths: there's a bizarre moment when Elle's one postgrad friend is given a makeover in which his perfectly decent cords are swapped for a trendy, loose-fitting suit that makes him look like the skeleton in someone's closet.
That's unintentionally absurd. But where the musical succeeds is in heightening the story's comedy.
The sub-plot, in which Elle comes to the aid of a lovelorn manicurist, is much sparkier than in the movie: partly because the hand-merchant is turned into a woozy Celtic romantic and partly because her stud-like rescuer, who show-stoppingly announces: "I've got a package", is sufficiently Irish to justify an outbreak of Riverdance.
Even the silliness of the courtroom scene is enhanced by having the sexual preferences of the defendant's pool guy turned into a big production number with everyone inquiring: "Is he gay or European?"
Sheridan Smith as Elle is also far more vivacious than Reese Witherspoon. Smith is perky, trim, and sings and dances excellently.
But her true star quality lies in her sense of mischief, which I first noticed when she was a teenager appearing with the National Youth Music Theatre.
Blessed with the long upper lip of a natural comic, Smith sails buoyantly through the show with a radiant smile as if warning us not to take it too seriously.
Even the character's transformation from Bel Air princess, claiming "Simon Cowell is our neighbour", to judicial wizard is played less as if it were a feminist statement than a piece of haphazard make-believe.
Mitchell's choreography also gives the show a lift and there is good support from Alex Gaumond as Elle's campus ally, Jill Halfpenny as the messed-up manicurist, and Chris Ellis-Stanton as the hilariously macho messenger boy.
It's worth adding that the producers, breaking with first-night custom, invited critics to a choice of previews.
I can only report that the predominantly female audience with whom I saw the show seemed to be having a whale of a time and did not give a damn about the fact that the musical is little more than a nonsensical fairytale.
© 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
x
x
x
My resumee:
nice, entertaining but not a must see.
Samstag, 28. Mai 2011
OFFBEAT: Shakespeare Theater's 'Madness of King George' a spectacular spiral of intrigue
My favorite play in Chicago. No doubt about it.
x
x
x
There are times when the audience winces or even feels the temptation to want to look away during the compelling unfolding of events in Chicago Shakepeare Theater's riveting production of "The Madness of George III."
These natural temptations serve as further proof of the sheer brilliance of the performance by three-time Tony Award nominee actor Harry Groener in the title role of a monarch on the verge of mental collapse at a time when medical science had little to offer the treatment of physical ailments, let alone, abnormalities of the intellect and reasoning.
Masterfully written by Alan Bennett, the Laurence Olivier and Tony Award-winning playwright of "The History Boys," this three-hour, one intermission dramatic masterpiece is directed by Penny Metropulos and runs through June 12 at the Courtyard Theater at Navy Pier.
Edge of the seat intrigue and amazingly ideal production values result in a story that quickly seems to swirl about as the audience is on the edge of their seats feeling compassion, confusion, sympathy and even moments of humor while absorbing this fascinating time of history.
"The Madness of George III" explores one of the most politically charged periods of Great Britain's history into a surprisingly heartfelt human story about loss-of mind, body and power.
The 13 Colonies of the "New America" have just been lost as King George III descends into madness and is forced to submit to his doctors' myriad 18th-century medical treatments, his personal and political affiliations are threatened.
Watching the descent of his father are his two sons, the thoroughly entertaining Richard Baird as the Prince of Wales and impish actor Alex Weisman as his brother the Duke of York.
But at the core of this story of royal intrigue are the King's relationships with his devoted Queen Charlotte, played by the ever-amazing Ora Jones and his closest advisers, who endure uncertainty as England's ruler struggles to remain in control of his own person and his government.
Readers might recall Bennett also received an Academy Award nomination for his 1994 cinematic adaptation of "The Madness of George III," which won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, and starred the late Nigel Hawthorne as King George III and Helen Mirren as Queen Charlotte.
Actor William Pitt is a strong and encaptivating stage force playing the prime minister torn between serving the people, his government and a ruler who has left a lasting impact on himself and many others.
Other members of this incredible, capable cast include Kevin Gudahl as Captain Fitzroy, David Lively as Thurlow, Brad Armacost as Dr. Baker, Patrick Clear as Dr. Warren, William Dick as Dr. Pepys, James Newcomb as Dr. Willis, Steven Pringle as Papandiek and Patrice Egleston as Lady Pembroke.
And look for South Holland native and actor Kevin Cox, delivering an amusing and carefully balanced performance as Braun, one of the king's footmen.
Scenic Designer William Bloodgood provides a perfect, transforming set for the story to emerge, while the costume design by Susan E. Mickey is stunning.
x
x
x
There are times when the audience winces or even feels the temptation to want to look away during the compelling unfolding of events in Chicago Shakepeare Theater's riveting production of "The Madness of George III."
These natural temptations serve as further proof of the sheer brilliance of the performance by three-time Tony Award nominee actor Harry Groener in the title role of a monarch on the verge of mental collapse at a time when medical science had little to offer the treatment of physical ailments, let alone, abnormalities of the intellect and reasoning.
Masterfully written by Alan Bennett, the Laurence Olivier and Tony Award-winning playwright of "The History Boys," this three-hour, one intermission dramatic masterpiece is directed by Penny Metropulos and runs through June 12 at the Courtyard Theater at Navy Pier.
Edge of the seat intrigue and amazingly ideal production values result in a story that quickly seems to swirl about as the audience is on the edge of their seats feeling compassion, confusion, sympathy and even moments of humor while absorbing this fascinating time of history.
"The Madness of George III" explores one of the most politically charged periods of Great Britain's history into a surprisingly heartfelt human story about loss-of mind, body and power.
The 13 Colonies of the "New America" have just been lost as King George III descends into madness and is forced to submit to his doctors' myriad 18th-century medical treatments, his personal and political affiliations are threatened.
Watching the descent of his father are his two sons, the thoroughly entertaining Richard Baird as the Prince of Wales and impish actor Alex Weisman as his brother the Duke of York.
But at the core of this story of royal intrigue are the King's relationships with his devoted Queen Charlotte, played by the ever-amazing Ora Jones and his closest advisers, who endure uncertainty as England's ruler struggles to remain in control of his own person and his government.
Readers might recall Bennett also received an Academy Award nomination for his 1994 cinematic adaptation of "The Madness of George III," which won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, and starred the late Nigel Hawthorne as King George III and Helen Mirren as Queen Charlotte.
Actor William Pitt is a strong and encaptivating stage force playing the prime minister torn between serving the people, his government and a ruler who has left a lasting impact on himself and many others.
Other members of this incredible, capable cast include Kevin Gudahl as Captain Fitzroy, David Lively as Thurlow, Brad Armacost as Dr. Baker, Patrick Clear as Dr. Warren, William Dick as Dr. Pepys, James Newcomb as Dr. Willis, Steven Pringle as Papandiek and Patrice Egleston as Lady Pembroke.
And look for South Holland native and actor Kevin Cox, delivering an amusing and carefully balanced performance as Braun, one of the king's footmen.
Scenic Designer William Bloodgood provides a perfect, transforming set for the story to emerge, while the costume design by Susan E. Mickey is stunning.
CST's - The Madness of George III
Like I said - go to the chicago Shalespeare Theatre and see George III from Alan Bennett.
Harry Groener plays the King George and he is great.
Here is an article about the actor.
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x
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Published on WBEZ (http://www.wbez.org)
The method in Harry Groener's madness
Laura Molzahn May 18, 2011
Harry Groener is passionate about being analytical. To prepare for his role as the king in CST's The Madness of George III, he read seven books—including one focused on the king’s 15 children. Or was it 16? Either way, he says, “If you look at the dates, that’s almost one a year!”
Alan Bennett’s 1991 play hews to the historical record, right down to the three bumpers of spa water George III drinks at Cheltenham, Groener says, in an effort to cure what ails him—probably porphyria, a disease discovered a century later. Cycling through all the character’s inexplicable, excoriating physical and mental afflictions, this Tony-nominated veteran of Broadway, television, and film manages to establish the character’s bedrock decency.
“George III has been demonized,” Groener says, “made into the crazy king who happened to be crazy during the American Revolution. But no, this was way after that, in the winter of 1788, 1789. The fact that they lost the colonies was something he could not bear till the day he died. Parliament was what he had trouble with. He wasn’t the one who said about the colonies, ‘Oh, they’re just misbehaving, treat them like children and give them a spanking and let’s not hear anymore about it.’ There are references to him saying, ‘Is there any way that we can resolve some of the grievances?’”
The so-called mad king, Groener says, “wanted to set an example to the country—a moral example, a religious example: be good, be honest, be honorable. Be true to your wife, monogamous—and he was.” Groener describes the king’s relationship with the German-born Queen Charlotte (a wonderfully warm Ora Jones) as “sweet, because it isn’t the norm, right? You get married, you don’t necessarily love the person, but your duty is to marry and have children to continue the line. Once you’ve done that, and have a few sons, you’re more or less done.” Not George III, apparently.
Nattering on about his favorite subject, Groener says: “He was very well educated, of course, but he also educated himself. He loved going to talk to the farmers, he loved talking about agriculture, of course he loved pigs—he loved pigs! He could exhaust you because he was so energetic and could just talk and talk and talk about ANY subject. This was before he was ill. When he was ill he would talk for hours and hours and hours. Some of it was nonsense, some of it wasn’t. And he was aware of the fact that something was going terribly wrong. He did hallucinate. The physical symptoms started first, and then they went to affect his mind.”
“We can all sympathize with the pain this person is going through,” says Groener. “And I think we can all relate to the caretaking theme. Penny Metropulos, our director—both of us were very, very well aware. She’s going through it now with her husband and her mother-in-law, and my wife and I’ve just gone through years of it, with friends and with our parents. I’m sure that at least 25 percent of the audience, if not more, on any given night are going through that at this very moment. The dealing with this person who’s becoming incontinent, and no one was equipped to deal with that—certainly not Charlotte, certainly not the sons. It was left to the doctors, the equerries, to deal with this man and his condition.”
“I loved reading about this, it really is fascinating,” says Groener. “A lot of it, you just have it in the background, it’s peripheral—you can’t play it, but you just have it back there, and it grounds you, so that when you look at these people you have a little bit more information about who that actor represents. For me it just gives it more weight, it colors it more, it fills in the blanks.”
Mittwoch, 25. Mai 2011
Outgoing Tide on the Northlight Theatre in Skokie
Critics are raving about The Outgoing Tide! - and they are right.
We were at the reading last year (not with Rondi Reed) and it was already great. Deanna Dunagan was suberb and we hope to see the result later. now this year we really made it. And it was great. A sad but beautiful play.
We had the chance for a small talk with the director B.J.Jones. He was very friendly and pleased that we came back a year later.
Since we also met chris jones and hedi weiss during the symposium here are the reviews:
The Outgoing Tide' at Northlight:
Play about end-of-life issues shows Mahoney at his finest
by Chris Jones
Chicago Tribune
May 24, 2011
★★★½
Gunner, the memory-challenged central character in Bruce Graham's new play "The Outgoing Tide," is slowly losing his grip on the ebbs and flows of life. But whereas it must be tempting to play an elderly man suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's, or severe dementia, as a timid, nervous fellow, there is not a hint of that in John Mahoney.
Mahoney - whose performance in director BJ Jones' superb world-premiere production is, I think, the best work I've ever seen him do on stage - understands that the agony of suffering from progressive memory loss is not best reflected theatrically through trepidation and confusion. On the contrary, it is best expressed through strength. Only then do we understand what is being lost.
And thus, in a display of robustness that one does not typically associate with this most genial of actors, Mahoney shows us a proud, flinty man for whom the loss of lucidity is entirely intolerable. It is an exceptionally moving performance that hones in on one thing that family members dealing with loved ones in this all-too-common situation too little understand: the importance of dignity and personal pride.
"The Outgoing Tide," which is set on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, is, at its core, at exploration of how such a man as Mahoney's Gunner - forceful, well-prepared, a father, a husband, a kidder - can live with a seriously diminished mental capacity, and whether he is within his rights to not want to live with it at all. It is a very tightly focused piece about a family of three. Rondi Reed plays Peg, Gunner's earnest, straight-talking wife, and Thomas J. Cox plays his son. Events take place on a day when Gunner has called up his son and asked him to visit. Gunner wants to tell him about a plan to provide more for his family, and also to put himself out of his own increasing misery.
If you're in anything approaching this situation - with your parents, partner, or self - I think you'll instantly recognize how Graham zeroes in on recognizable truths.
There is the leadership vacuum that occurs when a powerful patriarch can no longer remember to wear his pants. And Cox carefully shows us the travails that come when a mild, only moderately successful middle-aged man must suddenly assert himself with his far stronger father, a relationship that is clarified through flashbacks that Jones interweaves beautifully into the action. There is the way that your parents' aging often hits you when you're least prepared to deal with it; you're stuck, perhaps, in a stressed-out slump of diminished career expectations and dealing with kids and a troubled marriage of your own. There are those tantalizing moments of normalcy, when you convince yourself that things are getting better or, at least, no worse. And, most moving of all, there is the impact of an aging parent on his or her spouse and the fundamental changes that take place, rarely for the better, in a relationship that may stretch back 50 years or more.
Which brings me to Reed. This is a quiet performance that's wholly the equal of the extraordinary work being done by Mahoney - and by Cox, for that matter. But there's something in its reticence, its truly agonizing reticence, that has been living with me since. As penned by Graham, Peg would rather get up from the table whenever anything being said around that table is painful. As she bustles around, rarely looking anyone in the eye, Reed submerges her famously forceful personality inside a woman whom we see, over a couple of hours of stage traffic, must finally try and face something. It is quite something to watch.
Gunner's desire not to live in a reduced way sends this play off into the thorny debates surrounding many end-of-life issues, which, in the final analysis, I find less interesting than the nuanced and very personal crises being forged by these actors. The play needs, I suppose, the dramatic tension posed by Gunner threatening to do one final, all-enveloping thing. But I confess to some resistance to that; in real life, when we are faced with the possibility of such loss, our tendency is to try and delay or soften it, rather than treat it as an all-or-nothing issue. That human impulse gets short shrift here in the interests of dramatic stakes.
But in terms of acting and directing, nothing whatsoever gets short shrift. This is a trio of towering performances, made all the more intense by the sense that any tower can, eventually, be toppled.
Read the review on chicagotribune.com>
xxxxxx
Two Tony winners, perfectly paired in ‘The Outgoing Tide'
BY HEDY WEISS
Chicago Sun-Times
May 24, 2011
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
There is a special timbre to an audience's laughter of recognition, and it was fully audible throughout Sunday's performance of "The Outgoing Tide," the Bruce Graham play now in its world premiere at Northlight Theatre.
There also is a special sort of pleasure that infuses a production in which two veteran actors, who have long since put a high gloss on their craft, get to play opposite each other. And you certainly can feel that as John Mahoney and Rondi Reed, each a Tony Award winner, give an informal master class in acting as they play a couple that has been married for 50 years and is now trying to negotiate the volatile currents of the end game.
The storyline in Graham's play is an increasingly familiar one these days as people live longer and must deal with the onset of Alzheimer's and other care-intensie diseases. There are decisions to be made - by the afflicted person who still can make them, by the aging but healthy spouse who clearly will need help caring for a deteriorating partner, and/or by the adult children of such a couple - a baby boomer already in full midlife mode. And invariably that classic question will arise: Whose life is it, anyway?
Graham has crafted a skillful, punchy piece that careens expertly between the painful and the comic, features a number of laugh-out-loud one liners (delivered with equal aplomb by Mahoney and Reed), and very deftly incorporates some elements of surprise. And director BJ Jones, along with the ideally cast Thomas J. Cox (whose wiry build and gaunt face suggests he easily could be Mahoney's son), captures the play's shifting moods ideally, putting its many other concisely limned themes (the father-son relationship, the plight of the only child, generational shifts in attitudes about marriage), into sharp relief.
Set on the patio of a wood shingle cottage on Chesapeake Bay (Brian Sidney Bembridge's handsome architectural set is down payment worthy), the play begins as Jack (Cox), pays a visit to his "old school" Irish Catholic parents, and finds himself caught in the middle of their opposing choices.
Gunner (Mahoney), well aware he is losing his mental faculties, is fiercely resistant to the sort of assisted living facility his exhausted and frightened wife, Peg (Reed), wants to move into. And he has his own dramatic alternative plan in mind - one that would insure the futures of both his wife (with whom he has a loving but prickly relationship), and his son (a father of three, now in the process of a divorce). As Gunner puts it, he has "loose ends" to tie up, and he knows time is running out.
Mahoney, whippet thin, fast-talking and sly, expertly captures the brutal frustration inherent in advancing Alzheimer's, while also suggesting the innate irascibility and cruelty Gunner was capable of as a younger man. Reed is wonderfully transformed in this role - determined and feisty, but softer than usual, and lighter of voice, so that she truly suggests Gunner's youthful emory of her as his working class Grace Kelly. And Cox deftly suggests that Jack is very much the product of his parents' long-running emotional tug of war.
Read the review at suntimes.com>
We were at the reading last year (not with Rondi Reed) and it was already great. Deanna Dunagan was suberb and we hope to see the result later. now this year we really made it. And it was great. A sad but beautiful play.
We had the chance for a small talk with the director B.J.Jones. He was very friendly and pleased that we came back a year later.
Since we also met chris jones and hedi weiss during the symposium here are the reviews:
The Outgoing Tide' at Northlight:
Play about end-of-life issues shows Mahoney at his finest
by Chris Jones
Chicago Tribune
May 24, 2011
★★★½
Gunner, the memory-challenged central character in Bruce Graham's new play "The Outgoing Tide," is slowly losing his grip on the ebbs and flows of life. But whereas it must be tempting to play an elderly man suffering from the onset of Alzheimer's, or severe dementia, as a timid, nervous fellow, there is not a hint of that in John Mahoney.
Mahoney - whose performance in director BJ Jones' superb world-premiere production is, I think, the best work I've ever seen him do on stage - understands that the agony of suffering from progressive memory loss is not best reflected theatrically through trepidation and confusion. On the contrary, it is best expressed through strength. Only then do we understand what is being lost.
And thus, in a display of robustness that one does not typically associate with this most genial of actors, Mahoney shows us a proud, flinty man for whom the loss of lucidity is entirely intolerable. It is an exceptionally moving performance that hones in on one thing that family members dealing with loved ones in this all-too-common situation too little understand: the importance of dignity and personal pride.
"The Outgoing Tide," which is set on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, is, at its core, at exploration of how such a man as Mahoney's Gunner - forceful, well-prepared, a father, a husband, a kidder - can live with a seriously diminished mental capacity, and whether he is within his rights to not want to live with it at all. It is a very tightly focused piece about a family of three. Rondi Reed plays Peg, Gunner's earnest, straight-talking wife, and Thomas J. Cox plays his son. Events take place on a day when Gunner has called up his son and asked him to visit. Gunner wants to tell him about a plan to provide more for his family, and also to put himself out of his own increasing misery.
If you're in anything approaching this situation - with your parents, partner, or self - I think you'll instantly recognize how Graham zeroes in on recognizable truths.
There is the leadership vacuum that occurs when a powerful patriarch can no longer remember to wear his pants. And Cox carefully shows us the travails that come when a mild, only moderately successful middle-aged man must suddenly assert himself with his far stronger father, a relationship that is clarified through flashbacks that Jones interweaves beautifully into the action. There is the way that your parents' aging often hits you when you're least prepared to deal with it; you're stuck, perhaps, in a stressed-out slump of diminished career expectations and dealing with kids and a troubled marriage of your own. There are those tantalizing moments of normalcy, when you convince yourself that things are getting better or, at least, no worse. And, most moving of all, there is the impact of an aging parent on his or her spouse and the fundamental changes that take place, rarely for the better, in a relationship that may stretch back 50 years or more.
Which brings me to Reed. This is a quiet performance that's wholly the equal of the extraordinary work being done by Mahoney - and by Cox, for that matter. But there's something in its reticence, its truly agonizing reticence, that has been living with me since. As penned by Graham, Peg would rather get up from the table whenever anything being said around that table is painful. As she bustles around, rarely looking anyone in the eye, Reed submerges her famously forceful personality inside a woman whom we see, over a couple of hours of stage traffic, must finally try and face something. It is quite something to watch.
Gunner's desire not to live in a reduced way sends this play off into the thorny debates surrounding many end-of-life issues, which, in the final analysis, I find less interesting than the nuanced and very personal crises being forged by these actors. The play needs, I suppose, the dramatic tension posed by Gunner threatening to do one final, all-enveloping thing. But I confess to some resistance to that; in real life, when we are faced with the possibility of such loss, our tendency is to try and delay or soften it, rather than treat it as an all-or-nothing issue. That human impulse gets short shrift here in the interests of dramatic stakes.
But in terms of acting and directing, nothing whatsoever gets short shrift. This is a trio of towering performances, made all the more intense by the sense that any tower can, eventually, be toppled.
Read the review on chicagotribune.com>
xxxxxx
Two Tony winners, perfectly paired in ‘The Outgoing Tide'
BY HEDY WEISS
Chicago Sun-Times
May 24, 2011
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
There is a special timbre to an audience's laughter of recognition, and it was fully audible throughout Sunday's performance of "The Outgoing Tide," the Bruce Graham play now in its world premiere at Northlight Theatre.
There also is a special sort of pleasure that infuses a production in which two veteran actors, who have long since put a high gloss on their craft, get to play opposite each other. And you certainly can feel that as John Mahoney and Rondi Reed, each a Tony Award winner, give an informal master class in acting as they play a couple that has been married for 50 years and is now trying to negotiate the volatile currents of the end game.
The storyline in Graham's play is an increasingly familiar one these days as people live longer and must deal with the onset of Alzheimer's and other care-intensie diseases. There are decisions to be made - by the afflicted person who still can make them, by the aging but healthy spouse who clearly will need help caring for a deteriorating partner, and/or by the adult children of such a couple - a baby boomer already in full midlife mode. And invariably that classic question will arise: Whose life is it, anyway?
Graham has crafted a skillful, punchy piece that careens expertly between the painful and the comic, features a number of laugh-out-loud one liners (delivered with equal aplomb by Mahoney and Reed), and very deftly incorporates some elements of surprise. And director BJ Jones, along with the ideally cast Thomas J. Cox (whose wiry build and gaunt face suggests he easily could be Mahoney's son), captures the play's shifting moods ideally, putting its many other concisely limned themes (the father-son relationship, the plight of the only child, generational shifts in attitudes about marriage), into sharp relief.
Set on the patio of a wood shingle cottage on Chesapeake Bay (Brian Sidney Bembridge's handsome architectural set is down payment worthy), the play begins as Jack (Cox), pays a visit to his "old school" Irish Catholic parents, and finds himself caught in the middle of their opposing choices.
Gunner (Mahoney), well aware he is losing his mental faculties, is fiercely resistant to the sort of assisted living facility his exhausted and frightened wife, Peg (Reed), wants to move into. And he has his own dramatic alternative plan in mind - one that would insure the futures of both his wife (with whom he has a loving but prickly relationship), and his son (a father of three, now in the process of a divorce). As Gunner puts it, he has "loose ends" to tie up, and he knows time is running out.
Mahoney, whippet thin, fast-talking and sly, expertly captures the brutal frustration inherent in advancing Alzheimer's, while also suggesting the innate irascibility and cruelty Gunner was capable of as a younger man. Reed is wonderfully transformed in this role - determined and feisty, but softer than usual, and lighter of voice, so that she truly suggests Gunner's youthful emory of her as his working class Grace Kelly. And Cox deftly suggests that Jack is very much the product of his parents' long-running emotional tug of war.
Read the review at suntimes.com>
Tennessee Shakespeare Festival
The Tennessee Shakespeare Festival is at a critical juncture. Between last year's flood, this year's tornadoes, and an economy that seems mired in molasses, fund-raising for the festival has been more than challenging.
This year, I'm making a personal plea to the LD.com family to support this year's festival in any amount you can--$5 buys paint, $25 gets a costume, $100 pays an apprentice salary for a week (believe it or not--and I exploit them like 3rd World sweatshop workers, too.) $500 pays an Equity actor's salary, per diem, pension, health and welfare for a week.
Anyone donating will get a recent autographed 8x10 of me (actually taken within the last year!), and my eternal gratitude. Anyone donating $500 gets lunch at the Cracker Barrel with me, this summer or in the future. (Group donations count, but please have one designated donor.)
So please help if you can--as you all know, this festival is a dream near and dear to my heart. I'm hoping we can all look back in a few years and say, "Look what we did!"
To donate simply visit http://tennesseeshakespearefestival.com and simply click "donate".
Love to all,
Lane
This year, I'm making a personal plea to the LD.com family to support this year's festival in any amount you can--$5 buys paint, $25 gets a costume, $100 pays an apprentice salary for a week (believe it or not--and I exploit them like 3rd World sweatshop workers, too.) $500 pays an Equity actor's salary, per diem, pension, health and welfare for a week.
Anyone donating will get a recent autographed 8x10 of me (actually taken within the last year!), and my eternal gratitude. Anyone donating $500 gets lunch at the Cracker Barrel with me, this summer or in the future. (Group donations count, but please have one designated donor.)
So please help if you can--as you all know, this festival is a dream near and dear to my heart. I'm hoping we can all look back in a few years and say, "Look what we did!"
To donate simply visit http://tennesseeshakespearefestival.com and simply click "donate".
Love to all,
Lane
Donnerstag, 19. Mai 2011
if you are
in chicago right now go and watch the madness of george third from aln bennett. great play, great acting in the shakespeare at navy pier.
i also liked ratoun and die at victory gardens.
what else is on ?
mandrake at red orchid - funny and originell
the hot l baltimore at steppenwolf. strange play. i dont get why they did it.sorry.
the gospel according toj james at victory gardens. good but too long. they should cut one story but they wont.
the main actor andre .. is very interesting in person. we were at the premiere and today ont the symposium.
more later.
i also liked ratoun and die at victory gardens.
what else is on ?
mandrake at red orchid - funny and originell
the hot l baltimore at steppenwolf. strange play. i dont get why they did it.sorry.
the gospel according toj james at victory gardens. good but too long. they should cut one story but they wont.
the main actor andre .. is very interesting in person. we were at the premiere and today ont the symposium.
more later.
Sonntag, 8. Mai 2011
Chicago
Published on WBEZ (http://www.wbez.org)
Kelly Kleiman March 14, 2011It’s easier to look back on an historical moment than to realize that you’re living in one. What if the past fifty years of Chicago theater have been not just fun and exciting but actually constitute the equivalent of Elizabethan England or post-Civil War New York–that is, an instance of the ultimate flowering of the art form?
That’s precisely the theory behind Columbia College Chicago’s decision to host a scholarly symposium on what we’re all right in the middle of. “Chicago: Theatre Capital of America–Past, Present, Future,” scheduled for May 18-21, will bring together scholars from across the country to debate how the Chicago theater renaissance got its start in the late 1950s, what factors caused it to flourish, how influential Chicago theater has been on the art as practiced around the world, and what will be necessary to keep it alive and well and living in our back yard.
The scholars–from Harvard, the University of British Columbia and the Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance in London, among many others–will share panels with Chicago theater practitioners.
The presenters’ roster is a who’s who of Chicago theater, from Martha Lavey of Steppenwolf to Terry McCabe of City Lit to Paul Barosse and other members of the late lamented Practical Theatre Company, which dissolved when its players were swept en masse onto Saturday Night Live.
Panels will address the question whether Chicago’s legacy of African-American theater actually outstrips that of the Harlem Renaissance; the role of various training entities, from Second City to Hull House; the varying experiences of playwrights, directors, performers and critics; and on and on.
Says planning committee chair Albert Williams, a Columbia College faculty member and long-time chief theater critic of the Reader, “There will be discussions of the economics of the industry–Valuing the Art, People First, with [Writers Theatre Artistic Director] Michael Halberstam, [is] also known as Pay Your Actors a Decent Wage. And [there’s] another panel called Patron Experience, because you’re not just doing [theater] for yourselves but for people who paid money to be there.”
Williams stresses that the symposium is open to the public. “Presuming that people love theater as fans, they will learn a whole lot more about Chicago theater. They will get to rub elbows with leading theater practitioners in Chicago, and also former Chicago theater professionals who may be coming back.”
The conference is awaiting confirmation of participation by Chicago veterans such as Joe Mantegna, Regina Taylor and Terry Kinney. “[Mantegna] said he’d love to do it if it works with his schedule,” said Williams.
Further details to come.
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