Fourth of July and I am sitting here with the Brits for a full day (near 6 hours) of King Henry VIII and his relationship challenges. This massive work was really quite perfect for the Fourth of July! Told in two parts separated by a dinner break, I took off my shoes, curled my legs and hunkered down for a delicious piece of this history. Smartly so, the set was black and grey and stark and ready to put all of the attention on the characters – not their world. Unlike most tellings of this piece of history, Wolf Hall focuses on the role that Crowell played as he goes from minor player to the puppet-master himself. Continue reading Wolf Hall, Parts 1 & 2→
Wow! For a funny man like Larry David on stage – – nobody and I repeat nobody in the audience coughed up more than a laugh or two for the entire two hours. My row-mates and I thought that the opening scrim with the giant fish that actually winks at you was so cute – but then the curtain opened and we were in the land of TV sitcoms. Fish in the Dark focused on how bad family can behave around the relatives – especially the ones that have just kicked up the bucket. This is always ripe for comedy – but how many times have we seen it and how much better have we seen it! Continue reading Fish in the Dark→
Something Rotten!
book by Karey Kirkpatrick and John OβFarrell
music and lyrics by Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick
directed by Casey Nicholaw
St. James Theatre
June 20, 2015
Two massive things collide in this completely and way over the top musical: Shakespeare and Musical Theatre. And collide they do as the story takes us to a second rate Elizabethan acting company as it seeks to outdo Shakespeare fame by coming up with an entire new genre: Musical Theatre. Admittedly, I am not the biggest fan of musical theatre – – but I just found this one way to over the top – – to the point that it became ultimately tedious. It is one show-stopper after another, milking the audience for more and more attention – – begging to be loved.
Fun Home
music by Jeanine Tesori
book and lyrics by Lisa Kuhn
based on the graphic novel by Alision Bechdel
produced by Circle In the Square
June 16, 2015
Although I am not a musical theatre person, I was in the audience for the first week of the run of Rent and knew that musical theatre was going to change forever. I felt the same way sitting in the audience for Fun Home. Never have I felt the songs so connected to the story. When the show was over, it never occurred to me that the characters sang – – it was just that beautiful and that invisible! The story is about family and those crazy often toxic people that we will never be able to truly escape. They truly shape ever decision and turn that our life takes. Continue reading Fun Home→
Skylight
written by David Hare and Mathew Beard
starring Carey Mulligan and Bill Nighy
Golden Theatre – June 14, 2015
οΏΌ Production website
ππππ out of 5.
This is going to sound a bit crude but watching this show seemed to me a very literate and brilliantly played out feasting on the Animal Channel. Β Crude I know – – but the constant clashing of horns for both the materialist, Bill Nighy, and the newly drafted idealist, Carey Mulligan was a scary thing.
Early in the evening Kyra (Carey Mulligan) puts a pot of Bolognese on the stove (literally food on the stove) and literally heats it for all of the audience to watch and smell. Β This meal cooks and cooks and when finally served we can only guess how hot it gets and how severely it burns the tongue.
οΏΌ
At its simplest, Skylight is the story of an old rich married man with a sickly wife who befriends and later woos a much younger woman. Β The secret plays out for a long time until the death of the wife andΒ conscious of the youngerΒ woman kicks in. Β Now, separated, they join on this rainy night to rekindle (?) what could have been, or might be, or hasn’t a chance of being.
It was very scary to watch the match up here. Β The language was so brilliantly sharpΒ and you couldn’t find twoΒ better actors/swords to wield against each other.
On a funny note, one of my teenage students with me found it totally unbelievable that a man as OLD as he was could ever have a relationship with someone as YOUNG as she was. Β “What could possibly drive them together?”
Patience young teenager – life will reveal stranger things then this.
ish in the Dark
Fun Home