Actor’s biographer says personal archive reveals a ‘sensitive, organised man’ who was writing two screenplays just before his death in 2013
Peter O’Toole was writing two screenplays just before his death at the age of 81, according to research that also suggests the actor’s hell-raising image was a myth that he cultivated himself.
While working on a book about the actor, the biographer Alexander Larman had a glimpse of screen versions of the Seán O’Casey play Juno and the Paycock, and Chekhov’s work Uncle Vanya. He said O’Toole starred on stage in those plays, which each had characters with some similarities to O’Toole’s personality.
Continue reading...
Peter O’Toole was writing two screenplays just before his death at the age of 81, according to research that also suggests the actor’s hell-raising image was a myth that he cultivated himself.
While working on a book about the actor, the biographer Alexander Larman had a glimpse of screen versions of the Seán O’Casey play Juno and the Paycock, and Chekhov’s work Uncle Vanya. He said O’Toole starred on stage in those plays, which each had characters with some similarities to O’Toole’s personality.
Continue reading...
- 11/22/2017
- by Dalya Alberge
- The Guardian - Film News
Random Roles: Eddie Jemison on his iZombie villain and making his major film debut in Ocean’s Eleven
Welcome to Random Roles, wherein we talk to actors about the characters who defined their careers. The catch: They don’t know beforehand what roles we’ll ask them to talk about.
The actor: Eddie Jemison is one of those actors who managed to start on a blockbuster franchise, then went on to create a variety of memorable characters on TV shows from HBO’s Hung to various CSIs to prestige dramas like Six Feet Under and Masters Of Sex. He’s currently in the midst of a bit of a comeback as iZombie villain Mr. Boss; he’s also tearing up the floorboards in the current Lookingglass Theatre production in Chicago of Life Sucks, a modern rewrite of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. (It closes Sunday, November 6.)
Full disclosure: I knew Eddie through a mutual friend approximately 5 million years ago when he was a theater kid and ...
The actor: Eddie Jemison is one of those actors who managed to start on a blockbuster franchise, then went on to create a variety of memorable characters on TV shows from HBO’s Hung to various CSIs to prestige dramas like Six Feet Under and Masters Of Sex. He’s currently in the midst of a bit of a comeback as iZombie villain Mr. Boss; he’s also tearing up the floorboards in the current Lookingglass Theatre production in Chicago of Life Sucks, a modern rewrite of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. (It closes Sunday, November 6.)
Full disclosure: I knew Eddie through a mutual friend approximately 5 million years ago when he was a theater kid and ...
- 10/28/2016
- by Gwen Ihnat
- avclub.com
Happy Birthday, Sam Mendes Sam Mendes is best known for whis work as the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, and his direction of the film American Beauty and the Broadway production of Cabaret on Broadway starring Alan Cumming. His production of Oliver became the longest running show ever to play at the London Palladium. Additional stage credits includeTennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Stephen Sondheim's Company which had the first ever African American 'Bobby', Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus and his farewell duo of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night, which transferred to the Brooklyn Academy Of Music and Gypsy on Broadway starring Bernadette Peters.
- 8/1/2016
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2016
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Fade in on a girl with a hunger for fame and a face and a name to remember: Unknown actress Cate Blanchett is trying to make it on Broadway. Blanchett, just a girl from a Australia who's come to New York with big dreams, will make her Broadway debut in The Present, an adaptation of Chekhov's first play, which is often referred to as Platonov. The script, written by Blanchett's husband, Andrew Upton, updates the play's setting to a country house in the 1990s — two decades before the actual present, but what can you do? Blanchett and her co-star Richard Roxburgh headlined The Present's world premiere in Sydney last year, back in the past. The Present's Broadway iteration will be directed by John Crowley (Brooklyn) and it is set to open this fall, in the future. The struggling actress has previously appeared in stage productions in New York, including The Maids and Uncle Vanya,...
- 1/28/2016
- by Jackson McHenry
- Vulture
You couldn’t write an argument for optimism about New York theater without invoking Annie Baker, who, at 34, is practically a metonym for the best of her Off Broadway generation: creators making a life, if not quite a living, by redefining what it means to be innovative (and successful) in the medium. Setting her earliest plays in fictional Shirley, Vermont, a liberal college town not unlike her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts, she really broke through in 2009 with Circle Mirror Transformation, which was built around a series of goofy theater exercises, shared an Obie with another Baker show, The Aliens, and went on to become the country’s second most-produced play of 2010. With her inseparable director Sam Gold (who also directed the Tony-winning Fun Home), Baker then adapted Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya into an astonishingly intimate vernacular experience at the Soho Rep. In The Flick, three ushers get to know each...
- 12/17/2015
- by Boris Kachka
- Vulture
Constance Cummings: Stage and film actress ca. early 1940s. Constance Cummings on stage: From Sacha Guitry to Clifford Odets (See previous post: “Constance Cummings: Flawless 'Blithe Spirit,' Supporter of Political Refugees.”) In the post-World War II years, Constance Cummings' stage reputation continued to grow on the English stage, in plays as diverse as: Stephen Powys (pseudonym for P.G. Wodehouse) and Guy Bolton's English-language adaptation of Sacha Guitry's Don't Listen, Ladies! (1948), with Cummings as one of shop clerk Denholm Elliott's mistresses (the other one was Betty Marsden). “Miss Cummings and Miss Marsden act as fetchingly as they look,” commented The Spectator. Rodney Ackland's Before the Party (1949), delivering “a superb performance of controlled hysteria” according to theater director and Michael Redgrave biographer Alan Strachan, writing for The Independent at the time of Cummings' death. Clifford Odets' Winter Journey / The Country Girl (1952), as...
- 11/10/2015
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Who knew you could get this much mileage out of a ghost named Toby? Nine years ago this week, Oren Peli started production on "Paranormal Activity," which was made for $27, a box of Band-Aids, and three plates of ham sandwiches. Truly independent in every way, the film premiered a year later at ScreamFest, and then… didn't come out for two more years. While "Paranormal Activity" is a remarkable success story, it's also not an instant one. Peli had to struggle to get his film from that first screening to a major theatrical release, and there were plenty of fine-tuning that had to be done to get it there. "Paranormal" has many godfathers, and by the time the film came out in 2009, it had been through many hands. The result, though, has been one of the biggest horror franchises in recent memory, and it laid the foundation for Jason Blum's entire horror empire.
- 10/23/2015
- by Drew McWeeny
- Hitfix
Arnaud Desplechin of My Golden Days (Trois Souvenirs De Ma Jeunesse) directs Anne-Katrin Titze Photo: Sara Sampson
Mathieu Amalric, André Dussollier, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Quentin Dolmaire, Antoine Bui, Cécile Garcia-Fogel, Olivier Rabourdin, Irina Vavilova, Françoise Lebrun, Dinara Drukarova, Raphaël Cohen and Lily Taieb make My Golden Days burst with life.
How André Dussollier becomes a smiling Ernst Lubitsch devil out of Heaven Can Wait, location scouting in Roubaix, green Alfred Hitchcock scissors, New York Film Festival director Kent Jones's Hitchcock/Truffaut, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and Roman Polanski's Tess d'Urbervilles became part of my animated conversation with Arnaud.
Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric) questioned by agent (André Dussollier)
We spoke about François Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirène Du Mississipi), Esther’s siren song and Paul’s knightly mourning, how Stanley Cavell and John Ford make for a good epilogue, and why Arnaud no longer writes small talk but does dance choreography.
Mathieu Amalric, André Dussollier, Lou Roy-Lecollinet, Quentin Dolmaire, Antoine Bui, Cécile Garcia-Fogel, Olivier Rabourdin, Irina Vavilova, Françoise Lebrun, Dinara Drukarova, Raphaël Cohen and Lily Taieb make My Golden Days burst with life.
How André Dussollier becomes a smiling Ernst Lubitsch devil out of Heaven Can Wait, location scouting in Roubaix, green Alfred Hitchcock scissors, New York Film Festival director Kent Jones's Hitchcock/Truffaut, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, and Roman Polanski's Tess d'Urbervilles became part of my animated conversation with Arnaud.
Dédalus (Mathieu Amalric) questioned by agent (André Dussollier)
We spoke about François Truffaut's Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirène Du Mississipi), Esther’s siren song and Paul’s knightly mourning, how Stanley Cavell and John Ford make for a good epilogue, and why Arnaud no longer writes small talk but does dance choreography.
- 10/6/2015
- by Anne-Katrin Titze
- eyeforfilm.co.uk
Following the screening of their new film "Mistress America," writer and director Noah Baumbach and writer and producer Greta Gerwig, shared a lively and insightful discussion about their collaborations, writing, "Frances Ha" (in which Gerwig played the titular character), and her new starring role.
Tracy, a lonely college freshman in New York, is having neither the exciting university experience nor the glamorous metropolitan lifestyle she envisioned. But when she is taken in by her soon-to-be stepsister, Brooke—a resident of Times Square and adventurous gal about town—she is rescued from her disappointment and seduced by Brooke's alluringly mad schemes.
About Gerwig’s roles as Frances in "Frances Ha" and Brooke in "Mistress America"
Gerwig: Frances and Brooke share a type of madness. Frances literally stumbled at times. She had this running, loping, falling pace to her. Her fits and starts of conversation, and her flashes of confidence and then going back in. And, Brooke, the way we dressed her, was not really of this time -- like a misguided businesswoman with little heels, her little boots, and her pants were too short. She stomped around, and would keep stomping. She had no real shame register.
Baumbach: Brooke was someone we recognized. Aspects of Brooke are familiar to us. She felt like someone out of the movies. Brooke is in some ways all performance. Brooke is a movie. The movie is going on for her. That felt intuitively right.
Gerwig: With Brooke’s character introduction “Welcome to the Great White Way,” she starts this gesture that she realizes halfway down the stairs was not big enough to cover the whole stairs and has to keep going. She doesn’t have a moment of "What have I done?" She just keeps going. She’s kind of a hair flipper the way she speaks.
Frances was always saying something, some kind of internal joke with herself that she couldn’t share with anyone else. And Brooke would look at you and say, “Did you get the joke? Did you get the joke?” until you would say yes. There are so many things that are different about them. The one thing they share is a touch of madness. And I like that in characters. A different kind of madness.
The Writing and Physical Performing Process
Gerwig: There is no improv. We don’t change anything when we’re on set. We don’t adjust the lines for the people we cast. We cast them because they did the lines well. So it becomes a piece of writing that is unchangeable.
Baumbach: As the director of my material I come to it intuitively on set. Greta will struggle with stuff, get the line wrong, or do a kind of version -- but in the best way. She’s mining it in real time. It’s exciting. And she’s doing it with material she spent months perfecting.
Gerwig: I come at it as an actor -- an internal structure that makes sense to me. If I can’t hear it, it’s very hard for me to actually act it. With the script -- the language is so important to it; there is a sense of rhythm in it, that baseline of speech I understand. In (Baumbach’s film) "Greenburg," I could hear it right away. It’s the kind of writing I respond to.
Baumbach: The physical is important with actors; and what physical actions should accompany the line. You’re helping them to find ways to say it. We never change the dialogue but we changed the physical. It’s about finding the way so the actor can get the line right.
A Few Chuckles About Chekov
Gerwig: I think people don’t necessarily listen to each other. It’s one of my favorite things in theatre and film, with everybody missing each other. (Gerwig laughs) I feel like all of Chekov is that -- someone gives a four-page speech and the other person doesn’t care like in Uncle Vanya someone says: “I’m really worried about the forest” and the other character responds: “Do you have a crush on my friend?” I’m always interested in the ways people miss each other.
On Choreography
Baumbach: When we’re writing, we’re envisioning those scenes up to a point, and then when we’re on set, we’re not changing the script, we’re expanding it by this physical blocking and the actors bringing their own stuff to it. The dialogue stays the same; so much of the physical choreography is part of it. With the house (in "Mistress America") for example -- we could always see outside and inside simultaneously. That way the script is all there, ready to be interpreted.
On Language
Gerwig: As an actor my entry point is through language. It’s like reading sheet music. Language has rhythm in it. Language is physical. It’s part of your body; how you speak, how you present yourself.
Baumbach: The physical and verbal work together. It’s how we see things.
Gerwig: I think all of my favorite directors have a strong sense of language. It feels like this trust that I have that Noah will find the visual language that will underscore everything else.
Final Words
An important ‘character’ of "Mistress America" is New York City -- an aspect that was not lost on this Manhattan audience on a very hot and sunny August evening. Yes, there are a few inside New York jokes, but this character-driven comedy is universal, digging deep into the truth-telling rawness of both new and old relationships.
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College Suny, and presents international seminars on screenwriting and film. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com, http://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog...
Tracy, a lonely college freshman in New York, is having neither the exciting university experience nor the glamorous metropolitan lifestyle she envisioned. But when she is taken in by her soon-to-be stepsister, Brooke—a resident of Times Square and adventurous gal about town—she is rescued from her disappointment and seduced by Brooke's alluringly mad schemes.
About Gerwig’s roles as Frances in "Frances Ha" and Brooke in "Mistress America"
Gerwig: Frances and Brooke share a type of madness. Frances literally stumbled at times. She had this running, loping, falling pace to her. Her fits and starts of conversation, and her flashes of confidence and then going back in. And, Brooke, the way we dressed her, was not really of this time -- like a misguided businesswoman with little heels, her little boots, and her pants were too short. She stomped around, and would keep stomping. She had no real shame register.
Baumbach: Brooke was someone we recognized. Aspects of Brooke are familiar to us. She felt like someone out of the movies. Brooke is in some ways all performance. Brooke is a movie. The movie is going on for her. That felt intuitively right.
Gerwig: With Brooke’s character introduction “Welcome to the Great White Way,” she starts this gesture that she realizes halfway down the stairs was not big enough to cover the whole stairs and has to keep going. She doesn’t have a moment of "What have I done?" She just keeps going. She’s kind of a hair flipper the way she speaks.
Frances was always saying something, some kind of internal joke with herself that she couldn’t share with anyone else. And Brooke would look at you and say, “Did you get the joke? Did you get the joke?” until you would say yes. There are so many things that are different about them. The one thing they share is a touch of madness. And I like that in characters. A different kind of madness.
The Writing and Physical Performing Process
Gerwig: There is no improv. We don’t change anything when we’re on set. We don’t adjust the lines for the people we cast. We cast them because they did the lines well. So it becomes a piece of writing that is unchangeable.
Baumbach: As the director of my material I come to it intuitively on set. Greta will struggle with stuff, get the line wrong, or do a kind of version -- but in the best way. She’s mining it in real time. It’s exciting. And she’s doing it with material she spent months perfecting.
Gerwig: I come at it as an actor -- an internal structure that makes sense to me. If I can’t hear it, it’s very hard for me to actually act it. With the script -- the language is so important to it; there is a sense of rhythm in it, that baseline of speech I understand. In (Baumbach’s film) "Greenburg," I could hear it right away. It’s the kind of writing I respond to.
Baumbach: The physical is important with actors; and what physical actions should accompany the line. You’re helping them to find ways to say it. We never change the dialogue but we changed the physical. It’s about finding the way so the actor can get the line right.
A Few Chuckles About Chekov
Gerwig: I think people don’t necessarily listen to each other. It’s one of my favorite things in theatre and film, with everybody missing each other. (Gerwig laughs) I feel like all of Chekov is that -- someone gives a four-page speech and the other person doesn’t care like in Uncle Vanya someone says: “I’m really worried about the forest” and the other character responds: “Do you have a crush on my friend?” I’m always interested in the ways people miss each other.
On Choreography
Baumbach: When we’re writing, we’re envisioning those scenes up to a point, and then when we’re on set, we’re not changing the script, we’re expanding it by this physical blocking and the actors bringing their own stuff to it. The dialogue stays the same; so much of the physical choreography is part of it. With the house (in "Mistress America") for example -- we could always see outside and inside simultaneously. That way the script is all there, ready to be interpreted.
On Language
Gerwig: As an actor my entry point is through language. It’s like reading sheet music. Language has rhythm in it. Language is physical. It’s part of your body; how you speak, how you present yourself.
Baumbach: The physical and verbal work together. It’s how we see things.
Gerwig: I think all of my favorite directors have a strong sense of language. It feels like this trust that I have that Noah will find the visual language that will underscore everything else.
Final Words
An important ‘character’ of "Mistress America" is New York City -- an aspect that was not lost on this Manhattan audience on a very hot and sunny August evening. Yes, there are a few inside New York jokes, but this character-driven comedy is universal, digging deep into the truth-telling rawness of both new and old relationships.
Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell teaches screenwriting at Purchase College Suny, and presents international seminars on screenwriting and film. Author of Savvy Characters Sell Screenplays! and The Savvy Screenwriter, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1990 where she works with writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. www.su-city-pictures.com, http://su-city-pictures.com/wpblog...
- 8/19/2015
- by Susan Kouguell
- Sydney's Buzz
Happy Birthday, Sam Mendes Sam Mendes is best known for whis work as the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, and his direction of the film American Beauty and the Broadway production of Cabaret on Broadway starring Alan Cumming. His production of Oliver became the longest running show ever to play at the London Palladium. Additional stage credits includeTennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Stephen Sondheim's Company which had the first ever African American 'Bobby', Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus and his farewell duo of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night, which transferred to the Brooklyn Academy Of Music and Gypsy on Broadway starring Bernadette Peters.
- 8/1/2015
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
When My Dinner With Andre hit cinemas in 1981, Andre Gregory and Wallace Shawn were already established figures of the New York theater scene. But the hit film, directed by Louis Malle and consisting almost entirely of a scripted dinner conversation between the two men, turned them into something closer to celebrities: "Few people knew who they were when they entered the theater," wrote Roger Ebert about the film’s premiere at the Telluride Film Festival. "Now they would never be forgotten where films were taken seriously." Over the next several decades, the two men built on that collaboration with more films. Next came 1994’s Vanya on 42nd Street, also directed for the screen by Malle, though the theatrical production itself — essentially a years-long workshopping and exploration of Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya with little thought given to a traditional audience — was directed by Gregory himself. Then, in 2014, the...
- 6/17/2015
- by Bilge Ebiri
- Vulture
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2015
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
Distinguished stage and screen actor best known for her role as the shallow and materialistic mother in the hit 1967 film The Graduate
It is a show business axiom that a small role in a hit Hollywood film is worth much more in the currency of fame than dozens of longer, meatier parts in the theatre. Thus Elizabeth Wilson, who has died aged 94, is primarily acknowledged as having played Dustin Hoffman’s shallow and materialistic mother in The Graduate (1967) rather than for her critically acclaimed stage performances in plays by Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya), Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest), Eugene O’Neill (Ah Wilderness!), Bertolt Brecht (The Good Woman of Szechuan, The Threepenny Opera) and Edward Albee (A Delicate Balance).
Nevertheless, Wilson was admirable in Mike Nichols’s The Graduate, initially displaying maternal pride at her son’s achievements at college, reading from the yearbook to a houseful of...
It is a show business axiom that a small role in a hit Hollywood film is worth much more in the currency of fame than dozens of longer, meatier parts in the theatre. Thus Elizabeth Wilson, who has died aged 94, is primarily acknowledged as having played Dustin Hoffman’s shallow and materialistic mother in The Graduate (1967) rather than for her critically acclaimed stage performances in plays by Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya), Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest), Eugene O’Neill (Ah Wilderness!), Bertolt Brecht (The Good Woman of Szechuan, The Threepenny Opera) and Edward Albee (A Delicate Balance).
Nevertheless, Wilson was admirable in Mike Nichols’s The Graduate, initially displaying maternal pride at her son’s achievements at college, reading from the yearbook to a houseful of...
- 5/12/2015
- by Ronald Bergan
- The Guardian - Film News
Following a lengthy wait, Seventh Son has finally made its way to theaters. The epic fantasy centers on a professional spook (Jeff Bridges), who takes a dashing young apprentice (Ben Barnes) under his wing as the two prepare to face the end of the world. Together they square off against Mother Malkin (Julianne Moore) and her army of deadly minions.
Directed by Sergei Bodrov, Seventh Son is based on the novel The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney.
At a recent New York press conference for the film - Bridges, Moore and Barnes discussed their personal connections to their roles and how themes of fate and destiny have played out off-screen.
This film talks a lot about destiny and fate. How much has fate played a role in your lives?
Jeff Bridges: Destiny and fate? You guys wanna go first on that one?
Ben Barnes: Nobody wants to go first on that!
Directed by Sergei Bodrov, Seventh Son is based on the novel The Spook’s Apprentice by Joseph Delaney.
At a recent New York press conference for the film - Bridges, Moore and Barnes discussed their personal connections to their roles and how themes of fate and destiny have played out off-screen.
This film talks a lot about destiny and fate. How much has fate played a role in your lives?
Jeff Bridges: Destiny and fate? You guys wanna go first on that one?
Ben Barnes: Nobody wants to go first on that!
- 2/6/2015
- by Justine Browning
- LRMonline.com
It’s said that Chekhov was always trying to get the Moscow Art Theater to produce Ivan Turgenev’s neglected classic A Month in the Country instead of his own new plays. Was this homage, self-deprecation, or payment of a debt? So much of what we find great in Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, The Cherry Orchard, and the rest of the holy canon finds its origins in the earlier work. It’s uncanny, really: A Month in the Country, completed in 1850, already contemplates, as Chekhov would a generation later, the collapse of Russia’s idle aristocracy amid new money and peasant awakening. It pioneers a form of comedy we now call Chekhovian, in which no one is happy. It even investigates the intersection of those two ideas. And yet Chekhov lifted more than just Turgenev’s genre and themes. Broad swaths of plot are appropriated, whole casts of archetypes redeployed.
- 1/30/2015
- by Jesse Green
- Vulture
Everyone knows Woody Allen. At least, everyone thinks they know Woody Allen. His plumage is easily identifiable: horn-rimmed glasses, baggy suit, wispy hair, kvetching demeanor, ironic sense of humor, acute fear of death. As is his habitat: New York City, though recently he has flown as far afield as London, Barcelona, and Paris. His likes are well known: Bergman, Dostoevsky, New Orleans jazz. So too his dislikes: spiders, cars, nature, Wagner records, the entire city of Los Angeles. Whether or not these traits represent the true Allen, who’s to say? It is impossible to tell, with Allen, where cinema ends and life begins, an obfuscation he readily encourages. In the late nineteen-seventies, disillusioned with the comedic success he’d found making such films as Sleeper (1973), Love and Death (1975), and Annie Hall (1977), he turned for darker territory with Stardust Memories (1980), a film in which, none too surprisingly, he plays a...
- 1/24/2015
- by Graham Daseler
- The Moving Arts Journal
When people pass away, we often praise them with, "What couldn’t they do?" Exaggeration. With Mike Nichols, there’s really no answer to the theoretical. A seasoned comedian, a pillar of New York City theater, a successful film director — earning a Best Picture nomination, four Best Director nominations, and one win in the latter category — and one of only 12 people to successfully collect the coveted Egot, when it came to the entertainment industry, there really wasn’t anything he couldn’t do. He went out on a high. Thursday morning, we learned that Nichols passed away at the age of 83. Fleeing Nazi-occupied Germany in 1938, Nichols wound up in New York City and called the city home for nearly his entire life. Attending college in Chicago, he became part of the theater and comedy scenes, joining Second City and forming the comedy duo Nichols and May, along with actress Elaine May.
- 11/20/2014
- by Matt Patches
- Hitfix
Legendary filmmaker Mike Nichols has died at the age of 83 from a sudden cardiac arrest.
Born in Germany and moving to the U.S. in the late 1930s as a child, Nichols started out as a comedian before segueing into being a director, writer and producer of productions both on stage and on screen.
His first film was 1966's screen adaptation of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" which scored five Oscars, while he personally won an Oscar for his second effort "The Graduate".
Other famed films he directed included "Working Girl," "Postcards from the Edge," "Primary Colors," "The Birdcage," "Regarding Henry," "Biloxi Blues," "Wolf," "Silkwood," "Catch-22," "Carnal Knowledge, "Closer" and his last feature "Charlie Wilson's War".
He also directed the acclaimed TV adaptations of "Angels in America" and "Wit," and helmed a bunch of Broadway productions of various plays and musicals including "Uncle Vanya," Death of a Salesman," ""The Seagull,...
Born in Germany and moving to the U.S. in the late 1930s as a child, Nichols started out as a comedian before segueing into being a director, writer and producer of productions both on stage and on screen.
His first film was 1966's screen adaptation of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" which scored five Oscars, while he personally won an Oscar for his second effort "The Graduate".
Other famed films he directed included "Working Girl," "Postcards from the Edge," "Primary Colors," "The Birdcage," "Regarding Henry," "Biloxi Blues," "Wolf," "Silkwood," "Catch-22," "Carnal Knowledge, "Closer" and his last feature "Charlie Wilson's War".
He also directed the acclaimed TV adaptations of "Angels in America" and "Wit," and helmed a bunch of Broadway productions of various plays and musicals including "Uncle Vanya," Death of a Salesman," ""The Seagull,...
- 11/20/2014
- by Garth Franklin
- Dark Horizons
Timing is everything. Donald Margulies respectfully raids the Chekhovian thematic pantry in The Country House, which arrives on Broadway in an elegant production staged with customary polish by Daniel Sullivan and starring Blythe Danner in a role that overlaps with her own professional history. But coming in the wake of Christopher Durang's far more illuminating contemporary riff on the Russian master, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, seriously undercuts the usefulness of this engaging, if rather safe, middlebrow entertainment. Appropriating elements drawn primarily from The Seagull and Uncle Vanya, Margulies' Chekhov excursion is a vast improvement on the lame-
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- 10/3/2014
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Two-time Tony Award winner and Emmy nominee Patti LuPone ("American Horror Story," "Life Goes On") has signed on as a recurring guest star for the second season of the hit Showtime drama series "Penny Dreadful". Lupone will play a mysterious character of great importance in Vanessa.s (Eva Green) past. In addition, award-winning British actors Helen McCrory (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, As You Like It), and Simon Russell Beale ("Mi-5," Uncle Vanya) have been upped to series regulars. McCrory returns as Evelyn Poole (a.k.a. Madame Kali), the seductive spiritualist who will pose a unique threat to our protagonists this season, along with Beale, who is back as eccentric Egyptologist Ferdinand Lyle.
- 9/8/2014
- Comingsoon.net
Happy Birthday, Sam Mendes Sam Mendes is best known for whis work as the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, and his direction of the film American Beauty and the Broadway production of Cabaret on Broadway starring Alan Cumming. His production of Oliver became the longest running show ever to play at the London Palladium. Additional stage credits includeTennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Stephen Sondheim's Company which had the first ever African American 'Bobby', Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus and his farewell duo of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night, which transferred to the Brooklyn Academy Of Music and Gypsy on Broadway starring Bernadette Peters.
- 8/1/2014
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
On Wednesday, July 22, I had the privilege of hosting a talk with Andre Gregory, Wallace Shawn, and Jonathan Demme, under the auspices of the Screen Actors Guild Foundation, after a screening of the trio’s impressive collaboration A Master Builder (now playing at New York’s Film Forum). Much as they did with Uncle Vanya (filmed by Louis Malle as Vanya on 42nd Street), Gregory, Shawn, and the cast rehearsed Ibsen’s play for many years, ultimately performing it for small, invited audiences. Malle being dead, Demme stepped into the breach and filmed the production quickly and well.A Master Builder centers on acclaimed architect Halvard Solness (played onscreen by Shawn), who fears being dislodged by the next generation. He feels especially vulnerable because he has, over the last decade, gone from making towering structures to smaller buildings in which real people can live. He has lost some stature and...
- 7/25/2014
- by David Edelstein
- Vulture
Twenty years ago, André Gregory gathered a group of great actors to rehearse Uncle Vanya; Louis Malle came in to film their work, almost as if he were shooting a documentary; and the result, Vanya on 42nd Street, was an astonishing fusion of theater and film—superb Chekhov, superb moviemaking. Gregory, Wallace Shawn, and Larry Pine have reunited for Henrik Ibsen’s A Master Builder, and, Malle being dead, Jonathan Demme has stepped into the breach. (The film is dedicated to Malle.) Demme doesn’t take a documentary approach, which I don’t think would work for this strange masterpiece—a play that marked the moment that Ibsen began to turn away from the naturalism of A Doll’s House and Ghosts and head back to the mythic, poetic realm of earlier epics like Brand and Peer Gynt. Gregory and Demme have turned A Master Builder into (pardon my invoking...
- 7/22/2014
- by David Edelstein
- Vulture
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2014
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
If they gave Emmys for Outstanding Acting In a Vintage Roman Bath... That would be a very strange and limited Emmy category. It would also be a category that Linus Roache would win with ease this year. Roache has been a new addition in the second season of History's "Vikings," playing King Ecbert, a real history figure brought into the "Vikings" world as this year's Big Bad to oppose Travis Fimmel's Ragnar. Or at least that's the way it looked at first, but soon King Ecbert and Ragnar were making tentative treaties and Ecbert was showing great interest in the Viking religion. So who can say how things stand between King Ecbert and Ragnar at this point? One thing we know with certainty, though, is that King Ecbert loves a good soak. He meets with political allies in the bath. He meets with religion advisors in the bath. And...
- 4/3/2014
- by Daniel Fienberg
- Hitfix
Vermont's award-winning Weston Playhouse Theatre Company has announced its 2014 season of shows - a summer of Broadway blockbusters and exciting new works. Highlights include the world premiere of Paul Gordon's rock musical Analog and Vinyl directed by Michael Berresse, Christopher Lloyd and Campbell Scott in Annie Baker's Uncle Vanya, and Obie winner Dael Orlandersmith in her one-woman Stoop Stories.
- 3/29/2014
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
New York – Peter Sarsgaard and Chris Noth will test their classical theater chops, taking on the lead roles in, respectively, William Shakespeare's Hamlet and Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus. The productions are part of the 2014-15 season lineup of off-Broadway's Classic Stage Company, which gets underway in the fall with a revival of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II's rarely produced 1947 musical, Allegro, directed by John Doyle. Sarsgaard, who previously has appeared at Csc opposite his wife, Maggie Gyllenhaal, in Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters, returns as the depressive Danish prince in a January production of Hamlet, for
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- 3/6/2014
- by David Rooney
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Before she nabbed the Best Supporting Actress award for 12 Years A Slave at the 2014 Oscars - and became one of Hollywood's rising style icons in the process - Lupita Nyong'o honed her craft at the Yale School of Drama. "She was not a trained actor when she came here," says Yale's Chair of the Acting Department Ron Van Lieu, who auditioned Nyong'o. "She was running mostly on instinct and an innate sense of truthfulness. She's incapable of lying as an actor, so she had all of that but very little technique." Mexican-born and Kenyan-raised Nyong'o, 31, was hit by the acting...
- 3/5/2014
- by Carlos Greer
- PEOPLE.com
Dark Knight co-star will join Ewan McGregor in The Real Thing revival. Plus, Sting ships maritime musical to the Great White Way and Hugh Jackman to host Tony awards … again
Maggie Gyllenhaal is to make her Broadway debut this year when she joins Ewan McGregor in a revival of Tom Stoppard's comedy The Real Thing.
Gyllenhaal will star as Annie, an actor involved in an extramarital affair with a glib playwright – to be played by McGregor, whose casting was announced in November. The roles were first played on Broadway in 1984 by Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons, who both won Tony awards for their performances.
This is The Real Thing's third outing on Broadway. A Donmar Warehouse transfer in 2000, with Jennifer Ehle and Stephen Dillane, also won several Tony awards. The new revival will be produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, with the acclaimed director Sam Gold at the helm.
Maggie Gyllenhaal is to make her Broadway debut this year when she joins Ewan McGregor in a revival of Tom Stoppard's comedy The Real Thing.
Gyllenhaal will star as Annie, an actor involved in an extramarital affair with a glib playwright – to be played by McGregor, whose casting was announced in November. The roles were first played on Broadway in 1984 by Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons, who both won Tony awards for their performances.
This is The Real Thing's third outing on Broadway. A Donmar Warehouse transfer in 2000, with Jennifer Ehle and Stephen Dillane, also won several Tony awards. The new revival will be produced by the Roundabout Theatre Company, with the acclaimed director Sam Gold at the helm.
- 2/13/2014
- by Matt Trueman
- The Guardian - Film News
Acclaimed director Sam Gold to direct McGregor in The Real Thing, opening October 2014
Ewan McGregor is gearing up make his Broadway debut, it was announced on Thursday. The Trainspotting actor will star in a revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at American Airlines theatre next year. McGregor will play Henry, a glib and unhappily married playwright, in the Roundabout Theatre Company production, which will run from 2 October 2014 until the following January.
It is a role – and, indeed, a play – with serious calibre on Broadway. Stoppard's drama has been produced twice before on Broadway, picking up Tony awards for best new play and best revival. Both productions delivered best actor and actress wins for its leads, with Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons scooping Tonys in 1984 and Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle following in their footsteps in 2000, after the Donmar Warehouse revival transferred to New York.
McGregor has had a...
Ewan McGregor is gearing up make his Broadway debut, it was announced on Thursday. The Trainspotting actor will star in a revival of Tom Stoppard's The Real Thing at American Airlines theatre next year. McGregor will play Henry, a glib and unhappily married playwright, in the Roundabout Theatre Company production, which will run from 2 October 2014 until the following January.
It is a role – and, indeed, a play – with serious calibre on Broadway. Stoppard's drama has been produced twice before on Broadway, picking up Tony awards for best new play and best revival. Both productions delivered best actor and actress wins for its leads, with Glenn Close and Jeremy Irons scooping Tonys in 1984 and Stephen Dillane and Jennifer Ehle following in their footsteps in 2000, after the Donmar Warehouse revival transferred to New York.
McGregor has had a...
- 11/2/2013
- by Matt Trueman
- The Guardian - Film News
I actually became depressed at the thought of picking Julianne Moore‘s best movie. She’s not like Jane Fonda or Glenn Close (two of my favorite movie stars, to be clear), the fierce, lupine types who seem to take roles based on how much they can represent their signature intensity. In the case of Jane and Glenn, you basically have to pick their “fiercest” roles as favorites: for Jane, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They or Klute; for Glenn, Damages or Dangerous Liaisons. With Julianne Moore, who stars in the upcoming Carrie remake, it’s possible to forget that she was both Annette Bening‘s conflicted wife in The Kids Are All Right and the mother from Savage Grace. She’s so fundamentally different from role to role that grading them against one another feels (sigh) impossible.
But as you know, our Best Movie Ever? feature is not about pandering to critical taste.
But as you know, our Best Movie Ever? feature is not about pandering to critical taste.
- 10/7/2013
- by Louis Virtel
- The Backlot
Julianne Moore is a living legend for one reason (besides the unbelievable Bulgari ad above): her utter and absorbing onscreen command. Can you think of a time she was less than in complete control of her material? She even ruled in that weird-ass Vanya on 42nd Street (though she did perform in Uncle Vanya for years prior to that movie’s release, to be fair).
I like going to the movies when I know a star will flawlessly sell dialogue. You always know Meryl Streep will kill. Cate Blanchett will kill. Glenn Close will kill, perhaps in boiling water. But so will Julianne Moore, and for some reason I always feel compelled to note her flawlessness since she retains a strange underdog quality. Oh, and top of this? She is my nominee for a new gay icon.
In case you need a refresher on the rules of our Gay Icon Nominee selection,...
I like going to the movies when I know a star will flawlessly sell dialogue. You always know Meryl Streep will kill. Cate Blanchett will kill. Glenn Close will kill, perhaps in boiling water. But so will Julianne Moore, and for some reason I always feel compelled to note her flawlessness since she retains a strange underdog quality. Oh, and top of this? She is my nominee for a new gay icon.
In case you need a refresher on the rules of our Gay Icon Nominee selection,...
- 10/2/2013
- by Louis Virtel
- The Backlot
Happy Birthday, Sam Mendes Sam Mendes is best known for whis work as the artistic director of the Donmar Warehouse, and his direction of the film American Beauty and the Broadway production of Cabaret on Broadway starring Alan Cumming. His production of Oliver became the longest running show ever to play at the London Palladium. Additional stage credits includeTennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie, Stephen Sondheim's Company which had the first ever African American 'Bobby', Alan Bennett's Habeas Corpus and his farewell duo of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night, which transferred to the Brooklyn Academy Of Music and Gypsy on Broadway starring Bernadette Peters.
- 8/1/2013
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
New York — When Cate Blanchett was last in New York, in between her nightly performances in the acclaimed touring production of "Uncle Vanya," she would slip uptown, to the East Side, to stealthily research her role in Woody Allen's latest, "Blue Jasmine."
In it, Blanchett plays Jasmine, a socialite in breakdown, a modern Blanche DuBois (a role Blanchett played a few years ago on stage, the "detritus" of which she says stays with her), distraught and destroyed by the betrayal of her Bernie Madoff-like financier husband (Alec Baldwin). On Jasmine's stomping ground, the Upper East Side, Blanchett bent her ear to the neighborhood's accents of affluence.
"I drank way too much wine sitting in restaurants by myself," says Blanchett, today sitting in a midtown office in a sleeveless emerald green top and skirt.
The polished refinement, though, is only a small element – a surface that cracks – to Blanchett's enormously layered performance in "Blue Jasmine.
In it, Blanchett plays Jasmine, a socialite in breakdown, a modern Blanche DuBois (a role Blanchett played a few years ago on stage, the "detritus" of which she says stays with her), distraught and destroyed by the betrayal of her Bernie Madoff-like financier husband (Alec Baldwin). On Jasmine's stomping ground, the Upper East Side, Blanchett bent her ear to the neighborhood's accents of affluence.
"I drank way too much wine sitting in restaurants by myself," says Blanchett, today sitting in a midtown office in a sleeveless emerald green top and skirt.
The polished refinement, though, is only a small element – a surface that cracks – to Blanchett's enormously layered performance in "Blue Jasmine.
- 7/26/2013
- by AP
- Huffington Post
Exclusive: Theater veterans Michael Mayer and Stephen Karam have signed with Wme. Mayer received a Tony Award for his direction of Spring Awakening and was nominated for his work on Thoroughly Modern Millie. Karam is best known for writing Sons Of The Prophet, which was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, and won Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and Hull-Warriner awards for Best Play. The pair come from CAA, as the one-upsmanship continues between Hollywood’s two top talent agencies. Now the competition seems to be spreading to New York, where things aren’t nearly as rabid. Mayer’s long list of Broadway shows includes American Idiot, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, the Pulitzer-winning ‘night Mother, Everyday Rapture, After The Fall, An Almost Holy Picture, Uncle Vanya, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown, Side Man and Triumph Of Love. Mayer has also been...
- 6/17/2013
- by MIKE FLEMING JR
- Deadline TV
Exclusive: Theater veterans Michael Mayer and Stephen Karam have signed with Wme. Mayer received a Tony Award for his direction of Spring Awakening and was nominated for his work on Thoroughly Modern Millie. Karam is best known for writing Sons Of The Prophet, which was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize, and won Drama Critics Circle, Outer Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel and Hull-Warriner awards for Best Play. The pair come from CAA, as the one-upsmanship continues between Hollywood’s two top talent agencies. Now the competition seems to be spreading to New York, where things aren’t nearly as rabid. Mayer’s long list of Broadway shows includes American Idiot, On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, the Pulitzer-winning ‘night Mother, Everyday Rapture, After The Fall, An Almost Holy Picture, Uncle Vanya, You’re A Good Man Charlie Brown, Side Man and Triumph Of Love. Mayer has also been...
- 6/17/2013
- by MIKE FLEMING JR
- Deadline
Back in 2011, between shooting and editing The Avengers, Joss Whedon was supposed to take his wife, producer Kai Cole, on a dream Italian vacation to celebrate their 20th anniversary. Sensing an oncoming crisis of faith in filmmaking — perhaps one reason they’ve been able to achieve 20 years of marriage in an industry that seemingly grinds up and spits out unions just for kicks — she had another idea.
She suggested he finally shoot his dream project, a new black-and-white contemporary spin on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing using the original text with his friends/constant collaborators like Nathan Fillion, Alexis Denisof...
She suggested he finally shoot his dream project, a new black-and-white contemporary spin on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing using the original text with his friends/constant collaborators like Nathan Fillion, Alexis Denisof...
- 6/6/2013
- by Carrie Bell
- EW - Inside Movies
Happy Birthday, Laurence Olivier Born in 1907, Olivier remains one of the most revered actors of the 20th century. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from the title role in Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. Olivier played more than 120 stage roles Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake Is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh What a Lovely War,...
- 5/22/2013
- by Stage Tube
- BroadwayWorld.com
The 58th annual edition of these kudos took place on May 19 at the Town Hall in Manhattan. Read full report here. Best Play Annie Baker, The Flick Christopher Durang, Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike Joe Gilford, Finks Richard Greenberg, The Assembled Parties Amy Herzog, Belleville Deanna Jent, Falling Richard Nelson, Sorry Best Musical A Christmas Story: The Musical Giant Hands on a Hardbody Here Lies Love Matilda Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 The Other Josh Cohen Best Revival of a Play Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Golden Boy Good Person of Szechwan The Piano Lesson The Trip to Bountiful Uncle Vanya Best Revival of a Musical or Revue Passion Pippin Rodgers + Hammerstein's Cinderella The Golden Land The Mystery of Edwin Drood Working: A Musical Best Actor in a Play ...
- 5/20/2013
- Gold Derby
The American theater suffers from a serious case of Chekhov envy. Dead almost 100 years, the great Russian has his fingerprints on nearly every wistful drama now produced. I’m not complaining; at least it’s not Strindberg. But Chekhov is easier to ape than to assimilate. His unhurried, sideways approach to the kill is too often mistaken for gentleness, a substitution that turns tension to mush and lets the quarry escape.So Richard Nelson tempts fate in setting his wistful drama Nikolai and the Others, a Lincoln Center Theater production, among a bunch of sentimental Russians in a country house over a spring weekend. References to The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and, most overtly, The Seagull abound. The set is sun-dappled and wicker-filled. In the play’s first moment, a woman named Vera picks up her embroidery and says, “Nikolai Dimitrievich, I told Natasha you were here.” Can the samovar be far behind?...
- 5/8/2013
- by Jesse Green
- Vulture
The Drama Desk Awards — commonly known as the theater world’s Golden Globes, though nominees are represented across all NYC productions in a season — are the last precursor to the Tony Awards (check EW.com tomorrow morning for a full list of those). And judging by the list below, it’s going to be quite a competitive year, with some pretty heavy-hitters mixed in with longshots, not to mention some major snubs (Alan Cumming, Cyndi Lauper, Fiona Shaw, Chaplin’s Rob McClure to name a few). The winners will be announced at NYC’s Town Hall on May 19. Below is...
- 4/29/2013
- by Jason Clark
- EW.com - PopWatch
The World Premiere production of The Flick, a new play by the heralded Obie Award-winning playwright Annie Baker Circle Mirror Transformation, The Aliens, her recent adaptation of Uncle Vanya is currently playing at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theatre. Originally set to play a limited engagement through Sunday, March 31, the production has extended to Sunday, April 7.The show has received 'polarizng' reactions from audiences, and Playwrights Horizons has stepped up to defend the production. Artistic Director Tim Sanford recently sent a letter to season subscribers explaining the choice to produce the show. Check it out below...
- 3/25/2013
- by BWW News Desk
- BroadwayWorld.com
Part playwright, part mad scientist, Christopher Durang has spent his career experimenting with various concentrations of absurdity. The question he seems to be trying to answer is: How much distilled craziness can a realistic style accommodate? The right proportion raises the baseline sourness of his vision to an almost sublime state of hilarity, as in his 1979 Off Broadway hit Sister Mary Ignatius Explains It All for You. Yet as some of his later works demonstrated, one drop too much and everything curdles.If both reactions occur in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, that’s because Durang’s latest is really two plays. Or maybe more. One of them, as the first three quarters of the title suggests, is a Chekhovian drama of disappointment, albeit airlifted to contemporary Bucks County, with Diet Pepsi instead of samovars. Hewing reasonably close to Uncle Vanya, with elements of Chekhov’s three other...
- 3/15/2013
- by Jesse Green
- Vulture
Playwrights Horizons World Premiere of The Flick, a new play by Obie Award winner Annie Baker Circle Mirror Transformation at Ph, The Aliens, her recent adaptation of Uncle Vanya, opened last night, March 12. Directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold Circle Mirror Transformation, Kin and The Big Meal at Ph Seminar and Picnic on Broadway, the production will play through Sunday, March 31 at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater 416 West 42nd Street.BroadwayWorld was there for the opening night festivities and you can check out coverage from the curtain call and after party below...
- 3/13/2013
- by Jennifer Broski
- BroadwayWorld.com
Playwrights Horizons World Premiere of The Flick, a new play by Obie Award winner Annie Baker Circle Mirror Transformation at Ph, The Aliens, her recent adaptation of Uncle Vanya, opened last night, March 12. Directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold Circle Mirror Transformation, Kin and The Big Meal at Ph Seminar and Picnic on Broadway, the production will play through Sunday, March 31 at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater 416 West 42nd Street.BroadwayWorld was there for the opening night festivities and you can check out coverage from the theatre arrivals below...
- 3/13/2013
- by Walter McBride
- BroadwayWorld.com
Conrad Bain, who served for years as the eternally understanding adopting father to the American melting pot on Diff’rent Strokes, has died. Reports say that Bain died of natural causes at the age of 89. Bain was an actor who spent time doing Shakespeare and classic dramas on Broadway like The Iceman Cometh, Candide, and Uncle Vanya before breaking into film and TV in the late ’50s and early ’60s. Among his most notable early roles was on Dark Shadows as the town innkeeper—a two-season run that ignobly ended with his being killed by a werewolf. From there ...
- 1/16/2013
- avclub.com
Playwrights Horizons Tim Sanford, Artistic Director Leslie Marcus, Managing Director presents the World Premiere of The Flick, a new play by Obie Award winner Annie Baker Circle Mirror Transformation at Ph, The Aliens, her recent adaptation of Uncle Vanya. Directed by Obie Award winner Sam Gold Circle Mirror Transformation, Kin and The Big Meal at Ph Seminar and the current Picnic on Broadway, the production will begin previews Friday evening, February 15 at 8Pm with an Opening Night set for Tuesday, March 12 at 7Pm. The limited engagement will play through Sunday, March 31 at Playwrights Horizons' Mainstage Theater 416 West 42nd Street. The cast met the press today and you can check out photo coverage from the festivities below...
- 1/15/2013
- by Jennifer Broski
- BroadwayWorld.com
Today's celebrity pictures include Tulisa Contostavlos pushing past hordes of paparazzi as she and new footballer boyfriend Danny Simpson leave the Rose nightclub in Central London. Also in London, Eliza Doolittle wears a sheer top as she and Melanie Chisholm leave The Groucho Club, and Anna Friel feigns surprise at the awaiting photographers outside the Vaudeville Theatre following her performance in Uncle Vanya. (more)...
- 1/4/2013
- by By Naomi Gordon
- Digital Spy
Election season is upon us once again in 2013—but these upcoming political campaigns might have even more of an impact on actors and stage managers than this year’s presidential election.At regional membership meetings in New York, Chicago, and Hollywood next month, members of the Actors’ Equity Association will begin the process of nominating candidates for Equity’s 2013 national elections. The agenda for each meeting includes a special order of business to nominate and select the membership portion of this year’s regional nominating committees, which are responsible for interviewing prospective candidates and selecting a slate of nominees for 16 open Council seats.The Eastern Regional membership meeting will be held Friday, Jan. 11, at 2 p.m. at the Actors’ Equity building in New York, where the St. Clair Bayfield Award will be presented to David Furr for his performance in “As You Like It” at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park,...
- 12/18/2012
- backstage.com
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