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Leni and Nat
Gil Koffman was attracted to writing a solo piece (with instrumental accompaniment) about Leni Riefenstahl, the German movie star turned director whose film, Triumph of the Will, depicted Hitler as a god descending from the heavens to preside over the Nuremberg rallies. After the war, Riefenstahl tried to distance herself from Hitler and gain acceptance Continue reading
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Completing the Inge Cycle: Bus Stop
The core of William Inge’s reputation rests on four plays he wrote in the 1950s – Come Back Little Sheba, Picnic, Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Bus Stop. (Add to this the Oscar-winning screenplay he wrote for Elia Kazan’s 1961 film, Splendor in the Grass, and you have a pretty significant body Continue reading
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Talking to the Dead
One of my favorite sketches from the San Francisco improv-satire troupe, The Committee, is a scene between a man and a woman that is made up not of dialogue but of brief summaries of what the characters say. So, instead of saying something like, “You fill out that sweater well,” the guy says, “Suggestive remark.” Continue reading
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“Cherry Orchard,” “Streetcar,” and More
As it happened, some of the productions I saw in the weeks after my return from London have been productions I had heard about a lot while I was in London. I’ve already commented on Vanya, so I’ll focus on the others. Benedict Andrews’s staging of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard (at St. Anne’s) and Rebecca Continue reading
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An Adventure
For those who have noticed, I didn’t post post for a long time before my notes on Vanya. That’s because, for a long time, I wasn’t in New York seeing new shows but in London putting up one of my old ones. Though I keep my hand in as a theater journalist — posting here Continue reading
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Andrew Scott and “Vanya”
Vanya is a love story. Not between any of Chekhov’s characters but between Andrew Scott and the play. His passion for it leads him to share it with us in a great rush of enthusiasm. As you probably have heard, Scott plays all of the characters. The main task of doing a solo show featuring multiple characters Continue reading
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“The Merchant of Venice”
The production of The Merchant of Venice that opened recently at CSC was among the most dismaying evenings I’ve had in the theater in recent memory. It’s particularly dismaying because the director, Igor Golyak, recently staged in the same space a play called Our Class from a script by Tadeusz Słobodzianek that I thought, though Continue reading
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“Babe”
One of my students once went to the administration of the school where I taught to complain about the language being used in my class. It was frequently graphic and sexist and she felt that this made the class an unsafe environment. And so I had to sit down with people who had the power Continue reading
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“Shit. Meet. Fan.”
When a character in one of my students’ plays says, “Let’s play a game,” alarm bells go off. Almost invariably, the game is some version of the so-called truth game in which the ensemble share a fairly predictable series of embarrassments, betrayals and secrets. The problem is that these revelations don’t come from credible motivations Continue reading
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Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 