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AVA and Elizabeth McGovern
A couple of months back, Jodie Markell played actor-director Leni Riefenstahl in a piece called Leni’s Last Lament. I enjoyed Markell even as I had reservations about Gil Koffman’s script. Now we have Elizabeth McGovern playing actor Ava Gardner in Ava. Again, I enjoyed the performer while I had reservations about the script. The script… Continue reading
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George White and Finding the Way at the O’Neill
Lucy Rosenthal’s playwriting professor at Yale was critic and anthologist John Gassner. Her memories of him are not warm. “He advised me to transfer to the education school so I could be home at three o’clock to give the children milk and cookies. And then he said – if you want to know what the… Continue reading
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Actors Better Than the Plays That Make Them Look Good
Sometimes, at the end of a show, I feel pulled in two directions — admiration and dismay. Four recent shows made me feel this way. As the lights came up I found myself clapping fervently for the performances but feeling that the scripts that made those performances possible fell short as writing. I was particularly… Continue reading
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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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Jeffrey Sweet--Making the Scene 