Local Theater -- Red

My husband and I have also been attending performances of contemporary drama.  Last weekend we saw Red at Arena Stage, another impressive venue.  This venue, however, is quite 21st century.

Red's subject matter is also quite modern and fits into our course nicely.  The play is about modern artist Mark Rothko.

You may prefer to see his distinctive paintings in color.

The play is set in the late 1950s when Rothko was completing a commission to paint murals for The Four Seasons, a very expensive restaurant in NYC.  Rothko's style of painting was also being challenged by the work of artists such as Andy Warhol.  In the play itself, Rothko and his assistant, Ken, a young artist, battle over art and its meaning.  I wonder how this play would work as drama read in a class like EN 230.  However, visual and aural elements that may be difficult to convey on the page are so important to this play in particular.  (It is set in Rothko's studio, a capacious loft with much equipment and many paintings in progress.)  Also, as my brother-in-law pointed out to me, this play would be difficult to stage in many settings and requires a venue and company like Arena Stage or its equivalent.  For more information, see this article from The NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/30/theater/30red.html

The scene below is from Arena Stage.

Even the paint that Rothko and Ken throw around the stage requires technical know-how.  After all, oil paint is very permanent.  Yet, in one scene, Ken cleans it up very quickly.

For reviews of Red at Arena Stage, see the following links:

http://www.washingtonian.com/blogarticles/22609.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-hues-blend-evocatively-in-arena-stages-red/2012/01/29/gIQAvA52aQ_story.html

Links to reviews of other productions are below:

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/boston/southend/articles/2012/01/29/in_two_plays_art_and_red_one_question_how_much_do_we_believe_in_abstract_art/

http://thephoenix.com/boston/arts/132294-red-explores-rothkos-emotional-palette/

http://theater.nytimes.com/2010/04/02/theater/reviews/02red.html?pagewanted=all

http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/stage/7790335-421/red-uses-the-stage-as-a-canvas-in-painting-a-volcanic-mark-rothko.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/theatre/theatre-reviews/6767740/Red-at-the-Donmar-Warehouse-review.html

For information about Rothko, see the links below:

http://www.hollistaggart.com/artists/biography/mark_rothko/

http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/dec/12/mark-rothko-red-william-boyd

And what did happen to the murals that Rothko was supposed to paint for the Four Seasons:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2002/dec/07/artsfeatures

To finish, here are links to videos and articles about what it is like to perform in Red.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/blog/2010/04/from-one-artist-to-another-alfred-molina-plays-painter-rothko-on-broadway.html

http://video.pbs.org/video/2194097529/

http://www.edgeboston.com/index.php?ch=entertainment&sc=&sc2=features&sc3=&id=128678

The scene below is from Boston's Speakeasy Theater:

Local Theater -- The Gaming Table

Although Susanna Centlivre wrote The Basset Table...I mean...The Gaming Table long before our era begins in EN 230, I'd like to post a quick review of the performance my husband and I saw today at the Folger Theater in DC.

One of the advantages of living near DC is the ability to see performances of plays that are no longer performed as often.  The Folger Theater is a particularly suitable venue.  The two-story stage with its sweeping, wooden staircase represented an eighteenth-century London mansion in a way that a more typical stage might not.

This performance reminded me that Restoration comedy is fun to read--and watch.  The performance was fun and funny without being condescending or condescended to.  Neither did it creak.  The actors were skillful, and parts of the play were discreetly updated here and there.  Since we associate basset with dogs rather than with cards, the play's title became The Gaming Table.  After all, the play is about women who gamble on cards, love, and men.  The prologue and epilogue included references to Congress and women's roles today.

Like many Restoration comedies, The Gaming Table brings together several couples in a merry round of romance.  Centlivre gives us four to be exact.  First is Lady Reveller, a spunky widow, and her beau Worthy, who wants her to give up gambling.  Next is her cousin Lady Lucy, a serious young lady who prefers the playhouse to the gaming table, and Sir James Courtly, a not-so-serious man.  Another cousin, Valeria, would seem to prefer science to love...except that she is in love with the charming Ensign Lovely.  And then there are Mr. and Mrs. Sago, Pud and Kiki...except that she appears to love gaming and Sir James more than she loves her husband.  Other characters throw in complications.  Valeria's father intends for her to marry Captain Hearty who would rather not marry her.  And then there are Buckle and Alpiew, the servants of Worthy and Lady Reveller respectively.

But all's well in the end.

Here are links to a few reviews of The Gaming Table:

http://dctheatrescene.com/2012/02/02/the-gaming-table/

http://www.brightestyoungthings.com/articles/play-dc-the-gaming-table-the-folger-theatre.htm

http://www.washingtonpost.com/gog/performing-arts/the-gaming-table,1213012/critic-review.html

http://ellenandjim.wordpress.com/2012/01/27/susanna-centlivres-the-gaming-basset-table-at-the-folger/

For more information about the play itself, see The Folger Theater's website:

http://www.folger.edu/woSummary.cfm?woid=677

For more information about Susanna Centlivre who wrote The Basset Table in 1705, see these links:

http://www.folger.edu/template.cfm?cid=4035

http://www.juggernaut-theatre.org/first100years/centlivrebio.html

See these links for a review of an earlier revival of The Basset Table:

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=108015&sectioncode=26

UMBC has a podcast of a performance:

http://www.umbc.edu/theatre/z_bassettable.html

Chicago's Alcyone Festival in 2008 included a performance of another of Centlivre's plays:

http://halcyontheatre.org/boldstroke

The Busy Body was staged in NYC in 2010:

http://who-will-kiss-the-pig.blogspot.com/2010/08/saturday-evening-in-washington-heights.html

The blog entry above has many pictures!

The Wonder was also staged in NYC.  This appears to be a more modern version.

More Local Theater...August Wilson's Radio Golf

If I were to put together an anthology of world literature, I would like to include one of August Wilson's plays from his Pittsburgh Cycle.  In fact, if I teach EN 202HM again, I would assign one of these plays as the extra reading.  I would be interested in seeing how Gem of the Ocean or Fences or Joe Turner's Come and Gone or even Radio Golf would work with our readings, both the African and African-American works as well as our plays.

Compared to Mother Courage or Gem of the Ocean, Radio Golf is a fairly traditional, straightforward play.  It emphasizes Harmond Wilks' interactions with the other characters (his wife, Mame; his business partner, Roosevelt Hicks; his old schoolmate and current employee, Sterling Johnson; and Elder Joseph Barlow, a seemingly homeless man who turns out to be Wilks' cousin).  Wilson seems to have been wrapping up his cycle in this play.  Elder Joseph Barlow is the son of Citizen Barlow and Black Mary from Gem of the Ocean.  Black Mary was the protege of Aunt Ester (who died in the 1980s), and Elder Joseph (or "Old Joe") is fighting to preserve Aunt Ester's house at 1839 Wylie Avenue.  Harmond Wilks, on the other hand, is the grandson of Caesar Wilks, the black police constable in Gem of the Ocean.  Harmond is a real estate developer with plans to demolish 1839 Wylie Avenue and replace it with a condo complex complete with Barnes and Nobles, Whole Foods, and Starbucks.  He is also running for mayor of Pittsburgh.  If he's successful, he will be the first African-American mayor of Pittsburgh.


Here are a few images of the various characters in Radio Golf.  The play, by the way, is set in 1997.

In this poster from a Broadway production of the play, we see Harmond and Mame together.



On the other hand, Chicago's Goodman Theater depicted the couple in this way.  The actor playing Mame looks quite young.

This picture of the irrepressible Roosevelt and Harmond together comes from the Boston University Theater's production from 2006.  BTW, the actor playing Roosevelt (he is wearing glasses) looks a little like my ex-boss from the 1990s.

Or you may prefer this picture of Roosevelt in his golf outfit.  He is obsessed with golf!  This picture is from a British production.

There the two men are with Elder Joseph (seated).  Roosevelt is trying to browbeat him while Harmond looks on.  This production is a very recent one from Detroit.


Then, in this picture, Harmond and Sterling (the painter) are with Elder Joseph.  Here Anthony Chisolm plays Elder Joseph.  This again is from the Broadway production of Radio Golf.

Pictures from Live Arts' Mother Courage (Charlottesville VA)

While I'm online today, I'd like to post some pictures from Live Arts' production of Mother Courage.  (Live Arts is a community theater group from Charlottesville, VA, and my sister-in-law and her husband are very much involved in this group.   )

Here is Mother Courage pulling her cart.

Mother Courage is selling a capon (or chicken) to the Cook.

Yvette sings a song about her affair with the Cook.

Mother Courage is doing brisk business at her canteen.
Yvette arrives with her husband who is going to buy Mother Courage's cart for her.

Am not sure which scenes these are:



Below looks to be the scene where Kattrin is killed.

Mother Courage sings a lullaby to her dead daughter.

Here you may see the stage where everything took place.

After Going to See Mother Courage!

At long last!  Today (6/7) I was able to see Mother Courage at the Clark Street Playhouse in Virginia.  I have wanted to see Brecht's play for a while.  My husband and I were actually supposed to go last Sunday, but the matinee was canceled...due to a bike race.  

The picture above is of Colleen Delany (Kattrin) and Nancy Robinette (Mother Courage).  By the way, the Post gave Ms. Robinette quite a rave review:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303294.html

Here's a picture of the theater.  It is incredibly hard to find either on foot or by car, so it's no wonder that the bike race could cut off access to it.



The inside of this playhouse is just as funky, which fits Mother Courage, a play set on the battlefields of the Thirty Years War.  Also, Mother Courage is not intended to be a painfully historical or realistic play.  Even though it is set in the 17th century, historical and geographical details are not that important.  Mother Courage and her children might as well be on a treadmill as the years go by.   I would also say that Scena Theater's production was particularly austere.  Compare these two productions below.  The first is from a 2004 production that appeared in several cities in the UK and was set in modern-day Africa.  Another is from Cambridge (MA)'s American Repertory Theater.

 

However, an elaborate set or central idea is not always a sign of a fantastic production:

http://tech.mit.edu/V121/N11/Mother_Courage_.11a.html

http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/arts/theater/documents/00630946.htm

In Scena Theater's production that I saw, the play was staged on a concrete floor while the audience sat above in bleacher seats...ok...not quite bleacher seats.  The seats had backs.  The actors used all of the stage and more.  In fact, as the play began, the two army recruiters sat among the audience and spoke the first of their first lines there.  It was not until Mother Courage's sons Eiliff and Swiss Cheese pulled her cart out from the wings that the recruiters joined them on stage.  The cart was quite sizable, by the way.  It opened up so that Mother Courage and Kattrin could stand inside serving drinks in one scene.

Imagine the truck above without its engine and with a long pole with a long handle instead.

But what was it like to hear and see the actors performing the play?

I think that a performance of Mother Courage moves more quickly than one thinks if one has only read the play.  The scenes really fit together in performance.  Of course, this production showed information about each scene as well on screens well above the actors' heads.  However, watching the play, I saw how much the characters' situation changed and how much it remained the same.

Surprisingly, the songs did not jump out from this presentation, which detracted from more than one scene.  To compare, here is a link to Antaeus Theater's version of Mother Courage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUmpBu_qkD0

Probably the actors at Antaeus were miked.  Or Scena's taped music overwhelmed the singing of the live actors.  Or the Clark Street Playhouse is a little too intimate, which discourages the actors from projecting.  Mother Courage has been performed in more formal settings as in the picture of the University of Denver's production from 1985 (see below).  I'm not sure which.  It may even help to carry a tambourine as the actors at Antaeus do.



A number of scenes play differently in real life.  The scene right before Kattrin's death is a lot less sentimental than I imagined it.  The peasant woman telling Kattrin to pray is basically telling her to get lost.  Nancy Robinette's Mother Courage also seems to love her children more than I imagined her to, which affects the scene in which she is bargaining for Swiss Cheese's life or when she is reunited with Eiliff or when she responds to the attack on Kattrin.

However, as this picture from Yale University's production shows, actors do represent Mother Courage as more emotional and less hard-bitten -- despite playwright Bertolt Brecht's strictures.



My impression of various characters changed as I saw them in performance.  Joe Baker's Eiliff seemed more hostile and less stiffly heroic.  Rashard Harrison's Swiss Cheese was more bumbling.  Of course, since she is mute, Kattrin's role enlarges in performance.  I was really surprised by how much she aged in this production.  At the beginning, she was very sprightly and childish, but by the end, she was quite weary and moved very slowly until of course she broke away from the peasants to beat the drum warning the villagers.  If I were to watch this or another company's performance, I would play closer attention to the actor playing Kattrin.   (I couldn't find another picture of Colleen Delany as Kattrin, but here is a picture of Hilary Burns, a British actor, in that same role.

I happened to see someone videotaping the production.  Perhaps some scenes will end up on YouTube.  They would be useful for someone wanting to see a professional yet less distracting version of Mother Courage.  I wish that I had been able to go to Charlottesville last year or to the American Repertory Theater back in 2001.

August Wilson's Gem of The Ocean

  This photo from Syracuse Stage's 2007 production of August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean is very striking, but I thought I'd put up some words this evening to go with it.  Also, I'd like to find a few good pictures as well.

Gem of the Ocean is the first play in August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle...or Century Cycle, his series of ten plays, one for each decade of the 20th century.  Here is the Kennedy Center's site on Wilson's cycle.  It's a good, quick overview with useful links.

http://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/index.cfm?fuseaction=showevent&event=titac

For more information on August Wilson, see this extensive obituary from the NY Times. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/03/theater/newsandfeatures/03wilson.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Gem of the Ocean is set in the 1900s, a period of time that was as close to the Civil War as we are now to the 1960s.  Two of the characters in the play, Eli and Solly Two Kings, had helped to bring slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.  During the play, Solly tells of his own escape from Alabama, and he is intending to return there to rescue his sister.  Another character, Aunt Ester had been a slave as well (although she is a mystical individual, being 287 years old and able to travel to "The City of Bones.")  In the picture above, Aunt Ester, together with Eli, Solly, and Black Mary (Aunt Ester's protege), is conducting Citizen Barlow, a young refugee from Alabama, to that city so that he can redeem himself despite a death that he was responsible for.  (At the beginning of the play, another young man has drowned himself rather than admit to a crime he did not commit.  Citizen not only committed the crime but also looked on while the young man drowned.)

The productions of Gem of the Ocean & Fences that my husband and I saw at the Kennedy Center were staged readings.  In other words, each of the actors carried with him or her a bound script; however, some barely relied on their scripts and even used them to substitute for various props.  The actor playing Black Mary, for example, held her script as if it were a frying pan.  In Fences, on the other hand, the actors playing Troy and Rose passed a script between them as though it were the baby that he had brought home from the hospital.  Despite the performances being staged readings, the actors usually wore appropriate costumes, and the set design evoked Pittsburgh without being terribly fussy.  In fact, the same blue/black background served for both plays that I saw; only the arrangement of tables and chairs differed.  This is very different from some productions that I have seen; there the set design has been very elaborate, almost museum-quality.  (See the pictures below from "Jitney" and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone.")

However, as Gem of the Ocean contains much magic realism, a museum-quality set might be inappropriate.  After all, Citizen Barlow travels to the City of Bones in a paper boat made from Aunt Ester's bill of sale, and the play's most prosaic character, Caesar, is clearly an interloper.

Here are some reviews of other performances of Gem of the Ocean.  Phylicia Rashad (the mother on The Cosby Show) has played Aunt Ester; she has also directed another production of this same play.

http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=1873

http://www.theaterscene.net/ts/articles.nsf/RP/0E50FE60ABD8EB8D8525709D003F8C5D

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06156/695731-325.stm

http://blogcritics.org/archives/2006/01/16/083723.php

DC's Arena Theater also staged Gem of the Ocean in 2006:

http://dctheatrescene.com/2007/02/06/gem-of-the-ocean/


Below is a picture from that production.  The actor playing Citizen Barlow looks quite young!


To finish with, here is another scene from the Huntington Theater's production.  In this scene, Aunt Ester is sending the peddler Rutherford Selig off to find Solly and Citizen before the police constable Caesar finds them.  Here Phylicia Rashad plays Aunt Ester.


There she is with Solly Two Kings.  Anthony Chisolm also played Solly's role at the Kennedy Center's reading. 

Belated Review of MC's Chicago

A Doll's House (More Pictures!!!)

The picture above is from a California modern-dress production of A Doll's House.  I looked a little bit for a picture from a local production, but I wasn't able to find one quickly.  Below is another period production from the University of California at Riverside.  The scene depicted is Nora's rehearsal of the tarantella.



On the other hand, I did find this essay that explains the importance of Ibsen and his approach to modern drama.

http://www.ibsenvoyages.com/e-texts/four_plays_intro.html

The author of this essay is not only a literary scholar but also the former Resident Dramaturg for the American Ibsen Theater in Pittsburgh. 

Here is a link to a biography of Ibsen.  As you'll see, he lived a long life, and this long life was lived during an eventful period of history--the 19th century.

http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ibsen.htm

Ibsen caused quite a sensation in England, as this essay from 1893 details, and poet/critic/language reformer George Bernard Shaw coined the term "Ibsenism."

http://ibsen.net/index.gan?id=35363&subid=0

Ibsen caused this stir because of his approach to psychological and social realism. 

http://ibsen.net/index.gan?id=108034&subid=0

This article, also from the Norwegian site Ibsen.net, covers the playwright's approach to the performance of his plays, especially their casting:

http://ibsen.net/index.gan?id=1927&subid=0

I am trying to find some of the 19th c. and early 20th c. performances of A Doll's House online.  I wanted to find a picture of Elizabeth Robins (one of Ibsen's early advocates) as Nora, but all I could find was one of her portraying Hedda Gabler, another of Ibsen's heroines.



Northern State University in Aberdeen, SD has a very informative and complete site on A Doll's House.  The production is from the 2003-04 season.  Unfortunately, the web site is a little wonky.

http://www.northern.edu/wild/0304Season/DollsHouse/Doll_Nts.htm

Below are links to a variety of productions of A Doll's House.  The first link actually brings you to a site where you may download the scanned version of a review from 1918!  Alla Nazimova (pictured below) played Nora.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9B0DEFD81F3FE433A25753C3A9629C946996D6CF

The picture below is from Nazimova's 1922 silent film version of Ibsen's play.



This review is even older.  It describes a benefit performance held in 1894:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C02EFDC1F39E033A25755C1A9649C94659ED7CF

Here is a review of the 2007 production pictured at the top of this entry:

http://www.metroactive.com/metro/01.24.07/dolls-house-0704.html

Another recent production in New Hampshire took a very eccentric approach, casting very tall women and very short men.  The play was staged at Dartmouth by the Mabou Mines, an outside, experimental theater group from New York.

http://hop.dartmouth.edu/2005-06/46-dollhouse.html


Here is a link to a video of the Mabou Mines' production:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHn2FxLJOoI

This 2008 production from Chesapeake Shakespeare takes a more traditional approach.  




http://www.broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=25048

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303167.html



Look up or scroll down to see pictures from a Nepali theater's production of A Doll's House:

http://www.aarohantheatre.org/onstage.php

Here is a review of a recent production in NYC:

http://www.villagevoice.com/theater/0446,feingold,58483,11.html

Here are reviews of films from the 1970s.  The first starred Claire Bloom and Anthony Hopkins, and the second starred Jane Fonda.  We are watching the version starring Ms. Bloom and Hopkins.


But here is a picture of Ms. Fonda's version.


The link below is to a review of the version starring Ms. Fonda.

http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/133372/A-Doll-s-House/overview

I'll conclude with Prof. Ian Johnston's lecture on A Doll's House:

http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/introser/ibsen.htm