Theater Memories Part 13: Shakespeare The Histories

David Tenant as Richard II
Credit: Keith Pattison

To complete my Shakespeare recollections, here are all the history plays I can remember seeing (again this is only stage versions, there are too many film and TV productions to list):

Richard II: David Tenant (one of my all-time favorite Doctor Whos) RSC at BAM in rep with both parts of Henry IV and Henry V; Steven Skybell (Theater for a New Audience); Peter MacNichol (Delacorte).

Henry IV, Parts I and II: Alex Hassell (RSC at BAM, the same series as the David Tenant Richard II, Anthony Sher was a brilliant Falstaff); a really weird production directed by JoAnne Akalitis at the Public; a one-evening adaptation at the Vivian Beaumont at Lincoln Center with Kevin Kline as Falstaff, Michael Hayden as Prince Hal, Richard Easton as King Henry IV, Ethan Hawke as Hotspur, with Dana Ivey, Audra MacDonald and Dakin Matthews (who did the adaptation); Shakespeare and Company, Lenox, Mass.

Henry V: Twice at the Delacorte with Kevin Kline and then Andre Braugher; Alex Hassell in the RSC/BAM four-part production; Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, set during World War I. Act One had the soldiers in a trench rehearsing for a performance of Henry V, then Act Two, they are all in the hospital, wounded, and the nurses take part.

2019-20 B'way/Off-B'way Update: LSD, Cary Grant, Princess Di & Barry Manilow

As the summer dwindles down, the number of announcements for the upcoming Broadway and Off-Broadway season begins to pick up in volume. In the past few weeks, eight new shows have been confirmed for Broadway runs plus a number of Off-Broadway productions have been released or we’ve gotten more information on casting and dates. There was concern in some quarters that there were no new musicals featuring original scores on the Broadway schedule. Only tuners with catalogues of legendary musicians such as Bob Dylan (Girl from the North Country), Tina Turner (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical), Alanis Morrisette (Jagged Little Pill), David Bryne (American Utopia), and everybody whoever wrote a hit song in the last 40 years (Moulin Rouge), were to be on the boards. But now we have four tuners eligible for the Original Score Tony.

The weirdest and most interesting sounding one is neither a jukebox musical nor an adaptation of a hit movie. Flying Over Sunset focuses on the unlikely trio of  movie icon Cary Grant, playwright-diplomat Clare Booth Luce (The Women), and author Aldous Huxley (Brave New World). What did they have in common? All three experimented with LSD. The show, set in the 1950s, chronicles their experiences during crossroads in their respective lives. James Lapine, librettist-director of such groundbreaking works as Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George and Falsettos, writes the book and stages with Tom Kitt (Next to Normal) composing the music and Michael Korie (War Paint, Grey Gardens) writing the lyrics. David Yazbeck (Prince of Broadway, On the Town) is Grant, Carmen Cusack (Bright Star) plays Luce, and Harry Hadden-Patton (My Fair Lady, Downton Abbey) is Huxley. Previews begin March 12, 2020 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre with an April 16 opening set. Sounds totally different from your typical Broadway fare.

2013-14 Broadway Season: Hawke to Star in Scottish play

Ethan Hawke studying for his next Broadway role

Lincoln Center Theater just announced its season for 2013-14. The hot news is Ethan Hawke will be playing Macbeth,bringing to four the number of Shakespearean productions this Broadway season (Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and Richard III being the others). And we just saw Hawke in Before Midnight, but I ain't going to The Purge. It looks scary. (We should have been tipped off he would essay the Thane because he hosted a segment of Shakespeare Uncovered on the play.) Other Macbeths I've seen: Alan Cumming, Patrick Stewart, Tom Gualtieri (in That Play: A Solo Macbeth), Liev Schrieber, Raul Julia, Alec Baldwin, Orson Welles, Jon Finch (Roman Polanski's film), Ian McKellen, Nicol Williamson, John Douglas Thompson, whoever played it in Sleep No More (there was more than one).

So much Shakespeare is exciting, but a really troubling Broadway trend is the lack of new plays. So far, only one has been announced--The Snow Geese from Manhattan Theatre Club. But it's still early. Here's a rundown of the 2013-14 season as of now:

July 14--Luis Bravo's Forever Tango (Walter Kerr)
July 24--Let It Be (St. James)
Aug. 4--First Date (Longacre)
Aug. 15--Soul Doctor (Circle In the Square)
Sept. 19--Romeo and Juliet (Richard Rodgers)
Sept. 26--The Glass Menagerie (Booth)
Oct. 5--Big Fish (Neil Simon)
Oct. 24--The Snow Geese (Samuel Friedman)
Nov. 3--Betrayal (Barrymore)
Nov. 10--Twelfth Night/Richard III (Belasco)
Nov. 17--The Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder (Walter Kerr)
Nov. 21--Macbeth (Vivian Beaumont)
Nov. 24--Waiting for Godot/No Man's Land (Cort)
TBA--The Winslow Boy (American Airlines)
Jan. 16--Machinal (American Airlines)
Mid-Feb.--The Bridges of Madison County (Gerald Shoenfeld)
March 23--Les Miserables (Imperial)
March 27--If/Then (Theatre TBA)
April 17--Act One (Vivian Beaumont)
Spring--The Real Thing (American Airlines)
Spring--Houdini (Theatre TBA)
Spring--Rocky (Winter Garden)
Spring--Bullets Over Broadway (St. James)

Theater News: Shakespeare, Sunshine, and Rear Window

Lots of theater news today:

Mark Rylance as Olivia in Twelfth Night (l.) and as Richard III

Two time Tony winner Mark Rylance (Boeing-Boeing, Jerusalem), Stephen Fry of Black Adder fame, and Drama Desk winner and Tony nominee Samuel Barnett (The History Boys) will be coming to Broadway in a repertory of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night and Richard III. Previews begin Oct. 15 with a Nov. 10 opening at the Belasco. These Globe Theater productions were hits in London and will be staged as in Shakespeare's time with all-male casts, lighting by candles, and Elizabethan musical instruments. Twelfth Night features Rylance as Olivia, Fry as her servant Malvolio, and Barnett as the gender-bending Viola. Rylance will play Richard and Barnett his sister-in-law Queen Elizabeth.

Edwin Drood Tony-Drama Desk nominees Stephanie J. Block and Will Chase will reunite for the musical version of Little Miss Sunshine at Second Stage with previews beginning the same day (Oct. 25) with the opening November date to be announced.

New York's most distinguished critic, Michael Feingold, just laid off from the Village Voice, will be writing a column for Theatermania. No word if he will freelance for the Voice. The publication has asked if he will continue to chair the Obie committee. But what will the Voice's commitment to theater coverage be beyond handing out grants and awards?

Playwright-actor Keith Reddin, currently understudying David Hyde Pierce in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, is working on a stage version of Rear Window, the Conrad Woolrich short story which inspired Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1954 thriller starring James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter, and Raymond Burr. Terry Kinney (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest revival) directs.  

Oh, and the Tonys are on Sunday. My predictions are on ArtsinNY.com

New 'Romeo and Juliet' for B'way; Tony Nom Announcers Announced

Orlando Bloom

Heartthrob Orlando Bloom and rising star Condola Rashad (soon to star in The Trip to Bountiful) will star in a new production of Romeo and Juliet to play the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Broadway, beginning previews Aug. 24 and opening Sept. 19. The press release states the cast will be multi-ethnic and also include Tony nominees Jayne Houdyshell (Well, Dead Accounts, Follies) as the Nurse and Joe Morton (Raisin) as Lord Capulet, Juliet's father. The last major R&J in NYC was the Royal Shakespeare Theatre's production as part of a six-play rotating repertory in the summer of 2011. At the performance I attended, Romeo suffered an injury and his understudy had to go halfway through the show. Elizabeth Olsen is slated to star as Juliet at CSC during the same season. Famous screen R&Js have included Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, Leslie Howard and Norma Shearer, and of course, Marcia Brady and that kid with glasses. (Fortunately, Marcia was canned for behaving like a diva and wound up playing Lady Capulet.)

In other breaking news, the Tony nominations will be read by Sutton Foster and Jesse Tyler Ferguson at the New York Public Library on April 30; and David Hyde Pierce will host the Drama League Awards on May 17.

News Bits: 'Zero' Wins at NYFCC; Redgrave and Jones to Star in 'Much Ado'; Tyson in 'Bountiful'

Zero Thirty Down won Best Picture and Best Director from the New York Film Critics Circle which cast their votes today. Several GoldDerby prognosticators accurately predicted that outcome, but were wrong in their forecast of Zero's Jessica Chastain taking Best Actress. The winner was Rachel Weisz for The Deep Blue Sea. Lincoln won for Best Actor (Daniel Day-Lewis), Supporting Actress (Sally Field), and Screenplay (Tony Kushner). Nobody expected Matthew Maconaughey to take Supporting Actor honors for the male-stripper film Magic Mike and Bernie, the dark comedy starring Jack Black and Shirley MacLaine which came and went so quickly earlier this year. (Critics group often include multiple films for individual recipients if they are released in the same year.) Zero and Lincoln are definite frontrunners for Oscar and Golden Globe consideration and it will be interesting to see how the explosive action picture fares against the talky history film. But then Les Miz might trump them both.

Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in Driving Miss Daisy
Credit: Annabel Clark

Vanessa Redgrave (75) and James Earl Jones (81) will be playing Beatrice and Benedick in a production of Much Ado About Nothing for the Old Vic Theatre Company in London, next season (Sept.19-Nov. 16, 2013). Sounds like absolutely fascinating casting and if anyone call pull off playing Shakespeare's witty lovers at their shall we say mature ages, these two certainly can. I saw them playing opposite each other in Driving Miss Daisy on Broadway last year and the connection was electric.

Cicely Tyson will mark her return to Broadway after a 30-year absence in a revival of Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful which opens at the Sondheim Theatre on April 23 for a limited run (previews begin March 31). Michael Wilson who staged Foote's mammoth three-part The Orphan's Home Cycle at the Signature Theatre Company directs  Geraldine Page won and Oscar and Lois Smith won a Drama Desk Award for their portrayals of the lead character, Carrie Watts, who leaves her Houston home to revisit the gulf town of her youth. Lillian Gish originated the role in 1953 when it was a TV play and then brought to the Broadway stage version the same year. In those days, original, serious, studio-shot dramas were a staple on the airwaves and they were often translated to Broadway and the movies (Marty, Twelve Angry Men, The Days of Wine and Roses are just a few examples.) In today's vast universe of TV channels, not one rebroadcasts these great works or commissions new plays for the small screen.