What is the Last Show You Attended -- The Stage Version

Discussion in 'Movies, TV and Music' started by Val1, May 26, 2012.

  1. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    My wife and I decided to take a break from watching Star Trek Voyager this past weekend, so we lined up three musicals. On friday night, the Richard Harris Camelot. Our TV, on which we watched the 1998 World Cup and which has been getting dodgy of late, went completely black at about the 45 minute mark (at about the point my wife and I were both doing our usscouse impressions and nodding off). In the past when the TV did this, I pressed the upper right side and hit the top right side of the TV with the flat of my hand. This usually worked, but not this time.

    Normally, having to buy a new TV would bother me, but we didn't mind missing the rest of this movie. We wound up putting an old milk crate on the coffee table and watching a couple Voyager episodes on the lap top.

    Saturday afternoon, not really wanting to go to Best Buy, I put our next DVD in, a blu-ray of My Fair Lady. The picture was there. We watched that on Saturday night and Sondheim's Sunday in the Park With George last night with nary a problem. We're fairly certain our TV wasn't actually failing, it was just nodding off because of Richard Harris' performance.
     
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  2. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    :D :D
    Love it but you scared me for a moment with ...."I pressed the upper right side and hit the top right side with the flat of my hand." I thought you were talking about the wife!

    I saw Camelot on some "big" movie house in LA back in the 70's and don't even remember the drive (being driven) home. In fairness to that ham Harris, I'd been working a 7 day, 12 hour shift for about 4 months, that may have contributed.
     
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  3. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    :D
    Duly edited!

    I doubt it. I've been off for a week, getting plenty of sleep and exercise, and was relaxed enough that I wasn't thinking "********! Now we have to spend a few hundred $$$ on a new TV!!!!!Dammit!!!!"... and I had the same response.
     
  4. usscouse

    usscouse BigSoccer Supporter

    May 3, 2002
    Orygun coast
    :D

    And in keeping with this thread. The last live show I went to, was to see Gordon Lightfoot, going in I wondered why everyone entering were old farts, then I saw my reflection.
    Even Gordon looked old and wirey..:D
     
  5. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    if then.jpg

    If/Then -- National Theater, Washington DC

    Interesting play about the choices one woman makes, whether it is between 3 loves or two high powered jobs. Only the choices are all told simultaneously. I normally like stories that tell multiple stories at the same time, often from different viewpoints, so I like the Usual Suspects or any of half a dozen Steven King novels, but here, wow, this was pretty confusing. And I think somewhat cynically done in that the producers don't want the audience to be able to figure out whether we're seeing Elizabeth, Beth or Liz (all the same person, just different names to reflect the choices she's making). I've never seen a show before it gets established, and this is the pre-Broadway run, so it might be of interest to see how it's tweaked before it premiers, but I'd have to see it again just to figure out what I saw.

    The other problem is that the show features Idina Menzel, of Wicked fame, and there's no doubt she's got a set of pipes on her, but every song she sang was belted out full volume diva-style. A little subtlety would have gone a long way...
     
  6. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    #56 Val1, Dec 7, 2013
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2013
    My son is going to the fieldtrippingest school I've ever seen. So, I got to accompany him this weekend to see:

    download.jpg

    A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum -- Sidney Harman Hall, Washington DC


    I've never seen this play on the big stage before and it was a revelation. Hilarious. Psuedolus is an alltime great comedic role and this Phyllia was easily his equal. The wife is sick, my daughter has a full day of work tomorrow and my son is exhausted by a full day with classmates (on a Saturday no less), so all and sundry are heading off to bed early and I'll be re-savoring Forum with the movie tonight....

     
  7. riverplate

    riverplate Member+

    Jan 1, 2003
    Corona, Queens
    Club:
    CA River Plate
    The movie is awful. They only retained about four of Sondheim's songs.
     
  8. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Yeah, only the good ones.

    Now, if you want to debate whether it is a musical or not, that's fair enough, but the lame songs that Philia and Hysterium get in the stage version are thankfully excised here.
     
  9. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Last Sunday: Twelfth Night by W. Shakspar as the opening of the 3rd annual Scranton Shakespeare Festival.

    Last night, Fairy Cakes, a world premiere by Tony-nominated writer Douglas Carter Beane. I was dreading the rhyming couplets, and a few scenes/gags didn't quite work, but this thing might have legs enough to get to New York.

    http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/fairycakes-debuts-at-scranton-shakespeare-festival-1.1725252


    In this new tale, the fairies Peaseblossom, Mustardseed, Moth and Cobweb have gone on to interact with such characters as Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Pinocchio. When they learn their parents, Titania and Oberon, might split up, they try to save the relationship with the assistance of Puck. Their plans go awry and have repercussions for everyone, however. In trying to set things right, they learn about love and opening themselves to change.

    Told mostly in rhyme, the story mixes witty wordplay with physical comedy, which cracked up the audience and earned the cast a standing ovation at the end. The show also features the work of several other Broadway veterans, with music by Lewis Flinn, choreography by Tony nominee Josh Rhodes and costumes by Tony-nominated designer Gregory Gale, whose elaborate pieces blend whimsy with elegance.

    Mr. Beane, who was born in Wilkes-Barre and lives at Lake Carey in the summer, called his story of contemporary fairy tales “kind of like a little present” and thought it would just be a fun thing to try.​

     
  10. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    #60 Val1, Feb 22, 2015
    Last edited: Feb 22, 2015
    images.jpg

    Dunsinane -- David Greig
    Sidney Harman Hall -- National Shakespeare Company

    Macbeth is dead. His lady is dead. And MacDuff has come back to Scotland bringing the English to help settle the succession. Except that Lady Macbeth is still alive and she's the Queen of Scotland....

    Dunsinane is the fairly ballyhooed sequel to the Scottish Play, much in the way that Wicked reprises Wizard of Oz or Clybourne Park imagines the second act for A Raisin in the Sun. I'd been looking forward to seeing something I'd never seen before in what is becoming my favorite theater venue in DC (now that I've figured out the sucky parking garage...)

    Meh. The people who wrote the playbill "articles" were all very much in love with the play, and it is supposed, in it's deeper meaning, to be an allegory for our post war occupation in Afghanistan. In Scotland, following the death of Macbeth, there are a dozen warring clans and a queen of questionable legitimacy. But beyond a couple of lines of dialogue, there is no political intrigue. The woman playing Lady Macbeth (now going by Gruach) was a complete blank. She didn't act at all. Oh, she recited lots of lines, but I got the feeling that Mrs Wankler going in and reading from a script would have the same emotional impact. The final act takes place in the snowy winter, and the very highlight of the play was the snowstorm. I am betting that a literal 1/4" of "snow" was dumped during the last scene. Very impressive.

    It doesn't say much about the play when I'll remember the snow the most....
     
  11. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    William Shakespeare is most commonly associated with the Globe Theater in London. His production company, the Kings Men, owned shares in the Globe, so there is a reason for this association. What seems to be much less known is that Shakespeare personally owned a share of the Blackfriars Theater in Old London. Blackfriars was a highly desirable theater because being in Old London, it was exempt from the zoning that pushed the theater district south of the Thames. Anyway, there are over a dozen replica Globe theaters around the world, but exactly one Blackfriars replica, and that is in the rather unassuming town of Staunton, Virginia.

    So, anyway...

    images.jpg

    Hamlet -- William Shakespeare

    This was a very fun experience overall as this theater company is not as interested in preserving the notion of Shakespeare as The Bard of England, and more showing what a play was like when he was just a successful playwright. For instance, they keep the lights on during the performance, they sell concessions before the performance and during intermission right on the stage, they have a dozen seats on the stage, and even in a play as dramatically laden as Hamlet, the company generated laughs by playing with the audience, and they brought one woman on stage to pick which version of Hamlet they were going to do: the First Folio version, or the more authentic 2nd Quarto version.

    This performance was just fun, Hamlet was portrayed more as a snarky, sarcastic child of privilege as opposed to the mopey, whiney adolescent that he usually is. This was a lot more fun, and for the first time in a long time, I can see Hamlet accepting a duel with Laertes.

    I will go back soon, maybe this fall. We had extremely uncomfortable seats -- I stood for most of the first two acts -- but now we know which seats to avoid. A lot of fun...
     
  12. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Well, a week after seeing Hamlet at the Blackfriars, I got to see Tom Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead at a Globe replica, the Folger Theater in DC.

    RGEventSlider.jpg

    Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead, that was part of the denouement in Hamlet, but as this play opens, they don't know it yet. They figure out something is wrong when they flip a coin 85 times and it comes out heads every time. As they struggle to identify where they are, they share their collective memories and relieve their action in Hamlet, but most interestingly, they meet the tragedians who perform the Death of Gonzago in Hamlet. And this was the highlight, the lead tragedian, known only as The Player, is one helluva great role. Shakespeare would have been proud of Stoppard's thespian, and that seems to me the highest compliment I can give this work.
     
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  13. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    [​IMG]

    Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare as part of the Scranton Shakespeare festival. The cast was uneven: it reminded me of the early years of MLS when most teams would have a guy or two who could hold their own in a Premiership match without being exposed right away, along with a guy or two who'd struggle in the Conference. A tough night for Juliet as her Romeo had a tendency to swallow his lines and the guy playing her father stumbled a few times (though NOT in the scene after Juliet had drunk the potion: He killed that). The cast was a mix of young professionals from New York and local actors, and the locals held their own.
     
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  14. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    As part of the SSF, Robin Hood, the world premier of a new musical by Tony-nominee Douglas Carter Beane, who was in attendance (apparently his Shows For Days at Lincoln Center NYC can fend for itself, what with Patti Lupone opening up some whoop ass on cellphone junkies).

    It has a few rough edges, and Marion was in a bit of vocal distress, but it was an incredibly fun show. Not sure if it will make it on to Broadway (too old timey, not the least bit cynical in its humor), but it can easily have a run at major regional houses before it becomes a staple of school and community theater. A three piece acoustic band on stage (drum, guitar, upright piano) got the job done, though I can easily imagine this with a pretty decent score: more Lerner and Loewe Camelot than R & H or Sondheim, but it was still pretty enjoyable. And free (though my wife and I each gave a $20 to one of the actors with a collection box after the show: It would've been a bargain at 3 or 4 times the price.
     
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  15. riverplate

    riverplate Member+

    Jan 1, 2003
    Corona, Queens
    Club:
    CA River Plate
    I wasn't aware of this show, but I'm reading now that it could possibly end up in London. Nick Frankfort produced Beane's comedy The Little Dog Laughed over there and is interested. He'stalking with some companies about it.
     
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  16. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    It's brand new and still evolving. One of the actors was in line behind me at the coffee shop (She was Lady Anne last night, and Juliet in R&J) said they made slight changes in each show (very slight yesterday, since they had a 2:00 p.m. matinee that ended at 4:30 with a 7:00 start for the one we saw). She thanked me for telling her how much we liked it and was really grateful that my wife and I were sympathetic to her schedule (the last day of the festival she has a 2:00 p.m. matinee of Robin Hood and a 6:00 p.m. Romeo and Juliet in a park setting, {weather permitting} with mics if they're outside, without if they're in a theater). We'll try to see it again to see how they solved a couple of problems (a packet of slippery elm would've helped Marion: other problems will require revising a couple of numbers). Anyway, one of the things different from the first performance: all the actors spoke with a specific British accent, usually one of the Northern dialects, plus Scots. They did them pretty well (though occasionally an actor would lose it briefly coming out of a song, which won't be a problem in London, I'd guess).

    Last year Beane debuted a play called Fairy Cakes, which I probably covered upthread: I'm curious to see if anything is going on with that, but my google mojo isn't working.
     
  17. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    A Double-header yesterday: at 2:00 p.m on the campus of DeSales University, south of Allentown, as part of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival: Pericles by The Bard himself. Most interesting... From the website:


    One of Shakespeare's later plays, written in 1608, and popular in its day, Pericles is PSF's fourth production in five years rehearsed the way Shakespeare's company likely would have, with the actors taking control. The company of 18 actors arrives with their lines learned and open before an audience in a matter of days. There is no director—the position did not exist in Shakespeare's time. And no designers, also a more recent invention. (PSF typically rehearses plays for 3.5 to 6 weeks.)

    Actors costume themselves after a costume shop "raid," and commandeer props and elements from other Festival productions to fulfill a production that is uniquely of their invention. (The production takes place on the set of Around the World in 80 Days, which ran June 17 – July 12 in the Festival's intimate Schubert Theatre.)

    "The goal is to bring the audience a bit closer to the 'crackling now' energy of an Elizabethan theatre and to showcase the extraordinary creative capacity of the actor," says Producing Artistic Director Patrick Mulcahy. "We call it 'extreme Shakespeare.' Actors in Shakespeare's time were believed to perform on short notice and present dozens of plays in the span of a few weeks."​


    It worked really well. It helps that all the actors know Shakespeare and can handle the verse with ease. And at night, back home after a sandwich,

    The Tavern, by George M. Cohan, featuring a lot of local actors with day jobs. The director (according to our barista this morning, who played the governor's daughter) told the actors to go over the top with hamming it up, which was overdone to the point of distraction, but there were still some good performance by 1) a local bartender and 2) the aforementioned barista and 3) a guy who works in a sixpack shop and who was in an Intro to Lit class I taught at the local JuCo.
     
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  18. ElasticNorseman

    ElasticNorseman Member+

    Apr 16, 2004
    Natick, MA
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    Norway
    Last weekend, my wife and I took an impromptu getaway to the White Mountains in NH and took in (between the hiking and drinking):

    [​IMG]

    This was a small theater so the whole audience was close to the action. Sancho/Panza was the highlight. We had seen this in NYC in 2002 or 2003 with Brian Stokes Mitchell, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, and Ernie Sabella, and the current show of course couldn't compete as a total experience but made for a fun evening.

    http://jeans-playhouse.com/shows/2015-season/man-of-la-mancha-2015/
     
  19. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein, in Cooperstown NY. Five members of the opera companies young artist program did one hell of a job with this short (45 minutes at most) piece, just terrific from beginning to end. The two principles playing the married couple Dinah and Sam were good enough to make your hair stand up on the back of your neck. And the three kids in the "Trio" got the job done, too.
     
  20. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Candide, by Leonard Bernstein, 1999 John Caird re-write version. At Glimmerglass outside Cooperstown. Really solid. Probably not the greatest work in Bernstein's career, but a pretty interesting evening of music and theater. So I thought. The couple sitting next to my wife did NOT dig it. Which is fine. I didn't have to listen to any more harrumphing after intermission.
     
  21. ElasticNorseman

    ElasticNorseman Member+

    Apr 16, 2004
    Natick, MA
    Club:
    New England Revolution
    Nat'l Team:
    Norway
    We just came back from a short trip to NY. While there we took in:

    [​IMG]
     
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  22. riverplate

    riverplate Member+

    Jan 1, 2003
    Corona, Queens
    Club:
    CA River Plate
    #72 riverplate, Aug 15, 2015
    Last edited: Aug 15, 2015
    Jose Llana, who replaced Ken Wantanabe in July as the King, is said to be quite strong in the role. And, of course, you can understand every word he says -- something that had been a major issue as Wantanabe struggled a great deal with the language. Previously, Llana was in the 1996 revival of The King and I playing Lun Tha, one of the doomed lovers. I saw him in that, as well as the 2002 revival of Flower Drum Song. He also recently starred as Ferdinand Marcos in the off-Broadway musical Here Lies Love.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    As Ferdinand Marcos in Here Lies Love...

    [​IMG]
     
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  23. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    My neice was in NY last month for a youth orchestra thing. They took the kids to see this (6th and 7th graders) It was her first (professional) show, and she dug it quite a lot.
     
  24. Val1

    Val1 Member+

    Arsenal
    Mar 12, 2004
    MD's Eastern Shore
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    critichound.png

    The Critic and The Real Inspector Hound
    Lansburgh Theatre, Washington DC

    Two short, two-act plays using the same cast in both productions. The Critic was written in the late 18th Century by Richard Sheridan, who is more famous (well, to me anyway) for creating The Rivals' Mrs Malaprop. The Real Inspector Hound was written by Tom Stoppard, so now I have seen a pair of his plays in the past year.

    Both plays deal with the bane of the playwright: the critic. The Critic is a delightful farce wherein two much-aggrieved critics meet a third, more successful, critic who is wading into his inaugural effort as a playwright. They want to "help" him with his production by pointing out how the grandest critic of the time would feel about the play. The two attend the rehearsal and by playing on this critic's fear, they turn his play into a farce. Only unbeknownst to all, the Grand Critic is secretly watching and he thinks the play is hilarious.

    In Stoppard's work, a pair of second-rate critics attend a Mousetrap-type mystery play, wondering where the "first rate" critic is. Stoppard gets a little too cute by half, and in the second act, the critics are drawn into the play, wherein the secret identity of the killer is revealed to be the afforementioned first-rate critic.

    A fun day overall, though having seen both plays, originally written almost 200 years apart, I'm struck just how thin-skinned some playwrights are. It's a lot of whinging when taken together.

    And memo to me: stop attending Saturday matinees. Much more likely to get understudies then...
     
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  25. riverplate

    riverplate Member+

    Jan 1, 2003
    Corona, Queens
    Club:
    CA River Plate
    Geez... do these guys think they just have to show up?

    [​IMG]

    Forest Whitaker Is Taking His Lines From A Water Cooler - N.Y. Post
    http://nypost.com/2016/02/18/forest...st-broadway-star-who-cant-remember-his-lines/
     

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