3-28-08
Our Town on the Old Town Tonight
On April 27 at 7 p.m. The Hypocrites open Our Town at the Chopin Theatre as Strawdog opens the world premiere of Old Town, a new musical by Brett Neveu and Mikhail Fiksel. Reviewers and Jeff Committee members will need clear heads that evening.
The biggest name on Broadway this spring isn’t Shubert or Nederlander or Disney, it’s Chicago’s own Jam Theatricals, which virtually has reinvented non-musical drama on Broadway. Since late November, Jam has opened the Steppenwolf production of August: Osage County; Sir Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘N’ Roll, Conor McPherson’s The Seafarer (with McPherson directing), a revival of Nobel Laureate Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, and the world premiere of David Mamet’s savage political satire, November. Still to come is a revival of Clifford Odets’ The Country Girl starring Morgan Freeman, Peter Gallagher and Frances McDermott. The Letts, Mamet, Stoppard and McPherson shows are eligible for “best play” Tony Awards both for script and production, so it’s possible Jam will completely dominate those categories. Wouldn’t that be astonishing? Hats off to Jam Theatricals co-founder and president Steve Traxler.
August: Osage County played its 100th Broadway performance Feb. 20 and continues selling well for a drama, playing to 58 percent of capacity (week ending 3/16) at one of Broadway’s largest houses, the 1,400-seat Imperial Theatre. By comparison, Mamet’s November played to 84 percent of capacity in a 1058-seat house, with Nathan Lane as the drawing power. August: Osage County closes at the Imperial on April 20 and moves to the smaller Music Box Theatre right next door, starting April 29. Reports say that Deanna Dunagan’s stand-by now is doing matinees, and that some cast members are antsy as they approach the end of their six-month contracts. Tony Award nominations will be announced May 13 for the June 8 ceremonies. We can’t imagine anyone leaving the company prior to the nominations, especially since everyone gets a pay raise if they re-up.
The Joseph Jefferson Awards Committee has opened the door to establishing Fight Choreography as a new category. Currently, fight Jeffs are bestowed under the “Other” Award category, a catch-all that covers such crafts as puppetry, projections, prosthetics, etc. However, the Jeff Committee recently approved new language as follows: “If there are sufficient nominees in the ‘Other’ Award category in any one season concerning fight choreography, the Committee is empowered, in their discretion, to make a separate ‘Fight Choreography’ Award category for that season.” It’s not quite sainthood but at least it’s beatification.
Director/choreographer Marc Robin and partner Curt Dale Clark have just seen their full-scale musical version of Treasure Island produced with an all-male cast of 19 at the Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, PA, March 6-22. Locals may recall that Treasure Island began 10 years ago as a 50-minute children’s show at the Drury Lane Martinique. Over the decade, as Robin and Clark expanded and rewrote the show, versions were workshopped at the Eastlight Theatre in Peoria (with cast of 42) and at the Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire (cast of 24). For the official world premiere, Robin and Clark and Fulton artistic director Michael Mitchell imported Dale Benson to play Squire Trelawney and former Chicagoan John Herrera—long a New York cabaret and Broadway fixture—to star as Long John Silver. Clark and Robin continue to work in Chicago with some frequency, although they moved to Lancaster several years ago.
A rare TV interview with playwright Edward Albee will air on WTTW-Ch. 11 Friday, April 4, 10:30 p.m. It’s part of the series “In the Life,” the pioneering program dealing with people and issues shaping gay experience in the United States and elsewhere. WTTW has wavered in its commitment to “In the Life” but now has given the show a fixed time slot: 10:30 p.m. the first Friday of each month.
Chicago composer Paul Libman and lyricist/librettist David Hudson are in New York for a workshop of their Richard Rodgers Award-winning musical, Main-Travelled Roads, presented March 21-29 at The Barrow Group in association with the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Based on the short stories of Midwestern author Hamlin Garland, Main-Travelled Roads was the 2007 recipient of the prestigious Rodgers Prize, bestowed by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Libman and Hudson also won the Rodgers Award in 2005 for a show based on the poems of Carl Sandburg. Libman, whose Chicago career as a commercial composer stretches back 35 years, may move to the Big Apple come autumn.
Two playwrights with Chicago connections were finalists for the annual playwriting awards made by the American Theatre Critics Association (ATCA), supported by generous funding from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust. The Steinberg/ATCA New Play Awards recognize works that premiered outside New York City, with $25,000 (the largest national playwriting award) to the top winner and $7,500 to each of two runners-up. Among the six finalists this year were Rebecca Gilman for The Crowd You’re in With, presented at the Magic Theatre (San Francisco) and Sarah Ruhl for Dead Man’s Cell Phone, premiered at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company (Washington, D.C.) and currently at Steppenwolf Upstairs. Gilman and Ruhl’s plays were named along with works by Deborah Zoe Laufer, Robert Brustein, Naomi Iizuki and Moises Kaufman. Too late for our press deadline, the winners will be announced March 29 in a ceremony at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at Actors Theatre in Louisville.
This year’s Humana Festival features Chicago playwright Marisa Wegrzyn as one of the collective of authors contributing to the dramatic anthology, Game On, focusing on sports as an American metaphor. Wegrzyn, a Chicago Dramatists resident writer, is the only Chicago author produced at the 2008 Humana.
Bailiwick Repertory’s Barenaked Lads took off their clothes for the last time on March 8, ending a three-year run and several different editions of the boy-lesque revue. The Barenaked Lads also made a successful visit to Dublin, Ireland’s fourth International Gay Theater Festival and enjoyed a summer run at the Post Office Cabaret in Provincetown.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater has announced Christopher Marlowe’s Edward II as one of its 2008-2009 shows, directed by Sean Graney—just as British scientists have identified the skeletal remains of Sir Hugh Despenser the Younger, a royal favorite and reputed lover of Edward II’s, who features as an important character in Marlowe’s play. In 1326, as Edward was overthrown, Despenser was hung and while still conscious disembowled, castrated, drawn and quartered in the type of gruesome execution but joyous public event reserved for the most-loathed and important prisoners. The remains not only conform to what is known of Despenser’s death wounds and burial but also were found on grounds known to have been part of his brother-in-law’s estate.