Michael Dale - Page 31

It's been said that Irving Berlin was no fan of big musical spectacles, which is why he stopped writing songs for the ZIEGFELD FOLLIES and had the intimate Music Box Theatre built so that his work could be framed by smart revues that emphasized music and lyrics over glitz and showgirls.

It was thirty years ago when British director Peter Brook and BAM Executive Producer Harvey Lichtenstein first peeked inside what was left of the Majestic Theatre on Brooklyn's Fulton Street and deemed the crumbled remains of the elegantly ornate 1904 structure as the perfect venue for their landmark production based on the ancient Sanskrit epic poem, 'The Mahabharata.'

Given the basket of deplorables that have populated the oeuvre of playwright Neil LaBute, it should be of little surprise that the storyteller of his new solo play, All The Ways to Say I Love You, is a rapist, liar and adulterer who spends the hour-long performance playing the victim card.

The underappreciated art of sound design takes center stage in Simon McBurney's THE ENCOUNTER, a dramatization of Petru Popescu's book "Amazon Beaming" that comes off more as a demonstration of technological capabilities than engaging storytelling.

It takes a certain amount of moxie for a solo performer to begin his Off-Broadway show by looking into the audience and stating 'I am weird.'

Just as modern New York City evolved from a combination of immigrant societies that eventually mingled into one great metropolis, the major art form created by the city, the American musical play, evolved from a combination of stage entertainments these immigrant societies brought with them.

As part of The Public's dedication to community outreach, the Mobile Unit was created to bring high-quality productions of Shakespeare plays to people in prisons, shelters and community centers throughout the New York area.

With his quartet of dramas concerning the Apple family of Rhinebeck, New York now being followed by his trilogy-in-progress concerning their fellow Rhinebeckers, the Gabriels, you might say that Richard Nelson has written more Chekhovian plays than Anton Chekhov.

Long before the British invaded, Elvis swiveled his hips and Bill Haley rocked around the clock, the iconic vision of a rhythm and blues vocalist playing electric guitar was popularized in the 1940s by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a gospel singer who crossed over into nightclubs with a hard-belting style that fused the secular with the sacred.

From Thanksgiving turkey to roasted corn on the 4th of July to a slice of birthday cake, we grow up associating food with familial bonding and the gathering of loved ones. When we seek a romantic partner, eating together becomes an important part of the mating ritual and when tragedy strikes, we offer food as comfort.

The recent renaissance of appreciation for the musicals of composer Jerry Bock and lyricist Sheldon Harnick, which has included Broadway revivals of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and SHE LOVES ME, along with an Off-Broadway reworking of THE ROTHSCHILDS retitled ROTHSCHILD & SONS, continues with a transfer of director Bob Moss' Berkshire Theatre Group production of the team's Pulitzer Prize winner, FIORELLO!

'I am not gonna let Broadway rot,' raps a rising musical theatre artist who describes himself as being 'just like a savior / With Mobb Deep misbehavior,' in Gerard Alessandrini's positively brilliant spoof of Lin-Manuel Miranda's Tony and Pulitzer winner, repackaged as SPAMILTON.

For the past three years some of New York's most joyous theatrical celebrations have graced the city as the first September chill starts to pervade Central Park's Delecorte, when the Public Theater's Public Works program assembles a cast of over 200 strong to saturate a classic text with the flavor of the five boroughs.

Though his name is scarcely remembered on American shores, N.C. Hunter was one of the more popular English playwrights during the 1950s. His genteel dramas would feature such distinguished cast members as John Gielgud, Sybil Thorndike, Ingrid Bergman, Ralph Richardson, Vanessa Redgrave and Michael Redgrave, but his work fell out of favor with the rise of Britain's 'angry young men' playwrights.

Being a mere triple-threat isn't enough for the talented kids of Broadway's SCHOOL OF ROCK. Playing the emotionally repressed students of the prestigious Horace Green School who learn how to musically let out their inner rebels, they not only sing, dance and act, but play their own musical instruments.

The Drama Book Shop will welcome playwright and critic Terry Teachout (Wall Street Journal) and actor John Douglas Thompson for a discussion and signing of SATCHMO AT THE WALDORF on Wednesday, October 12th at 5:00pm. The discussion is free to the public and copies of the play will be available for purchase.

It's both the talk of the town and one of the best kept secrets in New York. Nassim Soleimanpour's internationally-acclaimed play White Rabbit Red Rabbit is a unique theatrical experience at every performance, because at every performance a different actor is handed the script for the first time as they step onto the stage.

The second coming of David Javerbaum's hit comedy, AN ACT OF GOD, which first came to Broadway in May of 2015 with Jim Parsons in the title role, will be ending its blessed 14-week limited engagement at the Booth Theatre (222 West 45th Street) on Sunday, September 4th, and its Tony nominated and Emmy winning star Sean Hayes is counting down the remaining performances.

Hosted by current WICKED on Broadway cast members Dawn E. Cantwell, who plays Nessarose, and Zachary Noah Piser, who plays Boq, the six-part podcast series, "Inside WICKED: Origin Stories" puts a spotlight on members of the WICKED family to find out how they got to where they are.

Two-time Olivier Award winning playwright Simon Stephens was warmly welcomed to Broadway nearly two years ago when his THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME opened to great acclaim and eventually took the Tony for Best Play.