Author Archives: Christopher Arnott

Yesterday at Never Ending Books, the largest Play in a Day gang yet assembled staged an epic 12-minute adaptation of Ben Jonson’s 1614 social satire Bartholomew Fair. One of Jonson’s greatest comedies, the play is renowned for its lack of a coherent plot, something we certainly honored here. We made sure to keep the fourth-wallbreaking … Continue reading »

The Archers, the British radio soap opera I’ve been stuck on for over ten years—and which has been around for 60—goes all play-within-a-play every year or so, with subplots about the rural village of Ambridge’s hallowed holiday pageant. This entertainment has taken many forms. This year it’s a dinner-theater revue of “Christmas Around the World.” … Continue reading »

On Jan. 11, one night before its spring semester line-up begins in earnest, the Yale Cabaret is presenting a special one-night engagement of Yale College alum Holcombe Waller, the introspective yet theatrically inclined singer/songwriter/producer who originally hails from California and now lives and works in Oregon. Earlier this month, Waller debuted Surfacing, which he described … Continue reading »

Doing another idiosyncratic “Play in A Day” project with whichever kids show up, Thursday Dec. 29 from 2-5 p.m. at Never Ending Books, 810 State St., New Haven. We adapt, design and rehearse a classic theater piece in just three hours, then perform the results when the parents arrive to bring their children home. All … Continue reading »

My favorite internet radio station, BBC Radio 4, is broadcasting its 1986 radio adaptation of Alan Ayckbourn’s 1980 dysfunctional family comedy Season’s Greetings. Peter Vaughan and Nicky Henson star in the 90-minute production, directed by Micahel A. Simpson. available via a “Listen Now” function through Sunday, here. The ten-character play, a sort of kindly British … Continue reading »

I dig out a version of this immortal sketch from Peter Cook & Dudley Moore’s Good Evening (aka Behind the Fridge) to watch or listen to every year at this time. You can find a tidy short rendition of “Gospel Truth” on the show’s soundtrack album or on the episode of Saturday Night Live which … Continue reading »

From the current, Christmas-spirited issue of World of Archie Double Digest (#12, Jan. 2012). You know how this is going to end—the Riverdale students’ outlandish solutions to real-life education crises give Betty fodder for her Drama Club sketch, and inspire mirth, mockery, meditation and ultimately admiration from the school administrators. Appropriately, my copy has gotten … Continue reading »

It’s Christmas, and for some that means endless talk about American Girls dolls. The American Girls brand of dolls, novels, videos, clothing, self-esteem manuals and other accessories for the well-heeled, history-literate female child has always been theater-friendly. Some of the American Girls stores have even had their own auditoriums and live musical revues. All the … Continue reading »

Exit the Actress By Priya Parmar (Touchstone, 2011) Packaged to look confusingly like a Philippa Gregory or Lauren Willig novel, Exit the Actress has a tone and structures which distinguish it from a lot of mainstream historical romances. Its cast of characters, listed in the front of the book as if you reading a theater … Continue reading »

There are other ways to be an angel than saving bedraggled building-and-loan guys from suicide. Long Wharf Theatre is asking audience members, and anybody who happens to stop by the theater, to donate non-perishable foodstuffs which will be distributed to the needy by Connecticut Food Bank. A press release explains: “People interested in donating can … Continue reading »