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There’s a special thrill in chatting with actors who continually challenge themselves. A lot of well-known stars have theater pieces they can easily bring on tour when their schedules open up. Leslie Nielsen and Henry Fonda were Clarence Darrow. Ethel Barrymore gave The Twelve Pound Look. Brian Dennehy, by contrast, does Krapp—the wizened recluse pawing … Continue reading »

This story, Top Hat! Return to the golden age of the musical: Forget the recession – moonlight and music and love and romance are back, in the Sunday, Nov. 27 edition of the England’s The Independent newspaper—had my hat popping off my head in cartoon-like exasperation. It’s not just the article’s forced “trend” premise—why, in … Continue reading »

Friday’s edition of the Non Sequitur comic strip. (I get it by subscription via the indispensible gocomics.com). This is Wiley Miller‘s take on an old joke. The concept was also grist for a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch in November, 1996. (Transcription here.) The premise of the mockery is that musical theater is an idealized, … Continue reading »

Thanksgiving-themed theater is simply not a bustling subject. Some likely excuses: a lot of theaters are dark over thanksgiving. Christmas plays tend to start touring around thanksgiving. Colleges aren’t in session, so no Thanksgiving plays there either. Well, I tried…   August: Osage County, Tracy Letts. Not specifically set at Thanksgiving, but a model modern … Continue reading »

Was I inspired to rush out and see the Muppets movie on the day of its release? No, despite my admiration for the troupe’s achievement at keeping an old-fashioned playhouse alive for so many decades. I was inspired, strangely, to download four dozen episodes of an earlier comedy puppet extravanganza, The Edgar Bergen and Charlie … Continue reading »

As the father of a couple of present-day elementary schoolers, I can attest that the holiday-themed school play—an entertainment staple of my own 1960s childhood, and popular comic fodder for Peanuts well into the 1980s—has gone the way of vaudeville and temperance lectures. There just isn’t an audience for the genre anymore. When both parents … Continue reading »

Well, that was easy. The new Managing Director of the Long Wharf Theatre is the guy who’s been doing the job for the last six months. When Josh Borenstein assumed the title of Interim Managing Director at the theater this spring—in the wake of Ray Cullom’s sudden departure and just as the 2010-2011 season was … Continue reading »

I’m pleased to note that the New Haven Advocate—the Connecticut alt-weekly for which I worked full-time from 1991-2008, and for which I wrote a weekly theater column for nearly 20 years—has reactivated the “Archives” section of its website. The archives had been disabled for months, and I wasn’t sure they were ever coming back. Literally … Continue reading »

  A couple of years ago, Wesleyan University, ever-aware of the difficulties inherent in supporting and promoting progressive artforms, started its Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance. This professional-certificate program is described in a press release as an “intensive, nine-month, low-residency academic program designed to encourage emerging curators to enrich their understanding of intellectually rigorous, … Continue reading »

My daughter Mabel (age 9) couldn’t sleep last night, so she created a booklet illustrating her favorite numbers from the Long Wharf Theatre production of Ain’t Misbehavin’, which closed yesterday. See if you can match the song title to the drawing: • “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” • “Honeysuckle Rose” • “Your Feet’s … Continue reading »