European Theater
A Man’s a Starman
David Bowie—Starman By Paul Trynka (Little, Brown/Hachette, 2011) This is the first Bowie bio I’ve found that gives serious attention to the erstwhile David Jones’ stage- and film-acting projects alongside his musical ones. The book devotes over six pages just to the BBC’s 1981 TV adaptation of Brecht’s Baal, in which Bowie starred. It’s revealed … Continue reading
Earnest Worthing
The comics sections are abuzz with Sept. 11 acknowledgements. Nice of Mary Worth to bring Oscar Wilde into hers. The quote is from Wilde’s Salome. The strip, we eagerly subscribe to via Daily Ink.
Please, No More Fabulous Flops
I know I mention BBC 4 Extra frequently, but name another 24-hour contemporary drama and comedy radio network with such variety. The 2006 series More Fabulous Flops is hosted by Paul Roseby and first aired in 2006. The fourth and last episode of the series is available online through Friday. While there’s some research and … Continue reading
Fringeing from Afar
I’ve never been to Edinburgh. Been to big arts festivals in Europe, but never been to THE big arts festival. Don’t really enjoy being overwhelmed, but of course wish I could be there, and can’t resist slavishly reading the news coverage and reviews. In a future post I hope to list some of the more … Continue reading
The Never Ending Orchard
OK, here, for what it’s worth (and I fully acknowledge the ridiculous elements of the concept) is the kid version of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard I devised (in a single three-hour session) with a bunch of kids at the Never Ending Bookstore in February. What’s missing from this excerpt is an opening burst of pageantry … Continue reading
The Acorn Doesn’t Fall Far from the TV
Acorn Media has started its own sort of selective Netflix, a Britflix if you will. It’s actually called AcornTV. Acorn is well known to theater geeks as the distributor of such stage-centric DVDs as Discovering Hamlet (reviewed here), the three-DVD television rendition of Alan Ayckbourn’s The Norman Conquests (which I’ve been meaning to review here … Continue reading
Faustus and Loose
Since Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is the greatest play ever written in the history of the world (those who disagree can go to the devil), it’s remarkable how rarely it’s done by major theaters. Now there’s a Globe Theatre production directed by Matthew Dunster, starring Paul Hilton in the title role and Arthur Darvill as … Continue reading
Farren at Her Height: Painted by Thomas Lawrence at the Yale Center for British Art
Today is national Museum Day. For theater fans, allow me to strongly recommend a stroll around the Thomas Lawrence exhibit on the second floor of the Yale Center for British Art. The show is extravagantly labeled Regency Power and Brilliance, but the hype is warranted because Lawrence was the coolest celebrity portrait artist of his … Continue reading
Outer Spacey
Kevin Spacey, the film actor turned Bobby Darin impersonator turned artistic director of the Old Vic Theatre Company in London, had a problem with the title of the new album by the indie band Cassettes Won’t Listen. The title: KEVINSPACEY. So the actor Kevin Spacey issued a cease-and-desist order against the album KEVINSPACEY. Rather than … Continue reading
Cyrano Jones
Jughead Jones is currently appearing in a limited run (plus extended dream sequence) of a freewheeling adaptation of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, for the Riverdale High Drama Club. The project has been extensively chronicled in issues #165-168 of the literary journal Jughead Double Digest. The Cyrano reading was the inspiration of new Riverdale High School … Continue reading