theaterboy®

Cut the crap, kids.

Tboy got this last week, between his afternoon in Tijuana and his seafood-taco excursion at Cabrillo national monument. But like he said, he was on vacation, so it's had to sit:

"The remarks by Paul Donnelly on your site concerning Kit Marlowe were interesting. In terms of directors and producers altering the work of playwrights, there is, however, one part of the dynamic that doesn't seem to have gotten much, if any, attention.

"That is the pressure from audiences -- and, particularly, critics -- to turn in an evening as compact, as brisk, and as brief as possible. One of the most striking trends that i've observed over the thirty plus years I have been doing and seeing theatre is how the attention span of audiences and critics has contracted."

Sez tboy: Well, yeah. TV and movies will do that to you.

"When I began, if I play was long (and plays from the middle of the last century and back tend to be much longer than your average play today), you knew you would be in the theater for as long as it would take to get through the play. Now, unless it is Lear or Hamlet or a big O'Neill, people just won't sit still for a complete reading of a text, expect you to cut it down to an acceptable size, and make a lot of noise if you do not.

Often, yes. But not always. More on which in a minute

"My working model is: If it ends between 10:30 and 10:45, you are safe; if it ends between 10:45 and 11:00, you better make sure it is rapidly paced; if it nears or passes 11, it better be the best thing you've done in three years, or else you will be reamed so mercilessly that you won' be able to sit down for a month. ...

You don't think that's a bit oversimplistic?

"You would probably be shocked at how much of Night of the Iguana ended up crossed out of our scripts this summer in order to keep us from either 1) coming down at 11:20 or 2) racing through the lyrical passages so quickly that some of the quality of those passages would have been lost. I hope this admission does not send mr. paul and his villagers over to Clark St. to torch us, and I recall that our Streetcar in 1994 did end at 11:20, and I wonder if we could get away with that today...that is how pronounced this trend has become, particularly in recent years.

"It is my understanding that there were time pressures on the Studio Secondstage production of Kit Marlowe, and i think this because Mike Chamberlin, knowing I had seen the New York production at the Public, asked me if I remembered how long it had been, and told me how unacceptably long had been a designer run of his production. I don't know if all of the alterations to which the writer objected had to do with these efforts to bring the show in at a reasonable time, but I believe many did.

I'm willing to believe all of that. Fact is, though, that if you *do* come at it with some smarts and some energy, all that calculus goes out the window. The National's Mourning Becomes Electra clocked in at 4 hours plus. And what about His Dark Materials? The Broadway run of Iceman went on all night. I saw Redgrave in Long Day's Journey and the Globe's Richard II and Edward II last summer, too -- and they were all damn near endless. And I was pretty much riveted.

"As a current example of what I am talking about, I watched opening night at the Lansburgh as Ed Gero came out and planted himself center stage at about 10:50, and began an unhurried and, it seems, uncut speech, basically expository and much of it information that the audience already had. Like the rest of the production, his approach seemed to be saying, "We are doing this play completely and we are not rushing through it" -- and i sat there thinking, nobody will stand for that kind of approach these days. And, indeed, our critics made clear that they certainly will not."

No, what critics won't stand for is the length without the spark. There was a lot to like about Henry, but it was missing something. You can't always put your finger on what it is -- energy, inspiration, pacing, texture? -- but you know when the alchemy isn't there. My favorite example is Strange Interlude. Flawed play, long evening, not entirely consistent performances across the cast, but some terrific lead turns -- and a smart approach that kept me hooked right up until the end.

"Basically, I am asking, when was the last time that you read a review in which a critic, familiar with a great work of the theatre, took a company to task for cutting too much, or unwisely, or for cutting at all? I can't think of an example (except for John Simon), although i am sure someone who wants to argue with me can point to examples. I can think of many reviews in which the explicit or implicit message was, "this play is too long" and I suggest that that is the much more frequent message. And that, if there is a problem, that is part of it."

That's probably fair. We could make a point of complaining in the other direction, if you like... [wicked grin]

Now, are you going to scold me like you scolded the dude who complained about blind items and such? I assume the free paper for which you work is the new Post-owned one they pass out in the Metro, which I understand pays its stringers better than does City Paper. (tee, hee.)

love,
artistic director-boy

Oh, bite me.

tboy at large...

Theaterboy's on vacation, so don't expect anything substantial over the next day or two. (Hi, y'all, from sunny San Diego, where it's 66 degrees at noon and still warming up.) Still, wanted to pass on this note from Theater Alliance's Jeremy Skidmore:

Final Pay-What-You Can Performance!

Theater Alliance presents
the Washington Premiere of
[sic]

by Melissa James Gibson

Directed by Kathleen Akerley

Featuring Michael Glenn, Ian LeValley, and Susan Lynskey
with Jason Lott and Adrienne Nelson

Come sit in a different spot! If you've already seen it, take this opportunity to see it again like several others already have. Final Pay-What-You-Can performance is this Saturday, February 21st at 2pm at the H Street Playhouse, 1365 H Street, NE.
For more details, check www.theateralliance.com.

Same drama, different year...

Ay, yi-yi.... Much as tboy would like to tell you exactly which director and which company this next item's about, he just can't -- it wouldn't be nice. But he trusts you'll enjoy the story anyway:

Once upon a time -- sometime last season, actually -- a local company went and tried to stage one of the great classics. It didn't work out. Now said company's giving it another shot. Guess what: It ain't workin' out again.

Says a source connected to the fiasco: "Last year, as technical rehearsals approached, [the company's] 'artistic director,' ... who had billed herself as a co-director (along with a Moscow-by-way-of-[city deleted] director brought to town by the theater), returned from being a month-long absentee at rehearsal only to discover that the show didn't meet her (I'll call them hackneyed) expectations."

All of a sudden, herself was awfully interested in what was going on. And as she got more and more interested, more and more rehearsals "degenerated into [director-lady] launching into lengthy episodes of verbal abuse directed at the actors and the other director. Eventually, this culminated in a two-hour long session of bitchery-by-appointment at which several of the actors (including me) professed support for the other director, which led to her firing the entire cast."

So, um, our source may not be entirely unbiased. Still...

But everybody's been through "artistic differences," right? Doesn't necessarily mean director-lady's an ogre.

Not so fast, sez our source: "Flash forward to this year! Once again, [this classic play] is on the sked, and fast approaching its opening. And reliable sources from inside [the company] have told me that not much has changed."

Apparently, director-lady has once again solicited the directorial skills of a visiting director [a Bulgarian], who balked at the task. She finally cajoled him into being an assistant director, and once he started coming to rehearsals, [director-lady] once again disappeared for a month. Sez our insider: "Now stuck with the task, our Bulgarian friend rolled up his sleeves and took responsibility for the project, shepherding the cast and building the production."

Now, though, our problematic boss lady has come back from wherever the hell she goes while other people get her company's plays on their feet -- and guess what, our source sez: "SHE NO LIKEY!!"

("Obviously, I am a total tease and leaving off what would be a juicy rack of well-marinated backstory," writes tboy's correspondent, in a thoroughly mean-spirited aside. But you'd literally have to sit for coffee with me to get the full panoply of ungodliness.")

Done. Tboy takes his coffee at Tryst in cold weather, CyberStop in warm. It's all about the WiFi, you know...

"But I'll tell you this: last year, when the first [production] was cancelled, we had a cast member's friend's mother (how sneaky of us!) call the theater inquiring after tickets. Our friend's mother was told that [the show] was canceled because one of the actors was called up to fight in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

"Ghastly, no?"

Ghastly, yes.

Name droppings

Writes a WSC partisan:

"Not to pile on to the dear, exhausted-by-intellectually-demanding-work woman who wrote to the Post, the idea that Bill Pullman in an evelope-pushing new Albee play--or Christopher Plummer doing Lear--is "dessert" compared to the "broccoli" of Sally Field in The Glass Menagerie is bizarre."

Ain't that the truth. This woman's argument seems to imply that familiar names necessarily turn in less challenging work -- tboy would be pissed if he were Christopher Plummer.

"Her M*A*S*H obssession, however, gave me a great idea, and i began to work on a competing Williams festival. I almost had commitments from Loretta Swit to play Amanda and Gary Burghoff to play Big Daddy, but it fell through. I received an e-mail saying, 'We were on board until we read in theaterboy that you pay people late. Fuck off, loser.'

"That left me with just Jamie Farr as a drag Blanche, and you can't really build a festival around that."

Sez tboy: Okay, now, that's just wrong.

Jump cut?

Actor snit:

"Jumpers just closed after an extension, and even though it set records for sold-out houses in a row, the actors were stiffed on their last paychecks. ... We were told to call the managing director at the same time and harass her to get our money....You should post this as a warning to other actors!!"

Indeed. Tboy would like to warn other actors to take a deep breath before firing off such things. From what he understands, nobody's been "stiffed." But he's guessing some bridges have been burned.

WSC artistic director Chris Henley acknowledges that the cast's final check hasn't been cut--but points out that everyone got a nice, apologetic note from the company explaining why (a cash-flow issue) and asking for everyone's patience until Box Office Tickets sends over the take from the last week or so of the run.

Tboy's seen the note, and nowhere does it suggest that the company's trying to weasel out of the last payment.

Henley sez he regrets that the cast didn't hear, in person from him or someone else in authority on Saturday night, that checks would be late.

"Even more," he writes, "I regret that that incident, whether by itself or combined with other aspects of the Jumpers experience, made anyone feel so disillusioned with WSC that they would advise another actor not to work with us."

Looks like actor-person sent tboy that note early yesterday, and the company's e-mail didn't go out until around 2 o'clock in the afternoon. So yeah, y'all -- tboy always wants to hear your gripes, but sometimes you might wanna hold on to 'em long enough to make sure you mean 'em.

By the way, Henley sez: Jumpers did well, but it didn't set any records. And "it's been a tough year for WSC. ... We are still reeling from [among other things] mounting an ambitious summer rep that wasn't covered by the Post until the final week of a 5 week run. ... Believe me, if the favorable Post review of The Night of the Iguana had run at the start of the run rather than at its end, we would be thousands of dollars richer, and cash flow wouldn't be an issue."

Hmmm. Weren't we talking last year about whether the Post's slacking off would hurt small companies? Guess it did...

Some people...

...are convinced theaterboy just has a thing about Arena Stage. Or about Molly Smith. Or about Southwest, maybe.

It ain't so. He just has a thing about half-baked theater. Hates it. What he likes is bold theater, even if it doesn't quite work. So he's damn near beside himself about A Man's a Man, which is as nervy a night out as anything he's seen in a while -- and which works just fine.

In short, if you like your theater smart, cynical, and politically savvy, get thee to Arena now. 'Cause if the delightful Ms. Sara Watson is any indication--see item below--you can bet the subscribers are bitching.

Write on...

Says an actor who, as she puts it, is still "at the way bottom of the totem pole":

"Michael Kahn has known it for years, as have the Kennedy Center and Arena Stage. (Witness the recent casting for the Tennessee Williams fest, for example.) And all of us hardworking but not-yet-known actors ... have known it in our hearts. But it's still hard to see it in black and white."

Known what? you're wondering. See what?

What one Sara Watson of Silver Spring had to say in her letter to the Washington Post this past Sunday: that "fun plays" with "interesting actors" are what'll fill all those new theaters Peter Marks wrote about the weekend before.

"I'll be catty," our correspondent writes, "and say that by 'interesting,' Watson means film and TV actors -- actors with names she can drop at the water cooler and say, 'Yes, I saw him perform live, you know.' "

Harsh? Not necessarily. Read the letter.

Watson, who takes pains to tell us she "work(s) hard all week at a very demanding job with high intellectual content," sounds like the classic tired businessman New York producers have always kept foremost in mind as they put shows together. She wants "to relax [and] laugh." She wants Tennessee Willams to seem "like dessert, not broccoli," and she apparently thinks pretty, familiar faces are what separates the one from the other. She wonders why we don't get touring shows featuring the cast of M*A*S*H. And, um, she had a blast at Camelot.

Watson thinks D.C. theaters offer nothing but "highbrow, exhausting plays" that "don't leave most of us with a good feeling."

(And that's just terrible, y'know, 'cause contemporary theater really oughta be in the same business as Touched By An Angel.)

Sez our friend the actress: "I sincerely hope Ms. Watson does not speak for every last potential theatergoer in the Washington area."

Sez theaterboy: Don't worry; there are still some audiences who actually want to be engaged. The ugly truth, though, is that too many patrons think of theater as live TV -- which, come to think of it, is probably why so many of them are willing to talk through it, like they're in their own damn living rooms.

Hate to call a kid an ass, but...

...have you seen the most recent MW? You'll have to pick up the print edition to read the whole awful truth, but Coverboy Rob -- who's presumably gonna remove the nipple rings for his performances in that Montgomery College Footloose we were talking about -- giggles to the interviewer that he "secretly served real alcohol to the other actors" one night during a run of Brigadoon.

Yeah, we bet that was a riot. Probably as much fun for this brat's castmates as it was for that noted blond actress who told tboy, while talking about an unrelated topic, about a similar incident at one of D.C.'s professional stages that left her enraged and off-balance during a difficult show.

Note to Rob: Don't do that shit again. Nobody'll ever trust you--and you'll never do your best work if your colleagues are scared to do theirs when you're around.

Not to beat up on you-know-who, but...

One of tboy's favorite rabble-rousers weighs in on the Kit Marlowe mess, and this time it's not Mike Chamberlin who's the target. At least not directly. It's all you lily-livered writers out there:

"The so-called Kit Marlowe fiasco didn't just highlight the complete disregard in which playwrights and any sort of ethical standards are held in certain quarters of our community. It was also an example of the total bovine passivity and lack of authentic community among Washington's playwrights."

And, um, this is a playwright (okay, a playwright/director) talking. Tboy wishes every post-show discussion were this frank.

"To have seen such an unprincipled hack job made of another writer's work and not to have united in our outrage like the villagers in Frankenstein to drive the monster from our midst should still be a source of shame for every self-proclaimed playwright in the area. I know it is for me.

"While the torches were lit, we should have gone ahead and burned down Frankenstein's lab at 14th and P. [Ed: Trouble with that is you'd had had to deal with Mrs. Mead afterwards, and you'd have to be a braver man than tboy... ] Too bad the moment passed with nary a whimper.

"Not one bit anonymously,

"-- Paul Donnelly"

To which tboy can only add: Ouch.

Left hangin'

From a D.C.-based actress who's no stranger to the canon's big plays:

"How lucky I'm home tonight and checked out your site ... to learn about all the Kennedy Center Williams casting going on."

Why lucky? you're wondering, as did tboy. Well, because "many folks in DC are [still] awaiting second callbacks."

Callbacks, she means, for parts whose casting has now been announced. Hey, that's classy.

"We were called by Tara Rubin Casting in NY and told we'd be called back in late January/early February, and have heard nothing so far. I was called back for Stella -- so how interesting to learn that that sure won't happen. Obviously I can't compete with Tony-award-nominated TV actors, but I will be really angry if DC is used only as an understudy farm."