theaterboy®

Suffering for your art.

And you guys think holding down a day job is rough.   

This reminds Tboy of his favorite line from the first episode of this season's Rome, about Caesar's public funeral: "No prostitutes, actors, or unclean tradesmen may attend."

Out of sorrow ...

Joy.

A week or so ago, Tboy posted an item about the cancellation of the Washington Shakespeare Company's King Lear. This past Wednesday, Wee Jane noted it, too.

Both Jane and I reported that "one of the principals has had some rough health news," or words to that effect. What neither of us spelled out, in deference to the man's privacy, was that the principal in question was Brian Hemmingsen, who was to have played the Lear.

Now, Hemmingsen's been smoking for 40 years, so when he started coughing up blood and his doctor detected a shadow on one lung, everybody -- including him -- feared the worst.

And somehow, who knows how, exactly, fears of the worst became reports that the worst had actually been diagnosed.

Those reports have probably spread far and wide, so I'm glad to say that I heard from Hemmingsen a few minutes ago--and that the biopsy his doctor did this past Monday indicates pneumonia, not cancer.

Just to reiterate: Whatever you may have heard notwithstanding, Hemmingsen wants you to know it's not lung cancer. He'll be going back for a follow-up CAT scan on Feb. 15 to confirm the non-diagnosis, but for now, we can all breathe a big, deep sigh of relief.

This concludes the medical bulletin. We now return to our regularly scheduled Tboying.

p.s.: Hemmingsen says he hasn't had a ciggy for 29 days.

The Week in Review(s)

Tboy tackled Synetic's Macbeth this week, and while the Tsikurishvilis' Scottish Play isn't quite as dazzling as some of their company's best work, "the production comes fully into its own with a sequence that makes a compact and yet seemingly endless horror of the Macduff murders." And watch out for the "the titanic blood and thunder of Cunis’ final confrontation with Kavsadze": The forest do indeed come to Dunsinane, and what follows is "fearlessly big, sensuously charged, a conscious flaunting of bodies and training and technique—and it fairly explodes off the stage." (UPDATE, Saturday noonish: Peter Marks swoons over it today.)

Not so much the Theater J show -- "a quirky memory play capable of accelerating from zero to saccharine in 6.3 seconds."  (Second item on this page)

Peter M. weighs in today, too, on Sleeping Arrangements. He likes Halo Wines (in fact he seems to have liked everything Tboy didn't and vice-versa), but the script itself  "suffers too many defects to stake out any sort of original claim in the crowded genre of the memory play."

One interesting note: Marks complains about the production not having a specific sense of place -- and indeed it doesn't -- but Tboy hears rumors that it was the author pushing the abstract set design, so it's a bummer that director Delia Taylor and her design team take so much heat for that in the Post review. (On the other hand, Tboy does ultimately believe that directors are like presidents: The bucks stop there, and they should be prepared to live with that.)

Bob Mondello weighs in, as promised, with a round of huzzahs for the Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? that continues its triumphant run at the Eisenhower:

• "Rocks the house with laughter for two acts, then turns so harrowing ... that it’s hard to remember what could possibly have seemed funny."
• Kathleen Turner ... turns [the] couplets [of her Act 3 meditation on her marriage] into the most delicate sort of haymakers imaginable. ...
• [Bill] Irwin’s George ... moves to mysterious rhythms, his arms flapping, head untethered, hips thrust forward as if he’s balanced his upper body on them the way a clown balances a towering pile of crockery just before someone adds one last plate and the tower comes crashing down."

Metro Weekly's Jolene Munch, interestingly, liked it rather less.

Earlier this week, Nelson Pressley walked softly on the subject of Mark Jaster's Seven Ages of Mime at Round House Silver Spring, saying "the show's not always that lively -- it's a considered stroll down memory lane, with pauses that sometimes feel like full stops -- but it's consistently winsome.

But Mondello, in today's paper, picks up a big stick and swats away: Jaster's opening bits are nice enough, but the Chaplin homage and whatnot come off like "a pale imitation  of something that’s available in film clips." (Last item.)

As for the Folger Theatre's King Lear, Tim Treanor was first out of the gate (if'n you don't count Tboy's briefly appalled note from Wednesday night, which you shouldn't). Treanor posted Thursday, summing it up as "a seven-course meal with no entrée." CP will get to it next week, and the Post is presumably cooking something up shortly.

Bonus: Scott Vogel's weekend column profiles designers Lee Savage and Jennifer Moeller, the infant Yalies who've designed Michael Kahn's new Richard III.

Tboy got a peek at the set, which is a poisonous industrial thing off-kilter enough that he bets it'll send a few patrons reeling seasick up the aisle.  Also: He hears the text alterations, or some of 'em anyway, are aimed at making the horror more intimate and personal. Which sounds promising, given the clinical (but exceedingly effective) brutality of the last go-round.

p.s.:  A mucky-muck argues that Ming Cho Lee ain't quite "retired," as the Post piece would have it; he's still teaching at Yale, and though he doesn't design much anymore, he does occasionally take on a project (like Lorenzaccio) when it rings his bell.

Arts in Action

You've seen the fundraiser ad over there on the right; now see Metro Weekly's short story on the benefit, complete with quotes from Sherri Edelen ...

Well, that was lively.

Took a night off from theater tonight, in favor of the music drama -- which is to say the opera. Except this was a concert staging of an opera, so more music than drama. Or maybe not, because there was a little minimal moving-about of people, and a surprising amount of characterization going on among the principals.

Aaaanyway.  The opera was Salome, which is roughly 3/4 of the Wilde play set to some of the noisiest and most gorgeous orchestral taffy-pulling Richard Strauss ever came up with. Which is  saying something.

Die-hard Synetic followers will remember that Tboy rather likes Salome, chiefly for its excesses. Now imagine those excesses scored for unhinged soprano and backed by a 100-piece orchestra, and you'll have a faint idea of how much fun Tboy had tonight.

Or you could just watch the big finish (in two parts):

That was La Leontyne, for those of you who never saw her onstage.  Tonight's Salome, as you may have read in last weekend's WashPo, was the su-effing-perb Debbie Voigt, which isn't the same kinda voice at all, though they're both glorious in their own way.

p.s.:  This ain't a review, so Tboy's not going to do the whole name-everybody-and-say-something-about-their-contributions thing. But the entire lineup was pretty damn good.

p.p.s: Tim Page, who's a really nice guy in addition to having a Pulitzer on his bookshelf, was there. He liked it, too.

Lear

Oh, dear.

And that's all Tboy's gonna say right now, 'cause he's not writing about it. Also there's a pizza on the way and some Ugly Betty on the Tivo.

Ooh, except that the Fool was terrific. So of course they killed him off in the first act.

p.s. - Yes, Tboy is aware that the Fool has no lines after the hovel scene. But -- and Tboy was trying not to give this part away -- he doesn't always exit the play the way he does in this production.

And speaking of Cherry Jones ...

... Doubt announces D.C. dates: March 13 - 25.  Short damn run.  Tix on sale Feb. 4.

If it's Wednesday ...

It's Wee Jane Day.

This week our hardy Backstage columnist gets Jeremy Skidmore and Paul-Douglas Michnewicz on the record about the regime change at Theater Alliance:  "I'm just getting to the place where I'm starting to have to turn down jobs that I didn't want to have to be turning down," Skidmore tells her.

One thing Tboy didn't hear from Skidmore before: Michnewicz is stepping in as an interim AD.  They'll do a national search next season, Wee Jane reports, and Michnewicz may apply.

She's also got Mark Jaster on his new show at Round House Silver Spring, and a follow spot on the Lear/Lucrece switcheroo at Washington Shakespeare Company.

Yikes.

Tboy, you may have noticed, has been playing around with new ad servers and ad providers.  He apologizes for the recent spate of lingerie (unless you're into that), and hopes that that'll sort itself out soon.

Misbegotten books a house

The NYT notes that the London production (pictured) of Moon for the Misbegotten -- "that rarest of theatrical treats: an evening of raw, powerful emotion"-- has set dates for its Broadway transer.

It stars Kevin Spacey, and is directed by Howard Davies, who staged the Iceman that earned Tony nominations for him and Spacey back in 1999.

Funny: Tboy had lunch with a youngish D.C.-based director-type yesterday, and he and said director-type were talking about the last Broadway production of that play, and swooning over Cherry Jones again, when director-type said something about "Of course, I was, like, 8 when I saw it, so maybe it wasn't as good as I remember.

Now, Tboy knows you're all tykes, but that production ran for four months in the spring of 2000. So for some reason (could it be that he's staring 39 in the face?) Tboy thinks somebody's being a little too giddy about his dewy youthful quality.

'Cause sweetie, you're not bossing the actors at that big ol' LORT house if you're 14-and-a-half. Tboy ain't hatin'. He's just sayin'.