Entries Tagged 'Theatre' ↓

Barack Obama’s national address on the state of race relations in America was a shrewd move to undercut the backlash stemming from comments made by his minister Jeremiah Wright, but also seems to have taken the wind out of the sails of the Hillary Clinton campaign, which has repeatedly injected racial (if not downright racist) undertones to their criticism of him. The question I have is, when will Hillary give her address on race issues? Why was it necessary for Obama to repudiate Rev. Wright when Hillary has so reluctantly distanced herself from racist statements coming from her camp? Why is it Black people always have to take on the responsibility of educating the rest of society on race?

And if we’re going to have a real discussion about race relations in this country, why don’t we begin with the arrival of Europeans in North America. The White man killed off Indians by the thousands, stole their land, put whomever was left on reservations, and created a system of laws and governments to justify it all. If we aren’t capable of talking about the basic injustices relevant to the formation of this country, then any other conversation on race is just an academic exercise.

New York’s state government seems to be settling down after a week and a half of sex-tinged controversy. First, former Governor Eliot Spitzer resigns in shame after his involvement in a high-end prostitution came to light. Now this week, his replacement, the new Governor David Paterson and his wife Michelle Paige Paterson both admit to having had extramarital affairs during a rocky period in their marriage. While some people want to get their noses out of joint over the mere suggestion of sexual impropriety, let me say first the latter scenario is nothing like the former.

Eliot Spitzer’s greatest offense was hypocrisy and infidelity. The self-proclaimed corruption fighter who was going to clean up Albany, forgot to start with his own closet. But the Patersons had a difficult phase in their relationship, which they’ve both acknowledged to one another. Fifty percent of marriages end in divorce and one of the top reasons is sexual incompatibility. Someone isn’t satisfied and starts looking outside the marriage. To their credit, David and Michelle Paterson are working to address the problems in their relationship. To our knowledge, Spitzer never told his wife Silda he was paying for callgirls.

In theatre news, a revival of August Wilson’s Fences is headed for Broadway. The play won four Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize during its original 1987 run. While it is great to see Wilson’s work get more exposure, is he destined to be, even in death, the only Black playwright able to get produced on Broadway? Producers need to know there are other Black writers out there.

As life imitates art, so does art draw inspiration from reality. In a perfect world great events would lead to equally great art. If only it was that easy.

Katrina, the costliest and most deadly hurricane to ever hit the United States, devastated the Gulf Coast of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi in August 2005, left more than $81 billion in damages, and displaced millions of residents, some of the hardest hit in New Orleans. A combination of indifference and incompetence on the part of the Bush Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and state and local governments has turned mostly poor and Black residents of that city into homeless refugees, some still in trailers now approaching three years later.

Lower Ninth is a new Off Broadway play in production at The Flea Theater in Lower Manhattan set among the wreckage in that section of New Orleans, the Lower 9th Ward, that borders the Mississippi River to the South and Saint Bernard Parish to the east. Mostly Black and working class, the neighborhood was left under water by the storm. People there lost lives and homes. Many have yet to return or rebuild.

The play tells the story of two men who have been stranded on a rooftop for three days. Malcolm (James McDaniel from ABC’s NYPD Blue), is an itinerant worker, now devout Bible-reader and stepfather to E-Z (Gaius Charles of NBC’s Friday Night Lights), a directionless young man seemingly angry with life and his present circumstances. A third man, Lowboy (Gbenga Akinnagbe from HBO’s The Wire) begins the play as a lifeless corpse wrapped in plastic, a former friend of E-Z who he rescued but couldn’t save from the rising waters.

In the small black box space at The Flea, set designer Donyale Werle has taken over the entire stage with a large, realistic rooftop set that creates a believable sense of abandonment. It is easy to imagine the water around them offering no hope for escape. Heather Dunbar’s costumes are appropriate for a hot, steamy New Orleans August and days spent without a bath.

Now, if only the actors and designers had a good play to work with.

Playwright Beau Willimon offers a one-act that understandably shifts the dialogue from subject to subject (what would you talk about all day if you were on a roof for three days) but quickly it just becomes blather. From last rites to games of twenty questions to how Malcolm met E-Z’s mother and more, he doesn’t spend enough time allowing us to know these men or care anything about them. Instead of mining the natural dramatic tension that might be drawn from an understanding of the circumstances that got them on the roof instead of away to safety, the playwright pursues middling attempts at sentimentality. In brief explorations of the relationship between Malcolm and E-Z, and E-Z and Lowboy, the story is neither compelling nor interesting, a mere collection of scenes, barely rising above the level of a bad made-for-tv movie.

Director Daniel Goldstein, like his actors, does a capable job with inferior material. In an inspired choice, to illustrate how these men are surviving both day and night, he plunges the theater in total darkness, the actors voices the only clue that anyone is still out there. If only they’d had more interesting things to say.

As Spike Lee has proven with his Emmy winning documentary on Katrina, that tragic episode is rife with artistic possibilities. Hopefully others will find a way to explore them for the stage.

Broadway has rarely been known for risk-taking. A commercial institution focused on the bottom line, theater producers like to give the audience what they think they want, over and over again, until the cash registers ring.

But with the opening (in preview) this week of a revival of Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Broadway is both playing it safe in restaging a classic, and taking chances–in the choice of performers–in a way that should leave producers and audiences most satisfied.

Williams’ 1955 Pulitzer Prize-winning play is getting a unique and innovative all-Black recasting, which while staying faithful to the original story of a wealthy, yet dysfunctional family in the Mississippi Delta, now has added nuance because of it.

The theater community has never completely embraced the concept of what it calls “alternative casting.” While White actors have always felt it their right to don blackface to do Othello, heaven help the Black actor who dares to perform a role previously conceived with a White person in mind. Drowning Crow, the 2004 all-Black adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, received compliments for performance but rankled the nerves of critics seemingly for the shear audacity of touching the classics.

This revival works largely because of its strong cast. It is remarkable how Williams’ words seem just as authentic, just as believable, coming out of the mouth of James Earl Jones as Big Daddy, as they did from Burl Ives in the original production (and later the film) more than fifty years ago. Jones uses his massive voice and presence to portray the most ornery and irascible old man you ever saw, on the evening of his 65th birthday celebration.

Joining him is one of the best actors working in theater today, Tony Award winner Phylicia Rashad as Big Mama. (If you only know her work from The Cosby Show, you don’t know her work at all. Get your butt to the theater!) Rashad is simply delightful to watch as Big Daddy’s doting wife, mistrusted by him but perhaps the only real loving person in the family.

Movie actor Terrence Howard (Academy Award nominated for Hustle & Flow) makes not only his Broadway but his stage debut as their son Brick, the ex-star athlete who is descending rapidly into alcoholism following the death of his very close friend Skipper and the pressure to produce offspring. Calling Howard a movie actor is not a knock, merely a statement of his past credentials. Though less experienced than others on this stage, he more than holds his own in balancing the emotions of a man in a loveless marriage, still mourning the loss of a friend he deeply cared about. Had Howard not been up to the task, he might have withered like a raisin in the sun or some other less skilled celebrities who have attempted to work in the theater.

His wife Maggie is played by yet another Tony winner, Anika Noni Rose. A beautiful, young, social climber who has married into the family, she is skilled at using her abundant feminine charms to get what she wants, but not skilled enough to get Brick to love her. She understands all too well that the price of inheriting Big Daddy’s estate and thus securing her future, is a baby. Rose’s Maggie is a bundle of energy, mixed with raw sex appeal, laced with cunning and guile and just a smidge of spite.

This half-century-old play seems timeless under Debbie Allen’s direction. In light of contemporary discussions of “the DL,” the show’s insinuation of a homosexual underpinning to Brick’s mourning and marital indifference, is perhaps more easily accepted by today’s audience than when it originally opened. It also allows us to better understand the machinations one goes through to keep up appearances for family and society’s sake.

Giancarlo Esposito and Lisa Arrindell Anderson are eldest son Gooper and his wife Mae, a successful corporate attorney and a fertile wife, who have done all the right things to provide heirs to the empire, but who still can’t seem to ingratiate themselves. Both performers amuse us with their calculated missteps before Big Daddy and well-aimed backstabs at Maggie and Brick.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof opens officially on March 6 for a limited run at the Broadhurst Theatre. I give it my “run, don’t walk” recommendation.

Washington DC’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts will celebrate the entire ten-play cycle of work by the late Pulitzer Prize-winner August Wilson. August Wilson’s 20th Century is an epic undertaking, rallying together some of the theater community’s most talented artists.

Wilson’s critically acclaimed dramas chronicle the African-American experience in the 20th century and will be offered in the Kennedy Center’s Terrace Theatre March 4-April 6. Kenny Leon is the artistic director for the project.

The creative team also includes David Gallo (sets), Reggie Ray (costumes), Allen Lee Hughes (lighting) and Dwight Andrews (music supervision). Todd Kreidler is associate artistic director.

Casting and directors for each of the ten plays follow:

Directed by Kenny Leon, Gem of the Ocean (set in the 1900s) will feature James A. Williams as Eli, John Erl Jelks as Citizen Barlow, Michele Shay as Aunt Ester, Raynor Scheine as Rutherford Selig, Anthony Chisholm as Solly Two Kings and Ruben Santiago-Hudson as Caesar. The role of Black Mary has yet to be cast.

Directed by Todd Kreidler, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (1910s) will feature Eugene Lee as Seth Holly, LaTanya Richardson Jackson as Bertha Holly, Keith David as Bynum Walker, Raynor Scheine as Rutherford Selig, Montae Russell as Jeremy Furlow, Russell Hornsby as Herald Loomis, Dominique Ross as Zonia Loomis, Cherise Boothe as Mattie Campbell, Terrance Thomas as Reuben Mercer, Michole Briana White as Molly Cunningham and Rosalyn Coleman as Martha Pentecost.

Lou Bellamy will direct Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom (1920s), which will feature Raynor Scheine as Sturdyvant, Jerry Whiddon as Irvin, Harry Lennix as Cutler, Roger Robinson as Toledo, James A. Williams as Slow Drag, Anthony Mackie as Levee, Ebony Jo-Ann as Ma Rainey, Jeff Allin as Policeman, Rosalyn Coleman as Dussie Mae and Eric Berryman as Sylvester.

The Piano Lesson (1930s), with direction by Kenny Leon, will feature Bill Nunn as Doaker, Ruben Santiago-Hudson as Boy Willie, Jason Dirden as Lymon, Heather Alicia Simms as Berniece, Alexandra Brooke Perrin as Maretha, Afemo Omilami as Avery, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Wining Boy and Cherise Boothe as Grace.

The cast of Seven Guitars (1940s), under the direction of Derrick Sanders, will include LaTanya Richardson Jackson as Louise, Russell Hornsby as Canewell, Harry Lennix as Red Carter, Vanessa Bell Calloway as Vera, Afemo Omilami as Hedley, Keith David as Floyd Barton and Crystal Fox as Ruby.

Fences (1950s) will star Bill Nunn as Jim Bono, Tamara Tunie as Rose, Montae Russell as Lyons, Hassan El-Amin as Gabriel, Anthony Mackie as Cory and Autumn Malhotra as Raynell; the role of Troy Maxon has yet to be cast. Kenny Leon directs.

The Israel Hicks-directed Two Trains Running (1960s) will feature Glynn Turman as Memphis, Russell Hornsby as Wolf, Michole Briana White as Risa, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Holloway, John Earl Jelks as Sterling, Hassan El-Amin as Hambone and Eugene Lee as West.

Jitney (1970s), directed by Gordon Davidson, will include Anthony Mackie as Youngblood, John Beasley as Turnbo, Anthony Chisolm as Fielding, Eugene Lee as Doub, Afemo Omilami as Shealy, Montae Russell as Philmore, Paul Butler as Becker, Roslyn Ruff as Rena and Hassan El-Amin as Booster.

The King Hedley II (1980s) company, directed by Derrick Sanders, will feature Russell Hornsby as King Hedley II, Lynda Gravátt as Ruby, John Earl Jelks as Mister, Stephen McKinley Henderson as Elmore, Heather Alicia Simms as Tonya and James A. Williams as Stool Pigeon.

Directed by Ruben Santiago-Hudson, the Radio Golf (1990s) company will comprise Harry Lennix as Harmond Wilks, Michole Briana White as Mame Wilks, James A. Williams as Roosevelt Hicks, John Earl Jelks as Sterling Johnson and Anthony Chisholm as Elder Joseph Barlow.

August Wilson (April 27, 1945-Oct. 2, 2005) authored Gem of the Ocean, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson, Seven Guitars, Fences, Two Trains Running, Jitney, King Hedley II and Radio Golf. These works explore the heritage and experience of African Americans, decade-by-decade, over the course of the 20th century. Wilson’s plays have been produced at regional theatres across the country and all over the world, as well as on Broadway. In 2003, Wilson made his professional stage debut in his one-man show, How I Learned What I Learned. Wilson’s works garnered many awards, including Pulitzer Prizes for Fences (1987); and for The Piano Lesson (1990); a Tony Award for Fences; Great Britain’s Olivier Award for Jitney; as well as seven New York Drama Critics Circle Awards for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, The Piano Lesson, Two Trains Running, Seven Guitars and Jitney.

Does the face we show the world represent who we really are? Can we ever show the world another face if others are only willing to see us as we were before? Who gets to decide who is authentic? 

These are but a few of the many questions raised, debated and bandied about in the refreshingly new, highly amusing, yet profoundly introspective play Yellow Face by Tony Award winning playwright David Henry Hwang, recently extended at The Public Theater through January 13.

Hwang takes the unusual approach of placing himself as the central character DHH—played with tremendous wit by actor Hoon Lee–in this semi-autobiographical, partly fictitious, partly factual exploration of the ways in which race and identity from an Asian-American perspective play out in America. The term yellow face, at least in one context, refers to non-Asians putting on makeup to perform roles that could or should have been given to Asian actors, as in the Charlie Chan movie series of the 1930’s and ‘40’s.

Hwang, who exploded onto the theatre scene with 1988 Tony and Drama Desk Award wins for M. Butterfly, cleverly takes us through the period immediately following when he led a group of Asian-American show business professionals in opposition to the casting of a White man, Jonathan Pryce, as a Eurasian in the 1991 Broadway production of Miss Saigon. Hwang was both praised by Asian groups for his outspokenness and vilified by Broadway power brokers for his stance to the point where his activism was affecting his career.

Hwang, as DHH, tries to move on with his life and get back to writing. He creates a new play with Asian characters but when a casting decision puts a White actor mistakenly believed to be Eurasian in the lead role, he jumps through hoops trying to cover up his error or just make it go away. This is where fact and fiction blend together at its entertaining best, lending to some of the cleverest and most amusing scenes of the show.

Marcus (Noah Bean), the White actor, reluctantly goes along at first with the charade of being passed off as Eurasian, but later sees an opportunity to get in touch with his new Asian roots and become a credit to the race, much to the annoyance of DHH. Its theater of the absurd as Marcus becomes the new face of the Asian acting community, rivaling DHH himself in stature.

Weaving another layer of reality into the story, Hwang recounts the United States Senate investigation of Chinese government business transactions with Chinese-American banks the late 1990’s. Hwang’s father Henry Y. Hwang, founded the first Asian-American-owned federally chartered bank in America and his bank was a target of those investigations, although no charges were ever brought against him.

Still this brought no shortage of personal angst and drama to the Hwang family and DHH himself who was at one time a board member of the bank. In the play’s most serious turn, DHH faces off with a NY Times reporter he feels has engaged in a vendetta against his father and the Chinese community in general. Through this scene and those with his father, we glean the true significance of this play and its title.

As DHH explains it, Asians in America are often asked, “Where are you from?” They may be native-born, second or third generation citizens, but upon informing questioners of this, the response is always, “No, where are you really from?” The inference being, no matter how hard they try, they are never accepted as full citizens.

In a five member ensemble supporting cast that expertly assumes several roles, Francis Jue stood out as DHH’s father, as actor B.D. Wong and assorted other scene-stealing characters. Leigh Silverman kept the entire pace lively with crisp direction.