Blogspot Blog Update: September 12, 2022

Shakespeare Gets The Last Word In King Charles' Farewell To His Mama, The Queen

In his first speech as Queen Elizabeth II's successor, her son gave Shakespeare the final words for his  mother with "May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest (Hamlet)." But while Shakespeare's plays  about historic royals were full of violence and power-seeking political machinations, the legacy of her  70-year spanning reign was that she remained a consistently neutral head no matter how societal changes affected even her own family. As one reporter about her death at 96 so aptly put it, this left her life "an  outline" open to interpretation.

 No wonder so many outstanding actors have put their own stamp on that "outline" in stage and screen  dramas like The Crown and The Queen, both still streaming at Netflix, with a highly anticipated new  season of the former due soon. It's a sure bet that the never-ending fascination with the British royals  will continue the flow of dramas about past and present royals.

 While Shakespeare continues to be a steady presence on our cultural landscape and his texts remain  favorite sources for apt comments at the right time and place, plenty of other plays have entered the  cannon of  stage-and-screen classics. They've thus also been ripe for brand-new presentations. One of  the most interesting examples coming up on Broadway next year is the musical 1776, about the   contentious forging of the document that would establish a new nation. Diane Paulus and Jeffrey Page  are presenting it with a cast haggling about that document's details that is all female, and in some roles transgender.

A Christmas Carol Also Gets a New Casting Twist

 For millions of people, it wouldn't be Christmas without Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. This  year, the beloved classic gets a new casting twist. Jefferson Mays, who gave the solo play new status  with his Pulitzer Prize-winning I Am My Own Wife, is taking on all the characters on Broadway during the coming holiday season.  It will run at the Nederlander Theater from November 8 to January 1.  

Even with more conventional casting, annual productions have been off-Broadway. In the same vein, Cost of Living would not extend its 2017 off-Broadway life (when  I  reviewed  it) before the current aims to make Broadway more diverse. It's therefore now premiering at MTC's Samuel J. Friedman Theatre with an official opening on October 3rd.

An Off-Broadway Theater's Attempt to Attract Audiences With Affordable Tickets

The Off-Broadway incubator Ars Nova on West 54th Street will allow audience members to pay what they wish for theater tickets in a new initiative called "What’s Ars Is Yours: Name Your Price"  for its 2022-23 season. Tickets will start at $5 and increase in $5 increments up to $100 per ticket. The season includes the world premiere of Hound Dog (Oct. 6-Nov. 5), and the world premiere of (Pray) from March 9-April 15. On Broadway, casting plays by proven playwrights and with stars is still the best way to sell tickets. Case-in-point: Laura Linney will return to Broadway next spring in Summer 1976, a new play by David Auburn about a friendship that arises between two women during America’s bicentennial.

 Series Continue To Hang In Longer Than They Should

Only Murders in the Building hopscotches cleverly between farcical humor and its trio of amateur  sleuths' darker sides. Steve Martin plays a once-famous TV actor, Martin Short is a down-on-his-luck Broadway director, and Selena Gomez is a young artist with her own issues. All live in an elegant   historic Manhattan apartment house (the interiors shot in one of the more renowned of these Upper West Side buildings). The amateur Sherlocks also manage to turn their crime-solving efforts into a popular podcast. Obviously, very timely. And, obviously, encouraging Hulu to let the series overstay its welcome to cash in on its success. The second season just wasn't as funny, but given the terrific acting and clever filming, the fan base did hold and yet another season is on the streaming horizon.

Working Girl, a 1988 Movie Gem, Becoming a Broadway Musical 

Working Girl, a  delightful 1988 movie that starred Melanie Griffith and Sigourney Weaver, is now being brought to the stage as a musical (music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper; directed by Christopher Ashley; scripted by Theresa  Rebeck). But why wait?  You can catch the movie if you're a Hulu subscriber or rent or buy it at Amazon Prime.

Sylvie's Love-- A Slice of Hollywood's Old Fashioned Romances With a New-Fangled Twist

By Elyse Sommer

Since I saw and reviewed Tessa Thompson in Rebecca Wilson's terrific film adaptation of Nella Larson's 1939 novel Passing (http://www.curtainup.com/passingmovie.html), any film she's in moves straight to the top of my must-see list. For some, her starring role in the multi-season Westworld series might be a draw.

Thompson's now starring in a romance with a strong whiff of the golden era of happy-ever-after Hollywood movies, which was more of a drawback than a draw for contemporary film producers. As they saw Eugene Ashe's love story, its focus on the personal made it seem irrelevant, especially since the romance's time frame paralleled the late '50s and early '60s when the civil rights movement reached its peak -- a peak that has been given new urgency by the current civil rights protests triggered by the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings.

Yet, important as it is to right unresolved racist attitudes and actions, pandemic-wary-and-weary theater and movie goers are hungry for an occasional escape from more gritty, painfully true staged or screened narratives.

Fortunately, Sylvie's Love (available for streaming on Amazon Prime) has blossomed into life despite all those producers' turn-downs. Unlike so many plays and movies nowadays, it provides audiences with a beautifully acted, smartly crafted, enjoyable diversion. It's easy to fall in love with Sylvie and Robert, and root for their often star-crossed love to end happily ever after.

Unlike Tessa Thompson, her co-star Nnamdi Asomugha came to acting more recently. As Eugene Ashe was a musician before, so Asomugha was previously an athlete. Ashe's musicianship has greatly enriched the film and imbues it with a picture of the period's change in music as well as society generally. It also inspired Asomugha to learn how to play the saxophone to actually deliver the jazzy musical numbers.

Per the title, this is essentially Sylvie's story and Thompson does full justice to it. But thanks to her co-star, the superb ensemble cast and the savvy production team, Sylvie's Love is truly a triumph of collaborative excellence.

Best of all, Mr. Ashe clearly wants you to enjoy the visual glitz of the movies made during the Hollywood studios' glory days. But his creation of that world, with its beautiful clothes, elegant sets and happy-ending romance, is more than a lightweight entertainment. Those producers who thought it was incumbent on Black filmmakers to only tell more political stories got it all wrong.

Sylvie's Love does have a story that should apply a corrective brush to the fault line tarnishing those movies. While families like his own were prospering and living the American dream like the actors in those movies, the culture of the time did not cast Black people. And so, Ashe filled in the blank in that part of the Golden Era romantic canvas with Sylvie and Robert, who at the time of that Hollywood studio culture would have  been strictly on the outside looking in -- or perhaps offered roles as servants.

Now we get a chance to see them experiencing the same emotions, dreaming the same dreams and being too influenced by the cultural mores of the times to always make the right moves towards that happy ending. Thus Sylvie, raised in an upwardly mobile social environment with its own debutante balls for meeting prosperous husbands, makes the safe choice. The male attitude about supporting a wife almost sabotages that ultimate happy ending. Seeing only people who don't look like you admitted into a world you yearn to be part of may not be as horrid an example of racism as the deadly actions against Black people, but it is an injustice that needs to be corrected. Eugene Ashe's  correction. manages to be at once joyful and tearful.

Bravo!

If you missed Tessa Thompson in the darker and more race-conscious Passing, it's still available on Netflix. I re-watched it after seeing her as the luminous Sylvie and I was bowled all over again.