Director Alex Timbers seems to have a penchant for period timepieces gone askew. He displayed this trait while directing previous productions such as Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson as well as the Tony Award-winning Peter Pan prequel, Peter Pan and the Starcatchers. He continues down this road with his latest production, the remake of the 1975 musical The Robber Bridegroom, an 18th century Southern romp inspired by a short story by Eudora Welty.
Unlike the typical Broadway show, director Bartlett Sher’s new revival of the iconic musical, Fiddler On The Roof, takes place in a white box setting with a highly reflective back wall, which allowed Tony Award-winning lighting designer Donald Holder the chance to play and sculpt with light in fun ways. “I got a lot of the responsibility for changing the space, of transforming it from one location to the other, one season to the next,” he tells PLSN. “It was real, pure storytelling through light. You don’t always get that opportunity. It was a challenge, but also a joy.”
All twenty-something slacker Dewey Finn wants to do is bring the rebellious spirit of rock ‘n’ roll back to the masses, but his stunted ambition and lack of income may force his friend/housemate Ned and his fiancée Patty to kick him out. However, when Dewey intercepts a temporary teaching assignment at the Horace Green prep school meant for his friend, he gets the opportunity not only to rake in some green but to teach some young kids the history of the genre and how to rock out and speak out against authority. They also enter a battle of the bands so that Dewey can live out his failed rock glory with them. But when the other teachers and parents discover his plans, their collective worlds are turned askew.
Veteran country music artist Marty Stuart once declared, “If country music had a Vatican, it would be the Ryman.” The venerated venue in Nashville has attracted a multi-generational cornucopia of music biz names to play its hallowed hall, which is known for its great acoustics. Everyone from Johnny Cash, Earl Scruggs and Robert Earl Keen to Aretha Franklin, ZZ Top and the Zac Brown Band has played there. It is often called the “Mother Church of Country Music” with good reason, and a recent expansion will help keep it an alluring Mecca for tourists and music fans alike.
The magic spectacle of The Illusionists — Live On Broadway recently offered that rare break from plays and musicals for something more offbeat and interactive. Featuring seven magicians with different skills — from the comedy hijinks of The Trickster to the death-defying stunts of The Daredevil to the fast-paced moves of The Deceptionist — the two-hour plus show is packed with all manner of dazzling illusions and is one of those rare shows that flies by. It begins its national tour in February.
The Tony Award-winning musical Spring Awakening has been revived on Broadway after six and a half years, but unlike many resurgent productions on the Great White Way, this one has had a whole extra dimension added to it. What started as a story about teenagers and adults (parents, teachers, and clergy) clashing over the way they communicate (specifically dealing with sexual repression) has now become a tale of deaf students and speaking adults at odds with each other over the same issues.
One of the highlights of this past summer’s New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) was Deep Love, a “ghostly rock opera” that chronicled a romantic quartet between a young woman named Constance, the ghost of her deceased lover (identified as Old Bones), and a young man named Friedrich, who has a dangerously possessive ex-lover named Florence.
Bryan Reesman expands his focus this month from Broadway to 11th Ave. and 34th St., the site of the Jacob Javits Convention Center and New York Comic Con, first launched at Javits by ReedPOP in 2006. This year’s event is set for Oct. 8-11, 2015. —ed.
When he designed the set for last year’s The Bridges Of Madison County, Tony Award winner Michael Yeargan fashioned a bridge out of pieces rolled on stage. With the current Tony Award-winning production of The King and I at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theatre, he has assembled four pairs of moving pillars to help create different room configurations for the King of Siam’s palace. The production co-stars Tony winner Kelli O’Hara as the English schoolteacher brought to teach the children of the proud King of Siam, and Ken Watanabe as the King, who learns life lessons from the schoolteacher as well.
Tony Award winner Scott Pask has tackled set design for large theatrical productions many times before, not to mention juggling multiple projects. He had five shows open this spring on Broadway, including the highly acclaimed Something Rotten!, the hilarious musical comedy about the birth of the musical genre in the Puritanical world of South England in 1595. The show was nominated for ten Tony Awards and won one for Best Featured Actor for the exuberant Christian Borle, and it is a true crowd pleaser that lovingly sends up the beginnings of musical theater through a satirical Shakespearean lens.
LD David Agress Sheds Light on the Inaugural Production
The New York Spring Spectacular that recently dazzled thousands of fans per show at Radio City Music Hall was a monster production — a Manhattan-focused extravaganza that encompassed numerous actors, the Rockettes, and impressive video and set pieces that took audiences from the depths of the subway system to the top of the Empire State Building.