The Bad News: Broadway Revival of 'Godspell' to Close - NYTimes.com

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/the-bad-news-broadway-revival-of-godspell-to-close/?pagemode=print[6/14/2012 9:25:32 AM]

Sara Krulwich/The New YorkTimes Hunter Parrish in theBroadway revival of “Godspell.”

JUNE 13, 2012, 10:00 AM

The Bad News: Broadway Revival of ‘Godspell’ to Close

By DAVE ITZKOFF

The annals of Broadway may have plenty of room for musicals with religiousthemes and stories inspired by the Gospels, but the summer season doesnot. The producers of the Broadway revival of “Godspell,” the pop musicalloosely based on parables from the New Testament, said late Tuesday evening that the production willplay its final performance at the Circle in the Square Theater on June 24.

This revival of “Godspell,” which features a score by Stephen Schwartz (“Wicked,” “Pippin”) and a bookby John-Michael Tebelak (who created the show as a master’s thesis project for Carnegie MellonUniversity, and directed its Off Broadway, Broadway and other incarnations), began performances onOct. 13 and officially opened on Nov. 7.

Reviewing this production, which featured an updated book and lyrics and new orchestrations byMichael Holland, and which starred Hunter Parrish (“Weeds”) as Jesus, Charles Isherwood wrote in TheNew York Times that the cast “virtually never stops bopping, bouncing, bounding, even trampoliningacross the stage and up the aisles of the theater.” He added, “It’s like being trapped in a summer camprec room with a bunch of kids who have been a little too reckless with the Red Bull.”

Corbin Bleu (“High School Musical”) replaced Mr. Parrish in the show in April, and performed with thecast in a number at the Tony Awards ceremony on Sunday night. But the production was not nominatedfor any awards there, and grossed only $156,437 for the week ending June 10, playing to only 45.8percent capacity. This “Godspell” will have played 30 previews and 264 regular performances at itsclosing.

Woody Harrelson, as Director and Co-Writer, Coming to Off Broadway - NYTimes.com

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/.../13/woody-harrelson-as-director-and-co-writer-coming-to-off-broadway/?pagemode=print[6/14/2012 9:26:35 AM]

JUNE 13, 2012, 1:29 PM

Woody Harrelson, as Director and Co-Writer, Coming to Off Broadway

By PATRICK HEALY

Matt Sayles/Associated PressWoody HarrelsonIn the summer of 1983, when an acting career was still just a dream, Woody Harrelson workedconstruction in Houston and met a play’s worth of colorful characters, including an aspiring writer fromHarlem named Frankie Hyman who became his best buddy on the scaffolding. That fall Mr. Harrelsonheaded for New York to try to break into theater, only to hit dead ends. As with many struggling actors,his thoughts turned to writing his own scripts, and he found himself thinking back to that summer inHouston – though it would take more than 25 years, and a collaboration with Mr. Hyman, to finish theplay he had in mind.

Their dark comedy, “Bullet for Adolf,” which had its world premiere in Toronto last year, will beginperformances Off Broadway at New World Stages on July 19 and run through Sept. 9. Mr. Harrelson,who went on to win an Emmy Award on “Cheers” and receive two Academy Award nominations, for“The People vs. Larry Flynt” (1996) and “The Messenger” (2009), will also direct the production.

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Mr. Harrelson said the play was set in Houston during hissummer working with Mr. Hyman, featuring characters based on real people but “a totally fabricatedstory.” He and Mr. Hyman, who reconnected in 1993 and have been close since, spent years kickingaround ideas for a plot until drawing inspiration from a story Mr. Harrelson had heard about a WorldWar II artifact, which provides the play’s title. The plot deals primarily with friendship and argumentsabout race and sex, with the central characters being stands-ins of a sort for Mr. Harrelson and Mr.Hyman.

“This was the play I really wanted to write back in ’83, when I was depressed in New York and gettingready to move back home with my mom,” said Mr. Harrelson, whose first big break in theater came thenext winter when he was cast as an understudy in the Broadway production of Neil Simon’s “BiloxiBlues.” “So, look, I’m really excited about this happening now, but I’m really scared too. This is a bigdream for me, to put this play up in New York. I’ve wanted to do it forever.”

Mr. Harrelson said he and Mr. Hyman felt great about the Toronto production last year but had beenrewriting the play on and off since then, focusing especially on a 25-page dinner party scene at the endof Act I. “There’s a lot of irreverent humor there, edgy humor, but there’s also some stuff that feels alittle overwritten, and some stuff in the play’s final scene that we’re trying to land better,” said Mr.Harrelson, who previously directed plays in Minneapolis and Toronto. “But the play is a comedy, so thegood thing in Toronto was, the people were laughing hysterically. It was one of the best experiences I’veever had, to sit in the audience and hear that.”

The cast includes a mix of New York and Canadian actors, including Marsha Stephanie Blake, RaulCasso, Brandon Coffey, David Coomber, Shamika Cotton, Shannon Garland, Chris Myers and Nick

Woody Harrelson, as Director and Co-Writer, Coming to Off Broadway - NYTimes.com

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/.../13/woody-harrelson-as-director-and-co-writer-coming-to-off-broadway/?pagemode=print[6/14/2012 9:26:35 AM]

Wyman.

Hire a Vet? Forget That. Adopt One Instead. - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/.../theater/reviews/luther-by-ethan-lipton-at-here-arts-center.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[6/14/2012 9:23:51 AM]

June 13, 2012THEATER REVIEW

Hire a Vet? Forget That. Adopt One Instead.By CATHERINE RAMPELL

Can a man who kills other men for money retain his humanity? What if his employer is the United Statesgovernment?

This question, as it pertains to the psychological and sociological fate of American veterans, is one that thecountry has never been quite comfortable answering, especially now that less than 1 percent of Americans servein the military. Suicides among active-duty soldiers are at a record high, and only about three-quarters ofveterans who served after Sept. 11 have jobs. Disturbing stuff, certainly, but what can disconnected civilians doabout it? Slap bumper stickers on our minivans?

“Luther,” running at Here Arts Center as part of the Clubbed Thumb Summerworks 2012 festival, offers a morevisceral alternative.

In this wine-dark satire, families adopt veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder to help them make thetransition back into civilian life. In this alternate universe the adopted veterans hold a social status that fallsbetween pet and child, while bourgeois “parents” coo over their own generosity toward America’s displacedheroes.

It is a bizarre conceit and a disturbing one. But it’s one that Ethan Lipton’s trenchant script and Ken RusSchmoll’s pitch-perfect direction deliver masterfully.

Ominous though the play’s premise is, laughs are elicited effortlessly from the most casual of dialogue. Initiallythe plot appears relatively banal: well meaning, the high-strung parents Marjorie and Walter (Kelly Mares andGibson Frazier) decide to take Luther — the infantilized veteran who sleeps on their couch — to a companyparty.

Unfortunately Luther (Bobby Moreno, as a disarmingly guileless killing machine) is not quite ready for primetime. Consequences both hilarious and horrifying ensue.

Most of the play oozes with a moral ambiguity that will stick to your bones and your conscience long afteryou’ve left the theater. It’s only in the last scene that Mr. Lipton succumbs to that dangerous dramatictemptation toward didacticism, clubbing his audience over the head with a long monologue about free will andthe evils of war.

But in an otherwise excellent play that explores how we alternately demonize, deify and finally ignore ourwounded warriors, perhaps one misstep is allowed.

June 13, 2012

Christopher Plummer, on screen and on stage at 82 By MARK KENNEDY

NEW YORK (AP) — Hitting 82 hasn't meant Christopher Plummer is slowing down. In fact, he seems to be hitting the gas.

"I've never worked as hard as I have in my life at the present time and I think it's wonderful," the oldest Oscar winner says. "It keeps me on my toes. It keeps me young. It keeps my memory going."

Plummer, who helped present at the Tony Awards on Sunday and who thrilled Nina Arianda by handing her a best actress award, is preparing for his stage performance in "The Tempest" to be shown in hundreds of movie theaters on Thursday. Later this fall, his "Barrymore" will hit movie screens across the world.

And in between, he's spilling his guts: Plummer will this month present "A World or Two," an autobiographical one-man show about his favorite writers at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, Canada.

"It's a celebration of language, is really what I call it and how it influenced me from the time I was very young right through my life," Plummer says. "Each decade there are poets and prose writers who have influenced me."

Plummer lists some of them: Stephen Leacock and A.A. Milne to Ben Jonson and Ogden Nash and Rudyard Kipling. The show, which Plummer has previously performed for charity functions, has been sharpened under the direction of Des McAnuff, the artistic director of the Stratford Festival.

"It sort of rides right through my life, from the love interests, to middle age and to death and then back again so that they cycle is complete," says Plummer. "It's really quite personal now. I'm a little bit scared that it's too personal. But it never can be."

Plummer has enjoyed a vibrant late-career push that has included his first two Oscar nominations in the past three years. He won this year for his role in "Beginners" as Hal Fields, a museum director who becomes openly gay after his wife of 44 years dies.

Now two of his stage roles are hitting movie screens — "The Tempest," which was recorded live over two days in the summer of 2010 by McAnuff at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and his "Barrymore," a two-person play exploring the life of actor John Barrymore that earned Plummer his second Tony in 1997.

"He is a force of nature. He is the tempest itself," says McAnuff. The two have been friends and collaborators for years, and McAnuff is still stunned by the energy and skill Plummer delivers. Right after winning the Oscar, McAnuff called Plummer to congratulate him, but all Plummer wanted to do was talk about his one-man show. "He's got an insatiable appetite for hard work and for creativity."

The irony is that Plummer has always been reluctant to allow his stage performances to be captured on film, other than archival footage.

"I don't like it because it's always so cold. There's a barrier between you and the audience, which the screen always puts up, and so it loses a lot of its immediacy generally. So I don't approve really of just filming a play just straight on as it is."

Instead, both "The Tempest" and "Barrymore" are more than just point-a-camera-at-the-stage recordings. In Shakespeare's play, which Plummer calls the Bard's most cinematic, the cameras swoop about the stage, creating close-ups and long shots.

In "Barrymore," which was filmed over seven days in and around the Elgin Theater in Toronto, director and adapter Erik Canuel used an empty theater for some scenes and filmed others in alleyways. Plummer says the piece got more laughs in front of a live audience, but becomes more emotional on screen.

For both, the actor is pleased, even if he wishes he had more time on each. "I think film does the play justice in both cases. 'Barrymore' is more filmic, but some of the magic does come through very well in 'The Tempest.'"

As for his own magic, Plummer hopes it keeps flowing. He laughs at all the celebrations and accolades he's lately accepting. "I think that's because I'm getting old. They're sort of saying, 'Oh, we better give it to him now otherwise he'll drop dead.' There's a sort of guilt thing, I think."

___

Online:

http://www.TheTempestHD.com

http://www.barrymorethefilm.com