The New York Observer » John Heilpern http://www.observer.com Just another WordPress site Tue, 14 Feb 2012 21:24:36 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Anything Goes at Shakespeare in the Park! I feel that I must reluctantly correct a serious error Oskar Eustis keeps making about his own theater.

The artistic director of the renowned Public Theater is known for his sometimes manic enthusiasm. He’s like the Music Man leading the parade while singing a rousing rendition of “Seventy-Six Trombones”—and no particular harm in that. But Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/anything-goes-shakespeare-park The Obama Effect … Wheee! It seems to me that the First Couple—of date-night fame—represent great news for theater lovers. They not only enjoy going to the theater; they do it together.

Were the Bushes ever theatergoers? Or the Clintons? Once in a blue moon, when absolutely necessary. True, Bill Clinton is known to recite entire chunks of Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/obama-effect-wheee Should a Fuss Be Made Over Colorblind Casting? "I was surprised—shocked, even—by the letter to The Times last Sunday that vigorously protested Phylicia Rashad being cast in the leading role of the white matriarch of August: Osage County. “Let’s keep white actresses playing white roles and blacks playing black roles,” Ronald Fernandez of Pittsburgh concluded sensationally.

His controversial letter raises a number of Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/should-fuss-be-made-over-colorblind-casting Tony S. at the Tonys I would like to begin my highly influential tips for the winners of this season’s Tony Awards with heartfelt congratulations to Dolly Parton.

Dolly has been nominated for Best Score of a Musical for the music and lyrics of 9 to 5. She isn’t going to win. I just think Dolly’s amazing.

On Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/tony-s-tonys My Plea to Directors: Quit Screwing With Beckett! There is, I believe, a catastrophic error of judgment in Anthony Page’s production of Waiting for Godot, starring Nathan Lane and Bill Irwin.

Samuel Beckett’s seminal Modernist masterpiece—first produced in America in 1956—is famously set in a void with only a near-barren tree (a Beckett tree: one too fragile upon which to hang yourself). But Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/my-plea-directors-quit-screwing-beckett Will New York Fall to The Norman Conquests? And so to the burning question: Which one of Alan Ayckbourn’s trilogy of vintage 1973 English comedies, The Norman Conquests at Circle in the Square theater, must you see?

The first, Table Manners, is my favorite. Not only is it consistently, irresistibly funny; it contains a dinner-party scene so blissfully hilarious that I was on Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/will-new-york-fall-norman-conquests I’m Tickled by Torture! Durang Deals Serious Comedy It's very good news that Christopher Durang, our Poet Laureate of the Absurd, has written a smashing new play.

Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater is a black farce that’s essentially about, well, torture, and a peculiar brand of American paranoia and bigotry—and I haven’t had such Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/im-tickled-torture-durang-deals-serious-comedy Move Over Lear! New Crazed King in Town It's a pleasure to acclaim Geoffrey Rush in Eugène Ionesco’s 1962 absurdist masterpiece Exit the King. Put simply, Mr. Rush is giving one of the greatest virtuoso performances I’ve ever seen.

And, in the best of all possible ways, it’s a daringly old-fashioned performance—the kind we feel exceptionally lucky to witness nowadays. From his first Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/move-over-lear-new-crazed-king-town Forever Fonda: Jane Looks Perky as Dying Patient in 33 Variations At the risk of seeming ungracious about Jane Fonda, I must confess that I didn’t quite recognize her when she first came briskly onstage at the start of 33 Variations. In her first Broadway role in 46 years, the star, at 71, looks simply marvelous! Not that I expected her to look anything less. But Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/forever-fonda-jane-looks-perky-dying-patient-33-variations Runyon Ruined: Snake Eyes for Revival of Guys and Dolls It doesn’t take a genius to know that what we need right now is a tonic. And what would do the trick better than Guys and Dolls, the greatest love letter ever written to New York City? The show is so good, Adam Gopnik enthused in a recent New Yorker, that it could be a Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/runyon-ruined-snake-eyes-revival-iguys-and-dollsi Uncle Vanya with Waterworks; Will Ferrell as Doofus in Chief Expression: Chew the scenery.

Definition: To act melodramatically; overact; ham it up.

We’ve all seen actors chew the scenery from time to time. It goes with the territory. But how many of us can claim to have seen an actor actually gnaw on a set?

My thanks to the Tony Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/uncle-vanya-waterworks-will-ferrell-doofus-chief Mary-Louise’s Bare Bum Had Me Hedda-ing for the Exits! Has a play ever been revived with more alarming frequency than Hedda Gabler (1890)? As Ibsen’s ghost was heard protesting in Kristiania, Norway, only last weekend: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.”

Hedda Gabler is apparently the only play that Henrik Ibsen ever wrote. While the derided revival by Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/style/mary-louises-bare-bum-had-me-hedda-ing-exits Gypsy Waves Goodbye; Becky Shaw Loses Focus; and The Cripple of Inishmaan Stands Tall Is there any job more weird than an actor’s?

I’m not so sure that all the world’s a stage, actually. Actors are different from you and me. They pretend to be other people via a state of deliberate amnesia.

It’s commonplace to say that actors must speak the lines as if for Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/theater/gypsy-waves-goodbye-becky-shaw-loses-focus-and-cripple-inishmaan-stands-tall Harold Pinter Enters the Silence Of the Long Pause To visit him in his Holland Park home was to enter unwittingly into a Pinter play. After greeting me at the door of his office—which was in a separate cottage in the grounds of the house Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2009/o2/harold-pinter-enters-silence-long-pause Only on Broadway: While the Economy Tanks, Ticket Prices Rise! Take the price of an orchestra seat for the new Read More

]]> http://www.observer.com/2008/o2/only-broadway-while-economy-tanks-ticket-prices-rise