We really don't care about theatre do we?

really. ugh. hate when that happens.

The Flick is well acted, funny, cleverly structured; I liked it. Really though, Pulitzer? What was in the pool that year? (Don't feel compelled to research.)

morbs u go out a lot, i feel like

yep! in NYC i feel like staying home alone is... why? unless someone else is there or baseball is on.

THANK YOU

heading to a flick discovered through morbius later - the royal road - & belatedly remembered i'd played a part in inflicting the flick, was potentially liable for a part-refund, &c. really glad you liked it. you know more about pulitzer credentials than i do but i feel like the sharpness and focus and at least noteworthy freshness of form make it pretty eligible. i just thought it was so strong, though. mapping the various heartbreaking dynamics of the three of them, & hanging this on generally sparse or ostensibly benign dialogue, it just felt like such a masterful balancing act to me.

Anyone in NYC want to check out a one-woman play written by and starring one of my college classmates and then tell me if it's any good?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/15/theater/review-in-this-is-mary-brown-mom-has-troubles-but-is-quite-a-character.html?_r=0

looks cool. been curious to check out La MaMa.

Earlier this year, in May, I saw three theater productions in three days. But I guess I didn't care enough to mention it on this thread.

what'd you see?

These three productions were part of the repertory season of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, OR, which has a pretty good rep as regional theater goes. My wife and I saw:

Fingersmith, an adaptation of the novel of the same name, very much a plot-twist driven play. We saw it the first night and it was a middling production and a somewhat flawed play. It was performed in bad cockney accents and never wholly committed to being either melodrama or naturalistic drama, and wound up neither fish nor fowl. It had its moments, and the audience lapped it up, but I never got into it.

Pericles, a seldom performed Shakespeare play that we read aloud to one another just prior to seeing it. The first three acts of the text were probably not written by WS, or if they were, he wrote them when he was still a cack-handed apprentice. The fourth act improved to a level of fair competence and the final act was fully mature Shakespeare. This production made a lot of judicious cuts to original, abridged it to two acts, added several songs not in the original, and astonishingly made a pretty good play out of it. Quite enjoyable work. Would recommend.

Secret Love in Peach Blossom Time, a play first produced in Taiwan a couple of decades ago, that became a hit. The playwright directed this production in Ashland. It's a mashup of a tear-jerking drama and farce, on balance favoring the farce over the drama by about two-to-one. This one was delightful. The pacing was a thing of beauty.

wow that sounds good

Did anyone see the stage version of let the right one in in nyc? I was the assistant designer on that. I just want to know if I got a credit hah

ha no but that sounds amazing!

lol, this fucken moran
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/exclusive-meet-the-guy-who-tried-to-charge-his-phone-on-stage-at-hand-to-god-353020

Silvestri returned to his seat with his smart phone, but the drama wasn't over yet. "The head guy came down and started yelling at me in front of my family and the whole place. My mother kept saying, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry,' and they finally let us us stay and watch the play."

And what did he think of Hand to God? "We enjoyed the show. I'm not much of a play guy, but it wasn't bad."

Did he ever get to charge his phone?
"No."

In retrospect, what would he say to the cast? "Hey, I'm sorry if I delayed your show five minutes. But you got a lot of attention from this, so maybe I made your show a little better [better known]."

i was in the middle of a monologue on stage on monday and someone's phone rang - it actually took them ages to find it and end it too. it's a v small space and it felt too intimate for me to just ignore it, so i kind of just held character and stared at her until it stopped.

phone charger old news, eclipsed by LuPone

"I am so defeated by this issue that I seriously question whether I want to work on stage anymore. Now I'm putting battle gear on over my costume to marshall the audience as well as perform."

http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/09/entertainment/feat-patti-lupone-cell-phone/index.html

The Flick is well acted, funny, cleverly structured; I liked it. Really though, Pulitzer? What was in the pool that year? (Don't feel compelled to research.)

Fun Home lost out to The Flick in 2014 (haven't seen either).

at the monthly gay club i run with my friend we don't allow anyone to use their phones on the dancefloor. you get asked to leave the dancefloor and permanently barred if you refuse.

i find it astonishing that someone would actually look at their phone during a show, rather than say forgetting to turn it off.

it's routine at movies in NYC. doing it on Broadway takes balls esp at those prices.

yeah, but tourists
concerts are now officially the worst; people arrive with their fucking arms extended and phones on

^lifelong idiot NYers fully capable of this behavior.

My pal's son Will is in this, alas sold out already, w/ other recent LaGuardia grads:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanne-rendell/theater-on-their-own-terms_b_7785570.html

my aunt wants to take me to something called JOHN at Signature NYC on Aug 8 but it's about young struggling love blegh

trying to figure out something else

it's by the playwright/dir of The Flick, surm, big dual profile in the Sunday Times

she can take me! j/k

in addition to Christopher Abbott, the legendary Lois Smith is in it i think. the reg tix are just $25 anyhoo.

oh u hafta subscribe for the discount, that figgers

http://www.signaturetheatre.org/tickets/production.aspx?pid=4241

yeah she's insisting on it Morbs. she's like do you want to bring your bf? i'm like ... no

btw The Flick just extended here thru January 10.

iiinteresting

Finally got on the Jerusalem bandwagon, fantastic. Amazing character and performance. Let down a little by my crappy restricted view seat. Wonder what A Farrell of this parish thought...

Hah, I don't think I was much of this parish at that point.

I thought it was fantastic, one of the best things I've seen, and it gave me a lot of Thoughts about England, particularly as contrasted with Britain. It strikes me as secretly being partially about the Criminal Justice Act, and I really wish I could discuss it with the dude I know who I am pretty certain has strong firsthand views on such things (and may have joked about being the kid on the gatefold of Songs For the Jilted Generation), but I'm pretty certain he didn't see it. I mean, the dude is doing okay, he has a canal boat now, but he doesn't see a lot of £50 plays.

Has anyone seen The Trial as a play? What was it like?

The answer is now yes, Rory Kinnear in the Young Vic production. It was pretty good. Wasn't convinced at first, it started out like a lurid bedroom farce interspersed with brief monologues in a strange kind of joycean proto-language. But it got increasingly nightmarish, though no less lurid - the hints and elided scenes of sex in the novel were dragged into the full glare of our hypermediated and hypersexualised environment - and it had a real sense of bewilderment and persecution. It did pull a punch with the death scene though.

Benedict Cumberbatch thought it (or Kinnear) was worth a standing ovation.

Well if Cumberbatch likes it then who are we to disagree?

Well they're probably bezzie mates so it would have been rude of him not to. Kinnear was very good though, as was Kate O’Flynn playing multiple roles.

i thought the trial was very good - i liked kinnear, don't normally like him, and kate o'flynn was amazing. the set was great. one drawback was that the music was poor and very clichéd, i felt.

i didn't like the clockwork orange style proto-language - i thought that was pretty stupid and didn't add to it

Can't say I'm a fan of Clockwork Orange-speak either :-( Hopefully that didn't elbow Kafka's phrasing too much.

I'll find out in a couple of weeks.

Stage director Peter Brook is revisiting The Mahabharata, his nine-hour epic stage production from 1985, as part of the Young Vic's new season.

The new play Battlefield, will focus on one section of the epic, dealing with the aftermath of a military conflict.

It will premiere in Paris on 15 September before coming to the Young Vic in February.

I'm in.

Well, Marc Maron has a post about loving Annie Baker's The Flick and John and interviewed her for an upcoming show, so maybe she'll be reaching a broader audience soon. Maybe the first mainstream "cool" playwright since Kushner?

lin-manuel miranda begs to differ

Oh, that's true.

Did manage to catch The Trial and liked Kate O'Flynn in those multiple roles of hers.

The mix-up of tenses from Kinnear did add a level of risk. I want to read the book and see if it adds anything -- Kinnear did convey someone who is kinda meek and shy and then has to break out of himself (which Kafka as a person has never done) to attempt to survive (which, again, Kafka himself didn't do).

http://www.npr.org/series/98679384/first-listen

The cast recording for Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton is an NPR First Listen

on first contact of song one, i really don't like it!

I was disappointed too, but haven't listened to the rest.

I will cop to being predisposed to dislike this but i have made a promise to myself to listen to it in its entirety before year's end

Man, big year for Ivo Van Hove in NYC: Bowie musical, A View from the Bridge, The Crucible (with Tavi Gevinson).

Christ, Hamilton. I'm guessing it works onstage, but it sure is hard to take on first listen.

seeing Helen Lawrence next week, STOKED
http://www.bam.org/theater/2015/helen-lawrence

opening night tonight for mary poppins; i will be wearing a headset and saying things like "projection standing by for flight" and "fuck".