We really don't care about theatre do we?

so uh what will be up in London, last week of November?

say, one West End and one smaller thing

or a classic and a gonzo brain-fryer

(pref to things i won't get in NY obviously)

Glenda Jackson as Lear, hmmmm

among the American comedy revivals opening soon in London: Kaufman & Hart's Once in a Lifetime and Murray Schisgal's Luv

I'm going to the king lear of glenda jackson and once in a lifetime in november - considering the children at the royal court which starts in november. have you looked at the national theatre? looking forward to seeing the red barn (david hare george simenon adap starring mark strong) next week which I think continues to the end of november but there may be other good things on then too

i got tickets for the 24 hour taylor after all. gonna be a thing.

Mark Rylance has a thing too

a thing he'd had in new york in 2013

didnt see it nor do i remember

anyone see this when it ran 3 years ago? i remember the reviews... West End transfer finally, and Phil Daniels!

https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/this-house

I thought it was great. I considered recommending it but I guess I thought it might be a little...specific?

i know a leetle about Brit politics of that era, having seen many punk documentaries :)

I've seen a couple of other plays by the same writer which were fine but not particularly good - this house I remember thinking was particularly good. brisk and funny with convincing (to me) specificity.

The Black Crook was super excellent
http://www.brooklynrail.org/2016/09/theater/debauching-many-a-pure-mind-the-return-of-the-black-crook

Taylor's 24 hour show had life changing qualities and i'm still unpacking

red barn bad btw

probly wouldn't have made my cut, but thanks

any small/indie London theatre recs? i have West End taken care of with This House... wil likely visit TKTS, see if The Children at Royal Court is available. but their web page doesn't seem to list non-WE stuff?

oh here we go

http://www.offwestend.com/

i've read good things abt the Pleasence Theatre

http://www.offwestend.com/index.php/theatres/shows/58

I can recommend Southwark Playhouse and the Almeida.

I don't have any particular recommendations at the moment - seeing the children in a couple of weeks. most of these "non-west-end" theatres, like the royal court and almeida, have their own sites and booking, although ATG groups together some incl donmar warehouse and trafalgar studios. almeida consistently good to very good and sometimes fantastic - depends when you're here as I think the current prod (which I liked) ends soon. southwark playhouse I have seen good things at but also some quite not good things. the king lear of glenda jackson at the old vic was good in parts - one part that was not good (was bad), sadly, was edgar. played by a grandson of patrick troughton. I realised later I'd seen him before in a not-great play by the guy that wrote this house.

Garrick prod of This House opened last night; on Monday I got a post-show-discussion w/ the playwright (who is ten tons of cute btw), director and cast as well. A very well-oiled, funny, energetic thing, and lucid despite all the 40-yo politics.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/this-house-garrick-theatre-review-james-graham-conservative-lib-dem-coalition-a7449831.html

the theatre designer i think i mentioned at some point at the lexington is rae smith, who was designer for the house (hadn't put two and two together here)

plus in other ppl-we-discussed-at-the-lexington news: i got an email out of the blue from former ilxor colin beckett the very next day!

i strongly disliked the Taylor mac distillation that i saw b4 it was completed

why? I'm a big fan.

you know, i think it would take me a long time to correctly articulate, but for now i would just leave it at i've never loved performance art! i was sort of dragged against my will....

it requires buy-in, that's for sure. Not for everybody!

^^truth

incidentally, i am seeing homos thursday
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/theater/homos-or-everyone-in-america-review.html
and the encounter at the end of the month
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/30/theater/the-encounter-review.html
and then six pieces at under the radar
http://publictheater.org/en/Public-Theater-Season/Under-the-Radar-2017/

the encounter pretty incredible if you like that kind of thing

i tend to!

suwm you woulda loved my performance art.

haha i'm sure :)

NYT rave for the Sunday in the Park with George revival so I guess that's my spring Broadway outing; just got a balcony ticket for April. August Wilson's Jitney is at the half-price booths every night so I guess I'll jump on that in the next 2 weeks.

My interest has been piqued by The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant at the New Ohio Theatre on Christopher St.

so is Lynn Nottage all that?

http://www.playbill.com/article/lynn-nottages-sweat-wins-pulitzer-prize-for-drama

i saw sweat and it was fine. it was pretty predictable; not entirely sure why this rocks everyone's world... especially against Taylor Mac's 24 hours which definitely did.

I saw a few Peter Hall stagings on Broadway in the '80s. Amadeus still strikes me as a gimmicky thing, but it was engineered with maximum cunning, and Ian McKellen's ham was well situated in it. Vanessa Redgrave was really full of mystery and desperation in Orpheus Descending, though as some of the Hall obits have said her Italian/Dixie accent was alien in ways perhaps unintended.

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-29467703

any Britfolk see this Long Day's Journey that's coming to Brooklyn? Jeremy Irons-Lesley Manville sounds pretty good to me. Casting of the brothers is crucial, though.

https://www.bam.org/theater/2018/long-day-journey-into-night

also this... Lear and LDJiN make for quite a twin stampede of the soul if done well

https://www.bam.org/theater/2018/king-lear

May as well dive into both, 7-8 dark hours.

Saw my first Ivo van Hove show this fall — A View from the Bridge at The Goodman. Had no idea going in if it would be high concept and shallow in character, but I was enthralled. Zero props in the whole show.

yeah, caek and I saw the NY run.

Never seen Lear onstage, LDJ twice in the '80s (Robards/Dewhurst/Campbell Scott; Lemmon/Spacey/Peter Gallagher).

I don't know why a third of the stage of the National Theatre's production of Network starring Bryan Cranston was a fully functioning restaurant, but it was pretty amazing to watch the play from the stage while eating a five course meal. Amazing, and confusing, not quite being able to devote my full attention to either the play or the food. The play? That was fine. Staging was fantastic, Cranston was great. It wasn't the revelatory satire it may have been in the 70s; I was thinking it would have been trivial to update it to a contemporary setting, but then realised that would have entirely lost the plus ca change theme which for me was the dominant element.

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/gallery/2018/jan/09/the-beauty-and-fascination-of-londons-theatres-in-pictures

really loved The Band's Visit with Tony Shaloub. a musical based on the 2007 Israeli film about an Egyptian band that mistakenly gets stuck in the wrong town (with a name similar to the one they're supposed to perform in) for 24 hours.

lots to like in a simple story more to do with themes and feelings. one of the more entrancing scores in recent memory too (kind of had the effect that Light in the Piazza had on me)

so I'm closing a production of Sondheim's Assassins right now, where I played Samuel Byck. It's been a very flawed, amateur production, one in which we had an abbreviated rehearsal schedule (10 rehearsals) due to a previous show being scrapped and this one being substituted last minute.

Here are some highlights from this troubled production (which, nonetheless, has been fun):

*Leon Czolgosz didn't say his own name correctly for two performances. The Balladeer sings it as "Jewgoz". Leon speaks and looks like Bob Ross.

*The production is filled with anachronisms, such as modern KFC buckets and beer cans for scenes from the 70s and a Lincoln scene featuring a newspaper with a picture of a car in it.

*They were supposed to build me a fake steering wheel to use in the second Byck "drunk driving" scene, which is customary, but didn't. so I had to mime a fake steering wheel.

*Giuseppe Zangara forgot all of his Italian last night, and just repeated the same line (something something "traverso te") over and over again for 5 minutes

*On opening night, after Booth asks why all redneck assassins have three names, Oswald is supposed to say his own name, but screwed up and said "John. W....(screams) AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

*Charlie Guiteau both stated on one night that he killed James Kennedy then introduced himself on another night as James Garfield.

*I drink actual Budweiser in the show, and forgot to tell the director we were out before this weekend, so I opted to pick it up myself, but accidentally bought bigger sized cans (16 ounces). wound up having 3 during the show as I was stressed out, and had a beer beforehand, so was semi-buzzed and fucked up the order of my last monologue.

*Balladeer, who admitted he was 'high as a kite' during last Friday's performance, was listening to music through headphones backstage, then made his entrance and did the entire scene with his headphones still on

*4 actors got in a loud, Noises Off style argument at the backstage curtain yesterday, heard by everybody in the audience.

good stuff

VERY Noises Off!

did the gunshots cause any audience 'accidents'?

Nah cos both prop guns busted tech week, director just replaced it with a sound effect