Friday, April 26, 2024
What Would Tilda Swinton Do is an ode to the underground, to the spirit of hedonism and to the irrepressible urge to push conventional boundaries. It’s a personality driven performance art, musical, Venus flytrap. The cheeky exuberance of the four artists draws you into their vortex with the hypnotic, curled finger of Beelzebub. You are more than willing to jump on the back of their “Bikerbraut” vibrating machine and head off into the night on the strains of their “lazy punk” groove. What Would Tilda Swinton Do is what happens when actors, musicians, artists and outsiders climb into the king sized
Month: August 2018
Worse Than Tigers at New Ohio Theatre
Worse Than Tigers is a bone-chilling, panic-attack inducing, primal, bloody, life resuscitator…and its funny. It’s a theatrical “Black Mirror”. What happens when we anesthetize ourselves from all of our feelings, cauterize all emotions and live in a “safe” controlled, flatlined existence? Will our demons and dark sides make their presence felt at all costs? Will emotions literally coming knocking at our door? This play is a discourse on the repercussions of repressing all “negative” feelings. It’s sneaky. It engages your intellect with complex, clever, funny dialogue revealing marital detachment, and then it pounces like a stalking animal that’s been biding
‘Red Emma and the Mad Monk’ at The Tank
Pre-teen Addison (Maybe Burke) likes history. Specifically, the last Romanovs and their spiritual adviser Gregory "The Mad Monk" Rasputin (Drita Kabashi). Out of loneliness and passion for a subject most of her peers will most likely never share even if they register Republican, Rasputin is a constant, real, and very funny friend. Their fantastical relationship with each other and Russian-American activist Emma Goldman (Imani Pearl Williams) is the basis for Alexis Roblan's Red Emma and The Mad Monk. The entertaining historical musical comedy-fantasy is now at The Tank following its 2017 world premiere at Ars Nova's ANT Fest. Red Emma and The Mad
Dance: The Sarasota Ballet at the Joyce
The Joyce's closed it's 2017-2018 season with the return of The Sarasota Ballet. With Dimensions Dance Theatre of Miami visiting in June and Sarasota Ballet last week, New Yorkers and Tri-Staters got a good look at Florida's thriving dance scene. (Miami City Ballet comes to City Center in the fall.) The August 18 matinee exemplified the excitement with a ballet not seen locally in a decade, another glimpse at the company's enviable Frederick Ashton repertory, and a guest appearance by Marcelo Gomes. Program B opened with Christopher Wheeldon's There Where She Loved. Created for The Royal Ballet in 2000, it was last
Feature: Leonard Bernstein’s Secular Liturgical Music
Saturday, August 25 is the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein's birth. During the upcoming weekend, Tanglewood, the Boston Symphony's Berkshires summer home where "Lenny's" conducting career began as a student in 1940 and ended with his last concert months before his death in 1990, and London's BBC Proms offer non-stop Bernstein. The classical music streaming service Medici.tv is offering a week of Bernstein archival footage and documentaries. For those who want to keep the music going there is Sir Antonio Pappano and the The Santa Cecilia Orchestra's new release of Lenny's three symphonies. Additionally, since musical milestones are aimed at
LOVE at ICE Factory, New Ohio Theatre
You’ll LOVE it! It’s Meredith Monk meets Laurie Anderson meets Urban Word meets Meryn Cadell meets Spalding Gray to create a spoken word duet that riffs on where we seek, find and lose love. It is a wellspring of tender and feisty fragments of Love stories in all of its guises. Vichet Chum and Laura Gragtmans’ work epitomizes good old fashioned great storytelling with an atmospheric, original underscore that transforms the heartbeat of inner anxiety and desire into sound waves, rhythms and repetitions. It’s a happy marriage of “wordsmithing” and technology, visual dazzle and aural titillation, skilled performers and onstage chemistry.
A Sequel To Fiddler On The Roof: Alexandra Silber’s Novel, “After Anatevka”
The first musical I was ever involved with in any capacity was as a freshman in high school helping with the production of, "Fiddler on the Roof". Since then the show has always held a very noteworthy region in my heart. Fiddler on The Roof was and is just about the most significant piece of musical theater ever. It's themes and stories still remain relevant today and reflects that with the worlds ever growing refugee and immigration conflicts. A sequel to a musical is rare and often hasn't worked. But unlike other musicals Fiddler leaves you with so many unanswered
Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra Presents Requiem, Piano Concerto No. 21
This past Saturday, August 11th, 2018, presented a transcendently commemorative close to 2018’s Mostly Mozart Festival. With esteemed conductor Louis Langrée at the helm, the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra and Concert Chorale of New York partnered with an accomplished group of soloists to bring three of Mozart’s most beloved works to life: Meistermusik, Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K.467, and Requiem. The evening opener, Meistermusik, served as an abbreviated sample of Mozart’s contribution to masonic music, with an approximate length of six minutes. As mentioned in Christopher H. Gibbs’ program notes, the composition was structured around a Gregorian chant
Wars of the Roses: Henry VI & Richard III at 124 Bank Street Theatre
In 1963, Peter Hall and John Barton crafted a defining trilogy - The Wars of the Roses, out of the texts of Richard III and the three parts of Henry VI. It was a production that would bring global attention to the newly formed Royal Shakespeare Company. In 2015, director Trevor Nunn attempted a similar feat with his production of The Wars of the Roses which was a 9-hour experience of these four plays, that took place on an entire Saturday. In Austin Pendleton’s 2018 production of Wars of the Roses: Henry VI & Richard III he compresses Henry VI part 3
The Hole at ICE Factory, New Ohio Theatre
The Hole is one of the most powerful productions I have ever seen. I know in the future when this show achieves its meteoric success, I will remember fondly that I got to see its magnificence before the ticket prices were Hamilton impossible. It’s that perfect confluence of a sagacious playwright, astounding performers and an intuitive director. I was totally absorbed in every single moment, character transformation and life lesson – I was literally on the edge of my seat, craning forward towards the action, unable to look away. Zhailon Levingston has written this piece in the blood of our time.