“Ava: The Secret Conversations” is the story of Ava Gardner, a Hollywood glamor girl pre-feminism. Elizabeth McGovern, the playwright and actor, is brilliant recreating a woman who somehow knew something was wrong with how the system and men treated her, but couldn’t quite figure it out. Women today would see her dialogue as a feminist cry of pain.
Dance programs always tell you what movements really mean. Poetic descriptions. But of course what matters is how you react to the movements.
So this production by “Taiwan Season: Trace of Belief” at the Edinburgh Fringe choreographed by Hsieh Yi-Chun is inspired by memories of temple processions and personal memories, including faith in a changing world, collective ritual vs individual will. Okay to see the dance through that prism. But I just love this company’s dance, which I have seen before at Avignon.
This biopic, written and performed by the masterful and accomplished British actress Alison Spilbeck at the Edinburgh Fringe, tells the story of the extraordinary Eleanor Roosevelt. To keep the interest of the British audience as this tours the UK, it is built around a wartime visit she made to London.
Mark Thomas is a British political actor. That means that the plays he performs in usually have strong social justice content. Sometimes in solo plays he brilliantly creates multiple characters. That is the case in “Ordinary Decent Criminal,” Written by Ed Edwards, directed by Charlotte Bennett, whose ironic title is explained near the end.
“Miles” at the Edinburgh Fringe is about the great jazz musician, his art and his life, Written and directed by Oliver Kaderbhai, it is not only a biography but a fascinating exploration of Miles Davis’s music with details that will fascinate jazz fans and musicologists. (Helps to know about flats and sharps.)
It’s a bankster thriller, doing to big-time financial charlatans what the play “Enron” did for corporate thieves. And more than that, it takes direct aim and hits the apparition of the capitalists’ god, Adam Smith. James Graham’s “Make It Happen” at the Edinburgh Theater Festival is a guidebook for how financial skullduggery works. And, directed by Andrew Panton, more entertaining than you’ll see on any financial pages.
Ever hear of the Cum-Ex scandal? Hint, it’s not about sex, it’s about money. There is so much financial corruption it’s hard to keep the stories straight. Eyes glaze over. And the mainstream media working with western governments generally lets the malefactors off the hook. (“Oh, so complicated!”)
This musical about the iconic painter Vincent Van Gogh at the Edinburgh Fringe brings a new political understanding as you see him at a workers protest.
Music, lyrics and book by Tony Norman, director and choreographer Sarah Dormady.
It’s a 1980s British tabloid story. “The Sun” (a Murdoch rag) sells 5 million copies on cheap paper whose ink comes off on 12 million readers’ hands. It also soils their brains. The foul-mouthed editor brags that he picks governments. And it is the venue for a stunning play by accomplished playwright-actor Henry Naylor. (It got one of the “Fringe First” awards given by “The Scotsman” to the five best plays out of more than 3,000 the first week of the Edinburgh Theater Festival Fringe.)
Australian choreographer Lewis Major at the Edinburgh Fringe presents an elegant, fluid, ethereal series of dances. In slow movements, bodies in black twist, bend, dip and turn to sounds that sometimes sound like a xylophone or the high notes of a piano, sometimes contemporary, sometimes classical.
Rick’s Bar (at the Edinburgh Fringe) features a chanteuse in gold gown (Jerry Burns), a fine jazzy voice filling the room with “You must remember this… As time goes by.”
A guy in a white suit murmurs, “Here’s looking at you kid.” He is Rick Blaine (Gavin Mitchell), owner of Rick’s Café. It’s 1941 and we’re in Vichy-occupied Casablanca. (Morocco was controlled by colonial invader France. So, the Nazis did not occupy Casablanca, but were there at the suffrage of their collaborators.)
“I Do” is a clever, too quirky to be really dark, but almost-dark video series by French writer/ director/ actor Nathalie Schmidt who subtly and comically skewers the talent for manipulation that imbues American culture. (And, of course, others, too.) Zoe Bloom (Schmidt) is a French singer who needs a green card and is looking for a husband to get her one. She seeks to get / persuade/ manipulate Americans to marry her but discovers they are just as good, in fact, superlative at the art.
“Call Me Izzy” is a feminist play about a rural Southern woman abused by her husband. But it’s not depressing. Jean Smart is brilliant as Izzy, stifled in a small Louisiana railroad town, her life a struggle between freedom and submission. The play is chilling but also invigorating, because Izzy finds solace and power in her identity as a poet. It is a solo performance, with Smart’s narrative telling the story.
The villains of this play were early conspiracy theorists who used techniques that have never gone out of style: viz the U.S. 1920s Red Scare, the 1950s McCarthy time and of course today when people with “wrong” ideas are jailed or deported. It’s where the phrase “witch hunter” comes from. The Red Rose Chain, a nonprofit theater in Ipswich, England, presented a chilling theatrical recollection of this time at 59E59 Theaters.
This play is about body image and politics. I’ll take the politics first. A group of Latinas at a dress-making workshop in Los Angeles succeed in a challenge to produce a big turnaround of dresses that a buyer wants because another producer suddenly failed. I like that. I want women to get ahead. And I like Estela (Florencia Cuenca), the feisty factory manager.
Jonathan Groff starts this jukebox musical about Bobby Darin as himself, saying he will tell Bobby Darin’s story. “I’m Jonathan, I’ll be your Bobby Darrin tonight.” The show indeed shows off the voice and pizzaz of Groff as he recreates Darin. He is every bit as good as a singer and performer.
The best thing about this play is Jasmine Amy Rogers’ star quality debut on Broadway as Betty Boop. The next best is the 17-year-old ingenue Angelica Hale as Trisha, a fanatic Boop fan. Rogers and Hale both have powerful voices and presence. Rogers’ is chirpy in a good way, which goes along with her New York accent.
This musical play by Will Aronson and Hue Park, set in South Korea, is about two robots who are sentient. That is taken for granted and not explained. In fact, they each have very different personalities, akin to real people. The only difference is that instead of food they get electric charges to survive. And they have liked being servants of humans. In fact, the male robot, Oliver (Darren Criss), loved his master, James. Calls him his friend. Claire (Helen J. Shen) had a complicated relationship to her master. If these servants were black slaves, the story would get quite a different reception.
This sci fi play is an allegory of how the U.S. military brainwashes recruits to make them kill even when they don’t want to. How it takes “normal” young men and turns them into killer “monsters.”
David Mamet’s play, staged on Broadway in 1984, getting a revival with movie star Kieran Culkin, pits a collection of real estate salesman against each other as if they were in an MMA combat. (That is mixed martial arts, for the non-cognoscenti.) A punch here, a kick there, blood on the ground. That is to say that under Patrick Marber’s direction, it is overwrought, overacted and implausible. The office and inhabitants resemble a mental institution more than a tough, competitive real estate sales office. This forty-year old play doesn’t age well.
Why would one want to do a play about a man trapped in cave in rural Kentucky in the winter of 1925? A true story. The book is by Tina Landau who also directed and presented it first in 1994 in Philadelphia. This is the Broadway premier.
This is the kind of theater piece I really don’t like except I really liked it! Portentous, pretentious, full of cymbals crashing. Tacky show girls with feather sequins and glitter. Tacky men with buttocks poking out of g-strings. This is Las Vegas! Maybe not.
It’s a charmer. A bit silly, but that’s part of the deal. If you’ve never seen a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, a charming take on British class oppression. Can those words go together? At a time when such subtlety was required. Still works.
“Sondheim’s Old Friends” is producer Cameron Mackintosh’s love letter to Stephen Sondheim’s greatest shows. Which he had produced. Better than a memorial service. For the rest of us, it’s also a chance to see Lea Salonga, a brilliant actor as well as singer.
It’s the Marilyn Monroe story, “Bombshell,” no really her story. Though it takes a while to figure that out. (Clues abound.) It starts in typical Broadway musical fashion with dance to jazzy music, with the Marilyn figure Ivy Lynn (Robyn Hurder), doing a “Let Me Be Your Star” number. Seems cliché. Disappointment. But wait!
