Last Play You Saw

[(poco) Sforzando]

With 24,000+ posts to the "Last Movie You Watched" thread, it surprises me that no one has started a thread about seeing live theater. (Or theatre, if you prefer. I go back and forth between the two, though I feel "theatre" seems the more pretentious spelling.) I myself live about 50 miles east of New York City, on a 150-mile-long tongue of land called Long Island, and I frequently attend live plays both in the city and (much less expensively) on the island - where there are several surprisingly good local companies not to mention various college productions during the school year. This past weekend I saw a play in Manhattan on Saturday and one out in Easthampton, on LI's east end yesterday. In the past two or three months I've seen the following:

Steve Martin's "The Underpants," a farce that falls rather flat, being neither funny nor clever despite a good production in Easthampton.

Gregory Moss's "Indian Summer," a new play, a romantic triangle for three young people that I thought read like a good first draft but was not ready for prime time.

The musical "Annie Get Your Gun," a community theater revival in Brooklyn where the musical director is a friend of mine. The outstanding lead, Jennifer Prezioso, is a name to watch for.

Christopher Durang's "Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike," his clever spoof on all themes Chekhovian. This is in fact the fourth time I've seen it, including the original cast with Sigourney Weaver and David Hyde Pierce.

A decent local production of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya."

Tracy Letts's "Superior Donuts," in a well-acted local revival. I don't think the play one of his best, however, neither as intense as "August, Osage County" nor as dramatically compelling as "Bug."

"Shrek the Musical," in a good local revival where one of the cast members is an acquaintance of mine. The play, however, is not nearly as good as Sondheim's "Into the Woods," which is coming to a theater/theatre near me soon.

A new play, Jonathan Tolin's "The Forgotten Woman," which is actually about an opera singer and was fairly good. Add this to the small list of plays about classical music.

A nearly inept local revival of "The Pirates of Penzance," using a digitized orchestra which meant the singers were almost constantly missing their cues.

A somewhat better "Iolanthe" by the Long Island Gilbert and Sullivan Society. Still a pretty clunky job. If you can't do G+S with superb style, better not to do them at all. The live orchestra had considerable trouble with the parts.

Moises Kaufman's "Gross Indecency," about the sodomy trials of Oscar Wilde. This was done quite well by the local company I am hoping will do a staged reading of my own play on classical music. This tiny little barebones theater does some inspiring productions on a shoestring, and I remain a loyal subscriber.

A little festival of 1-minute plays expressly written for a group of actors aged 11-16. The 25 plays included the world premiere of my own "The Minute Waltz."

"Spring Awakening," the musical, done by high school students whose sincerity made up for any lapses in professionalism. I saw this on Broadway some years ago, where the live music was ear-splitting, and it benefits from greater intimacy. The musical, however, tends to idealize the young people vs. the adults, something that is not true of the Frank Wedekind original on which it is based.

A rather good "Much Ado about Nothing" by a local company.

Next up will be "The Golden Smile" by Yaakov Bressler, a new play that I first saw because a friend of mine was in it. In it, a group of inmates in a mental hospital put on a play of their own. I thought the first version was pretty much a mess, but I hear it's being revised and I will catch it either tomorrow (unless it rains), or on July 3.

So - any theatergoers here?

[Ken B]

Me, to disappoint you.

The Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. In Toronto. Kind Hearts and Coronets as a musical. Cute and fun, derivative music. Finished its run.

A Little Night Music, Sonheim, at Stratford. A couple small weak points but excellent overall. Still playing.

Shakespeare in Love, Stoppard, at Stratford. Well mounted. Lesser Stoppard. Much lesser. Still playing.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Me, to disappoint you.

The Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. In Toronto. Kind Hearts and Coronets as a musical. Cute and fun, derivative music. Finished its run.

A Little Night Music, Sonheim, at Stratford. A couple small weak points but excellent overall. Still playing.

Shakespeare in Love, Stoppard, at Stratford. Well mounted. Lesser Stoppard. Much lesser. Still playing.

Delighted to have you disappoint me.

I think "Night Music" one of Sondheim's best. Though there are several others I think one of his best, including "Sweeney," which I never saw on Broadway but has had three quite good local revivals on LI. "ALNM" had a good local revival out here last year too.

As for the Stoppard, I know the movie version well but haven't seen the play. Unlike Karl Henning, I very much like the movie, but for pure Stoppard, nothing IMO can match "Arcadia," an utter miracle of theatrical inspiration. I did see the Lincoln Center premiere c. 20 years ago with actors like Billy Crudup and Robert Sean Leonard, and to be honest I didn't understand a thing then. But I've seen two very good revivals since, one on Broadway 2-3 years ago and another at Yale University more recently. I really think it one of the great plays of our time, and if mounted again I'd go in a heartbeat.

[NikF]

Very little...

Comedy of Errors - Globe Theatre.
2015. An otherwise fairly amusing and swift performance that ground to a halt each time the actor playing Egeon had to deliver a line.

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My Name is Saoirse by Eva O'Connor - Tron Theatre.
Rural Ireland, 1987. Saoirse lives in a peach coloured bungalow with her Da and big brother Brendan. Her best friend is Siobhán, who has a glorious fountain of ginger hair, a whisper like a foghorn and an arse so big it distracts all the men at mass. After a night out drinking with the lads, Saoirse discovers her pregnancy and is forced to set out on a journey that will take her miles away from her home and the carefree adolescence she once knew.
- a quirky and semi-comedic look at Irish life, but failed to move the quirky and semi-comedic Irish part of me.

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Bard in the Botanics - Twelfth Night.  Shakespeare performed in a Glasgow public park.
I have tickets for the performance tomorrow night, but will no longer be attending.

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And I've recently been invited to spend a weekend during August at the Edinburgh Fringe, although I've no idea what's on.

[Ken B]

Delighted to have you disappoint me.

I think "Night Music" one of Sondheim's best. Though there are several others I think one of his best, including "Sweeney," which I never saw on Broadway but has had three quite good local revivals on LI. "ALNM" had a good local revival out here last year too.

As for the Stoppard, I know the movie version well but haven't seen the play. Unlike Karl Henning, I very much like the movie, but for pure Stoppard, nothing IMO can match "Arcadia," an utter miracle of theatrical inspiration. I did see the Lincoln Center premiere c. 20 years ago with actors like Billy Crudup and Robert Sean Leonard, and to be honest I didn't understand a thing then. But I've seen two very good revivals since, one on Broadway 2-3 years ago and another at Yale University more recently. I really think it one of the great plays of our time, and if mounted again I'd go in a heartbeat.

I agree about Night Music. It works as a theatre piece, which cannot be said of many of his things. A lot of brilliant songs in many pieces, but not amounting to a successful show. Which is odd since he always puts the dramatic effect of his song first. A Little Death has the most beautiful melody he ever wrote, her plangent song of shame, but he cuts it short because everyone in the play is a Swede who stifles their emotions, and she stifles hers.

We saw Sweeney in London with Ball and Imelda Staunton. Perfect. The director, Jonathan Kent, caught everything I have heard or read SS talk about in that play. I'd watch anything he directed.

Never seen Arcadia. Guess I should keep my eye open.

My wish is to see a Plautus performed. Never have found one.

[Brian]

I'll be a bystander here, sadly...have only seen, I think, four shows during four years here in Dallas, with a pretty poor batting average overall*. Not counting the Broadway show I saw on vacation in New York.

*in order of recency:
Vanya, Sonya, Masha, and Spike (interesting but not especially compelling to me)
whatever the David Sedaris one-man show about the Christmas elf is called (Christmas fluff)
The Odd Couple (I liked this kind of thing a whole lot more when I was ten years younger)
Avenue Q (now this was fun!)

[Ken B]

The play I recommend to everyone is Noises Off.

[(poco) Sforzando]

I'll be a bystander here, sadly...have only seen, I think, four shows during four years here in Dallas, with a pretty poor batting average overall*. Not counting the Broadway show I saw on vacation in New York.

Yes, but that show has to count for 10 times any normal one, seeing that nobody can get in. (I predict, however, that in a year or two "Hamilton" will be like the Dutch tulip craze in the 17th century, and when the bubble finally bursts, you'll be able to walk in for half price and wonder what the fuss was all about. If scalped tickets weren't going for $3,000 and more, would the experience be half as sweet?)

As for "Vanya," I have found it growing on me the more I grasp Durang's absurdist tendencies and the better I know the Chekhovian inspirations. And despite its popularity with regional theatres, it is one show that was clearly written to showcase its amazing original cast. You need a Sonya with a perfect Maggie Smith imitation, something that the original Kristine Nielsen had, a Spike who is as improbably beautiful as Billy Magnussen (but who also nails the character's combination of narcissism, dim-wittedness, but fundamental guilelessness), a perfect schlemiel like David Hyde Pierce as Vanya, a beautiful Bucks County farmhouse set, and perhaps above all a daring tongue-in-cheek style that I haven't quite seen in any of the revivals. This is one play I'd like to see filmed with its original actors, though I fear that a lot would be sacrificed as they wouldn't be able to resist making it into a "movie." That's what happened with Alan Bennett's "The History Boys" which was filmed with its original cast, though it's not hard to find a bootleg YouTube with most of the original stage version.

And "The Odd Couple" is kind of formulaic Neil Simon, just like "Barefoot in the Park." You start with two characters who are total opposites - the slob and the neat freak in TOC, the free-spirited wife and uptight husband in BITP (a play which must have been wonderful on Broadway decades ago with the original Jane Fonda and Robert Redford). After some conflicts the two sides come closer together and gradually start to share each other's characteristics. It's almost like a Hegelian synthesis. Still, those are two of his best plays.

(Oops - my mistake, Elizabeth Ashley was the original wife in BITP the play. Jane Fonda was in the quite-good movie, as was Redford.)

Also pretty good is "Lost in Yonkers," about Simon's experiences growing up in, believe it or not, Yonkers. I saw a good revival of that one a couple of months ago too, at the excellent Hampton Theatre Company in the deliciously named town of Quogue on Long Island. I also recently saw Simon's "Fools," "allegedly written as the result of an agreement Simon made with his wife during their divorce proceedings. She was promised the profits of his next play, so he attempted to write something that never would last on Broadway." This one was truly bad, and by bad I mean bad.

[Todd]

I try to see one play a season, and I was supposed to see Heidi Schreck's "Grand Concourse" last month, but a soccer match the same day literally took up all parking spaces within a three mile radius of the theater, so I missed it.  Last season I saw Ayad Akhtar's "The Invisible Hand", about a banker forced to invest on behalf of his captors, and it was good overall, if maybe a bit too simplistic about a few things.  The pacing is just about right for the subject matter, though.  Next season I'm keen on seeing Jordan Harrison's "Marjorie Prime" - I think I'll skip the film version until after I see the play.

When I peruse local offerings, I'm usually more interested in new or newer plays than the standard, ancient fare.  (I can always visit the nearly year-long Oregon Shakespeare Festival if I want some good bard.)  I have yet to find any specific themes or subject matters that interest me more than others.  There's no solo piano music equivalent in the world of theater for me, at least yet.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Next season I'm keen on seeing Jordan Harrison's "Marjorie Prime" - I think I'll skip the film version until after I see the play.

Is that being filmed? I had a ticket for the last performance in NY this past January, which turned out to be the same day as the worst snowfall in recent memory, when they even cancelled the matinee at the Metropolitan Opera. And so I couldn't get in.

[Todd]

Is that being filmed?

Looks like it is in the can.  Don't know the release date.

[(poco) Sforzando]

Never seen Arcadia. Guess I should keep my eye open.

My wish is to see a Plautus performed. Never have found one.

Arcadia may help you. It has a tortoise named Plautus.
http://www.nytimes.com/1995/03/31/theater/theater-review-arcadia-stoppard-s-comedy-of-1809-and-now.html

[Jo498]

Not sure if these still exist in the US but if you have an old-fashioned Grammar School around, they might perform a Plautus comedy (probably in Latin...)
(I have never seen such but I have the vague recollection that a theater group of some some local school did a Plautus comedy, although in German translation, I think.)

I rarely go out and if at all, it is usually for music. The last play I saw a few months ago was a production of Goethe's "Iphigenie auf Tauris" (similar plot to the Gluck opera and written almost at the same time, a first prose version stems from 1779, the same year as Gluck' Iphigenie en Tauride, the now common one in verse is from 1786). It was not bad, this piece is to ca. 70% focussed on the main character and the actress was good but they added a few silly and superfluous things.
I had the impression that even the typical college-educated public is about to lose the ability to understand and appreciate Goethe's language in such a piece with little action and a lot of enlightenment moral philosophy.

[Karl Henning]

I don't do this nearly often enough.

Last was five quarters ago, a very good high-school production of 42^nd Street.  A bit of meta-drama was, the female lead had to be hospitalized late the night before (serious, but entirely recoverable, and she is fine and flourishing), so the morning of the show which I saw, the production spent in "put-in" rehearsal with the understudy.

[Drasko]

I think I saw just four plays this season, all here in Belgrade.

Julius Caesar at Zvezdara Theatre, somewhat on the nose political reading with few good ideas, like the same actor playing Caesar and Mark Antony. Also had one of my favorite Serbian actors as Brutus, unfortunately actor playing Caesar/Antony had a rather poor night.



Othello  at Yugoslav Drama Theatre, a fairly minimalistic production by young up-and-coming director, again few interesting ideas (Othello in black/green/blue face changing color and intensity as events progress) but felt draggy at moments.



The Cherry Orchard at Yugoslav Drama Theatre, an elegant staging by well known veteran director. A fine production with slightly too exasperated Ranyevska for my taste.



Crime and Punishment at Stupica, my favorite this season, brilliantly pared down dramatization by great Polish director Andrzej Wajda with handful of actors and focus on two pivotal lengthy confrontations between Raskolnikov and Porfiry Petrovich. Here directed by young female director in appropriately lean fashion, with superb cast, especially Porfiry Petrovich.