21 Friday Oct 2011
Posted in Broadway, Celebrity, How Very Odd
Celebrity casting is so September: vanity casting is where it’s at! Per today’s New York Times, the spunky Randi Zuckerberg (brother of the Facebook guy) has her sights on the Main Stem:
“Thanks to all of those Facebook stock options, [Zuckerberg] would also consider investing in a Broadway show–but only if she were given a small part.”
Well this should be interesting.
05 Wednesday Oct 2011
Posted in Books, Off-Broadway
We all know Chekhov’s famous rule (“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it”), and now it’s time for a 21st century update: “One must not put a cell phone onstage if no one is thinking of calling it.”
Gunshots and phone calls are pretty much the same thing in “The Submission,” which is taking absolutely no prisoners downtown at MCC. Our hero (antihero?) Danny, an ambitious playwright, gets his Chekhovian gunshot/phone call by the climax of this play, but by then shock and awe is hardly anything new; no—the flesh, guts, and gore start much early in this sharp-tongued story.
Danny has written a play, but he believes that its subject matter (a black family from the projects) will disqualify him from production: As a gay, white man, he’s hardly fodder for diversity, and feels he isn’t “allowed” to speak to the African-American condition. So he slaps an ethnic-sounding name on the play (“Shaleeha G’ntamobi”) and hires black actress to play him/her. And… cue the gunfire.
03 Monday Oct 2011
Posted in Off-Broadway
Zoe Kazan’s new play at MTC is called “We Live Here,” but I’m calling it “I Want to Live There”—John Lee Beatty’s set is so beautifully, fully realized that I left City Center with a severe case of real estate envy. His take on an upper middle-class New England colonial is the oh-so-right mix of elegance and hominess. Plus, all the levels that presumably help sightlines make it a dynamic, up and down space.
Do you do apartments, Mr. Beatty?
