Because, let's face it, the man doesn't exactly pick the most commercial properties in the world as his vehicles. You don't get Neil Simon or Guys and Dolls. You get Chinese Coffee. You get Hughie. You get a fancified staged reading of Oscar Wilde's Salome, for God's sake! With that history, The Merchant of Venice must look like a Yasmina Reza play to investors.
Pacino got good notices overall for his Shylock when the Shakespeare work that critics never tire of calling a "problem play" ran in Central Park. The lucky stiffs who got in at the Delacorte got to judge the actor's work for free. The folks lining up for the transfer to Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre won't be as lucky. (Do I hear premium seating being roped off?) The limited engagement begins Oct. 19. The Public Theater, Jeffrey Richards and Jerry Frankel will present a limited 78-performance Broadway engagement of Merchant, which will continue through Jan. 9, 2011. Pacino is the only cast member announced to reprise his performance.
The Public, by the way, seems to be at Joseph Papp levels of Broadway business lately. In addition to the recently closed Hair, it will see in the coming months Broadway stagings of its Merchant and Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson. Merchant is also the first Shakespeare the New York Shakespeare Festival has sent to Broadway since The Tempest 15 years ago.
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photo by Joan Marcus |
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Complete casting has been announced for the national tour of Dolly Parton's Broadway musical 9 to 5, which opens Sept. 21 at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville.
The cast will be headed by three-time Dee Hoty (Footloose, The Will Rogers Follies) as Violet, Mamie Parris (See Rock City) as Judy and Diana DeGarmo (Hair, Hairspray) as Doralee Rhodes.
The Broadway staging of 9 to 5 played 148 performances and 24 previews.
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Times continue to be tough Off-Broadway. Due to a $167,000 deficit, Off-Broadway's Cherry Lane Theatre, under the artistic direction of Angelina Fiordellisi, will not produce works on its 179-seat mainstage for a year's time beginning in September.
Cherry Lane Alternative — the resident theatre company established by Fiordellisi in 1997 — will, however, continue to produce the Mentor Project at Cherry Lane's 60-seat Studio Theatre.
Also, Cherry Lane Alternative will no longer serve as the rental and managing agent for the theatre's two stages to other theatre companies and commercial productions, relinquishing those responsibilities to the newly established Cherry Lane Theatre Company.
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photo by Aubrey Reuben |
Ten years ago would be 2000, when Rebeck's The Butterfly Collection—about a novelist—ran at a Playwrights Horizons Off-Broadway, and was panned by the New York Times' Bruce Weber as being anti-men. It's a review that Rebeck has never forgotten, and has written and talked about many times since as being unfair. (One day Rebeck will write a play about the infamous review, with Weber as a character, mark my words.)
For the title role in the new production, Rebeck got a writer who has become better known in recent years as an actor, Michael Cristofer, author of The Shadow Box. (Cristofer must get a special asterisk next to his name as the only Pulizter Prize-winning playwright to regularly appear on the stage.) Also in the cast are the just-plain-actors Kathryn Grody, Stephen Barker Turner, Liam Craig, Mary Bacon and Jennifer Ikeda.