But a thorough beat-down by Stephen Sondheim of the upcoming Broadway production of Porgy and Bess in the pages of the New York Times is not just any letter to the editor.
Sondheim read a recent feature about the production in the Times and didn't much like what the principals in the venture — director Diane Paulus, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, who's sprucing up the book by DuBose Heyward, and star Audra McDonald — had to say about the iconic 1935 Gershwin folk opera. The creative team has been very open about their intension to rework the classic so that it might better appeal to a modern, musical-theatregoing audience. But Sondheim was having none of it.
"The article by [Patrick] Healy about the coming revival of Porgy and Bess is dismaying on many levels," wrote the composer. "To begin with, the title of the show is now The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess. I assume that's in case anyone was worried it was the Rodgers and Hart Porgy and Bess that was coming to town. But what happened to DuBose Heyward? Most of the lyrics (and all of the good ones) are his alone ("Summertime," "My Man's Gone Now") or co-written with Ira Gershwin ("Bess, You Is My Woman Now"). If this billing is at the insistence of the Gershwin estate, they should be ashamed of themselves. If it's the producers' idea, it's just dumb. More dismaying is the disdain that Diane Paulus, Audra McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks feel toward the opera itself."
photo by Aubrey Reuben |
McDonald caught Sondheim's whip, too. "Ms. McDonald goes on to say, 'The opera has the makings of a great love story … that I think we're bringing to life.' Wow, who'd have thought there was a love story hiding in Porgy and Bess that just needed a group of visionaries to bring it out?" (When Sondheim is mad in print, he can be very funny.) There's a lot more I could quote, paragraphs more and I would really love to. Really I would. Because it's great copy. But let's just say it was a bad day in Porgy-ville. No one likes to get dressed down by the most famous and talented man in the American theatre.
Of course, there was a response by Paulus. And of course that was printed in the Times, too. The director is currently in rehearsals in Cambridge, MA, where Porgy and Bess begins previews Aug. 17. Her statement said, "The entire creative team and cast have the most enormous love and respect for Porgy and Bess, and we are grateful for the support and encouragement we have received from the Gershwin and Heyward Estates for this production." Short and sweet, and rather approved-by-legal sounding. Not a defense of the approach, but then what do you say when Sondheim takes you out to the woodshed? Just shut up, keep your head down, and soldier on. And if the box office ticks up because of the feud, you quietly smile.
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Catch Me If You Can, which officially opened at the Neil Simon Theatre April 10, will play its final performance on Broadway Sept. 4. When it closes, the new musical will have played 32 preview and 170 regular performances, which places it a far distant second to the first musical by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, Hairspray. The first national tour of Catch Me will launch in fall 2012 at the Providence Performing Arts Center in Rhode Island.
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Rent, the famous Broadway rock musical about a group of boho friends, lovers and artists in the age of AIDS which ran on Broadway for years following its 1996 debut, opened anew in Manhattan Aug. 11 in a freshly conceived production Off-Broadway, at New World Stages.
photo by Joan Marcus |
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Andrew Garfield, who will be seen in the title role of the film "The Amazing Spider-Man," will make his Broadway debut in spring 2012 in the revival of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, it was reported. Mike Nichols will direct the production, which will reportedly open in March at the Barrymore Theatre, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman and Linda Emond as his wife Linda. Garfield is scheduled to play their son Biff. If true, it's a very Nichols bit a casting; the director has always liked his stars, particularly young ones on their way up.
Richard III is currently playing to sold-out crowds at London's Old Vic Theatre. The newly announced San Francisco run is among 11 locations around the world that have been chosen to host the production; the schedule includes London, Epidaurus, Hong Kong, Aviles, Spain, Istanbul, Beijing, Singapore, Sydney and New York (Brooklyn Academy of Music). Which means Spacey won't have to bother booking thatround-the-world cruise he's always wanted to take.
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Finally, the 15th annual New York International Fringe Festival officially opens Aug. 12, and, presumedly, people will go. As will, more reluctantly, critics. The pre-press for this anniversary festival has been particularly harsh. Scott Brown's piece in New York magazine pretty much set the tone. "To know the New York International Fringe Festival is to hate it," the article began. "Each August, the New York International Fringe Festival unfurls its nearly 200 offerings, and we in the media throw our arms up in dismay," opined Time Out New York. "Who can cover so many shows? Which are the good ones? Can just anyone put on a Fringe play? (Sometimes it seems like it.)." The days of wonder and delight, when in the late 1990s critics wandered from venue to venue like giddy children with a free pass to the arcade, are distant memories surely.
One bright spot — and the one show that every reviewer in town will attend willingly — is Yeast Nation (the triumph of life), the long-in-coming follow-up to Urinetown from Tony Award-winning musical writers Greg Kotis and Mark Hollmann. Urinetown premiered at the 1999 Fringe Festival — those giddy days I mentioned above — prior to transferring to Off-Broadway and then Broadway in 2001. Yeast Nation (the triumph of life) has already sold out its entire run.