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What's new. What's hot. What they're saying. |
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Performances on Fringe... and Beyond Maybe it's the heat. This summer's new musical productions include live camels; a signed revival of "Big River"; stories about Stalin, Madame Mao, actor Robert Blake, and former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci, a gay Gilbert & Sullivan operetta; and Pterodactyls. And did we mention "Poseidon! The Upside Down Musical"? In New York, this year's Fringe Festival is just winding down. Called "the biggest, funniest, silliest, wildest, kinkiest, freakiest, screwiest, wackiest, artiest, funkiest, feistiest, scrappiest theatrical showcase of the year" by Time Out New York, the Fringe Festival has grown from its 1996 shoestring budget and handful of venues to the largest theater festival in the US (in terms of numbers of productions). It wouldn’t be the fringe if some of those 200-odd productions weren't... odd. The musicals in this year's lineup, selected from over 700 applications, included "Bad Ass Clown," "Blake… da Musical," "Escape from Pterodactyl Island," "Buddy Cianci the Musical," a gay "Pinafore!", "Poseidon! an Upside Down Musical," "Sherlock Holmes and The Secret of Making Whoopee II: The Houdini Incident," and "TRI-SCI-FI: A CHILLOGY." Last year the Fringe sold 40,000 tickets and expected to sell more this year (the massive power failure was not expected). In addition to big crowds of fans, the shows also have drawn numerous Broadway scouts looking for the next "Urinetown," which is won 3 Tony awards and is still running at Henry Miller's Theater on Broadway.
Outside the Fringe -- uptown at Broadway's American Airlines Theatre -- a remarkable revival of the seven-Tony-winning 1985 musical, "Big River" is playing to full houses. The cast of 18 includes seven deaf actors; all the actors sign their lines, and the deaf actors' lines and singing is voiced by other cast members. Critics have called the production "groundbreaking" and the integration of hearing and non-hearing cast "seamless." Minimal accommodations were required -- there are very few hand-held props to interfere with signing, while lighting and scenery movements cue actors for their lines. Audiences have found the themes of the play -- relationships between white & black, young & old, men & women -- to resonate with the reconciliation of hearing and deaf people. One review called the signing a "metaphor" for bringing diverse people together and not just a technical "gimmick."
Edinburgh's own Fringe Festival also contained some noteworthy productions, including the new musical "An Evening with Joe - Stalin the Musical." The satiric production, penned and directed by Cambridge University student James Stevens, includes songs such as "The Gulag Rag" and "Mrs. Stalin Regrets," and lyrics such as "Give genocide a helping hand." Audiences see Stalin's funeral as a Vegas-style production with a chorus singing "Sweet Stalin, I'm in Love Again." Stevens deflects any suggestion of callousness, saying that the production is trying to get people to think, not to minimize the terror and brutality of Stalin's regime. Yes, he helped the Allies win the war, but his "seedier side was ignored. He was a charming psychopath." As to the criticism that his work borrows from "Springtime for Hitler" in the Mel Brooks movie "The Producers," Stevens claims he hadn't heard of it when he started his own work.
The creator of the Santa Fe Opera's premiere work "Madame Mao" was more in tune with history, as well personally connected with the subject of his work. Bright Sheng was a victim of China's Cultural Revolution that Jiang Ching (Madame Mao) unleashed on the country from 1966-1976. He was shipped to the country for re-education, but unlike others who were forced into menial labor, Sheng was posted as the pianist and percussionist for a folk and dance company in remote Qinghai province, near Tibet. Sheng later emigrated to the US. He is currently a professor at the University of Michigan (and, recently, also a recipient of a Macarthur Foundation "genius" grant). Sheng's opera starts and ends with the dead body of Jiang, who hanged herself in prison. In between is a somewhat fanciful and psychological portrait of a two-sided woman -- a seductress turned evil spirit that the Wall Street Journal (Aug. 7) called "a modern Madame Butterfly who morphs into a vengeful Turandot."
Finally, somewhere in the Pacific, a boatload of camels is being serenaded with classical opera. The animals, part of Australia's (world-largest!) herd of 500,000 camels, are being shipped (one-way) to South Korea, where they will appear on stage with horses and elephants in a Seoul production of Verdi's opera, "Aida." The Egyptian setting calls for opera singers to ride the camels, which, despite their reputation for being cranky, have been described as easily adaptable. Because of strict quarantine laws, the camels will spend their retirement from show-biz in the Seoul area's "tourist industry." Read about the signed revival of Big River, read a review of the production, and get performance information from the American Airlines Theatre Read about the Australian camels being shipped to South Korea for their stage debut, via Yahoo and the Guardian Learn more about the Fringe Festival in New York City, or read a preview of this year's festival in the New York Times [fee required] Find out more about the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from their own site, or read a news article about the Stalin musical Visit the Santa Fe Opera, and learn more about their Madame Mao production. Read a news story or a Kansas City Star review of the production |
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