twi-ny recommended events

BRYANT PARK SUMMER FILM FESTIVAL: ALL ABOUT EVE

Anne Baxter and Bette Davis put on quite a show in ALL ABOUT EVE (yes, that’s Marilyn Monroe in the center)

ALL ABOUT EVE (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)
Bryant Park Summer Film Festival
41st St. at Sixth Ave.
Monday, August 13, free, dusk
212-512-5700
www.bryantpark.org

Nominated for fourteen Academy Awards and winner of six, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, All About Eve is one of Hollywood’s all-time greatest movies, a searing depiction of naked ambition set on the Great White Way. Based on Mary Orr’s 1946 short story “The Wisdom of Eve,” writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s flawless drama stars Anne Baxter as Eve Harrington, who is not exactly the mousey wallflower she at first appears to be. She quickly worms her way into an inner circle of Broadway vets populated by superstar Margo Channing (Bette Davis), her younger lover, Bill Sampson (Gary Merrill), playwright and director Lloyd Richards (Hugh Marlowe), and Richards’s wife, Karen (Celeste Holm), who takes Eve under her wing. Joining in on all the fun is powerful theater critic Addison DeWitt (Oscar winner George Sanders), who marvels at all the manipulation and backstage drama, much of which he wickedly orchestrates himself. “There never was, and there never will be, another like you,” DeWitt tells Eve in one of the film’s most poignant moments. All About Eve is filled with classic quotes, including the iconic “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night,” boldly proclaimed by Davis. In a movie about acting and the theater, Mankiewicz never shows anyone onstage; instead, he focuses on the characters and the intrigue with a sly flair that is deliciously entertaining. All About Eve is screening August 13 as part of the Bryant Park Summer Film Festival, which concludes August 20 with Raiders of the Lost Ark.

SONDHEIM IN THE PARK: INTO THE WOODS

INTO THE WOODS is given dazzling new life at the Delacorte (photo by Joan Marcus)

Central Park
Delacorte Theater
Extended through September 1, free, 8:00
Family-friendly matinee August 22, 3:00
Tickets available day of show at the box office and online here
shakespeareinthepark.org

The Public Theater’s revival of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony-winning Into the Woods has made a marvelous transformation to the Delacorte, as if it were the place it was always meant to be performed. Adapted from the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production, the fairy-tale mosh-up, directed by Regent’s artistic director Timothy Sheader with codirection by Liam Steel, has been given a more adult touch, darker and sexier than previous versions. On John Lee Beatty and Soutra Gilmour’s beautiful stage of multiple wooden ladders, walkways, and a tower constructed right into the actual woods of Central Park, a young boy (played alternately by Jack Broderick and Noah Radcliffe) creates the story of a childless couple, the Baker (Tony winner Denis O’Hare) and his wife (Oscar nominee Amy Adams), who are given a chance to have a baby if they collect four items for a wicked witch (Tony winner Donna Murphy): a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, and a slipper as pure as gold. So off they go on an adventure into a magical land populated by such characters as Little Red Ridinghood (Sarah Stiles) and the Wolf (Ivan Hernandez), Cinderella (Tony nominee Jessie Mueller) and a prince (also Hernandez), Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) and her prince (Cooper Grodin), and Jack (Gideon Glick) and his mother (Kristine Zbornik), who are forced to sell their cow because they are in desperate need of money. There’s also a mysterious man (Chip Zien, who played the Baker in the original Broadway production) wandering through the woods, popping up now and again to offer advice. As they strive toward their goal, the Baker and his wife must decide just how far they’re willing to go to have a child, and at what cost.

The Witch (Donna Murphy) and Rapunzel (Tess Soltau) face some surprisingly hard truths in INTO THE WOODS (photo by Joan Marcus)

The first act is an utter delight, highlighted by Stiles’s raunchy turn as Little Red Ridinghood, dressed like a hip skater chick, O’Hare’s self-examination as he considers doing things he never would have imagined, Jack’s cow, a skeletal figure carried around by another actor, and Murphy’s star turn as the Witch, walking with canes in a frightening get-up courtesy of costume designer Emily Rebholz. But things reach another level in the second act, which reveals what happens when happily ever after is not necessarily the end of the story. Such songs as “Into the Woods,” “Hello, Little Girl,” “Stay with Me,” “Witch’s Lament,” and “Your Fault” are brought to life by a live orchestra playing in the back of the fanciful tree house and a stellar cast that is game for just about anything, making the three-hour show breeze by in, well, a breeze. Nominated for ten Tonys and winning three back in 1988 (including Best Score and Best Book), Sondheim and Lapine’s show, which is essentially about the art of storytelling itself, feels as clever and fresh as ever. Rechristened Sondheim in the Park, this wonderful Shakespeare in the Park presentation, part of the Delacorte’s fiftieth anniversary, is everything that free outdoor summer theater should be.

MY MIND IS LIKE AN OPEN MEADOW

Erin Leddy pays tribute to her grandmother in experimental solo show at 59E59 (photo by Kate Sanderson Holly)

59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th St. between Park and Madison Aves.
Tuesday – Sunday through August 19, $25
212-279-4200
www.59e59.org
www.hand2mouththeatre.org

Built around recordings Erin Leddy made of her grandmother when they lived together for a year in 2001, Leddy’s debut solo piece, My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow, is an intriguing multidisciplinary show than can be as charming and fanciful as it is inscrutable and self-indulgent. A presentation of Portland’s Hand2Mouth theater ensemble, My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow explores aging and memory using dance, song, spoken word, and audience confrontation as Leddy has a conversation with her grandmother, actress Sarah Braveman, whose prerecorded voice emerges from a boombox in one corner of Christopher Kuhl’s claustrophobic set. The self-reflexive, hyper-aware work comments on itself as well as the audience of forty people in the small space at 59E59, creating an at times dreamlike atmosphere as Leddy sings Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” (“And a memory is all that’s left for you now”), draws varicose veins on her legs, rolls around on the floor, asks an unseen crew member for some Miles Davis music, and goes face-to-face with people in the front row, even spitting seeds at one empty chair. She occasionally slaps her body and dons an old woman’s wig, though it’s not always clear why. Kuhl’s inventive lighting and Casi Pacilio’s expressive sound design nearly steal the show, which features an original score by Portland band Ash Black Bufflo and songs cowritten by Leddy with Holcombe Waller. Directed by Hand2Mouth head Jonathan Walters, the sixty-five-minute production is a welcome, if frustrating, alternative to conventional theater, an unusual, intimate, confounding, offbeat, and touching tribute to a beloved relative. My Mind Is Like an Open Meadow continues at 59E59 through August 19, with special $10 tickets for Thursday’s show, which will be followed by a talk back with the company.

AMERICAN GAGSTERS — GREAT COMEDY TEAMS: THE AWFUL TRUTH

Ralph Bellamy, Cary Grant, and Irene Dunne get into quite a romantic pickle in THE AWFUL TRUTH

THE AWFUL TRUTH (Leo McCarey, 1937)
BAMcinématek, BAM Rose Cinemas
30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St.
Sunday, August 12, 2:00, 4:30, 6:50, 9:15
Series runs through September 17
212-415-5500
www.bam.org

The insults fly fast and furious in Leo McCarey’s uproarious screwball comedy The Awful Truth. “Marriage is a beautiful thing,” a divorce attorney tells Lucy Warriner (Irene Dunne), but it can also be riotously funny. Adapted from Arthur Richman’s play, The Awful Truth features one of the great comedy pairings of all time, Dunne and Cary Grant, as a husband and wife seemingly at the end of their rope, with Grant’s Jerry Warriner coming home with a sun-lamp tan he claimed he got on a trip to Florida, while Dunne’s Lucy returns from a mysterious night in the country with her music teacher, Armand Duvalle (Alexander D’Arcy). Tired of the lies and deception, Jerry and Lucy decide to get a divorce, even fighting over who gets the dog, Mr. Smith. Jerry hooks up with wealthy socialite Barbara Vance (Molly Lamont), while Lucy is pursued by rich Oklahoma bumpkin Dan Leeson (Ralph Bellamy), who doesn’t seem to do anything without the approval of his beloved mother (Esther Dale). (Bellamy went on to play a similar role as Bruce Baldwin in Howard Hawks’s 1940 His Girl Friday, serving as the boring love interest for Rosalind Russell, playing Grant’s ex-wife.) But Jerry and Lucy can’t seem to stop running into each other and sabotaging their new relationships, exchanging brilliant one-liners — many improvised — while inwardly wondering if they really do belong together after all, even if they refuse to be the first one to admit it. They certainly deserve each other. In accepting the Oscar for Best Director for The Awful Truth, McCarey claimed he really should have gotten it for his other 1937 film, Make Way for Tomorrow, but it’s The Awful Truth that has had more lasting impact, still fresh after seventy-five years, filled with unforgettable scenes and bawdy, wry humor. The Awful Truth is screening August 12 in the BAMcinématek series “American Gagsters: Great Comedy Teams,” which runs through September 17 and consists of fifty films (all but one in 35mm) with a special focus on Grant, including Bringing Up Baby, Holiday, and The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn and the aforementioned His Girl Friday.

VIDEO OF THE DAY: “WONDER” BY ETERNAL SUMMERS

As the balmy dog days of August threaten, the calendar pays no heed to the desire for the summer to go on and on and on. But the more one listens to Correct Behavior (Kanine, July 2012), the delightful sophomore album from Eternal Summers, the more it feels like the season just might actually last forever. After having her Parker Nitefly stolen during her last tour, lead singer Nicole Yun opted to replace it with a Fender Telecaster and bassist Jonathan Woods, turning the Roanoke duo — Yun and drummer Daniel Cundiff recorded the band’s debut, 2010’s Silver, and the 2011 four-track EP Prisoner — into a trio that expands their infectious postpunk dream pop in exciting ways. Correct Behavior blasts off with a massive triple shot of ’80’s-inspired subtle power, with “Millions,” “Wonder,” and “You Kill,” before turning to the goofy and playful “I Love You,” featuring bright, summery woo-oo-woo-oo-woo-oo vocals. Cundiff talk-sings his way through the electro-grooves of “Girls in the City,” leading into the shoegazing harmonies of “Good as You.” One of the best albums of the year concludes with the appropriately titled “Summerset,” as Yun opines, “With you I’ll die.” Summer isn’t quite dead yet, especially with Endless Summers playing two shows this weekend, Saturday night at 285 Kent with Dinowalrus, Life Size Maps, and Grand Resort, then Sunday afternoon at 3:00 at the free Sound Bites series at Fulton Stall Market at the South Street Seaport.

UNACCOMPANIED MINORS: THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

Robert Mitchum gets caught up in some dangerous dichotomies in THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER

VIEWS OF YOUTH IN FILMS FROM THE COLLECTION: THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER (Charles Laughton, 1955)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, August 11, 8:00
Series runs through August 14
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Robert Mitchum stars in Charles Laughton’s lurid story of traveling preacher/con man/murderer Harry Powell, who has the word “love” tattooed on one set of knuckles and “hate” on the other. While in prison, Powell bunks with Ben Harper (Peter Graves), who got caught stealing $10,000 — but the only person who knows where the money is is Ben’s young son, John (Billy Chapin). When Preacher is released from jail, he shows up on the Harpers’ doorstep, ready to woo the widow Willa (Shelley Winters) — and get his hands on the money any way he can, including torturing John and his sister, Ruby (Gloria Castillo). Laughton’s only directorial effort is seriously flawed — the scenes in the beginning and end with Lillian Gish are wholly unnecessary and detract from the overall mood. Stanley Cortez’s cinematography is outstanding, featuring his unique use of shadows, the battle between light and dark (which plays off of several themes: old versus young, rich versus poor, good versus evil, and men versus women), and some marvelous silhouettes. The Night of the Hunter is screening August 11 at 8:00 as part of the MoMA film series “Unaccompanied Minors: Views of Youth in Films from the Collection,” being held in conjunction with the new exhibit “Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000.” Running through August 14, the festival includes such other films about childhood as William A. Wellman’s Frisco Jenny, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves, and David D. Williams’s Thirteen.

THE PONDEROSA STOMP: SONGS OF SOULFUL ACTIVISM

Ponderosa Stomp will celebrate the legacy of Gil Scott-Heron and others at the free Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center this weekend

LINCOLN CENTER OUT OF DOORS: ROOTS OF AMERICAN MUSIC FESTIVAL
Lincoln Center
Bruno Walter Auditorium, Damrosch Park Bandshell, Hearst Plaza
Saturday, August 11, and Sunday, August 12, free
www.lcoutofdoors.org
www.ponderosastomp.com

The Ponderosa Stomp, whose official mission is “to ensure that the unsung heroes of American music are given their due: celebrated, included, and remembered, but most of all, heard,” returns to New York City for its fourth year participating in the Roots of American Music series at the free Lincoln Center Out of Doors festival, and the nonprofit organization has again brought an amazing cast of characters. “Songs of Social Activism” will take place August 11-12, with the first day dedicated to soulful songwriters and the second to socially conscious musicians. Saturday begins with the Stoned Soul Symposium at 12:30 in Bruno Walter Auditorium, with Michele Kort hosting a discussion on Laura Nyro, Gayle Wald talking about the fortieth anniversary of the Soul at the Center festival, and Greg Tate moderating a panel on Gil Scott-Heron. At 5:00, everyone will head outside to the Damrosch Park Bandshell for Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls All-Stars Band: Sister Songwriters, led by drummer LaFrae Sci, followed at 6:00 by the Triple Goddess Twilight Revue — Celebrating the Music of Laura Nyro, with such performers as Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, Desmond Child & Rouge, Melissa Manchester, and Kate Ferber. At 7:30, the Soulful Songwriters Circle consists of Dan Penn, Teenie Hodges, and William Bell, with the great Otis Clay and the Platinum Band closing the night at 8:45. On Sunday from 12 noon to 5:30, Hearst Plaza will be home to Erin McKeown & Her Fine Parade, Taylor Mac, Tom Paxton, Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird, and the Pura Fé Trio. The party then moves back to the bandshell, where Swamp Dogg takes the stage at 6:00 and Aloe Blacc at 7:00 before the festivities come to a stirring close with Pardon Our Analysis: An All-Star Gathering for Gil Scott-Heron, featuring the Black Rock Coalition Orchestra and such poets, writers, and musicians as Brian Jackson, Sapphire, Martha Redbone, Abiodun Oyewole, Sandra St. Victor, Cark Hancock Rux, A. Van Jordan, Gordon Voidwell, Hanifah Walidah, Willie Perdomo, and more.