this week in theater

TICKET ALERT: BAM FISHER NEXT WAVE

Tickets go on sale August 13 for inaugural Next Wave season in Fishman Space at new BAM Fisher center

BAM Fisher, Fishman Space
321 Ashland Pl.
All tickets $20; on sale Monday, August 13
Season runs September 5 – December 23
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Bigger isn’t necessarily better these days as BAM gets into the low-price, small-theater game for its thirtieth Next Wave festival. Earlier this year, the Signature Theatre opened its new Pershing Square Center on West 42nd St., comprising three venues that seat between 191 and 294 people and with all ticket prices for the initial run a mere $25. Then, in May, Lincoln Center raised the curtain on its new space, the Claire Tow Theater, which resides above the Mitzi E. Newhouse and has room for 112 customers, who pay only $20 per performance. And today, $20 tickets go on sale for BAM’s new venue, BAM Fisher on Ashland Pl., which features the 250-seat Fishman Space. Focusing on short-run experimental presentations, BAM Fisher will host dance, film, music, theater, talks, and more. The inaugural season opens with Jonah Bokaer and Anthony McCall’s site-specific Eclipse, an intimate four-character dance with the audience on all four sides, and continues with such works as The Shooting Gallery, a collaboration between video artist Bill Morrison and composer Richard Einhorn; Brooklyn Bred, consisting of performance art by Coco Fusco, Dread Scott, and Jennifer Miller, curated by Martha Wilson; Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Living Word Project’s sociopolitical red, black & GREEN: a blues, which promises something for all five senses; and dance pieces by Lucy Guerin (Untrained) and Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People (And lose the name of action). Expect the phone lines to be jammed, because tickets ($28-$144) also go on sale today for a new production of Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Childs’s four-and-a-half-hour Einstein on the Beach at the Howard Gilman Opera House.

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.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: COUGAR THE MUSICAL

The cougar phenomenon is explored in new musical (photo by BittenByAZebra)

COUGAR THE MUSICAL
St. Luke’s Theatre
308 West 46th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Previews begin August 10 prior to an August 26 opening, $39.50-$89.50
cougarthemusical.com

In Cougar the Musical, three older women, Clarity (Brenda Braxton), Lily (Catherine Porter), and Mary-Marie (Babs Winn), set their sights on a series of younger men, Buck, Twilight Dude, Bourbon Cowboy, Eve, and Naked Peter, all played by hottie Danny Bernardy. Written and composed by former Zoom cast member Donna Moore and directed and choreographed by Tony nominee Lynn Taylor-Corbett, the show, expanded from Moore’s two-person cabaret, features such songs as “Mother’s Love,” “Let’s Talk About Me,” “On the Prowl,” and “Love Is Ageless.” To find out more about the show and its creator, read our twi-ny talk with Moore here.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Cougar the Musical begins previews on August 10 at St. Luke’s Theatre, with the official opening slated for August 26, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite show or movie about a May/December romance to contest@twi-ny.com by Monday, August 13, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

TWI-NY TALK: DONNA MOORE

Former child star Donna Moore treads into cougar territory in new musical

COUGAR THE MUSICAL
St. Luke’s Theatre
308 West 46th St. between Eighth & Ninth Aves.
Previews begin August 10 prior to an August 26 opening, $39.50-$89.50
cougarthemusical.com

Cougars are hot hot hot these days, and the same can be said for Donna Moore. A stunning fortysomething single mother of two, Moore has revamped her two-person cabaret show about older women with a thing for younger men into Cougar the Musical, a full theatrical production that begins previews at St. Luke’s on August 10 prior to an August 26 opening. The NYU grad, who starred on the children’s television series Zoom back in the mid-1970s, has teamed up with Tony-nominated director and choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett to present the sexy story of a trio of older women (Brenda Braxton, Catherine Porter, and Babs Winn) who have the hots for a series of young studs with such names as Buck, Twilight Dude, Bourbon Cowboy, and Naked Peter (all played by Danny Bernardy). The perennially upbeat Moore, who battled Lupus after giving birth to her first child, is also an affirmationist who believes strongly in the power of positive thinking, telling herself such mantras as “I love and accept myself exactly as I am,” “I am forgiven as I forgive others,” and “I am connected to the flow of life.” Moore discussed Cougar, young studs, Lupus, and more in our latest twi-ny talk. (For a chance to win free tickets to see Cougar the Musical, go here.)

twi-ny: You were a cast member on Zoom back in the mid-1970s. At the time, did you anticipate a future in the entertainment business?

Donna Moore: I started performing when I was nine as a modern dancer and all I know is that something would happen when I would get on stage — like this free spirit that was my higher self would channel through me and a nine-year-old was transformed into an ageless, graceful creature. After Zoom, I always knew I wanted to continue to perform, but I think I was more concerned about survival from my childhood fame in a city public school (I was beaten up and threatened on a daily basis in junior high) to think about my future as a performer.

twi-ny: Cougar the Musical goes back to a cabaret you performed with Danny Bernardy back in 2007. How did it develop into a bigger musical with a full cast and crew?

Donna Moore: “The Cougar Cabaret” came out of a co-creation with R. K. Greene (who is now one of my “above line” associate producers). I had a cabaret show about my divorce that ran for a year called “The unBalancing Act” and the eleventh-hour number was a song called “The Cougar” that I cowrote with John Baxindine. It brought the house down every night, and one evening R.K was in the audience with Olson Rhodes (my current and wonderful GM) and they discussed how if I wrote a whole show about the cougar, how R.K would get behind me and coproduce.

“The Cougar Cabaret” came ran for one and a half years with my beloved Danny Bernardy. We each played three different characters. (I also played his Jewish mother from Boca who wasn’t too happy her son was dating a woman old enough to be her sister, “my older sista . . . it’s just wr-aw-ng!”) The show got a lot of buzz and there were a number of Broadway producers who said if I developed it into a larger book play they would get behind me. It took threes years (a number of separate book musicals and thirty songs later) and my partnering with director and dramaturg Lynne Taylor-Corbett [LTC] to turn the two-person, six-character cabaret script into a fully fleshed (no pun intended) four-person script.

In cabaret and stand-up, you can talk to the audience, tell it like it is, but I had to work painstakingly and determinedly to show the character development and not tell. I do credit LTC with helping me become a playwright worth her salt.

A trio of women have a thing for young studs in COUGAR THE MUSICAL (photo by BittenByAZebra)

twi-ny: What do you think of the whole Cougar phenomenon in general? What’s the difference between a cougar and a MILF?

Donna Moore: I’ll start with the easiest and then get deep on you: A MILF can be a cougar but a cougar cannot necessarily become a MILF. A MILF is required to be a mother and it’s incumbent upon the young men around her, who are friends with her teenage child, to desire this older woman, so it’s a “passive” term. A cougar is not necessarily a mom, and her cougar status has less to do with a young man desiring her as it has to do with the empowered woman desiring the young man.

I’ve been working on this project for eight years and have been interviewed by national magazines and newspapers as a “cougar expert” because of my cabaret show, lol, and there have been so many twists and turns but one thing that remains the same is my take on this cougar phenomenon. I believe the sociopolitical reason we are fixated on the cougar/older woman is that as a collective whole, we are yearning to embrace a more matriarchal system after a millennia of patriarchal dictation. And the “cougar” represents the medicine woman and the intuitive healer that older women used to represent in older societies. I believe that women have a chance to say “yes” to their innate sacred power and the access to that is to “embrace the sacred feminine” in all of us.

twi-ny: Speaking of sacred power, you are a strong believer in the healing properties of affirmations. Why do you think they work?

Donna Moore: I believe that life is holistic and metaphysical and that our experience is made up of mental, spiritual, and physical components that all exist as one whole. The thoughts you think create results, the context of which one thinks creates an attitude that serves well-being or shoots you in the foot, literally.

After the birth of my first child (who is turning twenty-two in November), I was diagnosed with Lupus, a horrible autoimmune disease where your immune system attacks your body and sees itself as a foreign threat. I was very sick, with horrible joint pain, unending fatigue, and depression. I had to crawl up the stairs and had no energy to do anything but sleep. I was only twenty-nine. I decided to take a spiritual approach and rid myself of my dis-ease. I refrained from any sort of gossip, I started to eat organically, and I submerged my consciousness with 100% positivity. I actively repeated affirmations of self-love and acceptance, ones that viscerally changed my state of being, and, happily, I was able to cure myself of Lupus. The ANA antibody is no longer positive, I was able to have a second child, and I have not experienced symptoms in over twenty years.

So yes, I believe affirmations are a powerful metaphysical medicine . . . or for those who may not be as a open-minded, it is a way to change your state into one that supports growth and happiness.

twi-ny: You are a vivacious fortysomething mother of two, prime cougar territory. Do you have any personal cougar stories you’re willing to share?

Donna Moore: I did date a man nine years my junior on and off for eight years. However, I never felt like I was older than he. . . . We were just two people who connected.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: TRIASSIC PARQ

Musical spoof offers a new take on Crichton and Spielberg’s JURASSIC PARK (photo by Carol Rosegg)

TRIASSIC PARQ: THE MUSICAL
SoHo Playhouse
15 Vandam St.
Through August 5, $69.50 – $79.50 ($39.50 with discount code TPREDFF here or at 212-352-3101)
triassicparq.com

Sharing the award for Overall Production/Musical at the 2010 Fringe Festival, Triassic Parq is a playful adult parody of Michael Crichton’s 1990 novel and Steven Spielberg’s 1993 film, Jurassic Park, which was followed by two sequels, with a third long in the works. Written by composer and director Marshall Pailet, Steve Wargo, and Bryce Norbitz and choreographed by Kyle Mullins, Triassic Parq: The Musical has fun with interspecies fornication and other elements that Crichton and Spielberg only hinted at. The current production stars Lindsay Nicole Chambers as the Velociraptor of Science, Wade McCollum as the Velociraptor of Faith, Alex Wyse as the Velociraptor of Innocence, Brandon Espinoza as Mime-a-saurus, Shelley Thomas as T-rex 1, Claire Neumann as T-rex 2, music director Zak Sandler as Pianosaurus, and Lee Seymour as narrator Morgan Freeman. The show also involves a certain amount of audience interaction, especially for those seated on the stage.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Triassic Parq: The Musical runs through August 5 at the SoHo Playhouse, and twi-ny has three pairs of tickets to give away for free. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time favorite dinosaur movie to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, July 26, at 12 noon to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

SLOWGIRL

Željko Ivanek and Sarah Steele make a powerful team in Greg Pierce’s beautifully done SLOWGIRL (photo by Erin Baiano)

Claire Tow Theater
LCT3/Lincoln Center Theater
150 West 65th St.
Extended through August 5, $20
www.lct.org

Lincoln Center has inaugurated its new low-price, 112-seat Claire Tow Theater, which sits above the Vivian Beaumont and Mitzi E. Newhouse, with the world premiere of Greg Pierce’s wonderful two-character Slowgirl. After being blamed for a high school tragedy back home, seventeen-year-old Becky (Sarah Steele) is sent off to spend a few days with her reclusive uncle Sterling (Željko Ivanek), a divorced lawyer who has been living by himself in a shack in the jungles of Costa Rica for nine years. Whereas Becky is outgoing and seems to never be able to shut up and relax, Sterling chooses his words far more carefully, as if each one pains him to say out loud, while wincing at Becky’s openness and questionable language. The two very different people eventually bond over smoothies and iguanas as Becky talks about what happened to her somewhat off classmate known as Slowgirl, who was seriously injured at a graduation party, and Sterling discusses the events that ultimately led him into the jungle.

The reclusive Sterling (Željko Ivanek) is forced to face some dark secrets in SLOWGIRL (photo by Erin Baiano)

Emmy winner and multiple Tony nominee Ivanek, most well known for recurring roles on such television series as Homicide, Damages, and Oz in addition to stage appearances in such shows as The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Brighton Beach Memoirs, is mesmerizing as Sterling, a pent-up bundle of nerves who can barely get the words out of his mouth, while Steele (All-American, Russian Transport) is delightful as Becky, a fast-talking teen with no filter, spitting out whatever’s on her mind. Rachel Hauck’s main set, Sterling’s open-air shack, rises at one point to reveal a labyrinth Sterling built to help him silently concentrate and focus, something Becky seems incapable of doing. Leah Gelpe’s sound design includes animal and bird noises that make the audience feel like they’re in the middle of the jungle, while Anne Kauffman’s (This Wide Night, Thugs) direction seamlessly weaves the characters and story together. Pierce (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) has written a compelling, intelligent, splendidly nuanced hundred-minute drama that is filled with small surprises and little touches that serve as a terrific introduction to Lincoln Center’s intimate new theater, which is dedicated to works by emerging playwrights, directors, and designers, with tickets for all productions only $20.