Tag Archives: Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre

TICKET GIVEAWAY: FINAL ANALYSIS

Gustav Mahler (Ezra Barnes) and his wife, Alma Maria (Elisabeth Jasicki), face a crisis in 1910 Vienna in Otho Eskin’s FINAL ANALYSIS (photo by Joan Marcus)

FINAL ANALYSIS
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
August 8 – October 5, $25-$95
212-279-4200
www.finalanalysistheplay.com

Nominated for an unprecedented thirteen Midtown International Theatre Festival awards last year and winning seven — for Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Script (Otho Eskin), Outstanding Direction (Ludovica Villar-Hauser), Outstanding Costume Design (Jenny Green), Outstanding Lead Actor (Michael Goldsmith), Outstanding Supporting Actor (Stephen Bradbury), and the Producers’ Award — Final Analysis is moving off Broadway to the Pershing Square Signature Center after a successful Kickstarter campaign that raised more than $50,000, running in repertory with Breakfast with Mugabe in the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre through early October. The play takes place in a single day in a coffee shop in 1910 Vienna, where a collection of influential intellectuals, artists, and leaders delve into art and science, corruption and morality, anti-Semitism and power, and the nature of evil, addressing the central question “Is hate love’s dark companion?” The play features Ezra Barnes as Gustav Mahler, Elisabeth Jasicki as Alma Maria, Gannon McHale as Sigmund Freud, Tony Naumovski as Joseph Stalin, Michael Satow as Ludwig Wittgenstein, Stephen Bradbury as a waiter, and Ryan Garbayo as a mysterious young man, with Villar-Hauser once again directng. There will be postperformance discussions on August 28 about Mahler’s conducting of the first uncut version of Wagner’s The Ring in August 1910; on September 11 on hate and madness; and on September 25 focusing on Freud.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets for Final Analysis are $25-$95, but twi-ny has three pairs to give away for free to performances August 8-30. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time-favorite Viennese intellectual to contest@twi-ny.com by Thursday, August 8, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: BREAKFAST WITH MUGABE

Play examines real-life story of Robert Mugabe’s fear that he was being haunted by a former guerrilla leader (photo by Carl Wallnau)

BREAKFAST WITH MUGABE
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
Pershing Square Signature Center
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
August 7 – October 6, $25-$95
212-279-4200
www.breakfastwithmugabe.com

For more than thirty years, Robert Mugabe has been either prime minister or executive president of Zimbabwe, continually accused by the international community of multiple human rights violations. Currently in the midst of a campaign to remain president, he just publicly denounced homosexuality yet again, even bringing decapitation into the mix. “If you take men and lock them in a house for five years and tell them to come up with two children and they fail to do that, then we will chop off their heads,” he declared. A dozen years ago, the then-seventy-seven-year-old Mugabe started believing that former guerrilla leader Josiah Tongogara, who died in a car crash in 1980, was haunting him for turning his back on his beliefs. This strange but true tale forms the basis of Fraser Grace’s Breakfast with Mugabe, which examines Mugabe’s fear of Tongogara’s ghost. Originally produced at the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Other Place in 2005, the play is making its New York debut August 7 – October 6 at the Pershing Square Signature Center, directed by David Shookhoff and starring Michael Rogers as Mugabe, Rosalyn Coleman as his second wife, Grace, Ezra Barnes as psychiatrist Andrew Peric, and Che Ayende as bodyguard Gabriel.

TICKET GIVEAWAY: Tickets for Breakfast with Mugabe are $25-$95, but twi-ny has three pairs to give away for free to performances August 7-31. Just send your name, daytime phone number, and all-time most-hated international dictator to contest@twi-ny.com by Wednesday, July 31, at 5:00 to be eligible. All entrants must be twenty-one years of age or older; three winners will be selected at random.

THE DANCE AND THE RAILROAD

Ma (Ruy Iskandar) and Lone (Yuekun Wu) discuss immigration, unions, life, and opera in THE DANCE AND THE RAILROAD (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through March 24, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

David Henry Hwang’s Residency One season at the Signature continues with an engaging revival of his second work, the short historical one-act The Dance and the Railroad. Written specifically for actors John Lone and Tzi Ma in 1981, the play was originally performed for children at the New Federal Theatre, but a rave review by Frank Rich helped it move to the Public, where it ran for six months to a more adult audience. The seventy-minute piece is set in California in 1867, where transcontinental railroad employees Lone (Yuekun Wu) and Ma (Ruy Iskandar) are taking a break on a mountaintop during a bold workers strike. The older, more experienced Lone, a master of Chinese opera, is practicing his discipline, which intrigues Ma, who only recently came over from China and thinks he can quickly learn to play Gwan Gung, a heroic mythical figure from the epic novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. But Ma will have to learn a whole lot more about life, not just opera, before being able to earn such a challenge and honor. Mimi Lien’s set consists of rocks that offer numerous platforms at different heights — evoking architect Frank Gehry’s design of the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theater itself — allowing director May Adrales (In the House, Whaddabloodclot!!!) to have the actors on the same level or above or below each other, changing the dynamic of their evolving relationship. Jiyoun Chang’s lighting changes night to day with projections on the background, while Huang Ruo’s score emphasizes the Chinese folk music tradition. The dance movements were choreographed by Chinese opera consultant Qian Yi, the star of the famous twenty-hour 1999 Lincoln Center Festival production of The Peony Pavilion. Wu and Iskandar make an excellent team in the two-person show, the former appropriately sly and serious, the latter wide-eyed and innocent. Despite its being more than three decades old and about an event that took place nearly 150 years ago, The Dance and the Railroad holds up extremely well, given America’s current battles over immigration and unions. Hwang’s residency at the Signature, which began with the disappointing Golden Child, will conclude next year with the world premiere of Kung Fu, about a Hong Kong martial artist who comes to America in the 1960s to become a movie star.

GOLDEN CHILD

David Henry Hwang’s GOLDEN CHILD is in need of revival at the Signature Theatre (photo by Richard Termine)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through December 16, $75
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Last year, Tony-winning playwright David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) teamed up with Obie-winning director Leigh Silverman (In the Wake, Go Back to Where You Are) and actress Jennifer Lim on the Broadway hit Chinglish, a charming comedy about an American businessman who arrives in a small town in China ready to make a deal but is beset by communication and language issues. The three are together again for the Signature Theatre’s revival of Hwang’s Obie-winning, Tony-nominated Golden Child, but the results this time are far less successful. Based on his own family history and a visit he made to his maternal grandmother when he was ten, Golden Child begins in 1968 Manila, as an American-born Chinese teenager (Greg Watanabe) gets ready to interview his grandmother, Eng Ahn (Annie Q), on a tape recorder. While he wants to talk about the history of the family, she wants to focus on Jesus and Christianity. The play then flashes back to Fujian, China, in 1918, as Eng Tieng Bin (Watanabe) is returning from three years working abroad. Waiting for him are his three wives: first wife Eng Siu-Yong (Julyana Soelistyo, who originated the title role in the 1998 Broadway production), a traditionalist who follows the rules of decorum; second wife Eng Luan (Lim), a manipulative woman with a master plan; and third wife Eng Eling (Lesley Hu), who is not as familiar with accepted protocol but is the most passionate of the trio. The three women, as well as Eng’s only daughter, Ahn (Annie Q), quickly learn about his travels, including his newfound interest in Christianity, made more apparent when a marble-mouthed British missionary, Reverend Baines (Matthew Maher), stops by for a visit. Golden Child examines such themes as ancestral worship, foot binding, Confucianism, Jesus, and bragging about one’s accomplishments, but Silverman’s stolid direction, the rather lackadaisical acting, and the tepid and didactic dialogue turn the play into a history lesson that sacrifices dramatic conflict and nuance in favor of educating the audience about the Westernization of modern China and the Asian-American experience in the new world. Class is in session, but not even a very interesting one at that. Perhaps the Signature will have better luck in February when Hwang, its new Residency One Playwright, returns with a revival of his 1981 show, The Dance and the Railroad.

SIGNATURE CINEMA: TSOTSI

Presley Chweneyagae is devastating in Gavin Hood’s TSOTSI, based on Athol Fugard’s only novel

TSOTSI (Gavin Hood, 2005)
The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Monday, September 24, $13, 7:00
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org/tickets/production.aspx?pid=2677
www.tsotsi.com

Every once in a while, a surprise movie comes along that just blows you away; Tsotsi is that kind of film. Based on the only novel by South African playwright and activist Athol Fugard, Tsotsi is set in the dangerous ghetto world on the outskirts of Johannesburg, where poverty goes hand in hand with violence. Presley Chweneyagae is simply remarkable as Tsotsi (South African for “thug” or “gangster”), the leader of a small group of hoods who pull off petty crimes — until they fatally stab a man on the subway, sending them into a dark and deadly tailspin. When Tsotsi shoots a woman and steals her car, he finds that there’s a baby in the backseat; he considers returning it or leaving it by the side of the road, but he instead brings it home, where he decides to take care of it himself — with the help of beautiful single mother Miriam (Terry Pheto). The baby triggers Tsotsi’s memories of his own horrific childhood, which writer-director Gavin Hood shows in brief but powerful flashbacks. Tsotsi struggles to keep the baby a secret from his cohorts, much the same as he tries to keep his past secret from everyone. But things soon come to a head, and Tsotsi must decide whether to reach inside his conscience — or for his gun. Chweneyagae dominates the screen from the very first moment, his intense stare filled with anger and hate, one of the most frightening you’ll ever see. Fortunately, Hood avoids any moments of sappy sentimentality or overemotional clichés, so you never know what’s going to happen next. The pulsing soundtrack of South African kwaito music comes from “Zola” Bonginkosi Dlamini, who also plays Fela. Reminiscent of such harrowing films about troubled children as Hector Babenco’s Pixote and Fernando Meirelles & Kátia Lund’s City of God, Tsotsi, which won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, is a devastating, unforgettable story that will drive itself deep into your heart and soul. Tsotsi is screening on September 24 as part of the new Signature Cinema series, being shown in conjunction with the Signature Theatre’s New York premiere of Fugard’s The Train Driver, which continues at the Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre through September 23.

TITLE AND DEED

Conor Lovett asks the audience to join him on an unusual but rewarding journey in Will Eno’s TITLE AND DEED (photo by Joan Marcus)

The Pershing Square Signature Center
The Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre
480 West 42nd St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves.
Through June 17, $25
212-244-7529
www.signaturetheatre.org

Written specifically for actor Conor Lovett, Will Eno’s Title and Deed is an endearingly existential foray into language, communication, and humanity’s deep-seated need to be part of a greater whole. In a stunningly understated solo performance, Lovett stars as a soft-spoken man who has just arrived in America, either from another country or a different planet. Speaking directly to the audience, the unnamed character has trouble finishing sentences, and he allows his mind to wander away on the sound and meaning of words, gets caught up in tangential soliloquys, or just plain loses his train of thought. He bandies about ideas and then watches them float away as he mutters under his breath or mumbles asides that are not nearly as random as they might first appear. For seventy minutes, Lovett shuffles across the nearly bare stage on a journey to find a new home, and he welcomes — actually, a better word might be “needs” or even “requires” — the audience to help him find it. Award-winning Brooklyn-based playwright Eno (Middletown, Oh, the Humanity and other exclamations) has crafted an offbeat, involving little slice of theater that is heavily inspired by Beckett, primarily Waiting for Godot, and directed by Lovett’s wife, Judy Hegarty Lovett; the Lovetts have previously collaborated on such productions as Molloy, First Love, and, not surprisingly, The Beckett Trilogy. Running in the Signature’s cozy Alice Griffin Jewel Box Theatre through June 17, Title and Deed will have you taking a trip through your own mind, with plenty of strange yet calming detours.