Tag Archives: brooklyn academy of music

’TIS PITY SHE’S A WHORE

Cheek by Jowl returns to BAM with its first non-Shakespeare Brooklyn production (photo by Manuel Harlan)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
March 20-31, $25-$80
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Founded in 1981 by Declan Donnellan and Nick Ormerod, British theater company Cheek by Jowl specializes in presenting unique takes on the classics, with a primary focus on the actors. The London-based troupe, which has previously been at BAM with As You Like It in 1994, Much Ado About Nothing in 1998,Othello in 2004, Cymbeline in 2007, and Macbeth in 2011, is back at the Harvey with John Ford’s controversial seventeenth-century tragedy, ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore. Directed by Donnellan and designed by Ormerod, the production stars Jack Gordon as Giovanni and Lydia Wilson as Annabella, wealthy siblings who are more than just a little bit too close. Romy Schneider and Alain Delon played the incestuous couple in a 1961 stage version at the Théâtre de Paris directed by Luchino Visconti, while Charlotte Rampling and Oliver Tobias inhabited the roles for Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s 1971 film, Addio, fratello crudele. The play was even a major inspiration for Peter Greenaway’s 1989 cult classic, The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. So it should be fascinating to see what Cheek by Jowl, which was named after a line in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, does in its first non-Bard play in Brooklyn.

Update: As the audience enters the Harvey Theater — which, on the night we went, included namesake and former BAM president Harvey Lichtenstein himself — a young woman in a red hoodie is sitting on a red bed in the middle of the stage, playing with her laptop. On the back wall of her bedroom are movie posters for The Vampire Diaries, A Clockwork Orange, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and Sweet Bird of Youth, hinting toward such things to come as innocence betrayed, dangerous sex, and a bit of the old ultraviolence, and come they do. The woman on the bed is Annabella (a delightful Lydia Wilson), a cheery sort whose father, Florio (David Collings), is preparing to marry her off to one of a string of well-dressed suitors who parade in front of her, but it turns out that she is most attracted to Giovanni (Jack Gordon), who just happens to be her older brother. After doing the dirty deed — depicted by director Declan Donnellan in a hot and heavy manner — all kinds of nastiness ensues, including scandal, treachery, lies, unwanted pregnancy, deception, more sex, and bloody murder. Cheek by Jowl’s streamlined version of John Ford’s controversial 1633 Jacobean drama is a lively, energetic production thumping with loud dance music and displaying a wry, ribald sense of humor. Although a few couples got up and left following the incest scene, everyone else stayed for the two-hour show — performed without intermission, which makes sense for this fast-paced production — only rising to their feet at the end, expressing their admiration by way of standing ovation.

THE BRIDGE PROJECT: RICHARD III

Kevin Spacey stars as the iconic Shakespearean king at BAM in final production of the Bridge Project (photo by Manuel Harlan)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through March 4, $30-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

As the audience enter BAM’s Harvey Theater for the Bridge Project production of Richard III, the word Now is glowing on a makeshift curtain, announcing not only the first word of the concluding work in Shakespeare’s War of the Roses tetralogy but the time in which the play takes place. When the curtain rises, Richard, the Duke of Gloucester, is sitting in a chair, a flat-screen video monitor behind him showing his brother, King Edward IV (Andrew Long), as Kevin Spacey intones those famous lines, “Now is the winter of our discontent / Made glorious summer by this sun of York; / And all the clouds that lour’d upon our house / In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.” The technology at the opening might indicate the play is set in the modern day, but the rest of this version of Richard III, a coproduction of BAM, Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions, and the Old Vic, headed by Spacey, is a timeless story of the intense desire for power. Taking on the iconic role previously played onstage by the likes of John Barrymore, Alec Guinness, Ian McKellen, Kenneth Branagh, and Al Pacino and, most famously, on film by Laurence Olivier, Spacey is delightfully devilish as he orchestrates the murder of anyone and everyone who stands in the way of his ascent to the throne of England.

Richard (Kevin Spacey) woos the just-widowed Lady Anne (Annabel Scholey) in Sam Mendes’s RICHARD III (photo by Joan Marcus)

Spacey, walking with a limp that is part Porgy, part Roger “Verbal” Kint (his character in The Usual Suspects), regularly turns to the audience and makes funny faces and gestures, mugging with a wicked sense of humor as he lasciviously betrays his brother Clarence (Chandler Williams), Queen Elizabeth (Haydn Gwynne), the Duke of Buckingham (Chuk Iwuji), and even his own mother, the Duchess of York (Maureen Anderman). In one of the play’s most potent scenes, the hunchbacked Richard woos Lady Anne (Annabel Scholey), even as her husband, the Prince of Wales, lies on his back murdered, blood still oozing out of his body. Tom Piper’s set is a three-sided whitewashed wall of eighteen doors through which characters enter and leave; in the shorter second act, the stage opens up into a long, narrowing pathway that seems to go on forever, particularly effective during the battle scene; the Harvey bursts with energy when Richard, dressed like a crazed dictator, marches his way from the back, pounding his cane like a royal scepter. Spacey, who cut his Gloucester teeth playing Buckingham in Al Pacino’s Looking for Richard, a thorough examination of the work viewed from numerous angles, does at times get a little too cutesy, and several of the actors in minor roles deliver stilted lines, but director Mendes — the two previously teamed up on the Oscar-winning American Beauty — does a good job keeping the delicious story centered and focused. The final production of the Bridge Project, which in past years combined American and British actors in The Winter’s Tale, The Tempest, As You Like It, and Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, this version of Richard III is fun and fanciful, funny and frightening, a fitting finale to this unique three-year collaboration.

THE BRIDGE PROJECT: RICHARD III

Kevin Spacey stars as the iconic Shakespearean king at BAM in final production of the Bridge Project (photo by Manuel Harlan)

Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through March 4, $30-$135
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Three years ago, BAM began the Bridge Project, a partnership with Sam Mendes’s Neal Street Productions and the Old Vic, headed by Kevin Spacey, staging The Winter’s Tale and Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of The Cherry Orchard in 2009 and The Tempest and As You Like It in 2010. After taking last year off, the project concludes with Richard III, directed by Mendes and starring Spacey as the iconic Shakespearean king notably played previously by such stalwarts as Laurence Olivier, Ian McKellen, John Barrymore, Kenneth Branagh, Alec Guinness, Ian Holm, and Al Pacino. As part of the initiative, the three-hour play, which runs at BAM’s Harvey Theater through March 4, features a cast of both American and British actors, including Simon Lee Phillips, Hannah Stokely, Jack Ellis, Gemma Jones, Stephen Lee Anderson, Katherine Manners, and others bridging the Atlantic.

MLK DAY 2012

MLK Day features a host of special events and community-based service projects throughout the city (photo by twi-ny/mdr)

Multiple venues
Monday, January 16
www.mlkday.gov

In 1983, the third Monday in January was officially recognized as Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, honoring the birthday of the civil rights leader who was assassinated in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Dr. King would have turned eighty-three today, and you can celebrate his legacy tomorrow by participating in a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service project or attending one of several special events taking place around the city. BAM’s twenty-sixth annual free Tribute to MLK includes a keynote speech by education chancellor Denis M. Walcott, the community art exhibition “Picture the Dream,” a musical performance by Toshi Reagon and BIGLovely and the Institutional Radio Choir C.O.G.I.C. of Brooklyn, and a screening of the stirring documentary The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975. The JCC in Manhattan will be holding a blood drive and a food-service project during the day, then team up with Symphony Space for “Moving Ideas: A Conversation Between Choreographers Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and Liz Lerman,” including excerpts from Zollar’s Give Your Hands to Struggle and Lerman’s The Matter of Origins, which were both partially inspired by Dr. King and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel; a concert by Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird; Zalmen Mlotek’s “Soul to Soul: A Celebration of African-American and Jewish Song” with Elmore James, Tony Perry, and Cantor Magda Fishman; and a screening of Nick Parker and Jazmin Jones’s documentary The Apollos. The Museum of the Moving Image will be honoring King with a screening of Michael Roemer’s seminal Nothing But a Man, in which Ivan Dixon and Abbey Lincoln play a young couple battling racism in 1960s Alabama. The Children’s Museum of Manhattan will teach kids about King’s legacy with its “Make a Difference Pledge” and performances by the Harlem Gospel Choir, while the Brooklyn Children’s Museum has “Let’s Join Hands,” a “Historical Snapshot” talk with civil rights activist Yolanda Clarke, and a living legacy collage and hand wreath workshop. And Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola is hosting Jazz at Lincoln Center’s annual “Dr. Martin Luther King Celebration” with the Warren Wolf Quintet, with Tim Green, Christian Sands, Kriss Funn, and Billy Williams.

PINA

PINA is a 3-D celebration of seminal choreographer Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal

PINA: DANCE, DANCE, OTHERWISE WE ARE LOST (Wim Wenders, 2011)
BAM Rose Cinemas, 30 Lafayette Ave. between Ashland Pl. & St. Felix St., through January 5, 718-636-4100, $15
IFC Center, 323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St., extended run, 212-924-7771, $17.50
www.sundanceselects.com

Back in 2004, in reviewing Pina Bausch’s Fur Die Kinder von Gesern, Heute und Morgen (For the Children of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow) at BAM, we wrote, “You don’t have to be a dance fan to love the always engaging Pina Bausch.” The same holds true for Wim Wenders’s loving 3-D documentary, Pina. The longtime director of Tanztheater Wuppertal, German choreographer Bausch created uniquely entertaining pieces for more than thirty years, combining a playful visual language with a ribald sense of humor, cutting-edge staging, diverse music, and a stellar cast of men and women of varying ages and body sizes, resulting in a new kind of dance theater. A friend of hers for more than twenty years, Wenders (Wings of Desire, Paris, Texas) was collaborating with Bausch on a film when she suddenly died of cancer in 2009 at the age of sixty-eight, two days before rehearsal shooting was to begin. Wenders decided to proceed, making a film for Pina instead of with her. Using the latest 3-D technology, including a specially developed camera rig mounted on a crane, Wenders invites audiences onstage as he captures thrilling, intimate performances of several of Bausch’s seminal works, 1975’s Le Sacre du printemps, 1978’s Café Müller, 1978 and 2000’s Kontakthof (Contact Zone), 2002’s Fur Die Kinder, and 2006’s Vollmond (Full Moon), which were selected by Bausch and Wenders together. The dancers seem to be more motivated than ever, reveling in Bausch’s building, repetitive vocabulary of movement and discussing how she inspired them with just a few words. As a bonus, Wenders includes footage of Bausch dancing Café Müller. Some members of the company also dance personal memories on the streets, in a factory, and aboard a monorail in and around Wuppertal. Pina is not a biopic; Wenders does not delve into Bausch’s personal life or have random talking heads discuss her contribution to the world. Instead, he focuses on how she used movement to celebrate humanity and get the most out of the men, women, and children who worked with her. In the September 2009 memorial ceremony held for Bausch at the Wuppertal Opera House, Wenders said, “I would like to ask all of you, finally, to cherish this treasure of Pina’s gaze. . . . appreciating that you knew Pina, that we all knew her gaze and were fortunate enough to experience such a priceless gift.” With Pina, Wenders has given us a beautiful gift, a wonderful tribute to his great friend. Pina is screening through January 10 at the IFC Center [ed. note: It continues to be extended there and is still running as of mid-June] and January 12 at BAM, where Tanztheater Wuppertal regularly performed since 1984, including most of the pieces featured in the film. Wenders will be appearing at a handful of screenings at IFC on January 6-7 and BAM on January 8 for intros, a book signing, and Q&As.

KRAPP’S LAST TAPE

John Hurt listens to his past in KRAPP’S LAST TAPE, running at BAM through December 18 (photo by Richard Termine)

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
Through December 18, $25-$90
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

Originally written in 1958 for British actor Patrick Magee, Samuel Beckett’s autobiographical Krapp’s Last Tape is a haunting examination of time, memory, and the futility of language. Performed over the years by the likes of Magee, Harold Pinter, Brian Dennehy, and Michael Gambon, the fifty-five-minute one-act is perhaps most closely identified today with John Hurt, who first appeared in the play at Dublin’s Gate Theatre in 1999, starred in Atom Egoyan’s 2001 film version, and is now giving a bravura command performance at BAM through December 18. Making his New York stage debut, Hurt (Midnight Express, 10 Rillington Place) plays a failed writer named Krapp who, when first seen, is sitting at a table in silence, an old lamp dangling overhead. He says nothing for several minutes and then eventually gets up, walks around in squeaky white shoes, consumes two bananas, slips on a peel he dropped on the floor, and carefully approaches the darkness on either side of him, deciding not to venture out of the lighted area, as if something unknown and dangerous awaits outside his very private, solitary comfort zone. It is a critical moment in the play, establishing the precipice of life and death that Krapp is balancing on while also reminding the audience that this is a staged production. As he does every year on his birthday, Krapp listens to reel-to-reel recordings of messages he left on previous birthdays and makes a new one; in this case, the sixty-nine-year-old shabbily dressed man is looking for the tape he made on his thirty-ninth, which, according to his dusty old ledger, can be found in “box five, spool three.” Krapp takes delight in drawing out the word spool like he is a child. As he listens to his old self discuss the past, present, and future as he saw it thirty years before, he starts and stops the tape, remembering some moments that elicit strong emotions while clearly having no memory of others, the fractured narrative tantalizing and teasing the audience. “Thirty-nine today,” the recorded Krapp says. “Sound as a bell.” But alas, the sixty-nine-year-old Krapp is not sound as a bell, with little but death to look forward to.

Director Michael Colgan and lighting designer James McConnell have placed Krapp in a masterfully minimalist black-and-white world, surrounded by darkness, the only colors the yellow of the bananas and the green in Krapp’s description of a former love’s coat. Hurt, now seventy-one, is a less angry, more fragile and perhaps desperate Krapp than he portrayed in previous versions, cupping his ear tighter as he leans his head to hear the tape, shuffling to the back — through a minefield of his past, the boxes of tapes strewn across the floor — to steal a drink, staring straight ahead, wondering what happened to the ambitious youth he once was. (He even resembles Beckett himself this time around.) Krapp’s Last Tape is an extraordinarily complex work that delves deep into the human psyche, a challenge for both the actor and the audience, a play that will stay with you for a long time, eliciting thoughts of where you’ve been, who you are, and what awaits you in the future. Hurt will participate in a post-show artist talk on December 15; in addition, BAMcinématek will be highlighting four of the British actor’s best films in “John Hurt Quartet,” including The Elephant Man (David Lynch, 1980) on December 12, Scandal (Michael Caton-Jones, 1989) on December 13 (followed by a Q&A with Hurt), Love and Death on Long Island (Richard Kwietniowski, 1997) on December 14, and Nineteen Eighty-Four (Michael Radford, 1984) on December 15.

JOHN JASPERSE: CANYON

John Jasperse’s CANYON should delight audiences at BAM this week

NEXT WAVE FESTIVAL
Brooklyn Academy of Music
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton St. between Ashland & Rockwell Pl.
November 16-19, $16-$45, 7:30
718-636-4100
www.bam.org

In works such as Becky, Jodi and John at Dance Theater Workshop, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies at the Joyce, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution at BAM’s 2007 Next Wave Festival, New York City–based choreographer John Jasperse has shared intimate moments with the audience in creating unusual and often challenging evenings of dance theater. This week Jasperse and his Thin Man Dance company return to BAM to present the New York premiere of Canyon, which deals with “the transformative power of losing oneself in visceral experience.” Running November 16-19, the seventy-minute piece features dancers Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn, a live score by Hahn Rowe, visual design by Tony Orrico, and lighting by James Clotfelter. There will be an artist talk with Jasperse and his collaborators following Thursday night’s performance, moderated by Mary-Jane Rubenstein, whose book Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe influenced the making of Canyon.

John Jasperse’s CANYON celebrates the thrill of the dance (photo by Tony Orrico)

Updated: Dance does not always have to be about something. In such previous works as Becky, Jodi and John, Truth, Revised Histories, Wishful Thinking, and Flat Out Lies, and Misuse Liable to Prosecution, John Jasperse dealt with a number of themes, from personal relationships and environmentalism to the fine line between fantasy and reality. In his latest evening-length piece, Jasperse eschews high concept in favor of, quite simply, the thrill of the dance. The seventy-minute Canyon puts Jasperse’s breathtaking choreography front and center, a celebration of the joy of movement, with Jasperse, Lindsay Clark, Erin Cornell, Kennis Hawkins, Burr Johnson, and James McGinn running, jumping, twisting, and rolling to an exciting score composed by Hahn Rowe and performed live by Olivia De Prato on violin, Ha-Yang Kim on cello, Doug Wieselman on bass clarinet, and Rowe on violin, guitar, and electronics. Because this is Jasperse, there are odd elements as well, courtesy of visual designer Tony Orrico, that include yellow tape that begins outside on the street and wends its way through the BAM Harvey lobby and bathrooms and into the theater, down the steps, across the stage, and onto the back wall, where they resemble an abstract map. Meanwhile, a large white box continually roams the space, adding to the fun. And what fun it is.