Andrea Martin Joins Cast of 'Pippin' Revival - NYTimes.com

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/andrea-martin-joins-cast-of-pippin-revival/?pagewanted=print[10/15/2012 8:58:37 AM]

OCTOBER 10, 2012, 2:06 PM

Andrea Martin Joins Cast of ‘Pippin’ Revival

By PATRICK HEALY

3:56 p.m. | Updated The comedienne and Tony Award-winning actress Andrea Martin ("My FavoriteYear," "Young Frankenstein") will return to the stage later this year as the scene-stealing grandmotherBerthe in "Pippin," the 1972 musical that is receiving a fresh staging at the American Repertory Theaterand being watched closely by Broadway producers.

On Wednesday the A.R.T. announced full casting for the show, which will star the British theater actorMatthew James Thomas, who has spent the last two years playing Peter Parker at some performances of"Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark" on Broadway. (Another young actor, Damon Daunno, played Pippin inthe A.R.T. workshop for the production this summer.) The "Pippin" cast will also include the Tony-nominated actors Patina Miller ("Sister Act") as the Leading Player, who narrates the show, and TerrenceMann ("Les Misérables") and Charlotte d'Amboise ("A Chorus Line") as Pippin's father, King Charles,and his wife Fastrada, Pippin's cruel stepmother. (Mr. Mann and Ms. d'Amboise are married in real life.)

Preview performances are set to begin on Dec. 5 at the A.R.T. in Cambridge, Mass., and run throughJan. 20, 2013.

New York theater producers have been following the development of "Pippin" and consider it apossibility to transfer to Broadway, given that it has not been performed there since the original five-yearrun ended in 1977. (Irene Ryan, Granny in "The Beverly Hillbillies" played Berthe in the original, whichmade a star out of Ben Vereen as the Leading Player.)

A spokeswoman for the A.R.T. said on Wednesday that no commercial or other outside producers wereattached to the "Pippin" production or enhancing it with private funds in exchange for possiblytransferring it to Broadway.

The "Pippin" revival is a collaboration between Diane Paulus, the Tony-nominated director of "TheGershwins' Porgy and Bess" (which began at the A.R.T. last year), and the Montreal circus company Les7 Doigts de la Main (or 7 Fingers). "Pippin" has music and lyrics by Stephen Schwartz ("Wicked") and abook by Roger O. Hirson.

Preaching and Converting Get a Young Man Into Trouble. Sound Familiar? - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/.../theater/reviews/heresy-by-a-r-gurney-at-the-flea-theater.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[10/15/2012 8:59:25 AM]

October 12, 2012THEATER REVIEW

Preaching and Converting Get a Young Man Into Trouble.Sound Familiar?By BEN BRANTLEY

It was only a matter of time before A. R. Gurney decided to answer the question “What would Jesus do?” Andof course he would unveil his response at the Flea Theater.

This tiny, fertile space in TriBeCa — where Mr. Gurney’s “Heresy” opened on Thursday night — has had a long,warm relationship with this accomplished and prolific playwright, an unlikely alliance of avant-garde and oldguard. The Flea, overseen by Jim Simpson, is celebrated as a platform for transgressive theater artists likeKaren Finley and Thomas Bradshaw (whose “Job” is currently also in residence there). Mr. Gurney is bestknown as a gentlemanly chronicler of the twilight of the country club gentile.

But while many of the characters he has created might contentedly share a dinner table (if not a pew) with MittRomney, Mr. Gurney himself leans left, at a rakish but determined angle. Much of what has been happening inhis country, particularly in the years since George W. Bush was elected president, has stirred his spleen. Andfor nearly a decade the Flea has allowed Mr. Gurney’s spleen a stage on which to play, pounce and politelybare its fangs.

“Heresy,” directed by Mr. Simpson, is the latest of these exercises, and like most of its predecessors (including“Screen Play” and “Post-Mortem”), it has the feeling of both an animated political cartoon and a cocktail-party-cum-pep-rally for like-minded souls. Set in a tomorrow recognizably rooted in today, this story of acharismatic, establishment-threatening young man named Chris (son to a carpenter named Joseph and hiswife, Mary) isn’t much more than a sprightly sermon to the converted.

On the other hand, how many sermons are delivered by a cast as tasty as this one? The stylish stage andscreen veterans Reg E. Cathey, Annette O’Toole, Steve Mellor and (oh, my gosh) Kathy Najimy have beenbrought together to deliver the gospel according to Gurney, which they do with both godly sincerity anddevilish flair. (Ms. Najimy will leave the cast and be succeeded by Karen Ziemba, starting on Friday.)

Their presence doesn’t quite disguise the collegiate essence, earnest but arch, of “Heresy,” which takes place ina federal conference room called the Liberty Lounge (rendered by Kate Foster as a sort of cushioned, wood-paneled bunker). It is here that Joseph (Mr. Mellor) and Mary (Ms. O’Toole), having learned that their son hasbeen taken into protective custody by Homeland Security, have come to seek help from their old acquaintance(and local prefect) Pontius Pilate (Mr. Cathey).

The first part of “Heresy” is devoted to figuring out just what it is Chris (whom we never meet) has done to gethim arrested in the first place. Once that’s established, the play turns into a debate about what to do with thisrenegade son of Joseph and Mary.

Preaching and Converting Get a Young Man Into Trouble. Sound Familiar? - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/.../theater/reviews/heresy-by-a-r-gurney-at-the-flea-theater.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[10/15/2012 8:59:25 AM]

The older characters (who also include Pontius’ wife, Phyllis, played by Ms. Najimy) are joined in fact-findingand argument by Pedro (Danny Rivera), Chris’s college roommate, and Lena (Ariel Woodiwiss), Chris’sgirlfriend and a prostitute.

Then there is Mark (Tommy Crawford), Pontius’ minute-taking orderly, who is hoping to “find stuff in thesemeetings that I can pull together into a meaningful story” and likes to translate conversational prose intosomething more, well, King Jamesian.

You get the idea. Anyway, it seems that Chris’s preachings — widely disseminated on YouTube — make himdangerous not only to all established religions but also, and especially, to big business. For Mr. Gurney’scentral point here is that a latter-day Jesus would be appalled by our consumerist economy.

None of this is terribly surprising. And for all its serious intentions, the show’s tone might be described, toborrow from the play, as “silly but sweet.”

Those words are used by Phyllis Pilate, commenting on Chris’s advocacy of volleyball as a profoundly religioussport. And while Pilate’s wife gets but a single reference in the New Testament, this newly expanded version ofher is the best reason for nonpartisans to visit Mr. Gurney’s Galilee on the Potomac.

Ms. Najimy (whom you may remember from “The Kathy and Mo Show” and the movie “Sister Act”) wallows sohappily and hilariously in the frivolous Phyllis’s shallows that she becomes a walking, slurring argument forthe existence of Philistines. She also probably comes closer than anyone else to summing up how we mightreact if faced with a second coming: “If Chris were here, I’d either burst into tears or throw my drink in hisface.”

Heresy

By A. R. Gurney; directed by Jim Simpson; sets by Kate Foster; lighting by Brian Aldous; costumes by ClaudiaBrown; sound by Jeremy S. Bloom; stage manager, Michelle Kelleher. Presented by the Flea Theater, Mr.Simpson, artistic director; Carol Ostrow, producing director; Beth Dembrow, managing director. At the FleaTheater, 41 White Street, TriBeCa, (212) 352-3101, theflea.org. Through November 4. Running time: 1 hour 20minutes.

WITH: Reg E. Cathey (Pontius), Tommy Crawford (Mark), Steve Mellor (Joseph), Kathy Najimy (Phyllis),Annette O’Toole (Mary), Danny Rivera (Pedro) and Ariel Woodiwiss (Lena).

At Home in a House of Horrors - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/...views/helen-edgar-edgar-olivers-solo-show-at-theater-80.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[10/15/2012 8:57:31 AM]

October 12, 2012THEATER REVIEW

At Home in a House of HorrorsBy BEN BRANTLEY

The waitress at the Brazier Burger drive-in in Savannah got it right, sort of, when she decided that EdgarOliver and his sister must be from Transylvania. Mr. Oliver was a little boy, and had rarely ventured far fromhis Georgia home, when that assessment was made. But if he talked anything like the way he does today, it wasa logical assumption.

Mr. Oliver, now in his 50s, has developed a cult following as a spell-casting raconteur who sounds as if helearned to speak in the crypt of a Hammer horror movie. His vowels stretch into gaping, quavering chasms,and practically every time he pronounces the letter R, it seems to throw up a thicket of midnight darkness.This means that it’s hard not to get the shivers when he uses words like “excruciating,” “mortifying,”“scorpion,” “lurk” and even “artist.”

Now imagine the effect a child with that voice would have had on the native Georgians of the 1960s —especially a child who considered himself an artist (sorry, “ahRRtist”). Small wonder that Mr. Oliver; his sister,Helen; and Louise, the possessive and obsessive mother who shaped their world, tended to keep to themselves.You might say they lived in their own private Transylvania, a place that has nothing to do with the real countryand everything to do with a state of mind in which shadows always threaten to claim you.

That is the geography explored in Mr. Oliver’s utterly absorbing and unexpectedly moving “Helen & Edgar,” atTheater 80 in the East Village. This spoken memoir was developed through the Moth, the storytelling projectthat has attracted a devoted national audience on radio and in live performance. At nearly two hours, “Helen &Edgar,” directed by Catherine Burns, is unusually long for a Moth story, but there is never any question of itsnot holding your attention.

That’s partly because few of us can resist a bedtime ghost story’s lulling and unnerving cadences, which areMr. Oliver’s natural rhythms. But it’s also because Mr. Oliver speaks to the Transylvanian that still lurks (orluRRRRks) in most of us: the child who remembers feeling like a freak in the outside world and wondering ifthe only place he truly belongs is that sweet house of horrors called home.

Not that the details of your upbringing are likely to match those of Mr. Oliver’s. “Never were there three morelost children than Mother, Helen and me,” he says early in the show, savoring the woeful, fairy-tale locution.

Louise, Edgar and his year-older sister, Helen, lived in an ivy-smothered Savannah house where visitorsseldom ventured, and only roaches spent much time in the kitchen. The three human residents shared a frontbedroom, because Louise was scared to sleep alone. Besides, she required foot massages and the occasionalOuija board session in the middle of the night.

Life with Mother, and according to Mother, was pretty much all that Helen and Edgar knew. Neither couldreally remember the father who had died years earlier — of a heart attack, Louise told them (at least at first).

At Home in a House of Horrors - The New York Times

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As Mr. Oliver puts it, “We had sprung together out of eternity.”

She also warned them to beware of all other people, especially grown-ups. “I’m not like a grown-up, am I?”she would ask urgently. She performed compulsive, repetitive rituals (involving a yellow suitcase and a changepurse) that she called “my foolishness.”

And she was known to lapse into periods of “sorrowful rage,” in which she would curse and keen. “Keen” as averb is one of those words that Mr. Oliver seems to own as completely as if he had patented it.

Crazy mothers have been staples of the nonfiction best-seller lists for decades. (Hello, Mary Karr.) But Mr.Oliver remembers mama without recrimination. He instead presents a child’s-eye view that finds enchantmentin the tight web of ritual his mother wove around them. (“In the beautiful depths of our indolence together” ishow he begins an account of one summer.) Of course there came a point — and we all reach that point growingup — when the web began to smother Helen and Edgar, and they plotted their escape.

I’m choosing not to provide too many details. You need to hear and see them as they are spun out by Mr.Oliver, who, when he performs, seems to be all eyes (alert, alarmed, prayerful) and hands (fluttering, clasping,beseeching). Like certain figures drawn by Edward Gorey, he has the carriage of a drooping lily.

There is something Victorian, as well as Gothic, about his presence — and his sentimental embrace of darkness.As was evident in his earlier “East 10th Street: Self Portrait With Empty House,” staged in New York threeyears ago, Mr. Oliver has made pets of the ghosts of loneliness, fearfulness and loss that most of us do our bestto keep at bay.

By the way, projections of Louise Oliver’s sketches and paintings are shown during “Helen & Edgar,” cityscapesand portraits drawn with the shimmering bluntness of an eternally untutored child. Mr. Oliver says he feelsthat there is “an innocence to mother’s work that is like a form of revelation.” Forms of revelation obviouslyrun in the family.

Helen & Edgar

Told by Edgar Oliver; directed by Catherine Burns; production consultant, Anna Becker; slides and projectionsby Aaron Howard; lighting by Charlie Babbitt; produced by George Dawes Green; associate producer, BonnieBlue Edwards. Presented by the Moth, Mr. Green, founder; at Theater 80, 80 St. Marks Place, East Village;helenandedgar.com. Through Oct. 27. Running time: 2 hours.

Taking No Prisoners in Boozy, Brutal Head Games - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/...heater/reviews/tracy-letts-in-whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[10/15/2012 8:40:37 AM]

October 14, 2012THEATER REVIEW

Taking No Prisoners in Boozy, Brutal Head GamesBy CHARLES ISHERWOOD

“George and Martha: sad, sad, sad.”

Those keening words may never have cut so deep or hurt so bad as they do in the shattering revival of EdwardAlbee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” that opened on Saturday night at the Booth Theater, precisely 50years to the day after this landmark drama first exploded like a stealth bomb on Broadway, establishing Mr.Albee as the most important American playwright of his generation and setting a brave new standard for truth-telling — not to mention expletive-spewing — in the decorous world of the commercial theater.

But the soul ache this superlative staging leaves behind is accompanied by a feeling far more emotionallyenriching: the exhilaration of a fresh encounter with a great work of theater revitalized anew. This SteppenwolfTheater production, the first necessary ticket of the fall Broadway season, establishes beyond question that atthe half-century mark, an age when many plays, not to mention many people, are showing signs of flab, Mr.Albee’s scalding drama of marital discord still retains the bantam energy and strong bite of its youth.

The revelation here is the performance of Tracy Letts, making an electrifying Broadway debut as an actor fiveyears after winning a Tony Award and subsequently a Pulitzer Prize as a playwright, for “August: OsageCounty.” Under the tightrope-taut direction of Pam MacKinnon (“Clybourne Park,” Mr. Albee’s “Peter andJerry”), Mr. Letts brings a coiled ferocity to George that all but reorders our responses to a play that many ofus probably thought had by now vouchsafed all its surprises.

Stalking the stage like an animal ever on the verge of pouncing, hands stuffed deep in the pockets of hiscardigan — as if only vigilant restraint could keep him from pummeling everyone in his orbit — Mr. Letts’sGeorge sets the production’s tone of incipient threat from the opening moments. Alternating simmeringdisquiet with bursts of spine-chilling viciousness, Mr. Letts’s shlumpy but somehow magnetic George keepsstoking the suspense, moment by moment, for three harrowing and yet highly entertaining hours.

Technically, it’s true, George has always been the master of ceremonies in the bruising games of Mr. Albee’splay, which depicts an endless night of boozy revels and bitchy acrimony taking place in the disorderly livingroom of a history professor and his wife, Martha, who have invited another, younger couple over to join in theblood sport. It is George who dispenses the copious amounts of liquor, George whose verbal wit most dazzles,George who brings the savage rites to a close.

But the loudmouthed, take-no-prisoners brutality of Martha usually dominates the proceedings, as she keepsthe volume permanently cranked up in their battle of wits and wills. Here Martha is portrayed in an intriguing,effective lower key by Amy Morton (the Tony-nominated star of “August: Osage County”), who puts a subtleemphasis on the bruised woman inside the brawling monster. Ms. Morton has the husky, bourbon-flavoredvoice that many a Martha before her has used to incendiary effect — most recently the blistering Kathleen

Taking No Prisoners in Boozy, Brutal Head Games - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/...heater/reviews/tracy-letts-in-whos-afraid-of-virginia-woolf.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[10/15/2012 8:40:37 AM]

Turner in the 2005 Broadway revival — but she chooses to keep it modulated for long stretches of the evening,and the predatory leer in Martha’s icy eyes alternates with flickering hints of the terror and grief that willultimately engulf her.

That the night will indeed end in wholesale destruction is a given for all who know the play. But never beforehave I felt such a prickly sense of dread as the three acts unfolded in all their symphonic discord. Mr. Lettsand Ms. Morton make clear that beneath the couple’s mechanical antagonism lies a profound emotionaldependence with gnarled roots embedded deeply in love. We sense from the beginning how high the stakesare, and as we watch George and Martha perform their devilish waltz ever closer to the precipice, the tensionbecomes almost unbearable.

Nick and Honey, hapless partners in George and Martha’s dark dance, are brought to vivid life by MadisonDirks and Carrie Coon. Ms. Coon depicts Honey’s vertiginous descent from tipsy to sodden to sickened withhilarious physical precision. Honey’s eyes seem to shrink into tiny slits from which she peeks out onlyintermittently, preferring the company of her own giddy thoughts sloshing around her head like the brandy inher glass. Against considerable odds, Mr. Dirks’s Nick retains his composure in the face of the predatoryonslaughts of Martha and the castrating contempt of George, at least until the devastating scene in whichGeorge exposes the secrets that have already begun to poison their young marriage.

This is not, of course, the most brutal of George’s gambits. That he saves for Martha. But as Mr. Letts’sperformance also makes clear, underneath George’s seeming mercilessness is a mournful sense of compassion.By turning their bitterness into a source of entertainment, George and Martha have distracted themselves fromfacing the truth of their disappointing lives. In bringing Nick and Honey’s shame into the light, George robs itof its power to sting. In the same spirit, and with a greater sense of sorrow, he knows he must destroy thecomforting illusions he and Martha have created to anesthetize themselves against acknowledging how deeplythey have been scarred.

It is an act of terrible spiritual violence, and like all violent acts it is shocking to witness — as is, I might add,the physical violence George inflicts on Martha, depicted with gut-churning realism here. But the final imageof this exemplary production is, in its way, just as shocking. After the storms of cruelty, how wondrous andstrange that a mere touch of the hand can startle us with its beauty and simplicity, its tenderness and truth.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

By Edward Albee; directed by Pam MacKinnon; sets by Todd Rosenthal; costumes by Nan Cibula-Jenkins;lighting by Allen Lee Hughes; sound by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen; technical supervisor, HudsonTheatrical Associates; production stage manager, Malcolm Ewen; general manager, Richards/Climan. TheSteppenwolf Theater Company production, presented by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Susan Quint Gallin,Mary Lu Roffe, Kit Seidel, Amy Danis and Mark Johannes, Patty Baker, Mark S. Golub and David S. Golub,Richard Gross, Jam Theatricals, Cheryl Lachowicz, Michael Palitz, Dramatic Forces/Angelina Fiordellisi, LuigiCaiola and Rose Caiola, Ken Greiner, Kathleen K. Johnson, Kirmser Ponturo Fund, Will Trice and GFourProductions. At the Booth Theater, 222 West 45th Street, Manhattan, (212) 239-6200, telecharge.com.Through Jan. 27. Running time: 3 hours 5 minutes.

WITH: Tracy Letts (George), Amy Morton (Martha), Carrie Coon (Honey) and Madison Dirks (Nick).

Even Making Amends Comes With Drawbacks - The New York Times

http://theater.nytimes.com/.../reviews/dont-go-gentle-by-stephen-belber-at-lucille-lortel.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[10/15/2012 8:41:25 AM]

October 14, 2012THEATER REVIEW

Even Making Amends Comes With DrawbacksBy CHARLES ISHERWOOD

A judge facing a potential death sentence — imposed by illness, as opposed to the legal system — is arraignedbefore the court of his progeny in “Don’t Go Gentle,” a tidy drama by Stephen Belber that opened on Sundaynight at the Lucille Lortel Theater in an MCC Theater production. In the central role of a retired conservativejudge in Buffalo, the veteran actor Michael Cristofer gives the play an absorbing center, delivering a prickly,moving performance as a man whose attempt to make amends for a lifetime of spiritual flaws only draws himdeeper into conflict with his troubled children.

At the age of 72, and recovering from surgery for stomach cancer, Lawrence Driver (Mr. Cristofer) has decidedthat the time has come to start doing some good works. As the play opens he finds himself in an awkwardconversation with Tanya (Angela Lewis), a young woman in need of some free legal counsel, and her 16-year-old son, Rasheed (Maxx Brawer).

A measure of its awkwardness: “And what kind of name is that?” Lawrence asks Rasheed, attemptingicebreaking chitchat.

“It’s black,” Rasheed replies with a contemptuous stare.

Tanya served time for smuggling a small amount of marijuana into a prison while visiting a boyfriend. Afterexamining her case, Lawrence has determined that the court-appointed lawyer gave her bad advice, resultingin a felony conviction when the charge should have been a misdemeanor. “Misapplication of the law offendsme,” he says, and he wants to help her sue for compensation from the state.

Although she is wary, Tanya desperately needs money. Soon, thanks to Lawrence’s increasing interest in hercase and (in a neat convenience) Tanya’s nursing experience, both Tanya and Rasheed have moved in withtheir benefactor.

This novel arrangement gives Mr. Belber’s play a frisson of freshness, but it’s a thin coat of paint on a creakyold car. “Don’t Go Gentle” for the most part chugs along as a familiar tale of angst, dysfunction and guiltspread evenly among the members of a white upper-middle-class family.

Lawrence’s informal adoption of a new set of offspring doesn’t sit easily with his own children, who alreadyhave a well-stocked cupboard of grudges against him. Amelia (Jennifer Mudge), who lives nearby and wastaking pleasure in looking after her father until the arrival of Tanya, is only mildly prickly. She cannot resistneedling Lawrence for his unloving treatment of her mother, now dead. But mostly she plays the peacekeeperin the recurring battles between her father and her brother, Ben (David Wilson Barnes), who looks suspiciouslyat Lawrence’s sudden generosity.

“If you think about it,” he tells Amelia, “Dad doesn’t have an altruistic bone in his body. What he does have,

Even Making Amends Comes With Drawbacks - The New York Times

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actually, is a history of incarcerating young black women, not to mention a skeleton or two in his closetregarding ‘other women.’ ”

The history between Ben and his father is really what rankles. Lawrence’s biblical rectitude has gnawed away atBen’s innards all his life. Even now his father cannot resist making snide remarks about Ben’s failure to live upto his standards; when he learns that Ben is going to get a job at a bakery to make some quick cash — he’s justback from a few sobering-up months in India — Lawrence sniffs, “I don’t want you making scones, Ben.”

Mr. Belber, the author of several plays seen on Broadway (“Match”) and off (“McReele,” “Dusk Rings a Bell”),writes intelligent, credible dialogue that occasionally crackles with biting humor. His characterizations areeconomically drawn, and his sense of dramatic structure is steady. But while they are invariably proficient, Mr.Belber’s plays mostly lack the igniting spark of inspiration or originality. As a playwright his voice is literate,professional and almost wholly anonymous.

Under the crisp direction of Lucie Tiberghien, the cast members flesh out their roles with admirable skill. Ms.Mudge imbues Amelia with an air of wary affection that signals how determined she is to give her father thebenefit of the doubt, despite their fundamental lack of emotional rapport. Mr. Barnes is excellent as the sonwho cannot stop himself from slipping into the old patterns; although it is in a more minor key, hisperformance has some of the stealth savagery he brought to his memorable turn in “Becky Shaw.”

Mr. Brawer is clearly older than 16, but he’s subtly funny as Rasheed, who bridles under the largess of apatrician white man whose guilt-driven motives he intuits perhaps a little too wisely for Lawrence’s comfort.And as embodied with sharp edges and a soft center by Ms. Lewis, Tanya comes across as a woman of firmpride who will do what she needs to get by, but remains sensitive to how she is perceived by others, and quickto take offense.

Mr. Cristofer, in the richest role, dominates the play without resorting to displays of obvious bravura. Comingto realize the damage he has done, and at a loss as to how to properly atone for it, Lawrence must fight againsthis instinctive righteousness, even though he’s hardly at home expressing vulnerability and contrition. Mr.Cristofer keeps his eye trained firmly on the character’s ambiguities, keeping the sensitivity and thebrusqueness in perfect balance so that, like his children, the audience is never quite sure whether he’s a man tobe loved, condemned or pitied.

Don’t Go Gentle

By Stephen Belber; directed by Lucie Tiberghien; sets by Robin Vest; costumes by Jenny Mannis; lighting byMatthew Richards; music and sound by Fabian Obispo; fight director, J. David Brimmer; production stagemanager, Matthew Silver; production manager, B. D. White; general manager, Pamela Adams. Presented bythe MCC Theater, Robert LuPone, Bernard Telsey and William Cantler, artistic directors; Blake West, executivedirector. At the Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street, West Village, (212) 352-3101, mcctheater.org.Through Nov. 4. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes.

WITH: David Wilson Barnes (Ben), Maxx Brawer (Rasheed), Michael Cristofer (Lawrence), Angela Lewis(Tanya) and Jennifer Mudge (Amelia).

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Dan Stevens, who plays Morris Townsend, in his dressing room.

Chastain in costume.

Chasatin with fans after the show.

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Kieran Campion as Arthur Townsend.

David Strathairn as Dr. Austin Sloper.

Virginia Kull as Maria.

Chastain with director Moisés Kaufman.

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Chastain as Catherine Sloper.

Judith Ivey backstage (plays Lavinia Penniman).

Virginia Kull, Kieran Campion, and Dee Nelson backstage.

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Chastain backstage.

Dee Nelson in character as Mrs. Montgomery.

Caitlin O’Connell.

Chastain in her dressing room.

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Caitlin O’Connell backstage.

Dee Nelson in the theater during rehearsal.

Caitlin O’Connell backstage (plays Elizabeth Almond).

Molly Camp as Marian Almond.

Molly Camp and Virginia Kull backstage.

Olivier awards set date - Entertainment News, International News, Media - Variety

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118060680?refcatid=19&printerfriendly=true[10/15/2012 8:48:16 AM]

Posted: Fri., Oct. 12, 2012, 5:41am PT

Olivier awards set dateKudos to take place April 28 at Royal Opera HouseBy DAVID BENEDICT

LONDON -- The 2013 Olivier awards will take place on April 28 at the Royal Opera House, it wasannounced Friday by the Society of London Theater.

Nominees for London's leading annual legit kudofest will be announced on March 26 with a March5 cut-off. In contrast to the Tony awards, which are chosen by more than 800 voters across theindustry, the Olivier judging panel for theater numbers just nine voters. Last year's panel saw morethan 80 shows in contention for the awards as compared with the Tony voters, who saw just 37.Expectations of the number of London shows for 2013 consideration are equally high.

All further details about the ceremony are under wraps until January.

Contact David Benedict at benedictdavid@mac.com