by John Lithgow, NY Times, June 18, 2014 John Lithgow, a Tony-winning actor and writer, will be regularly blogging on ArtsBeat as he rehearses “King Lear” for Shakespeare in the Park. His first report follows. This is not going to be easy. I’ve finished my first day of rehearsal, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., for a Shakespeare in the Park […]
The Delacorte it ain’t. During performances of “Twelfth Night,” directed by Hamilton Clancy, garbage trucks and M14 buses override dialogue; sirens and yapping dogs interrupt soliloquies. Sometimes the streetlights, which provide the stage’s only illumination, inexplicably darken. At other times cars and vans, their sound systems booming, swerve perilously close to the crowd. The stage? A square of Astroturf on […]
Titus Andronicus, the “grotesquely violent” Shakespearean tale of revenge, has 14 deaths, many violently bloody, as well as rape and mutilation. But that’s nothing compared to the audience casualty toll of its recent run at the Globe Theatre in London. The Independent can disclose that more than 100 people either fainted or left the theatre after being overcome by on-stage […]
Ben Brantley, NY Times March 27, 2014 “King Lear” has lowered its voice, the better to be heard more clearly. The bluster quotient has been toned down in Arin Arbus’s thoughtful and affecting interpretation of this most daunting of tragedies, which opened on Thursday night at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Oh, don’t worry. Thunder still rumbles, […]
This new play from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Robert Schenkkan features a company of 20 distinguished stage actors playing some of history’s most dynamic figures: J. Edgar Hoover; Martin Luther King, Jr.; Governor George Wallace; Senator Hubert Humphrey; Secretary of Defense Robert J. McNamara and LBJ himself. 1964: A pivotal year in American history—a landmark civil rights bill was passed, […]
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