The Kindness of Strangers

There are some theater moments that are so iconic, so deeply ingrained in our collective cultural consciousness, they eclipse the theater pieces they are from.

In the BAM production of Tennessee William's A Streetcar Named Desire directed by Liv Ullman, the talented cast distracted from the anticipation of that moment. A luminescent Cate Blanchett plays Blanche Dubois as a willowy, delusional, dramatic woman, who is slowly unraveling while hiding out from a ruined life with her sister Stella and new brother-in-law Stanley.

And when "the moment" came, it almost was a surprise. A menacing, goose bump inducing surprise.

image via www.newyorkmag.com

There is history in this room.

In The Kirby Theater Company's production of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress, five bridesmaid huddle together in the bride's childhood bedroom to escape a Southern circus wedding. They commiserate about the bitchy bride and their hideous bridesmaids dresses while sharing stories from their hapless romantic histories.

The play was written by Alan Ball of True Blood fame. His feisty bad girl Southern belle characters are familiar and their snappy dialogue is as hilarious as Sookie and Tera's repartee on True Blood. Minus the blood sucking vampire stuff.

Noble Attitude and Thrilling Voice

Juilliard 4th year actors performed George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man this past week. The lovely Vivienne Benesch directed the production and led a behind the scenes event revealing the actors' process from script reading to stage. Benesch pointed out how Shaw's scripts were extremely language heavy and showed a couple of exercises the actors used to work through particularly challenging passages, including a hilarious game where the actors perform scenes speaking entirely in gibberish. Image the scene below, only completely indecipherable:



image via http://lib-1.lse.ac.uk/archivesblog/

The Retributionists

I received comp tickets to the matinee of The Retributionists at the Playwrights Horizons theater in midtown over the weekend. The lead actress moo-ed her lines so distractingly I could scarcely enjoy the play at all. She was supposed to be some kind of manipulative femme fatale revenge mastermind, but instead she was just kind of exhausting.

The handsome Adam Driver provided some consolation. While he was at Juilliard, I saw him in Burn This and have been a fan ever since. His performance yesterday was a bright spot in this otherwise grim production.