THE CURSE OF THE SCOTTISH PLAY
As fans of the bard well know, those involved in a production of Macbeth should never utter the name Macbeth in any of their discourse...
SOFTBALL, SHAKESPEARE, AND SHINERS
In 2017, I write a blog post about the first time I saw Hamlet or a reasonable facsimile of the play, since called "The Naked Hamlet". I...
THE NAKED HAMLET (Hamlet # 1)
Joe Papp was a New York City icon. In many ways, he still is because his legacy thrives. It was Joe, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia, who convinced NYC to approve the creation of the New York Shakespeare Festival. In the early 60s, Joe introduced free Shakespeare-in-the-Park, with two or three plays a year presented at the Delacorte Castle in Central Park. Many of the world's greatest actors, from George C. Scott and James Earl Jones to Meryl Streep and Amy Adams
JAMES EARL JONES AND FRIENDS
As I mentioned in my last entry, when I was fairly young in my teaching career I took the initiative to see if I could replicate my experience with Broadway actors for my own students nearly twenty years later. What inspired me was the performance by James Earl Jones in August Wilson's wonderful play Fences, a play which copped both a TONY and a Pulitzer in 1987. Fences is one of ten plays written by Wilson that are collectively known as The Pittsburgh Cycle. They deal prima
THE GREAT WHITE HOPE
To celebrate fifty years of theatre going, I am highlighting the backstory of some of my more memorable trips to Broadway or London over the years. Few productions had as much an impact on me as did the one on my return to the Alvin Theatre (where I saw my very first show It's a Bird, It's a Plane, It's Superman!--see prior entry). In April of 1969, my school (the legendary Syosset High School) sent a large group of us into NYC to see the much talked about
RICKY JAY
I grew up knowing one card trick. It's a good trick, and I've performed it for students over the years. But it's still only one trick. I say "performing" because the delivery of the trick is at least as much about the presentation as about the actual mechanics of the trick. I can't recall when I first saw Ricky Jay, but it couldn't have been any later than his appearance in the second season of SNL in January of 1977 (episode 12). Perhaps it was years earlier on Johnny Ca
GOLDEN ANNIVERSARY
Yup. It was fifty years ago, on March 17th, 1966--St. Patrick's Day--that I saw my first Broadway show! Why would I remember it? Easy. I was already approaching my teen years and I had never seen a show. My parents hadn't taken me to one. In fact, they never would. I was listening to WABC-AM radio (770 on your dial--radios actually had dials then), the station virtually all kids kept their ears to during the heyday of the Beatles and the Stones, when I heard one of an e
SIDE BY SIDE
It took me a long time to come around to Stephen Sondheim, I admit. Oh, I recognized his importance to the American Musical Theatre--he is unquestionably a giant. Of that there can be no doubt. But his musical compositions often only had a tenuous relationship to melody (and that was of paramount importance to me) and his lyrics were sometimes too cute by half. Most of my theatre-going life has been dedicated to drama anyway, as anyone scanning the walls of my classroom can
SHUFFLING OFF THIS MORTAL COIL
The theatre world lost two mavericks not too long ago, and I thought they deserved some recognition for their work. The Scotsman Nicol Williamson left us in late January at the age of 75. Cancer. Hard to believe he lasted that long given the way he pretty much grabbed life by the throat and wrestled it to the ground. Playwright John Osborne thought him the greatest actor since Brando and playwright Samuel Beckett opined that Nicol was "touched by genius". As encomiums go...
