Results tagged “johnpatrickshanley”

THEATER: A revival of John Patrick Shanley’s Women of Manhattan closes tonight. The play - described by the Moonstruck scribe as an “Upper West Side Story” - focuses on three female Manhattanites who lament the fact that, while their careers are flourishing, their emotional lives are a wreck. "Rhonda can't dispose of her ex-lover's shoes, Billie can't escape the honeymoon phase of a three-year marriage, and Judy can't seem to find an attractive man who isn't gay." You’ll laugh/cry. - John Del Signore

With the massive arts listings in last Sunday’s Times, the new season officially got underway, although theatre fans have for some time been able to get at least some idea about the next year on stage, and not only the brand-name productions, via the estimable nytheatre.com. Still, poring over those inky pages and getting overwhelmed by the sheer bulk of what’s about to come our way has no real substitute, and we’re now particularly looking forward to October’s Massacre (Sing to Your Children), a dark psychodrama/mystery written by Jose Rivera and being produced by the LAByrinth Theatre Company at the Public; 4.48 Psychose, Sarah Kane’s very experimental final play which will be performed by Isabelle Huppert in French (also in October, it’s part of both the Act French festival and BAM’s Next Wave festival); the latest provocation from Les Freres Corbusier, Hell House, which from the Times’ description sounds like it will be a close reproduction of fundamentalist Christians’ method of scaring people into faith, though you probably won’t have to look too hard for the satiric element; and Douglas Carter Beane’s The Little Dog Laughed, a send-up of the pervasive celebrity gossip culture playing in December at Second Stage. We were also tickled to see that Martin McDonagh (writer of The Pillowman) and John Patrick Shanley (Doubt) will again go head-to-head with new plays next spring – Shanley’s Defiance at Manhattan Theatre Club and McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore at the Atlantic. As the Times asks, why mess with success? The Pillowman’s imminent closing notwithstanding, both have been hits despite being singularly unsettling theatrical experiences, so maybe they offer each other mutual support, and maybe the new plays will find the same rapport. In any case, we’re excited.

The Reverend Al Sharpton is not much of a speller. He joined the cast of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee during the Tony Awards telecast yesterday and participated in the bee. He was given the word "dengue," which pretty much means diarrhea to the hundredth degree, though the CDC doesn't really expound that part at length. Now, we're not sure if Sharpton was playing a poor speller or just badly spelling, but he spelled "D-E-N-K-E" or something very far off. (Gothamist guessed "D-E-N-G-H-E".)

Spalding Gray, who committed suicide in 2004, was a beloved fixture of the downtown theatre scene. He cofounded the Wooster Group in 1977 and turned extraordinarily personal monologue performances into a hypnotizing experience for audiences. One of these, Swimming to Cambodia, became a movie filmed by Jonathan Demme and released in 1987, and it propelled his fame beyond the experimental off-Broadway scene (it’s also just been reissued as a book). But it was his friends and fans from that world who have missed him most, and they’re giving a tribute to him tonight at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, at 7pm. Eric Bogosian, Bob Holman, Reno, Roger Rosenblatt and Kate Valk will read from Gray’s work in this free event. If you ever saw Gray perform, or if you just have enjoyed the innovative avant-garde theatre that he nurtured and refined, you should definitely catch what will undoubtedly be both a sad and loving appreciation.

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/national/deathonthetracks_index.html?">railroad fatalities and the coverups behind them. We spent some of the evening reading a lot of the winning work, including Newsday's Dele Olojede's excellent and harrowing series on the tenth anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, which shared the international reporting prize with the LA Times, and the Willamette Week's winning investigative reporting revealing a former Oregon governor's sexual abuse of his 14 year-old baby-sitter. While it's natural that a lot of amazing reporting would come out of urban centers like NY, LA, and Chicago, it's great to see other papers get recognized. You can read the work on the Pulitzer website.