Anton Chekhov's final play, The Cherry Orchard, premiered in Moscow just six months before his death, in 1904. It was immediately well-received, but the author was frustrated with the production. Chekhov considered it a comedy, but Moscow Art Theater director Constantin Stanislavski staged it as tragedy, with what the playwright felt was an insufferable amount of "weepiness." Over a hundred years and a hundred thousand boring Chekhov productions later, one imagines the author would have been pleased with Andrei Belgrader's fresh revival of the play at the intimate Classic Stage Company, where an almost sublime balance of absurd humor and poignant wistfulness has been achieved, thanks to a splendid ensemble featuring John Turturro, Dianne Wiest, Josh Hamilton, Alvin Epstein, and Daniel Davis.
Theater Review: The Cherry Orchard, Starring Dianne Wiest and John Turturro
Theater Review: Relatively Speaking
"I admit Freud was a genius. Who else could make an hour into fifty minutes?" quips the Rabbi in Woody Allen's one-act play Honeymoon Motel. "" One-liners of both the classic and clunker variety abound in Allen's play, which makes up one-third of an evening of one-act comedies called Relatively Speaking at Broadway's Brooks Atkinson Theatre. It's tough for straight plays to make it to Broadway these days, and even tougher for one-acts to see the light of day there. But when you've got big names like Woody Allen, Ethan Coen, Elaine May, and John Turturro on the marquee, anything's possible. But is it worth the $55-$135?
10 Theatrical Productions You Won't Want To Miss This Season
There are so many potentially terrific shows on the horizon that narrowing them down to ten seems absurd. But our insatiable media beast lusts for lists, so list we must! Here are ten shows we have our eye on in the coming theatrical "season" (which extends through spring, but we're homing in on the next few months here). Many of these will sell out fast, so don't wait forever—we don't want a repeat of Book of Mormon, now do we?
Watch John Turturro In An Animated Version Of Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers
Art Spiegelman's acclaimed graphic novel In the Shadow of No Towers has been turned into an animated film with a voiceover by John Turturro and music by guitarist/composer Marco Cappelli. Spiegelman, having escaped the immediate vicinity of Ground Zero on the morning of 9/11 with his young daughter, crafted his "survivor's tale" as his way of coping with the attacks and their odious political aftermath. A DVD version will be released next month, and judging by the looks of this trailer, it's a fascinating piece.
In The Kitchen With John Turturro, Who Learned How To Cook To Get Laid
Wall Street Journal reporter Charlotte Druckman recently hung out with John Turturro and his wife Katherine Borowitz in their Park Slope brownstone, where they chatted about Italian food as he cooked for everybody. Nice work if you can get it! The feature includes Turturro's twist on a simple recipe for Spaghetti Al Pomodoro Crudo, which he makes with fresh ingredients from the Park Slope Food Co-Op. During the dinner, Turturro explains how he learned to cook:
Residents of Carnegie Artist Studios Take It to City Hall
Actor/director John Turturro was among the protesters assembled at City Hall today for a rally to save the Carnegie artist studios, which could soon be taken over by Carnegie Hall expansion plans. But the big star of the day was 95-year-old Editta Sherman, the building’s longest living tenant, having resided there since 1949. She’s seen here holding a photograph she took of Leonard Bernstein, a former resident; Sherman’s studio in the building was once a destination for celebrities seeking classy photographic portraiture. Though her future there is now in jeopardy, Sherman, known to friends as the Duchess of Carnegie Hall, sounded resilient: “I’m not thinking about it, I’m not worried about it, because I’m not going anywhere.”
Gothamist Year In Interviews
We interviewed hundreds of people this year, from long-time rockers to the designer of New York’s subway map. Here are a few conversations you may have missed:
- On the day Radiohead’s In Rainbows was released exclusively online, musician Jonny Greenwood talked about the “experiment.”
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Gothamist's Year in Theater 2007
The most exciting story in New York theater this year had nothing to do with the Broadway stagehands' strike, it was the vibrant growth of what used to be called “experimental theater”, a movement that can now really only loosely be defined by what it’s not: non-naturalistic and not made for TV, with an emphasis on bold physicality, collaboration and, sometimes, multimedia.
Gotham Awards Say Hello Brooklyn
The Gotham Awards gala run by the Independent Feature Project (IFP) will be held in Brooklyn for the first time tonight, after 17 years spent bouncing around between Roseland, Hammerstein Ballroom and Chelsea Piers. This year the independent film awards will take place on the soundstage of Steiner Studios in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Among the thousand-plus guests expected to attend are Javier Bardem, Sean Penn, Laura Linney, Uma Thurman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Brooklyn’s...
Noah Baumbach, Director
At just 24, Noah Baumbach made his mark on the indie film world with Kicking and Screaming, his hilarious and finely observed study of post-collegiate ennui. His Mr. Jealousy followed but the picture’s lukewarm response meant a long five years before he obtained funding for The Squid and the Whale. Happily for Baumbach, the superb film was a major critical and commercial success. Two years later, he’s back with Margot at the Wedding, another character-driven...
45th New York Film Festival: Halfway Through
We've made it through 10 days of this year's New York Film Festival, and it's been a great run so far. As usual, the selection committee has picked stellar films and we've sat in on some star-studded Q&A sessions at Lincoln Center. Here are a few thoughts at the midpoint.
New York Gets the Boot
In time for next week’s Columbus Day festivities, the Post’s Steve Cuozzo lets his Ital flag fly with two gushing columns on Italian cuisine. He points out that Italian restaurants outnumber all other kinds of restaurants in New York by a big margin (and that’s not because of the ever-metastasizing Olive Gardens.) He cites seven “marvelous” eateries – Del Posto, A Voce, Abbocatto, Insieme, Fiamma, L'Impero and Alto – that “establish Italian as the cuisine to beat.” Nobu can sleep with the fishes.
Is Brooklyn So Over?
The NY Times is hinting that Brooklyn may be so over, a theory that seems to be based around Heath Ledger leaving the borough.
What if Brooklyn’s recent cachet as the locus for what’s next is little more than a thin and fragile crust of chic, hiding the insecurity of people who constantly measure the social currency of their ZIP code by Manhattan standards? The number of trendy boutiques, bistros and music clubs in Brooklyn may have spiked in the last five years, but its infrastructure of cool still represents only a fraction of that found in Manhattan. Its new identity is moored to a finite number of shops, restaurants, luxury condominiums and, yes, celebrities. If even one leaves, a void is created. Could the borough’s new status vanish as quickly as it ascended?We think perhaps their belief is based upon a "thin and fragile" foundation. After all, if a borough's cred is based upon shops, condos and stars...Brooklyn is faring pretty well. With Trader Joe's, Urban Outfitters, an Apple Store and luxury condos flooding the market and John Turturro, Rosie Perez, Norman Mailer, Steve Buscemi, Jennifer Connelly, Paul Bettany, Paul Giammati, Adrian Grenier, Michael Pitt, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Peter Sarsgaard calling it home -- it seems Brooklyn won't be suffering from a lack of attention anytime soon, Heath or no Heath.
John Turturro, Director
Hardly content with his career as one of the most fascinating actors in the business today, John Turturro continues to make his mark as director of a growing catalog of boldly independent films. His searing debut, Mac, drew deeply from his experiences in a Brooklyn family cast adrift after their father’s death. Six years later, Turturro reveled in his love for theater with Illuminata, which Salon called “a heartbreakingly beautiful tragicomedy about art, love and artifice, with a script of rare humor and complexity.” Fast forward seven years to 2005, and, like clockwork, Turturro finished his most wildly imaginative project, Romance and Cigarettes, produced by the Coen brothers. Unfortunately, the Hollywood distribution system lacks Turturro’s regularity, and it’s taken another two years for this heartfelt and hilarious picture to appear in America. (A run at Film Forum begins tonight.) Gothamist recently spoke with Turturro about the film, the entertainment industry, and his hope to hatch a Big Lebowski spin-off with the Coens.
Romance and Cigarettes Finally Lights Up
Hear about that movie Romance and Cigarettes that premiered last night? You know, the one directed by John Turturro, starring Chris Walken, James Gandolfini, Susan Sarandon, Steve Buscemi, Kate Winslet, Mary Louise-Parker, Bobby Cannavale, Mandy Moore, Elaine Stritch and Amy Sedaris? Well, don’t feel bad if you didn't – that fact that two years since it wrapped the film’s been released all over the world except the town where it was shot speaks volumes about the Hollywood distribution system.
Noteworthy Television This Week: Not Just the Bronx Burning
A look at some noteworthy television this week:
The Bronx is Burning
In October 1977, Howard Cosell leaned into his announcer's microphone and intoned to the worldwide audience watching the World Series, "Ladies and gentlemen, the Bronx is burning." He was reporting yet another burning building marring the NYC skyline from his vantage point at Yankee Stadium. His line would eventually become the partial title of a superb book written by Jonathan Mahler: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City.
Theater Thrills
Believe it or not, there have been some truly exciting moments in theater during the past month, albeit unintentionally. Theater blogger What’s Good/What Blows alerted readers to this NY Post interview with two stars of the Broadway hit Spring Awakening. It seems the show’s sizzling sex scene has provoked audiences in more ways than one. Actor Jonathan Groff divulged that "some guy was kicked out of the mezzanine for masturbating.” Since Spring Awakening also seats some audience members up on stage, we think the producers may want to get out ahead of this thing and invest in some Gallagher-esque ponchos for the first few rows. (Read about one theatergoer’s onstage experience here.)
Opinionist: A Spanish Play
In Yasmina Reza’s A Spanish Play, we watch actors rehearse an unnamed play by a Spanish playwright. Two characters in this play within the play are actors, and one of them repeatedly runs lines for her upcoming role in an unnamed Bulgarian play. So, in what’s intended as a frolicsome demonstration of reality’s manifold layers, we’re sometimes watching a play within a play within a play. That adds up to three plays, which is a bit of a problem since they’re forced to share less than half a story.
First The Nets, Now The Kennedys?
If Caroline Kennedy moves to Park Slope, what does that do to the neighborhood? Do you think she'd join the Food Co-Op? Here's the Corcoran guide to Park Slope (a Corcoran broker called "Prospect Park West" Brooklyn's "Central Park West"). NY Magazine's Park Slope profile.
Red Hook Filming at Dusk
Here is IMDB's list of shows and films that filmed in New York (note: many of the TV shows might simply be in a studio in NY).
Monk Casting News
The new season of Monk begins on January 16 on USA; Turturro's episode will air on January 23. Gothamist also saw Turturro and Shalhoub share the stage in the Classic Stage Company's Waiting for Godot; Turturro's son Amedeo had a bit part in it but is better known as the young Richie Tenebaum in The Royal Tenenbaums.
Collyer Bros.: Pack Rats to End All Pack Rats
Franz Lidz looks at the timeless story of the Collyer Brothers for the Times' City section. Two educated brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer, lived in Harlem at the beginning of the 1900s and soon their house would have 180 tons of garbage, much of it newspapers, in it. The main impetus to save was when Homer went blind, and Langley, while taking care of him (like feeding him oranges for his sight), saved newspapers for him, adding to a collection that included 10 pianos, a disassembled car (or two) and a dozen gas chandeliers among other things. Unfortunately Langley died when he sprung on of his homemade burglar traps, becoming buried beneath mounds of newspapers, and Homer died from starvation. Police found Homer's body, but did not find Langley's rat-gnawed body until weeks later within the debris, after searching the city for him.
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