Results tagged “moliere”

In announcing their presentation of Moliere’s riff on the Don Juan legend, The National Theater of the United States of America promised “a production so authentic that it rivals in authenticity Moliere’s own 1665 production at the Palais-Royal in Paris.” As we learn in an opening monologue, their tongue-in-cheek press release prompted one critic to sniff, “I see there is no translator mentioned. I assume you will be doing it in the original French.” Ah, touché! But director Jonathan Jacobs’s idea of authenticity is to coax out the farcical spirit of the original with a sort of lavish amateurishness that proves irresistible from the show’s first beat.

FILM: Going to movies can sometimes suck a lot of time and money out of you. Which is why we love film shorts. They cater to our attention span, and in this case - our wallet, too. “Made in NY Shorts,” is a whold bunch of shorts that'll leave you filled up like you'd just seen a feature length.

On Sundays Gothamist runs opinion pieces relevant to life in New York and reviews of recent books and performances. The judgments expressed below are entirely those of the author.

The past couple weeks have been a little slower than usual in Theatreland, with fewer openings, numerous closings, and performances on limited schedules. This week, as we all get back up to speed, there’s already quite a lot to choose from.

Since we haven’t been following the New York theatre scene for years and years, we’d rather not pontificate about how 2005 was overall for the art. Thinking about it now, it seems like it was pretty great, but that might just be our affectionate, soft-focus hindsight, plus we’re just crazy about theatre in general. And even though we see way more of it than most people we know, nytheatre.com’s season archives quickly reminded us that we made it to a mere fraction of what was on offer, so there’s no pretending we saw “the” best performance. But of what we did go to, here’s what stands out as the year finishes (in no real order except for saving the best for last).

On Sundays, Gothamist runs opinion pieces on issues relevant to life in New York. The views expressed below are solely those of the author.

The sun was still fairly well up in the sky when the New York Classical Theatre’s free outdoor performance of Moliere’s Scapin began on Saturday when Gothamist went to see it. By the end of the show dusk had settled in and the crew was using flashlights as footlights, but the lightness of the sky throughout much of it was just as well – the better to see this utterly delightful little performance. Plus it was good to be able to see in order to follow the cast around, as Scapin (like most of NYCT’s plays) is done in “environmental” format, meaning that every scene or so, you get up from your spot and move to a new little grove of the park.

Gothamist loves free theater in a park (any park!) as much as the next group-blog, but to be honest we've been left cold the last few times we've gone to see the stuff put up by the Public (it's been a problem ever since that ill-conceived star-studded production of ). And anyway the next show at the Delecorte doesn't start till the 16th and by then we're going to be too distracted by the Fringe Festival (buy your tickets now!).

Shakespeare in the Park doesn’t start until June 25, and if you’ve gone in past years you know that even when that wait is over, you’ll still have to wait in line for ages to get the show tickets. But even though the heat might be tempting you to duck into a nice cool theater, remember, it’s only going to get worse, so you might as well be outside while you can. And there are a surprising number of theatre companies who are getting the jump on the Public Theater, which puts on Shakespeare in the Park, on the outdoor thing. You’re not likely to have to wait in line much for these, either.