Results tagged “nationaltheatre”

In Samuel Beckett’s 1961 play Happy Days, a decidedly upbeat woman named Winnie spends Act One striving valiantly to make the best of her sticky situation: she’s irrevocably buried up to her waist in a “low mound.” True, Winnie has her reticent companion Willie for company, but she cheerily defies the barren void by holding forth for a seemingly nonexistent gathering of spectators. And Act Two finds Winnie still determined to make a go of it, despite a marked deterioration of her condition: she is now buried up to the neck. 47 years after Beckett finished it, the brutally funny and moving Happy Days is now the hot ticket at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Scotland’s Black Watch is an elite military regiment whose history stretches back almost three centuries. The regiment most recently saw action as part of the British Army’s deployment in Iraq, where seven members lost their lives – five of the men in the space of 11 days in 2004. The National Theatre of Scotland tracked down some of the Black Watch soldiers upon their return to Scotland and, over the course of several months and countless pints of Guinness, playwright Gregory Burke got the men to open up about their experiences. The stories they told, as well as the way they told them, have been woven into a dazzling tapestry of warfare, as seen through the hardened eyes of this now-fading regiment.

MUSIC: Frequenter of the Hotel Chelsea, Country Joe McDonald (pictured at Woodstock) will be taking the Joe's Pub stage tonight to perform a tribute to Woody Guthrie where he "deftly conveys all the charm, talent, and social and political consciousness of the legendary folksinger from Oklahoma."

A look at some noteworthy (and mainly regifted) programs this week:

Appropriately in this sticky heat, it’s kind of a slow week for theater, at least openings-wise. So for a change of pace, instead of a show roundup, here are a few recent theater-world tidbits that struck Gothamist as interesting.

Plan your trip to D.C., either by car or by train. And if you go to D.C., you must see the real pandas at the National Zoo.