After posting my comments on Broadway’s rollickingly funny POTUS last May, I took a hiatus from this blog. I have been in and out of New York City this year. After five or so years of chronicling my theater experiences I decided to take a break. I am currently back in NYC for a visit. My theater docket is loaded with, hopefully, a great itinerary.
A Strange Loop
I paused blogging but did see one more production on Broadway last May. I found the Tony and Pulitzer Prize winning A Strange Loop utterly mediocre. This meta musical follows a character named Usher who is exactly that at The Lion King. The book follows the story of Usher, a black queer man who is writing about a black queer man who is writing a musical.
The show is filled with self-deprecation, humor and analysis, largely about sexuality and inner growth. In discussing the show with friends months after, most seemed to admire that this content was on the Broadway stage. I saw an underproduced entertainment better suited for Off-Broadway. The multiple swipes at Tyler Perry struck a hollow note for me as well.
Agamemnone
I was fortunate later in June to travel to Sicily with friends and family. We all went to the Teatro Greco in Siracusa to see a performance of Agamemnone. This Greek amphitheater was built in the 5th century BCE and renovated two hundred years later during the Roman period. The photograph above was taken as nightfall approached.
All summer long this venue presents historical plays in this breathtaking open air locale. Agamemnone was performed in Italian so it was helpful to be familiar with the story beforehand. Production values, notably lighting and sound, were superb. For theater lovers, the thrill of physically going back in time and sitting in this ancient structure is an unparalleled joy. The icing on the cake: a full house with more than half the audience under the age of thirty.
Anatomy of a Murder
In the fall of 2022, I decided to “put my money where my mouth is” and audition for a role. I had the opportunity to play the Judge in a reader’s theater staging of Anatomy of a Murder with the Glen Arbor Players in Michigan. The show had sets and costumes but the actors (of a certain age!) carry scripts for the one weekend, three performance run. I cannot comment on a show in which I was a member of the cast. I can factually report that the turnout was record setting for this company and no one threw a tomato at me.
The Agenda
Those updates bring me to today and an excited return to NYC for theatrical immersion (plus a holiday dinner with the college gang and their families). The docket includes &Juliet, Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson on Broadway. I passed on the gloriously reviewed Kimberly Akimbo since I saw it downtown last winter. It is an excellent musical with a great cast.
Off-Broadway plans include Will Arbery’s Evanston Salt Costs Climbing, Becky Nurse of Salem, the Mint Theater’s American premiere of Noel Coward’s The Rat Trap and, despite its disastrous foreboding, the musical Titanique. There is one more matinee slot which could be filled…
…And next week I will be in South Bend, Indiana where a little reveling will be expected at Jane Lynch’s A Swinging Little Christmas. Nothing like a little breather to stoke my passion for live theater.