Interludes

THE STATE OF THE ARTS – February 25, 2015

• By drediman
• February 25, 2015
• No Comments

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

• Scott Ellis’s joyous Broadway revival of the George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart classic You Can’t Take It With You ended its limited run last weekend. If anything, the production was stronger (less frantic and warmer) than when it opened a few months ago. Annaleigh Ashford, who I’m betting will end the season with a Tony in her hands, and Julie Halston still steal the show with their totally inspired idiosyncratic readings of their relatively small respective supporting roles.
• Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and the New York Philharmonic (led here by Music Director Alan Gilbert) joined forced last week to present an enticing East meets West program at Avery Fisher Hall. The aural rewards of this collaboration were plenty. As evidenced by enthusiastic sold out houses, the Philharmonic should use these concerts as templates for some more creative, cross-cultural programming in the future.
• At the state-of-the-art Harman Hall in Washington, DC, I caught the National Theatre of Scotland and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Dunsinane, David Greig’s sequel to Shakespeare’s Scottish Play. As it turned out, this engrossing and terribly exciting production is easily one of the best Shakespeare spin-offs I’ve come across since, you got it, Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. By insisting on speaking in its own uncompromising voice, Greig’s play ends up pleasing both fans of Shakespeare and contemporary theater (it works brilliantly as an allegorical mirror to warfare in our times).
• Also in Washington, I was able to catch the Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company’s expertly-acted, polished production of Lisa D’Amour’s thought-provoking Cherokee. Much like her Detroit (a 2011 Pulitzer Prize finalist), Ms. D’Amour here delves once again into existential questions on what it means to be an American today.
• Kate Baldwin is as incandescent as ever in Keen Company’s current 20^th anniversary revival of Andrew Lippa and Tom Greenwald’s slight yet heartfelt John & Jen. It’s refreshing and thrilling to hear Ms. Baldwin’s ravishing clarion voice soar within the intimate confines of Theatre Row’s Clurman Theatre without the aid of amplification.