SONG CYCLE CYCLES BACK: I’m a huge Adam Guettel fan; as you know, he’s the multi-award-winning composer/lyricist of The Light in the Piazza and Floyd Collins, among other daring and original musicals, and, like all other AG fans, I eagerly anticipate his next work. Until then, I’ll be more than happy to content myself with a reconceived version of his amazing theater piece Myths and Hymns, the acclaimed song cycle about memory, loss and redemption that began in concert form in 1998 at The Public Theater under the title Saturn Returns. This month, Prospect Theater Company presents the New York premiere of stage and film director Elizabeth Lucas’s narrative version of Myths and Hymns, featuring Bob Stillman, Linda Balgord, Anika Larsen, Lucas Steele, Ally Bonino, Matthew Farcher and Donnel Foreman. Lucas’s idea was to write a narrative that ties Guettel’s songs together, and this version of the song cycle aims to bring a character-driven context to the numbers that previously were performed without an imposed context. (Got that, boys and girls?) Guettel fans are sure to be seen lining up at the West End Theatre in the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew for performances now through February 26. www.ProspectTheatre.org
TAKING OFF: Three terrific and celebrated theater actors, Maddie Corman, Maria Tucci and Jonathan Walker make up the cast of Michel Wallerstein’s Flight, which receives its World Premiere production courtesy of Alchemy Theatre of Manhattan, in conjunction with Playwrights’ Playground NYC. Wallerstein’s play takes a look at a man’s search for truth, love and even his identity against the backdrop of his mother’s deterioration. Padraic Lillis directs; performances begin March 2 at DR 2 Theatre. www.alchemytheatre.org
HIT A HOMER:
Tony Award-winning actor Denis
O’Hare, most recently seen in the stylish
TV thriller series American Horror Story, can now add
“playwright” to the Additional Skills
section of his resume. Mr. O’Hare
has joined forces with another playwright, Lisa Peterson, for An
Illiad, a sprawling theatrical yarn based
on Homer’s epic poem. Taking their cue from their ancient forebear, An
Iliad still spins the familiar tale of gods
and goddesses, undying love and endless battles from the old text, but told
through an original and immediate voice.
In performance, Mr. O’Hare will alternate in the play with another Tony
winner, Stephen Spinella, as they recount this well-known, but
still gripping, tale of humanity’s unshakeable attraction to violence,
destruction, and chaos. (Have
things changed all that much since the Trojan War?) Performances have just begun at New York Theatre Workshop, with opening night set for March 6 for Mr. O’Hare
and March 7 for Mr. Spinella. Two opening nights…how epic! www.nytw.org
THE BOOK OF SETH:
Everybody in the New York theater
world, it seems, knows Seth Rudetsky. How could you not? Seth is one of our most visible (not to
mention funniest) ambassadors of theater to the country at large, being, of
course, a prominent DJ on Sirius
XM Radio’s popular musical theater
channel. Well, this month, Seth
multi-tasks and moonlights as a fiction writer when his novel for young people My
Awesome Awful Popularity Plan hits bookstores from Random House. In
the kind of hyper-animated and high-energy voice that distinguishes his lively
radio commentary, Seth turns his attention to his young hero. Justin Goldblatt,
trying desperately (and hilariously, and poignantly) to navigate the ups and
downs of his sophomore year in high school. Unfortunately, for starters, Justin has set his romantic
sights on the quarterback of the football team…there must be a song cue in
there somewhere! Popularity
Plan is out now…and so, incidentally, is Justin! As Seth himself might say,
ahmaazing. www.randomhouse.com/teens
SISTER ACT: Playwright Begonya Plaza takes a sexually charged look at politics, religion and, ultimately, love in her new play Teresa’s Ecstasy, which begins performances March 4 at Cherry Lane Theatre in a production directed by Will Pomerantz. Seems that Carlotta (played by Ms. Plaza) has two purposes for returning to Barcelona; one, it’s a stopover on the way to Avila, where she is researching an article on St. Teresa, a 16th century nun. Second, she’s also there to serve her husband Andres with divorce papers. In her quest for the divine, and in the process of discovering the mystical Teresa’s “Ecstasy,” Carlotta also discovers herself. Shawn Elliott and Linda Larkin co-star; opening night is scheduled for March 14. www.cherrylanetheatre.org
