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Kennedy Center Salutes 1940s Broadway Musicals

A "subtle spell" was cast over the Kennedy Center's Concert Hall Sunday night by powerhouse performances from hit Broadway musicals such as "Carousel," and "Annie Get Your Gun."

"The center's 13th annual gala [was]...a respectably glitzy 90-minute concert hosted by Julie Andrews (whose participation, alas, was limited to opening remarks)," writes Nelson Pressley in The Washington Post. Highlights included Brian Stokes Mitchell's rendition of "Soliloquy" from "Carousel"; Barbara Cook performing "Wonderful Guy," making it "sound like the easiest song ever written, even though singing that contains sparkle of such a high magnitude is rare," according to Pressley. Cook also conveyed "exquisite heartache" with her "downbeat, gossamer rendition of 'This Nearly Was Mine,'" Pressley wrote. Marvin Hamlisch, principal conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra Pops, was musical conceiver and director of the evening's program. Not surprisingly, Rodgers and Hammerstein dominated the program, with more than half the selections coming from their musicals.

Rosemary Kennedy Captured Playwrights' Imaginations

Rosemary Kennedy, mentally disabled sister of President Kennedy, died on January 7 at the age of 86. Her life for a long time captured the imagination of artists and playwrights. The idea of a "slow" sibling trying to fit in with a brilliant, high-achieving family has a natural pathos and tension, challenging perspectives on expectations of children and expectations of life itself, that artists hope to portray successfully. Don't be surprised to see a revival of existing drama about Rosemary's life, as well as new teleplays, movies or docu-dramas.

CurtainUp.com, the international theater magazine, has in its database two plays about Rosemary Kennedy, Rosemary, and Our Fathers.

"Rosemary," by Jim O'Connor, premiered in Chicago and won the 2002 Joseph Jefferson Citation for Outstanding New Work. It is a "tragic portrait" of a "misunderstood" eldest daughter. Joseph P. Kennedy describes his daughter as "slow,and getting worse."

"Rosemary retreats into her private world of talking to rocks she has collected on the beach and O'Connor makes the point early that her dysfunctional family contributed to her mental deterioration. 'Slow' is what they used to say in those days to cover a whole range of neurological or emotional disorders," reviewer Lewis Whittington writes.

The premise of Our Fathers by Luigi Lunari, first produced in Milan, Italy in 1998, is this: what if the mentally disabled offspring of two historical figures -- Joseph P. Kennedy, hard-driving American businessman, and Palmiro Togliatti, cofounder of the Italian Communist Party -- "met on some astral plane where they can articulate their feelings for their respective fathers?"

"Rosemary (the play) is...living proof of the madness of doctrinaire ideology," writes reviewer Carolyn Balducci. "...The strength of Our Fathers comes from the two fine portrayals of characters who, though mentally disabled, are three-dimensional, dignified and heroic. It also provides an opportunity to see the work of a noted, internationally produced Italian playwright." 

Drill Deeper:

• Rosemary Kennedy and the Kennedys' Exemplary Leadership on Mental Retardation

Broadway Looks To Strong 2005 Season

If Broadway is making a big post-9/11 comeback, barring another terrorist attack or natural disaster in the big apple, it should do even better in 2005.

A handful of highly popular new musicals are set to open in the first half of 2005, including a Monty Python vehicle, "Spamalot." Other musicals utilize the songs of the Beach Boys and Elvis Presley.

Big stars will be appearing in Broadway shows that have a long track record of popularity. These include:

• Denzel Washington in "Julius Caesar";
• Kathleen Turner in "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf";
• Jessica Lange in "The Glass Menagerie" and
• John Lithgow in "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels."

Broadway Has Great 2004, Thanks Primarily to Foreign Visitors

Finally recovering from the impact of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on New York, Broadway's finances leaped upward in 2004, according to the League of American Theatres and Producers. An increase in foreign visitors plus a
host of successful new openings have led to a $23 million uptick in ticket sales for the year.

Broadway shows are taking in at least $748 million this year, up from
$725 million in 2003, the league reports. Overseas visitors accounted for 12 percent of ticket sales, double that of last year. "Overseas tourists are now back
at the same numbers as they were prior to September 11," League president
Jed Bernstein told the BBC. "From a business point of view, it was a
very solid year."

The year got off to a slow start -- "last winter was a hard time," Bernstein observed, "but things were very strong in the spring and summer." Business slowed down after Labor Day, but "the last month or so has been much stronger," Bernstein said. He's hoping for a great close to the year, especially in the days between Christmas and New Year's. "We're almost cooking along now the way we were in the 2000-2001 season, which was a record setter," Bernstein said.

The strongest Broadway shows this year have been:

Billy Crystal's one-man autobiographical play, "700 Sundays." It has raked in
more than $600,000 in ticket sales, just since its premiere on Dec. 5. Critics
have given the first half of Crystal's show strong reviews, but complained
that it was about an hour too long.

"A Raisin in the Sun," starring Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs;

The musical "Avenue Q"

The musical "Wicked."

The latter three were Tony award-winners.

'Best British Dramatist' Harold Pinter Needles Critics

Playwright Harold Pinter was recognized this week as "the outstanding British dramatist of the last half century" by London's Evening Standard newspaper.

Sir Peter Hall, imminent director of the Royal Shakespeare Company in the 1960s, of the Royal National Theatre in the 1970s and 1980s, praised Pinter as the playwright who "has brought poetry back to English theatre, not as something decorative but rooted in the vitality of modern language," the Guardian reported. "The foundation of his work is the Cockney...contest or confrontation." For his part, in accepting the award, Pinter took the Evening Standard to task in its early review of his play, "The Birthday Party":

"Forty six years ago, my [first] play 'The Birthday Party' was performed in London and slaughtered by the critics - particularly by the Evening Standard, by the way. But in the early new year I'm happy to say that rehearsals will start for the fourth revival in London.

"So not only is this award very gratifying in itself, it is also gratifying in terms of its timing."

Sally Field in 'Glass Menagerie': Magnificient Play, Great Performance

A major stage debut by movie actress Sally Field occurred Thursday night in Washington, and received extremely positive reviews.

This production of "The Glass Menagerie" reaffirms that it is one of Tennessee Williams' "most moving and skillful play, one of the signal family dramas of the American theater," writes Peter Marks in The Washington Post. "Directed by Gregory Mosher with a captivating intuition for the play's unerring emotional truth, (the play) is all about the zone of protection we attempt to draw around the people we love, and how easy it is forever after to be trapped between the impulses of self-sacrifice and self-preservation."

Field does not make the mistake many movie actors' make when shifting to the stage. Even without the camera close-ups, her character is strong and memorable, poignant and magnificient, Marks says.

One-Woman Show About Former First Lady May Move Up to Broadway

July 23-25, 2004...An off-Broadway one-woman show depicting the life of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis may soon move up to Broadway. "Cirque Jacqueline: Behind the Facade of Jackie O" stars Andrea Reese in a one-act play that attempts to "show the real Jackie rather than the idealized version." Reese, who wrote the play as well as stars in it, bears a striking resemblance to the former first lady. The show has received consistently positive reviews.

"Cirque Jacqueline" takes its title from Jackie's childhood fantasy of running off and joining the circus. "The theme of fleeing the vicissitudes of life weaves through the play,"
writes
Barbara Nachman in the New York Journal News. "The escape fantasy began in the unhappy Bouvier home, where Jackie's father was an alcoholic womanizer and her mother was calculating, bitter and hypercritical." The show opens with music by The Platters, "The Great Pretender." Reese's Jackie is "a flawed perfectionist whose life is both tragic and uplifting."

Jackie's mother sternly counseled her that "your choice of a husband is the most important decision you'll ever make. Be smart, Jacqueline. It's better to be bored with a rich man than bored with a poor man." Later Jackie commiserates with Joan Kennedy, the first wife of Senator Edward Kennedy, and advises her sister-in-law not to divorce Ted. "No men are faithful to their wives," she says. "Just sort of block it out, like switching a station on the radio when you don't like what's on."

The character is complex. On the one hand, Jackie's ambition in life seems to be stylish and beautiful. And yet, she chain-smokes, has assassination flashbacks and gets amphetamine injections. Reese even explores the two voices of Jackie, the public voice of the White House tour, a cultivated media voice that sounded remarkably like Marilyn Monroe, and "another, much less airy voice," that she used in private. Asked about the similarities between herself and the former first lady, Reese said, "In acting, you have to figure out what the verbs are that run though someone's life. With Jackie, it was to amaze and to fascinate. I think mine would be the same."

Regional Theaters Struggle Financially

Regional theaters are attracting veteran actors and actresses this summer, but they still have serious financial challenges, according to USA TODAY.

Mia Farrow, Marcia Gay Harden and Amy Irving are participating this summer in the 20th anniversary season of Powerhouse Theater, a summer program presented at Vassar College in association with New York Stage & Film. But actor Mark Linn-Baker, who conceived the program in 1985, says the economics of regional theater simply do not work.

"As a business, it's stupid, and it's not getting any better," he told USA TODAY. "Sources of new material, even not-for-profit (theaters), have to pay attention to box office — in New York, certainly, and in regional. The longer you can put off that kind of commercial pressure, the more of a chance you have to develop something meaningful to the people working on it."

Still, he adds, "we have a devoted audience that is as excited about seeing what works and what doesn't as we are."

Sally Field's New Career: With Film Roles Limited, She Moves to the Stage

July 20, 2004...The film industry is mostly uninterested in older women, Sally Field says, so she
has taken to the stage. She's spending the summer in Washington, playing Amanda in the Kennedy
Center's production of Tennessee Williams classic, "The Glass Menagerie." Amanda is a classic role -- a mother trying to control her children, and force her idea of happiness onto her son and daughter.

She is looking forward to a new career on the stage. "They don't make a lot of films that have really good roles for women, 'cause this society and [the industry] are not interested in older women," she told The Washington Post. "Which is fine, I guess. So most of the things that I get (for film) are
just awful, and I don't want to do them. But even, honestly . . .so much of American film that I see now, I wouldn't want to be in it anyway. I don't see anything that I go, 'Ohhhh! Boy!'...So I really find that my interests are -- as I knew they would be eventually anyway -- in what I haven't really done enough of in my
life, which is the stage."

Best known as giggly Gidget. The Flying Nun. Norma Rae, the textile mill worker turned militant. An estranged but dutiful wife in "Places in the Heart." Ex-wife to Robin Williams in "Mrs. Doubtfire." Single mom to Forrest Gump, with her box of chocolates. Now, for the summer, she's playing "a faded Southern belle who chose poorly when the time came to wed one of her numberless gentlemen callers, and now she's trying to make certain Laura marries well," the Post's Chip Crews writes.

Director Gregory Mosher says Field was "born to play this part." Her characters tend to grow from fragile, girlish, to tough, strong-willed. Perhaps there's some typecasting involved. She's twice-divorced, the mother
of three boys, with the youngest, 16-year-old Sam, still in the nest, but not for much longer. In two years, she'll be free to pursue her stage career more fully, moving where the shows take her.