Linda Lavin to Star in New Nicky Silver Play - NYTimes.com

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/10/linda-lavin-to-star-in-new-nicky-silver-play/?hpw&rref=theater&pagewanted=print[12/11/2013 9:26:44 AM]

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DECEMBER 10, 2013, 11:39 AM

Linda Lavin to Star in New Nicky Silver Play

By ALLAN KOZINN

The team responsible for “The Lyons” — the playwright Nicky Silver, the actress Linda Lavin and the director Mark Brokaw — will reconvene thisspring at the Vineyard Theater, where “The Lyons” ran before moving to Broadway in 2012, for Mr. Silver’s latest work, “Too Much Sun.” Previewsbegin on May 1; the play opens on May 20.

Ms. Lavin, whose emotionally taut portrayal of the soon-to-be widowed Rita in “The Lyons” led to her sixth Tony nomination, will this time playAudrey Langham, an actress who goes to pieces while preparing for a production of “Medea,” and decides to spend time with her marrieddaughter.

“Like any playwright who has worked with Linda Lavin,” Mr. Silver said in a telephone interview on Tuesday, “I wanted to work with her again. Soyes, I absolutely wrote ‘Too Much Sun’ with her in mind, and hoped that she would like it and want to do it. The character is very different, but Ireally feel that Linda can do almost anything — in fact, I’d leave ‘almost’ out of the sentence — and I wanted her to use different muscles than shewas called on to use in ‘The Lyons.’”

Whether Ms. Lavin would like the play was only one potential hitch. There was also the question of whether she would be busy filming episodes ofthe sitcom “Sean Saves the World.” Mr. Silver took a gamble on that.

“When I was talking with Vineyard about doing the play,” Mr. Silver said, “I asked for the last slot in the season, because that would be hiatustime. It’s hard to cast plays in New York with TV going on, but that last slot is always your friend.”

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‘Nutcracker Rouge,’ at the Minetta Lane Theater - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/...13/12/06/arts/dance/nutcracker-rouge-at-the-minetta-lane-theater.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print[12/11/2013 9:25:30 AM]

December 5, 2013

Like a Classic Ballet, but Nothing Like ItBy NEIL GENZLINGER

There is a law, apparently, that in December everyone must see a production that has the word“Nutcracker” in the title. Otherwise why would there be so many of them?

Well, there’s good news at the Minetta Lane Theater for those who can’t stand to sit through the old balletyet again but don’t want to go to jail for not fulfilling their nutcrackerly responsibility. It’s called“Nutcracker Rouge,” and if the plain old “Nutcracker” causes you to zone out, this one will surely wake youup.

The show, from Austin McCormick’s Company XIV and the presenting organization Saint at Large, is a sortof seasonal killer-B’s confection: ballet, baroque and burlesque. The eye-popping production is “TheNutcracker” as it might exist in another, decadent dimension. There’s candy, but not the kind you buy at asweets shop. No gingerbread here either; pasties, not pastries. Although the familiar “Nutcracker” musicturns up, so does “Material Girl,” the Madonna song. Madonna, Christmas — in the skewed world of“Nutcracker Rouge,” it makes a certain amount of sense.

Laura Careless is Marie Claire, and the scant story chronicles her education, or her defiling, depending onyour point of view. Mr. Drosselmeyer (Jeff Takacs) serves as a gnarly ringmaster, while Mrs. Drosselmeyer(Shelly Watson) is a buxom cabaret singer who propels things along with an appealing voice and occasionalforays into the audience.

This “Nutcracker” adopts a steamy tone right from the start, the stage bathed in red as the audience enters,a haze hanging in the air. Zane Pihlstrom, who designed the sets and costumes, and Jeanette Yew, thelighting designer, want you to feel as if you’re in a club when you ought to be in church — guilt merged withanticipation. They succeed.

The show looks at times like an adults-only Cirque du Soleil extravaganza, with trapeze acts and otherathletic displays. Early on, Courtney Giannone delivers a gravity-defying routine using a big hoop withshowstopping panache. But Mr. McCormick, who directed and choreographed the show, has much granderambitions than a “Nutcracker” under the big top or a bawdy parody. The cast is full of classically traineddancers, and when he turns them loose, the result can be dazzling.

That is especially true of a concluding sequence by Marie, who at this point has lost most of her clothes,and her prince (Alexander Hille), an exhilarating pas de deux that ends the work with a declaration. “Yes,”it seems to say, “this show was raucous and risqué, but it was also, in its way, art. So take that, New YorkCity Ballet.”

‘Nutcracker Rouge,’ at the Minetta Lane Theater - NYTimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/...13/12/06/arts/dance/nutcracker-rouge-at-the-minetta-lane-theater.html?_r=0&pagewanted=print[12/11/2013 9:25:30 AM]

“Nutcracker Rouge” continues through Jan. 5 at the Minetta Lane Theater, 18 Minetta Lane, Greenwich Village;

800-745-3000, ticketmaster.com.