Homer Run
One of the hottest theater names in regional theater hereabouts is a Greek poet who composed his epic works some 28 centuries ago.
“The Odyssey” by Homer is the foundation of Suzan-Lori Parks’ Civil War drama “Father Comes Home from the Wars Parts 1, 2 & 3,” at Yale Rep through April 7. Next season the Long Wharf Theatre will produce Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s “An Iliad,” a one-actor adaptation of Homer’s “The Iliad.” Trinity Rep in Providence also has “An Iliad” on its 2018-19 schedule.
On the West Coast, Seattle Repertory Theatre began its 2017-18 season with Todd Almond’s new musical version of “The Odyssey,” which New York’s Public Theater premiered in 2015. Mary Zimmerman’s multimedia adaptation of “The Odyssey” could be found in 2017 at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Playwright Marcus Gardley’s modern, urban, lower-cased “black odyssey” premiered in August 2017 at California Shakespeare Theater.
Are we as audiences seeking traditional forms and values? Do we just crave adventure? It’s certainly a zeitgeist thing. Some of these plays are new, but “An Iliad” has been around since 2010, and Zimmerman’s “The Odyssey” first happened in 1990.
If you want to bone up on Homer before you see one of these shows, there are excellent recent translations of “The Odyssey” by Emily Wilson and “The Iliad” by Caroline Alexander.
Never Say Never
When I interviewed Doug Hughes about directing “The Age of Innocence” at Hartford Stage (the Edith Wharton adaptation is running through May 6), I was compelled to ask if he would ever be interested in running a regional theater again. Hughes was the artistic director of Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven from 1997 to 2001, sending shows such as “Wit” and “The Grey Zone” to New York and serving up fine productions of “She Stoops to Conquer,” “The Importance of Being Earnest” and “The Good Person of New Haven,” to name a few. There are a number of regional theaters in the country searching for new artistic leaders right now, Hartford Stage and Long Wharf among them.
Hughes’ response: “I always thought it was a great thing to do in life. I think that answer falls into the ‘Never say never’ category.”
Prize Round-Up
The Richard Rodgers Award for Musical Theatre honors the work of emerging composers. The 2018 honorees are “Gun & Powder” by Ross Baum and Angelica Chéri and “KPOP” by Jason Kim, Helen Park, Max Vernon and Woodshed Collective. “Gun & Powder” was partially developed through a residency at Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam. Kim and Vernon were at Goodspeed’s Johnny Mercer Writers Colony in 2016 developing a different show, “Co-op.”
The winner of the 2018 Yale Drama Series is Leah Nanako Winkler’s family drama “God Said This.” The winning play (“selected by a distinguished playwright” — this year Ayad Akhtar did the honors) gets published by Yale Press and is given a staged reading at New York’s Lincoln Center. The playwright also receives $10,000. “God Said This” was already going places: the show is being produced this month at the Actors Theatre of Louisville’s Humana Festival in Kentucky, and will get a New York production in January at New York’s Primary Stages.
Enfield High School was among the 50 recipients of the inaugural Recognizing and Inspiring Student Expression (RISE) grants bestowed by NBC in honor of the network’s new school-theater-themed series “Rise.” Each school gets $10,000 to help support theater education — that can mean anything from production costs to new equipment to master classes.
Friends In Jersey
We’ve been hearing a lot about the McCarter Theater Center this year. The Princeton, N.J.-based theater did two co-productions with Hartford Stage — “Murder on the Orient Express” and “The Age of Innocence” — this season, and has another one (“Detroit ’67”) planned for next season. The McCarter also co-produced the musical “Crowns” with Long Wharf Theatre.
Seems like there are a lot of shared tastes and interests between New Jersey and Connecticut theaters. So what’s on the McCarter slate for next season?
The McCarter’s 2018-19 season opens in September with “The Age of Innocence,” the production that runs at Hartford Stage April 5 to May 6. It’s followed in October by “Detroit ’67,” which Hartford Stage audiences will see in February/March. Then comes Eleanor Burgess’ “The Niceties” in January, a new comedy by “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Baskerville” scribe Ken Ludwig in March and David Hare’s “Skylight” in May.
A Positive Move
Hartford Stage has a new slogan, “Positively Hartford Stage.” (The old one was “The best theater. Period.”) The new tagline has been cleverly applied to the titles in the theater’s recently announced 2018-19 season, in promotional artwork on the hartfordstage.org website. The promo reads “Positively Playful” (with an illustration of a child dressing up in adult high heeled shoes, to evoke the new Bess Wohl play “Make Believe”), “Positively Epic” (a sword, for Shakespeare’s “Henry V”), “Positively Engaging” (a ring, for the premiere of Samuel Baum’s “The Engagement Party”), “Positively Motown” (a cracked LP record, for Dominique Morisseau’s “Detroit ’67”) and “Positively Musical” (a cabana boy holding a tray, for the premiere of the new musical “The Flamingo Kid”). A sixth show for the 2018-19 season has yet to be announced. We’re positive they’ll find a cool way to describe it in one word.
The Scorecard
Yale Rep has cast “Kiss.” Guillermo Calderón’s backstage social satire will be in New Haven April 27 through May 19. The show features current Yale School of Drama student Abubakr Ali as The Interpreter, 2015 YSD grad James Cusati-Moyer as Youssif, Soraya Broukhim (“Sodom and Gomorrah” at the O’Neill Theater Center) as Hadeel, Ian Lassiter (Broadway’s “Junk”) as Ahmed, Hend Ayoub (Janan in the Israel episodes of “Transparent”) as Bana and Rasha Zamamiri (“Hijabi Woman” from the “America is Beautiful” Coca-Cola commercial) as Woman.
“Kiss” is a metadrama that begins with four actors enacting a Syrian soap opera script, then morphs into dire political realities. Most productions (and reviews) of “Kiss” are loath to reveal spoilers, since there are so many plot twists and style shifts.
Calderón’s meditation on the death of Chekhov, “Neva,” was part of Yale’s “No Boundaries” series in 2012, performed by the playwright’s own Teatro en el Blanco company. That show was written and performed in Spanish. “Kiss” is the first play that Calderón (who’s from Chile) has written in English.
“Kiss” is directed at the Rep by Evan Yionoulis, who has taught at the Yale School of Drama for 20 years but is leaving soon to become the head of the Drama department at Juilliard.
