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Hartford Stage’s Tresnjak To Direct Verdi Opera ‘Macbeth’ In L.A.

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Darko Tresnjak just directed “Macbeth” at Hartford Stage two seasons ago, and now he’s doing it again? No, wait. This time it’s not the Shakespeare play but the Verdi opera. It’ll be done in Los Angeles, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in September. And who’s that playing Macbeth? Plácido Domingo! This will mark Tresnjak’s fourth time directing for the L.A. Opera company.

Got The Goods

Goodspeed Musicals and Hartford Symphony Orchestra Celebrate the Best of Broadway on Feb. 20 at The Bushnell, featuring vocalists who starred in recent Goodspeed musicals. They are Gizel Jiménez from “The Theory of Relativity”; Conor Ryan, who was the son in “La Cage aux Folles”; Tony Sheldon, who played Horace in “Hello, Dolly”; and Laurie Wells from “City of Angels” and “42nd Street.” Michael O’Flaherty, who has been resident music director at Goodspeed Musicals for a quarter of a century, will guest-conduct the HSO for the show-tune-studded concert.

Laurie Wells from “City of Angels” and “42nd Street” will also be part the Goodspeed and HSO celebration of Broadway at the Bushnell.

Tales Of Another Broken Home

As reported in The Courant earlier, a proposed Enfield High School Lamplighters Drama Club production of the musical “American Idiot” was canceled due to complaints from what the faculty member in charge of the show described as “a very small number of extremely vocal people.”

The National Coalition Against Censorship and Howard Sherman of the Arts Integrity Initiative sounded the alarm, and when the show’s co-creator Billie Joe Armstrong, frontman of the band Green Day, shared his thoughts on the controversy it became a national news story.

A post on the Lamplighters Facebook page noted that “Billie Joe is not happy, you guys.” Enfield High reportedly will produce “Little Shop of Horrors” instead this spring. “American Idiot” has been a popular choice at colleges and small theaters throughout Connecticut since the performance rights became available. It’s being done at Downtown Cabaret Theater in Bridgeport in April. You can safely expect there to be dozens of high school productions in coming years. Enfield had a chance to be in the forefront, but instead chose to (as the title song of “American Idiot” goes) “sing along to the age of paranoia.”

Gizel Jiménez is among the featured vocalists for the “HSO & Goodspeed Celebrate the Best of Broadway,” Feb. 20 at The Bushnell.

Academy Fight Song

Lupita Nyong’o, who was cast in her Oscar-winning role in “Twelve Years a Slave” just weeks after graduating from the Yale School of Drama, is among the many actors complaining about the lack of diversity among this year’s Academy Award nominees. In a tweet, Nyong’o said: I stand with my peers who are calling for change in expanding the stories that are told and recognition of the people who tell them.” Among Nyong’o’s roles at Yale, all unconventionally cast: Perdita in “The Winter’s Tale,” Sonya in “Uncle Vanya,” Mephisto in “Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights” and Katherine in “The Taming of the Shrew.” The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Science has announced it is taking steps to diversify its membership and, by extension, its nominees. The 2016 Oscar ceremony is Feb. 28.

Greek-Irish

Colin Lane, who spent December reciting Dylan Thomas’ “A Child’s Christmas in Wales” at libraries in Stratford, Milford and New Haven, is in the cast of the well-received new production of Seamus Heaney’s “Burial at Thebes” at New York’s Irish Repertory Theatre. The play’s Antigone is Rebekah Brockman, who appeared in “Arcadia” at Yale Rep in 2014. Yale Rep did a different one of Heaney’s revised Greek tragedies, “The Cure at Troy,” in 1998. The Irish Rep brought its production of Brian Friel’s “Molly Sweeney” to the Long Wharf Theatre in 2011.

Expect Great Things

The 2016 Kleban Prize for “most promising theater librettist” has been awarded to Daniel Goldstein, whose musical, “Unknown Soldier” (written with Michael Friedman), was developed at The O’Neill Theatre Center in Waterford and staged last summer at the Williamstown Theater Festival in Massachusetts. The Kleban Prize for “most promising musical theater lyricist”— these awards are parsed very carefully — went to Stacey Luftig, who worked on “My Heart is the Drum” (with Philip Palmer and Jennie Redling) during the 2014 Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Musicals in East Haddam. The judges who bestowed the prizes were former Goodspeed Executive Director Michael Price, Broadway actress Judith Ivey (who appeared in the Long Wharf Theater productions of “The Glass Menagerie” and “Shirley Valentine”) and casting director Andrew Zeeman.

Bedford at Rest

Brian Bedford, the great British actor who died Jan. 13 at the age of 80, was no stranger to Connecticut. He appeared at Westport Country Playhouse in a 1973 production of Simon Gray’s “Butley,” brought his one-man Shakespeare pageant “Stuff As Dreams Are Made On: The Lunatic, the Lover and the Poet” to the Long Wharf Theatre in 1993 and starred in the farce double-feature “The Moliere Comedies” at Stamford Center for the Arts in 1995.