A Hit in Seattle, `First Date` Coming to Broadway

A Hit in Seattle, 'First Date' Coming to Broadway - NYTimes.com
MARCH 7, 2013, 1:25 PM
A Hit in Seattle, ‘First Date’ Coming to Broadway
By ALLAN KOZINN
It was probably only a matter of time before the high-tech side of dating – Google background checks
and fake emergency cellphone calls – would find its way onto the Broadway stage. The technological
aspects of romance will be part of the fabric of “First Date,” a new musical that will open at the Longacre
Theater on Aug. 4, with previews starting on July 9.
The musical follows a mismatched couple – an investment banker and a fledgling artist – on a blind
date, and was first staged in Seattle last year. Its book is by Austin Winsberg, who is best known as a
producer and writer for television. His credits include “Gossip Girl,” “Jake in Progress” and “Glory
Days,” but he has also directed productions at the Blank Theater Company’s Young Playwrights Festival
in Los Angeles.
The music and lyrics are by Michael Weiner and Alan Zachary, a young composing partnership whose
2005 “Twice Charmed: An Original Twist on the Cinderella Story” was written for Disney Cruise Line,
and whose latest work, a musical adaptation of the film “Secondhand Lions,” will have its premiere in
Seattle in September.
“First Date” is being staged by Junkyard Dog Productions, the company that produced “Memphis,” the
winner of the Tony Award for best musical in 2010. Bill Berry will direct, and Josh Rhodes is the
choreographer. Casting has not been announced.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 7, 2013
An earlier version of this post misidentified the company that is staging "First Date" on Broadway. It
is Junkyard Dog Productions, not Junkyard Productions.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/07/a-hit-in-seattle-first-date-coming-to-broadway/?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[3/8/2013 10:55:38 AM]
Elizabeth Olsen to Star in 'Romeo and Juliet' at Classic Stage Company - NYTimes.com
MARCH 7, 2013, 12:20 PM
Elizabeth Olsen to Star in ‘Romeo and Juliet’ at Classic Stage Company
By ERIK PIEPENBURG
The twins Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen have found success after transitioning from TV sitcom tots on
“Full House” to major design darlings with their own fashion house. Now it’s time for their sister
Elizabeth Olsen to make a high-profile career switcheroo: the Classic Stage Company announced on
Thursday that the actress will star in a production of “Romeo and Juliet” that will open the company’s
2013-14 season this fall. Additional casting, a creative team and run dates are to be announced.
The production will be Ms. Olsen’s first time originating a stage role. Her theater background includes
two stints as an understudy: in the 2009 Broadway production of the play “Impressionism” and in the
2008 Off Broadway play “Dust.”
Ms. Olsen is known mostly for her film roles, including “Silent House,” “Martha Marcy May Marlene”
and “Liberal Arts.” She recently completed production on Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s
“Oldboy,” with Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Brolin, set for release in October.
This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: March 7, 2013
An earlier version of this post misstated the name of the theater company where Elizabeth Olsen will
be performing in "Romeo and Juliet." It is the Classic Stage Company, not the Classic Theater
Company. Using information from a publicist it also referred imprecisely to her role in Spike Lee's film
adaptation of "Oldboy." She has completed production on the film; she is not currently filming it.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/...zabeth-olsen-to-star-in-romeo-and-juliet-at-classic-stage/?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[3/8/2013 10:56:31 AM]
Fiery, Salty and Brash, This Rose of Texas - The New York Times
March 7, 2013
THEATER REVIEW
Fiery, Salty and Brash, This Rose of Texas
By CHARLES ISHERWOOD
She was a memorable figure even before she opened her mouth — that sculptured meringue of hair seemed to
enter the room before she did — and an unforgettable one when she opened it, as salty wisecracks poured
forth like popcorn from a machine. She was politically as blue as they come, but managed to win the
leadership of a state as red-trending as any in the land. She acquired a national political profile without
holding national office, and openly discussed her alcoholism before this became a rite of passage for famous
figures from across the political spectrum.
Unless you slept through the late 1980s and the 1990s, folks, you probably know by now that I refer to Ann
Richards, the onetime governor of Texas, whose life and career are being given a ticker tape parade on the
stage of the Vivian Beaumont Theater, where the new Broadway show “Ann,” written by and starring Holland
Taylor, opened on Thursday night.
To put it as the plain-talking Richards might, this one-dynamo show — Ms. Taylor is the lone cast member —
is neither a shapely work of drama nor a deeply probing character study. But admirers of Richards probably
won’t give a darn. She was a brightly shining political star and an inspiring figure during the years of her
renown, and Ms. Taylor is essentially just giving this beloved dame one more chance to bask in the spotlight.
As a performer, Ms. Taylor also emerges from this two-hour pep rally smelling like a rose (a yellow one, let us
say). In a Broadway season sadly deficient, at this late juncture, in impressive leading performances from
women (not that notable women’s roles have been thick on the ground), Ms. Taylor’s lively, funny, humane
Ann Richards looks mighty formidable, despite the unshaded if colorful writing and the slack direction of
Benjamin Endsley Klein.
The solo format is challenging to negotiate even for seasoned playwrights, of course. Ms. Taylor divides the
show into distinct sections: the first half-hour or so consists of a speech Richards is giving at a college
graduation in some imaginary “present,” as the program has it. (Richards died in 2006.) The device allows
Richards to retail folksy advice to a new generation, but mostly to reminisce about her unlikely path from
contentedly domesticated housewife to high-office holder.
Her history runs along well-worn lines that make good bio copy for American politicians to this day: “simple
as a crayon drawing,” as Ms. Taylor’s Ann puts it. A Depression-era baby, she was born in rural Texas to a
doting father who was “pure sunlight,” and a mother who kept pointing out the clouds in the sky. She skirts
smoothly over her divorce from David Richards, a civil rights lawyer whose unwillingness to run for a
particular office instigated his wife’s full-ahead plunge into the “contact sport” that is Texas politics. Even her
battle with alcoholism is dispatched with a few jokes and a few home truths.
“I musta drunk eleven hundred thousand martinis by the time I landed in A.A. — and by then, I was this big
http://theater.nytimes.com/...eviews/ann-with-holland-taylor-at-vivian-beaumont-theater.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[3/8/2013 11:02:06 AM]
Fiery, Salty and Brash, This Rose of Texas - The New York Times
ol’ county commissioner!” she recalls. “So I like to think I broke a barrier for politicians with an addiction in
their past. And nowadays, hell, you can’t hardly even get into a primary unless you’ve done time in rehab.”
After this tidy, homespun recital of her upbringing and history in local politics before the governorship,
Richards then steps away from the podium and onto an imposing set (by Michael Fagin) representing the
Texas governor’s office, where a harried day in the life of the hard-driving Richards unfolds.
She displays more or less the same qualities in the public and (comparatively) private spheres. She’s frank and
funny, earthy and warm, tough as saddle leather and, when it comes to family and friends, loyal as they come.
Juggling flurries of phone calls as she whips through a busy day (Bill Clinton is first on the line), Ann takes
just as much time to arrange a family vacation, smoothing over one son’s sensitivities when it comes to
charades, flatly telling his sister that she’s baking the pies again.
She’s both demanding and nurturing to her devoted staff, complaining vociferously about her tardy
speechwriter at one moment, ordering up a trunk full of cowboy boots as gifts the next. Running on gut
instinct, she also has the political savvy to know exactly how much capital her tougher decisions are going to
cost: during this day-in-the-life scene, Richards is wrestling with a decision to grant a stay of execution to a
notorious murderer.
“Right now on the news they’re saying Governor Richards ‘did not take’ Mother Teresa’s call!” she rants to her
secretary in an outer office (patiently voiced by no less than the Tony-winning, Texas-bred Julie White). “I was
giving a speech — it’s not like I hung up on her.”
Ms. Taylor, wearing a facsimile of a Chanel-style suit Richards once wore, her cherry-red lips blazing beneath a
white wig that seems to travel with its own spotlight, has worked this lovably ornery woman deep into her
bones. If you can spy even a crack of daylight between actor and character in this performance, you’ve got
better eyes than I do.
The temptation, when portraying a woman who was larger than life even as she consciously played the good ol’
girl next door, would surely be to go big, broad and brassy. But while Ms. Taylor delivers the text’s many
chicken-fried wisecracks and homey anecdotes with silky relish, she wisely keeps her performance grounded
and human in scale.
Richly stocked in amusing lore as it is, “Ann” remains bright, peppy and unreflecting through its somewhat
overextended running time. Much like a politician de nos jours, the play also seems at pains to alienate no
possible constituencies: although she was defeated in a bid for re-election by George W. Bush, his name is
nowhere mentioned in “Ann,” notwithstanding Richards’s famous quip that his father was “born with a silver
foot in his mouth.”
This despite the unnecessary presence of not one but two codas, the first describing Richards’s life postgovernorship, the second a return to the speechifying mode of the play’s opening. Here the play digresses a
little tediously into a sermon on the importance of public service (“The government isn’t ‘they’! The
government — is you! It is me, it is us!”), followed by a series of loosely strung pearls of wisdom and parting
thoughts. (“The here and now is all you have, and if you play it right, it’s all you need.”)
Ann the preacher is not as appealing as Ann the canny politician or Ann the retailer of fricasseed repartee. But
as portrayed by Ms. Taylor, she still remains fine company. Her bid for re-election may have been doomed
http://theater.nytimes.com/...eviews/ann-with-holland-taylor-at-vivian-beaumont-theater.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[3/8/2013 11:02:06 AM]
Fiery, Salty and Brash, This Rose of Texas - The New York Times
partly by Richards’s brave decision to oppose a bill allowing Texans to carry concealed weapons, but even her
foes would have to concede that the woman sure was a pistol.
Ann
By Holland Taylor; directed by Benjamin Endsley Klein; sets by Michael Fagin; costumes by Julie Weiss;
lighting by Matthew Richards; sound by Ken Huncovsky; projections by Zachary Borovay; wig design by Paul
Huntley; production manager, Peter Fulbright; production stage manager, J. P. Elins; general manager, 101
Productions Ltd.; associate producers, Colleen Barrett, Francesca Zambello and Faith Gay, Nancy T.
Beren/Patrick Terry, Marcy Adelman/Paula Kaminsky Davis, Campbell Spencer/Gasparian Suisman and
Bonnie Levinson. Presented by Bob Boyett, Harriet Newman Leve, Jane Dubin, Jack Thomas/Mark Johannes
and Amy Danis, Sarahbeth Grossman, Jon Cryer/Lisa Joyner, Minerva Productions, Lary Brandt/Brian Dorsey,
Kate Hathaway/Allison Thomas, Jennifer Isaacson and Kevin Bailey, in association with Lincoln Center
Theater. At the Vivian Beaumont Theater, Lincoln Center, (212) 239-6200, lct.org. Through June 9. Running
time: 1 hour 55 minutes.
WITH: Holland Taylor (Ann Richards) and Julie White (Voice of Nancy Kohler).
http://theater.nytimes.com/...eviews/ann-with-holland-taylor-at-vivian-beaumont-theater.html?ref=theater&pagewanted=print[3/8/2013 11:02:06 AM]
All the Political Discussion Ends in a Clash of Swords - The New York Times
March 7, 2013
THEATER REVIEW
All the Political Discussion Ends in a Clash of Swords
By DAVID ROONEY
Detractors of Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” took the view that the film was a brief battle scene followed by more
than two hours of erudite yet wearying political talk. Shakespeare’s “Henry IV, Part 1” might be seen as the
reversal of that formula, a marathon of debate among royals, rebels and reprobates, culminating in a clash of
swords and daggers. With fat jokes.
That makes this history play a bold choice for Davis McCallum, a gifted Off Broadway director who has forged
a growing reputation on contemporary works by writers like Samuel D. Hunter (“A Bright New Boise,” “The
Whale”) and Quiara Alegría Hudes (“Water By the Spoonful”) but is less seasoned with the classics.
His production at the Pearl Theater is physically commanding, taking full advantage of the larger playing space
in the company’s new home. Daniel Zimmerman’s spare scenic design and Whitney Locher’s mix of period and
modern-dress costumes make crisp distinctions among the principal settings of royal court, tavern and
battlefield.
But aside from vigorous handling of the climactic fighting at Shrewsbury, the staging lacks spark. For a drama
about the wartime reconciliation of a burdened monarch (Bradford Cover) with his wayward son (John
Brummer) there’s a curious absence of tension.
Mr. Cover brings more solemnity than authority to Henry IV’s inner conflicts, pondering his fallen popularity,
the mutinous factions rallying against him and the disappointment of his hedonistic heir, Prince Hal. In that
role Mr. Brummer looks the portrait of swaggering youth in his snug jeans and cool leather jacket. But his
redeeming transformation from carouser to valiant soldier occurs without much nuanced exploration of the
character’s awakening sense of duty and honor.
That’s partly a constraint of the play, which gives a more satisfying account of Hal when its two parts are
performed together as they were in Lincoln Center Theater’s condensed yet muscular 2003 version.
Among the other key roles Shawn Fagan brings simmering rage and not much else to Hotspur, the cocky battle
hero who turns against the king for his perceived lack of gratitude to those who helped him secure the throne.
The central figure alongside Hal is his roguish old friend and surrogate father, Falstaff. As that rotund knight,
Dan Daily is every ample inch the shameless pragmatist, a cowardly braggart who makes no bones about his
preference for swigging sack over defending king and country. However, like this production as a whole, which
is clean and correct but too infrequently incisive, even Falstaff could use a shot of vitality.
http://theater.nytimes.com/...s/shakespeares-henry-iv-part-1-at-the-pearl-theater.html?ref=theater&_r=0&pagewanted=print[3/8/2013 10:57:40 AM]