"Hair:" The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical

The Theatre Times: Hair the first Rock Musical opened in 1967 for six weeks at the New York Shakespeare Festival Theatre and moved to the Biltmore Theatre on Broadway the following year where it was a hit. The book and lyrics were written by Gerome Ragni and James Rado (both actors in the play) while the music was composed by Galt MacDermot.

Issue #135: APR 2015 – Released!

www.cirquefascination.com: Welcome to the latest edition of Fascination, the Unofficial Cirque du Soleil Newsletter.

And perhaps the last with Cirque du Soleil as an independent company. What am I talking about? It all started on Wednesday, March 25th with a blurb from the Globe and Mail. In it the paper suggested the sale of Quebec’s famed Cirque du Soleil was moving into the final stages, with bidders given until the following week to submit offers to a acquire a controlling stake in the company.

Cirque du Wiz??

www.cirquefascination.com: Charlie Smalls and William F. Brown’s The Wiz will be presented as NBC’s third annual live musical, following 2013’s The Sound of Music LIVE!, starring Carrie Underwood, and 2014’s Peter Pan LIVE!, starring Allison Williams and Christopher Walken. The event will be presented December 3, according to Variety.

The production will be co-produced by Cirque du Soleil’s new stage theatrical division and is set to head to Broadway for a revival (also presented by Cirque du Soleil) during the 2016-17 season. No casting information has been announced thus far.

The Incubator Arts Project

incubatorarts.org: With a skeleton faithfully based on the 17th century Japanese play by Zeami, and flesh that is all All-American, Lady Han is an entirely focused and otherworldly 20th century spin on a classic Noh play. Lady Han is a story of a prostitute who falls in love with a client, Yoshida, and pines for him all Fall and Winter. When he returns she has already gone mad and doesn’t recognize him. Using this poetic text and the conventions of classical Japanese drama, the production aims to lift our own culture — denim, Dolly, shopping carts, line dancing, plastic Christmas trees — to the height of elegance.

Developmental Stages

WSJ.com: David T. Little's "Dog Days," one of the most exciting new operas of recent years, had its world premiere earlier this fall not at a traditional opera company but at Montclair State University in New Jersey, co-produced by the school's Peak Performances and an independent nonprofit, Beth Morrison Projects. Like many others, Darren K. Woods, general director of the Fort Worth Opera, was blown away by the ferocious intensity of the piece, which is based on an apocalyptic story and ends with 11 minutes of steadily escalating noise. He wished that he could bring the production, which has seven singers and nine players, to Fort Worth. "It would be a real shame if Montclair, N.J., was the only place that piece got seen," he says.

How 'Angels in America' changed the national conversation

latimes.com: Queen Elizabeth called 1992 her annus horribilis. Bill Clinton defeated President George H.W. Bush and ended the Reagan era. Pope John Paul II lifted the Edict of Inquisition against Galileo, and the Toronto Blue Jays became the first non-American team to win the World Series. In April, a Simi Valley jury found four LAPD officers not guilty in the beating of Rodney King and Los Angeles exploded. In August, Pat Buchanan rocked the Republican convention with his infamous "God's country" speech ("better in the original German," observed columnist Molly Ivins).

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

Pittsburgh City Paper: At a recent performance of Apple Hill Playhouse's The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, one remarkable aspect was the audience reaction. A little background: Putnam is a musical conceived by Rebecca Feldman, with a book by Rachel Sheinkin (additional material from Jay Reiss), and William Finn providing words and music. It's the story of a small-town spelling bee, in which a handful of children (played by adult actors) compete for first prize. What makes Putnam such a popular show is that underneath its cutesy, somewhat twee, surface is a subtext of lost, excluded children doing the one thing they can think of to make their parents love them.

"It Started Out Like a Song": Lonny Price Recalls Iconic Merrily Moment

Playbill.com: The year was 1981. A 21-year-old actor named Lonny Price was cast as playwright-lyricist Charley Kringas in the new Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical Merrily We Roll Along – the latest in a string of creative hits from director-producer Harold Prince and Sondheim, following Company, Follies and Sweeney Todd.

Play review: 'Hair' shows its roots

SignOnSanDiego.com: Protest signs on the inside, protest signs on the outside: Playgoers at the Civic Theatre on Wednesday night found themselves in a peculiar, decade-blurring limbo — neither “Hair” nor there. As the Occupy San Diego movement continued its rally on the plaza outside the downtown theater (and even serenaded patrons with “Aquarius” as they filtered out during intermission), the touring version of the revived “American Tribal Love-Rock Musical” got its beads on for its local opening.

Pitt Rep to take big swing with 'Sweeney Todd'

Post Gazette: It's theater tradition to "attend the tale of Sweeney Todd," but in the upcoming University of Pittsburgh production, Mrs. Lovett gets her due as well. "I'm interested in that this woman should have sold those razors 10 years ago, and were it not for these razors, the character of Sweeney Todd could not have been created so quickly," said Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, who is directing her first Pitt Repertory Theatre production, which opens Thursday.

Untangling Hair

Stage Directions: In April, the Department of Theatre at Oklahoma State University opened their production of the psychedelic musical Hair. At the request of Assistant Professor Don Childs (who provided scenic design for the show), Brian Gale (who recently designed the lighting for the new Los Angeles Opera production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle) came on as lighting designer. Gale knew the show well so he and Childs got to work, holding production meetings via Skype.

The dangerous history of "Hair"

The Denver Post: In 1971, Denver police would not let the sunshine in. Or anything else to do with the pro-love, anti-war rock musical "Hair." The counterculture Broadway freakout, making its way from New York to cities across the country for the first time, had been booked for a week-long run at the downtown Auditorium Theatre. But when the company arrived, Denver police told them to keep right on moving. There would be nothing to see here. Certainly not a brief scene in which some of the actors celebrate the hippie credo of sexual freedom by stripping. The vice bureau invoked a seldom-used (but still existing) law banning public nudity, as had other cities before Denver.

Forum Theatre’s ‘Mad Forest’: Smart, absorbing look at Communist Romania

The Washington Post: Big Brother is watching — or, at least, Nicolae Ceausescu is. The stony gaze of Romania’s long-reigning communist dictator can be felt in Forum Theatre’s smart, absorbing production of Caryl Churchill’s “Mad Forest. Director Michael Dove has shrewdly given an in-the-round staging to this 1990 work about the Romanian revolution, planting Churchill’s politically aware and sometimes phantasmagorical scenes in what appears to be an Eastern European square. Silver busts of Ceausescu, mounted on silver pedestals, stand around the square’s perimeter (amid audience seating), creating a look of gloomy Stalinist-style pomp — and, more important, a paranoid vibe. In this exposed, encircled environment, there is no privacy: Anything may be seen or overheard.

Washington Ballet to premiere new ‘Alice’ next season

The Washington Post: "The Washington Ballet will dance on the Turkish Riviera and bring a bit of Lady Gaga into the Kennedy Center in its 2011-12 season, the company has announced. Among the highlights are its first overseas tour in six years, a world-premiere production of “Alice (in Wonderland),” a program devoted to Twyla Tharp in honor of the choreographer’s 70th birthday and a run of “Nutcrackers” saluting the 50th anniversary of the company’s first production of the holiday staple.

Alice's New Lookingglass: Wonderland Opens on Broadway

Playbill.com: "Wonderland, the new musical that reinvents 'Alice in Wonderland' for the 21st century, opens on Broadway April 17 following previews from March 21 at the Marquis Theatre. Janet Dacal, of In the Heights, plays a modern-day Manhattan mom named Alice, who sings a score by Frank Wildhorn and Jack Murphy.

Variations on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ around

The Boston Globe: "“A Midsummer Night’s Dream’’ may or may not be Shakespeare’s most popular comedy. This spring it’s definitely his most popular work around Boston — in one form or another.

Review | `The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee'

MiamiHerald.com: "How do you spell 'adorable?' Technically speaking, of course, the answer is a-d-o-r-a-b-l-e. But if you check out the newest production at Actors' Playhouse, you'd swear ``adorable'' equals The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Three Sistahs

washingtonpost.com: "Wrong Chekhov, but right vibe: It's 'Three Sistahs,' the quiet storm of a musical that's back at MetroStage, where it first appeared five years ago. The moody, sometimes diffuse show, closer to a trio cabaret than a traditional musical, transplants Anton Chekhov's Russian 1901 'Three Sisters' to America circa 1969. Between Vietnam, civil rights and a smoldering family dynamic that borrows freely from Chekhov's drama, these women have plenty to sing about."

Chekhov Compacted, in Spanish

New York Times: "“Un Hombre que se Ahoga” (“A Man Who Drowns”), an Argentine piece at this year’s Lincoln Center Festival, is an adaptation of Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” arranged as efficiently as a businessman’s valise. Of all Chekhov’s masterworks, “Three Sisters” is the play we most associate with stasis, the grim view that life is happening far beyond the tree line. Chekhov himself acknowledged that it had “an atmosphere more gloomy than gloom itself.” The manipulative prevail; the hopeful and decent merely subsist. But in this production by Proyecto Chejov, Daniel Veronese, the director and adapter, has refused to travel with the full cargo of all that melancholy."

Playbill News: Guys and Dolls Revival Will Begin Broadway Previews in February 2008

Playbill News: "The acclaimed, Olivier-winning, Michael Grandage-directed production of Guys and Dolls, which was presented by the Donmar Warehouse at London's Piccadilly Theatre, will arrive on Broadway in 2008."