Dementia in the theater is the illness
of the last few weeks. A Broadway show
features a mother/grandmother, who
babbles incoherently. An Off-Broadway
play has a mother, who has moments of
memory loss. Now, in The
Father, by Florian
Zeller, at the Samuel F. Friedman
Theatre, we have an 80-year-old man (Frank
Langella) suffering from
dementia. The problem with this illness
is that the sufferer repeats the same
lines repeatedly. He also has a problem
with a missing watch. It is not
dramatic, and it forces the audience to
suffer also. Langella does an excellent
job, as does Kathryn
Erbe as
his daughter. However, the play is a
grim, depressing 90 minutes in twelve
brief scenes, interrupted by horrendous,
blinding lighting. Doug
Hughes directed
the six member cast. The other four
contribute little to the play.
Fully
Committed, by Becky
Mode, at the Lyceum Theatre,
opens on April 26. My review will appear
after its opening.
American Psycho, book by Roberto
Aguirre-Sacasa, music and lyrics
by Duncan
Sheik, at the Gerald Schoenfeld
Theatre, opens on April 21. My review
will appear after its opening.
Waitress, book by Jessie
Nelson, music & lyrics by Sara
Bareilles, at the Brooks Atkinson
Theatre, opens April 24. My review will
appear after its opening.
Mike
Birbiglia Thank
God For Jokes, directed by Seth
Barrish, at the Lynn Redgrave
Theater, is 90 minutes of stand-up
comedy by Mike Birbiglia on a bare stage
except for a stool. He works hard, and
the audience seemed delighted with his
shenanigans.
Bolshoi Ballet in Cinema presented Don
Quixote, choreography by Alexei
Fadeyechev after Marius
Petipa and Alexander
Gorsky, music by Ludwig
Minkus, with two brilliant. dancers. Ekaterina
Kryanova as
Kitri and Semyon
Chudin as
Basilio were outstanding.
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Their speed, their dexterity, their turns, the lifts were a joy to behold.
I enjoyed every minute of this colorful ballet, and
I left the cinema exhilarated. The entire cast was
marvelous, with soloists like Olga
Smirnova (Queen
of the Dryads), Ruslan
Skvortsov (toreador)
and Anna
Tikhomirova (Street
Dancer) exciting to watch. The Bolshoi corps de
ballet is unequaled. The costumes and the sets were
sumptuous, and were a delight to the eye. It was
glorious event filmed live from Moscow.
Honoree Cora
Cahan, The New 42nd Street President and New
Victory Arts Award recipient posed for a photo with Sarah
Jessica Parker at
New 42nd Street Studios. An open bar and buffet
greeted the guests before attending the program at
the New Victory Theater. Among the guests at this
festive occasion, I chatted with Mark
Linn-Baker, Tiler Peck, Tony Yazbeck, Kate Reinders,
Bill Irwin and
another honoree Mortimer
Zuckerman.
High-Rise, by Ben
Wheatley, UK, 2016, features a cast of fine
mostly British actors wasted in a ridiculous film.
The film pretends to show the decadence of the
British upper class in a new building that is
falling apart. The dialogue is superficial. The
music is unpleasant to the ear. The hordes of
screaming children at a high decibel level is
equally unpleasant. The appearance of child in a
room where his mother is copulating with a neighbor
is just plain sick. The sci-fi thriller is meant to
shock, but with all the unpleasantness in the real
world today, it contributes nothing to our
understanding of what turns people into savages. It
is a disappointing film.
I
rarely go to Queens, but we were invited to the Museum
of the Moving Image, 36-01 35th Ave in Astoria,
to attend a program by a delegation from the Giuzhou
province in China to promote the beautiful area,
full of mountains, caves, quaint villages with
colorful minorities in traditional costumes, who
sing and dance exquisitely, and features the highest
waterfall in Asia. We saw films and photographs, and
a number of speakers described the wonders of the
province. Yan,
an international opera singer, sang a Puccini aria,
followed by a song from her native hometown in
Guizhov. My wife is Chinese and has never visited
Guizhou. We plan to visit.
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