Sunday, April 23, 2000
'Nixon's Nixon' wraps up run at Toronto festival
Today, Tim Donoghue and Keith Joachim finally get to take a breather. They've wrapped four days of performing Nixon's Nixon in Toronto as part of DuMaurier World Stage, the biennial, citywide theater festival that's the largest in North America. (It continues through April 30.)
It's the play that opened to cheering audiences at Playhouse in the Park almost three years ago and has continued on to San Diego, Edinburgh and Dublin.
It's the only U.S. entry in World Stage and makes a strong partner to some of the political theater that opened early on in the festival. While Cuba's Teatro Buendia' Otra Tempestad (Another Tempest) and a two-part modern take on The Oresteia from Royal National Theatre (United Kingdom) are based on classics, they were both overtly political.
The Cubans brought Hamlet, Macbeth and Shylock to Prospero's magical island and used a world of theater — Noh (the classical drama of Japan), puppets, African drums, masks, native folk songs, stunningly beautiful bare-breasted women and movement — to reflect on magic and oppression.
The media-savvy update of The Oresteia, set to a haunting Gypsy score performed live and filled with arresting images, would be right at home in the modern-day Balkans. It unflinchingly examines the aftermath of war; the human psyche's inability to let go and move on but to lust for revenge; and ultimately questions of justice and negotiated peace.
While not based on a classic, unless you consider Watergate a classic, Nixon is also a political fantasy with a great deal to say about our world.
In a larger context, what's intriguing here is that Playhouse can hold its own in an international arena, but who knows it?
Professional sports are on television. Significant art exhibits have catalogs. Orchestras record. Dance companies establish a national reputation by touring.
Professional theaters, large and small tend, to be resident in a community, and if that community is more than 50 miles inland from any coast (including the Great Lakes) its excellence goes unremarked.
As for the Nixon guys, they're moving on to other gigs while they wait to see if money can be raised to make the next stop London's West End.
"New Brain' debut: Footlighters will give Cincinnati its regional premiere of off-Broadway's much admired A New Brain. The showopens Thursday for a three weekend run at Stained Glass Theatre in Newport.
William Finn (Falsettos) again manages a stylish — and heartfelt — musical comedy about a tough subject. A frustrated writer of songs for a children's show who longs to write the next great Broadway musical discovers he has a brain tumor. As he awaits surgery, he sees all the people in his life from a fresh and often funny perspective.
This isn't about sadness, it's about joy and resolution, says New Brain director Skip Fenker. “It's about leaving a legacy and honoring your talent. It's not that he's going to die, but that he might not live to write the songs he wants to write.”
Mr. Fenker, an old hand at musicals, had been looking for a project for some time and was getting depressed. “Everything was too big or too small or too expensive or too obscure.”
Then he heard New Brain on CD, fell in love with it and became depressed again. “Nobody'll do it,” he thought, Mr. Fenker said he did have to work hard to sell New Brain to Footlighters. “It's wonderful, but only people in musical theater know the show.”
It came down to a competition with another little-known musical with a strong proponent. Mr. Fenker's 27-minute presentation won the day. The other contender, Weird Romance (performed in workshop last month at Dayton's Human Race) will have a slot next season, directed by Brian Benz.
New Brain features Mike Fielder in the central role of Gordon. Among the folks surrounding him are Dianna Davis, Joe Hornbaker, Laurie Schneider and Kendra Struthers.
Performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Stained Glass Theatre, 8th and York streets. Tickets cost $12. For reservations and information, call the box office at 891-1965.
Wilson backward: Here's an opportunity you don't get everyday: a chance to see Lanford Wilson's Talley trilogy — backward. Next May, Playhouse in the Park will produce his exquisite series opener Talley's Folly, about the romance of 1940s Missouri spinster Sally Talley.
We meet everybody else in the remaining two shows. Director Mike Morehead starts things off with the final chapter Wednesday through May 6 with Talley & Son at the Village Players in Fort Thomas. (Call 441-3170.)
May 18-20 the middle section, The Fifth of July, will be offered in a workshop in College-Conservatory of Music's Studio Theater at University of Cincinnati. Tickets are free, reservations are a must, 556-4183.
Then all you have to do is wait a year for the story to start. Talley's Folly is looking more and more like a centerpiece to a Wilson festival.
Ensemble Theatre has already announced a recent Wilson work for the same time slot.
Within a week or so, Ovation will announce its 2000-2001 season that will include an evening of one-acts by Mr. Wilson, who has been a barometer of American culture for most of the last half of the 20th century.
Mr. Morehead will be directing one of the pieces. “I have original programs from Talley's Folly and The Fifth of July. I hope he'll autograph them.”
Don't be surprised to see Theatre of the Mind announce a season addition for the same period, a reading of the mysterious and wonderful Sympathetic Magic.
Theatre of the Mind's current season of plays by contemporary American womencomes to a close at Mercantile Library (414 Walnut St.) with a 7 p.m. May 8 reading of Cincinnati native Theresa Rebeck's political comedy View of the Dome. Call 961-2994 for reservations and information.
Fund corner: As of April 18, the annual Fine Arts Fund has reached $7,284,123. That's 82 percent of this year's $8,886,458 goal. The fund drive ends Thursday. .
The fund primarily supports Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Ballet, Cincinnati Opera, Cincinnati Symphony, Contemporary Arts Center, May Festival, Playhouse in the Park and Taft Museum of Art.
Last year, about $600,000 was divided among nine midsized associate members and dozens of small arts organizations. Anyone interested in contributing to the fund can call 871-2787 for more information.
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