The MCA went public with much of its 2009–10 performance season today, which means I can finally share the great news I’ve been sitting on since I learned of it Monday: Young Jean Lee is coming to town. I’ve been dying to see the New York–based playwright-director bring her style of experimental theater here ever since I started hearing about her some years back—her Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven has toured worldwide but made Minneapolis its only Midwest stop.
Now our wait is (almost) over: Next March, the MCA is hosting Lee’s The Shipment, in which she does for black minstrelsy, in a way, what Dragons did for Asian minstrelsy. Read more about Lee and the show from my TONY cronies Helen Shaw and David Cote. Also on the theatrical slate is the Hypocrites‘ first night at the museum, with Sean Graney’s new adaptation of Frankenstein in October. (Yes, it’s promenade staging.) The MCA’s Sarah Wambold tells me there are more theater announcements to come; considering that the MCA Stage in recent years has brought us the terrific likes of Mike Daisey, Elevator Repair Service and Heather Raffo as well as partnering with locals such as Court, Next and Redmoon, I’m waiting with bated breath. Tickets for the currently announced lineup go on sale mid-July.
Host Jon Steinhagen welcomed us all to “Daley’s Corners” last night, kicking off the 36th annual Non-Equity Joseph Jefferson Awards. It was part of a cute riff on Our Town, the show that’s kind of defined the Off-Loop year, from its opening last April to its remount in September to its current Off-Broadway reincarnation, with some of its Chicago cast, including director David Cromer, intact.
The Hypocrites show was named outstanding production, and Cromer outstanding director; Cromer, who’s on a break from playing the Stage Manager in New York to direct The Farnsworth Invention for Houston’s Alley Theatre (the Aaron Sorkin play opens there tomorrow), told me after the ceremony that he was sure everybody was sick of hearing about Our Town by now.
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What’s that? Our Town picked up another award? Oh great…I kid, I kid. It’s just that David Cromer’s searing revival of the Thornton Wilder classic (which began life as a Hypocrites production last spring before being recruited by Off-Broadway producer Scott Morfee for a New York run) has by now picked up so many honors from everybody but the Jeff committee that I’m running out of adjectives (have we used “searing” already?) .
With no consideration for my needs, Cromer went ahead and picked up an Obie last night—his second, after winning last year for the Next Theatre–born Adding Machine, also produced by Morfee in New York. I’m almost certain the Obies are the last awards Our Town is eligible for in New York—unless the show transfers to Broadway, as the Times’s Patrick Healy suggested it might last week, with producers Barry Weissler and Ken Davenport both sniffing around. Cromer and Morfee’s refusal to comment on any transfer possibility suggests that might just be wishful leaking on the Broadway producers’ parts.
Our Town's David Cromer, Jennifer Grace and Jonathan Mastro
She didn’t make the Jeff committee’s cut, but the Hypocrites‘ Jennifer Grace has been singled out for making one of the season’s finest New York stage debuts: Grace was announced this morning as a winner of the Theatre World Awards. First given in 1945, the awards honor actors making their first appearance on a New York stage; Grace won as Our Town’s Emily Webb at off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre, a role she first played in the Hypocrites’ production at the Chopin Theatre last year.
A committee of theater writers (including Time Out New York theater editor David Cote) chooses the Theatre World Award honorees, traditionally six men and six women. Grace’s company includes Exit the King’s Geoffrey Rush, West Side Story’s Josefina Scaglione, the boys of Billy Elliott and Ruined’s Condola Rashad (also seen here in that play’s premiere at the Goodman). The awards will be presented at a June 2 ceremony.
Spend less than a week away from Facebook and you’re likely to miss out on news stories. After spending an extended weekend apart from both Chicago and the Internet, I learned only today that Sunday night, Chicago’s celebrated director and reluctant actor David Cromer picked up a Lucille Lortel Award for his Barrow Street direction of Our Town (which started as a Hypocrites production down in the fabulous cellar of the Chopin Theatre). The staging also won the Lortel Award, which honors off-Broadway excellence, for best revival.
I’ve personally tried not to draw attention to Cromer in my tenure at TOC, as I don’t want my friendship with him to bias what I write about him. But now that he has nearly 1,400 Facebook friends, I am significantly less important to him, so my mentioning his win is less precarious a conflict of interests.
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Our distinguished hero
Ah, the wonders of Chicago spring: schizophrenic temperatures that can ruin any otherwise lovely event, Cubs fans getting back into therapy and the much-anticipated non-Equity Joseph Jefferson nominations. Named for 19th-century actor Jefferson, who spent much of his career playing the titular character in productions of Rip Van Winkle, the Jeff noms’ announcement inevitably brings as much whiplash-inducing, “What were they thinking?” shock value for the talented non-nominees and observers as they do joy to those whose work was honored. This year we consider what they were thinking, and even try to imagine it, in an attempt to figure out what makes the ever-elusive Jeff committee tick.
Here are our attempted-mind-reading guesses for why some of Chicago’s finest got snubbed this year. Again. (The complete list of nominees follows.)
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The 2009-2010 season of the off-Loop theater gang the Hypocrites was announced today. And just when you thought you’d had your fill of apocalyptic Nazi musicals.
Later this year, artistic director Sean Graney will be adapting and directing Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (which has seen umpteen stage adaptations over the years, a situation which will hopefully force the company into creating something completely fresh rather than simply reanimating dead tissue), as well as staging Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit.
But the real news is that next spring the ‘crites will be producing Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, under the direction of the House Theatre’s Matt Hawkins, who memorably staged the hillbilly melodrama Hatfield & McCoy in 2006. This is big deal primarily because the contrapuntal Hypocrites are known for a lot of things but, um, musicals aren’t exactly one of them. (Graney’s lukewarm Threepenny Opera last year in the Steppenwolf Garage was the company’s only foray into that theatrical breach.) Read more »
