The Performa festival drives me nuts. Founded by RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, Performa throws a very large umbrella over anything in town that can consider itself performance art—such a notoriously loose category that my actual kitchen sink, ignored dishes moldering away, has applied for a slot. Look, I’m in favor of anything that throws commissioning money at the arts (hooray!); however, even a devoted art-lover might be put off by the terrifying printed schedule (as impossible to fold as a London street map and printed in light, eyesight-destroying gray) or the website (confusing and alarmingly loud). Not to worry! First, Howard Halle alerted you to the splashy offerings from the artsy-art perspective; now we theaterites want to take a whack at the performance end. Keep reading for our top four…

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My review of Richard Foreman’s newest mind attack, Idiot Savant, is up. This delirious banquet of multisensory disruption stars the marvelous Willem Dafoe, Alenka Kraigher and slinky Foreman vet Elina Löwensohn, and it’s rumored to be the great writer-director-designer’s final play. We shall see if it’s just another of his periodic mock exits from the public stage. (Quick note about this production, which is markedly different from Foreman’s last three at the Ontological: Yes, it’s headlined by the well-known Dafoe, but it’s not like Foreman is unused to working with trained and distinguished actors. However, you wouldn’t know that if you only read the New York Times review. Blogger Isaac Butler offers a corrective post.) In other linkage news, Helen Shaw spied on an Idiot Savant rehearsal last month. And, if you want to get to know the homemaker behind the madness, check out TONY’s exclusive tour of Foreman’s jaw-dropping two-bedroom loft on Wooster Street. Enjoy the pictures of his insanely sprawling collection of books and other handmade ephemera—with commentary from the man himself. I’ve been to Dr. Foreman’s cabinet of wonders a couple of times—once, as an actor, for an audition, and later to interview him for a documentary. It is indeed a bibliophile’s paradise, and Foreman is a wonderful host. No, he won’t regale you with cookies and tea, but he’s a perfect gentleman and might even lend you a tome.

Our rave review of Taylor Mac’s gorgeous The Lily’s Revenge will not appear in print until next week, but since tickets and time are so limited—the show runs only through November 22—we just put up the review online. Click here to see it. Other reviews of the show are expected to appear soon, notably in the Times—so buy your tickets right here right now, while you can. With all seats going for just $35, this is currently the best theater deal in the city. To whet your appetite, here is an interview we conducted with Mac in 2007, and a collection of photographs that he recently took for us during rehearsals for The Lily’s Revenge.

The good news is official now: Geoffrey Nauffts’s moving and well-observed Next Fall, a Naked Angels production that ran upstairs at Playwrights Horizons this summer, will open at Broadway’s intimate Helen Hayes Theatre on March 11 with its Off Broadway cast intact—led by Patrick Breen and Patrick Heusinger as a gay couple divided by faith and fate. In this regard, the show is bucking the emerging conventional wisdom that declares a matinee-name star to be absolutely necessary for the success of a straight play on Broadway. Here’s your chance to rattle that dangerous notion: When tickets go on sale here on November 16, buy a pair and enjoy one of the year’s best plays—we reviewed it here—as performed by the right cast for the job.

Something strange is happening at New World Stages, the five-year-old theater complex on West 50th Street: You can actually see worthwhile shows there. Not so long ago, we’d associate the former Hell’s Kitchen cineplex with gimmicky tourist trash (Naked Boys Singing, My First Time, etc). But with today’s announcement that Jon Marans’s The Temperamentals will reopen there in March, we find ourselves looking at the space with new eyes. There’s actually a handful of decent shows playing there. Adam Feldman reviewed Love Child this week, I revisited Avenue Q, and Altar Boyz and The Toxic Avenger continue their runs. Sure, neither of those tuners is the next Gypsy or Spring Awakening, but they’re fun, well crafted and clearly fill a populist niche. The death of commercial Off Broadway is a constant refrain in theater news, but New World Stages continues to buck the trend. What does it mean when the venue becomes home to shows of actual quality? We’re still waiting for them to offer a residency to a major Off Broadway company: the New Group, Keen Company or MCC Theater.

We don’t see many Broadway concerts, but we’re making an exception on Monday, November 9, for Bernadette Peters’s one-night benefit for two charities: her longtime pet project Broadway Barks, which promotes the adoption of stray animals, and the Main Stem mainstay Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. We’ve never seen Peters perform a full live concert, and we’re pretty excited to see this eternal kewpie work her magic. We only wish we knew a little more about what she was actually going to perform: The concert promoters are being hush puppies indeed when it comes to the set list. A few possible clues: In the final minute of this video interview over at Broadway.com, Peters mentions that she will be kicking the concert off with the opening sequence from Into the Woods—with Broadway Barks cofounder Mary Tyler Moore guest-starring as the Narrator; she also mentions that she will take on six or seven new songs, and a sequence with dogs onstage. We’ve picked up some Twitter noise about a possible rendition of the beautiful “In Buddy’s Eyes” from Follies, but nothing definite. Can anyone spare a leak? If so, feel free to use our comments section below. And while you wait for Monday, you can sate yourself on two of Peters’s best performances: this heart-rending 1998 video of Peters performing “Not a Day Goes By” in London, and this classic Tony Awards clip of the ravishing “Rose’s Turn” from her underrated 2002 Gypsy—and, for a quick giggle, check out Cole Escola’s silly take on Bernadette in this video from the VGL Gay Boys.

Shakespeare’s plays are filled with music—lyrics he wrote and other material he cribbed—but little of the original music remains (the First Folio contains zero sheet music). Over the centuries, composers have tried their hand at setting his words to music. From Mendelssohn to Michael Nyman and Stephen Sondheim, we have hours of underscoring and song settings (and that doesn’t even include operas inspired by him). Two recent CD releases, from the band Hem and singer-songwriter Stew, carry on the tradition of making Shakespeare sing in a contemporary idiom.

Twelfth Night
At nearly 33 minutes, this CD by the Celtic-fusion folk band Hem collects the incidental music heard this summer in the Public Theater’s jolly, enchanting Twelfth Night in Central Park. Twenty-eight short tracks cover a modest range of styles, from Irish reels and jigs to lilting string arrangements and touching ballads. Frisky, soulful, uplifting and richly textured, Dan Messé’s arrangements with Gary Maurer and Steve Curtis have an unforced affinity for Shakespeare’s folksy, English roots. If you loved the scoring of Twelfth Night and want to hear Audra McDonald, David Pittu and Anne Hathaway’s pretty renditions again, this is a fine addition to your music library. And if you didn’t see the show but you’re planning your own outdoor Twelfth Night? Why not get permission from Hem and use a few tracks for scene transitions? Buy it at Amazon.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
For a much looser take on scoring the Bard, we have the soul-rock-funk-blues-and-what-else-you-got stylings of Stew, whose Passing Strange ran too briefly on Broadway the season before last. Stew’s 36-minute Midsummer score (written for Shakespeare on the Sound’s production this past summer) includes horn-and-guitar vamps and psychedelic stomps that have a groovy hypnotic flavor all their own. He sets various fairy songs to sweet, wistful airs and creates a beautiful “Wedding Processional” that builds from a drum march, organ and harp. As with any compilation of incidental music (such as soundtracks, although technically these are not soundtracks—nor are they exactly original cast albums), it’s hard to critique them for being too short or that they cut off just as they get interesting. But Stew’s exceptional musicianship (come back, already!) makes for an album that is beguiling, mysterious, humorous and totally playable. Buy it here.

This is my second post in five days about a WNYC show. Clearly, while everybody else dashes off into the new media, I’m hunkered over the radio dial, blissfully churning my own butter and putting up preserves. But this interview with Willem Dafoe on the Leonard Lopate show adds a fun dimension to the new Richard Foreman spectacular Idiot Savant at the Public, particularly when he raises a wicked eyebrow (you can actually hear it over the air) at Foreman’s avowal that this time he’s serious! He’s quitting! No more plays for him! Willem, for one, thinks Foreman will be back.

If you’re hungry for a little vintage Dafoe (not to mention a baby-faced Jon Stewart) watch this 2002 interview, in which he manages to shoehorn in some touching chat about his love for the theater, or pop over to UbuWeb to watch Rhyme ‘Em to Death, the Wooster Group’s bizarre film version of the “trial of the goat” sequence from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Perfect amuse-bouches for the Idiot Savant…

One of the most eagerly anticipated productions of this Broadway season is the revival of 1997’s Ragtime, a musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel: a complex turn-of-the-20th-century tapestry that weaves together stories of a WASP family, an African-American musician and a Jewish immigrant as they make their way in the new New World. Press performances don’t begin until next week, but we are pleased to offer TONY readers an exclusive first look at Joan Marcus’s beautiful photo shoot of the show’s six principal actors as they transform from modern dress to period costume. Click here to see the full portfolio.

When I heard that Alfred Preisser and Christopher McElroen were departing the Classical Theatre of Harlem—the company they founded 11 years ago and which I’ve frequently written about—my first thought was, Sad. Another troupe bites the dust. For much of their tenure, Preisser and McElroen were CTH. Not only did they literally run the show, as artistic director and executive director respectively, they helmed almost all of the productions, notably the Obie-winning The Blacks: A Clown Show, the Drama Desk–nominated revival of Melvin Van Peebles’s searing musical Ain’t Supposed to Die a Natural Death and their brilliant reinvention of Waiting for Godot, which set the (in)action on a flood-soaked New Orleans rooftop post-Katrina. Read more »

Taylor Mac

• Here is something I almost never do: tip my hand about a review that I have not yet written. But because this particular show is so wonderful, and because seats are so limited, I will make an exception. Go here right now and buy seats,  if you can, to Taylor Mac’s spectacular ramshackle epic The Lily’s Revenge at HERE. Yes, it is nearly five hours long; yes, it is full of weird performers from the downtown scene; yes, it includes nearly a whole act in verse. Purge all fears from your mind, and go see it. I will explain more later in the week. For now, just trust me. This is what downtown New York theater is all about at its very best. If you do not see this, you should kick yourself for years to come; if you need help, I will come over and kick you.

Paula West

• Another artist well worth your while this week is not technically theater, but since she’s singing Cole Porter songs—and putting a decidedly dramatic stamp on tunes by the likes of Bob Dylan—I think she qualifies. The superb jazz singer Paula West is back in town for her annual run at the Oak Room at the historic Algonquin Hotel, and if you have any taste for the great jazz-pop singers of old (Ella, Sarah, Dinah, Billie), then you simply must go check her out. She stamps her own distinctively contemporary sound on the old-time swing, and I have never sent anyone to to hear her who hasn’t come back singing her praises to the sky.

• Finally, a realistic tip. I am not a huge fan of Finian’s Rainbow; it is the kind of show (i.e., often great score, mostly ridiculous book) that I think is better suited to an Encores! staging than a full Broadway revival. Most of my colleagues raved about the current production, but this strikes me one of those cases (and I have been on the other side more than once) in which the average professional critic is simply out of touch with the average Broadway theatergoer, for whom Finian’s Rainbow—treasured by aficionados though it may be—is liable to seem very dated indeed. Even aside from the balderdash about leprechauns and wishes, and the paper-thin characters, and the empty romance, and the once-daring, now-facile antiracist messaging: This is a show in which the heroes are looking for endless easy credit to finance their tobacco farm. (There is a reason this show has not had a major Broadway revival since 1947.) Nonetheless, I fully grant that the current production has many merits, including a very fine cast and a lush orchestra to bring out Burton Lane’s appealing melodies. And if these are sufficient incentives for you, I urge you to see Finian’s Rainbow right away. For if the deeply saddening Brighton Beach Memoirs fiasco—and a real heartbreaker it was, since that production was a great success from an artistic standpoint—teaches us anything, it is that good reviews cannot save a production that audiences just don’t want to see. Finian’s Rainbow is currently playing to 73.7 percent capacity, at an anemic average ticket price of $36.98. These are not the kinds of figures that keep a show this big and expensive on the boards. Now, those numbers will probably pick up a little as the reviews sink in—but not, I would bet, by much. For unlike Brighton Beach Memoirs, which might have found an audience in time, Finian’s Rainbow is at this point a connoisseur’s confection. And in this economy, those don’t stay on the market long.

All theater folks like a good scare on Halloween, but this is too much: The producers of Brighton Beach Memoirs, which I reviewed favorably here, have posted a provisional closing notice for tomorrow, a week after they opened to generally strong notices. It goes without saying that the companion production to Brighton Beach Memoirs, Broadway Bound–which was to have opened in six weeks and run in repertory with the first–will not happen. That’s especially bad news for those of us looking forward to the Broadway debut of Josh Grisetti (far left), who was to star in Broadway Bound. Big questions remain: How is it possible that the first Broadway revival of a Neil Simon hit play, helmed by a highly respected director (David Cromer), is closing so soon? Clearly, the audiences aren’t coming. No celebrity names in the cast, and the dependable crowds who will go see any Simon on Broadway have thinned or simply won’t take the risk. Let’s be honest: This isn’t the 1960s. Simon hasn’t been the comedy king of the Great White Way for decades. But still, it’s a sad state when a production as good as this one can’t find an audience. We certainly hope this doesn’t affect Cromer’s plans to bring his acclaimed production of Picnic to Broadway next year. And let’s hope that any remaining scares this weekend come in the form of a kid in a mask wanting candy.

UPDATE: Garrett Eisler, blogger and TONY contributor, provides thoughts and analysis at Playgoer. Short version: By trying to mount a dual production for a commerical run without a nonprofit cushion, producer Manny Azenburg bit off more than a New York audience could chew.

Full disclosure: I have a sound designer in the family. My sister sound designs and composes all over this fair city, so much so that in my paranoid moments I think she may be overcommitting herself deliberately so I will be limited in what I can review. I have occasionally shaken my clenched fist at the sky. But that tiny drawback aside, having a sound-designing sister has sensitized me to how this vital theatrical component too often goes unappreciated. Now that there’s a Tony Award for sound design, a little sunshine might be landing on these be-headphoned stalwarts. And happily, one of downtown’s most prolific sound masters Muttt Dog got some much-deserved stroking on this morning’s Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Muttt was there with Andy Donald to promote Naked Angels Radio and to demonstrate how to make Halloweeny sounds with produce. Enjoy.

I’m seeing Theresa Rebeck’s The Understudy tonight, but before that, I’m having a conversation with playwright Lynn Nottage and actor Saidah Arrika Ekulona, of Ruined. Theatre Communications Group has just published Ruined in hardcover and paperback, and they’re organizing a panel and signing at the Drama Book Shop (520 W 40th St, between Seventh and Eighth Aves) tonight at 5:30pm. How exciting! I didn’t really have a chance to talk to Nottage when the New York Drama Critics Circle gave her an award. I loved Ruined when it opened in February at Manhattan Theatre Club. And I really liked her Fabulation before that. Plus we have Ekulona there to talk about the particular challenges of playing Mama Nadi. But I turn to you, dear Upstaged readers: Can you suggest any questions I should ask tonight?

This week’s opener is a profile of playwright Kenneth Lonergan by former TONY theater editor Jason Zinoman. Go read it now. Zinoman was an early and enthusiastic supporter of the author’s charming, hangdog character study Lobby Hero (2001). It so happens that Lobby Hero was Lonergan’s last show before his latest, The Starry Messenger. That one—produced by the New Group and directed by the author—is now in previews, and it stars Matthew Broderick. This week, the production has been in the news elsewhere—and not so flatteringly. Following up (no doubt) on rumblings at the message board All That Chat, the Times has blogged and reported on that occasional situation during early previews: when actors need to be on book. Sometimes, as in the rotating-cast event Love, Loss and What I Wore, the conceit of having performers with scripts on music stands is part of the aesthetic. When you see a City Center Encores! concert, the actors carry books, but often seem to have memorized their material. In the case of Broderick, who knows what the problem is. He could be late on learning lines (and, heck, the guy does have four-month-old twins to take care of while SJP wraps SATC2). Or Lonergan might be tweaking the script so much, they have no other choice. Maybe Broderick is nervous after his critical drubbing for The Philanthropist. At any rate, it’s a far cry from Richard Foreman’s approach, which is to start rehearsals with actors already off book. But then, not all theatrical processes are created equal.

Theater is cruel. Not because it doesn’t forgive mistakes (go one step too far and yep, you’ve fallen into the orchestra pit), but because there are sometimes nights when you have to decide between two hugely tempting shows. You can’t see both. And whichever one you elect not to see will of course be the one that turns into a classic and in 2040, you’ll be the only toothless critic staggering around the Old Reviewers Home unable to bask in reminiscence of that single perfect experience. Decisions. Bah! So here’s the torment. This week, Anne Bogart and the SITI Company are at Dance Theater Workshop with their Antigone, and Hanna Cheek is performing in the final week of Clay McLeod Chapman’s high-school-shooting monologue, Commencement. In the “pros” column for Anne Bogart: She’s an American master, the company does beautiful work with classics (I’m still shuddering from their soundscaped Macbeth), and who doesn’t love a little Sophocles? On Commencement’s side: Clay McLeod Chapman wrote one of my favorite pieces last season (Hostage Song) and, of course, Hanna Cheek. Hanna Cheek is a lead weight on the teeter-totter of decision-making, because she is an actor of rare gifts, and someday Hollywood will steal her, so you have to snatch at every chance to see her onstage. But on the other hand, there’s Anne Bogart!  For those of you lucky enough to have two evenings free this week, you should see both. But if you’re down to one measly free night, which should it be?

Terri White

A few quickies from the wings:

• We missed Finian’s Rainbow back when it was at Encores! in the spring, but there’s at least one thing about the Broadway revival that we know we’ll enjoy: the gruff, soulful Terri White ’s performance as Dottie, who sings the show-stopping number “Necessity.” How do we know this? Because we saw White in the same role back in the Irish Rep’s 2004 production of Finian’s Rainbow, when we described her performance as “marvelously lively”—but also because we’ve been listening to White for years in her offstage capacity as a cowboy-hatted singing server at such piano bars as Eighty-Eights, Rose’s Turn and Broadway Baby (all of them, alas, now in that great musical-theater district in the sky). We knew, because we interviewed her for a cabaret article last year, that White had fallen on hard times after Rose’s Turn closed; but we had no idea (because she hid it well) that she had actually become homeless for a period. The Times’s Susan Dominus chronicles her amazing story in this moving article today; if you missed it—it’s in the NY/Region section instead of the Arts section—read it now.

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Goodness gracious! Not only did  we just break the news that super-thespian Elizabeth Marvel will reteam with Flemish director Ivo van Hove at New York Theatre Workshop, but now we hear that the true-named Ms. Marvel will be starring in Suzan-Lori Parks’s new play at the Public Theater this March. The new show is called The Book of Grace, and Marvel has the title role. The Public describes the new play as “a family portrait shattered by issues of rage, revenge, power and betrayal. When a young man returns home to South Texas to confront his father, everyday life erupts into a battle for personal survival.” And the kicker to this tasty bit of news: Directing the world premiere is none other than James Macdonald. Who the hell’s he? Only the guy who directed Manhattan Theatre Club’s excellent revival of Top Girls. What we want to know now: What are the dates for the Van Hove–Marvel Little Foxes at NYTW? Gonna be a busy season for her fans!

Oh, Halloween. For theater people, who dress up for a living, tramping about in a costume is a bit of a busman’s holiday. And yet, there are parties to go to and friends to impress. Where can you turn for fresh ideas? Broadway itself has been poaching from Halloween for ages now. (You could go as a troll from Shrek, a monster from Young Frankenstein, a witch from Wicked or a man-eating plant from Little Shop. Yawn.) As always, TONY is there for you. Here are five costume ideas, deliciously cheap to realize, that you’ll definitely have to explain to your non-theater friends.

1. Jeremy Piven in Speed-the-Plow. All you’ll need is a suede jacket (see picture), a sushi menu, black eyeshadow to draw bags under your eyes and a boxed set of Entourage DVDs for brandishing at hot women. Optional: a copy of the 44-page arbitration document that cleared the Piv of wrongdoing. You can force anyone who laughs at your costume to read it in its entirety. While you are in this costume, you should party heavily. Read more »

At the international Dialog Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, last week, the shows were so spectacular, I got depressed. Every day, there was yet another pair of astonishing shows to see, and every night (or morning, I never quite got my jet lag sorted out) I would grow entirely maudlin. “Why?” I would moan into my sour rye soup. “Why don’t we get to see this stuff in New York?” Actually, I know why, and I’m not taking it lying down, so check this space next week for some advocacy ideas. But in order to whet your appetite, to hone it to a razor edge of need for rock-’em-sock-’em international theater, I’ll just count down the top six Wroclaw highlights. Read more »