Culture Watch

Little Orphan Annie is Back and Better than Ever

by Bruce Chadwick

Annie Palace Theater 1564 Broadway New York, N.Y.The lights are back on on Broadway, where Sandy isn't a hurricane, but a dog.It's Christmas 1933, and Franklin Roosevelt has been in office for nine months, trying everything he can to pull the nation out of the Great Depression. Nearly 40 percent of the country is out of work. The Nazis are on the march in Germany. Life is grim. At least people can drink again, but then it's not like Prohibition ever stopped that, anyway.In New York, sour-faced Oliver Warbucks, the bald billionaire, has just returned to his mammoth Fifth Avenue mansion from a six-week tour of his factories. At the same time, a little eleven-year-old girl named Annie, a street smart tyke with blazing red hair and a smile as wide as the Empire State building, has fled from a downtown all girl orphanage run by Miss Hannigan, a badly dressed, boozy tyrant, and is trying to find her real parents. Along the journey through Depression New York, she picks up a cute stray dog, Sandy. Soon, in an odd twist of fate, Annie and Warbucks meet.The musical Annie is back and just in time.

Oliver Stone's Recycled Leftist History

by Ronald Radosh

Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.Two years ago, Oliver Stone announced that he was preparing to make a documentary about recent American history. It premieres on the CBS-owned cable network Showtime on November 12. Titled Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States, it is written by Stone and historian Peter Kuznick and narrated and directed by Stone. The series reflects the view Stone expressed in 2010 that the Soviet Union’s leader in the 1930s and ’40s, Joseph Stalin, has “been vilified pretty thoroughly by history,” so what is needed is a program allowing viewers to walk in both his and Hitler’s shoes “to understand their point of view.”

When History Repeats Itself

by Bruce Chadwick

A Summer Day Cherry Lane Theater 38 Commerce Street New York, N.Y.What happens when history repeats itself?There are numerous answers and we get some of them in Norwegian Jon Fosse’s new play A Summer Day, that stars Karen Allen (the co-star of the hit film Raiders of the Lost Ark). Allen plays a woman who appears on stage looking out the window of her seaside home in Norway at the ocean. The time is a generation ago and she is waiting for her husband to return from a sail in his rowboat in bad weather. Suddenly, a second, younger woman appears in the same room with her husband, contemporary time. They argue about whether they want to keep living in the house, the same house as Allen’s character, and then, angry, the husband goes off in his rowboat for a sail and bad weather sets in. It is the same exact thing that happened to Allen’s husband, a generation earlier.

Coast to Coast, Presidential Election Ignites New Look at Campaigns and Politics

by Bruce Chadwick

It is the political season on stage as well as off-stage this month as more than a dozen plays about elections and political history flood the nation’s theaters from coast to coast in an effort to tie in to the close, heated Presidential campaign.There is something for everybody, Democrat as well as Republican, liberal as well as conservative. You are tired of American politics? There are plays about politics in Norway, England, Ireland and Argentina. You don’t like contemporary politics? There is one play about Depression-era politics written in 1933, one about Richard Nixon’s 1952 Vice-Presidential campaign and another about the politics of 1600. You want women in politics? How about Eva Peron? Contemporary? The Los Angeles Mark Taper Forum has the play November and its modern presidential election plot.The political plays are, of course, spurred on by the Presidential campaign between President Barack Obama and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and a host of gubernatorial, Senatorial and Congressional races in different states. We even have Bristol Palin, daughter of former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, who ran for the Dancing with the Stars television show title.

The "Man From La Mancha" Imagines the World as It Should Be

by Bruce Chadwick

Man of La Mancha Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey Drew University Madison, N.J.Don Quixote rides again!The immortal knight-errant of the sixteenth century, created by writer Miguel de Cervantes between several prison sentences during the Spanish Inquisition, is back on stage in a new version of the Man of La Mancha, which opened last Saturday at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey.Man of La Mancha is set in the late sixteenth century in a large common cell of a Spanish prison during Inquisition. Miguel de Cervantes and his squire, Sancho, arrive amid a crowd of cutthroat murderers, robbers and political prisoners in the large, dark, sparse, foreboding cell. Cervantes is put on trial in a kangaroo court by the prisoners, and to prove his innocence he stages a play-within-the-play version of Don Quixote. In the little cell drama, the character alternately looks like a saint and a fool, but it doesn't matter to him because he sees the best in everybody, especially a tavern whore named Aldonza, whom he calls Dulcinea and serenades with a heartbreakingly beautiful song.

"A Chorus Line": Thirty-Seven Years Old, But Still Ageless

by Bruce Chadwick

A Chorus Line Paper Mill Playhouse Millburn, New JerseyI had a lunch interview with Marvin Hamlisch, who wrote the music for the smash 1975 Broadway musical A Chorus Line, twenty years ago at Windows on the World restaurant, the eatery on the very top of the World Trade Center. After lunch, we walked over to the restaurants window walls and looked out over Manhattan. We were so high up that planes and helicopters flew beneath us. We had been talking about his work, that included songs that would win three Oscars, Four Emmys and Four Grammys.I asked him something about staying successful in such a tough business for so long. He laughed and said something like, “You’re only as good as your last song.”“You’re wrong,” I told him. “A Chorus Line will live forever.”It has. Hamlisch, one of America’s premier composers, died last August, but his music, especially his songs from A Chorus Line, lives on.

The N-YHS Takes a Look at the Big Apple in World War II

by Bruce Chadwick

WWII & NYC New-York Historical Society 170 Central Park West New York, N.Y. It was inevitable that the greatest war the world has ever known left an indelible mark on the world's greatest city. The New-York Historical Society's new exhibit, "WWII & NYC," covering the better part of three floors, tells the story of how America’s largest city weathered the greatest war of our time.Visitors learn much about the city’s role in the war and how the most mundane of locations became key centers for research and training. Curator Marci Reaven has done a fine job of developing an entertaining and engaging exhibition that is also very educational.

The Irish Troubles Still Troubling Thirty Years Later

by Bruce Chadwick

Credit: Irish Repertory Theater.Freedom of the City Irish Repertory Theater 132 W. 22nd Street New York, N.Y. In the summer of 1970, following the arrest of twenty-three-year-old Irish activist Bernadette Devlin, riots broke out in Derry, Northern Ireland, and caused an uproar throughout the world. They followed similar riots in 1969 and would be followed by more over the years as Irish demonstrators continually clashed with police. The worst was the Bloody Sunday massacre of 1972, in which thirteen protestors were shot dead by the police.Right after Bloody Sunday, playwright Brian Friel wrote Freedom of the City. The play is loosely based on the 1970 riots. In his work, three protestors are killed and three more, by accident, wind up in the mayor's office in the Derry Guildhall, surrounded by the police.

"The Exonerated" is a Relentless, Scalding Indictment of the U.S. Justice System

by Bruce Chadwick

The Exonerated The Culture Project 45 Bleecker Street New York, N. Y.If you walk into the lobby of the Culture Project Theater, home to many "crusade for justice"-style plays, you'll be met with an oversized portrait of a man who did twenty-two years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. He's surrounded by a portrait gallery of other "criminals" who spent years in prison for crimes committed by others and were finally released. It's a gigantic Wall of Shame.Welcome to The Exonerated.The Exonerated was written by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen and is based on the court papers and interviews of all the exonerated inmates in the show. Nothing is made up. The five former inmates on stage are just a handful of the more than three hundred people released from death row in prisons all over America during the last ten years, proven innocent after DNA tests or long-concealed evidence surfaced. Many served more than twenty years.

Searing "Red Dog Howls" Tells Story of Armenian Genocide

by Bruce Chadwick

Red Dog HowlsNew York Theater Workshop79 W. Fourth St.New York, N.Y.Back in the 1970s, a reporter of Armenian descent who worked with me at the New York Daily News sat me down in a corner of the newsroom early one quiet summer afternoon and, in great detail, told me the story of the Turkish genocide against the people of Armenia during World War I, resulting in the deaths of nearly 1.5 million people. It was a tale of unrelenting horror. I had never heard it before and told him so.“That’s the problem,” he said, scornfully. “This is one of the nightmares of world history and most people never heard of it.”Much has changed in the past forty years, and the Armenian genocide, if eclipsed by the Holocaust in the popular imagination, is increasingly recognized. Red Dog Howls, a stirring new drama with a power-packed conclusion by Alexander Dinelaris, continues this trend.

Ibsen's "An Enemy of the People," More Relevant than Ever

by Bruce Chadwick

An Enemy of the People Samuel Friedman Theater W. 47th Street New York, N.Y.A conscientious doctor discovers that the water in the world-famous baths of his city is so polluted by bacteria that it probably will kill people. Alarmed, he goes to the left-wing media and blows the whistle. The media wants to turn the tainted water into a sensational story. The city’s mayor, knowing the story, and the probable closing of the baths, will ruin the town’s economy, begs the doctor, who is also his brother, to relent. The doctor refuses. Then, on the day the story is ready to go to press, the mayor announces the only way to clean the baths is a huge property tax increase.The crusaders, thinking about their pocketbooks, suddenly change their mind and leave the noble doctor well out on the proverbial limb.

Having the Wildest Tea Ever in 1901 with Two Eccentric New York Women about to Change History

by Bruce Chadwick

The Bachelors' Tea Party Lady Mendl Tea Garden 56 Irving Place New York, N.Y.How eccentric were Bessie Marbury, one of the first female show business agents, and Elsie de Wolfe, the nation’s first interior decorator? Their ‘play,’ The Bachelors, set in 1901, starts with Elsie racing into the center of the tea garden and standing on her head, white bloomers sticking out for all to see, and reciting her first lines.That’s eccentric, folks.The producers at the Stolen Chair Production Company came up with a unique idea. They decided to stage a play about two women having tea in the middle of a dining room at a fabled New York tea garden in 1901, with twenty or so patrons just six feet from the actresses. Everybody in the theater has tea along with de Wolfe and Marbury, and their two cute porcelain dolls, who play a variety of male and female roles. The play, written by Kiran Rikhye, is unique, wild and eccentric -- in sum, it's a hoot!

The Rock Star as Historian

by John W. Johnson

Bruce Springsteen performing at Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville, Florida on August 15, 2008. Credit: Craig O'Neil.On a cool evening in early September, my son and I joined 40,000 fans in the "friendly confines" of Wrigley Field. No, we didn't travel more than two hundred miles to see the Chicago Cubs stumble to the end of another forgettable season. We made our way to Wrigley, instead, to see the country's most consistent long-term winner ... Bruce Springsteen.To frequent chants of "Bruuuce," the "Boss" and his E-Street Band belted out twenty-one songs, followed by seven (!) encores. Included on the set list were highlights from the Springsteen canon: "Prove It All Night," "Atlantic City," "Badlands," Thunder Road," "Born to Run," and "Jungleland." There were also six tracks from Springsteen's most recently-released CD, "Wrecking Ball." Love him or hate him, Springsteen and his band mates have been playing an ever evolving, eclectic and exuberant brand of music for four decades.

The Little Tramp, His Four Wives, Eight Children, Five Film Companies and Even J. Edgar Hoover Conquer the Stage in "Chaplin"

by Bruce Chadwick

Chaplin Barrymore Theater 243 W. 47th Street New York, N.Y.Actor Charlie Chaplin, "the Little Tramp," was one of the most famous entertainers in history. With his round black hat, cane, tiny moustache, oversized shoes, sad eyes and odd walk, he shuffled his way through dozens of hit silent movies, earned close to a million dollars a year in the 1920s, helped found the hugely successful United Artists film company and thrilled audiences all over the world.The Little Tramp is back again in the musical Chaplin, which opened last week in New York. The play is not only a good show but a searing look into American history during the McCarthy era in the early 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy and his henchmen used congressional committees to hunt down entertainers and others with any ties to the Communist Party and tried to ruin them.

New "Oliver Twist" Plays Takes Searing Look at London’s Criminal Class in the 1830s

by Bruce Chadwick

Oliver Twist Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey Drew University Madison, N.J.Ten-year-old Oliver Twist, an orphan stuck toiling in a roughly run British workhouse in the 1830s, walked up to his supervisor with an empty bowl of gruel after lunch and pleaded, “Please sir, can I have some more?” The unheard-of demand for a decent meal in the horrid workhouse created a storm of trouble among the other boys incarcerated there and the crude staff.With the legendary demand, the latest stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’s scalding novel Oliver Twist was off and running at the regional Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey, where it opened on Saturday. This majestic new version of the play, adapted by Neil Bartlett and based on Dickens book, with quite a bit of Oliver!, the 1968 musical adaptation thrown in for good measure, casts a troubled eye on labor conditions in British workhouses for boys in the first half of the nineteenth century.

On Jews and Baseball for the High Holidays

by Peter Ephross

Sandy Koufax pitching in Game 7 of the 1965 World Series. Credit: Flickr/cliff1066.Most baseball fans know the story of Sandy Koufax not pitching the first game of the 1965 World Series because it was Yom Kippur. In 1934, future Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg made a similar decision, choosing to sit out a game to observe the holiday. Both of these decisions educated Americans about Jews. In fact, there was even a poem published in a Detroit newspaper about Greenberg sitting out the game:We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat, But he’s true to his religion — and I honor him for that!”Greenberg and Koufax’s decisions also went a long way toward making Jews feel comfortable in America. Jews saw that Americans accepted a Jewish athlete’s decision to honor his religion and realized that they, too, could be accepted as Americans while simultaneously remaining true to their faith.

An Unsteady John Wilkes Booth

by Bruce Chadwick

BANG! The Curse of John Wilkes Booth New York International Fringe Festival Gene Frankel Theater 24 Bond Street New York, N.Y.Writer/actor Scott Baker had a decent idea for his play Bang! The Curse of John Wilkes Booth. Baker, who stars in the one-man play, assumed, as some have claimed, that Booth was not killed by federal troops in a barn on the Garrett farm near Port Royal, Virginia, after Booth assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865. In his play, he insists that, somehow, Booth survived the troopers that trapped him, and the fire that destroyed the barn, escaped and lived for decades in the Midwest. Baker’s one-man play is about the lives of some of the men who in later years insisted they were really Booth.There are several segments to the play. In the first, Baker plays Booth and tells the assassin’s tale. In the next few, he assumes the character of the Booth impersonators and explains their story. From time to time, he becomes the narrator of each story.

Sad Tale of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries in the 1940s Is Devastating

by Bruce Chadwick

Magdalen New York International Fringe Festival Gene Frankel Theater 24 Bond Street New York, N.Y.From 1765 through 1996, the Catholic Church in Ireland ran a chain of large laundries supervised by nuns called the Magdalene laundries. The workers, over 30,000 of them over the centuries, were all prostitutes, rape victims, sexually abused girls, troubled girls and, in later years, the mentally challenged. They were sent to the laundries by their families and the courts in the belief that hard work cleanses the soul and that the good sisters would rehabilitate the women.

A Harrowing and Brilliant Look at Gay America in 1958

by Bruce Chadwick

June and Nancy New York Fringe Festival Kraine Theater 85 E. Fourth Street New York, N.Y. It's 1958, and gays and lesbians live “a life in hiding.” Nancy is a lesbian who met June, a woman married for ten years, at an art museum, where she worked as a volunteer guide. June has had two miscarriages and is in a frustrating marriage to a man who only sees her as the woman who provides meals, housecleaning, occasional sex and nothing more. She has no love and no future and has started to hit the bottle. Nancy, for her part, is out of work, has no partner and is thinking about moving to San Francisco.

A 1950s Harvest Moon Rises Over Tragedies in a Small Texas Town

by Bruce Chadwick

Harrison, TX: Three Plays by Horton Foote Primary Stages/59E59 Theaters 59 E. 59th Street New York, N.Y.The story of Harrison, a small town in Texas, opens in the autumn of 1956 with a shining, promising harvest moon rising over the wind-blown meadows. The bright, glowing moon masks terrible tragedy below in three tales that, tied together, tell the story of lives gone very wrong. The plays, which opened Wednesday, are carried along by a vivid sense of narrative by playwright Foote that provides a wonderful portrait of a small burg that explodes with violence and tension in three separate but dynamic stories.It is a solid history play. The three one-acts, filled with references to the 1920s and 1950s, give the audience a nice look at big, bawdy Texas just four years before Lyndon Johnson became Kennedy's vice president and around the time the classic Texas movie Giant debuted. It isn’t just the references that smack of history, though. It is the comparison of what we have today, in psychiatric care, medicine and technology, and the way we see each other, that strikes such a demonstrative historical contrast with life in Texas nearly sixty years ago.