Andy Warhol on Stage in Pittsburgh

This article was first published at  Technorati

Whether you call it homage to a native son or cashing in on his fifteen plus minutes of fame,  the final production of Pittsburgh's City Theatre's 2011/2012 season which opens on Saturday, May 5^th  is the Andy Warhol magical musical mystery tour de force, Pop!. Pittsburgh has long had a somewhat late love affair with Warhol who was born in the city's Oakland section, went to study commercial art at what was then the Carnegie Institute of Technology, and promptly left for greener pastures where his flamboyant persona and his aesthetic vision might be better appreciated.  And appreciated they were, little Andy Warhola became the notorious Andy Warhol, still little, but no longer small. 

So it was not strange when a couple of years after the man died plans were afoot to open a museum in his honor.  If it was not quite in the neighborhood of his birth, it was not all that far away on the North Shore.  There at least he would be close to such other attractions as what would have been at the time Three Rivers Stadium—after all it makes sense to keep potential tourist attractions in reasonable proximity.  Now the area boasts two stadiums, a science center and a casino. The seven floor ex-warehouse opened its doors for business in May of 1994.  It is roundly touted as the largest art museum devoted to the work of a single artist.  From the city's point of view it has certainly been an instrumental element in changing the Steel Town's one time shot and a beer image.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, it just needs a little polishing.  Warhol's panache helped to apply the polish.

Pop!, a musical by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Anna K. Jacobs, was workshopped and premiered at Yale in 2009 and has had successful staging at a regional theatre or two in the years since.  The latest was an acclaimed production at the Studio Theatre in Washington, DC.  As explained in the City Theatre's promotional material, the play has Warhol's life flashing before him as "he confronts an unforgettable cast of outrageous suspects and wrestles with the meaning of his own legacy."  Reviewers of past performances have described it as coupling "cartoonish zaniness" with "historical authenticity."

The City Theatre production directed by Brad Rouse stars Anthony Rapp best known for his role in the Broadway production of Rent.    Rapp, something of a Pittsburgh favorite has appeared in the company's productions of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, his brother Adam's drama Gompers, and most recently in his own one man show Without You.  The show runs through May 27^th.

Pop! is not the City Theatre's first venture into the world of Warhol.  Back in 1997 they collaborated with experimental director Anne Bogart's Saratoga International Theatre Institute (SITI)  Company in a production of Culture of Desire, a play which  metaphorically envisions a hellish journey through the mind of a dying figure called 'A' representing Warhol in one sense and the artist in another.  To emphasize the larger metaphoric sense 'A' was played by a woman.  More a critique of the effect of Warhol and his work on the culture than any sort of hagiography, and perhaps a bit too experimental for Pittsburgh at the time, it received a mixed reception.  Perhaps that accounts for the fifteen year lapse before another attempt, this time one that seems as advertised in a more Pop(ular)  vehicle.

BBC Looks at Shakespeare's Changing World

This article was first published at  Technorati.

Fans of the BBC's much acclaimed series A History of the World in 100 Objects will probably want to take a look at a new series just getting started called Shakespeare's Restless World.  Hosted by British Museum Director Neil MacGregor, each episode runs for approximately 15 minutes and focuses on a significant object from the Museum and  what it shows about how the playwright and his audience were dealing with a world that was going through turbulent changes as earth shaking as the 20^th century venture into space. Episodes are broadcast Monday through Friday at 1:45pm and 7:45pm on BBC 4.  They are also available as podcasts. 

After a short introductory opening, the second episode looks at a medal cast to commemorate Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe and shows how his voyage symbolized the way the world was changed by the wave of exploration throughout Europe.  Not only did it feed the British public's nationalistic pride but it promised all sorts of exotic new experiences and knowledge.  MacGregor points out how exploration informed passages in  plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream and The Comedy of Errors.  He even suggests that the new interest in the wider world as evidenced by the publication of something like the first book of maps might have been one reason for the name given to the new theater built by Shakespeare's company.

The second episode looks at the role of religion in everyday life through a silver communion cup from Holy Trinity Church in Stratford on Avon dating from 1571-2.   The website indicates that the cup was brought to Stratford when Shakespeare was young to reinforce Elizabeth's support for Protestantism.  It demonstrates the significance of religion in politics during the period.

Twenty episodes are planned for the series over four weeks.  The object to be dealt with in each episode is pictured on the Shakespeare's Restless World website.  Included are things like design proposals for a new British flag after the assent of James I to the throne,  a Reliquary containing the right eye of Blessed Edward Oldcorne, and a musical clock. Perhaps a mite less ambitious than its predecessor, this new series is both informative and entertaining.  It is 15 minutes well spent.

DVD Review: Making War Horse

This article was first published at Blogcritics

Making War Horse is a very conventional documentary about a very unconventional play.  Written, filmed and directed by David Bickerstaff and Phil Grabsky, the documentary tells the story of the multiple award winning National Theatre production from its inception to its critically acclaimed premiere.  War Horse is an adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's young adult novel dealing with the military's use of horses in WWI.  And although it was the winner of the 2011 Tony Award for best play, it is considered by many less significant as a dramatic piece than as a theatrical spectacle.  Indeed, in an interview on CUNY's Theater Talk, Nicholas Hytner, the National Theatre's artistic director, confessed some surprise that the play had received the award.  It wasn't that he wasn't happy to have won; it was simply that he seemed to agree that it was the play's spectacular staging that made it exceptional. 

It is that exceptional staging that is the central concern of Making War Horse.  The decision to use life size puppets to get not only the horses but other animals as well on stage was no doubt the crucial element in the show's success. Co-director of the production, Tom Morris, had seen the work of a South African puppet company, Handspring Puppet Company, and was looking for a vehicle in which he could utilize their puppets.  Morpurgo's novel was suggested by his mother.  It turns out mothers always know best.  If the spectacular use of puppetry is the best part of the production, the film of the puppeteers working to capture the horses' movements, three puppeteers to each horse, is the best part of the documentary.  Just as the audiences in the theater can manage to ignore the visible puppeteers as they create the illusion of galloping horses on the stage, so too can the viewer of the documentary.  Even on film the effect is breathtaking. 

All well and good, but how do you adapt a story where the main character is a horse and everything comes from that horse's point of view to the stage?  Morpurgo, himself, confesses to his own skepticism when he found out about the project.  Hytner says: "There was no question ever of the horse speaking. So, that was a challenge . . .the necessity of finding a story which put the horse at its center but which denied the horse a speaking voice."  It was left to writer Nick Stafford to turn the horse's first person account into a third person narrative.  Morpurgo explains that he used the horse's point of view because an animal would experience the horrors of war without taking sides.  Stafford also had to find a way to make this idea that war is not really good for anyone clear as well.

While the actual documentary runs a little under 50 minutes, the DVD does include over 70 minutes of bonus material.  There is a lengthy interview with Morpurgo that covers among other things his thoughts about war, his writing methods, his feelings about adaptations and his limited role in the production.  A short feature on the process of getting the play on the stage includes extensions of interviews with co-directors Morris and Marianne Elliott and writer, Stafford.  Some of the material is a repetition of what had been included in the actual documentary.  There is also a short feature on the Handspring Puppet Company which includes some interesting material on how the puppets were made, how they are maintained, and how they are operated.

A section called "Video Diaries" consists of some candid film taken by Tom Olié, one of the puppeteers.  It begins with the first day of rehearsal when the cast and crew gather to introduce themselves and ends with the final curtain call before the production moves from the National to the New London.  Together with a short behind the scenes feature which silently roams around backstage they give some interesting insight into what is happening on the other side of the curtain. Finally there is a video of the puppeteers visiting an actual military horse troop to get a realistic sense of the animal's movement, a War Horse trailer and an image gallery. 

A film adaptation directed by Steven Spielberg is due in theaters in December.  The cast includes David Thewlis, Jeremy Irvine, Bernard Cumberbatch and Emily Watson—no puppets.