LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Brandenburg Concertos

"A New York Holiday staple." -The New York Times

A New York holiday season without CMS’s beloved Brandenburg Concertos has become unimaginable. Don’t miss the performance which is now the essential year-end musical tradition for thousands of music lovers.

THEATER

Classice Stage Company
Twelfth Night, or What You Will - William Shakespeare

"Shipwrecked on the island of Illyria, Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated, each fearing the other lost to the sea. Viola disguises herself as a boy and wades into a complex romantic triangle with Duke Orsino and the Countess Olivia. New York’s innovative Fiasco Theater brings their hallmark style and expansive imagination to one of Shakespeare’s funniest and poetic comedies."

Review: Finding Serenity in a Tempest-Tossed ‘Twelfth Night’

By BEN BRANTLEYDEC. 14, 2017

Fiasco Theater — whose affable “Twelfth Night, or What You Will” opened on Thursday night at the Classic Stage Company — is to the thickets of Shakespeare what your favorite high school math teacher was to the complexities of calculus. I’m talking about those easygoing, enthusiastic guides who take you by the hand and show you that what you thought was impenetrable not only makes sense, but might also be improbably pleasurable.

This company first won my heart in 2011 with a production of Shakespeare’s “Cymbeline,” in which a cast of six (assisted by a bedsheet and a trunk) brought light and sparkle to a plot-congested romance. Its streamlined “Measure for Measure,” one of Shakespeare’s most notorious “problem plays,” was such a forthright and forgiving portrait of people’s paradoxical natures that you left it asking, “So what was the problem?”

Fiasco also coaxed an effervescent, youthful sweetness from the sour inconstancy of the lovers in “The Two Gentleman of Verona,” an early comedy. And, taking a vacation from the canon, it turned the dense Sondheim-Lapine musical “Into the Woods” into a blithe celebration of storytelling that crossed the Atlantic for a warmly received London run.

Fiasco’s “Twelfth Night,” directed by Noah Brody and Ben Steinfeld, is full of the troupe’s signature traits. These include minimal scenery and costumes, spirited musical interludes (with cast members doubling as musicians) and a winningly prosaic way of delivering thickly poetic dialogue, as if that were the way everybody talked these days.

As usual, the performers let the story tell itself, without excessive interpretive psychology. And they never pander or patronize with the big annotative gestures or frenzied slapstick common to the “Shakespeare is fun” school of acting. The show is steeped in a daylight lucidity, making it an ideal introduction to “Twelfth Night” for theatergoers unacquainted with this play.

For the rest of us, this production offers a perfectly agreeable two-and-a-half hours of stage time. But the electricity I associate with Fiasco is oddly lacking, as is the sense of unexpected revelation. The show as a whole feels like a clean-lined sketch for a fuller work to come.

Featuring a nautically themed wooden set by John Doyle, the artistic director at Classic Stage and a dab hand at eloquent minimalism himself, this “Twelfth Night” begins promisingly with a sea storm worthy of “The Tempest.” This particular raging squall, evoked by swaying, chantey-singing performers, is the one that separates the look-alike brother and sister Viola (Emily Young) and Sebastian (Javier Ignacio) and sets into motion a tale of confused identities.PhotoIt’s a well-chosen entry point into a comic universe in which sea imagery, and the sense of an ordering oceanic force, abounds. And because the cast members speak with such clarity and naturalness, you may find yourself newly aware of references to a threatening but ultimately providential water-hemmed world in which “tempests are kind and salt waves fresh in love.”

As always with Fiasco, you never doubt that everyone involved understands the play from the inside out and is working as a team to convey that shared appreciation. Monologues are often addressed directly to the audience, with a chummy air that stops short of condescending jokiness. The generous suggestion here is that we — the theatergoers — are a crucial part of creating the fantasy before us.

But “Twelfth Night” is one of the most frequently performed works in the canon. I have seen at least five versions during the past five years, including the glorious Shakespeare’s Globe production out of London that starred Mark Rylance as the Countess Olivia. So I approach each new production of it with particularly high standards, hoping to see a beloved kaleidoscopic work (and my favorite Shakespeare comedy) from yet another freshly arranged perspective.

Fiasco’s house acting style might be described as one of instructive transparency, in which flamboyant performances never get in the way of the textual meaning. This works beautifully with a thorny enigma like “Measure for Measure,” where concentrating too much on the characters’ warped psychology can strand you in a Freudian wilderness.

“Twelfth Night,” though, cries out for more layered and intricate portraiture. It is, above all, about people living in disguise — not only to others, but also to themselves — and gradually uncovering their essential natures. And no matter what the title character of “Hamlet” famously advised to the traveling players in that tragedy, simply speaking the speech doesn’t tap into the emotional riches on offer in “Twelfth Night.”

The production’s leading ladies, who wear their feelings closest to the surface, are easiest to identify with here. Ms. Young is an earnest and honest Viola, who dresses as a page named Cesario to navigate the unknown kingdom of Illyria; and Jessie Austrian is a commanding and clever Olivia, the countess who unwittingly falls in love with this lass in lad’s clothing.

On the other hand, where is the bereavement that colors the lives of these women, each of whom believes she has lost a brother? For the play’s gloriously symmetrical happy ending to have full impact, you need to feel the anxiety of characters who hardly trusted in such a denouement ever arriving.

The directors double as actors here, with Mr. Brody as the self-infatuated Count Orsino and Mr. Steinfeld as an especially tuneful Feste, a clown in Olivia’s court, who delivers his melancholy ballads in the style of a James Taylor-esque troubadour. Paul L. Coffey is the puritanical Malvolio, Olivia’s steward; Andy Grotelueschen is her hedonistic cousin, Sir Toby Belch; and Paco Tolson is his dimwitted companion in revelry, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, with Tina Chilip as Toby’s girlfriend (and fellow conniver in Malvolio-baiting), Maria.

You may note that I didn’t characterize these cast members beyond, well, the characters they portray. That’s because the performances match those basic descriptions without adding much to them. Viola speaks often of not being what she appears to be. But in this “Twelfth Night” what you see is more or less what you get, even when people are pretending to be what they are not.

PERFORMANCE

Merkin Hall
What Makes It Great?

Beethoven - String Quartet No. 16, Op. 135

"The F-major Quartet was Beethoven's last completed work, finished only five months before his death. On the manuscript of the last movement, he writes, “The very difficult question” and then above the movement's 6 key notes, “Must it be?” and “It must be.” The meaning of these words as well as the quartet's unique mixture of the serious and the playful, the cosmic and the comic, have made the work one of Beethoven's most enigmatic masterpieces. Join Rob Kapilow and the Harlem Quartet as they explore the mysteries of Beethoven's final work."

LINCOLN CENTER

David Geffen Hall
New York Philharmonic

Weber - Oberon Overture
Mozart - Sinfonia concertante for Winds
Beethoven - Symphony No. 5

Alan Gilbert - Conductor
Liang Wang - Oboe
Anthony McGill - Clarinet
Judith LeClair - Bassoon
Richard Deane - Horn

175th Birthday Concert

"Celebrate the Philharmonic’s 175th birthday with Alan Gilbert conducting Beethoven’s immortal Fifth Symphony. Rising from the unmistakable four-note opening, it transports us from tragedy to triumph, from darkness into the light. Featuring a virtuoso quartet of Philharmonic wind principals, Mozart’s Sinfonia concertante is guaranteed to delight with its entrancing melodies, elegance, and vibrancy."

LINCOLN CENTER

Alice Tully Hall
The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center

Baroque Collection

Handel - Concerto Grosso in D major for Two Violins, Cello, Strings, and Continue, Op. 6, No. 5 (1739)
Couperin - Concert Royal No. 4 in E minor for Oboe d'Amore and Continuo (1722)
Bach - Concerto in A minor for Violin, Strings, and Continuo, BWV 1041 (c. 1730)
Vitali - Ciaccona from Varie partite del passeremo, ciaccona, capricci, e passagalii for Two Violins and Continuo, Op. 7 (1682)
Telemann - Concerto in G major for Viola, Strings, and Continuo (c. 1716-21)
Vivaldi - Concerto in F major for Three Violins, Strings, and Continuo, RV 551 (1711)

"French elegance, Italian vitality, and German tradition combine for a concert of Baroque fireworks. The first “age of virtuosity” is brought to life by a roster of truly virtuoso artists."

THEATER

Cherry Lane Theater
Pride and Prejudice

 

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

Written by and featuring Kate Hamill
Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
Directed by Amanda Dehnert

Presented in a co-production with The Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival

This fall, acclaimed writer and actress Kate Hamill (Bedlam’s Sense and Sensibility) will debut her playful new adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic romance, Pride and Prejudice. The outspoken Elizabeth Bennet faces mounting pressure from her status-conscious mother to secure a suitable marriage. But is marriage suitable for a woman of Elizabeth’s intelligence and independence? Especially when the irritating, aloof, self-involved… tall, vaguely handsome, mildly amusing, and impossibly aristocratic Mr. Darcy keeps popping up at every turn?! What? Why are you looking at us like that? Literature’s greatest tale of latent love has never felt so theatrical, or so full of life than it does in this effervescent new adaptation.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/theater/a-madcap-pride-prejudice-alfresco-in-the-hudson-valley.html

Outdoor Stages: A Madcap ‘Pride & Prejudice’ in the Hudson Valley

 John Tufts, center, as Mr. Bingley in Kate Hamill’s adaptation of “Pride & Prejudice” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison, N.Y. Ms. Hamill is second from left. Nicole Fara Silver for The New York Times 

Lizzy Bennet lives with Mr. Darcy in Queens.

This summer, however, the prickliest pair in fiction can be found most nights in their own D.I.Y. Pemberley, a tent in Garrison, N.Y., overlooking the Hudson River — and reminding audiences that the finest china in their beloved Jane Austen is as likely to be a chamber pot as a teacup.

Lizzy is Kate Hamill. Her stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Pride & Prejudice” had its premiere last Saturday at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival there, where it will play in repertory until September before shifting to Primary Stages Off Broadway in November. And yes, Ms. Hamill acts opposite her nonfictional boyfriend, Jason O’Connell. It’s a first for the couple, although he played the future brother-in-law, Edward, to her Marianne Dashwood in Ms. Hamill’s previous Austen adaptation, “Sense & Sensibility,” a rollicking muslins-on-wheels affair (by the appropriately named theater company Bedlam) that had an acclaimed run Off Broadway last year.

Ms. Hamill, 33, says she plans to adapt all six Austen novels for the stage — probably in the order of their writing, the better to chart her own progress against Austen’s. “Northanger Abbey” may be next. (“There’s something I love about teenage vernacular,” she said in an interview last week.) Starting with “Sense & Sensibility” was perhaps wise: She could gauge the appetite for yet another Austen adaptation before adapting the most adapted — and cherished — of them all, “Pride & Prejudice.” “It’s the one everyone knows,” she said. “People have a serious attachment to it.”

“Sense” was such a hit that even a committed Janeite’s attachment might well withstand an irreverent “Pride.”

 

Jason O’Connell and Kate Hamill, center, in “Pride & Prejudice” at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival. Nicole Fara Silver for The New York Times 

And it is irreverent. Think men cast as Mary, the plain and prudish Bennet sister, and as the snobbish Miss Bingley. A lot of “intentional water spillage.” Mr. Bingley as near to being a puppy as a man can be without being on all fours.

“People might feel I have desecrated their idols, but, you know, at least I’ve tried to do something interesting,” she said, noting that she had not put zombies in it, and that “I haven’t set it on Mars.” She has discovered, however, that “Janeites” — and she counts herself as one — “are pretty open-minded people; they’re exceptionally generous. Because sometimes I’m taking liberties.”

Ms. Hamill doesn’t see the purpose in adapting a classic unless there is a clear point of view. She found hers for “Pride & Prejudice” in the exaggerated notion of courtship and marriage as a game with winners, losers, referees and exceptionally bad coaches. She applied her own “historical ambivalence about marriage” just as she was arriving at the age when her friends were pairing off around her. She concluded that matches happen between people “whose weirdnesses fit together.”

She looked to the Shakespeare canon for a model. “It’s a romantic comedy, and I was thinking, what romantic comedies do I not hate?” The answer was “Much Ado About Nothing.”

“I thought the big challenge going into it was, everyone knows who gets together,” she said. “I wanted to make a certain story uncertain. How do you make a ‘Much Ado’ where you’re really not sure if Benedick and Beatrice get together?”

She was not afraid to go broad and go silly. There are games galore in her production. (In researching games of the period, she said, she discovered one in which participants simply slap one another in the face. It’s not in her production.)

 

Kate Hamill in her Elizabeth Bennet best for “Pride & Prejudice.” Nicole Fara Silver for The New York Times 

Bells ring throughout her play: wedding bells; alarm bells; the kind of bells that signal rounds in a prizefight; a chime that sounds, if only in your head, when you connect with your imperfect perfect match. (“It kind of annoys me when both Lizzy and Darcy are supermodels,” she said.)

The clanging insistence of bells became a critical device to her retelling of this classic story about the game of games: the marriage game.

Ms. Hamill grew up in a farmhouse in rural Lansing, N.Y., the fifth of six siblings. She knows how to milk a cow and collect eggs from hens, but she spent much of her time reading (“My parents didn’t believe in TV”), and she joined the theater program in her very small high school. That’s where she gained some sage advice. She was studying to be an actress, but the drama teacher told the girls that if they wanted work, they had to create it.

When she moved to New York, one of her jobs involved writing copy for catalogs. Hundreds of descriptions of jewelry. “You start to just amuse yourself: What else can I say about this pendant?” Early on, she said, “in my mind a serious writer was someone different from me,” and she remained committed to acting. But she wearied of auditions for “silent suffering girlfriend” and “girl in bikini.” That’s when she recalled her old instructor’s counsel. Three-quarters of all plays are written by men, and an overwhelming majority of parts are for men, she said, reeling off statistics she seemed to have learned the hard way. She began to think about creating “new classics.”

In addition to the two Austen novels, she has adapted Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair,” and is at work on Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” and — why not? — “The Odyssey,” for which she wrote a scene, she said, featuring a Cyclops singing to his sheep.

In the meantime, she is vastly amused to be doing a show with Mr. O’Connell in which they get to “bicker and hate each other for hours” — and nightly he must recite a proposal that was written by her.