In the Wings

White Plains PAC wonders: Who is Westchester’s Best?

Peter D. Kramer — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:38:29 +0000

Got a call from Jack Batman and Bruce Robert Harris at White Plains Performing Arts Center this afternoon.

They’re not sitting idol—I mean idle — this summer. They’re announcing the following “challenge” to find Westchester’s Best Singer, Best Dancer and Best Comic.

First up is the singing competition, in two categories — Age 10-16 and Age 17+.

Registration, which cost $25, will be held July 31 and Aug. 1, from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the WPPAC, which is on the top floor of the City Center mall in downtown White Plains. (At 11 City Center Place.)

The preliminaries will be held Aug. 3 with the semifinals and finals on Aug. 9.

The challenge is limited to Westchester residents. (Two forms of ID are required.)

You’ll get to sing a two- to three-minute song and hope to impress the panel of judges.

Among the prizes in the challenge — which is sponsored by the PAC, the White Plains BID and Applebee’s — is an opportunity for the kid-category winner to have a walk-on role in the WPPAC holiday production of “Oliver!”

Later in the year, they’ll be looking for Westchester’s Best Dancer and Westchester’s Best Comic.

Batman said it’s another good way for the new theater to connect with the community. He says the open calls they’ve held for their productions have shown him that there are a lot of talented people in Westchester.

For details, call 914-328-1600.

This week’s video: Pizzarelli and Divas

Peter D. Kramer — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:29:57 +0000

Here’s this week’s video, tied to Friday’s Fourth of July performance by John Pizzarelli at Caramoor.

Nyack’s “Phantom” takes National Youth Theatre honors

Peter D. Kramer — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 19:02:57 +0000

Nyack High School’s production of “The Phantom of the Opera” won six awards from the National Youth Theatre.

The regional awards — Nyack was in the northeast region — were selected from a group of more than 170 productions in more than 90 different theaters in more than 60 cities spanning 23 states. Winners were selected from nominations by a panel of ten judges and reviewers.

It was named outstanding production and outstanding ensemble and awards went to Max Reinhardsen (outstanding lead actor in a musical), Edy Modica (outstanding lead actress in a musical), Tom Beck and Neil Schleifer (outstanding costume design), Joseph J. Egan (outstanding set design).

Producers were Drama Club Advisors Kathy Tappenden and Simona Moldovan.

Read the review here

The winners will be formally presented with their awards at a ceremony honoring their accomplishments on July 19 at 7:30 p.m. at the TADA Theater, 15 W. 28th St., between Broadway and Fifth Avenue.

Theater review: “Twelfth Night”

Peter D. Kramer — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 17:29:06 +0000

All is not as it seems in “Twelfth Night,” now in repertory at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison.
When you see Feste, the fool, you’re looking at the play’s wisest character.
Behold Cesario, the faithful servant boy, and you’re looking at a lady in disguise.
And Malvolio, the haughty servant who would hold all to his moral compass, is, in fact, a preening peacock.
Welcome to Illyria, where the shipwrecked Viola — distraught over the loss of her brother, Sebastian, at sea — makes landfall.

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Theater review: “The Fall to Earth”

Peter D. Kramer — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 20:19:11 +0000

If theater is meant to spark conversation, its mission is accomplished with Penguin Rep’s latest production, Joel Drake Johnson’s “The Fall to Earth.”

The play’s final moment — which Johnson has said was meant to be “deliberately ambiguous” — certainly had people talking after Sunday’s matinee.

“What does it mean?” one woman wondered aloud.

“Do you think…?” one wife asked her husband, who offered a long “Nooooo” in reply.

In the parking lot, one theatergoer turned to the members of her party and said, “We’re going to have to have a long talk about this one.”

You won’t learn about the ending here — no “spoiler alerts” required — but rest assured that, after 95 minutes, it comes as a surprise.

Johnson’s one-act play — on stage at Penguin Rep in Stony Point through July 20 — involves Fay and her daughter, Rachel, who check into “a typical chain motel in a small American town.”

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After a spark, insight and revelations

Peter D. Kramer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 18:28:58 +0000

It started in 2005, Anna Becker recalls, at a conference table at Northern Westchester Center for the Arts, which was in its final months.
Becker had been called in to advise Michael Unthank, who had just taken over at NWCA.
“He asked me what the place needed to be more complete as an arts center and I said, ‘You don’t have a professional performance component,’” she recalls in a conversation at her Pound Ridge home.
As she discussed the potential such an addition would bring to the center, a board member noticed how animated she was getting.
Becker went home, thought about it, asked Unthank if she could try to put such a program together and, one PowerPoint presentation later, the job was hers.

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More than a little “Night” music

Peter D. Kramer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:41:26 +0000

“If music be the food of love, play on,
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken and so die.”
So says Orsino, the lovestruck duke in the opening of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night.”
Director John Christian Plummer will have musicians play on when the romantic comedy opens tonight at the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival in Garrison.
Plummer, who lives in Cold Spring, is directing at the festival for the first time, but he’s well-acquainted with the Bard.
When he was fresh out of Tufts University — where he directed a “Twelfth Night” — he created the Albany-based Actors Shakespeare Company, which presented nearly two dozen productions over seven summers.
Plummer’s parents have lived in the area for 15 years or so, and his wife, actress Maia Guest — who plays Feste the clown in “Twelfth Night” — trod the Boscobel lawn in “The Rivals” two summers ago and was Phoebe in “As You Like It” more than a dozen years ago.
Regular HVSF patrons know that music always finds its way into the tent at the Boscobel Restoration, the festival’s home:

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Catch a mom who’s falling

Peter D. Kramer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:45:25 +0000

Five years ago this month, Michele Pawk clutched her new Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a play as an alcoholic mother in “Hollywood Arms.”
Starting tonight, she plays another mother in “The Fall to Earth” at Stony Point’s Penguin Rep in a production that runs through July 20.
Pawk plays Fay Schorsch, a role created by Rondi Reed, who was this year’s Best Featured Actress in a play for her work in “August: Osage County.” Both plays began life at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago.
In Joel Drake Johnson’s “The Fall to Earth,” Fay checks into “a typical chain motel in a small American town” with her daughter, Rachel.It’s not clear why they’re here. It is clear that Fay is a nervous wreck. She speaks constantly in rapid-fire fashion, her daughter offering monosyllabic answers.

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They ran away to start a circus

Peter D. Kramer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:29:30 +0000

When Paul Binder and Michael Christensen met at the San Francisco Mime Troupe in 1972, they clicked right away.

“We had a great time together,” says Christensen. “We made each other laugh. We enjoyed hanging out. Ideas would tumble and we always existed in a spirit of play. We played a lot together, like brothers.”

They are a study in contrasts: Binder, a Brooklynite, is loud and takes the lead; Christensen, who is from Walla Walla, Wash., is quiet and chooses his words carefully.

“And therein lies the tale,” says Christensen.

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Theater review: The Big Apple Circus’ “Celebrate”

Peter D. Kramer — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:16:29 +0000

“Celebrate” starts, appropriately, with a confetti cannon, this 30th anniversary spectacular of the one-ring wonder known as the Big Apple Circus.
The Huesca Brothers tumble their way through a rapid-fire act that involves one brother flipping the other over and over using just his feet. It’s a routine that will make back-pain sufferers wince but they make it look as easy as a walk the park.
The inimitable Barry Lubin is in fine form as Grandma the clown, deconstructing what the audience has just seen in his own particular way.
Fellow clowns Fumagalli and Daris are classic tumblers who blend comedy with their act, eliciting titters from the 3-year-olds in the front row – and their parents.
Two acts take children’s toys to a whole other level.
Yelena Larkina gives hula-hoop lovers something to shoot for – and then some – in a stylized routine titled “Wedding Rings.”
“Jump for Joy” has the Kovgar Troupe doing double-Dutch times three, with six jump ropes going at once.

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