AN EVENING OF SHORT PLAYS DIRECTED BY BOB BALABAN

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Bob Balaban, photo courtesy of Guild Hall.

Tag: Performing Arts

Nightly Met Opera Streams: Viewers’ Choice: Puccini’s La Bohème

Visit the Metropolitan Opera’s homepage to view this stream for 23 hours after it premieres

Puccini’s heartbreaking story of young love in the garrets of Belle Epoque Paris has attracted many famous singers through the years. But with James Levine at the helm and the starry duo of Luciano Pavarotti and Renata Scotto as Rodolfo and Mimi, every bit of emotion in the score pours across the footlights and seduces the audience. In this case, the audience was in the millions since this was the very first in the “Live from the Met” series of telecasts. The evocative production is by Fabrizio Melano, designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi.

Nightly Met Opera Streams: Strauss’s Capriccio

Visit the Metropolitan Opera’s homepage to view this stream for 23 hours after it premieres

Renée Fleming is Countess Madeleine, the beautiful, enigmatic woman at the center of Strauss’s sophisticated “Conversation Piece for Music.” She is being courted by two men: Joseph Kaiser sings the composer, Flamand, and Russell Braun is Olivier, the poet. The stellar cast also includes Peter Rose as the theater director La Roche, Sarah Connolly as the actress Clairon, and Morten Frank Larsen as the Countess’s brother. John Cox’s elegant production places the action in the 1920s. Andrew Davis conducts.

Nightly Met Opera Streams: Saariaho’s L’Amour de Loin

Visit the Metropolitan Opera’s homepage to view this stream for 23 hours after it premieres

Robert Lepage’s dreamlike production, with its thousands of twinkling LED lights stretching across the stage to represent the sea, encapsulates the mystic feeling of L’Amour de Loin, Saariaho’s haunting opera of distant love. Eric Owens is Jaufré Rudel, a troubadour in 12th century France who has become tired of his hedonistic life and longs for an idealized love. Enter the Pilgrim (Tamara Mumford) who tells him his perfect love does, in fact, exist, far across the sea. She is Clémence, Countess of Tripoli (Susanna Phillips). The magic of the characters’ inner lives as they explore the meaning of love, longing, life, and death is heightened by Saariaho’s hypnotic and bewitching score, conducted by Susanna Mälkki.

Nightly Met Opera Streams: Thomas’s Hamlet

Visit the Metropolitan Opera’s homepage to view this stream for 23 hours after it premieres

After over a century out of the Met’s repertoire, audiences were thrilled to discover just what a sensational evening in the theater Thomas’s Hamlet can be. Simon Keenlyside’s riveting performance as the tortured Prince of Denmark in Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser’s starkly brooding production had critics raving that Keenlyside’s superb singing, coupled with his deftly delineated three-dimensional Hamlet, was one of the greatest examples of operatic drama of our time. The cast includes Marlis Petersen as the long suffering Ophélie, who brilliantly shows why her mad scene is so justly famous, along with Jennifer Larmore and James Morris as Gertrude and Claudius.

Nightly Met Opera Streams: Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro

Visit the Metropolitan Opera’s homepage to view this stream for 23 hours after it premieres

The Met assembled a vocal dream team for Jonathan Miller’s stylish production of the eternal Mozart masterpiece: Renée Fleming as the Countess, Cecilia Bartoli as Susanna, and Bryn Terfel as Figaro. With James Levine—one of the world’s great conductors of Mozart—in the pit, Bartoli interpolating two rarely heard alternate arias, and Dwayne Croft as the Count and Susanne Mentzer as Cherubino, this is a performance for the record books.

Portrait of Tennessee: The Words of Tennessee Williams starring Mercedes Ruehl, Harris Yulin, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, & Tedra Millan

Four great actors – stars of Broadway, television and the cinema – reunite virtually for one night only in a very special LIVE online Zoom theatrical event to Benefit the John Drew Theater at Guild Hall, which has been closed since the start of the pandemic. Director Harris Yulin (Ozark) returns to Guild Hall where he directed a gorgeous production of Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie starring Amy Irving and Ebon Moss-Bachrach that served to re-open the John Drew Theater after major renovations in 2009. Yulin has directed many readings at the Drew with stars such as Eli Wallach, Dianne Wiest, Edward Asner and F. Murray Abraham, including last season’s sold-out reading of Jules Feiffer’s A Bad Friend which celebrated the playwright’s 90th birthday. Yulin is joined once again by longtime friend and collaborator Mercedes Ruehl. The legendary Academy, Golden Globe, Tony, Obie and Drama Desk-award winning Ruehl is herself no stranger to the Drew, having appeared in dozens of readings over the course of the last two decades, as well as starring in Guild Hall’s production of Jenny Lyn Bader’s comedy Manhattan Casanova in 2001. Joining this stellar ensemble are Ebon Moss-Bachrach (HBO’s Girls and John Adams, The Punisher, NOS4A2) who in addition to starring in The Glass Menagerie appeared at Guild Hall alongside Ms. Ruehl, Richard Kind and James Earl Jones in a recent reading of the political thriller Are You Now…, also directed by Yulin. The final cast member is rising Broadway star Tedra Millan (Present Laughter with Kevin Kline and The Wolves at Lincoln Center) who returns to the Drew for this virtual reading, having made her actual Guild Hall debut last summer as the memorable lead in Feiffer’s A Bad Friend. Yulin is a master interpreter of the work of Tennessee Williams, and he brings his prodigious knowledge, experience and passion to this project, which is artfully arranged and scripted entirely from Williams’ essays, letters, journals and plays. This evening will shine a light on the brilliance of one of America’s most impactful playwrights, and will reward viewers with an informal and intimate experience up close with four astonishing actors in a virtual event exclusive to Guild Hall. This event is produced by the Drew’s Artistic Director Josh Gladstone, who will introduce the evening, and is stage managed and assistant directed by Amanda Kate Joshi.

Arranged by Harris Yulin and Jack Canfora
Starring Mercedes Ruehl, Harris Yulin, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, & Tedra Millan
Directed by Harris Yulin
Scripted entirely from Williams’ essays, letters, journals and plays, this evening will shine a light on the brilliance of one of America’s most impactful playwrights, Tennessee Williams.
Stage Manager: Amanda Kate Joshi

Preview article by Bridget LeRoy in The Independent Newspaper

Melissa Errico: Sondheim Sublime (Facebook LIVE Premiere Concert)

Please join us on Guild Hall’s Facebook Page on May 2 at 4:00pm, when we’ll host a listening and viewing party for Melissa Errico’s sing down of “Sondheim Sublime,” her concert tribute to the music and lyrics of Stephen Sondheim. This concert, recorded in East Hampton in June of 2019, premiered on our YouTube channel March 22 (Sondheim’s 90th Birthday), to a touchingly large and appreciative audience – and one of the most appealing parts of the event was the engaged and questioning commentary that Melissa fielded even as we watched her perform. Songs of isolation, like “I Remember” from Evening Primrose, and songs of protective love, like “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd, startled us all by revealing, in this uniquely troubled moment, new depths of meaning that had never before been so apparent. We found ourselves in an informal Sondheim seminar even as we watched Melissa’s Sondheim show.  Click here to go to our Facebook page.

So, in honor of the 36th anniversary of the opening night of Sondheim’s show Sunday in the Park with George (5/2/1984), Guild Hall will rebroadcast the concert, with a special invitation to everyone to attend and extend that “seminar” – to bring their Sondheim queries, revelations, specialized knowledge, passions — and even their most pacific overtures — to the afternoon. Ask questions, and Melissa will answer them – joining forces for the occasion with the co-writer of her “Sondheim Sublime” project, musical theater maven and lyricist, Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker. They’ll field questions about all things Sondheim, many things musical and whatever else is on your mind—from what ‘sublime’ really means to how many dots there actually are in a Georges Seurat’s hat.

“I’ve never been more moved by anything than by the way the virtual audience for the show gathered and responded together last time” Melissa says, “and so I’m happy to encourage even more questions and new responses. Whatever brings us all together. It’s a particular treat for me to co-ordinate the viewing party with the anniversary of Sunday in the Park with George and I’m especially happy to connect, to distract, and bring writer Adam Gopnik along from his home, a man who no doubt will have unique live commentary on Sondheim‘s genius.”

The event can be viewed on Guild Hall’s Facebook page at 4:00pm on May 2. It should be…sublime.

(Melissa is also appearing on a special PBS episode of Poetry in America about Sondheim and Sunday in the Park with George titled “Finishing the Hat” premiering May 9 at 7:30pm).

HamptonsFilm presents NOW SHOWING: Sorry We Missed You

Directed by Ken Loach

(UK, 2019, 100 minutes)

The British working class is once again the empathetic subject of Ken Loach’s SORRY WE MISSED YOU, a wrenching, intimate family drama that exposes the dark side of the so-called “gig economy”.
Ricky, a former laborer, and his home-attendant wife Abby—who lost their home in the 2008 financial crash—are desperate to get out of their financial distress. When an opportunity comes up for Ricky to work as his own boss as a delivery driver, they sell their only asset, Abby’s car, to trade it in for a shiny new white van and the dream that Ricky can work his way up to someday owning his own delivery franchise.
But the couple find their lives are quickly pushed further to the edge by an unrelenting work schedule, a ruthless supervisor and the needs of their two teenage children. Capturing the sacred moments that make a family as well as the acts of desperation they need to undertake to make it through each day, this universal story is skillfully and indelibly told with unforgettable performances and a searing script by Loach’s long-time collaborator Paul Laverty.

We at HamptonsFilm and Guild Hall are committed to connecting our audiences with terrific new films through our popular Now Showing series. Until we can safely meet again, we’re delighted to announce that our weekly model will continue, moving from our recent screenings at Guild Hall onto your personal screens in the privacy of your own home.

 

National Theatre Live at Home: Antony & Cleopatra

Visit the National Theatre’s homepage to view this stream for one week after it premieres

Ralph Fiennes (The English Patient, James Bond: Spectre) and Sophie Okonedo (Chimerica, Hotel Rwanda) play Shakespeare’s famous fated couple in his great tragedy of politics, passion and power.

Caesar and his assassins are dead. General Mark Antony now rules alongside his fellow defenders of Rome. But at the fringes of a war-torn empire the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra and Mark Antony have fallen fiercely in love. In a tragic fight between devotion and duty, obsession becomes a catalyst for war. 

Simon Godwin (Hansard, Twelfth Night) directed this critically acclaimed production at the National Theatre in 2018. You can watch Antony & Cleopatra on the National Theatre’s YouTube channel from 7pm UK time on Thursday 7 May for one week.

This filmed performance was given a BBFC rating of 12A and contains some staged violence and flashing lights. 

National Theatre Live at Home: Frankenstein

Visit the National Theatre’s homepage to view this stream for one week after it premieres

Filmed live in 2011 from the stage of the National Theatre in London, this thrilling, sold-out production became an international sensation, experienced by more than 800,000 people in cinemas around the world.

Directed by Academy Award®-winner Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, Slumdog Millionaire), this production of Frankenstein sees Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange, Hamlet, Sherlock) and Jonny Lee Miller (Elementary, Trainspotting) alternating between the roles of Victor Frankenstein and his creation.

Childlike in his innocence but grotesque in form, Frankenstein’s bewildered creature is cast out into a hostile universe by his horror-struck maker. Meeting with cruelty wherever he goes, the increasingly desperate and vengeful Creature determines to track down his creator and strike a terrifying deal.

This filmed performance is recommended for ages 12 and up. This recording has been adjusted for YouTube.