Enjoy the show...or else: Orientarhythm

This week in the Village Voice Theater Section:

Michael Feingold contemplates links between violence in the larger world and contemporary drama.

I spent four days covering this incarnation of the New York Fringe. Though largely disappointing and blister inducing, I saw a couple of shows I quite enjoyed, BASH'd and Orientarhythm. Bukowsical? Not so much.

The Knee Plays: Fair Game

I'll be away this weekend, in Saratoga for the races. But last night I managed to catch September 12th at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and also a performance of La Vie at the Spiegeltent (I still don't like it quite as much as Absinthe, but it's improved a lot since it's showing earlier in the summer). On Monday I'll see Karl Gajdusek's Fair Game and I'm hoping to reschedule Iphigenia 2.0 for Thursday.

The new face of musical theater

We've snuck a sneak peak at the P.S.122 fall season and are particularly excited about an appearance by hipster rockers Japanther who will present a new work featuring “an animatronic robot dinosaur.” We don't know much more about it, but “an animatronic robot dinosaur"! Now when our friends come up to us and ask us whatever can be done to make theater cool again, we have an answer: “an animatronic robot dinosaur." Apparently dance and conceptual art features, too.

Casting Kohl

Just received an email that Christine Baranski has had to withdraw from this spring's production of Antony and Cleopatra at Theater for a new Audience. Scheduling conflicts are blamed. Director Darko Tresnjak will be looking for a new leading lady, and what a lovely opportunity for an actress of a certain age. Who would you like to see as Cleo? If Jennifer Ehle could age a decade or two I wouldn't mind that. Sigourney Weaver? Lindsay Duncan? Ellen Mclaughlin? Kate Burton? Christine Ebersole? Fiona Shaw? Helen Mirren? Who's your fantasy pick?

Orlando Bloom: perhaps he'd sell more tickets sans moustache?

Earlier tonight I mused on the panoply of screen faves destined for Broadway stages this fall. Just read Matt Wolf's quick post in the Guardian where the expatriate Yank argues that star presence alone won't revive or sustain a lagging West End box office. Unlike us easily swayed Americans (he cites the sold-out Three Days of Rain), an above-the-critics name won't send the Brits buying, though it did lure Ben Brantley. Wolf writes:

In London, the play, not the player, is still the thing, especially since you don't find Judi Dench and Maggie Smith together on stage all that often: their West End duet in David Hare's Breath of Life looks unlikely to be repeated. In the meantime, Juliette Lewis tanked in "Fool For Love," Jessica Lange has done less well on each of her three West End engagements, and tickets proved far from impossible to obtain for Daniel Radcliffe in "Equus," or Orlando Bloom's ongoing run in "In Celebration": the anticipated Julia Roberts-style hysteria never quite hit London.

Kevin Kline: Rhinoplasty candidate?

Hollywood names will make quite a few appearances on Broadway this fall. Following recent announcements about Claire Danes's turn in Pygmalion and Jake Gyllenhaal's mooted appearance in Farragut North comes the news that Jen Garner and Kevin Kline will star as Roxanne and her beaky swain in Cyrano de Bergerac. Kline's an old Broadway hand, of course, but it will be interesting to see how well Garner's grin and gams translate to the stage. Of Garner, Gyllenhaal and Danes, who do you imagine will acquit themselves best in the stage to screen transition? Danes has some intriguing indie theater cred, but our money's on young Jake. Which film actor would you most like to see form an orchestra seat?

A dazzler

Over at the Playgoer, occasional Voice critic Garrett Eisler has launched a new feature, highlighting favorite theater posters. Email him "a jpg of a poster for a theatrical production--a real-life production--that you just think is really, really cool, whether or not the production itself was, or whether or not you even saw it. I'll post the highlights as they come in." It's just getting started, but quite interesting to see what people think construes a striking representation and why. I've included one of my favorites above. Let Garrett know yours.

Fringe, here's to ya'

The Fringe round-ups are trickling in; mine should be online Tuesday afternoon. In the Times, Ginia Bellafante attends a handful of shows and finds Bucharest Calling and The Consuming Passions of Lydia Pinkham and Rev. Sylvester Graham sufficiently consuming. As far as Time Out New York knows, it likes As Far as We Know best. It also has kind words for Lost in Hollywood land and Notes to the Motherland, which I didn't so much care for. They also liked my little sis's show. Meanwhile nytheatre.com continues in their quixotic attempt to review absolutely everything, and typically, they enjoy lots.

Life is a Dream: The Delacorte

Am spending this weekend in San Francisco for a wedding and the following one in Saratoga playing the ponies, but will try to sneak a little theatergoing into my busy life of leisure. On Wednesday evening I'll see Charles Mee's version of Iphigenia at Aulis, Iphigenia 2.0 at the Signature. Have to brush upon my Euripides. Will also try to get to Midsummer Night's Dream at the Delacorte, with picnic basket in hand.

String Theory: Opus

This Week in the Village Voice Theater section:

Michael Feingold offers an appreciation of Ingmar Bergman, focusing on both his films and his theatrical work, a major aspect of his career that too many obits have ignored. “He made this latter reputation doing only what great stage directors are supposed to do: taking on the finest works of dramatic literature and putting his personal mark on them in ways that magically managed to fulfill both his own vision and their authors' deepest meanings.”

I spent my week exploring the disputed territory of Israeli-Palestinian drama, attending Betty Shamieh’s The Black Eyed and Ilan Hatsor’s Masked. The former concerns four Palestinian from across the centuries, trapped in the afterlife. Alas, “Shamieh has an exasperating impulse toward the general. She wants to speak for all women, always, and in portentous poesy besides.” Though Masked would like to spark controversy, the blurb on its poster "An Israeli play about three Palestinian brothers," is much more shocking than the play itself.

Andy Propst doesn’t really harmonize with Michael Hollinger’s Opus at Primary Stages, calling it “an easily digested soap opera set in the highbrow world of classical music.” At Keith Reddin’s Human Errors, James Hannaham finds plenty: “When Miranda tearfully recites dialogue from the black-box recorder, we know this baby's going down.”