red shoes on a thuuursday: June 2008

Monday, June 30, 2008

SEAGULL, with Kristin Scott Thomas and Peter Sarsgaard, to Play the Kerr

I love Krisitn Scott Thomas.
I love Chekhov's THE SEAGULL.
What a combination!

Last week, I auditioned for this production. They need(ed) understudies for all the roles. One lucky gal will understudy both the roles of Nina and Masha. I didn't receive a call about it, and it really stinks that I have to let this one go, but I must persevere on---> =)

Nonetheless, I would LOVE to see this production.
(I would Love MORE to be in it, to be part of it;)

By Andrew Gans
30 Jun 2008

Ian Rickson's acclaimed production of Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, which played a January-March 2007 run at London's Royal Court, will begin previews Sept. 16 at the Walter Kerr Theatre.

The production, which features a new translation by playwright Christopher Hampton (Les Liaisons Dangereuses, The Philanthropist), was the final play to be directed by Rickson as the Court's artistic director. Opening on Broadway will be Oct. 1. The production will play a limited run of 14 weeks through Dec. 21.

(The Kerr is the current home of A Catered Affair, which will end its run July 27.)

Kristin Scott Thomas will reprise her Olivier Award-winning performance as Arkadina for New York audiences. She will be joined onstage by Peter Sarsgaard, who will also be making his Broadway debut, as Trigorin. The cast will also feature members of the original Royal Court Theatre cast, including Mackenzie Crook as Konstantin, Art Malik as Dorn, Carey Mulligan as Nina, Pearce Quigley as Medvedenko, Peter Wight as Sorin, Christopher Patrick Nolan as Yakov and Mary Rose as the Maid. The production will also feature Zoe Kazan as Masha, with other casting to be announced at a later date.

Chekhov wrote The Seagull in 1985. The classic play, according to press notes, concerns "the romantic entanglements and regrets of a group of actors, writers and artists gathered on a Russian estate."

The production will feature designs by Hildegard Bechtler, lighting by Peter Mumford, sound by Ian Dickinson and music by Stephen Warbeck.

Kristin Scott Thomas won the 2007 Olivier Award for Best Actress in a Play for her performance as Arkadina in The Seagull. She received an Academy Award nomination for her performance in "The English Patient" and has also been seen in "Four Weddings and a Funeral," "Gosford Park," "Random Hearts," "Life as a House," "The Horse Whisperer," "Angels and Insects," "The Other Boleyn Girl" and "The Walker" as well as the upcoming ""Easy Virtue," "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and "I've Loved You So Long."

Peter Sarsgaard made his screen debut in "Dead Man Walking" and has since appeared in "Kinsey," "Shattered Glass" (National Society of Film Critics Award), "Garden State," "Boys Don't Cry," "Rendition," "The Dying Gaul," "Jarhead," "The Skeleton Key," "Flightplan," "Year of the Dog" and the upcoming "In the Electric Mist," "Orphan," "Elegy," "An Education" and "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh." He trained at the Actor's Studio and appeared Off-Broadway in Signature Theatre's production of Burn This and Laura Dennis and Drama Dept.'s Kingdom of Earth.

The Seagull will be produced on Broadway by Sonia Friedman Productions, Bob Boyett, Robert G. Bartner, Dede Harris, Eric Falkenstein, Fox Theatricals, Dena Hammerstein, Sharon Karmazin, Olympus Theatricals, Spring Sirkin, Tara Smith, Mort Swinsky, Karl Sydow, The Weinstein Company and Jay & Cindy Gutterman.

Show times will be Tuesdays-Saturdays at 8 PM with matinees Wednesdays and Saturdays at 2 PM and Sundays at 3 PM. There will be an extra performance Sunday, Oct. 5 at 8 PM.

Ticket information will be announced shortly.

The Walter Kerr Theatre is located in Manhattan at 219 West 48th Street.

from: playbill.com
photo of Kristin Scott Thomas as Arkadina in the London production of THE SEAGULL by Johan Persson

Saturday, June 21, 2008

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY to Play London's National in Fall 2008

from: http://www.playbill.com

By Mark Shenton
June 20, 2008

It has been confirmed that the National Theatre will present the London debut of this year's Tony Award-winning Best Play, Tracy Letts' August: Osage County.

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production will begin an eight-week run in the Lyttelton Theatre in late November (with precise dates still to be confirmed). Most of the original Broadway cast will likely reprise their performances in London.

Steppenwolf previously appeared at the National Theatre in 1989, when they transferred their stage adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath from Chicago to London, ahead of a Broadway run the year after.

Playwright Letts won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the three-and-a-half-hour dark ensemble comedy-drama about three generations of an Oklahoma clan. The Broadway production also picked up five 2008 Tony Awards, including one for Best Play.

Directed by Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County "tells the explosively funny tale of the Weston clan, triggered by the recent disappearance of the family patriarch."

The designers are Todd Rosenthal (sets), Ana Kuzmanic (costumes), Ann G. Wrightson (lights), Richard Woodbury (sound) and David Singer (original music).

In New York August plays the Music Box Theatre.

Currently reading: Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard by Isak Dinesen

Fengshen and a Ferry Down in the Philippines

I can't seem to get over this line in the article: "...children's slippers were scattered on the shoreline."

UPDATE 1-At least 4 dead after ferry down in Philippines

Sat Jun 21, 2008 11:18pm EDT
(Adds details throughout)

By Rosemarie Francisco

MANILA, June 22 (Reuters) - A ferry with more than 700 people sank off the coast of the central Philippines in winds and high waves caused by Typhoon Fengshen and at least four people were killed, local officials said on Sunday.

"I sent a speed boat to check," Nanette Tansingco, a mayor of the coastal town of Romblon province, told local radio.

"They saw the boat upside down with a big hole in the hull."

She said at least four bodies were found and childrens' slippers were scattered on the shoreline.
The MV Princess of Stars stalled in rough seas near Sibuyan island on Saturday with 626 passengers and 121 crew on board as Fengshen, with winds gusting up to 195 kph (121 mph), ripped through the Philippines archipelago.

Coast guard vessels were unable to reach the ferry due to high waves and winds.

"We were told that at around 5 am the captain sounded the abandon ship signal," said Lieutenant General Pedro Inserto, military commander in the Visayas, the central region of the Philippines.

A local councillor, Ricardo Aligno, said the bodies of two women had been washed ashore. He said on a radio programme that more corpses had been found in other villages but high winds and rain made it difficult to reach those communities.

The coast guard was still verifying the reports early Sunday.

The ship, with a gross tonnage of 23,824.17 and total passenger capacity of 1,992 people, was enroute to the central province of Cebu from Manila.

Fengshen has already killed at least 17 people in the southern Philippines including an 8-year old girl and her grandfather who were buried in a "trash slide" at a rubbish dump in Cotabato City.
Over 20,000 people were being housed in evacuation centres in the centre and south of the archipelago, where the storm had triggered flashfloods, landslides and torn up trees and power lines.

In Iloilo City, the navy was using rubber boats to rescue some residents marooned on the roofs of their houses.

The typhoon pelted Manila with torrential rain and high winds early on Sunday, triggering power outages in many parts of the capital.

Most domestic and international flights were either delayed or cancelled and the airconditioning at Manila's international airport was only partly working.

Fengshen, the sixth typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, is headed north and expected to hit Taiwan in the next few days, according to storm tracker website http://www.tropicalstormrisk.com/.

About 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year, triggering flooding and mass evacuations. Environmental groups blame illegal logging for making flooding worse, particularly in the central Philippines, where more than 5,000 people were killed in 1991 by floodwaters triggered by a typhoon. (Reporting by Carmel Crimmins; Additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco and Manny Mogato; Editing by Valerie Lee)

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Currently reading: Anecdotes of Destiny and Ehrengard by Isak Dinesen