Stephen Sondheim
America’s Chekhov Still Juicy; Sondheim’s Roadshow Blows a Flat
Horton Foote’s Dividing the Estate, which has made a very welcome transfer to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, couldn’t be timelier.
Mr. Foote’s gentle, comic parable about self-interest and desperation over the fate of a family estate in the playwright’s imagined small town of Harrison, Texas, first premiered at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1989. With the rising anxiety about our economic future, the celebrated play and its genteelly feuding Southern characters have become more poignant. But only the prescient Mr. Foote, who ranks among America’s greatest playwrights, would make his point so charmingly in the unobtrusive manner of Chekhov.
George Furth, Sondheim Collaborator, Dies at 75
George Furth, a playwright who co-wrote musicals with Stephen Sondheim including Tony Award-winning Company, died on Monday in California at 75. He was hospitalized for a lung infection, but an exact cause has not been reported. Mr. Furth was a lanky, familiar character in many movies and tv shows including Blazing Saddles, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Murder, She Wrote, and Wings.
As a playwright, Mr. Furth reached Broadway several times, both on his own and as a collaborator. “Twigs,” his play about four women from the same family, all played by Sada Thompson, received mixed reviews when it opened on Broadway in 1971, though Mr.
Dot's Not All, Folks
For all the theatergoers who snub musicals, Jenna Russell, the 40-year-old actress who plays Dot in Sunday in the Park With George on Broadway, assures you that Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics will change your mind. “The more life kind of beats you about a bit, you understand what James [Lapine, the book scribe] and Stephen Sondheim were writing about, the struggles they were trying to illuminate,” she told The Observer over the phone. “Relationships to your parents, relationships with your children, to be creative, to leaving some sort of permanence in the world, death and love and redemptions, all those things. It seems to touch people in very different, personal ways.” read more »
Monday: 'LoHo' and DUMBO (and 38th Street?) Light Up
Hilarity in Park Slope
- Nothing says 'new Financial District condo!' like chic concierge service. The developers of South Star at 80 John Street are luring buyers with amenities from the Gansevoort Hotel (which, of course, the developers also did). Shouldn't private terraces, a "rock-climbing-wall machine" and in-house acupuncture treatment be big enough condo bait? No. (NY Times)
- Who knew New York magazine would be interested in the identity crises of Park Slope mothers searching for a nice night out? This week's profile of "adult space" hits up the Slope's Tea Lounge and Prospect Heights' Amorina, plus Cafe La Fortuna and Bottino in Manhattan. (But can we trust a writer who boasts: "I have eaten tuna tartare with my kid"?) (New York Magazine)
- It's hard to find a bargain in the Lower East Side these days, which surely means the neighborhood is dead. Where is Foreman's? Blame the 'hip Village-type crowd' that likes staying out late. Or blame the phrase 'LoHo.' Or blame the $200-sf rents. (NY Daily News)
- But who should be blamed for the theater district zoning deal that allows theater owners to trade around air rights (thereby building higher than they should)? The City. Who should be blamed for preventing all the extra money from going to state education? Stephen Sondheim and Tony Randall. (New York Times)
- Apparently 34th Street is "the next 'It' neighborhood." And apparently it is entirely rational that tourists and businessmen crave a second Times Square. (Crain's premium)
- DUMBO's waterfront Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park will be open past dark, which means the neighborhood might finally become hip. No matter how bright its lights are, they won't match up to 2012's super-mega Brooklyn Bridge Park. (NY Daily News) - Max Abelson read more »
