Idina Menzel to Return to Broadway Next Spring in a New Musical - NYTimes.com

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FEBRUARY 28, 2013, 2:01 PM

Idina Menzel to Return to Broadway Next Spring in a New Musical

By PATRICK HEALY

The Tony Award-winning actress Idina Menzel will return to Broadway next spring for the first timesince “Wicked” to star in a new musical, “If/Then,” about a woman who moves to New York seeking afresh start as she prepares to turn 40, the show’s producer, David Stone, announced on Thursday.

“If/Then” will also be the first Broadway production by the composer Tom Kitt and the lyricist and bookwriter Brian Yorkey since their critically acclaimed 2009 musical, “Next to Normal,” which won threeTonys – including one for best score – as well as the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

Like “Next to Normal,” which centered on a mother struggling with mental illness, “If/Then” is acontemporary-sounding musical about a strongly drawn female protagonist, Elizabeth, who Ms. Menzeldescribed in a statement as “complex, flawed, and surprising.” Beyond Elizabeth’s goals – a new homeand friends, and hopes for a resurgent career – little else was revealed about the character in theannouncement Thursday, although the titles of two of Elizabeth’s songs – “Here I Go” and “You Learn toLive Without” – offer some flavor. Ms. Menzel is expected to perform those songs on Friday at anAmerican Songbook series concert featuring the work of Mr. Kitt and Mr. Yorkey.

“If/Then” boasts several creative reunions. Mr. Kitt and Mr. Yorkey are again working with their “Next toNormal” director, Michael Greif, and its producer, Mr. Stone. Mr. Greif, meanwhile, directed Ms. Menzelin 1996 in her breakout performance as Maureen in the original production of “Rent,” which earned hera Tony nomination. And Mr. Stone is a producer of “Wicked,” the international blockbuster that broughtMs. Menzel to prominence – and won her a best actress Tony – in the role of the green-skinnedElphaba, who grows up to become the Wicked Witch of the West.

Ms. Menzel, who also played Maureen in the 2005 film adaptation of “Rent” and has been a guest star inseveral episodes of the Fox series “Glee,” said in the statement that she had been “eager to find a projectwhere the material was exciting and new and spoke to my heart.” “I’m thrilled to have finally found it,”added Ms. Menzel, who left the Broadway company of “Wicked” in early 2005.

Mr. Stone, in a telephone interview on Thursday, said he was attracted to the project because of thechance to work again with the four artists, and because of the material. “The show is really about how wechoose our lives and how our lives choose us, themes that I find very rich and very moving,” he said.

Mr. Kitt and Mr. Yorkey wrote a six-page treatment of “If/Then” in 2008 during the out-of-town run of“Next to Normal” in Washington, Mr. Stone said, and since then they have had three developmentalworkshops, all involving Ms. Menzel. A fourth is planned for April, after which the team will prepare fora pre-Broadway run at the National Theater in Washington. The musical is to begin previewperformances there on Nov. 5 and open on Nov. 24.

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The Broadway production, which will be at a Nederlander theater to be announced later, is scheduled tobegin previews on March 4, 2014, and open on March 27. Mr. Stone declined to provide a budgetestimate for the show but said it would be “midsize” – which means more than the $4-million “Next toNormal” but less than the big-cast Broadway musicals that can cost around $15 million. He said the castof “If/Then,” in its current shape, included 16 actors or so.

A Private World, Heedlessly Invaded - The New York Times

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February 28, 2013THEATER REVIEW

A Private World, Heedlessly InvadedBy BEN BRANTLEY

Now here’s something to paste into your memory book of strange, wonderful and utterly unmatchablemoments at the theater: the sight of Vanessa Redgrave having her legs shaved by a burly, middle-aged man ona small stage in Greenwich Village.

This cryptic event occurs several scenes into “The Revisionist,” which opened on Thursday night at the CherryLane Theater, with Ms. Redgrave giving a performance that reminds us why she’s considered the greatestactress of her generation. It’s the strangeness of the situation that most strikes the third person on that stage.

That’s Jesse Eisenberg, the play’s author, who is also portraying David, a young American visiting his elderlyJewish cousin, Maria (Ms. Redgrave), in a port city in Poland. David, a pothead writer who at this point is onetoke over the line, stumbles onto the scene and recoils like Dracula before a crucifix. “Who is that man andwhat is he doing to you?” he exclaims.

We don’t have much of a clue either, since Maria and Zenon (an excellent Daniel Oreskes), for that is the otherman’s name, have been speaking in Polish. (It will turn out, if you must know, that Zenon is shaving Maria’slegs for sentimental reasons, because he used to do it for his dead mother.) But we realize that however bizarrethis vignette may appear, the woman at its center is unconditionally at home and in control.

Whispering and chiding in unintelligible but unmistakably gleeful language, and laughing with the sybariticdelight of someone indulging in a special treat, Ms. Redgrave spins a complete and compelling vision of onewoman’s world, as familiar to her as it is exotic to us. And she occupies it with an assurance that makes us feellike humble, highly privileged trespassers.

No one fills — and owns — a room like Ms. Redgrave. Make that several rooms. The designer John McDermotthas created a complete, scrupulously detailed apartment for this production, filled with framed photographsand tchotchkes and pots and pans.

With every inch and item of that apartment Ms. Redgrave seems to be on terms of intimacy that come onlywith decades of acquaintance. Woe to him who, like David, tries to commandeer that space for himself. Maria’shome isn’t just her castle; it’s her fortress and her asylum.

Though I suspect that “The Revisionist” might seem rather thin and implausible without Ms. Redgrave, Iwould like to extend hearty thanks to Mr. Eisenberg — and to the director Kip Fagan — for giving her thespace and material to create her finest, fullest stage performance since she won a Tony for “Long Day’sJourney Into Night” a decade ago.

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Ms. Redgrave, for the record, isn’t making a meal out of an hors d’oeuvre of a part. Mr. Eisenberg — bestknown as a movie actor (“The Social Network”) — has written a beguilingly layered role for her, even if someof those layers have been aired regularly in dramas of the past half-century. I only wish that this multitalentedyoung actor — whose “Asuncion” was staged at the Cherry Lane in 2011 and who has yet to hit 30 — had beenequally generous in writing his own part.

A production of the invaluable Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, “The Revisionist” might be seen as astreamlined variation on themes that William Styron wove into a prizewinning, best-selling novel with“Sophie’s Choice” (published in 1979 and the basis for the 1982 film). Like Styron’s book “The Revisionist” isabout a Polish survivor of the Holocaust, who holds a guilty secret close to her chest and a naïve youngAmerican writer who can’t see the secret for the woman.

David, however, is of an obtuseness and self-centeredness that make most portraits of artists as young menseem like hagiography. He has come to Poland to stay with Maria — whom he met as a child at his parents’home, although he has no recollection of her visit — to revise a science-fiction novel he’s been working on.

You would think that David would show some gratitude toward an old woman who has upended hermeticulously ordered life to create a writer’s retreat. Yet David is a whining caricature of the angry entitlementoften ascribed to his generation.

He makes no effort to be gracious to Maria, to whom his visit obviously means so much. (She has made aprivate cult of her American relatives and maintains virtual shrines of their photographs.) We wonder that shedoesn’t throw him out on his ear as soon as he arrives (and refuses to sit down to the dinner she has preparedin his honor). And though he says he wants to hear the story of her wartime childhood, he is obviously farmore interested in airing his own grievances about the injustice of bad reviews and the successes of his peers.

As an actor Mr. Eisenberg has specialized in solipsistic jerks. (This is the guy who played the voraciouslyambitious Mark Zuckerberg, and his part for himself in “Asuncion” was deep in the same vein.) Hisperformance here is credible and watchable. He doesn’t shrink or vanish in Ms. Redgrave’s presence, which isno mean feat; there’s a cracklingly ambivalent chemistry between them. More important, he serves as awhetstone on which she can sharpen her character.

And what a sharpness there is. I can’t vouch for the authenticity of Ms. Redgrave’s Polish or even her accent.But there’s no denying the exactness of every gesture, stance and inflection in defining someone who has madea fine art of self-protection and passive aggression.

Maria’s straight-backed posture alone reads like a defiance of a past that keeps pulling her toward the groundand the grave. Her vacillations between brusque directness and self-effacing coyness keep David (and us) offbalance. Yet her laughter, which bubbles and foams like rich ale, suggests an earthy and direct capacity forpleasure. Ms. Redgrave makes us believe in Maria as a product and manipulator of a very particular EasternEuropean past and present.

“I am an open book,” Maria tells David, when he hesitates in asking her about what happened to her familyunder the Nazis. No, she’s not, not nearly. But it’s a testament to Ms. Redgrave’s magic that even when Mariais at her most closed and secretive, we sense between the lines something formidable and complete unto itself.Even at her most mysterious this actress is eminently legible. The reverse, of course, is also true.

A Private World, Heedlessly Invaded - The New York Times

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The Revisionist

By Jesse Eisenberg; directed by Kip Fagan; sets by John McDermott; costumes by Jessica Pabst; lighting byMatt Frey; sound by Bart Fasbender; stage manager, Christine Catti; production manager, Eugenia Furneaux.Presented by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, David Van Asselt, artistic director; Brian Long, managingdirector. At the Cherry Lane Theater, 38 Commerce Street, West Village, (866) 811-4111, rattlestick.org.Through April 21. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

WITH: Jesse Eisenberg (David), Daniel Oreskes (Zenon) and Vanessa Redgrave (Maria).

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Close Enough to Singe Your Soul - The New York Times

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February 28, 2013THEATER REVIEW

Close Enough to Singe Your SoulBy BEN BRANTLEY

Keep your distance, the young soldier is told, regarding the importunate, sickly woman who has fallen in lovewith him, and the advice is eminently sensible. But in the exquisite closed hothouse that is John Doyle’sversion of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s “Passion” there’s not a chance in hell of anyone keeping adistance.

We’re all right on top of one another, under one another’s skins, you might even say inside one another’sminds. And, yes, that includes — in addition to the love-crippled characters onstage — every member of theaudience at this revival, which opened Thursday night in the tiny theater of the Classic Stage Company.“Passion,” you see, thrives in close quarters.

Of all the formidable directors who have staged Mr. Sondheim’s musicals, no one cuts closer to their heartthan Mr. Doyle, a minimalist with a scalpel. His Broadway productions of “Sweeney Todd” and “Company”seemed to pull us directly into the souls of the conflicted men at their centers — not easy tasks, since one ofthem is a homicidal monomaniac and the other a swinging bachelor whose most salient trait is his inability toknow what, if anything, he is feeling.

So it was only a matter of time before Mr. Doyle made his date with “Passion,” the most personal andinternalized of Mr. Sondheim’s works. When it was first staged, in 1994 by Mr. Lapine, this concentratedportrait of a romantic triangle in 19th-century Italy seemed to take place at a chilly, analytic remove. Despitethe dominating bravura performance of Donna Murphy as the ailing, love-starved Fosca (Ms. Murphy won aTony, as did the musical) “Passion” often made love look like a virulent germ isolated in a petri dish.

In contrast Mr. Doyle’s “Passion” — which features a perfectly balanced triumvirate of stars in Ryan Silverman,Judy Kuhn and Melissa Errico — comes across as a pulsing collective fever dream. And it reminds us that outof such dreams a startling clarity can emerge, almost painful in its acuteness.

The tightness in my chest that I experienced during the show had nothing to do with the cold I was nursing. Itwas more as if I were suffering from a condition ascribed by the military doctor (well played by Tom Nelis) tothe invalid Fosca (Ms. Kuhn): “One might say that her nerve endings are exposed, where ours are protected bya firm layer of skin.”

This production’s successful assault on our nerve endings is partly made possible by its scale. Though it packsthe power of an opera this “Passion” is definitely a chamber musical. It has a nine-member orchestra, led withtensile strength by Rob Berman, and a three-quarter-in-the-round stage that is roughly the size of a starter

Close Enough to Singe Your Soul - The New York Times

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studio apartment.

The scenery consists of some chairs and a few decorative mirrors, though Mr. Doyle (the designer as well asdirector) has provided Italianate touches of black marble and ormolu. And the gifted Ann Hould-Ward hasdressed the cast in period costumes, which are worn as naturally as if they were gym sweats.

Mostly, however, the show’s pervasive appeal to the senses comes through the music, which seems to fill thetheater like a churning ocean. Orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, Mr. Sondhiem’s frequent and brilliantcollaborator, that music swirls in sweet and somber contradictions of tone and meter, given visual equivalentsby Mr. Doyle’s circular staging and Jane Cox’s fire-and-ice lighting. And in this version it all seems to emanatefrom one source.

That would be the mind of Giorgio Bachetti (Mr. Silverman), a young army captain who, when the showbegins, is making love to his beautiful, married Milanese mistress, Clara (Ms. Errico). They are separated whenGiorgio is stationed in a remote mountain outpost, where he meets Fosca, the unhappy, unprepossessingcousin of his commanding officer (Stephen Bogardus, excellent).

What follows is the gradual shift of Giorgio’s affections from the seductive, radiant Clara to the demanding,desperate Fosca, who pursues him with an obsessiveness to rival the revenge fixation of Sweeney Todd. If thisis, on the surface, a most improbable transition, it also feels inevitable here, as Giorgio arrives at therealization that “love within reason is not love at all.”

“Passion,” which is based on Ettore Scola’s 1981 film, “Passione d’Amore,” could easily register as a sort ofgrotesque comedy of love’s arbitrariness, a pathological variation on Titania’s falling for Bottom in “AMidsummer Night’s Dream.” Uneasy laughter was not uncommon during the show’s Broadway run, much tothe discomfort of its cast and creators.

Laughter usually requires an outsider’s distance, though, and Mr. Doyle never releases us from Giorgio’s pointof view. The echoing love motifs of the score — which hover in haunting counterpoint to the sounds of militarydrum rolls and barracks jocularity — suggest the eternal presence of the two very different women in Giorgio’shead as well as in his life.

The sole female presences in a masculine landscape, they always seem to be whispering in his (and our) ear,setting themselves up to be compared. At times they blur at the edges, threatening to merge into one, animpression facilitated by a subliminal hint of physical similarities of the dark-haired women portraying them.(In all the other productions I’ve seen Clara is a blonde.)

Ms. Kuhn and Ms. Errico, former Broadway ingénues who have ripened into a nuanced maturity, make highlypersuasive sung cases for their characters’ respective holds on Giorgio. Ms. Kuhn, who played Fosca in EricSchaeffer’s very fine “Passion” at the Kennedy Center in 2002, has enriched her part by simplifying it.

As pale and skeletal as death’s handmaiden, she endows Fosca with a directness and honesty that makes herthe most sympathetic — and perversely sane — I have seen. Ms. Errico is just as good, lending dimension andtexture to a Clara who isn’t, in this version, all surface.

But the production rises and falls on its Giorgio, and Mr. Silverman gives us one to stand in memory next tothat of Michael Cerveris, who played the role at the Kennedy Center opposite Ms. Kuhn. Mr. Silverman has a

Close Enough to Singe Your Soul - The New York Times

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journeyman leading-tenor résumé (Raoul on Broadway in “Phantom,” Tony in “West Side Story” in London,Maxim DeWinter in the notoriously aborted “Rebecca”). And he initially comes across here as stolid, handsomeand unexceptional.

We change our minds quickly. Mr. Silverman soon makes it clear that this polite young soldier is a callow,deeply susceptible being with the soul of a Romantic poet and a skin as thin as Fosca’s. This is a performanceof risk-taking, unconditional emotional commitment. And by the end of the show’s uninterrupted 105 minutesyou feel you’ve been run through a wringer by it.

I haven’t dwelt much on the vocal performances, which seems strange for a show that is mostly sung. They’reall impeccable, from the rakish harmonies of the soldiers to the soaring, diving solos of the three leads. Butwhile I was there, I didn’t stop to think that I was listening to songs. I was hearing thought. And at moments Iwas hearing a distillation of pure emotion.

Passion

Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim; book by James Lapine, based on the film “Passione d’Amore” directedby Ettore Scola; directed by John Doyle; musical direction by Rob Berman; costumes by Ann Hould-Ward;lighting by Jane Cox; sound by Dan Moses Schreier; orchestrations by Jonathan Tunick; music coordinator,Seymour Red Press; makeup by Angelina Avallone; hair consultants, J. Jared Janas and Rob Greene;production stage manager, Adam John Hunter; production supervisor, Production Core; managing director,Jeff Griffin. Presented by Classic Stage Company, Brian Kulick, artistic director; Greg Reiner, executivedirector. At Classic Stage Company, 136 East 13th Street, East Village, (866) 811-4111, classicstage.org.Through April 7. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

WITH: Stephen Bogardus (Colonel Ricci), Jeffry Denman (Lieutenant Barri/Mother), Melissa Errico (Clara),Jason Michael Evans (Private Augenti/Mistress), Ken Krugman (Lieutenant Torasso/Father), Judy Kuhn(Fosca), Orville Mendoza (Sergeant Lombardi), Tom Nelis (Doctor Tambourri), Will Reynolds (MajorRizzolli/Ludovic) and Ryan Silverman (Giorgio).

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In a Sunny Setting, Lives Dappled by Shadow - The New York Times

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February 28, 2013THEATER REVIEW

In a Sunny Setting, Lives Dappled by ShadowBy CHARLES ISHERWOOD

There’s a sly fitness to the pairing of Kelli O’Hara and Nathan Gunn in the concert version of Rodgers andHammerstein’s “Carousel” being presented by the New York Philharmonic through Saturday. You might saythese gifted singers come from different worlds, just as do their characters, Julie Jordan and Billy Bigelow. Ms.O’Hara, perhaps best known for her splendid Nellie Forbush in the Tony-winning revival of “South Pacific,” isa Broadway baby. Mr. Gunn is a well-established lyric baritone in the opera world who has made anothersinging Billy — Billy Budd — a signature role.

Happily, and perhaps obviously, things work out better for Ms. O’Hara and Mr. Gunn than they do for theloving but trouble-plagued characters they portray. Things come out pretty swell for the audience too: from topto bottom this is as gorgeously sung a production of this sublime 1945 Broadway musical as you are ever likelyto hear. The cast also includes the powerhouse operatic mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe as Julie’s cousinNettie Fowler, alongside a select group of musical-theater veterans and up-and-comers: Jessie Mueller (mostrecently a delicious Helena Landless in “The Mystery of Edwin Drood”) as Carrie Pipperidge, Jason Danieleyas her beloved Enoch Snow, and Shuler Hensley as the nefarious Jigger Craigin.

Many Broadway musicals are now performed as symphony orchestra concerts, and there’s no better candidatefor this kind of crossover than “Carousel,” one of the most musically rich shows in the history of Broadway.Written just after Rodgers and Hammerstein had broken new dramatic ground in the genre with “Oklahoma!,”“Carousel” represents an even more audacious step toward the seamless integration of drama and music, and,for that matter, the depiction on the Broadway stage of human experience dappled in shadow, not justsplashed with sunlight.

The semi-staged Philharmonic production, conducted by Rob Fisher and directed by John Rando, begins byputting the music first, which is only appropriate in this context: the “Carousel Waltz” is performed by theorchestra without the usual — and for the time novel — intervention of a wordless scene set at a New Englandcarnival. It’s a fair trade-off that allows us fully to absorb the complexity of Richard Rodgers’s music as itweaves in and out of its sweeping dance rhythms.

Soon enough, in any case, we are swept up in the bittersweet story, which juxtaposes the mostly smoothromance between Carrie and Enoch with the turbulent relationship between Julie, a millworker with a touch ofthe poet in her soul, and Billy, the ne’er-do-well carnival barker whose sense of alienation unexpectedly sparksan echo in Julie’s heart. They commit themselves to each other in a manner that remains as moving — andsurprising — as it must have seemed more than a half-century ago, in a love song that is entirely provisional:“If I Loved You.”

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I was struck throughout by how often the words “if” and “when” recur in Oscar Hammerstein II’s lyrics. Thecharacters in “Carousel” seem always to be peering around the corner at a happier future. And speaking of “if”:If I could only hear one song from a Broadway musical for the rest of my life, “If I Loved You” just might be it,so beautifully does Rodgers’s melody soar and fall in concert with the strange but very human blend of hopeand anxiety in Hammerstein’s lyrics. Ms. O’Hara and Mr. Gunn’s performance just might be the one I’d chooseto memorialize too: both are in ravishing voice.

Ms. O’Hara brings to the stage the same quiet luminosity she brought to Nellie Forbush, in a slightly moresomber hue. Although she exudes natural good spirits, Ms. O’Hara also manages to infuse her performancewith that necessary touch of introversion that sets Julie apart, makes her ever so slightly “queer” to her friendsand neighbors. Somehow Julie has always known her destiny would be an unhappy one, and her recognition ofthis gives her an emotional maturity beyond her years.

Mr. Gunn seems to me a more natural Billy Budd — the doomed innocent in the Benjamin Britten opera fromthe Herman Melville novel — than a Billy Bigelow. Try though he does to act the sullen tough, he cannot quitekeep his beaming wholesomeness in check (even wearing a black leather vest). The measure of any BillyBigelow must be taken in the celebrated “Soliloquy,” and while Mr. Gunn sings it with impressive musicalauthority, I found his interpretation lacking in emotional dynamics. It felt studied instead of spontaneous, sowe are not drawn into Billy’s conflicts as fully as we might be. Oddly — and fortunately — the ferocity that wasmissing here was in full display in Billy’s second-act solo, “The Highest Judge of All,” in which the now-deadBilly demands in the hereafter the chance he feels he was never granted in life.

Shortly after she comes bustling onstage, radiating maternal warmth, Ms. Blythe blows the audience away withher astoundingly lush voice, leading the exuberant “June Is Bustin’ Out All Over.” The role of Nettie hastraditionally been cast with an opera star (sometimes a perilous undertaking), but Ms. Blythe is in every wayan ideal fit. An assured actress, she is the rare classically trained singer who can also perform standards fromthe American songbook as if to the manner born.

Ms. Mueller is equally at home as Carrie, a role in which her superb musicality and pure soprano are pairedwith a likable presence and smooth comic timing. Mr. Danieley makes for an unusually handsome Enoch — inthe dreamboat department he’s more or less the equal of Billy here — but he works in enough quirks to givethe character the proper prickly oddity.

Mr. Hensley is effectively surly as Jigger, and the cast is rounded out by a vivid Kate Burton as Mrs. Mullin,and the excellent John Cullum, in the dual roles of the Starkeeper and Dr. Seldon, who presides over the highschool graduation of Julie and Billy’s daughter, Louise (played by the thoroughly enchanting Tiler Peck, aprincipal dancer with New York City Ballet).

Paired opposite Robert Fairchild, another terrific principal dancer from the same company, Ms. Peck all butstops the show with her radiant performance in the second-act ballet, choreographed skillfully if somewhatgenerically by Warren Carlyle. Granted a chance to descend to earth for a single day, Billy watches inastonishment as his teenage daughter sweeps recklessly through her dance, her juvenile high spirits a mirror ofhis own heedlessness. Ms. Peck dances with such emotional fervor that we can only share his speechlesswonder at the beauty, the joy and — oh, if only we could know it at the time! — the folly of youth.

Carousel

In a Sunny Setting, Lives Dappled by Shadow - The New York Times

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Music by Richard Rodgers; book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, based on the play “Liliom” by FerencMolnar; directed by John Rando; conductor/musical director, Rob Fisher; choreography by Warren Carlyle;dance music arranged by Trude Rittmann; orchestrations by Don Walker; sets by Allen Moyer; lighting by KenBillington; sound by Peter Fitzgerald; costumes by David C. Woolard; hair and wig design by Tom Watson;production stage manager, Peter Hanson. Presented by the New York Philharmonic, Alan Gilbert, musicdirector. At Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, (212) 875-5656, nyphil.org. Through Saturday. Running time: 2hours 30 minutes.

WITH: Kelli O’Hara (Julie Jordan), Nathan Gunn (Billy Bigelow), Stephanie Blythe (Nettie Fowler), ShulerHensley (Jigger Craigin), Jason Danieley (Enoch Snow), Jessie Mueller (Carrie Pipperidge), Kate Burton (Mrs.Mullin), John Cullum (Starkeeper/Dr. Seldon), Robert Fairchild (Carnival Boy) and Tiler Peck (Louise).

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Manchester sets stage slate | Variety

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Legit News

Posted: Thu., Feb. 28, 2013, 1:25pm PT

Manchester sets stage slateBaryshnikov, Dafoe among creatives in the mixBy DAVID BENEDICT

Mikhail Baryshnikov, Willem Dafoe and helmer Robert Wilson are among the creatives joiningKenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford in mounting legit productions at the U.K.'s Manchester Festival,as part of a wide-ranging slate of commissions.

Ashford and Branagh were already on tap to co-direct "Macbeth" with Branagh in the title role.

Dafoe and Baryshnikov will star in the premiere of Wilson's production "The Old Woman," anadaptation of a novella by Russian author Daniil Kharms.

Josie Rourke, a.d. of London's Donmar Warehouse, helms the world preem of "The Machine" byfast-rising U.K. scribe Matt Charman, currently writing a screenplay for Universal/Working Title, SonFilms and Roland Emmerich, as well as two original drama series for the BBC.

In 1999 Branagh told Variety he would star in his own movie version of "Macbeth," but the projectnever materialized.

His Manchester gig will be his first performance in a Shakespearean role since playing Richard III athe Sheffield Crucible in 2002.

Founded in 2007, Manchester presents new works in all genres.

-- David Benedict

Contact David Benedict at benedictdavid@mac.com

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West End labor talks resume | Variety

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118066659/?refcatid=4154&printerfriendly=true[3/1/2013 10:22:05 AM]

International News

Posted: Thu., Feb. 28, 2013, 9:44am PT

West End labor talks resumeStalled negotiations threatened to darken showsBy DAVID BENEDICT

LONDON

A U.K. labor dispute that has threatened to darken a number of West End shows -- including"Wicked" at the Apollo Victoria Theater and "The Lion King" at the Lyceum -- appears to be movingtoward a resolution, with previously stalled talks resuming between the Ambassador Theater Group(ATG), the largest owner/operator of theaters in the U.K., and the 25,000-member media andentertainment union BECTU.

A strike, posed as a possibility by the union, could shutter productions at ATG's 39 legit venuesacross the U.K. Contract issues under dispute are primarily pay scale and work hours for front-of-house staff, plus a change from weekly to monthly pay imposed by the government.

Talks had been ongoing at the offices of U.K. arbitration body A.C.A.S. but broke down Feb. 25 afteten hours.

BECTU accused ATG of sabotaging the talks by making changes to an agreement reached only lasSeptember, and quickly began balloting its members about strike action (as legally required).Although no details of potential disruption were released, the union issued a statement warningtheatergoers they should check in advance whether the shows they have booked might be hit.

A spokesperson for ATG told Variety the org had been actively trying to get the talks back on trackand that ATG remain upbeat and were keen to resolve the issue.

In its official statement, the org said, "ATG was stunned and disappointed when BECTU decided tobreak off from negotiations on Monday. BECTU rejected out of hand an improved pay deal and athree-and-a-half-hour minimum call time (more than had been lobbied for) for all front-of-house staaffected from 1 April. Talks with BECTU have resumed today in the hope of finding swift resolution."

The spokesman for BECTU, already involved in the latest round of talks, could not be reached forcomment.

Contact David Benedict at benedictdavid@mac.com

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