Latest news with #TennesseeWilliams
Evening Standard
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Evening Standard
Spacey told actor ‘don't worry about it' after alleged assault, documents claim
According to the documents, filed in June, Mr Spacey was working as artistic director at the Old Vic Theatre at the time of the alleged assaults on a production of a play by Tennessee Williams known as Sweet Bird Of Youth, and Mr Cannon was a member of the cast in this production.
New York Times
16-07-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Williamstown Theater Festival Was in Crisis. Here's How It's Changing.
Williamstown Theater Festival, long one of the nation's most highly regarded summer theaters, has been fighting for its life recently, struggling to regain its footing after complaints about its workplace practices, leadership turnover and the economic challenges that have vexed other performing arts organizations. This summer, the Western Massachusetts nonprofit's latest leadership team has opted for a radically new and risky reboot: Instead of a summer-long season with two shows at a time, the company is leaning into the 'festival' part of its name, offering eight shows simultaneously, but only for three long weekends, starting July 17 and ending Aug. 3. The shows — which include dance, opera and music as well as theater — are being curated by Jeremy O. Harris, the audacious playwright best known for 'Slave Play,' and several of the productions are based on stories written by, or inspired by, Tennessee Williams. Most unexpected: an ice dance show inspired by a Williams novel. Why does Williamstown matter? The Williamstown Theater Festival had been a destination not only for culture-loving visitors who flock to the Berkshires every summer, but also for theater performers, writers and directors seeking to hone their craft and develop new work. It was also an important training ground for many aspiring theater industry workers. Numerous shows moved from Williamstown to New York, including, during the last full prepandemic season, three that transferred to Broadway: the plays 'Grand Horizons' and 'The Sound Inside' as well as a revival of another Tennessee Williams play, 'The Rose Tattoo.' Why has the festival been struggling? At the start of the pandemic, following the death of George Floyd, the calls for a social justice reckoning that rocked many corners of society also shook theater. Staff and alumni of the festival objected to the nonprofit's history of relying on young workers who were often unpaid or underpaid; there were also complaints about how the company responded to safety concerns. The turmoil, chronicled by The Los Angeles Times, led to the departure of the festival's artistic director, Mandy Greenfield, and a review of the festival's practices. Ultimately, the festival decided all staff would be paid; that decision was followed by a sharp reduction in programming. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Mother Play review – Sigrid Thornton is terrific as a gin-soaked, monstrous matriarch
Poisonous and heavily self-medicating mothers are a standard in the theatre, from Mary Tyrone in Long Day's Journey into Night to Violet Weston in August: Osage County. Self-absorbed, vain and hypercritical, they tend to stalk their stages like injured lionesses, their own offspring the convenient targets of their abuse and cynicism. US playwright Paula Vogel adds Phyllis Herman (Sigrid Thornton) to this list, as monstrous and brittle as any of them. While Mother Play (the subtitle is A Play in Five Evictions) flirts with the toxicity and histrionics of those antecedents, it feels closer in spirit to Tennessee Williams' 'memory play' The Glass Menagerie. Where Williams created the character of Tom as an authorial surrogate, Vogel gives us Martha (Yael Stone), who is likewise desperate to escape her mother's clutches while trying to understand what makes her tick. There's a deep melancholy working under the play, a sense of all that's been lost to the ravages of time and forgetting. Like Williams, Vogel is mining a lot of her own biography here – her mother was also named Phyllis, and worked as a secretary for the Postal Service after the breakdown of her marriage – and she traces the outline of a family in slow decline with poignancy and skill. The rot sets in during the first eviction, as Martha and her elder brother Carl (Ash Flanders) move boxes and furniture around while Phyllis drinks herself into a state of grotesque self-pity. The kids are only 12 and 14, and yet already they seem like the parents to a stubborn and petulant child. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning As the play progresses and the narrative moves inexorably through the decades – it opens in the early 60s and ends in the present day – this parental imbalance only worsens. Gin-soaked and combative, Phyllis alternately berates, guilts and clings to her children like resented support structures; one moment she is rejecting them for being gay, the next grasping for their approval. She's fiendish and cruel, but Vogel also lets us see the damage done to her, the ways in which she is shaped by the casual cruelties of others. It isn't so much a cycle of abuse as a long sputtering out, levelled by great reserves of forgiveness and stoicism from the kids. Thornton is terrific, constantly alive to the character's gaping flaws without once losing the central pathos that keeps us engaged and sympathetic. She has a harsh, steely quality under the gaucheness and impropriety that softens as the play progresses, eventually reaching a kind of weary dignity and poise. Stone finds great depth and complexity in Martha, pained by her mother's sadism but determined to see beyond it. Flanders is solid in the lesser part of Carl, and together the cast paint a convincing and intricate family dynamic. Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion Director Lee Lewis gets many things right, which makes the ones she gets wrong seem more egregious, somehow. Those performances are beautifully calibrated and expertly pitched, but Vogel's startling tonal shifts and narrative longueurs seem to trip Lewis up; too often the production falters, pitching into silliness and camp. One scene in a gay bar – where Phyllis starts dancing a conga line with her adult children – feels desperate, and the less said about a giant cockroach that waves at the audience the better. This reticence seeps into Christina Smith's design, which is surprisingly banal and unwieldy – although not her costumes, which are little treasure troves of period wit and personality. The family's five different abodes are simultaneously underdone and overly complicated, necessitating some clunky transitions. Niklas Pajanti's inventive lighting helps, pitching from glamorous to desolate as the family's fortunes change. Kelly Ryall's compositions are similarly mercurial, jaunty one minute and plaintive the next. Vogel is a fascinating and idiosyncratic playwright, and if this production of Mother Play doesn't quite coalesce, it still achieves moments of beauty and quiet awe. That temporal scope allows the actors to track the emotional beats of their characters' lives like pins on a map, and if political and social events tend to disappear into the background, their effect on the family's interpersonal relationships is forcefully underlined. The moral battle between liberalism and conservatism, those ideological polarities currently tearing the US apart, are depicted here as fissures of the self and the family unit, a long time coming. Memory plays are by definition fragmentary and elliptical, so perhaps the staccato rhythms and jolting tonal shifts are necessary. The cliche of the monstrous feminine, where the mother becomes the repository of all the family's sickness and perversion, is subtly but surely unpacked and debunked. What we're left with is a mother and a daughter tremulously reaching for care, compassion and connection. In this way, it feels vital and contemporary. Mother Play, by the Melbourne Theatre Company, is on at the Sumner theatre until 2 August
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tony Awards: Every Best Play Winner Since 1947
Since 1947, the Tony Awards have recognized an array of remarkable shows with the coveted title of Best Play. From timeless classics like Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman to modern-day masters such as Alan Bennett's The History Boys and Michael Morpurgo's War Horse. Through their captivating narratives and spellbinding performances, the plays remind us why the Tonys have a knack for recognizing the timeless magic that leaves audiences longing for an encore. The most recent winner was Purpose, which won at the 2025 Tonys. More from Deadline Deadline's Tony Awards Live Blog 'Hamilton' Reunion Performance Rouses Tony Awards Crowd As Lin-Manuel Miranda Leads Intricate Medley Of Songs - Watch Sarah Snook Doesn't Know How Cate Blanchett Would Turn "Picture Of Dorian Gray" Into A Film, But Would Love To Help Her Try Scroll through the gallery to take a look back at all the Best Play winners. RELATED: Tony Awards: Every Best Musical Winner Since 1949 Best of Deadline Tony Awards: Every Best Musical Winner Since 1949 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
Yahoo
09-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Tony Awards: Every Best Play Winner Since 1947
Since 1947, the Tony Awards have recognized an array of remarkable shows with the coveted title of Best Play. From timeless classics like Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman to modern-day masters such as Alan Bennett's The History Boys and Michael Morpurgo's War Horse. Through their captivating narratives and spellbinding performances, the plays remind us why the Tonys have a knack for recognizing the timeless magic that leaves audiences longing for an encore. The most recent winner was Purpose, which won at the 2025 Tonys. More from Deadline Deadline's Tony Awards Live Blog 'Hamilton' Reunion Performance Rouses Tony Awards Crowd As Lin-Manuel Miranda Leads Intricate Medley Of Songs - Watch Sarah Snook Doesn't Know How Cate Blanchett Would Turn "Picture Of Dorian Gray" Into A Film, But Would Love To Help Her Try Scroll through the gallery to take a look back at all the Best Play winners. RELATED: Tony Awards: Every Best Musical Winner Since 1949 Best of Deadline Tony Awards: Every Best Musical Winner Since 1949 2025-26 Awards Season Calendar: Dates For Tonys, Emmys, Oscars & More 2025 TV Series Renewals: Photo Gallery
