I really enjoyed this production of Hamlet, which I would tell you all to go see except that it is now closed. I will tell you, though, to keep an eye out for John Skelley, who was especially great.
Last week was a good week. I will take several more just like it, thanks.
Macbeth, in a church, directed by Julia Campanelli, with Careena Melia and Kelly Bartnik and Sai Somboon. I mean I really wouldn’t have needed anything else, but as it happens the rest of the cast were wonderful, as indeed was the entire show. I spent the first half of the show trying to remember how I recognized the (excellent) actor playing Macduff - this of course was David Hywel Baynes, who I eventually realized I had seen as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing on Roosevelt Island. Really there wasn’t anything I could possibly complain about, except how long it takes me to get home from the LES.
The top photo here is mine, the rest were stolen from Stephen Trumon Gray.
Last summer, some of my favorite people held a Kickstarter so they could put on Twelfth Night for free in Central Park. I backed it, of course, and this week I was rewarded with a bacon-themed donor dinner. There were bacon martinis, bacon mashed potatoes, a salad with edible wildflowers and bacon, and steak with bacon gravy. Just ridiculous, and easily the best Kickstarter perk I’ve had yet. I look forward to throwing more money at Barefoot Shakespeare Company in the future!
The delightful Barefoot Shakespeare Company gave us Twelfth Night in Central Park last weekend, and it was one of the most pleasant Sunday afternoons I have spent in recent memory. I like having friends who do things like this.
I saw Alan Cumming’s one-man version of Macbeth over the summer at Lincoln Center and was totally blown away. Evidently the show will be back in NYC in April, and if you haven’t caught it yet I strongly recommend that you do so. Here’s an awesome trailer from the last production!
You still have a few more chances to see Alan Cumming’s (nearly) one-man production of Macbeth as part of the Lincoln Center Festival. I saw it last night, and have been thinking about it non-stop since then.
Alan Cumming is doing a one-man production of Macbeth, set in a mental hospital. It’s coming to Lincoln Center in July and I’m pretty goddamn excited. I strongly encourage you to watch the trailer and then get excited with me.
“We both wanted to do it properly in the way we really wanted to do it. It’s the perfect show for NTS – it’s traditional and radical and experimental. It’s nuts, what we’re doing. Nuts!”
In the meantime, Cumming has immersed himself in the voices of Macbeth by not only doing an audiobook of the play but also recording Macbeth: A Novel by David Hewson and A J Hartley. Then, last autumn, the immersive theatremakers Punchdrunk asked him to guest for two performances in Sleep No More, their reworking of Macbeth.
“So all roads were leading to Macbeth,” he says. But a Macbeth in which actor and directors, to a greater extent than usual, make it all up as they go along. This, for Cumming, is the visceral thrill.
I JUST REALLY LIKE SHAKESPEARE OKAY
Sleep No More
My gentleman caller and I went to Sleep No More on Wednesday night, and I’ve been trying to figure out since then what exactly I should say about it apart from “go see it at once.” There’s no good way to describe it, except perhaps as some unholy conglomeration of Shakespeare and Silent Hill in a haunted house on mushrooms. It’s literally incredible, in the sense that I can hardly believe that there’s a 100-room immersive theatre version of Macbeth in the old Blood Manor space in Chelsea, and that it’s fucking wonderful.
My only advice for when you go, which you must, is that you should wear shoes you can run in and clothes you don’t mind covering in dust and sweat and stage blood. Bring cash for drinks and coat check, contacts instead of glasses if possible, don’t be afraid to split up from your companions, and consider taking a breather in the bar about halfway through.
If you want more information than that, these are the most helpful reviews I found: