Weekly Margin 2020, W18: A Moment in Time

Honestly the fact that I am tracking this week by week is one of the few things creating a semblance of a timeline, now when time feels meaningless. At least that's how I'd been feeling (and will probably feel again). But this past week I actually had appointment internet TV, night after night. We started with the Sondheim concert last Sunday, but then we also a SubCulture concert from Jason Robert Brown on Monday night, the benefit reading of Beirut on Tuesday, Richard Nelson's poignant and perfect Zoom play, What Do We Need To Talk About? on Wednesday, and I almost felt like myself again: weeping at good theater. Weeping at the simplicity of words being spoken (or sung).

It's always brief. People have been saying, during each of these, the moment itself transcended enough that they forgot for a few minutes about the pandemic (in fact, the characters in What Do We Need ... say it to each other, after one of the siblings tells a biographical mystery). We forget, and then one turn of phrase twists in our gut, and we remember again. And we mourn. We cry, and we laugh, we applaud for people who can't hear us. And we're grateful we're alive, and we're grieving for what is irrevocably lost, and what is still left to lose.

Streaming Theater-Related Content I Watched

• You bet your ass I watched that Sondheim concert again.
• Broadway.com's #LiveatFive with Raul Esparza and Mary-Mitchell Campbell discuss the behind the scenes of said concert.
• Jason Robert Brown's SubCulture Residency Concert #58.
• The Joe's Pub performance of songs from Alex Timbers/Michael Friedman's musical adaptation of Love's Labour's Lost, produced at Shakespeare in the Park.
• MCC's livestream of Beirut.
• Mary Neely's astonishing and delightful rendition of "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast (and if you click through to the thread, a lot more delight besides).
• Various interviews and reunions on Stars In The House.
• The newest installment in The Apple Family Plays, What Do We Need to Talk About? Conversations on Zoom.
• Richard Nelson's The Gabriels play series.
• The global cast members of Six perform the opening number.
• Sing Street's delightful online concert.
• Skylar Astin and Shoshana Bean singing "The Next Ten Minutes" from The Last Five Years.
• National Theatre At Home's Frankenstein (with BC as the Creature; I'll do JLM as the Creature next week)
• Captain Tom (and Michael Ball and the NHS Voices of Care Choir) singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel.

Theater Developments

• Broadway producer Bernard Gersten passed away at 97.
• UCB has permanently shuttered its New York locations.
• The Outer Critics Circle Awards will be announced May 11.
• Broadway Bares is postponed until next year.
• The New York Drama Circle Awards were announced on April 29 on Stars In The House.
• The Lucille Lortel Awards were announced on May 3 (Octet won best new musical! Yaaaaay!)