12/11/23: The Country Wife
What: Red Bull presents a benefit concert staging of Maltby and Shire's adaptation of William Wycherley's play about sexual escapades, with a revisionist slant.
And? What's funny is, right before seeing this performance, I was talking with a friend about the problem of revisals (problems include: changing things without the (dead) author's consent but pretending it's still the same work; "fixing" the wrong things and utterly demolishing the stakes in the process; and maybe if the show is enough of a problem we just shouldn't do it? maybe we just write a new show? how about that? the songs from Carousel aren't going anywhere but I don't need to see that show ever again. anyway). And this is an interesting solution: a play-within-a-play adaptation of a problematic play where one of the characters articulates her issues with the play as written and then proceeds to rewrite it. It's not a perfect solve: a lot of the grosser elements are still there, but now the show is calling them out. But the audience is still expected to applaud the songs about the grosser elements so ... it's a bit of trying to have their cake and eating it too. We had a number of covers going on last minute for the concert staging, including the story's hero, with Nicholas Edwards ably and charismatically stepping in for Jelani Remy. And as a special treat, this is now the second time I've seen Richard Maltby, Jr. step in to cover a role in a show he wrote, so that was pretty charming too.
12/12/23: Christmas Spectacular
What: The annual Christmas show from the Radio City Rockettes.
And? Funnily enough, this marks my first time actually seeing a Rockettes show! It's definitely worth experiencing if you've never gone, but I don't know that I'll make an effort to catch it every year going forward. The Parade of the Wooden Soldiers dance is really something else. I think that was my favorite.
Streaming Theater Related Content I Watched
- Lookingglass Theatre's stream of Lookingglass Alice on PBS.
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