February 16, 2015

Wimpy Kid Musical to Have Premiere in Minneapolis

By Jennifer Schuessler

“Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” Jeff Kinney’s series about the misadventures of a misfit middle schooler, has sold
more than 120 million books and inspired a Hollywood franchise. Now, a musical version will hit the stage next
spring, capping off the 50th anniversary season of Children’s Theater Company in Minneapolis.

“Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Musical,” scheduled to run from April 12 to June 5, 2016, features music and
lyrics by Joe Iconis and a book by Joe Tracz. Rachel Rockwell, a Chicago-based director known for productions
of “Brigadoon” and “Beauty and the Beast,” will direct.

Children’s Theater Company, which in 2003 became the first theater for young people to win the Tony Award
for regional theater, will offer four other premieres as part of its 2015-2016 season, including a mixture of re-
imagined classics and original works. The season will open on Sept. 1 with “Akeelah and the Bee,”based on
Doug Atchison’s 2006 film about an 11-year-old African-American girl who enters the Scripps National
Spelling Bee, which has been adapted for the stage by Cheryl L. West, with Charles Randolph-Wright directing.
“The Snowy Day and Other Stories by Ezra Jack Keats,” written by Jerome Hairston and directed by Peter C.
Brosius, who is also the company’s artistic director, features puppets by Teatro Gioco Vita, a troupe based in
Piacenza, Italy.

“The Jungle Book,” directed by Greg Banks, re-imagines Rudyard Kipling’s classic, “with an emphasis on the
sheer virtuosity of the actors,” according to a release. “Animal Dance,” created and directed by the
choreographer and performance artist Ann Carlson,with Mr. Brosius, is an original piece “developed
specifically with preschoolers’ interests and attention spans in mind.”

The season will also include productions of “The Frog Bride,” a one-person piece written and performed
by David Gonzalez, and a musical version of “The Wizard of Oz,” adapted from the 1939 movie.

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 February 14, 2015
Second Stage Fights for Broadway’s Helen Hayes Theater
By Patrick Healy

The Off Broadway company Second Stage Theater asked the New York State Supreme Court on Friday to
prevent the owners of the Helen Hayes Theater, a Broadway house, from scuttling a $25 million deal under
which Second Stage would buy the Hayes. In a legal filing, Carole Rothman, the artistic director of Second
Stage, argued that the owners were trying to get a higher price, given that the theater’s value has probably
grown since the deal was negotiated in 2007, but then faced multiple delays.

The owners said on Friday that they were not seeking more money from another buyer; rather, they said,
Second Stage does not have the $25 million for the scheduled closing on Tuesday. Ms. Rothman asked the court
to grant a 90-day extension, moving the closing to May 18, “to allow Second Stage the necessary time to secure
financing, among other important actions.” She said the extension was allowed under the original purchase
agreement.

Casey Reitz, the executive director of Second Stage, said in an interview that the company needed more time to
finalize financing for the purchase, “one of 38 points on a checklist of closing-related items we have to deal
with.” He and Ms. Rothman contended that the Hayes owners had not given Second Stage enough time to
prepare for the closing because, in part, the owners had not given them any advance notice last fall that the
musical “Rock of Ages” was ending at the Hayes, and therefore the closing date was on for February.

The Hayes owners offered an extension to Second Stage in exchange for a six-figure payment; Ms. Rothman
and Mr. Reitz negotiated over the sum, but a compromise couldn’t be reached.

Jeffrey Tick, one of the Hayes owners, said in an interview that the contract calls for Second Stage to have the
$25 million in place by Tuesday. “They don’t have the money,” Mr. Tick said. “That’s the truth. We have a
closing set up, we followed everything according to the contract.” He denied that he wanted to sell the theater
for a higher price.

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Should the Second Stage deal fall through, he plans to continue owning the Hayes, he said, explaining that he
had a change of heart and wished that he and his partner, Martin Markinson, had not agreed to sell. The Hayes
is one of only 40 Broadway theaters, which rarely come up for sale, and it is widely regarded as a beautiful
playhouse in a prime location.
 February 16, 2015

Review: ‘Rap Guide to Religion’ Examines Why Humanity

Created God
By Anita Gates

You know what would make Baba Brinkmanhappy this weekend? If just one winner would get up at the Oscars
and make an acceptance speech that began not with an expression of gratitude to God but with “I want to thank
Charles Darwin.”

Seeing “Rap Guide to Religion,” Mr. Brinkman’s very funny, very educational solo show, directed by Darren
Lee Cole at the SoHo Playhouse, is like attending the best TED talk ever, but with musical breaks.

The first few minutes, an aggressive rap number, are jolting. I have nothing against rap as an art form. I have
nothing against white Canadian rappers. But I felt assaulted, even when the lyrics distinguished themselves by
rhyming pagan with Carl Sagan. Luckily, most of the show is talk — smart talk — and it proved itself worthy
the minute a Rick Ross rap lyric was applied to the plight of the American nonbeliever.

Mr. Brinkman, who also wrote “The Rap Guide to Evolution” and a hip-hop “Canterbury Tales,” is with
antireligionists like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, but he focuses on why religious belief exists at all,
what needs it fills and what its real effects are.

“Your brain is a promiscuous explanation seeker,” he observes, and the existence of a supreme being
theoretically explains everything. Aided by video — including clips of Fergie (a Grammy-winning God
thanker) singing “My Humps” — Mr. Brinkman delves into theories of mind, the statistical connection between
suffering and belief, and a study that showed that many people would rather hire a convicted rapist than an
atheist to babysit for their kids.

No self-respecting 2015 satirist can do 90 minutes without alluding to the Charlie Hebdo attacks. But not every
polemicist explains how religion developed during the hunter-gatherer stage of human history, how we’re
heading back that way, and how Facebook and Uber may save us all.

“Rap Guide to Religion” runs through March 1 at the SoHo Playhouse, 15 Vandam Street, South Village; 212-
691-1555, sohoplayhouse.com.

Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890

Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986
Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000
 February 16, 2015

Review: In 'Paradox of the Urban Cliché,’ Verse Melts Into

Drama
By Laura Collins-Hughes

The soft sound of snapping fingers rippled through the audience at “Paradox of the Urban Cliché,” a thoughtful
new play by Craig Grant, as a character named Smiles laid down her rhymes. The pain-filled verses flowed with
an easy grace, and the snaps on a recent night at the Wild Project were a sign of approval borrowed from the
world of performance poetry.

Verse melts into drama, and love story into Kafkaesque nightmare, in “Paradox of the Urban Cliché,” whose
polished staging by Reginald L. Douglas is part of Poetic Theater Productions’s Poetic License festival.

Smiles (Eboni Flowers) and her boyfriend, Ceez (Jaime Lincoln Smith), are a young black couple in
nongentrified Harlem, and from their first conversation, he’s the dreamer of the two. He prods her to believe in
her ability to make the life she wants.

“You be using mad anti words: ‘I don’t, I can’t, I ain’t,’ ” he tells her. “Decide what it is you do, and do that to
death.”

We learn their love story in flashbacks, and we know from the beginning that something has gone badly wrong.
Ceez is being questioned as a suspect in some crime, and when a white character known as Authority (Morgan
James Nichols) tells him he can leave the room whenever he wants, Ceez can’t find the door.

“Free will is limited by what you can control,” Authority points out, and if he seems a bit like Dostoyevsky’s
Grand Inquisitor, Ceez — full name Jefferson Christopher Caesar — also has a certain timelessness.

“Paradox of the Urban Cliché” is more ambitious and complex than “A Sucker Emcee,” the autobiographical
solo show Mr. Grant, also known as muMs, performed this season at Labyrinth Theater Company. With a fine
cast of four, including W. Tré Davis in multiple roles, and a talented design team — particularly the video
designer David Palmer and the sound designer Julian Evans — the new play simmers with anger about
injustices both recent and historical. This isn’t the place to look for a happy resolution.

The ending is so abrupt that it diminishes what’s come before, yet that doesn’t extinguish the willful optimism
at the play’s core. When Smiles, prodded by Ceez, performs her poetry in front of an audience, the spectators
love it, and this upsets her: She mined her art from the sadness of her life.

“I’m supposed to keep that with me, write rhymes about that ... and kick it to people for them to clap and snap
they fingers at and cry over and say, wow, that was deep?” she laments to Ceez.

“At least you got a chance to make the ugly beautiful,” he says, and that’s what Mr. Grant is doing, too.

“Paradox of the Urban Cliché” continues through Sunday at the Wild Project, 195 East Third Street, East
Village; 866-811-4111, poetictheater.com.

Total Daily Circulation – 1,897,890

Total Sunday Circulation – 2,391,986
Monthly Online Readership – 30,000,000
 February 14, 2015
Review: John Cariani’s ‘Love/Sick’ at Royal Family
By Ken Jaworowski

The ratio of laughs to eye rolls runs about three to one in the whimsical romantic comedy “Love/Sick.” A
pessimist would say, that’s a lot of eye rolls. An optimist would say, it’s just a play, shut up and stop keeping
score.

In the nine vignettes that make up John Cariani’s play, couples meet cute or break apart or learn to love each
other more. Most of the situations have been mined before in sitcoms and sketch comedies. Yet the jokes here
are easygoing and snark-free. Even when clichés arise (and many do), it’s hard to berate such audience-friendly
writing. You’d sooner kick a kitten.

One piece, “Uh-Oh,” finds a woman trying to put a spark into her dull marriage. “What?!?” has a man grappling
with a stress-related disorder that jeopardizes his love life. “Destiny” features a couple who reconnect after their
carts collide at the SuperCenter. (That Walmart-like big-box store is a thread that runs through the program and
inspires the short song-and-dance numbers between the sketches.)

“Love/Sick” is a follow-up to Mr. Cariani’s play “Almost, Maine.” That work initially flopped in New York, in
2006, but went on to a staggering number of runs elsewhere; thousands of productions have been staged at
community theaters, high schools, colleges and regional houses, with translations into almost 20 languages.
(According to reports, it is, in many years, the most-produced play in American high schools, topping “A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.”)

While “Love/Sick” is billed as a “darker cousin” to “Almost, Maine,” they share some of the same strained
features — forced quirkiness, unrealistic kisses, abrupt plot swings. Several of these stories dip their toes into
melancholy. But they rarely take a risk and dive into deep sadness.
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Mr. Cariani has supported innumerable performers with all those productions, and on opening night of
“Love/Sick” he helped another one when he stepped in for an ailing actor. He’s a likable presence, comfortable
and vivid onstage. He certainly has experience: He scored a Tony nomination in 2004 for a featured role in
“Fiddler on the Roof.” “Almost, Maine” started out as a series of audition pieces for his acting career.

Love/Sick

Simone Harrison, Debargo Sanyal and Dee Roscioli, who with Mr. Cariani portray a total of 18 characters, also
supply praiseworthy performances in this 80-minute show. Their timing is keen, spicing up moments before
they turn sticky sweet. Chris Henry directs at the Royal Family Performing Arts Space; Mr. Cariani will
continue in the show until the original actor recovers.

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In the end, a pessimist might rightly say that “Love/Sick” doesn’t reach for much, while an optimist could
counter that it achieves what it sets out to do — deliver a few laughs and some cleverness. It all depends on how
— or if — you’re keeping score.
 February 16, 2015

London Theater Journal: Crawling Inside a Family Saga and a

Jacobean Noir
By Ben Brantley

LONDON – Certain plays allow you to crawl inside them in the way that good books do. You come to inhabit
such productions so completely that when they end you experience that glazed resentment that arrives when you
have to put down a novel that’s consumed you for the length of a plane or train ride.

I was lucky enough to encounter two works of that rare stripe only a day apart this week: Tena Stivicic’s “Three
Winters” — a time-traveling portrait of a contentious Croatian family, which just ended its run at the National
Theater — and a sulfurous revival of “The Changeling,” Thomas Middleton and William Rowley’s 17th-
century revenge tragedy, at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Both plays left me happily replete, though neither could be said to be cheerful or even pleasant. “The
Changeling” has always been notorious for its grisly depictions of civilized savagery, and “Three Winters”
considers the moral price exacted for survival through decades of divisive political foment. They are hefty in
length as well, each approaching three hours.

Yet I found myself feeling a bit deprived when they were over. That’s not just because each is, on some level,
an engrossing soap opera (as, I might add, are the works of Shakespeare and Sophocles). They have also been
given productions that create complete, internally logical universes, shaped by rhythms as hypnotic as those of
authoritative prose on a page.

In some ways, these works are very different, of course. “Three Winters,” which follows the zigzag fortunes of
a single household in Zagreb from 1945 to the present, has the layered, quotidian naturalism of fat family sagas
like Thomas Mann’s “Buddenbrooks” or Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet chronicles.

“The Changeling” is a bloody slice of Jacobean noir, suggesting James M. Cain in the age of James I. Both
plays, however, are also expressly theatrical endeavors that could have been realized as successfully as they
have been only in their respective theaters here.

It’s hard to imagine “Three Winters” being presented as richly or as fluidly as it has been at the National
Theater, which has the resources to give great epic when the occasion requires. (In New York, only Lincoln
Center Theater, which did proud by Tom Stoppard’s marathon “The Coast of Utopia” after the National
production, comes close to being an equivalent.)

Directed by Howard Davies, who has proved himself a dab hand at large theatrical canvases at the National
(Gorky’s “Philistines,” O’Neill’s “Mourning Becomes Electra”), “Three Winters” juggles scenes from three
different eras. We begin in the chaotic aftermath of World War II, when Rose King (Jo Herbert), a valued
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member of the Communist party, moves her small family into the stately home in Zagreb where her mother,
Monika (Josie Walker), once worked as a servant.

The action shifts backward and forward between that time and 1990, when Yugoslavia is on the brink of civil
war, and 2011, when a capitalism-driven Croatia is taking shape. In these sequences, Rose’s daughter, first seen
as an unusually sedate infant, is now the put-upon family matriarch, played with resentfully self-effacing
weariness by Siobhan Finneran (best known as O’Brien, the scheming lady’s maid on “Downton Abbey”).

No matter the decade, the Kings are an argumentative clan. And both their personal relationships and political
positions are shaped by the vicissitudes of a country that keeps redefining itself, with an ever-shifting class
structure to match.

Big questions, economic and ethical, are posed during family debates, including notions of entitlement
regarding the old homestead, the ownership of which is repeatedly under siege. People make marriages for
reasons both sentimental and practical. Love affairs founder on the shoals of social conflict. And older people
keep insisting – as older people will – that life was so much more centered and secure in earlier days, though the
evidence hardly supports such assertions.

A large cast of characters, including a number who are embodied at different ages by different actors, inhabits
“Three Winters.” And though much of it takes place in the same room, the look of that room keeps changing, no
easy task when a play jumps among eras as this one does.

Yet thanks to specifically defined performances – and a miraculous sliding set by Tim Hatley (with connective
video projections by Jon Driscoll) – you never feel lost as you float through the different winters of the title. By
the end, you have the illusion that you know the Kings as well as if they were your own relatives. And by a
perfectly painless osmosis, you have also acquired a solid grasp of the complicated history of the mutable nation
known today as Croatia.

Though it sticks to one, relatively brief time period, “The Changeling” is as complicated as “Three Winters” in
its permutations of plot. First staged in the 1620s, this bloody tale of love and death among Spanish aristocrats
has so many levels of deception that even those doing the deceiving can’t keep them straight.

Chief among the connivers is the ravishing noblewoman Beatrice-Joanna (even her name is double), played
with thrillingly seductive willfulness by Hattie Morahan (a brilliant Nora in the Young Vic production of
Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House,” seen last year at the Brooklyn Academy of Music). Finding herself betrothed to a
man she doesn’t love, she enlists a household servant she loathes, the hideous-looking Deflores (Trystan
Gravelle), to kill her fiancé.

This collusion leads to all sorts of sordid inconveniences, including the loss of her virginity (to Deflores), before
her wedding night to the man she really loves, or thinks she does. Love and revulsion have a way of changing
places in “The Changeling,” which features a nasty subplot set in a lunatic asylum, run by a pompous old fool
(Phil Whitchurch), who keeps his lust-inspiring young wife (Sarah MacRae) in a state of captivity there.

Did I mention the severed finger that figures in the plot? Or the potion that proves a woman’s maidenhood, or
lack thereof? Or Beatrice-Joanna’s passing off her maid (Thalissa Teixiera) for herself on her wedding night?
Ah, the things a lady has to do to get her way while keeping her reputation in chivalric Spain.
Such sinister doings are best carried out under cover of darkness. That makes “The Changeling” ideal for the
Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – the Renaissance facsimile indoor theater that opened last year as the wintertime
residence of Shakespeare’s Globe – which uses candlelight as its only illumination.

Staged by Dominic Dromgoole, the Globe’s artistic director, with period-appropriate design by Jonathan
Fensom and unsettling string music by Claire van Kampen, this “Changeling” makes maximal use of both the
theater’s intimate scale and nocturnal shadows. The characters’ asides to the audience take on the aspect of
confidences shared with us by compellingly creepy strangers.

It seems perfectly natural when bloodied and fire-charred ghosts walk the stage. Darkness begets such
phantasms. In this case, they include a specter that participates in a deeply creepy three-way copulation that
seems destined to trouble my dreams. Even so, I was sorry to wake from the lurid nightmare so expertly
conjured here.