They may never get to Moscow, but “Three Sisters” can still show audiences a good night out–at least the way Dominic Dromgoole directs them in their current London production. In Samuel Adamson’s vivid, idiomatic adaptation, Masha is a gutsy malcontent who stomps around saying things like “bloody hell!” then grabs at love with both fists.
De La Guarda, on this summer in London, is not your father’s circus, or your mother’s theater. The Argentine troupe’s performance melds aspects of the circus, clubs, theater and raves, all performed midair by what appears to be a bunch of lunatics on strings. They swoop into the audience, fondling and groping them. One man was accosted by a performer who climbed on top of his head, tried to strip him of his sweater, and then attempted to slobber all over his chest. Despite this, the spectacle is mesmerizing, with fairground music and with eerie shadows flitting across a paper ceiling. Madonna and Leo DiCaprio are fans–a sign that the show’s rich, strange and not for the shy.
Until “Shakespeare in Love,” Tom Stoppard was known for his intellectual gymnastics, not his love stories. But “The Real Thing,” now showing at London’s Donmar Warehouse, is a real love story, albeit an embittered one. Jennifer Ehle reportedly glows, just as a lover should.
The inaugural production for Berlin’s brand-new Stella Theater on the freshly reconstructed Potsdamer Platz was the world premiere of Disney’s stage version of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame.” Costing ¤23 million, it’s the most expensive musical ever staged. Most of the cash went into high-tech effects: Notre Dame’s bell tower and the Seine are created by a dizzying array of moving platforms, balconies and trap doors. Even if you don’t speak German, the spectacle is worth the ticket price.
And now for something completely different. On July 14 in Palermo, Sicily, the Parisian director Jerome Savary will be directing about a hundred Cuban and Sicilian artists as part of a spectacular parade at The Festival of Santa Rosalia. All of life’s rich pageant, it seems, will participate: a salsa ensemble, percussion groups, a folk ballet by dancers wearing voodoo masks, a chorus of fishermen from the Sicilian island of Favignana, a polyphonic choir from Montedoro singing in Latin. The evening’s climax: the great dance of all the people to the beat of Cuban percussionists. If not a Monty Python sketch, then a neat idea.
France’s annual Avignon Festival will open with a play by an Englishman. On July 9, Shakespeare’s “Henry V” will play the Palais des Papes. Jean-Louis Benoit will direct Philippe Torreton’s Henry in this historical play about a young king seeking human and divine recognition and waging war on France. Also at Avignon:
“Le Colonel-Oiseau,” by Hristo Boytchev. Originally written in Bulgarian, the work poignantly analyzes the experience of exile from the Balkans.
