Showed Up: Sam Mendes Does 'The Tempest' and 'As You Like It' at BAM @12:45 PM
The second of three seasons of The Bridge Project, a partnership of the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Old Vic and Neal Street, is closing at BAM this week. Last year, Sam Mendes staged The Winter’s Tale and The Cherry Orchard here; this year it’s The Tempest and As You Like It. Two of those plays are romances, involving love but also magic, sadness, and personal redemption. One, written as a comedy, is regularly performed as a tragedy, which means that audiences see it as a little of both. As You Like It is a straightforward comedy, but here Mendes has added a torture scene, which isn’t very funny. READ MORE 5
Showed Up: 'Elektra' at the Metropolitan Opera @3:50 PM
Seth Colter Walls: Matthew, why is Elektra, currently at the Met, important? Like, The Awl basically never covers operas. Why are we doing this one?
Choire Sicha: Yeah, seriously, what the hell?
Seth: And why have you gone 3 times in the last week, weirdo?
Matthew Gallaway: Elektra is an opera written in 1909 by Richard Strauss, who is one of the most important composers of the 20th Century. In the manner of say, Picasso, he paved the way for the atonal dissonance and 12-tone scales that would come to define progressive music for the next 100 years or more. (Read Alex Ross for more accurate information!) READ MORE 37
Showed Up: Deez Nuts, A Rap Musical @3:00 PM
Musicals are gross and I hate them. People bursting into song in unison and then pointing it at me is maybe the worst thing I can think of, never mind that you have to pay good money to go be yelled/danced at. This is not a sentiment that will be shared by all but when someone told me DEEZ NUTS was a rap play with a prominent musical bent I was a little very afraid. Full disclosure, the playwright, Sacha Jenkins is a friend but that's always the massive risk when you partake of a very creative friend's creative offerings. It can veer extraordinarily deep into the realm of the unfortunate and you can't make eye contact with a bunch of people once- to-thrice removed from said locus. But whatevs it's New York and I barely leave my house! READ MORE 3
