Director Lynne Meadow juggles laughter and tears in a play about cancer, life, and death

In retrospect, it’s a very strange place for a laugh.

Near the end of Margaret Edson’s Wit, the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning play now making its Broadway debut with Manhattan Theater Club, Vivian Bearing is just a few heartbeats from death. We’ve known this was coming from the very first scene, when she strolls on in a hospital gown, bald from chemotherapy, and tell us she has terminal cancer. But somehow, even as she takes us through her arduous hospital routine, it’s easy to overlook that Vivian’s dying. She’s just so forceful, wryly commenting on the silliness of medical bureaucracy and reflecting on her passion for the poetry of John Donne. Yes, her reveries are interrupted by tests and examinations, but still, she seems bigger than that. (This is partly due to the gusto of Cynthia Nixon’s performance.)

Eventually, though, just like Vivian promised, death slides into the room. The walls of her intellect and humor crack open, and her pain is laid bare. But just when she’s at her weakest, she’s visited by another character. For a few moments, they have a tender scene that’s dotted with intellectual curiosity. There’s even a clever observation about a children’s book that pulls a giant laugh from the audience.

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Reimagining Adam Guettel’s beloved song cycle

Myths and Hymns is practically begging to be interpreted and reinterpreted on stage.

Written by composer-lyricist Adam Guettel (The Light in the Piazza, Floyd Collins), it’s a song cycle that uses mythology, religious allusions, and the lyrics to classic hymns to explore massive themes like ambition, love, and death. Yet for all their all grandeur, the songs are easily accessible, influenced not only by European art songs and show tunes, but also by gospel, R&B, and Latin music.

As of today, however, there have only been sixteen official performances of Myths and Hymns in New York City, and those were in 1998, when the show was called Saturn Returns and got a brief concert staging at the Public Theater. Since then, a celebrated recording featuring Kristen Chenoweth, Audra McDonald, and Billy Porter has carried on the music’s legacy, but that’s just not the same as a living, breathing production.

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Director Gordon Edelstein discover new facets of Athol Fugard’s play

Reading scripts can be incredibly rewarding, but it’s like smelling your food instead of tasting it. For all that you learn from the page, you can’t fully comprehend a play until you see it on stage, in the place it was intended to live.

And if you’re a director, even seeing a play can only take you so far. It’s not until you’ve directed it yourself, seen its parts moving from the inside, that you really grasp what it’s doing.
Gordon Edelstein, for instance, saw Athol Fugard’s drama The Road to Mecca when it premiered in the 80s, but now that he’s directing the Roundabout’s current Broadway revival, he’s learning new things.

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Once again, Phillip Boykin stars in “Porgy and Bess”

At the curtain call of a recent preview of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, actor Phillip Boykin gave a dainty curtsy. The crowd was delighted, since they’d just seen him play the burly, brutal Crown. “I want to let the audience know that I’m not really that bad,” says the actor, who describes himself as someone who loves to laugh, give, and cook.

So how does this nice guy play a villain eight times a week? For one, he doesn’t consider Crown a villain: “[He's] a regular person just like everybody else.”

Crown, Bess’ lover, sets this classic story in motion when he murders a man and goes into hiding. Bess must find a new home in Catfish Row, a rundown tenement in South Carolina, so she turns to Porgy, a disabled beggar. They fall in love, and there are violent consequences when Crown returns.

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Two services push the theatre into online publishing

And then suddenly, the theatre entered the world of online publishing.

Until this year, scripts were largely absent from the booming field of ebooks, stranding readers who wanted to add their favorite dramas to their Kindle or Nook. In recent months, however, two services have emerged to fill the void.

In November, prominent play publisher Samuel French launched its eBook program. Customers can visit Apple’s iBookstore to download plays and musical by writers like Charles Busch and Israel Horovitz, with new titles being added regularly. Most scripts retail for $8.99, and soon, Samuel French will make them available at all digital retailers

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