Uinterview - u ask. they tell.

Elling

11/22/2010

This holiday season Broadway is serving up two Norwegian fruitcakes in Elling, a nutty confection sure to give you a sugar rush. The titular character Elling, played with manic verve by Denis O'Hare, is released from a mental institution to live in a small Oslo apartment with 40-year-old virgin Kjell Bjarne, played by Brendan Fraser in his Broadway debut, who gives a somewhat heavy-handed but ultimately winning performance. The agoraphobic Elling becomes strangely attached to his oafish and sex-crazed roommate as he dabbles in writing and finds a mentor in a noted Norwegian poet (Richard Easton), who may or may not be trying to to steal his work.

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Shakespeare in the Park: A Merchant of Venice

By Neil Pedley

07/20/2010

Continuing their fine tradition of non-profit arts initiatives, The Public Theater once more returns to The Delacorte in New York's Central Park for the summer season, this year presenting - free to the public - productions of Shakespeare's comedies: A Winter's Tale, and a Merchant of Venice, headlined this year by the venerable Al Pacino. An 1800 seat open air arena The Delacorte is a unique experience, with (weather permitting) performances preceding through Twilight and into the warm summer nighttime.

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Race

By Chris Roberts

03/03/2010

Of all the playwrights working today you’d be hard pressed to find one who has had more critical acclaim lavished on him than David Mamet. And while he may, at times, be treated as the second coming, most of that praise is well deserved as any time you sit down for one of his plays (or films) you are guaranteed to have your long standing beliefs challenged in a format that is wildly entertaining yet downright brutal to those who refuse to keep up. Plus he’s never been one to pander to those upper class types who regularly fill the nation’s theatres.

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Streetcar Named Desire

01/09/2010

Maybe it takes a Dane and an Aussie to reinterpret an American classic. In the Sydney Theatre Company production of A Streetcar Named Desire at the BAM Harvey Theater, directed by Dane Liv Ullmann, Aussie Cate Blanchet gives new life and subtlety to Blanche DuBois, a character so well known to audiences that we didn't believe there was anything new to discover about her. Blanche, who moves into the New Orleans apartment of her pregnant sister, Stella Kowalski, and her thuggish husband, Stanley, spirals ever deeper into their psychodrama.

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