Answer these trivia questions for a chance to win two tickets to the outstanding production of Death of A Salesman, currently running at the Vancouver Playhouse.
The original Broadway production of Death of A Salesman opened at the Morosco Theatre on February 10, 1949.
It won the Tony Award for Best Play, Author (Arthur Miller), Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Arthur Kennedy), Best Scenic Design (Jo Mielziner), Producer - Dramatic (Kermit Bloomgarden), and Director (Elia Kazan), as well as the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Play.
The questions:
1) Who is the actor who originated the role of Willy Loman, yet did not get the 1949 Tony Award for best Actor
2) a. Who did get the award for best actor ?
and b. for what play?
3) What stands today in Times Square on the site of the old Morosco Theatre?
After missing out on a number of events from October to December, I now find myself confronted with a plethora of theatre offerings - far more than I can keep up with. I was really excited to see that in one of those unusual programming conjunctions that occur from time to time, in this month alone three award winning plays about dysfunctional family relationships are opening.
Trace Letts' August: Osage County (2008 Pulitzer, Tony and New York Drama Critics Awards) is already playing at The Stanley, Arthur Miller's Death of A Salesman (1949 Pulitzer, Tony and New York Drama Critics Awards) opens this week at the Vancouver Playhouse and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf(1963 Tony and New York Drama Critics Award) is at the Granville Island Stage.
And here is where the first bit of trivia comes in.
Playland by Athol Fugard
Directed by Anthony Ingram
Pacific Theatre
Nov 5 - 27, 2010
I grew up in South Africa during the apartheid era and moved to Canada some 15 years before the time in which this play is set. Ironically it was here in Canada rather than in South Africa that I learned about and became an admirer of Athol Fugard 's plays.
Don Quixote
By Colin Heath and Peter Anderson
Directed by Roy Surette
Adapted from the novel by Miguel de Cervantes
A co-production of the Arts Club and Centaur Theatre Companies in association with Axis Theatre.
Granville Island Stage
Sept 23 to Oct 23, 2010
Vancouver, BC: As a life-long compulsive reader whose greatest pleasure from childhood was to journey into the imaginary worlds I discovered in books, how could I not find myself heart and soul in sympathy with the deluded seventeenth-century gentleman, Alonso Quixano, who becomes the "knight errant, Don Quixote de la Mancha" and sets out to right the wrongs of the world. In my more cynical moments, I might even wonder how many of us today, trying to do our bit to make our little piece of the world a "better" place, find that we are but tilting at windmills.
Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan
Directed by Kelly-Ruth Mercier
Dirty Manhattan Equity Co-op
Havana Theatre
Sept 29 to Oct 16, 2010
Vancouver, BC: My only previous exposure to a Kenneth Lonergan play was four years ago and at that time This is My Youth brought forth a rant rather than a rave. So I had prepared myself for more of the same with Lobby Hero. But instead I thoroughly enjoyed this production. I thought the script dealt with some really interesting issues, the set design made excellent use of the black box space, and the actors gave very creditable performances.
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Directed by Scott Bellis
Bard on the Beach
Main Stage, Vanier Park
to September 24, 2010
Vancouver, BC: Chronologically Antony and Cleopatra follows just after three of Shakespeare's most powerful tragedies, Othello, King Lear and Macbeth. Yet although this tragedy chronicles the downfall and the deaths of the heroic Roman, Mark Antony, and Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, it does not make the same emotional impact on me that the fates of Othello and Lear do.
Perhaps it is because when we first meet Antony in this play, he is already in thrall to Cleopatra and while in her presence, seems to lack the aura of greatness of a heroic figure. There are many ways to play these two characters but mostly we don't get any sense of the power Cleopatra must wield over the Kingdom of Egypt: instead we only see her as a manipulative coquette, jealous of the other women in Antony's life. So despite their exalted status as Roman triumvir and Ruler, they seem all too human and commonplace in the way their sexual passion ultimately destroys them.
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story by Alan Janes and Rob Bettinson
Directed by Bill Millerd
Choreographer Valerie Easton
Musical Director Sasha Niechoda
Vancouver, BC: When your entire audience is on their feet ready to break loose for a rock and roll party you know you have yet another hit on your hands. Bill Millerd and the Arts Club gang must be rockin' and rollin' themselves because that's what happened last night at the opening night of Buddy at the Stanley Theatre.
This Vancouver production of Buddy - a musical that enjoyed a 13 year run after its original 1989 opening in London's West end and has delighted audiences round the world, rocked the joint to the rafters and is a must see for anyone who loves to rock and roll.
Buddy is set in the US, between January 1956, when Buddy Holly was a young singer trying to find his own musical voice in the dominant country music scene, and February 1959 when he died at 22 in a plane crash. The show charts his meteoric rise to the top of the billboards with the release of 3 original albums in that short span of time.
At the Corner of Virtue and Sexmore
by William Maranda
Directed by Elizabeth McLaughlin
William Maranda Productions
Studio 16
April 23 to May 7
Vancouver, BC: The premise behind this play sounded quite promising. A comedy about 7 strangers in a boarding house at the corner where the street Virtue meets Sexmore - and where raging hormones collide with celibacy. The last play I saw by playwright Maranda was The 8th Land which I really enjoyed so I anticipated a sound evening's entertainment.
I was also intrigued by the way in which this work had evolved into the production now being staged. Last September, four groups of Vancouver actors, 6 per group, participated in a a rather unique production process around the staging of this play. Each group was given a "Seven Characters in Need" Production package which contained one quarter of the script for this play, a set design and a list of provided props. They had 48 hours to memorize their parts, develop costumes and to stage their portion of the script. The four groups then performed their sections of the play in sequence. One group was selected to finally perform the entire play, under the direction of McLaughlin, who had directed the winning sections.
The small intimate Studio 16 is well suited for the staging of this play which is billed as a farce. The set design by Craig Alfredson uses the space very well. The audience looks into the two level interior of the V&S Hotel. On either end of the second floor a door opens into a room with a bed. One is inhabited by sex-addicted Bob Bob (J.P. McGlynn). The other, by Mr. Cable (Matt Kennedy) who wanted to research techniques to make him into a sex machine!
The doors were numbered 2, 3, 5, and 604; promising something mysterious. I really loved the set which had great potential for a fast paced farcical use of the various doors. But despite the often frenetic pace of the play, the direction did not make good enough use of this aspect of the set and the 604 mystery was not well enough developed.
Burn The Floor: FloorPlay
Conceived, Directed and Choreographed by Jason Gilkison
Vogue Theatre
Remaining shows Apr 17, 2 and 8 pm, April 18.
Vancouver, BC: Last night at the Vogue Theatre I saw Burn the Floor for the third time in eight months . The show has lost none of its impact from the first two times I saw it in New York and the dancing- and the singing - is as fantastic as before. They got several standing ovations and deservedly so. Anyone who loves dance should see this show and there are only three performances left before they head off to Toronto.
We were a group of 8 people with very mixed experience in dance, that met to go and see the Friday night performance. All of us, from the 5 who are simply enthusiastic observers of dance shows, to me - a very late starter in ballroom dance, and my two teachers, who are ex-competitive dancers, were wild about the show.
Earlier this week I had enjoyed the opportunity to chat to some of the dancers and to Preview the cast dancing in three of the numbers up close, but the energy they generated in the dance studio was nothing compared to that in the theatre, when magnified by the strong percussive music. You could power a city with the force of their energy.
Unfortunately I had a very large, tall man in the seat in front of me with a big head that really blocked my view of the overall stage, except for two numbers when he sat a little lower in his seat. If it was the first time I saw the show I would have been really upset.
But as it was, looking around his head, I found myself focusing less on the spectacle and more objectively on the individual dancing- the various steps that I could identify and the awesome precision of the footwork.
Collected Stories by Donald Margulies
Directed by Mel Tuck
PAL Theatre
April 14 to 17, 21 to 24, 2010
Vancouver, BC: Well I have now seen three of the four plays I mentioned in my Preview of Collected Stories. Plays with satisfyingly meaty roles for "veteran actresses." Ruth Steiner in Collected Stories is such a character and, in the opening night show, Karen Austin did full justice to the role.
Collected Stories, by American playwright, Donald Margulies (who teaches playwriting at Yale School of Drama) premiered in New York in 1997 and won a Drama Desk nomination for Best play. it is beautifully constructed to show the changing relationship between successful writer/ professor, Ruth Steiner and the young student Lisa (Deborah English) who becomes her protege, her friend and ultimately her rival.
Answer these trivia questions for a chance to win two tickets to the outstanding production of 
Playland by Athol Fugard
Don Quixote
Lobby Hero by Kenneth Lonergan
Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare
Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story by Alan Janes and Rob Bettinson
At the Corner of Virtue and Sexmore
Burn The Floor: FloorPlay
Earlier this week I had enjoyed the opportunity to chat to some of the dancers and to 
Collected Stories by Donald Margulies
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