Tina Howe Still Shimmers

I wrote this feature for today's Theatermania.com.


Two hallmarks that have made Tina Howe such a beloved playwright, especially to women, are her humor and her shimmering endings. Both are onstage again in the first New York revival of Painting Churches, Howe’s 1983 breakthrough play about a family facing past resentments and a darkening future. This story of love and forgiveness, produced by the Keen Company, opens March 6 at the Clurman Theatre on Theatre Row under the direction of Carl Forsman.

The day before previews were to begin, Howe sat in the sunny living room of her Upper West Side apartment and talked about this most autobiographical, and vulnerable, of her works in which Mags, a young artist -- the Tina character (played by Kate Turnbull) -- returns to her parents gracious Boston townhouse determined to paint their portrait and finally win their approval. But Fanny and Gardner Church (Kathleen Chalfant and John Cunningham) have their own needs -- dealing with the decline in their lives as age and finances force them from their Brahmin world to a small cottage on Cape Cod. Set in the living room amid boxes in various stages of packing, old grievances give way to fresh understandings, with Howe’s zany sense of comedy lighting the way.

“The characters are very close to the household I grew up in, with echoes of the drama, the eccentricities, I heard constantly growing up,” she says.

Howe’s father was journalist Quincy Howe, who broadcast the evening news for years on CBS radio and moderated the final Kennedy/Nixon debate. One of her grandfathers and an uncle were Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, as is Gardner in the play.

“I grew up hearing the news in my father’s voice,” she said. “I knew what it felt like to grow up with a famous father.”

In Mags, she comes to terms with the feelings of inadequacy and need for attention that marked her early life. Reviewing the original production, New York Times critic Frank Rich wrote: “What Painting Churches has really revealed is the time and pain it costs us all to make that complete and honest parental portrait at last come into view.”

“It’s all true but none of it happened,” Howe says.

The play’s ending, though, is far removed from her parent’s leave-taking.

“The actual portrait, and the play, is a wish, a fantasy,” she says. “We all know life does not end that way. My parents’ ending was much more harrowing. I was painting a portrait of how we wish to see our parents at the end of life. That’s why audiences have loved it. It gives them a beautiful alternative, which I think is the function of theatre.

“I see Fanny and Gardner as tremendously brave and valiant. Fanny is aware Gardner is losing it but she soldiers on, creates an illusion that everything is all right. Their valor gets me. That’s very New England. They’re not into self-pity.”

She thinks of her endings as epiphanies.

“I believe in transformation. All my plays end in characters who are transformed and rise to a new level.”

Her plays also offer a decidedly female point of view, from The Nest, which deals with husband hunting, to Birth and After Birth’s portrayal of frazzled young motherhood, then menopause in Approaching Zanzibar and finally old age in Chasing Manet.

She is pleased that Painting Churches is one of three major revivals of the work of women playwrights this season, along with Margaret Edson’s Wit and Paula Vogel’s How I Learned to Drive. For her, it’s still too few.

“Women’s work is still not at the top of artistic directors’ lists, yet we’re the ones buying the tickets.”

Painting Churches was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, losing to Glengarry Glen Ross. Pride’s Crossing, her play about the first woman to swim from English to France, also was a finalist in a year the Pulitzer committee chose not to offer an award for drama.

Next up, Howe is shopping around her latest work, which she will identify only as “apocalyptic play set on ocean liner,” and is working on a musical and a TV pilot, the details of which she declines to disclose. And she is passionate about developing new writers in her role as playwright in residence at Hunter College’s MFA program.

“I’m a hopeless optimist. It’s so easy to go to the dark side, weeping and tearing of flesh. It’s much harder to find grace. That’s always my goal.”

Surviving a career in the arts

This Lenten reflection on Mark 8:31-38 was written by Brian Hampton, Marble Collegiate Church’s director of arts ministry and children, youth, and families ministry.


"He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me'" (Mark 8:34).

Many creative people in the arts come to church for a very specific reason—to strengthen their faith. It keeps them going. Careers in the arts are some of the most difficult professions out there, and faith in God and in God's will for them is essential to artists' work.

To be in the arts means that you have to have a "thick skin"; at least, according to the old adage. "I hope you have a thick skin," was what people told me when I decided to move to New York City from Virginia to become an actor and a playwright.

They were right. But it's not really about the box of rejection letters, the countless auditions, or the unanswered calls. It's about putting your point of view and faith out there to be judged and seen by others. It's tough. Just like telling others about your faith in God, it's exposing, personal, and there will always be critics.

Peter is the critic in this story. He rebukes Jesus, but Jesus says to him, "You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things" (verse 33).

That's what you have to listen to and hold on to when you are in the arts. When you put words to page, acting to dialogue, paint to canvas, movement to music, or notes to a melody, you have to keep in mind the divine message, the ministry it gives to you, and what you, in turn, give to your audience. You can't think of those who will reject you—you think of those whose spirits you'll be healing and what you'll be inspiring in people as a result.

As Jesus says to the crowd, deny yourself and take up your cross and follow him. It won't be an easy road, but if you hold on to God, God will pull you through to see your creative work come alive and touch people's lives.

So go and create, and discover, and minister in your own creative way! As Jesus says in this passage, "Get behind me, Satan!" That's what you need to say when that voice inside critiques you and holds you back. Push it behind you, because you and your talent belong out there in the front.

God, as we walk through the season of Lent, remind us that even though the road is not always an easy one, with you walking beside us, our faith reminds us that you are the greatest guide, on the greatest path, to the greatest glory. Amen.

Ballroom Ghosts: Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3 at the New York City Ballet

By Mary Sheeran
 
Women with long, unbound hair sweep through a dark, otherwise deserted ballroom partially hidden by mist. A young man kneels in a pose of grief and loss. One of these ghostly women knows him; their dancing evokes grief and passion. Is she dead? Is he? Are they beloved ghosts the ballroom remembers?
 
            So begins George Balanchine’s Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3, a four-movement piece with lush Romantic music, a flood of strings, and long phrases with emotional peaks. This New York City Ballet favorite, performed at the company's Feb. 25 matinee and throughout the concluding performances of its winter season, has an interesting history underlying its unique structure. In 1947, Balanchine created a ballet called Theme and Variations for Ballet Theater (now American Ballet Theater) to the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky’s score. A thrilling showcase of bravura classical technique, it demanded the best from the best of dancers. Consequently, Theme and Variations quickly became a popular staple in the repertory of most ballet companies. Then, in 1970, with his own company firmly established inside the vast New York State Theater, Balanchine added Tchaikovksy’s other three movements, making the “T&V” section the fourth movement of the ballet that Balanchine typically (for him in 1970) named after the music’s score, “Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3.”
 
            Those first three sections take place in the darkened ballroom, perhaps after the dancing has ended and the ghosts take over, the women in long, romantic blue skirts. For Theme and Variations, the stage is transformed to a brilliantly lit ballroom, and the dancers shimmer in classical ballet attire.
 
            The first three sections and “T&V” can feel like two different ballets. Part of the audience’s task is to link these disparate sections – or not. All four movements do, after all, come from the same piece of music, and that may be enough. Or one can see the entire piece as showing how ballet grew here. In 1947, Theme and Variations showed pure classical style to American audiences new to ballet, but by 1970, this was no longer necessary with Balanchine’s audiences. One can also see the ballet in psychological terms, as what is happening beneath the surface of those radiant ballroom figures – or as a foreshadowing of their sad future. Or Balanchine could also be referencing other ballets: For instance, is the first movement, “Élégie,” a variation of a memory from the classic ballet Giselle, where the heroine tries to prevent her spirit companions from harming her grieving lover? (This theme from Giselle inevitably points to Orpheus, one of Balanchine’s signature ballets, whose lyre is the NYCB’s symbol.)
 
            Or you can just sit back and enjoy it all sweeping over you!
 
            Ashley Bouder and Andrew Veyette delivered technically excellent but otherwise chilly performances Saturday in the Theme and Variations movement. I was taken aback by Bouder’s simpering smile, which shocked me more than the stage’s brilliance when the chandeliers dramatically lit up at the beginning of the movement. For his part, Veyette was precision itself and a careful, if distant, partner. Bouder didn’t seem to notice him, alas. The “invisible partner idea” is certainly a Balanchine theme, as well as a motif in classic ballet, but it’s out of place in this glowing ballroom! The classical heritage of the “T&V” section comes from court dance, where one should at least politely acknowledge one’s partner. Bouder’s overall attitude not only influenced the incomplete phrasing of her dancing, but it also diluted the impact of the first three sections, excellently and movingly danced by Teresa Reichlin, Ask La Cour, Rebecca Krohn, Jared Angle, Erica Pereira, and the ever excellent Daniel Ulbricht.
 
            Balanchine enjoyed making dances to Tchaikovsky’s music. Of Allegro Brillante, the short ballet that opened Saturday’s program, Balanchine said, “It contains everything I know about the classical ballet in thirteen minutes.” Its beginning is a smile from Balanchine - “first the music” and then, after a few moments of our “just” listening, the curtain goes up, and we see eight women circling on a stage that is all for them, along with the backdrop of Balanchine’s blue sky kingdom, the location of so many of his ballets. In a magnificent debut, Sara Mearns once again demonstrated her musicality by the intelligent and sensitive way she listens with her whole body. Want to study phrasing? Watch Sara! Her very nerve fibers must listen. She’s terrific in Allegro Brillante’s final cadenza with her fleet light turns and precise footwork. Every so often, she’d return to her partner (dependable Jared Angle), as if remembering he was there before whirling off again.
 
            Saturday’s program also included Jerome Robbins’ Fancy Free. The best thing about Fancy Free is what it became – the Broadway and film musicals of On the Town – but so much of Fancy Free is dated now. Those three sailors ganging up against a lone woman and mischievously grabbing her purse – even if it’s all just a lark -- fails to elicit the genuine laughter that scene might have elicited in 1944. But, well, Fancy Free stamped the word “American” on ballet, it gave us Jerome Robbins, and the cast was marvelous, with the engaging Sean Suozzi, Robert Fairchild, and Adam Hendrickson. The strong, intelligent performances by Stephanie Chrosniak and Sterling Hyltin helped to ward off some of the egregious, boys will be boys chauvinism.
 
            As an appetizer to these full-course ballets on Saturday, Peter Martins’ Zakouski proved a delightful showcase for Megan Fairchild and Joaquin de Luz. “Zakouski” means “hors d’oevures” in Russian, and we were treated to tasty selections by Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Tchaikovsky that the charming dancers enjoyed as much as the audience did.
 
            The afternoon was a splendid program as NYCB concluded a strong winter season at Lincoln Center. And I would be amiss not to call out the New York City Ballet Orchestra’s excellence and the tiny, fiery Clotilde Otranto, who conducted the Tchaikovsky suite with a joyful intensity.
 
Allegro Brillante. Music by Peter Tchaikovsky (Piano Concerto No. 3, Opus 75). Choreography by George Balanchine. Costumes by Karinska. Lighting by Mark Stanley. Piano Solo: Elaine Chelton. With Sara Mearns, Jared Angle. Premiere: March 1, 1956, City Center of Music and Drama.
Zakouski. Music by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, and Peter Tchaikovsky. Choreography by Peter Martins. Costumes by Barbara Matera. Lighting by Mark Stanley. Violin: Arturo Delmoni; Piano: Nancy McDill. With Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz. Premiere: Nov. 17, 1992, New York State Theater.
Fancy Free. Music by Leonard Bernstein. Choreography by Jerome Robbins. Scenery by Oliver Smith. Costumes by Kermit Love. Lighting by Ronald Bates. With Robert Fairchild, Adam Hendrickson, Sean Suozzi, Stephanie Chrosniak, Sterling Hyltin, Amanda Hankes. Premiere: April 18, 1944, Ballet Theater, Metropolitan Opera House. NYCB premiere: Jan. 31, 1980, New York State Theater.
Tschaikovsky Suite No. 3. Music by Peter Tschaikovsky. Choreography by George Balanchine. Scenery and Costumes by Nicolas Benois. Original Lighting by Ronald Bates. Lighting by Mark Stanley. With Teresa Reichlen, Ask La Cour, Rebecca Krohn, Jared Angle, Erica Pereira, Daniel Ulbricht, Ashley Bouder, Andrew Veyette. Premiere: Dec. 3, 1970, New York State Theater.
 
Mary Sheeran is the author of Quest of the Sleeping Princess, a novel set during a gala performance at the New York City Ballet, and Who Have the Power, a historical novel set during the Comstock Lode era, concerning the effect of the mining on the native tribes. Her CD, "Through the Years," is available on CD Baby.

Rutherford & Son

By the time the second act ends, you will be longing to see comeuppance reign down on John Rutherford Sr., the tyrannical patriarch in the revival of Githa Sowerby’s Rutherford & Son, which opened last night in a 100th anniversary celebration at the Mint Theater Company. Such is Sowerby’s skill as a playwright that you will not see the ending coming. And you will leave this two-and-a-half-hour show savoring the delights of a thoroughly great production.

Rutherford, played with chilling force by Robert Hogan (in photo), dominates his household and his glassworks factory in the industrial north of England with not a shred of compassion. So thorough is his hold over his three adult children that his only daughter, Janet (Sara Surrey, in photo), 36-years-old and unmarried, brings him his slippers each evening and removes his boots. Son John (Eli James), who works with him at the factory, and his other son, Richard (James Patrick Nelson), are weak, spineless creatures who cower under their father’s rule.

Director Richard Corley allows this tension to permeate the stage and seep into the audience. Even when the elder Rutherford isn’t seen, his presence is felt in the family’s gracious Victorian living room (excellent set by Vicki R. Davis). Since his wife died years before, his sister, Ann (Sandra Shipley), has taken on the woman of the house role, but only in a small way. Even she plays a subservient role to this man who is used to getting his own way and will tolerate nothing less.

The suspense of the plot hinges on whether John junior will be able to break free and enjoy an independent life with his working class wife, Mary (Allison McLemore), and their infant son by selling a new metal formula he has discovered. The personal metal of all of the characters will be tested.

Rutherford & Son is the latest example of how wonderfully this theater company, under artistic director Jonathan Bank, carries out its mission of resurrecting forgotten and neglected plays and restoring them to mint condition. This company not only offers first-rate productions, but the handouts and program notes enrich the experience with fascinating background information about the plays and playwrights.

We learn that Rutherford & Son was originally scheduled for only four performances when it opened at London’s Royal Court Theatre on Jan. 31, 1912, but the critical response was so enthusiastic it quickly transferred to the West End. 

“One of the very best, strongest, deftest, and altogether most masterly family dramas that we have had for a long time from any one, however famous,” wrote one London critic. 

The New York premiere later that year equally impressed American critics: “A play that carries conviction in every line — that leaves no doubt that it was written out of a fullness of knowledge of the life and people with which it deals,” wrote The New York Times.

That reaction proved to be timeless.

“Sowerby knew what she was talking about,” wrote Lyn Gardner in The Guardian of a 2009 London revival.  “The amazing thing is that she did it so blatantly and with such flair almost 100 years ago, when women were seen but seldom heard on British stages.”

The fact that she was a woman threw the original critics for a loop. Surprised that such a play of such depth and stagecraft could be penned by a first-time playwright, the London Times predicted a future “full of promise” for this talented writer, known at that point only as “K.G. Sowerby.”

When “K.G.” was revealed to stand for Katherine Githa, critics were gob smacked. The playwright, whom one critic referred to as a “girl-dramatist,” made headlines in New York as well as London and her work was compared to that of Ibsen.

The Times of London observed: “She is the last person in the world one would expect to find as the author of so grim, powerful and closely thought-out drama of business.  Instead of looking as if she wrote this play, she is a young, pretty, fair-haired girl, refined of speech and dainty in dress, who seems far better suited to a drawing room than to the dramatist’s work room.”

She was portrayed as an English rose who’d stumbled into play writing, and, being a private person who avoided interviews, she did little to correct that impression. 

In the midst of such triumph, she became engaged to John Kaye Kendall, a poet and dramatist, after knowing him for only three weeks and married him two months later.

She remained a private person, and even burned her personal papers shortly before her death in 1970. By that time, both her and her work had been forgotten.  None of her plays after Rutherford & Son had achieved acclaim and even Rutherford disappeared from the repertory. 

When the National Theatre revived Rutherford & Son in 1994, inspiring new interest in Githa, her life remained a mystery. With the publication of Looking for Githa by Patricia Riley two years ago, concrete details of Githa’s life and family history finally emerged. The Mint’s program includes an essay by Riley, whose biography was greatly helped by memories shared by Githa’s daughter, Joan. Riley learned that the ruthless industrialist Rutherford was based on Sowerby’s grandfather who owned a glassworks factory. She writes that Githa had been successful as a children’s book author before turning to play writing. She penned other plays, but Rutherford was her most successful.

“She died in 1970, aged 93, believing that her work had been forgotten and, wrongly, that her family had no interest in her achievement,” Riley writes.

Fortunately that didn't prove to be true, and thanks to the Mint another great play and playwright have been brought back to life for New York audiences. This excellent production continues through April 1. For more information, visit minttheater.org.

Theodore Mann and Journeys in the Night

I posted this originally on Jan. 30, 2008. Theodore Mann died Friday of complications of pneumonia. He was 87.

Theodore Mann has plenty of showbiz stories to tell. Since starting Circle in the Square in 1951, he has presented more than 200 productions, received 14 Tony nominations, plus the Tony for best play for his world premiere production of “Long Day’s Journey into Night.” He has worked with George C. Scott, Geraldine Page, Jason Robards, Peter Falk and many others. He offers his memories of those decades in the new book Journeys in the Night: Creating a New American Theater with Circle in the Square. He shared some of those stories with our Dutch Treat Club yesterday at the National Arts Club.

It all started in an abandoned dance hall in the Village that was “like a little Greek theatre.” The first production, “Dark of the Moon,” had more actors than audience members. But “I’m the kind of person that when I start something I finish it,” Mann said.

He’s also the kind of person to seize opportunity. The first review of a Circle production was by “New York Times” critic Brooks Atkinson. It was eight inches long and said “it’s hot,” explaining that the theatre space was too warm. Mann turned the comment into an ad, quoting just that part of Atkinson’s review, as if the show were a hit. Unfortunately, the “Times” refused to run the ad.

But success followed. “Summer and Smoke,” starring a young Page, got great reviews, ran for a year and launched Page’s career. In time Scott would play there; it was at Circle that he met Colleen Dewhurst.

Mann also had his eye on another young actor he had seen Off-Broadway. “I want to find a play for him,” he said about Dustin Hoffman. But Hoffman didn’t respond, heading out to Hollywood instead. Years later Hoffmann told him why: “I thought you guys were trying to pick me up.”

Up until 1956 it has been “a roller coaster ride” -- a success followed by several failures. But then Mann considered taking a chance on Eugene O’Neill’s “The Iceman Cometh,” which had been a failure on Broadway. “If we were going to go down, it would be like the Titanic. We’d go down big.” Robards had already been cast in the play, but had a higher vision for himself. “I gotta do Hickey,” he told Mann. “He was very wired up and obviously had had a few drinks.” But when he performed one of Hickey’s monologues, “I got chills down my back,” Mann said.

Jose Quintero, who was directing the production, also was impressed. He later called Robards, who was living in the meat packing district, and asked for Hickey. “That’s how he heard he got the part,” Mann said.

They weren’t the only ones impressed. Robards’ performance also opened another door for the fledgling theatre. O’Neill’s widow contacted Mann about doing the premiere of her husband’s most autobiographical work, “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” on Broadway. Dressed all in black, including dark glasses, she was “very tempestuous and mercurial.”

Mrs. O’Neill had chosen wisely. The production was so powerful that at first the theatre was silent after the show ended on opening night. Then the audience burst into applause. “It was a great thrill for us,” Mann said. The play went on to win a Pulitzer and the production many Tonys. “O’Neill’s reputation was revived and he was hailed as the greatest American playwright.”

And Circle in the Square is still producing Broadway hits, the latest being “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” which closed Jan 20 after three years. This is the Circle in the Square I’ve always known, in the midtown, downstairs space on 50th between Broadway and Eighth. Even before I lived in New York I knew and loved this theatre. My friend Karen Murphy Jensen and I always tried to get tickets there when we visited NYC. It’s where I first saw Kevin Kline on stage in a Shaw play, “Arms and the Man,” I think. As Mann says: “It’s still like a Greek theatre, with the audience all around.”

I agree with him that part of what makes that theatre so special is “the intimacy of being close.” It was the perfect place to create a beach for Tina Howe’s “Coastal Disturbance.” That’s probably the biggest set I ever saw there; the simplest may have been for “Frozen.”

It was clear listening to Mann that he had many more stories to impart than we had time for. Luckily he’s written them down so they’ll never be lost. His book is about more than just one theatre; it’s about all those people who brought it to life, and who went on from there to bless so many people with their gifts.

Nice job, little Greek theatre.

Come Home for Lent

The following blog by Nina Frost appears on the Marble Collegiate Church web site.

“Welcome back,” said the cab driver, with no small amount of conviction, as I left LaGuardia on Tuesday, the last day of Epiphany, and headed to Marble Church, to continue preparations for the upcoming women’s retreat.

Though he asked where I was coming from (Virginia), and said nothing else during the ride, when I got out at Marble, he looked me in the eye and said it again: “Welcome back… and be well.” I wished him the same, fervently, in that way you do when you feel you have stepped into something large and mysterious and wonderful with a total stranger.

The thing is: While yes, I grew up in New York, and lived and worked for most of my life here, and am still blessed to come here periodically for work, he had no way of knowing that, and I don’t think I telegraph anything that screams New York native on her return voyage. And I am beyond happy in my Virginia home with my husband.

And yet: His words felt very apt, but not for reasons geographic. I had been thinking about Lent, which starts today, and about the journey it invites each of us to take, every year. A journey that is different for each person, and just as inscrutable.

But I believe at the heart of the Lenten journey is the invitation to return: To look long and hard at the disconnects in our lives—with God, with other people, with ourselves—and to make reparations… changes in behavior and thinking that ultimately allow someone, maybe ourselves, maybe God, to say: “Welcome back.”

In the reading many will hear at Ash Wednesday services, the words from Psalm 51 will repeat a prayer many of us also say and hope for, one way or another:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”

In this prayer is the longing to come home, to be welcomed back. And as both this prayer and Lent remind, we are always needing to return… we always stray, and that straying is not a source of condemnation but, actually, the source of the desire to turn back toward God.

As we walk into this season of both promise and honest self-examination together, think of ways you are being “welcomed back.” There may be some things you need to do before that can happen. Lord knows that is true for me. But: There are metaphorical cab drivers everywhere, just waiting to help you take the first step. The rest will be up to you… you and God. Thanks be.

Each is given
a bag of tools,
A shapeless mass,
a book of rules;
And each must make
ere life has flown
A stumbling block
or a stepping stone.
-- R.L. Sharpe