January 28, 2010

Here she is, boys! Alice Duffy Makes her Broadway Debut




Here's Alice Duffy on NBC's Today show. In addition to Present Laughter Alice has appeared at the Huntington in Dead End, Heartbreak House, A Month in the Country and Les Liaisons Dangereuses.


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January 21, 2010

Present Laughter opens on Broadway!


Just in case you haven't heard... tonight is opening night for the Broadway production of Present Laughter at the Roundabout's American Airlines Theatre. Here's a toast to Nicky, and the cast and crew! Break a leg!

It's pretty much the same bunch - Victor Garber, Brooks Ashmanskas, Lisa Banes, Holly Fain, and Boston locals Nancy E. Carroll and Alice Duffy, amongst others. We understand that octogenarian Alice Duffy will be featured on NBC's  Today (Wednesday, January 27 in the 8:30am half-hour) to celebrate her Broadway debut. I've got the DVR set.

You'll also see some of the original Huntington props onstage in Present Laughter, the scenery and costumes have been re-built.Congrats again!

If the Roundabout sounds familiar you may recall that David Rabe's Streamers directed by Scott Ellis played there following the Huntington's production, as did Carry Fisher in Wishful Drinking.

Our production of The 39 Steps also opened on Broadway at the American Airlines Theatre, and then moved to the Cort and then the Helen Hayes. It closed at the Cort on Jan 10, and after 771 performances it was the longest running play on Broadway in 7 years. A long rumored Off Broadway run at New World Stages has just been announced to open on March 25 for an open ended run. A US national tour kicked off in November, and regional productions are springing up across the country.


 On the run for their lives, Pamela (Jennifer Ferrin) and Hannay (Charles Edwards) discover the only way is up in the Huntington Theatre Company's pre-Broadway American premiere production of Alfred Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps." Photo: T. Charles Erickson


It's so exciting that our work continues to be represented in New York and across the country. We are so proud and thrilled! Happy Opening Present Laughter!

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January 18, 2010

All My Sons - Reviews

Audiences and critics alike seem to be impressed with our production of Arthur Miller's ALL MY SONS. Here are a few links - and please - feel free to leave your own thoughts and comments!

The Boston Globe  "Under the direction of David Esbjornson, a superb Huntington cast gives us Miller at his fiercest and most unflinching. During the climactic moments of “All My Sons,’’ everyone in the Boston University Theatre seemed to be holding their breath."

The Hub Review "I realized about half an hour into the show that I was going to need all my superlatives for All My Sons, the new production of Arthur Miller's 1947 classic that singlehandedly re-instates the Huntington as a great regional theatre. The Huntington is back, and it rules"

The Theater Mirror (Carl Rossi) "When the applause that ends Act One sounds like the applause heard at curtain call, you know you’re seeing a winner!"

Boston Herald "Productions like this remind you why classics became classics in the first place." "The palpitating heart of this production is Karen MacDonald, whose turn as Kate is virtuosic."

Blast Magazine "“All My Sons” is the fourth play in what the Huntington has called its “Season of American Stories.” In many ways, it echoes the season’s premier, August Wilson’s “Fences.” While very different in rhythm and tone, both plays feature a charismatic father holding court over his backyard, who ultimately tests your loyalty and trust. Both explore strained families, and the way a father’s past can shape his son’s future. Both are excellent."

The Fenway News "Secrets are always bound to come out sooner or later, and hope and faith do not always translate into a happy ending." "it resonates with the same tone as it did over 60 years ago."

Citrus Quark Blog "by the end the sh-- really hits the fan! The suspense was amazing, and I'm not sure that I blinked during the entire second and third acts."

Berkshire Fine Arts "Here is serious theatre at its best. The performances, the production and the play are simply superb. All My Sons is a must see!"

Boston Low Brow "Scott Bradley has built a barren, while mildly reflective of post-war American prosperity, set that gives the production a smart touch of Ibsen and Bergman. A plain backing is either lighted as a blank abstraction of a Midwestern horizon or used as a massive movie screen for Maya Ciarrocchi’s film montages – a device I liked"

The Boston Phoenix "this is enacted on the BU stage with a blistering believability that does not flinch from the play's near-operatic anguish." "a production that proves, however out of fashion the moral crusader who married Marilyn Monroe might have been, it's Miller time in America once again."

Theater Mirror (Larry Stark) "it is glorious to see a cast headed by half a dozen of Boston's best actors filling Boston's biggest local stage with landmark performances."

BroadwayWorld.com "Still Awesome after all these years"

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Karen MacDonald as Kate Keller and Will Lyman as Joe Keller in the Huntington Theatre Company's production of All My Sons by Arthur Miller is playing January 8 through February 7, 2010 at our Mainstage, the Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave Boston MA 02115. Online tickets and information available 24/7 or call our Box Office (click for hours this week) at 617 266-0800

January 8, 2010

All My Sons - Behind the Scenes Video



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The Huntington Theatre Company's production of All My Sons by Arthur Miller is playing January 8 through February 7, 2010 at our Mainstage, the Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave Boston MA 02115. Online tickets and information available 24/7 or call our Box Office (click for hours this week) at 617 266-0800

January 5, 2010

Conversations - Esbjornson and Lucas

Throughout this season, we will feature artists interviewing other artists working at the Huntington. Below, All My Sons director David Esbjornson (left) talks with playwright Craig Lucas (right), author of Prelude to a Kiss. Here's a short excerpt of the conversation that ranges from the Greeks, Ibsen, O'Neill, Strindberg and more. All in the context of All My Sons: 

    David Esbjornson: You’ve certainly spurred some important thinking on my end about the play in your questions. I don’t know if I can be articulate in answering them, but I can certainly try.
    Craig Lucas: So, I sort of remember what Elliot Norton taught us about the play back in my undergraduate days and I actually went back to my notes from Elliot’s class. And it seemed to me that a lot of what he taught us about the play isn’t true. We were taught that it was a kind of modern attempt to do what the Greek tragedians had done and that [Arthur] Miller was obsessed with the gods putting things right. And then, you know, I’ve since done my own translation, or adaptation rather, of Oedipus, and I have read those plays a little more carefully, and they’re not about justice at all!
    DE: No.
    CL: The gods are always punishing people for doing things that they had no control over, and didn’t even mean to do, and often unwittingly did. And the point of them all is that, if you’re a human being, you’re going to pay.
    DE: Right. And you had to cope with whatever was being dealt you.
    CL: Yeah, that’s just it. You’re just going to have a rough go of it. We’re mortal, and we’re going to get shit on, and we have to, as you said, just cope with it. But that doesn’t seem to me to be . . .
    DE: I think where it maybe ventures back into some of the Greek plays is maybe in the idea of free will and if there are moments in which human beings are free to make choices for themselves in the midst of all that. And, you know, you brought up Oedipus, which is what made me think that perhaps that element is something maybe Miller was interested in.
    CL: Well clearly, he is the very kind of fixated, in a way, on personal culpability, but also the thing that I can’t quite wrap my mind around still which feels deeply, deeply personal to him which is familial responsibility, that in a sense, okay, not to . . . here’s that little thing that appears in Mad Men: [Spoiler Alert] Larry’s suicide is a very strange gesture in the midst of a war where his life could mean the life or death of other soldiers. To take his own life in a response to what he hears about, mostly from the newspapers, is his father’s culpability is such strange and rash act. And then I was thinking Miller’s whole body of work and how much suicide there is in it. You know there’s the guy who throws himself off the tracks in After The Fall, of course there’s Willy Loman; the plays are filled with it. 
The Huntington Theatre Company's production of All My Sons by Arthur Miller is playing January 8 through February 7, 2010 at our Mainstage, the Boston University Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave Boston MA 02115. Online tickets and information available 24/7 or call our Box Office (click for hours this week) at 617 266-0800