The New Season
Familiar Faces Wear Classic Roles
Sam Waterston, right, will play King Lear in the Public Theater's production this fall, following on the heels of the recent Lears, clockwise from top left: Derek Jacobi, Greg Hicks and Ian McKellen.
By BEN BRANTLEY
Shakespear's saddest monarch will be out on the heath again this fall, yelling at the elements and courting death by lightning, when the Public Theater opens its new production of “King Lear,” starring Sam Waterston, in November. New Yorkers may feel that this demented curser of the gods has been hanging out a lot in their neighborhood recently. You could even say he’s become sort of a cautionary fixture in this town, like that homeless guy on the corner who talks to space aliens and throws rotten fruit at passers-by.
Alastair Muir/Old Vic
Kevin Spacey will inhabit the role of Shakespeare's psychopathic Richard III at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Mr. Waterston’s interpretation, as it happens, will be the third to grace a New York stage in six months, following two imported British productions: Derek Jacobi’s version for the Donmar Warehouse (seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in May), and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s “King Lear” of this summer, with Greg Hicks in the title role. It was only four years ago that Ian McKellen played Lear at the Brooklyn Academy (in another Royal Shakespeare Company production), while Christopher Plummer wore the same painful crown at Lincoln Center in 2004.
What gives? Time was that unless you lived in a town with Stratford in its name, you might have to wait a generation to see a major starry new production of a tragedy by Shakespeare. Now Lears (and Hamlets and Macbeths) are as frequent visitors to this city as Violettas, Mimis and Scarpias are to the Metropolitan Opera. And it’s not only Shakespeare’s cosmically challenged royals who are recrossing our line of vision with increasing frequency. This season is bounteous with familiar characters from other chapters of dramatic literature, who were last seen in the vicinity only a decade or so ago and are now being given fresh life by new (though preferably familiar-in-their-own-right) interpreters.
Among those waiting in the wings: Philip Seymour Hoffman as the title character in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (directed by Mike Nichols, scheduled to open on Broadway in March); Dianne Wiest as the foolish, romantically impulsive Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” (at the Classic Stage Company this fall); Kim Cattrall as the vixenish, uncertainly married Amanda in Noël Coward’s “Private Lives” (on Broadway in November); Kevin Spacey as Shakespeare’s psychopathic Richard III (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, early next year) and Blair Underwood as that eternal boon to the T-shirt industry, Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire” (planned for Broadway next spring).
Even plays that have yet to claim their places in the pantheon of immortal classics are being revived with a dispatch that might feel premature to some. Cynthia Nixon (best known, like Ms. Cattrall, for television’s “Sex and the City”) returns to Broadway in January as a metaphysical poetry teacher wrestling with cancer in “Wit,” Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that was an Off Broadway hit of the late 1990s. And Tyne Daly packed ’em in at the Friedman Theater this summer as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s “Master Class,” which was last on Broadway 14 years ago.
You may see this list as cause for mourning the paucity of new plays and the lack of imagination and bravery on the part of theater producers. And yes, there’s a case to be made for that point of view. But before we put on the black armbands, allow to me say that I — and, I would venture, any number of my fellow theater aficionados — am hardly overwhelmed by déjà vu and weariness at the prospect of sitting through plays I have seen, in some cases, a score of times. Instead — with a few exceptions (and I’m not so ungallant as to name them) — what I feel is excitement.
I mean the same sort of rush that might ripple through the hard-core opera lover who learns that a favorite diva is going to take on Tosca, say, or Brünnhilde, or that a sports fan might experience on hearing that a rising young golfer will be facing down the course at Pebble Beach in a U.S. Open. The advantage of theater as an endless, circular repertory is that it allows you to see great performers test their mettle in roles that might be regarded as Olympics caliber. (Portraying Lear or Hamlet is surely as tough as a decathlon.)
Disappointment may await, of course, but so may the revitalization that comes with being forced to rethink a part or a performer you thought you knew inside out. (I have had that experience twice with Cate Blanchett, first when she portrayed Blanche in “Streetcar” in 2009 and just last month, when I saw her in Washington as Yelena in the Sydney Theater Company’s “Uncle Vanya” at the Kennedy Center.)
And just because I was let down by the National Theater’s production of “The Cherry Orchard” in London this summer doesn’t mean I’m not eager to see what the Classic Stage Company does with the same play. Ms. Wiest, at the top of her form, embodies hardened softness (and the opposite) as well as anyone. (Remember her in 1984 as the Marilyn Monroe character in Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall”?) I’m looking forward to adding her to my gallery of Ranevskayas, which already includes (among others) Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Linda Emond and Zoe Wanamaker. And if Philip Seymour Hoffman seems, at 44, a bit young to play Willy Loman, that’s the same age Dustin Hoffman was when he picked up the salesman’s battered briefcase in 1984. As an added bonus Ms. Emond (whom I would happily watch play anything, even a kazoo) will be Willy’s enduring helpmeet, Linda, a part created on Broadway by Mildred Dunnock (and affectingly recreated by Elizabeth Franz, opposite Brian Dennehy in 1999).
I could also imagine Ms. Emond in a very different part, that of the disgruntled, depressive daughter in “Other Desert Cities,” Jon Robin Baitz’s superb drama of generations at loggerheads, bound for Broadway this season in a Lincoln Center production. As it happens that part, created to perfection Off Broadway by Elizabeth Marvel, will be handled by Rachel Griffiths, who showed she knew from dysfunction in her turn as Brenda in “Six Feet Under.” Judith Light replaces Linda Lavin as the play’s withering alcoholic in residence. I’m looking forward to that bit of recasting too. And I can imagine a time when “Other Desert Cities” will join the eternal repertory. Perhaps some day the Fanning sisters can be the combative siblings now to be played by Ms. Light and Stockard Channing.
As for Mr. Waterston as Lear, I have hopes. These are founded not in his long tenure as the perpetually indignant prosecutor Jack McCoy on “Law & Order,” but in a revelatory and surprising turn he did as Polonius in “Hamlet” in Central Park several years ago. Anyway, Mr. Waterston has been through the ages of man with Shakespeare. In his youth he portrayed both Hamlet and Benedick (in “Much Ado About Nothing”) for the Public.
Now that I think of it, three of my most memorable Lears — Mr. McKellen, Mr. Jacobi and Mr. Plummer — had all been closely watched Hamlets once upon a time. Not that I saw them in the role, but how I wish I had. That’s another plus about this endless rotating repertory business. Stay around long enough, and you get to see an actor go — and grow — from Hamlet to Lear.
What gives? Time was that unless you lived in a town with Stratford in its name, you might have to wait a generation to see a major starry new production of a tragedy by Shakespeare. Now Lears (and Hamlets and Macbeths) are as frequent visitors to this city as Violettas, Mimis and Scarpias are to the Metropolitan Opera. And it’s not only Shakespeare’s cosmically challenged royals who are recrossing our line of vision with increasing frequency. This season is bounteous with familiar characters from other chapters of dramatic literature, who were last seen in the vicinity only a decade or so ago and are now being given fresh life by new (though preferably familiar-in-their-own-right) interpreters.
Among those waiting in the wings: Philip Seymour Hoffman as the title character in Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (directed by Mike Nichols, scheduled to open on Broadway in March); Dianne Wiest as the foolish, romantically impulsive Ranevskaya in Chekhov’s “Cherry Orchard” (at the Classic Stage Company this fall); Kim Cattrall as the vixenish, uncertainly married Amanda in Noël Coward’s “Private Lives” (on Broadway in November); Kevin Spacey as Shakespeare’s psychopathic Richard III (at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, early next year) and Blair Underwood as that eternal boon to the T-shirt industry, Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams’s “Streetcar Named Desire” (planned for Broadway next spring).
Even plays that have yet to claim their places in the pantheon of immortal classics are being revived with a dispatch that might feel premature to some. Cynthia Nixon (best known, like Ms. Cattrall, for television’s “Sex and the City”) returns to Broadway in January as a metaphysical poetry teacher wrestling with cancer in “Wit,” Margaret Edson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama that was an Off Broadway hit of the late 1990s. And Tyne Daly packed ’em in at the Friedman Theater this summer as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s “Master Class,” which was last on Broadway 14 years ago.
You may see this list as cause for mourning the paucity of new plays and the lack of imagination and bravery on the part of theater producers. And yes, there’s a case to be made for that point of view. But before we put on the black armbands, allow to me say that I — and, I would venture, any number of my fellow theater aficionados — am hardly overwhelmed by déjà vu and weariness at the prospect of sitting through plays I have seen, in some cases, a score of times. Instead — with a few exceptions (and I’m not so ungallant as to name them) — what I feel is excitement.
I mean the same sort of rush that might ripple through the hard-core opera lover who learns that a favorite diva is going to take on Tosca, say, or Brünnhilde, or that a sports fan might experience on hearing that a rising young golfer will be facing down the course at Pebble Beach in a U.S. Open. The advantage of theater as an endless, circular repertory is that it allows you to see great performers test their mettle in roles that might be regarded as Olympics caliber. (Portraying Lear or Hamlet is surely as tough as a decathlon.)
Disappointment may await, of course, but so may the revitalization that comes with being forced to rethink a part or a performer you thought you knew inside out. (I have had that experience twice with Cate Blanchett, first when she portrayed Blanche in “Streetcar” in 2009 and just last month, when I saw her in Washington as Yelena in the Sydney Theater Company’s “Uncle Vanya” at the Kennedy Center.)
And just because I was let down by the National Theater’s production of “The Cherry Orchard” in London this summer doesn’t mean I’m not eager to see what the Classic Stage Company does with the same play. Ms. Wiest, at the top of her form, embodies hardened softness (and the opposite) as well as anyone. (Remember her in 1984 as the Marilyn Monroe character in Arthur Miller’s “After the Fall”?) I’m looking forward to adding her to my gallery of Ranevskayas, which already includes (among others) Judi Dench, Vanessa Redgrave, Linda Emond and Zoe Wanamaker. And if Philip Seymour Hoffman seems, at 44, a bit young to play Willy Loman, that’s the same age Dustin Hoffman was when he picked up the salesman’s battered briefcase in 1984. As an added bonus Ms. Emond (whom I would happily watch play anything, even a kazoo) will be Willy’s enduring helpmeet, Linda, a part created on Broadway by Mildred Dunnock (and affectingly recreated by Elizabeth Franz, opposite Brian Dennehy in 1999).
I could also imagine Ms. Emond in a very different part, that of the disgruntled, depressive daughter in “Other Desert Cities,” Jon Robin Baitz’s superb drama of generations at loggerheads, bound for Broadway this season in a Lincoln Center production. As it happens that part, created to perfection Off Broadway by Elizabeth Marvel, will be handled by Rachel Griffiths, who showed she knew from dysfunction in her turn as Brenda in “Six Feet Under.” Judith Light replaces Linda Lavin as the play’s withering alcoholic in residence. I’m looking forward to that bit of recasting too. And I can imagine a time when “Other Desert Cities” will join the eternal repertory. Perhaps some day the Fanning sisters can be the combative siblings now to be played by Ms. Light and Stockard Channing.
As for Mr. Waterston as Lear, I have hopes. These are founded not in his long tenure as the perpetually indignant prosecutor Jack McCoy on “Law & Order,” but in a revelatory and surprising turn he did as Polonius in “Hamlet” in Central Park several years ago. Anyway, Mr. Waterston has been through the ages of man with Shakespeare. In his youth he portrayed both Hamlet and Benedick (in “Much Ado About Nothing”) for the Public.
Now that I think of it, three of my most memorable Lears — Mr. McKellen, Mr. Jacobi and Mr. Plummer — had all been closely watched Hamlets once upon a time. Not that I saw them in the role, but how I wish I had. That’s another plus about this endless rotating repertory business. Stay around long enough, and you get to see an actor go — and grow — from Hamlet to Lear.
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