HERE WE ARE

[scenicdesign71]

I forget whether the OCR includes the dialogue about Leo and Marianne cloning their dogs (so as to keep an identical set at each of their houses around the world, saving the hassle of pet transport when traveling).  But this article made me think of them...

The New Yorker:  Best Inbreed
                                         The rise of canine clones.

[scenicdesign71]

Ives's latest sounds interesting, even if it's not quite ready for primetime:

NYT:   In Pamela Palmer, a Blonde, a Gumshoe and an Existential Mystery

I was stumped (especially without having seen or read the play, as one might assume most readers of theatre reviews haven't) as to what near-anagram Green could be thinking of for the eponymous heroine's name ("map me paral[l]el"??), before finally reaching the obvious conclusion: he's simply pointing out that her first and last names are near-anagrams for each other.

I enjoyed Ms. Benko in the 2020 indie The Scottish Play not once but twice: when it first streamed in 2021, and then again last year on PBS (where it can still be viewed with a PBS Passport, or rented on Prime Video or Apple TV+).   It turns out that, around that same time, she also had a four-episode arc in Raising Kanan's first season, playing a doctor who delivers bad medical news to, and conducts subsequent check-ins with, one of the series leads (a police detective played by Omar Epps).  I never met her, but I vaguely recall working on her character's office set soon after our return from the pandemic "hiatus".

[Leighton]

UK premiere at the National Theatre in April! https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/cast-announced-for-sondheims-final-musical-here-we-are-premiering-at-the-national-theatre_1633574/

[scenicdesign71]

Full casting has been announced and is now listed on the NT website, and it's a very exciting group indeed:

(It's taken me a year or two — of very irregular watching, maybe a dozen videos over that time? — to warm to this Mickey Jo fellow; but if influencers really have to be a thing that exists in the world, we could do worse).

[Leighton]

My mother is gifting me some money for Christmas; as soon as it hits my account I'm booking a ticket!

[scenicdesign71]

Yay!!  Please give us a detailed account when you see it, @Leighton !

In my limited (and long-ago) experience of the Lyttelton, I've always assumed it was the least flexible of NT's stages — but, between its size and excellent sightlines, and the theatre's enviable resources, I can theoretically imagine a replica of the Shed production there, perhaps with a shallower thrust (or perhaps not; more recently I know they've done traverse stagings in the Lyttelton, and that it has an expandable forestage, so perhaps the space is more flexible than I thought). 

But I'm hugely curious whether Mantello and Zinn (or, for that matter, Ives and Tunick) are in fact planning to simply replicate their NYC original; while it will presumably be recognizably the same show overall, I wouldn't be surprised if there end up being tweaks, at the very least.  As elegant as HWA was here at the Shed, I can't imagine having a potential "second pass" at it a year and a half later, with another dream cast, at a world-class institution like the National, and not wanting to keep exploring.

Either way, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for this to make its way to NT Live and/or NT At Home at some point.

[Leighton]

Certainly shall!