The Gang's All High

Tim Robbins' Actors' Gang has announced the "Axis Mundi" series, an extracurricular series of off-night talks and screenings and events around the Gang's Culver City location. I have a lot of respect for Robbins and his company, but I can't help but read a lot of "Ray" in the press release ("Ray" being the ponytailed pomp peddler Robbins played so eerily well in High Fidelity).

"It's time to stir things up and gather community in a public forum that allows for illumination, dissection, and discussion of contemporary issues," Robbins is quoted as saying in the press release I got. "Nothing is out of bounds." The release goes on to inform us, "Axis mundi is a term representing the center point of the compass, a symbol that crosses human cultures, expressing a point of connection between the sky, the earth and the four directions."

A key sign that this is still the Gang we love, though, is that amid the planned panels on corporate corruption and earnest satire of the "institutionalized ignorance infecting America," there's this:

Tues., Nov. 9: Dark Side of Oz - A visual/audio mash up of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz. BYOW

Dude!

Busy Days

Apologies for the light posting. I reappear briefly to announce two public appearances in the coming week or so:

On Friday, Oct. 22, at 8:30 p.m., I'll be playing some tunes at the Path Cafe.

On Monday, Oct. 25, 6:30 p.m. at the Martin E. Segal Theater, I'll join Time Out NY editor David Cote and a few other esteemed colleagues on a panel about the state of criticism in the age of Twitter.

Only one will feature a piano, but both are free.

Too-Convenient Parking

David Byrne says this is an oft-reproduced image of the Michigan Theatre in Detroit, but I'd never seen it till I checked in with his bleakly illuminating traveblogue (h/t Createquity). At American Theatre we're cooking up a story about the state of the lively arts in this desolate former auto capital, and I'm looking forward to it all the more keenly.

Best. Office. Ever.

My favorite bit: When Daryl shushes Michael with these wise words: "We have to listen to the overture, otherwise we won't recognize the themes when they come up later."

A New Low for Riedel

The Post's resident scourge has already pronounced himself bored in advance by this season's star-starved Broadway offerings, so he goes looking for fresh targets in the supposedly Broadway-bound, reportedly somewhat troubled musical Leap of Faith at the Ahmanson in L.A. So there's been some backstage sniping, and Brooke Shields can't sing; that much is fair game (though that doesn't explain why a show that's gotten mixed reviews is flatly labeled "bad" in the headline).

But check out Riedel's take on the director/choreographer, Rob Ashford:

Last year, powerful behind-the-scenes players were touting Ashford as the next Michael Bennett. But then "Promises, Promises" opened and "the next Michael Bennett" became the next Roger De Bris.

"Promises" is a hit at the box office. But Ashford's direction and choreography are swishier than anything Roger De Bris came up with for "Springtime for Hitler."

Huh? I guess in the Post, swishy = sucky? Now, I didn't see it, but I understand that Ashford's production of Jason Robert Brown's cheerful lynching musical Parade, originally produced at the Donmar Warehouse but also seen at the Ahmanson last year, was nothing to sneeze at. Suitably manful, too, I would imagine.

Seriously, I love good dish as much as the next culture vulture, and I'm more or less down with Rebecca West's call to "listen...to our geniuses in a disrespectful manner." But Riedel defines decadence down; he regularly goes beyond the call of doody.

Left Cold by Brits

photo by Tristram Kenton
As an inveterate Anglophile weaned on Doctor Who, the Pythons, and Merchant Ivory, I still found last week's Broadway season openers, Brief Encounter and The Pitmen Painters, impressive but largely unsatisfying. The first is an alternately lavish and impish production of a very attenuated romance that wears out its narrative welcome pretty quickly, despite some moments of pure theater magic involving a ukulele and an overturned rowboat; the latter, despite the efforts of a lovely ensemble cast, falls into the dodgy genre of art-as-vehicle-of-social-uplift. I'm often a sucker for this kind of story when it involves a backstage, let's-put-on-a-show element (like Lee Hall's other Broadway show), but I find it insufferable when it features characters who are walking mouthpieces for half-baked ideas about the meaning of "art"--a noun which should almost never be the named subject of any play.

In short, these two new offerings, if not quite the dog's breakfast, aren't exactly the dog's dinner, either.

The Season's Top 10

Along with the nifty new October season preview issue of American Theatre is the much-anticipated Top 10 list of plays slated for the most productions in the coming season* , reprinted here in full:

The 39 Steps (23)
adapted by Patrick Barlow from Alfred Hitchcock

Circle Mirror Transformation (15)
by Annie Baker

Superior Donuts (10)
by Tracy Letts

Ruined (10)
by Lynn Nottage

August: Osage County (9)
by Tracy Letts

God of Carnage (8)
by Yasmina Reza

In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (8)
by Sarah Ruhl

The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee (8)
by Rachel Sheinkin (book) and William Finn (music and lyrics)

To Kill a Mockingbird (7)
adapted by Christopher Sergel from Harper Lee

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (7)
by August Wilson

A few surprises there (Ma Rainey?). And sorry to say, this is as strong a representation of female playwrights as we've seen since we've been doing the Top 10 list. Take it away, Playgoer.

*The usual caveats must be mentioned: This list reflects only TCG member theaters who got us their season lists by our deadline.