Director David Herskovits inserts himself and his Target Margin company into what he sees as a turning point in American writing and stagecraft--the high-profile failure of Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan's 1953 collaboration on Camino Real (page 52), after which, Herskovits asserts, the experimental was increasingly marginalized and "mainstream theatre technique became crystallized as naturalism." Critic Garrett Eisler fast-forwards from the HUAC-haunted '50s to the present day in his essay on the dramaturgy of
Clifford Odets (page 56), whose standing as a card-carrying realist is being challenged in a wave of bold new interpretations.
NEW YORK An Ostar Prods., Bob Boyett, Shubert Organization, Eric Falkenstein, Roy Furman, Lawrence Horowitz, Jam Theatricals, Stephanie McClelland, Bill Rollnick/Nancy Ellison Rollnick, Daryl Roth/Debra Black presentation, in association with Jon Avnet/Ralph Guild, Michael Coppel, Jamie deRoy/Michael Filerman, Philip Geier/Donald Keough, Max OnStage, Mary Lu Roffe, of a play in two acts by
Clifford Odets. Directed by Mike Nichols.
This is going to feel like a cutting-edge work that is going to speak directly to our times." In other words, this isn't your grandfather's
Clifford Odets.
Is
Clifford Odets poised for a return to the spotlight?
Under the auspices of President Roosevelt's Federal Theater Project, the first play written by
Clifford Odets, Awake and Sing!, opens at the Belasco Theatre, starring, among others, Stella Adler.
The front-runners appear to include Brit import "Macbeth," starring Patrick Stewart in Rupert Goold's boldly theatrical staging; Mike Nichols' return to directing drama on Broadway with
Clifford Odets' "The Country Girl," starring Morgan Freeman, Frances McDormand and Peter Gallagher; and Laura Linney as the malevolent Marquise de Merteuil in "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," directed by Rufus Norris.
An original member of the Actors Studio, Maiden made his Broadway debut in
Clifford Odets's Golden Boy in 1937, and went on to perform in 20 shows, including the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's All My Sons.
Epatha Merkerson in Manhattan Theater Club's current production of "Come Back, Little Sheba" and Morgan Freeman in the April revival of
Clifford Odets' "The Country Girl."
She will also direct
Clifford Odets's Awake and Sing!
LONDON An Almeida Theater presentation of a play in two acts by
Clifford Odets. Directed by Michael Attenborough.
Spivey acted Off and Off-Off Broadway in such plays as
Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty and Waldo Pagune's The Crime of This Life, studied the Meisner technique with William Esper, directed when the opportunity arose--and, in 2001, founded a nonprofit company in East Harlem called Powerful Long Ladder, for which he staged a critically acclaimed production of Ntozake Shange's for colored girls.
The similarities to
Clifford Odets' 1935 masterwork are more than coincidental.