Carrie Musical Can Hold Her Own

broadwayworld.com reports that Carrie The Musical is a summer sensation for FlynnArts Summer Youth Theater.  The musical opened the program July 18 at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts.

The broadwayworld article notes that 1988 flop and the 2009 "revamp."  So what's new?

2009 saw a major revamp of CARRIE by its creators, composer Michael Gore, lyricist Dean Pitchford, and bookwriter Lawrence D. Cohen, along with director Stafford Arima. The revision met with critical acclaim in a 2012 off-Broadway revival featuring Molly Ranson as Carrie White and Marin Mazzie as Margaret White. 

Of course, what's unique is FlynnArts choice to do Carrie as a "youth musical" with no one under the age of 19.  Broadwayworld raves, "There are no weak links in this cast, and many of the young actors display near-professional ability."

FlynnArts provides this age advisory for CARRIE, THE MUSICAL: Although bloody, Carrie is not actually gory. (The blood is a cruel prank meant to humiliate Carrie about the onset of her period.) Overall this is a tale of bullying and supernatural revenge (which will take an abstract form in this production - no gruesome violence.) Carrie's mother also demonstrates an abusive parenting style that some children (and adults!) might find disturbing to experience in close proximity. That said, we think most youth aged 11+ can handle the content with a parent or guardian present to field questions, and the ultimate anti-bullying message of the piece is a vital one for middle- and high-schoolers to grasp.

Want To Visit Shawshank ?

Want to visit Shawshank prison?  Want to be part of the story?  It's in London.  Really!  (Bet ya didn't know Shawshank prison is in London.)

It's part of Secret Cinema's unique presentation.  The theater not only shows the movie, it moves you into the era and surroundings.  Nick Curtis gives this explanation, saying it is "an immersive experience that builds the world of the film around its audience, elevating them from spectators to enthralled participants."

Their youtube video simply says, "Secret Cinema presents Frank Darabont's 'The Shawshank Redemption' at the Cardinal Pole School, East London."

Here is Curtis' description of the Shawshank experience in November:

In November I attended Secret Cinema’s screening of Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption. After signing up online, I was issued with a new identity, Hal Wood, by the ‘State of Oak Hampton’ and told to report to Bethnal Green Library one Sunday evening. There were obscure clues to the film’s identity (I thought it was 12 Angry Men), hints that 1940s-style men’s suits would be suitable apparel, under which guests should wear long johns and a T-shirt, for reasons that later became apparent. 

In a chilly hall I was sent down for bigamy by a judge, and covertly sold a £20 ‘library ticket’ by my lawyer to buy privileges — food and drink — in prison. Then I and 400 others were driven in vintage coaches to ‘Shawshank’ — in fact, the forbidding former Cardinal Pole Lower School building by Victoria Park. Inmates banged on the van and shouted sexual taunts as we spilled into the yard: ‘Hey, Dapper Dan, you wanna be my friend?’ 

We were herded into a hallway by yelling guards, told to strip to our underwear and put our clothes and possessions in numbered sacks that contained our prison uniforms. Then we were marched through showers where a naked man crouched, bleeding, on the floor, to cells where we were banged up. I got my first taste of the underground prison economy, swapping my ill-fitting trousers with a fellow guest: my second, when an actor inmate sold me a Jack Daniel’s miniature for a tick on my library card. He then exhorted us to chant ‘new fish, new fish’ at other prisoners shuffling along the corridor outside, until someone on the landing above broke down and cried, to lewd hoots and catcalls. 

This was the first of sundry scenarios from the film played out live, along with a hostage situation, a sudden surge of opera through the corridors, and an escape that led to us being put on lockdown in the gym, which is when the screening started. Mostly, though, it was about atmosphere as we drifted or were gently guided through the teeming life of the building. Some were taken to the work sheds to repair bicycles or brew beer (both sheds are run by local Hackney businesses), some were examined by a psychoanalyst (a real one, who works in prisons). There were work programmes — candle-making, cross-stitching, composing letters to imprisoned writers for the anti-censorship charity Pen — in rooms studded with quirky artworks assembled by Riggall under another offshoot brand, Secret Gallery. 

Those who had paid £100 for the Secret Restaurant package got to dress up as the governor’s guests for a three-course meal prepared by Alan Stewart and the catering/design company Blanch & Shock. I was smuggled a shin of beef in the school’s boiler room: delicious. For an extra £30, you could stay in the Secret Hotel — one of the shared ‘cells’ — and be further hectored overnight, followed by a yoga session in the exercise yard in the morning. In effect, you’d be paying to stay in a cell with four or five strangers, in a chilly former school, wearing either underwear or a uniform, before a PE lesson and breakfast in an institutional canteen. Surely only a dominatrix could better persuade people to collude in, and enjoy, their own discomfiture. 

But the level of detail and organisation in the building was extraordinary, the immersion an oddly nuanced process. No one broke character: Riggall tells me later that a bus broke down one night and the actor in charge frogmarched his ‘prisoners’ through the rain for 35 minutes, past boggling onlookers. The selling of drinks and snacks was conducted as if it were a black market. In a quiet moment I found myself shooting hoops in the yard with two strangers, exchanging nods like weary lifers. 

In the library I got talking to a German animator called Viv (she initially gave me her male, Shawshank, name) who has worked on a lot of live art events. ‘It’s extraordinary to corral and control this number of people in this big a space, and to be giving them booze at the same time,’ she said. ‘It should be a riot but it isn’t.’ For the guests there was an odd tension between the maintenance and subversion of the illusion. 

From Nick Curtis' article, "Secret Cinema: how to get 25,000 people to pay £50 for a film ticket, without knowing what the film is."  The full article is at www.standard.co.uk

--thanks to Micheal o'Reilly

Misery Heads To Stage

On the heels of a successful  Carrie run, Misery is headed to the stage at Bucks County Playhouse in New  Hope, Pa.

In a September 20 article in the New York times Patrick Healy wrote:

This fall Misery Chastain will live again, this time on stage: The theatrical division of Warner Bros. Entertainment announced on Thursday that it had developed a new play based on the original “Misery” novel by Stephen King that will run Nov. 24-Dec. 8 at Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pa. 

The script is by the two-time Oscar winner William Goldman, whom Warner Bros. recruited in Hollywood’s latest attempt at synergy between the film and theater worlds. Mr. Goldman previously adapted the King novel for the screen version of “Misery,” and won his Academy Awards for “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “All the President’s Men.”

I would love to see it!

I posted a short article about previous appearances of Misery on stage HERE at talkstephenking and HERE about a staged reading of Misery.  Obviously, Misery is a book that translates nicely not only to screen, but to the stage.

The times article is HERE.
There is another  interesting article about the play at broadwayworld.com

King Of Bangor (Paperback)

Overlook Connection has published Lee Gambin's play "King Of Bangor."  The 70 page script sells for $10 on amazon.  Fangoria says the plays Milbourne, Australia run has been "successful."  (Gambin is a contributor to Fangoria.)

Heather Bloom, AustralianStage.com says the work is "A wonderful look into the thin line that divides reality from illusion, The King of Bangor is an unsettling tale of what can happen when creation surpasses creator."


Also cited by amazon is this quote from theatre of words, "Although marketed to horror fans this play does have broader appeal. It is insightful, surprisingly funny at points and delightfully inter-textual. It is not a comfortable place to be sitting as Stephen King at his typewriter, but it sure is an absolute pleasure to sit in the audience and watch as both the play and his sanity unfold."

http://www.amazon.com/King-Bangor-Lee-Gambin/dp/1892950545/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1310391745&sr=1-2
http://www.fangoria.com/index.php?view=article&id=5060:fango-writers-stephen-king-play-now-for-sale&option=com_content&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=167

Link: Review STEPHEN KING OF BANGOR

Cameron Woodhead has a review of Lee Gambin's Australian play "Stephen King of Bangor." He gives the play 3 of 5 stars (generous I suspect).

STEPHEN King has vices, but writer's block? The man wrote 2000 words a day for most of his career. I'm not saying he's nerveless: King threw the manuscript of Carrie in the trash before his wife fished it out and urged him to finish it. But no genre writer is as prolific and popular. To the extent that Lee Gambin's King of Bangor is intended to serve as a dramatic illustration of writer's block, it's barking up the wrong tree.


Luckily, that's not all it does. The one-act play features a passable King lookalike (Peter Berzanskis) perched on a throne at a typewriter. He's stuck. Characters from his fiction crowd him as he downs Scotch at an alarming rate, snorts lines and gobbles pills.

Since I haven't seen the play, I'll reserve comment.
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/theatre/king-of-bangor-20110703-1gx82.html

Australian Play: King Of Bangor

Fangoria reports that Lee Gambin, an Australian playwright (and contributor to Fangoria), is about to "unleash a fascinating new one-act play called KING OF BANGOR."  Gambin is also a contributor to Fangoria.  This current copy (#303) includes an interview Gambin did with Shelley Duvall.

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King Of Bangor is directed by Dione Joseph.  Gambin calls the play “a spine-chilling glimpse into the world of one the horror genre’s most prolific writers—as well as one of the most reclusive. It’s a venture into the world of Stephen King.”

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Here’s the synopsis from the press release: “In oppressive darkness, successful novelist Stephen King sits on his throne mapping out a new story of the macabre. But there is a problem; he’s stuck. Writer’s block has set in. But soon familiar voices offer advice and King begins to type: the flow comes and goes just as distractions and inspirations surface—then disappear then reappear. Real life begins to merge with his creative stream of consciousness and his creations start to mirror and comment on his own existence in a terrifying downward spiral."

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It will take place at: Bella Union, Trades Hall in Melbourne on June 29 and 30 and July 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9, with showtimes at 1 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tickets are $30

http://www.fangoria.com/index.php?view=article&id=4275:fango-scribe-puts-the-king-on-stage&option=com_content&catid=1:latest-news&Itemid=167

Stephen King story in Belfast

Strange Main posted a neat opportunity to hear a reading of "The Reach" at Aarhus Gallery on February 13. The post says that the reading will be performed by Maine actors Helen York and Bonnie VersbenCoeur, with musical accompaniment by Doug Ludwig.
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THE INFO: http://strangemaine.blogspot.com/2011/02/event-stephen-king-story-in-belfast.html

A Dude Named CARRIE!

Remember Brat Productions version of Carrie? Philly.com's "The daily post" has offered their take ina review titled, "In campy version of Carrie, heroine is a bloody guy."

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Director Michael Alltop offers this interesting insight, "The characters don't see a guy. They see a lumpy, awkward girl." Alltop explains that the switch in gender is twofold: First it heightens Carrie's status as an outcast, and second, it's funny.

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To hype up the camp, Bart Productions encourages people to show up in their high school prom outfits. Yikes! Like those still fit.

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Regarding the altarations to the book and movie, the article notes, "Alltop posits the reason King gave Jackson his blessing to adapt his debut novel is that it deviates from the norm. "We're not trying to be the movie; we're not trying to be Broadway," Alltop says, referring to the 1988 musical that lasted only five performances on the Great White Way.
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But, as Ransom says, Jackson's script reveres the movie and the book, and Brat isn't skimping on the special effects, hiring a three-man team to recreate Carrie's telekinesis, including bursting lightbulbs, flying scissors and an exploding car.

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http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20101001_In_campy_version_of__Carrie___heroine_is_a_bloody_guy.html

Carrie On Stage -- In drag!

This looks crazy! How about Carrie White in drag? Not really a fan of drag; but for Carrie White, it seems strangely right. I don't know, my head is spinning around like the Exorcist on this one! Wish I was in Philadelphia to go see it because everything about this looks fresh, creative and very energetic. Brat Productions is calling this a "comic horror thrill ride" -- nice! CARRIE. The play will run from October 2 through November 7, 2010; appropriately the Halloween season.

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PHILADELPHIA –

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This October, Brat Productions presents Carrie like never before in a black comedy by Erik Jackson, based on the legendary 1974 novel by Stephen King. Fresh from last Halloween’s critically acclaimed Haunted Poe (Best Production of a Play, Philadelphia Weekly), Brat offers another distinctive theater experience with the gender-bending Philadelphia premiere of Jackson's adaptation of King’s bestselling novel.

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Carrie begins previews October 2, opens on October 7 (press night), and runs through November 7, 2010 at Underground Arts at the Wolf Building (340 North 12th Street, Philadelphia). Tickets, ranging from $15 – $29, will be available soon at www.bratproductions.org and through TicketLeap.

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Directed by Brat Productions’ Producing Artistic Director Michael Alltop, Carrie features puppets and costumes from Haunted Poe’s Alisa Sickora Kleckner and stunning special effects – exploding light bulbs, flying knives, electric shocks, a car crash, and a burning high school – created by a team that includes Sickora Kleckner, along with set designer Chris Kleckner, lighting designer Paul Moffitt and Michael Christaldi . Erik Jackson’s Carrie includes all of the magic and blood-drenched horror of the original bestselling novel with surprising and hilarious new twists.

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Adding a gender-bending spin, New Jersey-based actor, drag performer, and musician Erik Ransom (off-Broadway’s My Big Gay Italian Wedding) will play the iconic telekinetic outcast, Carrie White.

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The cast of nine features notable Philadelphia actors: Leah Walton (EgoPo’s Spring Awakening and Azuka Theatre’s Nerve) as Carrie’s religious fanatic mother Margaret White, Bradley Wrenn (Swim Pony’s SURVIVE!, ’09 Philly Fringe’s The Annihilation Point) as Carrie’s love interest Tommy Ross, Bethany Ditnes (Luna Theater’s Sick) as the quintessential mean girl Chris Hargensen, Mariel Rosati (Montgomery Theater’s Moonlight and Magnolias) as Sue Snell, Jess Conda (Brat’s Haunted Poe, and the ’10 reincarnation of a 24-hour Bald Soprano) as Norma Watson, Justin Jain (Brat’s Haunted Poe) as Billy Nolan, Colleen Corcoran (company member of Madhouse Theater Company) as Miss Gardner, and Jarrod Yuskauskas (Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival’s A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum) as the principal, Mr. Morton.

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Brat has salvaged lockers and curtains from a closed high school to add a layer of reality to the oppressive school environment, setting the scene for Carrie’s fiery rage-filled prom night massacre, which The New York Times applauds, saying, “The story’s big prom-night finish has never been more fun.”

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Says playwright Erik Jackson, “I was lucky enough to be introduced to Michael Alltop, and Brat Productions through a mutual friend when Michael was looking for a writer on another project, and I really admired the excellent, adventurous work they were doing. I can't wait to see what they do with Carrie. Michael has let slip a few things already that have made my jaw drop.”
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Alltop says, “Halloween is about imagination, a time in which even adults get into the spirit of the season and play ‘dress up,’ assume an alter-ego, and let go of inhibitions. These are qualities that all theater artists employ on a daily basis, but it’s unusual for most ‘normal’ people. By producing a show every Halloween, we aim to get people out of their comfort zones and close the gap between artists and audiences. Our goal is to show just how engaging a work of theater can be.”

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ABOUT THE PLAY
After playwright Erik Jackson wrote an impassioned 6-page letter asking Stephen King to entrust him with one of his great bestsellers, the world-renowned novelist agreed to allow Jackson and Theatre Couture (creators of the off-Broadway hits Charlie! and Tell-Tale) to mine Carrie for humor, developing it into a dark comedy for 2006’s sold-out off-Broadway run at PS122 in New York, featuring the internationally-recognized drag queen Sherry Vine (aka Keith Levy) as Carrie White.

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Carrie – which has also been a 1976 feature film directed by Brian De Palma, a 1988 Broadway musical, a 1999 feature film sequel, and a 2002 television movie – tells the story of young Carrie White who is painfully shy, unfortunately naïve, and telekinetic. Carrie's fundamentalist Christian mother Margaret has been tormenting her for years, and things are even worse at school. When a terrified Carrie gets her first period in the school locker room's shower, her classmates taunt her and pelt her with feminine products. Banned from the prom for the locker room harassment, the gorgeous but cruel Chris Hargensen hatches an awful plan to exact revenge by humiliating Carrie in front of the whole school at the senior prom. But, what Chris doesn't know is that Carrie can move things with her mind, and she'll soon find out that she picked the wrong girl to mess with.

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“The essential nature of the story to me is the examination of the outsider, the outcast, the loser,” says Jackson. “I think most everyone on the planet at one time or another has felt like that person. I was intrigued by the idea of exploring a reverse Cinderella story: the put-upon ugly duckling gets the guy, goes to the ball – and then it all goes to hell, quite literally. I love extremes in my own work, and have always been drawn to the contrast between King's novel's sweet, quiet moments and the gruesome spectacle.”

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ABOUT BRAT PRODUCTIONS
Founded in 1996, Brat Productions is committed to “thinking outside the proscenium” with performance pieces that are surprising and incendiary, entertaining and unsettling. Brat’s mission is to create an audience of the future by producing theatre that breaks the rules; theatre that tests conventions; theatre that rocks! Over the years, Brat has established itself as one of Philadelphia’s most adventurous theatre companies and is known for using unusual performance venues to enhance original and noteworthy productions. Its numerous productions have included Three Chord Fiction, winner of the Ted and Stevie Wolf Barrymore Award for New Approaches to Collaboration, Haunted Poe, A 24-Hour The Bald Soprano, A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant and Eye-95: Retarred.

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CARRIE ONLINE

For an insider look at Carrie, regular updates on the show, tips for audience members and more, follow Brat Productions online:

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Official Website www.bratproductions.org

Become a Fan of Brat on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/bratproductions?ref=ts

Check out Brat on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/bratproductions

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Carrie has been funded by the Wyncote Foundation. Brat has received 2010-11 season support from the William Penn Foundation, Haas Trust “A”, Samuel S. Fels Fund, and the Independence Foundation.

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Dates: October 2 – November 7, 2010

Previews run October 2-6

Opening night is Thursday, October 7
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Location: Underground Arts at the Wolf Building
340 North 12th Street (at Callowhill)
Philadelphia, PA
Tickets: $15 – $29

Misery On Stage

The price for thsi is right. . . but unfortunately, you have to be ready to fly!

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Guildhall Arts Centere has this announcement:

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Following the sell-out success of their Spring 2009 tour of Bouncers, Jamie Marcus Productions returns to the Guildhall with an electrifying production of Stephen King's ‘Misery’, adapted for the stage by Simon Moore. Paul Sheldon, best-selling author of the 'Misery Chastaine' novels, is crippled in a car crash only to be rescued by Annie Wilkes, his 'number one fan'. Far from being an angel of mercy, when she discovers that his eponymous heroine dies in the latest book, Annie imprisons Sheldon insisting that he write another. Fearing for his life, Paul writes a chapter per day as he descends into a living hell beyond anything that he could ever imagine for Misery.

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Cost: £9.00 / £7.50 concessions / £5.00 students

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http://www.guildhallartscentre.com/event-details/?id=368

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see also:

http://talkstephenking.blogspot.com/2009/10/staged-reading-of-misery.html

Shawshank Redemption On Stage

Playbill.com reprots that Owen O'Neill and Dave Johns' stage version of the Shawshank Redemption will be showing at Wyndhams Theatre. Unfortunately. . . that's in London! So, for those of us who are an ocean or two away, we'll just have to drool and wish we were there. I must say, a stage version of Shawshank sounds a lot better than a Carrie musical.

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http://www.playbill.com/news/article/134297-_West_End_Production_of_The_Shawkshank_Redemption_to_Shutter_Nov%2029

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Get a behind the scenes look on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob-WrG8Mss8

Staged Reading of MISERY

This comes under the heading of: "I wanna go! I wanna go!"

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On Octoer 22 TheatreWorks New Milford, CT, will present a staged reading of Stephen King's Misery by playwright Simon Moore. This will be followed by a wine and cheese reception -- exactly what you feel like after a nice good reading of Misery!
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broadwayworld.com writes: "Misery is a roller coaster ride into the darkness and torment of obsession. Audiences can expect the unexpected in this compellingly cruel thriller. After an auto accident, best-selling romance novelist, Paul Sheldon, is lucky to be alive. Or is he? This stunning stage adaptation of Stephen King's masterpiece is a true nail-biting suspense thriller. The story is well-known for the 1990 screen version starring James Caan and Kathy Bates, which garnered Ms. Bates an Academy Award for her role as Mr. Sheldon's "Number 1 Fan," Annie Wilkes.
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Misery is under the direction of Jackie Decho-Holm of New Milford with a cast including Vicki Sosbe (New Milford), and Jonathan and KC Ross (both Thomaston).

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The event is free, but reservations must be made by calling (860) 350-6863or by visiting the website at www.theatreworks.us. TheatreWorks is an award-winning, professional non-Equity theatre company located on 5 Brookside Avenue, just off Route 202, in New Milford, CT.

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http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/TheatreWorks_New_Milford_Presents_Staged_Reading_of_Misery_1022_20010101