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	<title>EntertainmentCategory: Theater &#124; Entertainment &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>EntertainmentCategory: Theater &#124; Entertainment &#124; TIME.com</title>
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		<title>Natasha, Imelda and the Great Immersion of 2013</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/20/natasha-imelda-and-the-great-immersion-of-2013/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/20/natasha-imelda-and-the-great-immersion-of-2013/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:23 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[and the Great Comet ot 1812]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[David Byrne]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Here Lies Love]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Leo Tolstoy]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Natasha]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pierre]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The waiters were serving borscht and blinis while we sat at our tables in the faux-Russian supper club, waiting for the show to start the other night. A sociable young women in 19th-century period dress stopped by to welcome us and asked if we had everything we needed. As long as you asked, I said, my friend here ordered a vodka a half-hour ago, and it still hasn’t arrived. Her pretty face grew clouded; she said she’d look into it, but quickly had to scoot away. The music had struck up, and she was a key part of the opening number. I was complaining about the service to one of the stars of the show. “Immersive” theater is all the rage these days. No longer can audiences sink into their seats and be assured of an uninterrupted couple of hours of passive entertainment (or snoozing). More and more shows are “immersing” the audience in the action. At the hit off-Broadway show Sleep No More, the audience wends its way through a dilapidated hotel, having random encounters with actors miming snatches of scenes from Macbeth. Even in conventional Broadway theaters, audience members are apt to be called up onstage by Bette Midler (playing pushy Hollywood agent Sue Mengers in I’ll Eat You Last) or invited to wander onto the stage before the show, to explore the set or belly up to the bar, as in the Tony-winning musical Once. Some of this is just gimmickry. But two new immersive off-Broadway musicals use the technique to wonderfully energizing effect. In Here Lies Love, David Byrne’s almost shamefully enjoyable new show about the rise and fall of Filipino First Lady Imelda Marcos, the audience stands on a disco floor for the entire 90 minutes, as the sung-through show is performed on a series of moving stages. In Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, characters from Tolstoy’s War and Peace come to life in a Russian cabaret. The audience gets to sit through this one (and even eat dinner), but the actors can pop up anywhere — on the ribbon-like stages that<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3540629&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/np1.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">niennunb</media:title>
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		<title>On Your Toes at Encores!: Dancing With the Real Stars</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/10/on-your-toes-at-encores-dancing-with-the-real-stars/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/10/on-your-toes-at-encores-dancing-with-the-real-stars/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 10 May 2013 21:01:31 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Corliss</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christine Baranski]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Abbott]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[George Balanchine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Irina Dvorvenko]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Joaquin De Luz]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Karen Ziemba]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Kelli Barrett]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lorenz Hart]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[On Your Toes]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Randy Skinner]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Richard Rodgers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rob Fisher]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Shonn Wiley]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Walter Bobbie]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Warren Carlyle]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539671</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;Do you think my music will still be played 100 years from now?&#8221; asks the young composer. &#8220;If you&#8217;re still around,&#8221; his music teacher sarcastically replies, &#8220;it will be.&#8221; This exchange is from On Your Toes, the 1936 show that brought together four Broadway legends: the songwriting team of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, librettist-director George Abbott, and choreographer George Balanchine. Seventy-seven years later, folks are still humming the show&#8217;s hit song &#8220;There&#8217;s a Small Hotel&#8221; and dozens of other Rodgers and Hart tunes. Will they still be played in 2036? If the world doesn&#8217;t blow up or go under, they will be. And if there&#8217;s any justice, Encores! will still be producing three concert revivals of Broadway musicals each year from now to infinity. Since 1994, at City Center on 55th Street, the musical theater&#8217;s brightest curators have mounted spiffy reboots that are usually among any season&#8217;s most appealing shows, new or vintage. Grand old films can be found on Turner Classic Movies and on thousands of DVDs, but a stage production dies on closing night. The mission and triumph of Encores! is to bring classic musicals back to life, as they were originally scored, with the finest contemporary directors and actor-singers as loving curators. Five of the series&#8217; 60 shows have featured Rodgers and Hart scores: Pal Joey (1995), The Boys from Syracuse (1997), Babes in Arms (1999), A Connecticut Yankee (2001) and, this week through Sunday, the delightful, dance-crazy On Your Toes. (READ: Bravo! Encores!) For its 20th anniversary, Encores! has looked back on its own history, and that of the giant Moorish mausoleum that houses it. The year&#8217;s first production, of the 1958 Fiorello!, was a revival of  a revival — of the musical that launched the series in 1994 — and a reminder that New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia had converted City Center in 1940 from a defaulted Shriners&#8217; hall into a theater for the performing arts. After a fresh production of the 1966 pop-art musical It&#8217;s a Bird&#8230;It&#8217;s a Plane&#8230;It&#8217;s Superman, Artistic Director Jack Viertel and the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539671&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/oyt.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">On Your Toes</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">Richard Corliss</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Neil Patrick Harris to Return as Tony Awards Host</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/09/neil-patrick-harris-to-return-as-tony-awards-host/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/09/neil-patrick-harris-to-return-as-tony-awards-host/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 09 May 2013 09:23:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Associated Press</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[NEW YORK (AP) — Neil Patrick Harris will be back for his fourth turn as host of the Tony Awards. The Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, joint producers of the show that honors the best of Broadway, said Thursday the 67th annual awards will be broadcast live by CBS from Radio City Music Hall on June 9. In a statement, Harris said he was excited to be back hosting the Tonys, adding: &#8220;The show will rock!&#8221; Harris previously hosted the Tonys last year and in 2011 and 2009. Last year&#8217;s telecast at the intimate Beacon Theatre was seen by 6 million viewers, down significantly from 2011&#8242;s 6.9 million. It was also the second-lowest ratings for the Tony Awards since 1988, though it was up against the season finale of AMC&#8217;s Mad Men. The 39-year-old Harris has starred in three Broadway productions, including Assassins, Proof, opposite Anne Heche, and as the exuberant master of ceremonies in Cabaret. He currently stars as dapper ladies&#8217; man Barney Stinson on CBS&#8217; sitcom hit How I Met Your Mother.<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539629&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/c6de3b8295045e0f310f6a706700b3a6.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Theater-Tony Host</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>Show Stoppers: A Brief History of Rude and Disruptive Behavior in Theater</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/06/show-stoppers-a-brief-history-of-theater-interruptus/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/05/06/show-stoppers-a-brief-history-of-theater-interruptus/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 06 May 2013 17:42:54 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lily Rothman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[broadway]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Daniel Craig]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Helen Mirren]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hugh Jackman]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Whoopi Goldberg]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3539253</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Last week, Helen Mirren won an Olivier Award—the West End&#8217;s most prestigious accolade—for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in the play The Audience. And during a weekend performance of the show, she gave an impromptu performance as a Queen not at all amused. As The Daily Telegraph reports, Dame Helen went outside at intermission to loudly scold a group of nearby drummers whose playing could be heard in the theater. (The drummers were parading to promote a May 26 gay festival called As One In The Park and had stopped right outside the stage door.) And yes, Mirren was dressed in full costume while she gave delivered her royal dressing-down. One of the parade organizers told the Telegraph that seeing Mirren as the Queen &#8220;cussing and swearing&#8221; was &#8220;a new one.&#8221; That may be so, but the circumstances aren&#8217;t that new at all. The pesky percussionists are part of a long-ish history of dramatic disturbances, one that is— not surprisingly—dominated by mobile phones. May 31, 2006: A cell phone goes off during a matinee of The History Boys on Broadway. The late Richard Griffiths—who had also shamed owners of ringing mobile phones during previous interruptions when the play ran in London—stops the show and starts a scene over from the beginning, warning the audience that he would only do so once. June 21, 2009: Patti LuPone, in concert in Las Vegas, sees someone in the audience taking pictures. She stops the show and asks what&#8217;s going on out there, but receives no response. And it&#8217;s not her first time at that particular rodeo: earlier in 2009, during a Broadway performance of Gypsy, she stopped the show when someone else tried to take a picture. Sept. 23, 2009: A cell phone goes off during a performance of A Steady Rain on Broadway&#8230;and, minutes later, goes off again. Stars Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig stop the play to admonish the offender—and the entire incident was caught on video. December 2011: While headlining in Richard III in Sydney, actor Kevin Spacey does double duty as noise enforcer: first, admonishing (while in character) the owner of a cell phone and, during a<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3539253&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/05/ta.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">The Audience</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">rothmanlily</media:title>
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		<title>Tony Noms: Our Critic&#8217;s Take (and the Complete List of Nominees)</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/30/tony-noms-our-critics-take-and-the-complete-list-of-nominees/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/30/tony-noms-our-critics-take-and-the-complete-list-of-nominees/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2013 16:45:07 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[tony awards]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tonys]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3538659</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The Tony Award nominations, announced this morning in New York City, set up a clear battle in the race for Best Musical of the season, between two popular, critically acclaimed but very different shows: Matilda: The Musical, the London import based on Roald Dahl’s children’s story, and Kinky Boots, the splashy homegrown show about a struggling shoe factory that tries to save itself by producing stilettos for drag-show entertainers. If not quite a competition between class and mass (both shows are doing sellout business at the box office), it’s an intriguing matchup between a traditional Broadway crowd-pleaser, and a more daring and somewhat darker family musical. Kinky nudged out Matilda in total nominations, 13 to 12, including two nods for Best Actor in a Musical — for stars Billy Porter (as the leading drag queen) and Stark Sands (as the shoe-factory owner), and one for Cyndi Lauper’s first Broadway score. Matilda grabbed three acting nominations, including one for its own drag queen, Bertie Carvel, who plays the sadistic headmistress who makes little Matilda’s life miserable. The two other nominees for Best Musical, Bring It On, and A Christmas Story, both of which have closed, don’t stand much of a chance. But they spoiled the evening for a couple of shows that had hopes of a nomination: Motown: The Musical, a jukebox show that is drawing big crowds (and picked up four nominations) and Hands on a Hardbody, the offbeat, country-flavored show about a dozen down-on-their-luck Texans competing to see who can keep their hands on a pickup truck the longest (which got three nominations). Two musical revivals also got a lot of love from the Tony nominators. Pippin — a new version of the Bob Fosse show, reconceived as an acrobatic spectacle by director Diane Paulus — got 10 nominations, and  Rodgers &#38; Hammerstein’s Cinderella — originally done for television but making its first appearance Broadway — garnered  9. They’ll compete in the Best Revival category with Annie (which, surprisingly, snagged only a single nomination) and The Mystery of Edwin Drood (which got 5). In the acting categories, the focus as usual was on the snubs. Chief among them was the absence of Bette Midler,<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3538659&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/kb.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Kinky Boots</media:title>
		</media:content>

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			<media:title type="html">niennunb</media:title>
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		<item>
		<title>&#8216;Kinky Boots&#8217; Gets a Leading 13 Tony Award Nods</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/30/kinky-boots-gets-a-leading-13-tony-award-nods/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/30/kinky-boots-gets-a-leading-13-tony-award-nods/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:32:42 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Associated Press</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3538661</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[(NEW YORK) — The Cyndi Lauper-scored &#8220;Kinky Boots&#8221; has earned a leading 13 Tony Award nominations, with the British import &#8220;Matilda: The Musical&#8221; close behind with 12. Tom Hanks, making his Broadway debut, earned a nod as leading man in a play. &#8220;Kinky Boots&#8221; is based on the 2005 British movie about a real-life shoe factory that struggles until it finds new life in fetish footwear. Lauper&#8217;s songs and a story by Harvey Fierstein have made it a crowd-pleaser. &#8220;I walked my dog early this morning so I&#8217;d be back in time to listen to the announcement. It&#8217;s so great. It&#8217;s so great. I&#8217;m done crying a little bit. But I&#8217;m still thrilled and a little stunned,&#8221; Lauper said. The haul did not match the record number of nominations for a musical, which is 15, set by &#8220;The Producers&#8221; in 2001 and &#8220;Billy Elliot&#8221; in 2009. &#8220;The Book of Mormon&#8221; nabbed 14 Tony nods in 2011. In addition to Hanks, the leading actor in a play nominees are Nathan Lane for &#8220;The Nance,&#8221; Tracy Letts from &#8220;Who&#8217;s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?&#8221;, David Hyde Pierce from &#8220;Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike&#8221; and Tom Sturridge from &#8220;Orphans.&#8221; (MORE: The Tony Awards 2012: Best and Worst Moments from Theater’s Biggest Night) &#8220;Matilda: The Musical&#8221; is a witty musical adaptation of the novel by Roald Dahl and is true to his bleak vision of childhood as a savage battleground. Both &#8220;Kinky Boots&#8221; and &#8220;Matilda&#8221; will compete for the best musical prize with the acrobatic &#8220;Bring It On: The Musical&#8221; and &#8220;A Christmas Story, The Musical,&#8221; adapted from the beloved holiday movie. Among the flurry of nominations, &#8220;Kinky Boots&#8221; also earned Fierstein a nod for best book, David Rockwell got one for sets, Jerry Mitchell for directing and for choreography, and nominations for its two leading men, Billy Porter and Stark Sands. Annaleigh Ashford earned a featured role nomination. &#8220;Matilda&#8221; earned nominations for choreography, Matthew Warchus&#8217; directing, Chris Nightingale&#8217;s orchestrations, best book by Dennis Kelly, Tim Minchin for lyrics and songs, and Bertie<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3538661&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/kb.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Kinky Boots</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
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		<title>Musical of Rocky Heading to Broadway</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/29/musical-of-rocky-heading-to-broadway/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/29/musical-of-rocky-heading-to-broadway/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 29 Apr 2013 15:11:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>AP / Mark Kennedy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[broadway]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rocky]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3538540</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[NEW YORK (AP) — It&#8217;s been a knockout in Germany. Now Sylvester Stallone hopes a musical based on his beloved boxing film Rocky will also be a hit on Broadway. Producers said Sunday they plan to get Rocky up and punching at the Winter Garden by February following a successful debut in Hamburg last fall. Based on the Oscar-winning 1976 film, the musical features a score by Ragtime veterans Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, and a story by Thomas Meehan, who wrote The Producers and Hairspray. Originally written in English but translated into German for its world premiere and billed as Rocky: Das Musical, the show is produced by Stallone and Stage Entertainment USA. (MORE: TIME&#8217;s original review of Rocky) &#8220;The reason I think it has worked so well there and why I think it&#8217;ll work on Broadway is that, yes, it&#8217;s a story about boxing, but the real story is actually an intimate, powerful and gritty and moving love story between two people who are both lonely and in a difficult place in their worlds,&#8221; said Bill Taylor, managing director of Stage Entertainment USA. &#8220;They rescue each other. It&#8217;s very uplifting.&#8221; The musical stays close to the film, which charted the rise and romance of amateur boxer and debt collector Rocky Balboa, played in Germany by Drew Sarich. No casting has been decided for New York. In the story, Balboa, nicknamed the Italian Stallion, gets his shot against undefeated heavyweight champion Apollo Creed, played in the film by Carl Weathers. He also woos a love interest, Adrianna &#8220;Adrian&#8221; Pennino. Stallone wrote the screenplay and it won the best picture Oscar in 1976. The film made famous the image of Balboa running up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the quote &#8220;Yo, Adrian!&#8221; The German production kept the trumpet-laden funky theme &#8220;Gonna Fly Now&#8221; and the anthem &#8220;Eye of the Tiger,&#8221; written for &#8220;Rocky III.&#8221; Both will also be in the Broadway version. (MORE: 10 Questions for Sylvester Stallone) The director is Alex Timbers, who directed Broadway&#8217;s The Pee-wee Herman Show and directed and wrote<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3538540&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><letterbox>1</letterbox><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/theater-rocky_lim.jpg?w=235</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Image: Rocky the Musical</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">timeassociatedpress</media:title>
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		<title>Macbeth, Mary and Midler: Solo Turns on Broadway</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/25/macbeth-mary-and-midler-solo-turns-on-broadway/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/25/macbeth-mary-and-midler-solo-turns-on-broadway/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:45:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Alan Cumming]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Bette Midler]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Fiona Shaw]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3538220</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[One actor alone onstage — not necessarily my idea of a good time at the theater. Yet one-person shows continue to have enormous appeal: for actors (the ultimate ego trip), for producers (less expensive to stage), and very often for critics, who find it hard to resist a showboating star. I usually do, but two extraordinary new solo shows on Broadway have almost revived my faith in the genre. A third, not so much. The Irish actress Fiona Shaw and director Deborah Warner have collaborated on on adventurous solo pieces several times before. Some of them, like their adaptation of T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, I found pretty hard going. But their latest, The Testament of Mary — the Virgin Mary, in a monologue imagined by Irish novelist Colm Toibin — is both an absorbing piece of theater and a challenging work of theological inquiry. Toibin’s take on the religious icon is revisionist without being dismissive (which hasn’t stopped at least one Catholic group from calling it “blasphemous”). His goal is to strip away the Biblical iconography and speculate on what the mother of Jesus might have been like in the real world — to separate the human from the holy. His Mary is not the mother of God, but the mother of a man; she’s grief-stricken, sardonic, suspicious of her son’s followers (“misfits,” she calls them), skeptical of his divinity. Her narrative is fragmented and impressionistic, but with two moving extended passages: her haunting account of the raising of Lazarus from the dead (a miracle that she views as transgressive and dangerous) and the Crucifixion itself, rendered in language as graphic and harrowing as any I’ve encountered on stage. Shaw, donning a drab brown cloak and wandering in an abstract, Beckett-like landscape (a ladder, an uprooted tree, an empty birdcage, rolls of barbed wire) gives a titanic performance: earthy, poetic, brutally honest (she strips naked at one point, climbing into her bath), so intense it leaves you exhausted. In her many classic roles, ranging from Medea to Hedda Gabler, Shaw has sometimes struck<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3538220&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/fs.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Image: Fiona Shaw</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">niennunb</media:title>
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		<title>The Nance: Gay Burlesque and Straight Plays</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/17/the-nance-gay-burlesque-and-straight-plays/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/17/the-nance-gay-burlesque-and-straight-plays/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 17 Apr 2013 09:45:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Nathan Lane]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Nance]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tom Hanks]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3537511</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When people ask me how the theater season is going, I can, for once, be honestly upbeat. One great musical, Matilda, and several very good off-Broadway plays, among them Amy Herzog’s Belleville and Annie Baker’s oddly riveting three-hour slice of cinema-house verite, The Flick — that’s plenty to get excited about. Still, there is one glaring hole that has become endemic to the New York theater scene: the lack of any good straight plays on Broadway.   The difficulties faced by non-musicals on Broadway are built into the system. For a play to have a viable chance of success with mainstream audiences, it generally needs one of three things. The first is a bankable star — usually starring in something closer to an actor’s vehicle than a full-bodied play. Hence this season’s Lucky Guy, with Tom Hanks as New York newspaper columnist Mike McAlary, and the upcoming I’ll Eat You Last, a one-woman show with Bette Midler playing the late Hollywood talent agent Sue Mengers. In lieu of a star, you must have laughs. Exhibit A this season is Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike, the unaccountably popular new comedy by Christopher Durang. I was left totally cold by the relentless stream of one-liners and frantic overacting in Durang’s amped-up family comedy, with strains (very strained) of Chekhov. But audiences are roaring, critics are swooning, and, given the typically weak competition, the play probably has the inside track for top Tony awards. The third kind of play that can occasionally make it on Broadway is one geared to a reliable theatergoing constituency. Thus, we have Richard Greenberg’s new play Assembled Parties, a scattered and unconvincing comedy-drama about an Upper West Side Jewish family, aimed squarely at those Upper West Side Jewish theatergoers (and their relatives in Westchester County) who used to congregate at Neil Simon comedies. And then there is Douglas Carter Beane’s new play The Nance. Actually, The Nance has all three things going for it. Set in 1930s New York City, it revolves around a gay stage performer who plays a mincing gay caricature— a “nance” — in burlesque. His onstage<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3537511&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/n.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Image: The Nance</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">niennunb</media:title>
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		<title>Matilda: The Best Musical Since The Lion King</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/11/matilda-the-best-musical-since-the-lion-king/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/11/matilda-the-best-musical-since-the-lion-king/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 12 Apr 2013 03:00:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Matilda]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Roald Dahl]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[The Lion King]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3536949</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[ “My Mummy says I’m a miracle!” sings the first child to appear onstage, in the opening number of Matilda: The Musical. He’s quickly joined by more kids, all singing about how their parents treat them like princes and angels and Daddy’s “special little guy.” The delicious irony, of course, is that they’re a bunch of brats, and Matilda, the precocious four-year-old who outshines them all, has been sentenced to the two most neglectful, self-absorbed parents on earth. Her pompadour-haired Dad can’t even get it through his thick skull that she’s a girl. The real miracle, though, is not Matilda, but Matilda, the wondrous new musical from London that has just arrived on Broadway. It would be easy to call it the best British musical since Billy Elliot, but that, I’m afraid, would be underselling it. You have to go back to The Lion King to find a show with as much invention, spirit and genre-redefining verve. After plugging through years of slick but workmanlike musicals, crowd-pleasing song cycles and formulaic spirit-lifters (latest example: Kinky Boots), Matilda seems to clear away the deadwood and announce a fresh start for the Broadway musical. The Royal Shakespeare Company production is based on Roald Dahl’s famous children’s story, about a little girl who reads Dickens before most kids can spell, glues her father’s hat to his head, and battles injustices with a little talent for moving objects with her eyes. It’s a children’s story, to be sure, but with its jaundiced satire of good family values and deep understanding of the anxieties of both kids and grown-ups, there isn’t a more adult show on Broadway. Dennis Kelly’s book stays true to the spirit, and most of the details, of Dahl’s story, while adding some new trimmings. Matilda’s dad (the hilarious Gabriel Ebert) is a sleazy car dealer who turns back the speedometers on the junkers he sells to gullible Russians. Mom (Lesli Margherita) is a peroxide-blonde dimwit who travels the world to compete in amateur dance contests. Matilda’s chief nemesis, however, is the sadistic, hammer-throwing headmistress Miss Trunchbull — played, as in London, by Bertie<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3536949&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/matilda.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Image: Matilda the Musical</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">niennunb</media:title>
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		<title>Fastest-Closing New Broadway Musical of the Year: Hands on a Hardbody</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/09/fastest-closing-new-broadway-musical-of-the-year-hands-on-a-hardbody/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/09/fastest-closing-new-broadway-musical-of-the-year-hands-on-a-hardbody/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 09 Apr 2013 16:46:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Lily Rothman</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hands on a Hardbody]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Musical]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3536700</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Hands on a Hardbody did seem like an unlikely Broadway musical: based on a documentary of the same name and with music by Phish&#8217;s Trey Anastasio, it&#8217;s the story of some down-on-their-luck individuals who enter a gimmicky contest to win a truck. Though he thought the title would be a hard sell to audiences unfamiliar with the true story behind the show, TIME&#8217;s Richard Zoglin deemed it &#8220;a surprisingly engaging little show&#8221; and &#8220;fully road-worthy.&#8221; (MORE: TIME Reviews Hands on a Hardbody) Still, it seems few were willing to take it for a test-drive: the producers recently announced that the show will close on Saturday, Apr. 13, with just 56 performances—28 of them previews—under its fan belt. As the Associated Press reports, that move will earn the show the dubious distinction of being the fastest-closing new musical of the season. (A Broadway year is measured differently from a calendar year, encompassing the period of eligibility for the Tony Awards. This year the 2012-13 season ends on Apr. 25, the date by which a show must official open in order to qualify for a nomination—and, with that cut-off looming so close, the Hands record is unlikely to be broken.) So was it the tricky-title curse that did the generally well-received show in? The New York Times suggests that another factor may be this season&#8217;s glut of grabby musicals opening around the same time, from Kinky Boots to Pippin to Matilda. There&#8217;s been no word on how much it cost producers to put Hands on a Hardbody together—though the New York Post, which saw this closing coming, suggests that it&#8217;s about $450,000 a week—but statistics over at Entertainment Weekly show that the traditionally Broadway-friendly Easter holiday did increase sales at Hands on a Hardbody for the last week of March&#8230;to a modest $321,043, about a third of the money it could have made during that week and more than $100,000 short of a profit. (On the other hand, that&#8217;s enough to buy about 50 new Nissan hardbody pickup trucks.)<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3536700&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hoah.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Image: Hands on a Hard Body</media:title>
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			<media:title type="html">rothmanlily</media:title>
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		<title>Lucky Guy: A Broadway Debut for Tom Hanks</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/04/lucky-guy-a-broadway-debut-for-tom-hanks/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/04/04/lucky-guy-a-broadway-debut-for-tom-hanks/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Apr 2013 09:45:16 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3535836</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[When he makes his first appearance onstage, Tom Hanks acknowledges the inevitable burst of applause with a little wink and a nod to the audience. It’s a friendly, self-conscious, out-of-character gesture — but an appropriate one. Hanks, the Hollywood star making his Broadway debut, is, after all, the reason Nora Ephron’s new play Lucky Guy, about New York City newspaper columnist Mike McAlary, made it to Broadway in the first place. What’s more, his chummy acknowledgement of his fans is perfectly in keeping with Ephron’s biographical drama — which is less a play than a series of barroom stories about one of the city&#8217;s most colorful journalists. McAlary was a brusque, streetwise reporter and columnist for (at one time or another) three different Gotham tabloids who broke stories of police corruption, won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the brutal police interrogation of Abner Louima and died of colon cancer in 1998 at age 41. Ephron, the journalist-novelist-filmmaker who herself died last year of cancer, originally wanted to make McAlary’s life story into a movie. She reported it like a good magazine story, and the material is rich enough for a brisk, book-length biography. (PHOTOS: Tom Hanks: America&#8217;s Chronicler-in-Chief) But here it is on Broadway, a little uneasily. Much of the story is told, not shown — narrated by McAlary and various characters he crossed paths with, speaking directly to the audience. Chunks of dialogue simply mean nothing without any scenes to illustrate them (“He started out a little shaky at the News, but then he found a rhythm”). Cast members argue, cutely, over who gets to tell certain pieces of the story. After one character finishes a scene, she turns to the audience and says, “By the way, that is the end of me in this story,” before exiting the play, stage right. Lucky Guy mostly wins us over in spite of all this, thanks to Ephron’s genuine love of her subject and her solid grounding in the nuts-and-bolts details of the world she chronicled. We’ve had so many amped-up, overglamorized versions of the<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3535836&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/lg.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Image: Lucky Guy</media:title>
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		<title>Hands on a Hardbody: Broadway’s New Pickup</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/27/hands-on-a-hardbody-broadways-new-pickup/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/27/hands-on-a-hardbody-broadways-new-pickup/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:00:17 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hands on a Hardbody]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3535192</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Imagine you’re trying to sell Broadway audiences on a new musical about a group of people competing to see which one of them can stand touching a pickup truck the longest.  Would you really want to call it Hands on a Hardbody? To be sure, that’s the name of the movie on which the show is based — a 1997 documentary that chronicled the bizarre contest run as a marketing gimmick by a Nissan dealer in Texas. But it’s hardly a recognizable brand name, or any kind of selling point. Was Pickup! The Musical taken? Still, once you get past the worst title in recent Broadway memory, and the realization that, yes, this really is a musical about people standing around a truck, Hands on a Hardbody is a surprisingly engaging little show. Developed at California’s La Jolla Playhouse, it has a fairly predictable book (by Doug Wright): 10 contestants, each of whom gets a soul-baring musical number, before being dispatched, Ten Little Indians-style, until just one is left. But it captures a working-class milieu with the sort of authenticity and empathy that you rarely find in a Broadway musical. Trey Anastasio, front man of the jam-band Phish, and lyricist Amanda Green have contributed a flavorful country-Western score that is tuneful, well integrated and evocative of the setting. And choreographer Sergio Trujillo had found inventive ways to keep the stage active, despite the obvious restrictions. He cheats only once, in a fantasy number in which a UPS worker and a laid-off stockroom clerk float away from the truck to bond over their dead-end jobs and sing about their dreams. (But, hey, rules are rules: when all the contestants pound the truck as rhythm accompaniment to the big gospel number, I thought the refs were going to disqualify every one of them.) (READ: A review of Trey Anastasio&#8217;s album Traveler) If I feel more kindly toward Hands on a Hardbody than I did to the quirky “little” musical of last season, Once, it’s probably because I haven’t seen the movie on<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3535192&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/hoah.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Image: Hands on a Hard Body</media:title>
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		<title>Cinderella Then and Now: Revisiting Rodgers and Hammerstein</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/13/cinderella-then-and-now-revisiting-rodgers-and-hammerstein/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/13/cinderella-then-and-now-revisiting-rodgers-and-hammerstein/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 13 Mar 2013 11:00:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3533743</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Seeing the new Broadway version of Cinderella was, for this musical-theater fan, a rare virgin experience. Rodgers and Hammerstein wrote the musical for television back in 1957 (nearly six years after their most recent Broadway hit, The King and I). Broadcast live on CBS, with Julie Andrews in the starring role, it was watched by more people than any TV show in history up to that point — but never rerun. Two more TV versions followed (one in 1965 with Lesley Ann Warren, and another in 1997 with the pop singer Brandy), along with a few stage incarnations, including a 1958 London version and a New York City Opera production in the 1990s.  But this Rodgers &#38; Hammerstein classic is new to Broadway  — and to me. Directed by Mark Brokaw, with a revamped book by Douglas Carter Beane, Broadway’s new Cinderella is an enjoyable show: brightly colored, high spirited and well sung. Laura Osnes (who won a TV competition to star in Broadway’s 2007 revival of Grease, but has since proven to be more than a reality-show flash in the pan) is a fetching, if a little generic, Cinderella, and Santino Fontana puts just enough tongue in his cheek as the Prince. The production is opulent without being overwhelming: Cinderella’s transformation from rags to ball gown is done with some clever stage sleight-of-hand that I can’t even explain. The score may not be A-1 Rodgers &#38; Hammerstein, but it’s still better than almost anything else around. The songs are warm, tuneful and less simple than they might appear, from the major-minor key changes in Cinderella’s solo, “My Own Little Corner,” to the feisty comic number “Stepsister’s Lament,” which offers a wry counterpoint to the fairy-tale romance:   “Why would a fellow want a girl like her/ A girl who’s merely lovely / Why can’t a fellow ever once prefer / A girl who’s merely me.” As for Douglas Carter Beane’s updated book — well, it could be worse. The classic fairy tale has been bolstered with all sorts of psychological and political background.  The cruel stepmother (Harriet Harris) bad-mouths Cinderella’s father<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3533743&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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	<primary_category>Theater</primary_category><primary_category_link>http://entertainment.time.com/category/fine-arts/theater/</primary_category_link><featured_image>http://timeentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/wp163054033.jpg?w=240</featured_image>
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			<media:title type="html">Cinderella on Broadway</media:title>
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		<title>Down and Out in Paris: Amy Herzog&#8217;s Belleville</title>
		<link>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/06/down-and-out-in-paris-amy-herzogs-belleville/</link>
		<comments>http://entertainment.time.com/2013/03/06/down-and-out-in-paris-amy-herzogs-belleville/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 06 Mar 2013 13:00:15 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Richard Zoglin</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Fine Arts]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Theater]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://entertainment.time.com/?p=3533085</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Amy Herzog’s play Belleville opens with a scream. Abby, an American expatriate living in Paris, comes back from a yoga class to find her doctor husband, Zack, unexpectedly home from work and passing the time in the bedroom with online porn. She utters a quick shriek when she sees him, but soon composes herself, as they both try to cover up the embarrassment and get back to carrying on with their lives. Those lives seem a little precarious from the start. They have moved to a working-class neighborhood in Paris so that Zack, who has just graduated medical school, can take a job doing AIDS research. Abby is not adapting well to the new surroundings. She has dropped her French classes because the teacher made fun of her accent. She misses her family terribly, especially now that her sister is about to deliver her first child. Even the yoga class she teaches is little consolation; she’s home early because nobody showed up. Herzog, a 34-year-old graduate of the Yale School of Drama, is a connoisseur of dislocation, a sympathetic chronicler of the tenuous hold we have on our ordered lives and comforting beliefs. No one currently writing for the theater has a sharper grasp of character, or more sheer storytelling technique. Her plays revolve around secrets being revealed — the illusions about her left-wing family in her semi-autobiographical first play, After the Revolution; the story behind a young man’s sudden appearance at his grandmother’s doorstep after a cross-country bike trip in 4000 Miles; a journalist who discovers that he may, or may not, have been sexually abused as a child in The Great God Pan.  But the revelations emerge naturally, through pitch-perfect dialogue, rather than being imposed by the demands of plot, or force-fed to serve an author’s ideas or agenda. Herzog’s handiwork is all the more impressive for how unobtrusive it is. The sense of unease in Abby and Zack’s life mounts gradually. Their Senegalese landlord, with whom Zack shares pot, presses him quietly, but with growing urgency, to pay the four months of back rent<img alt="" border="0" src="http://stats.wordpress.com/b.gif?host=entertainment.time.com&#038;blog=24659518&#038;post=3533085&#038;subd=timeentertainment&#038;ref=&#038;feed=1" width="1" height="1" />]]></description>
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			<media:title type="html">Belleville</media:title>
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