Time Out New York, and about the Extended Dates...
First off, if you're having trouble getting to the extended performances, try again later. Not worth going into the details, but the new performances should be available for purchase today or tomorrow.
Second off, a little writeup in this week's Time Out New York:
Musicals just ain't what they used to be--and the 30 shows featured in this year's New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) testify to the expanding range of the genre. Many do hew to the tried and true: a Shakespeare adaptation, a teenybopper romance. But others tackle subjects that defy expectations in potentially funny ways, hopefully demonstrating that musicals needn't just be what they were.
Keeping an eye out
Children are the victims, not the predators, in Oedipus for Kids!, which twistedly imagines a children's-theater troupe's misguided efforts to foist Sophocles' incest tragedy on unsuspecting tykes. (Among the company's previous efforts: Titus Andronicus Bakes a Cake.) "What you're watching is a real-time presentation," says librettist Gil Varod, who co-wrote the book with Kimberly Patterson (to music by Robert J. Saferstein). "The conceit is that the audience members are the kids and their mommies and daddies." But when the actors rebel against their artistic director's vision, things get blindingly ugly. "The play goes down a Charybdis-like whirlpool of suck," Varod notes. "It gets to the point where it's just tasteless--which you don't find in enough musicals these days."
Second off, a little writeup in this week's Time Out New York:
Musicals just ain't what they used to be--and the 30 shows featured in this year's New York Musical Theatre Festival (NYMF) testify to the expanding range of the genre. Many do hew to the tried and true: a Shakespeare adaptation, a teenybopper romance. But others tackle subjects that defy expectations in potentially funny ways, hopefully demonstrating that musicals needn't just be what they were.
Keeping an eye out
Children are the victims, not the predators, in Oedipus for Kids!, which twistedly imagines a children's-theater troupe's misguided efforts to foist Sophocles' incest tragedy on unsuspecting tykes. (Among the company's previous efforts: Titus Andronicus Bakes a Cake.) "What you're watching is a real-time presentation," says librettist Gil Varod, who co-wrote the book with Kimberly Patterson (to music by Robert J. Saferstein). "The conceit is that the audience members are the kids and their mommies and daddies." But when the actors rebel against their artistic director's vision, things get blindingly ugly. "The play goes down a Charybdis-like whirlpool of suck," Varod notes. "It gets to the point where it's just tasteless--which you don't find in enough musicals these days."
Oedipus for Kids! plays as part of the