Latest news with #TheLadyoftheCamellias
Boston Globe
21-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Pamela Anderson takes on a complicated Tennessee Williams role in ‘Camino Real'
The cast member in question, of course, was The play in question was 'Camino Real,' by Advertisement Dylan's 'Desolation Row' meets Fellini's 'La Strada' in 'Camino Real.' There's not much of a plot; Williams was after the kind of effects that might be lost within a linear storyline. It takes place in what is described as 'a police state in an imagined Latin-Mediterranean-American country.' The often pell-mell action unfolds in a courtyard. On one side is a luxury hotel, presided over by the heartless Gutman (Vin Knight), who periodically emerges onto a balcony to portentously announce the next scene. On the other is Skid Row, where all is struggle. With a large cast directed by Dustin Wills, 'Camino Real' is a visually arresting fantasia populated with original characters and figures from literature whom Williams saw, in their creativity and individuality, as kindred spirits. They include Don Quixote (Frankie J. Alvarez); Sancho Panza (Emma Ramos); Lord Byron (Ato Blankson-Wood); Casanova (Bruce McKenzie); the Hunchback of Notre Dame (Ryan Shinji); and Esmeralda (Whitney Peak), also from the Victor Hugo novel. Advertisement They register less as characters than as apparitions, or as the figures from a dream. Anderson plays Marguerite Gautier, the courtesan from Alexander Dumas's 'The Lady of the Camellias.' (The character is best known today from Greta Garbo's portrayal in the 1936 film 'Camille.') Hearing Anderson was an issue at Sunday's matinee. She failed to project many of her lines. Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising. Though she played Roxie Hart in 'Chicago' on Broadway in 2022, Anderson has spent most of her career on TV or in film, where vocal projection is much less of an issue. Director Wills needs to remind her of the need to, as they say, hit the back wall of the theater. Anderson proved up to the other challenges of a role that requires her to operate at a perpetual fever pitch of hysteria and, in one scene, repeatedly run back and forth across the stage while barefoot. Into this confusing world steps the idealistic Kilroy (Nicholas Alexander Chavez), a wholesome Jack Armstrong-type who's a former prizefighter. His red boxing gloves are slung over his shoulders, and his prowess in the ring is made plain by the 'CHAMP' belt he wears. Later, Kilroy will be forced to don a clown suit and a bulbous red nose. Kilroy is, essentially, a test case, the answer to the question of whether one can hold on to one's finer qualities amid degradation. 'Camino Real' occupies an interesting place in the Williams oeuvre. It was more stylistically daring than the plays that made his reputation. It was a rare flop in the middle of his exceptional hot streak and the commercial success that came with it. It followed 'The Glass Menagerie' (1944), 'A Streetcar Named Desire' (1947) and 'The Rose Tattoo' (1950), and came not long before 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' (1955.) Advertisement When it premiered on Broadway in 1953, directed by frequent Williams collaborator Elia Kazan, 'Camino Real' ran for only 60 performances, A 1970 revival starring a pre-Michael Corleone Al Pacino as Kilroy was likewise short-lived, closing after 13 previews and 52 performances. In 1999, when he was artistic director of Williamstown Theatre Festival, Nicholas Martin directed a production of 'Camino Real' that starred Ethan Hawke as Kilroy. That's part of the value of regional theater: It can prolong the life of a play, no matter how it fared in New York, or rediscover a forgotten play that deserves to be seen. In this case, it also enables theatergoers to get a fuller idea of a major playwright's creative imagination, and ponder what Williams was trying to say, beyond the same handful of classics. Broadly speaking, 'Camino Real' registers as a battle between self-expression and innocence on the one hand and suppression and corruption on the other. The Williamstown production leans into the comedy at the expense of the terror. 'Camino Real' was a deeply personal matter for Williams, and he was saddened by its failure on Broadway. But later, he gained perspective, writing to drama critic Brooks Atkinson, 'The work was done for exactly what it has gained: a communion with people.' CAMINO REAL Play by Tennessee Williams. Directed by Dustin Wills. Presented by Williamstown Theatre Festival. At MainStage Theatre, Williamstown. Through Aug. 3. Tickets $35-$130. At 413-458-3253 or Advertisement Don Aucoin can be reached at
Korea Herald
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Korea Herald
Neumeier's ‘Camellias' to bloom again in Seoul as its ‘best version yet'
Drama ballet that earned Kang Sue-jin her Benois de la Danse premieres in May Legendary choreographer John Neumeier's 'The Lady of the Camellias,' with which ballerina Kang Sue-jin became the first Asian dancer to win the Benois de la Danse award in 1999, will take the stage at the Seoul Arts Center, May 7-11. Neumeier and Kang, artistic director of The Korean National Ballet, have come together to create 'the best possible version of this ballet that we can see right now.' 'Ballet is an art of life,' said Neumeier during a press conference held Tuesday at the Seoul Arts Center. 'I have never imagined I would just revive a work. I must recreate a work for it to have value, for it to have life. Without a living (element), it becomes some kind of moving museum.' Based on Alexandre Dumas fils' 1848 novel of the same title, the ballet tells the tragic love story of Marguerite, a courtesan, and Armand Duval, a young bourgeois, set in 19th-century Paris. Premiered in 1978 for the Stuttgart Ballet, Neumeier's 'The Lady of Camellias' sought to break away from traditional narrative ballet structures. 'At that time, I was searching for a new kind of full-length ballet, one that was different from 19th-century works. (The novel) has a sense of overlapping realities, visions and points of view — similar to the technique of modern cinema.' The production by the KNB marks the first time a full-length version of the ballet will be performed by an Asian company. And its arrival in Korea holds particular significance for Kang. ''The Lady of the Camellias' is very special to me. It expresses love, sacrifice and the deep emotions of human nature through the language of ballet,' she said. 'I have truly loved this work, and as artistic director, I have poured my heart into bringing it to the (Korean) stage. I am happy to pass on this ballet, which I have cherished, to the next generation of dancers.' A former principal dancer with the Stuttgart Ballet, Kang has long been immersed in Neumeier's world. During a rehearsal, she stepped in to demonstrate scenes alongside her longtime stage partner Marijn Rademaker. 'During this process, I was surprised to find that the movements and emotions of this piece are still alive in my body, my mind and my heart,' she said. 'It felt as if the moments I once danced on stage were returning to life.' Neumeier praised the commitment of Kang and her company. 'The Korean National Ballet has given complete cooperation, complete understanding and complete desire to realize this work as the best it can be,' he said. His collaboration with the company began last year with 'The Little Mermaid.' That earlier experience, he said, was essential groundwork, because this ballet not only depends on the two main characters but rather on a balance between all of the 10 characters of the piece — all of whom must be technically and emotionally on the same level. 'It was important for me, in working with the Korean National Ballet, to have an experience before 'The Lady of the Camellias.' So that I would be able to know this company better, be able to judge a balance within a cast.' Each rehearsal, for him, is a process of discovery. 'I always find something new — some detail, some truth — which I try to give to the dancers,' he said. 'I am alive, which means every hour, every minute I work with dancers, I discover new truths. I couldn't possibly explain them all to you. There's nothing extraordinary about it, but for me, dance is the living shape of emotion. There is a constant sense of learning and discovering.'
Washington Post
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
The turbulent beauty of art nouveau is still all over culture
There is no train in 'Monaco • Monte-Carlo.' The railway ad instead pictures a woman, poised at the shore's edge. Encircled in rings of carmine- and blush-tinged blossoms, she looks up, hands held in wonder, her lips cherry red. Anticipation swells in the Alphonse Mucha poster, in the liquid folds of a satin skirt, in the stirring of plans unformed. This is not the world as it is, but as it could be. Mucha, the subject of a Phillips Collection survey, was a student of the world. As a child in Moravia, in the present-day Czech Republic, he spent his days poring over 'flowers, the neighbours' dogs and horses,' noting every curve and flourish, as he wrote years later. 'I tried not only to depict them, but also to preserve them.' Mucha's sketches are nimble, some ecstatic. One, of a man at rest in a high-backed chair, is impossibly fluid, his coiled mustache and tousled hair a flurry of razor-sharp slashes. His pastel 'Holy Night' is a furious study of cornflower and powder blues, veiled by a web of tissue-paper-thin streaks. Mucha examined life closely, intensely. He was, artist Charles Matlack Price observed, 'the most perfect and painstaking draftsman.' Mucha was a close observer of the world, drawing out the strange and fantastical. Art should project 'moral harmonies,' he professed; it should 'know how to charm.' In his pictures, he didn't bother with facial details. More interesting to him was capturing the movement, the verve of his subjects, suffusing them with luster. In one picture, he swapped out an actress's short, red curls for cascading blond tresses; in another, he elongated a model's fingers, coiling them around a fluted bouquet. His work is all affect, made 'to glorify beauty,' he said, to awaken the soul. This movement — the sweeping lines, rich patterning and swirling ornamentation — became an instantly recognizable element of art nouveau, the style Mucha helped lead to lasting popularity through 20th-century commercial art, global comics and counterculture. As an illustrator in fin de siècle Paris, Mucha saw his images reach wide audiences, especially images featuring the beloved French actress Sarah Bernhardt. His theater posters are wide awake. In one, for the Alexandre Dumas play 'The Lady of the Camellias,' he set Bernhardt against a violet ground, dappled with pearl-gray stars. As the title courtesan, she is forced to give up her lover, her death all but inevitable. She turns away, enveloped in cream-colored blooms. In 'Lorenzaccio,' Bernhardt is still more withdrawn. Draped in billowing opals, she is Lorenzo de' Medici, who kills the tyrant of Florence. Bernhardt here is steely, lost in thought before a gilded archway, a mint-green dragon snaked about her. Each captures what Mucha called the 'particular magic of her movements,' Bernhardt's sinuous lines and chilly, spellbinding gaze. There's much to gaze at in Mucha's pictures. Take 'Zodiac,' a woman in profile, glittering in syrupy crimson, teal and eggshell, her hair a spiral of copper. (Mucha was especially fond of redheads, writing in a 1908 article, 'A man admires a red-haired woman for the same reason that he papers the walls of his bachelor apartment red … because red is his favorite color.') He was unguarded, his work brimming with periwinkle-blue diadems and whirling arabesques, his studio overgrown with rococo tables and grand palms. The effect is thrilling, if slightly manic. He once lamented, 'I never had time to finish the work.' That energy carried over to Mucha's classroom. He was an in-demand teacher and charmer, earning 'a reputation as a kind of joker,' a student recalled. 'We had a circus.' His philosophy was simple: Art should stir the viewer, inviting them to a higher plane. The idea recurs in the show in a French-blue Grateful Dead cover — of a skeleton, crowned with bloodred rosettes — and a Pink Floyd print — of a castle floating through a scarlet- and yellow-soaked sky — the pictures at once conjuring and falling short of the Czech master. Mucha saw his work as a reprieve. People 'needed to breathe fresh air,' he maintained, 'to quench their thirst for beauty.' That splendor, edged in Mucha's prints with sumptuous brocades and rubies, may be what's missing from some of his many followers. As one pupil said, 'There are few who have been on this Earth like Mucha.' Phillips Collection, 1600 21st St., NW. 202-387-2151. Dates: Through May 18. Prices: $20; $15 for seniors; $12 for military personnel; $10 for students and teachers; free for members and visitors 18 and under. Admission is pay-what-you-wish daily from 4 p.m. to closing. On the third Thursday of the month, the museum stays open until 8 p.m. and admission is free after 4 p.m.
