Maria Aitken Brings Family Fun to THE COCKTAIL HOUR

Our relationship with director Maria Aitken goes back to 2007 with her production of Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, which moved on to Broadway and ran for nearly 800 performances. Fortunately she appears to reciprocate our love, and we've since brought her back to the Huntington for critically acclaimed productions of Educating Rita (2011), Private Lives and Betrayal (2012). At the first rehearsal for Private Lives, Maria even quipped that she "might as well toss a mattress in the corner of the rehearsal room and stay here for a while*." We're ecstatic to welcome her back to our stage once again to present A.R. Gurney's The Cocktail Hour this season.

Outside of work as a director, Maria is an accomplished comedienne, having appeared in more Noël Coward plays than any other actress, and we're excited to have her bring that unique sensibility to The Cocktail Hour. The play tells the story of a playwright named John, who interrupts his parents' daily cocktail hour ritual to announce that he has written a pseudo-autobiographical about the family. Naturally, this news is received with mixed reactions -- and lots of alcohol. The play is a thinly-veiled allegory for playwright A.R. Gurney's actual relationship with his family, to the point that he promised them that as long as they were still alive, he would never, ever let the play be produced anywhere near the Buffalo near (where they resided). And if that uncomfortably-close-to-home-meta-ness weren't enough, the character of John mentions at one point having had a play produced at...the Boston University Theatre.

It might sound a little heavy -- and there is certainly some drama! -- but we actually like to think of The Cocktail Hour as an American comedy of manners. It has much more in common with Noël Coward than Arthur Miller, but whereas Coward's characters and worlds are distinctly British, Gurney's play takes place right here in the Northeast. Plus, John's upper-class family happens to be avid theatregoers, so we think our audience will enjoy seeing a version of their own lives portrayed on stage. Allegorically, of course. Unless the lampooning hits too close to home, in which case it was entirely coincidental. We swear.

Here's Artistic Director Peter DuBois discussing the show, and gushing even more over the wonderful Maria Aitken:

The Cocktail Hour plays Nov. 15 - Dec. 15, 2013 at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre.

*In reference to the fact that rehearsals for Betrayal would be starting just over six months later. Also, just to be clear, we do in fact provide our visiting artists with more than just a mattress in the corner of the rehearsal room. Unless that's something they specifically request, of course.

I Believe In THE POWER OF DUFF

The Power of Duff marks the return of playwright Stephen Belber to the Huntington, following 2005's Carol Mulroney (the first production of ours to feature Johanna Day, who has since become a favorite of many of our audience members). Directed by our fearless leader Peter DuBois, The Power of Duff tells the story of a news anchor in Rochester named Charlie Duff who offers up a prayer on-air in honor of his recently deceased father, which in turn spins the community into a frenzy. So naturally, he keeps doing it. He soon finds himself at the center of a cult of (media) personality, while simultaneously  trying to win back his estranged wife and son, neither of whom is particularly fond of Charlie's newfound spirituality. Peter worked with Stephen Belber on the show's world premiere at New York Stage & Film in the summer of 2012, and Stephen has been working hard on sharpening and honing the script for this next iteration.

At its core, The Power of Duff is the story of a desperate man's attempt to reconnect with something in the face of loss. One of the things that makes it so compelling is its multifaceted exploration of faith. The play is very much grounded in the present day, fully aware of the political climate of the country, and looks at the value and function of faith from many different perspectives. The initial prayer that sets the story off is not overtly religious by any means; Charlie himself invokes the Big G a few times, but he is hardly pious. Rather, it's a communal call to unite people together under something greater than their individual selves. Or, it's not, but that's part of what makes the story so captivating. It investigates the relationship between spirituality and religion, and the powers of community and belief.

And? It's hilarious. Seriously. The interactions between various the big-headed personalities of the newsroom where Charlie works are well worth the price of admission alone. One of my personal favorite little bits is the character of Ron Kirkpatrick, a reporter on the show who covers all kinds of bizarre and off-kilter human interest pieces on location, and only ever appears on video (it being a play about a TV news channel, there is a lot of really fascinating video projection work going on onstage as well). It's kind of like Anchorman meets The Newsroom times As Good As It Gets divided by About A Boy. Except not at all -- but admit it, you're intrigued.

Here's Peter DuBois discussing the show:

THE JUNGLE BOOK is coming! THE JUNGLE BOOK is coming!

We could not be more excited to welcome Mary Zimmerman back to the Huntington, and what better way to mark her triumphant return than a stage adaptation of The Jungle Book? Some of our subscribers (and staff) still haven't fully recovered from the overwhelming joyfulness of her production of Candide, which kicked off our 30th Anniversary Season in 2011. Mary has spent much of her career re-exploring timeless texts, taking a magnifying glass and a scalpel to these iconic, formative myths, and uncovering the modern richness and relevance within them.

With Candide, she scoured the archives of Leonard Bernstein's music, drawing from multiple iterations and compositions from various versions of the famously uneven musical, and created an entirely new version of the play with a book that she derived from the original text by Voltaire. Similarly, with The Jungle Book, Mary and her team are using the popular songs from the classic Disney movie -- "Bare Necessities," "I Wanna Be Like You," and others -- and re-arranging them with new orchestrations featuring authentic Indian instruments. For the book, Mary has returned to the original stories of Rudyard Kipling to create an entirely new script and story.

Here's a little peek at an early workshop version of "Bare Necessities":


Also like Candide, Mary is developing The Jungle Book with the help of several different cities, companies, and audiences. After several development workshops, performances of The Jungle Book began June 21 at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago (yes, we still care deeply for our Chicago theatre colleagues, even if their stupid hockey team bests our own). The cast & creative team will then join us in Boston, where they will continue to work on and tweak the musical -- adjusting things, making cuts and edits, fleshing out scenes where they need more meat, and so on. This process is an important part of what makes theatre unique as a living art form, and we're proud to play such a crucial role in Mary's creative process.

Here's Artistic Director Peter DuBois discussing the show, and sharing his own excitement about welcoming Mary back to Boston:

The Jungle Book plays Sept. 7 - Oct. 6, 2013 at the Avenue of the Arts / BU Theatre. Tickets are on sale now.

Hey Remember That Time We Won A Tony Award That Was Totally Awesome

Who's got two thumbs and just won a Tony Award? This Guy. Well, technically, this company, but companies don't really have collective thumbs or anything, so the joke doesn't really work as well.

Still, the point is: We have a Tony Award!

Desiree Pedrami, Thom Dunn,
Solange Garcia, and Catherine
Halpin, outside Radio City
Music Hall

This past Sunday night was an incredibly exciting evening for all of us, and not just because it's fun to wear a tux (although it is). A total of Eighty-Five Huntingtonians (including staff, Board, and guests) traveled to New York to see Michael Maso & Peter DuBois receive the 2013 Regional Theatre Tony Award live at Radio City Music Hall on our behalf. For a lot of us, the thrill of strolling down the streets of Midtown in our fancy dress felt like Theatre Prom, minus the curfew. The crowds of spectators had already gathered outside the police barricades around the venue by 5:30, and while admittedly they probably weren't trying to snap a photo of me (or any of the Huntington staff in attendance), parting the sea of people like a well-dressed Moses and having a friendly police officer take note of your fancy attire and help you through was still pretty cool.

Once inside Radio City, we began searching around for the rest of our Huntington family, all of whom were cleverly disguised in fabulous gowns and penguin costumes. We ran into former Artistic Director Nicholas Martin in the lobby, accompanied by Brooks Ashmanskas, who most recently appeared at the Huntington in God of Carnage. Everyone grabbed a drink, learned that drinks aren't allowed in the theatre, shrugged, and took our seats in the back of the orchestra (only Michael and Peter got to enjoy the real good seats down front for nominees).

One of the more interesting parts of the evening was experiencing the live filming and editing of the performance. Every now and then we'd hear the Production Stage Manager's voice booming over the God Mic, "2 minutes, ladies and gentlemen...and we're back in 10...9...8...a little applause everybody...and we're back live!", and as the night wore on he always found new ways to entertain us and keep the energy up while the folks back home enjoyed their obligatory commercial breaks (we don't normally have those in theatre). Although the broadcast began at 8pm, the awards themselves actually started around 7:15pm. This segment was hosted by Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family) and Jane Krakowski (30 Rock), who prepped the audience on the rules: hold your applause until the end, winners have 75 seconds to get to the stage and speak, et cetera. The awards presented during this segment were later aired as clips during the live broadcast; it was fun seeing which pull-quote or snippet from each acceptance speech actually made it onto television. We had originally expected Michael & Peter to accept the award during this time, but unfortunately the Lifetime Achievement speeches went a bit longer than anticipated (to be fair, it is an achievement of an entire lifetime, so...), and our fearless leaders were temporarily shunted off to a holding cell along with the children of Annie and Matilda to await their rescheduled on-stage appearance.

They eventually made it out alive, and here's their victory speech in its entirety (presented by my personal favorite time-traveling-plastic-Centurion-nurse-turned-Irish-pub-singer Rory Pond):

Michael won the backstage bet of getting his soundbite on the air ("And so together we celebrate our extraordinary audiences and with you tonight we celebrate the proud, passionate, and resilient people of the great city of Boston, Massachusetts"), meaning Peter paid for the first round of drinks. That being said, I must deny any rumors of a Maso-DuBois standup comedy duo act being added to our 2013-2014 Season.

Former Director of Public Relations John Michael Kennedy
with current staff members Lisa McColgan and Michael
Comey (with Christopher Durang photobombing in the
background)

Overall, it was a fantastic night for Boston on the Great White Way, with Diane Paulus of the A.R.T. winning "Best Director of a Musical" for production of Pippin, which itself won "Best Revival Of A Musical" (and of course begin its run in Cambridge). And while we were disappointed that Nicholas Martin did not win "Best Director" for Vanya & Sonya & Masha & Spike despite our wild howling (although the production itself won "Best Play"), we were very pleased to see the women sweep the awards for directing. If that's what we have to take, we'll happily live with it! Our friends at Chicago's Steppenwolf also won for "Best Revival of a Play" for Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, making it a strong showing for non-profit regional theatres across the country.

After being wow'd by NPH's sick rhymes (does anyone else smell a Jay-Z musical coming next fall?), we celebrated the evening at the Renaissance Hotel overlooking Times Square, where we were joined by our extended family, including former Director of Public Relations John Michael Kennedy, Peter's former assistant Chris Carcione, director Daniel Goldstein (God of Carnage, next season's Venus in Fur), and many others (we even had a few party crashers! We're that cool!). Everyone at the after party had a chance to pose with the Tony Award, which is much heavier than it looks, and munch on special Huntington cupcakes, which were precisely as delicious as they look. It's my understanding that after the evening (morning?) came to an end, a small group continued the celebration at the Kinky Boots party down the street, but that story isn't mine to tell.

You can check out our complete photo album over on Facebook or Flickr, but here are a few selects from the evening (morning?).

Peter DuBois, Carol Deane (Chairman of the Board), Michael Maso, and Mitchell J. Roberts (President of the Board)	The Artistic & Literary Teams: Vicki Schairer, Peter DuBois, M. Bevin O'Gara, Charles Haugland, Lisa Timmel, Christopher Wigle, and Anna Fisher
The Box Office Squad! Featuring Noah C. Ingle, Hailey Fuqua, Catherine Halpin, Katie Catano, Derrick Martin, and Patrick Harris	Team Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA: Katie Most, Rebecca Bradshaw, and Kat Alix