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Articles tagged with: Charles Newell

Theater 2018-19: Court maps world premiere and last play in the Wilson cycle: ‘Radio Golf’

Aug 21, 2018 – 9:25 am
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Third in a series of season previews: Court Theatre will cap its 64th season – and artistic director Charles Newell’s 24th year at the helm — with the world premiere adaptation of Saul Bellow’s novel “The Adventures of Augie March,” and kick it off with August Wilson’s “Radio Golf,” the tenth and final installment in his chronicle of the African American experience.

‘All My Sons’ at Court: The sins of a father, unatoned and brought down on two houses

Jan 25, 2018 – 5:21 pm
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Review: It’s as Greek as Aeschylus, the inexorable tragedy that infects and ultimately destroys two families in Arthur Miller’s “All My Sons.” And in the marvelous, shattering production at Court Theatre directed by Charles Newell, a long Greek shadow falls across Miller’s characters, amid the torment and self-deception, in spectral silence. ★★★★★

‘Man in the Ring’ at Court: Landing 1-2 punch to pound out portrait of a fractured champion

Oct 7, 2016 – 9:55 am
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Review: The title of Michael Cristofer’s play “Man in the Ring,” now in its gripping world premiere run at Court Theatre, is double edged. Outwardly, the play is about the meteoric rise and brutal fall of boxer Emile Griffith, among the most dominant champions in pugilistic history. But it’s also, in the most essential way, about the loss of innocence and purity and the unfettered joy of being alive. ★★★★★

‘Satchmo at the Waldorf’: As Louis Armstrong nears end, he recalls a winding path to fame

Jan 22, 2016 – 9:24 am
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Review: Terry Teachout’s “Satchmo at the Waldorf,” a one-man bio-drama on the life of jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong, is an affecting, often surprising and raspingly funny alchemy of brass and clay. it is a lively, engaging fiction but also a credible portrait with a human heart. ★★★

Role Playing: Sandra Marquez, as Clytemnestra, sees an exceptional woman in the Greek queen

Dec 5, 2015 – 8:30 am
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Interview: What would she, this modern woman, have done in the place of a legendary queen who has been abandoned by her warring husband, a man who also has sacrificed their daughter for the sake of his military campaign? That was the question on Sandra Marquez’s mind as she approached her complex portrayal of the vengeful Clytemnestra in Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon” at Court Theatre.

‘Agamemnon’ at Court: Queen welcomes king with smile and nice bath in his own hot blood

Dec 2, 2015 – 5:52 pm
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Review: Agamemnon, king of Argos and commander of the vast Greek expeditionary force that conquered Troy after 10 years of fighting, is home from the war at last – victorious, exhausted and, not least, wreathed in guilt. That is the proposition of Aeschylus’ tragedy “Agamemnon,” which now enters its final weekend of performances in an imaginative, keen-edged production at Court Theatre directed by Charles Newell. ★★★★★

Theater 2015-16: The binding threads are classic in Court’s pursuit of Greek and modern

Sep 6, 2015 – 3:12 pm
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10th in a series of season previews

Theater 2014-15: Greek tragedy, 2 premieres, musical spell excitement in Court’s 60th year

Aug 28, 2014 – 5:46 pm
Jerod Haynes is Bigger Thomas in 'Native Son,' which opens the Court Theatre 2014-15 season. (Joe Mazza)

10th in a series of season previews You can hear the phrase resonate in his voice when Charles Newell, artistic director of Court Theatre, says the company wanted to do something “very exciting” this season in observance of its 60th anniversary. It has turned out to be not one thing but more like a menu, spanning centuries and cultures, classics to modern explorations. The season opens with Nambi E. Kelley’s world-premiere adaptation of Richard Wright’s novel “Native Son,” about a young black man trapped by desperate circumstances in a white world. The project is a joint venture by Court and American Blues Theater.

‘M. Butterfly’ at Court Theatre: Amorous fantasy blurs truth and tests the limits of plausibility

May 27, 2014 – 3:42 pm
Now it's time for Gallimard (Sean Fortunato) to put on the ceremonial trappings of Madama Butterfly. (Michael Brosilow)

Review: Rene Gallimard is a shy functionary in Beijing’s French diplomatic corps who falls head over heels for a Peking Opera artist performing “Madama Butterfly.” He soon begins a 20-year love affair with the man he believes to be a woman, and falls into a classic honeypot lure for spy recruitment. ★★

Theater 2013-14: ‘The Mountaintop,’ Dr. King poised at mortal precipice, opens at Court

Sep 5, 2013 – 2:29 pm
David Alan Anderson, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in "The Mountaintop" by Katori Hall at Court Theatre 2013

11th in a series of season previews: “It’s been a long while since I read a play and without hesitation said, ‘We have to do this,’” says Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell about Katori Hall’s “The Mountaintop,” which imagines Martin Luther King’s last night on earth. King had given a speech that day in Memphis in which he famously touched on a premonition that he would die soon. Hall’s play catches up with him a few hours later in his hotel room, a weary man who strikes up a conversation with the chamber maid.

‘The Misanthrope’ at Court: Rants that rhyme keep laughs coming in crisp, modern Molière

May 30, 2013 – 5:16 pm
Erik Hellman with Grace Gealey in The Misanthrope at Court Theatre credit Michael Brosilow

Review: When Molière’s satiric play “The Misanthrope” first came to the stage in 1666, at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris, its mockery of society as duplicitous, self-aggrandizing and narcissistic must have had audiences teary-eyed with laughter. Just so is Court Theatre’s deliciously decadent new production LOL stuff. Indeed, director Charles Newell’s imaginative, sharply executed enterprise is simply not to be missed. ★★★★

Role Playing: Chaon Cross turned Court stage into a romper room finding answers in ‘Proof’

Apr 5, 2013 – 1:11 am
Actor Chaon Cross credit Joe Mazza

Interview: The interpretive quest that led Chaon Cross to her fierce, blazing portrayal of Catherine, the brilliant but unmoored young woman in David Auburn’s “Proof” at Court Theatre, began in rehearsals with a lot of running around, getting under furniture and throwing things.

‘Proof’ at Court Theatre: Finding love, other prime factors in calculus of life’s choices

Mar 21, 2013 – 11:23 am
Chaon Cross is Catherine in David Auburn Proof directed by Charles Newell Court Theatre 2013 credit Michael Brosilow

Review: ★★★★★

’Tis a bittersweet night of mirth and memories at Court, an Irish Yule to wake ‘The Dead’

Dec 4, 2012 – 11:06 am
James Joyce's The Dead cast feature image Court Theatre 2012 credit Michael Brosilow

Review: High spirits rule at a gathering of friends and family in “James Joyce’s ‘The Dead,’” a play with music by Richard Nelson and Shaun Davey after the famous short story. But ghosts of past, present and future have crashed the party. ★★★★

The New Season: Court Theatre maps journey from Wilson’s ‘Jitney’ to a Molière bonanza

Aug 15, 2012 – 4:02 pm
WilsonAugust Jitney collage

Seventh in a series of season previews: What begins in September as an ambitious and far-flung season at Court Theatre, with August Wilson’s “Jitney,” ends next spring with nothing less than a prodigious Molière double-header, back to back productions of “The Misanthrope” and “Tartuffe.”

‘Angels in America’ at the Court: Viewing AIDS and the yearning heart through a perfect lens

Apr 15, 2012 – 10:58 pm
Angels in America featured image Court Theatre Rob Lindley Mary Beth Fisher credit Michael Brosilow

Tony Kushner’s classic soars. 5 stars!