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about: Regina Weinreich

  • Billy Collins to read at Guild Hall: A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Dentist

    Billy-Collins-When I heard that Billy Collins would give a reading at Guild Hall, I wanted to talk to the U. S. Poet Laureate (2001-2003). I caught up with him in transit. 

    I hope I’m not interrupting anything.

    I am on the way to the dentist, so figure I have just a few minutes. I just spent two weeks in Italy at a writers retreat, Civitella in Ombria in a 15th century castle, so now I have to catch up with things like the dentist. I recommend going to a writers retreat: It is a unique sensation to wake up in the morning and have nothing to do, so I opted to write and came up with a dozen new poems.

    Will you read them at Guild Hall on July 12?

    I always read new poems [at my readings].

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  • “Hey Monkee Man:” Micky Dolenz at 54 Below

    Fifty
    Micky Dolenz     sprinkles so many stories through his superb show at 54 Below, you are repeatedly astounded at the decades of history that go with the popular soundtrack of Carole King and Jerry Goffen tunes as well as mint Monkees he performs. That is, if you are of a certain age. And even if you aren’t—there was a teen seated front row center among those adorned with silver manes and fedoras last Tuesday —there are always television reruns of The Monkees for reference. But Dolenz’s career also featured Broadway (Aida), just down the block from 54 Below. At 70, he has the chops to do it all.

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  • Arthamptons Lifetime Achievement Award: Ruth Appelhof at the Maidstone

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    Just prior to the Arthamptons opening, I met with Ruth Appelhof, Executive Director of Guild Hall, who will receive the Arthamptons Lifetime Achievement Award on July 5. Over eggs Benedict at the Maidstone in East Hampton, we talked about her background in the arts, accomplishments at Guild Hall over her 16-year tenure, how things get done in the premiere arts institution out east, celebrities, and her interest in women artists.

    Over the years, since you took the reins at Guild Hall, you have created a state of the art theater, exhibition space, and educational program. How do you explain your leadership strategy?

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  • Of Good Stock: Come and Smell the Bacon

    As Good
    Melissa Ross    ’ new play, Of Good Stock, a Manhattan Theater Club production, directed by Lynne Meadow, belongs to the genre of literature that illuminates family misery as unique, and universal. Three sisters, the Stocktons, daughters of a famous novelist, who has had at least one book that changed readers’ lives, converge on a Cape Cod beach house where all three summered growing up. Literary legacy aside, the dead father’s philandering had an impact on his girls. The eldest and most grounded, Jess (Jennifer Mudge), now lives in the cedar shingled house with her husband, Fred (Kelly AuCoin), a food writer; Jess wants to celebrate her birthday with family.

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  • Five Presidents at Bay Street Theater

    Five Presidents
    The fun of watching the new play, Five Presidents in its east coast premiere at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, is knowing the history moving forward from the momentous day, April 27, 1994 when the most exclusive club in the world, consisting of living presidents, comes together in a suite preparing for the funeral of one of their own, Richard Nixon. Under Mark Clements’ fine direction, first Gerald Ford (John Bolger) who is on the wagon but circles the bar like a vulture, then Jimmy Carter (Martin L’Herault) who gets a tall pour of scotch from his predecessor, then a slicked wigged Ronald Reagan (Steve Sheridan), George Herbert Walker Bush (Mark Jacoby) and “the new guy,” Bill Clinton (Brit Whittle), arrive one by one swapping stories about women they have nailed, the conflicts of going to war and sending young men and women to die, the economy, a rehash of everything you know about their presidencies meshed with their individual personalities and leavened by liquor. As these were the years before the name Monica Lewinsky entered the public consciousness, the name Gennifer Flowers is a reminder of that president’s pre-election dalliance. A Reagan verging on his famed senescence speaks inappropriately of a particular intimate act with Marilyn Monroe.

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  • Requiem for the Dead: American Spring 2014 on HBO, and Now

    Doc
    When HBO had a launch for the new documentary, Requiem for the Dead: American Spring 2014 last Monday, a gunman had not yet joined the prayer group at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, ending in the shooting deaths of nine parishioners including Pastor Clementa Pinckney, not only a spiritual leader, but a prominent African American political presence. A who’s who of non-fiction filmmakers including D. A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, and Nancy Buirski, marveled at the film’s ingenuity: the documentary, the brainchild of HBO’s Sheila Nevins, and directed by Nick Doob and Shari Cookson, providing a numbing account of the number of gun-related deaths in just one American season, is created of text messages, recordings of emergency calls to 911, news footage, home photos of a selection of such random deaths that all go back to the one common denominator: the availability of guns. By Wednesday, when the horrible killing in Charleston occurred, no more examples were needed to make the point. And yet, as many mourn, with memorial services now underway and the 21 year old gunman in custody, community leaders are saying this is the “never again” moment, the call for restrictions on guns.

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  • Kate Winslet in A Little Chaos

    Kate Winslet
    Kate Winslet     in a smart ponytail and slinky black skimmer posed for selfies with fans as I approached MoMA this week for the New York premiere screening of her new film, A Little Chaos, directed by Alan Rickman. Finally prying herself loose from the crowd she joined the audience for this period piece in which she portrays Sabine De Barra, a self-possessed woman with a career as a landscape designer—from—most improbably—the 17th century, the time of Louis XIV (Rickman is both imperious and human in this role as king). A Little Chaos describes her mode of design which impresses Andre de Notre (Matthias Schoenaerts) to hire her for the work at Versailles, and from there, the rest is history, as they say, or more to this film, historical fiction. There is much to say about Ellen Kuras’ stunning cinematography. The film was shot in the castles near London, exteriors in gardens, and interiors in bedrooms where the emerging love affair is swoon-worthy.

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  • Sam Waterston: A Temperate Prospero in The Tempest in the Park

    Shaekspear 2
    A storm threatened. Not the one that opens Shakespeare’s late life play, The Tempest. On the evening I ventured into Central Park, to the Delacorte Theater for the always delightful experience of seeing Shakespeare under the night sky, rain was in the forecast. It would have been appropriate: not a downpour which would have cancelled the performance, but a melding of real nature with the teeming waters of the Public Theater’s ocean backdrop (Riccardo Hernandez’ design) for this season’s The Tempest, directed by Michael Greif, with Sam Waterston as Prospero.

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  • A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Julie Taymor’s Splendid Shakespearean Romp in Film

    A-midsummer-nights-dream
    Julie Taymor’s     latest triumph is the movie version of the play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, she debuted in 2013 at the Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn. Her film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is a mesmerizing and indeed, dream vision composed of the Shakespeare’s scenes and characters, made into a surreal at times, slapstick at times, genuinely delightful version of this, one of the bard’s most popular comedies. Composer Elliot Goldenthal’s whimsical music enhances the dreaminess and shenanigans of the carnival of lovers, spirits, royals and workmen in this gorgeous confection.

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  • A Fashion Elite Turns Out for The True Cost, A Documentary About What We Wear

    WhoPaysIf the title of the compelling documentary, The True Cost, directed by Andrew Morgan, sounds a little mercantile, it is. Dealing with the dreadful reality behind “fast fashion,” the greed behind low cost clothes, the exploitation of a work force in underdeveloped countries, and the marketing of unnecessary, non-biodegradable, expendable tee-shirts and other splurge purchases to a population that does not need them, the documentary makes you want to avoid H&M, Forever 21, and Zara. (This last, in particular is in a much-publicized suit regarding racism and anti-Semitism, but I digress.) The film makes it hard to rationalize patronizing these retailers, knowing that the low prices passed along to consumers are the result of dire costs in human lives.

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  • Alec Baldwin and Laurie Metcalf in Arthur Miller’s All My Sons at Guild Hall

    All My Sons3
    The first rate revival of Arthur Miller’s tragedy, All My Sons, at Guild Hall’s John Drew Theater is a reason to celebrate theater out east. With a cast led by Alec Baldwin and Laurie Metcalf, under Stephen Hamilton’s direction, the drama moves quickly through the moral dilemma of an American family, post World War II. The sons, one presumed dead, one alive, ask for accountability, a heavy load for Joe Keller—that’s Alec Baldwin, his baggy trousers skimming an ample belly held up by suspenders—who is boss, businessman, and bully. When son Chris (Ryan Eggold) asks the big questions about his possible role in the deaths of 21 fighter pilots, and the ruin of his partner’s family, Joe defends himself. He’s got a wife Kate, submissive, damaged, but spiritual, performed by the formidable Metcalf, and family to support, a good enough reason to risk sending out faulty airplane parts from his factory—and, in fact, to lie. To his sons, Chris and Larry, his ordinariness is crushing, tragic—he was Father, better than this moral slide. They could accept no less in Miller’s classic drama.

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  • Ornette Coleman and the Beat Generation Literati

    Ornet Coleman4A Pulitzer Prize winner and MacArthur Fellow, jazzman Ornette Coleman died this week at age 85. Ornette Coleman’s extraordinary career as an alto saxophone performer dovetailed with several poetry movements in America including his friendship and collaborations with the Beat Generation writers. He made the soundtracks on David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch (1991), based on William Burroughs’ classic novel, featuring a sequence in the “Interzone” marketplace, a stand in for Tangier, and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1990), based on Paul Bowles’ book about a Western couple travelling in Morocco.

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  • Mark Ruffalo in Infinitely Polar Bear

    Mark
    Maya Forbes    ’ autobiographical film, Infinitely Polar Bear, about her family coping with her father’s bipolar disorder, is set in the late ‘70’s, a time when few understood the impact of this mental malfunction. This smart feature may coincide with a hot topic in the Zeitgeist. Particularly as portrayed by Mark Ruffalo, there’s no question that Cam Stuart was infinitely charismatic and fun to be with, at the same time, questionable as a stay-at-home parent. Maya Forbes’ daughter Imogene Wolodarsky plays Amelia, the daughter most like her mother. When their mother Maggie (Zoe Saldana) goes to business school in New York, she leaves Amelia and little sister Faith (Ashley Aufderheide) with dad in charge in Boston, and all hell breaks loose in this very winning comedy.

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  • The New Sincerity at Bay Street Theater: The Revolution Will Not Be Sold

    New SenerityAlena Smith’s smart play, The New Sincerity, in its world premiere at Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor, is perhaps the first drama to deal with the idealism of the Occupy Movement. Championed for its revolutionary goals, Occupy opened a dialogue about the ills of capitalism and social injustice. Many came to Zuccotti Park to camp out in support, like Django, one of four characters in The New Sincerity, expertly directed by Bob Balaban, who keeps the flow of characters in and out of the offices of a literary journal brisk for its 85-minute duration. Keep your eye on the word “sincerity” of the title, a playful take on the currency of authenticity.

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  • Why Allen Ginsberg Matters: The Essential Ginsberg

    IThe Esential Ginsbergn 1997, the last year of his life, poet Allen Ginsberg fretted that the first amendment battles won over his iconic epic Howl, would now face a reversal. Howl had been read on Pacifica radio, and censors now wanted to confine those readings till late night, lest innocent ears be compromised. Backtrack to 1955, the year of the poem’s composition: Howl had been the subject of a censorship trial, its language deemed obscene. The midcentury court ruled in Howl’s favor, finding the poem’s language reflective of redeeming human values, to frame the decision in some legal context. To all who understood the poem’s meaning, the court declared a victory for tenderness, and the right to express horror at society’s attempts to dehumanize and restrict individual freedom. Now, fast forward to 2015. Ginsberg’s fears are coming true in the nightmare news that David Olio, a beloved and much awarded Connecticut teacher, has been fired for reading aloud in an AP English classroom from Ginsberg’s poem, “Please Master.”

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  • Amanda Seyfried’s Theater Debut in Neil LaBute’s The Way We Get By

    Neil labute's play
    Among the many reasons to see Neil LaBute’s latest exploration of sexual relations, The Way We Get By, in its Second Stage Theatre production, is to see the actor Thomas Sadoski fussing, and to glimpse Amanda Seyfried’s bare breast as she changes her tee-shirt. The two-hander involves a couple after a night in bed. Is it a one-night stand? Or will they fall back into one another’s arms?

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  • Anticipating the Tony Awards, with Alan Cumming at the Café Carlyle, the Astaire Awards, and Stars in the Alley

    Tony AwardsFacing a crowd that included his mother and brother as well as Tony Danza, next up for a run at the Café Carlyle, Alan Cumming reminded everyone that he would be hosting the Tony Awards with Kristen Chenoweth on Sunday night, admitting that he was “freaking out.” That was hard to believe from the poised actor, prepared by years of M.C. workout in Cabaret. But as he deftly sang his “sloppy” mash-ups including one channeling Adele, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry, he paused to sing from the Kander & Ebb musical, The Visit, a contender for Best Musical: “You, You, You,” a number sung memorably by Chita Rivera, herself nominated for Best Actress in a Musical.

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  • Michele Lee: Remembering Cy Coleman at 54 Below

    Michele lee
    Michele Lee,     of ‘80’s era soap opera Knots Landing fame, will perform Cy Coleman tunes in a tribute celebrating the composer’s birthday at 54 Below for three nights, June 11-13. A great and giving storyteller, Lee’s engagement should be a music fest, yes, but also anecdote-laden treat, with some tasty Broadway legend tidbits. The multi-talented star, first came on my radar on television, in “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis” and in my very first Broadway show, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, with Rudy Vallee and a young Robert Morse, now known as Mad Men’s Bert Cooper. More recently off Broadway Lee was part of the rotating cast of Love, Loss, and What I Wore, written by Delia and Nora Ephron. I had a chance to talk to Michele Lee about her next great moment– on the intimate cabaret stage.

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  • Alicia Vikander: Testament of Youth Premieres

    Red CrossVera Brittain’s Testament of Youth, the famed memoir of the author’s time as a nurse during World War I, is now a major motion picture perfectly poised for summer. Leave it to David Heyman, the producer of the Harry Potter films, to put this book on screen. Heyman seems to specialize in coming of age stories, and this one, about a writer, is stunning. A love story set against the epic sweep of war, covering the terrain made famous in the literature of Ernest Hemingway and T. S. Eliot, this film, sad in its revelations about the emptiness of war, takes a grand anti-war stand when Brittain, played exquisitely by the lithe Alicia Vikander speaks to revenge-minded Brits about losses endured by everyone on every side, including Germans. Having lost her dear brother Edward (Taron Egerton), her friend Victor (Colin Morgan), and her poet fiancé Roland (the dreamy Kit Harington), Brittain knows of what she speaks. In our time of drone warfare, WWI appears quaint and bloody with its hand-to-hand combat. If any film is to capture the attention of vacationing crowds, it’s this gorgeous movie. 

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  • Lauryn Hill at the Apollo: Celebrating Nina Simone

    Nina Simone3You know the old joke: how do you get to Carnegie Hall? For jazz giant Nina Simone, it took more than practice. A classical piano prodigy, Simone, nee Eunice Waymon, was denied entrance to the Curtis Institute of Music, and could not be booked in clubs even after she showed she had the chops: she was black. For one gig, she was told she had to sing; it is for her unusual gift as a vocalist that she is best known. Liz Garbus’ documentary about Nina Simone: What Happened, Miss Simone? Had its New York premiere at the Apollo Theater Monday night, co-hosted by The Film Society of Lincoln Center. The Netflix movie limns this genius’ difficult life: married to a man who controlled and beat her, through her political activism, her mental decline, and her final years battling bipolar disorder and breast cancer. Her performances of “I Loves You, Porgy,” “I Put a Spell on You,” “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” and many other songs lift this film out of the usual biopic genre. Evocative archival footage, and interviews with family, friends and band mates, round out the lively portrait: you feel her vital, troubled, and singularly talented presence the whole time.

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  • Ann Roth Honored at NYWFT’s Designing Women

    AnnrothEven though she loves awards, Meryl Streep did not show up to introduce Ann Roth at last night’s New York Women in Film & Television’s Designing Women evening, where the legendary costume designer was being honored for lifetime achievement. At a Roth tribute at the Hamptons Film Festival in 2013, the actress who had been dressed as Julia Child by Roth, as well as Donna in Mamma Mia!, not to mention many other characters, flew in from the Midwest set of August: Osage County for the occasion. Not this time. The multi-Academy Award winning actress sent a message to the presenter, Roth’s daughter, Hannah Sorkin, noting “I love her unequivocally” and “I cannot imagine what it would be like to have Ann Roth as a mother.”

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  • Nice Girl at the Labyrinth Theater

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    You can tell the play Nice Girl at the Labyrinth Theater is set in the ‘80’s because when a woman in a housedress enters the living room and flicks on the set, the television has Jane Pauley on the Today Show. Her daughter, Jo, follows, to make breakfast for her mother before going off to work. Jo (Diane Davis) is a nice girl, a term that could translate to good girl: she’s quit her scholarship to Radcliffe after her father’s death to take care of this mother (Kathryn Kates), and she’s a bit of a frump with no social aspirations. At her humdrum secretarial job she takes a lunch break with Sherry (Liv Rooth), the kind of girl you knew in high school, who always pushed you beyond your comfort zone. Big haired, made up, and loud, Sherry is devastated by a recent breakup. The guy she hoped to make a life with just told her he was married. Not as trampy as she looks, like Jo, she wants a better life than she thinks she deserves. “Everyone should fall in love,” she says, “It’s like voting. A right.” You can see Jo’s reluctance, but she and Sherry resolve to go out to some bars.

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  • Permission: Spanking for Jesus at the Lucille Lortel Theater

    Christian
    Whatever special kinks spice up your sex life, the particular coupling of spanking and faith in Robert Askins’ play, Permission, will having you laughing, and googling Christian Domestic Discipline (CDD) at intermission. Who knew this was a real life church sanctioned practice? In its world premiere at the Lucille Lortel Theater, under the direction of Alex Timbers, the MCC production of Permission, penned by the Hand to God playwright, relies on the conceit that marital bliss can be found if the husband assumes authority in marriage by acting like a man, that is, disciplining his wife with a firm hand (or belt) on the butt.

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  • Composer Elliot Goldenthal: American Ballet Theater’s Othello and Grounded at the Public Theater

    Elliot Goldenthal xxx This week’s opening of the American Ballet Theater’s Othello at the Metropolitan Opera House, a spectacular version of Shakespeare’s tragedy about the warrior king who succumbs to the manipulations of an ensign, and murders the love of his life, marks ABT’s commitment to newer works. As part of its 75th anniversary ABT had been showing the early works of George Balanchine, Agnes DeMille, Jerome Robbins, among others, but with this Othello, first produced in 1997, with Lar Lubovitch’s choreography and Elliot Goldenthal’s music, the ballet in 3 acts verges more toward opera than to traditional ballet. And with Julie Kent, Marcelo Gomes, and Misty Copeland, ballet superstars, the work was thrilling. For the Academy Award winning composer, this is a highpoint in a stellar career scoring movies, and other works in many genres. Most recently, he created sound for Grounded, a one-woman show starring Anne Hathaway, and directed by Julie Taymor at the Public Theater. I had the opportunity to talk to Elliot Goldenthal prior to this opening, about his work on Othello and Grounded, his Symphony in G Minor, the upcoming film release of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and the career honors he is about to be awarded in Poland. 

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  • Megan Hilty: “Popular” at the Café Carlyle

    MeganOn night two of her two-week not to be missed run, the Café Carlyle was packed with fans for Megan Hilty. Surveying the scene, Hilty spotted a girl front and center, and asked her what her favorite Broadway show was, hoping she would say Wicked. A debut for Hilty back in the day when she was an understudy, after the incomparable Kristin Chenowith left, Wicked launched Hilty, as it did Idina Menzel with whom she performed. Hilty went into her rendition of “Popular,” a hit from the show. Then again, all sentimental about little girls –Hilty and her guitarist husband Brian Gallagher just had one, naming her Viola Philomena-– the chance to sing a song for a little girl was clearly irresistible.

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