Tonight! Find out what moved Ron Howard to believe David Frost’s 1977 interviews with ex-President Nixon would make a good film. Frost/Nixon was a mediocre movie but a very good play, and tonight Portland Center Stage opens a production of the 2006 Peter Morgan script that provided the foundation of the screenplay.
On Saturday, PCS presents an accompanying afternoon panel discussion at the Armory titled, “Bread & Circuses: Politics, Spectacle and Public Memory,” with talk show host Thom Hartmann, Oregonian reporter David Sarasohn, cartoonist Jack Ohman and UO journalism prof Al Stavitsky. It is free and open to the public.
Also opening this weekend:
Artists Rep’s production of Distracted, about a couple who must decide whether their kid is a pain in the butt because he is, as the doctors tell them, hyperactive, or just because he’s a kid. Leif Norby and Kimberly Howard star.
Vertigo’s last show of the season, Freakshow, about the members of a carnival sideshow coping with a failing business and changing world at the end of the 19th Century.
It’s been open for a few weeks, but I’ve been told by several people that Northwest Academy senior Jacob Storms’ performance of Doug Wright’s I Am My Own Wife, the solo show about the life of East German transvestite Charlotte von Mahlsdorf that Portland Center Stage produced two years ago, is very good. It’s also free.
One ongoing show that has stuck in my mind is Miracle Theatre’s El Grito del Bronx, a haunting play about a woman trying to escape her family’s abusive past and cope with her brother’s career as a serial killer. Miracle is hosting a talk-back with the playwright, Migdalia Cruz, this Sunday, and blogger Ryan Fish has an interesting interview with director Antonio Sonera on his website. This is a good one, well-staged and acted, dark and violent and disturbing and surprisingly hopeful. Check it out.
As always, the week’s dramatic goings-on are cataloged in our performance listings.
Some News: The Oregon Arts Commission has $307,600 in federal stimulus funds to distribute to arts organizations to
“preserve jobs in the arts that are threatened or have been recently eliminated due to the economic downturn.” If your company is in dire straits, apply for a grant through the Commission’s website.
Lakewood Theatre and Miracle Theatre Group both announced their 2009-2010 seasons this week. Lakewood, starting in July, will produce The Producers, Oliver!, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Agatha Christie’s Spider’s Web, Peter Shaffer’s Lettuce and Lovage and the Broadway musical murder mystery Curtains.
Miracle’s season kicks off with two original productions, El Día de los Muertos Festival and Dañel Malán and Rebecca Martínez’ American Sueño, and continues in 2010 with a Spanish-language romantic comedy, Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda; Karen Zacarías’ adaptation of Julia Alvarez’ How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents; and a bilingual adaptation of Don Quijote.
