STAGE AWARDS

US theatre triumphs at The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence
Published Wednesday 29 August 2007 at 11:45 by Matthew Hemley




Shalimar Theatre Company: Laura Lee Anderson, Kim Gainer, Jen Taher, Marissa Lupe, Craig Peugh, Joey Williamson, Shoshona Currier, Atticus Rowe and Justin Donham won Best Ensemble for La Femme Est Morte or Why I Should Not F**k My Son at the Pleasance Dome.
Photo: Chris Watt


American visitors to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe might have been fewer but US performers scored one of their best results at this year’s prestigious Stage Awards for Acting Excellence.

Performers from New York-based theatre company Shalimar were crowned Best Ensemble for their production of La Femme Est Morte or Why I Should Not F**k My Son at the Pleasance Dome. Compatriot Madi Distefano won Best Solo Performer for her production Popsicle’s Departure 1989 at the Assembly Rooms.

Distefano, who beat competition including Linda Marlowe, Elisabeth Gray, Alexander Campbell, Iris Bahr and Joanna Swain, said: “This is such a major international award. I never planned on touring the piece as I am a full-time Philadelphian actor, director and mother, but now I would be honoured to go to some other festivals.”

The two shows were among only three US productions to reach the shortlist of 23 nominees for the awards, now in their 13th year, which celebrate the best theatre at the fringe.

Shalimar artistic director Shoshona Currier said: “It’s a really great honour to win the award. It’s been a slow festival and we’ve struggled with audiences but it’s an amazing honour to be recognised by a group of critics and our peers.”

Other winners at this year’s event include Garry Cooper, who won Best Actor for his role in Long Time Dead at the Traverse, beating competition from James Baxter in Scarborough, Daniel Pirrie in Sting for Nolte and Merryn Owen for World’s End.

Colleagues Eugenia Caruso and Janet Bamford walked away with a rare joint award for Best Actress for their performances in Truckstop at the Zoo, beating competition from the likes of Stage columnist Dillie Keane, who appeared in Frank and Dolly at the Gilded Balloon Teviot.

Nominees are selected by The Stage’s team of critics, who review more than 300 professional shows.

Jeremy Austin, who heads the reviews team, said: “It’s been a great year for drama. None of us has seen a bad play.”

He warned the programme for this year’s festival had been “bigger than ever” and said: “There are not enough audiences to sustain something this size.”

Check out this magical video on non other than...BROADWAY BABY!

edinburgh out-takes

So we're done. Two days ago I got up at 6:30am to put Joey in a cab to a bus to London. Then Craig, Atticus, and Kim got on a plane. Justin left for Prague. The next day Marissa and Joe got on the early bus to London and then Jen got on a plane. This morning Laura Lee got on the bus to London and now Husband and I are hopping a train to Glasgow and then another to the sandy freezing beaches of Ayrshire.

I have documented none of this. I actually am feeling a little sentimental and sad (a LITTLE) and didn't want to photograph the backs of my amazing cast as they carried their suitcases down the stairs, hopped into cabs and said good-bye. This was a killer group of people to work with. I couldn't have asked for a more fun talented caring and exciting cast and crew. And so it's sad to see it end. It's not just the end of a 4 week festival. It is the end of a year and a half of really dilligent work on a play that showed us at our best, as an ensemble and as individual artists.

Looking forward to the next show though...

I went through the i-photo and pulled some pictures of random wonderous moments throughout the fest. And after I post this, I will pack up my computer, walk out of Footlights for (god willing) the last time, and get on my train.

Here are some happy moments from this month.

Jen. Cleaning.



The boys from MOD.




EdFestTV





Lunch at the Princess St. Mall food court. Joey ate KFC...




...while I got obsessed with a McTart.





This is how the Best Ensemble warms up.



I got a new tattoo. Don't be fooled by Marissa's smiling face...she punked out.






Auto Auto. This is what the fringe is all about. Two German guys fucking destroying a car while they sing classical music. This show should have won every award going. It was a pretty special experience.




Kim flyered. And met a 19 year old.





Atticus got knocked down by that damn ghost.




Oh Dino. Marissa flyered Dino and he came to our show and he turned out to be the sweetest friendliest DJ from South Africa you've ever met. Yow.


Dino's show, The House of the Holy Afro. It was amazing.



This is our venue's "VIP" bar, Brooke's. Notice how it looks like a dentist's waiting room? Worst VIP bar in Edinburgh.



Kim's photo shoot.






Drinking and smoking and choking.





Simon. aka Moira.




Here is how we postered on the Royal Mile. ONCE.




The cue for our show. Magical.

WE WON!

The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence 2007

Despite complaints of a drop in the number of US visitors to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, American performers recorded their best ever win at the prestigious Stage Awards for Acting Excellence.

Of the four prizes on offer, they won a total of two, despite the fact that only three US productions were included amongst the shortlist of 23 nominees.

Shalimar won Best Ensemble for their show La Femme Est Morte, at the Pleasance Dome, while Madi Distefano received Best Solo Performer for Popsicle’s Departure 1989 at the Assembly @ St George’s West.

British wins included Best Actor Award for Garry Cooper for Long Time Dead, hosted by the Traverse. Colleagues Eugenia Caruso and Janet Bamford tied for Best Actress and received a joint award for their performances in Truckstop at The Zoo.

The Stage Awards, now in their 13th year, aim to recognise outstanding theatre performances by individuals and companies on the Fringe. Nominees are selected from nearly 350 productions covered by the reviews team during the festival and the winners were chosen by the principal reviewers, Jeremy Austin, Gerald Berkowitz, Thom Dibdin, Duska Radosavljevic, Nick Awde and William McEvoy.
The 2007 winners
Best Actor
Winner

Garry Cooper for Long Time Dead (Travsere).
Also nominated:

* James Baxter for Scarborough (Assembly @ George Street)
* Daniel Pirrie for Sting for Nolte (Gilded Balloon Teviot)
* Merryn Owen for World’s End (Pleasance Dome)

Best Actress
Winners

Eugenia Caruso and Janet Bamford for Truckstop (The Zoo)
Also nominated:

* Nathalie Armin for Damascus (Traverse)
* Holly Atkins for Scarborough (Assembly @ George Street)
* Beth Fitzgerald for Follow Me (Assembly @ George Street)
* Dillie Keane for Frank and Dolly (Gilded Balloon Teviot)

Best Ensemble
Winner

Shalimar for La Femme est Morte, or Why I Should Not F**k My Son (Pleasance Dome)
Also nominated:

* Druid for The Walworth Farce (Traverse)
* Nimble Fish for The Container (E4 UdderBELLY’s Pasture)
* Arches Theatre Company for Pit (Traverse)
* Song of the Goat for Lacrimosa (Assembly Aurora Nova)
* Analogue for Mile End (Pleasance Dome)
* Angelica for Stonewall (Pleasance Courtyard)

Best Solo Performer
Winner

Madi Distefano for Popsicle’s Departure 1989 (Assembly @ St. George’s West)
Also nominated:

* Linda Marlowe for Believe (Traverse)
* Elisabeth Gray for Wish I Had A Sylvia Plath (Underbelly’s Smirnoff Baby Belly)
* Alexander Campbell for Private Peaceful (Assembly @ George Street)
* Iris Bahr for Dai (Enough) (Pleasance Courtyard)
* Joanna Swain for Talking to Spacehoppers (C soco)

hate mail

Subject: edinburgh extra-curricular activities
From: "Seamus McFadden"
Date: Fri, August 24, 2007 7:35 am
To: shoni@shalimarproductions.org
Priority: Normal
Options: View Full Header | View Printable Version | Add to Addressbook

Ms. Shoshona,

I wanted to inform you that my colleagues and I were planning on attending your show in this year's Edinburgh Fringe Festival - La Femme Est Morte - however, after witnessing a select member of your company engage in highly offensive and virtually pornographic activities outside your venue, we have decided to lead a boycott against your artistic efforts, which, no doubt, are as tasteless and inappropriate as your disregard for public decency.

Attached are photos of the incident to which I am referring. I apologize for being the bearer of such ill tidings, but as a fellow artist I thought that it may be helpful to your company.

I wish you the best in the future.


Yours in Decency,

Seamus McFadden
Artistic Director
Garden Variety Theatre Company






Ok. It turned out to be from Joe, Atticus, and Craig. Those motherfuckers totally punked me and it was genius.

New York Sun review!

you can read the whole article here. we are on the second page. WOOOOO!

Another unlikely musical is the Shalimar's version of èacine's "Phedre" Â-- "La Femme Est Morte or Why I Should not F%!# My Son." Artfully updated by Shoshona Currier, the doom-laden tragedy becomes a slick modern parable about celebrity and power. Theseus is a war veteran with a returning soldier's ambivalence toward the loved ones he fought for, who are also the softies who stayed at home. Phaedra's confidante is her lifestyle guru and publicist. hippolytus is a gorgeous hunk of gym-toned masculine beauty who takes on his stepfather in a briskly choreographed boxing bout and makes his final and all-too-fitting appearance as a heap of raw meat. Joey Williamson, the musical director, plays Tiresias as an androgynous snake-in-the-grass gossip writer, leading a chorus/ chorus line of hacks and paparazzi. Thehard-rocking musical numbers last too long, but the performances are polished and the script is marvelously clever. For all its glossy modernity, " La Femme Est Morte" captures the themes and moods of the Euripidean original faithfully, making a snazzy but thoughtful contribution to an ancient debate about public honor and private passion.

the Financial Times review

The Financial Times really raved. I attached the scan because there was nothing more magical than opening a major national paper and seeing an enormous picture of our show. Truly incredible.

It's a great article about the state of the Fringe and it goes on to mention a mere three shows. LA FEMME, Subway (which Joey and I are going to see in an hour), and another show that I fear I will miss but which sounds fun and simple. It is a great article by a highly respected writer. Click on the image below to get it to blow up.

as bad as it gets

We got spanked. Again.

And we then got this from Hairline:

La Femme Est Morte or Why I Should Not F**k My Son

In direct contrast to the other production at this year's Fringe which recounts the tragic Greek myth of Phaedra in the much more conventional tradition of Racine, Shalimar's version of events brings the story kicking and screaming like a Jerry Springer guest right into the modern age. Their production takes in gaudy Heat magazine style celebrity glamour, the phenomenon of mobile communications and the scourge of sensationalist paparazzi journalism, as well as the brute force of American foreign politics, as it recounts the tale of the love triangle between Queen Phaedra, her husband Theseus and his son from a former marriage, Hippolytus.

The audience is impressed by the lively contemporary musical score, containing a number of up to date chart toppers by various over produced manufactured pop artists, performed live by a perfectly vacuous trio including the musical director Joey Williamson as the lead singer. The trio also double up as the vulture like media manipulators, feasting on the rotting carcass of society’s morals with a maniacal pleasure. Excellent characterisation in all honesty. In addition to this, Phaedra is presented as a regular Jenny from the Block bling queen, bored and lonely wife of a military man gone to war, Neevee is her PR and stylist, Theseus is the all American buzz cut GI Joe, and Hippolytus is here seen as a confused, hormone ridden adolescent frat boy who pours out his heart to his buddy X over boxing spars. The performances are excellent.

A rollercoaster of a play, the acting is great, and give a real depth to the production, using a mixture of traditional and modern dialogue to satirise today’s shiny consumerised, celebrity obsessed society, as well as highlighting the gung-ho approach to world affairs that modern America has made its name with. “America hates losers…We are He-men”.


4/5

Robert May


Truthfully, the reviews don't hurt anymore. I deeply believe in this show and the work we have done on it, so it has become masochistically intriguing, reading what people think of us. Jen always said this play is love it or hate it and I always thought that was bullshit. We encountered very little hate in New York. Pretty much everyone who saw it at Fringe and at 59e59 understood the satire, were thrilled by the spectacle, and were very willing to ride with us. The reviews here are not mixed, they are split down the fucking middle. Not a single three star review, they are all either 4 stars (spectacularly magical genius satire!) or 2 stars (let's assassinate The Shalimar from behind while they're walking away, those fucking motherfuckers).

The split is thrilling. I mean who wants to make middle of the road work? Is it not better to enrage than induce apathy? However, the thing with apathy, is it's expected. In this enormous arts festival if Joe Shmoe reads a 3 star review that is middling at best, he may still attend that show to see the fair writing, decent acting, and adequate costumes. But if Mr. Shmoe reads a review that calls out a piece as "a dud of epic proportions" and "a truly awful, misguided and forgettable hour of theatre", well it is just harder to justify seeing that piece of shit.

Whereas I find it entertaining to read the reviews by people who absolutely refused to go with us to the exciting world this play lives in, reviews by little rich girls from Conneticut who were longing to see a piece of reverential Greek Tragedy, and reviews by fucking FOOD CRITICS who admitted the not knowing that much about theater (!!!), I also fear the power of the print. I know our work is good. The 30 or so people who populate our audience on a daily basis are nothing but complimentary. We were nominated for a prestigious award. We have more 4 star reviews than I can even remember off the top of my head. And yet, people read these slams and decide we are not worth an hour of their festival weekend.

And who can blame them? When was the last time I read a positively shitty review and went to see the show anyway, figuring the reviewer was just misguided? It doesn't happen. And yet, I wouldn't change this. I wouldn't erase our 2 star reviews from memory. I wouldn't go back and remove the meat. I wouldn't change a damb thing about this show to make it easier to understand or stomach. This is by far the best work most of us have done and I stand by pushing some boundaries and making a mess.

And fuck it. Today the Financial Times ran a huge picture of us and called us "the most exciting young American company I have seen up here so far this century."

Eat that with your ground beef. Give a 2 star show a fucking chance. Maybe it's genius. Maybe it's a piece of shit. But I guarantee you won't be able to take your eyes off it.

it's an honor to be nominated...

The Stage Awards for Acting Excellence 2007

Threatened Edinburgh site the Assembly Rooms has dominated nominations for this year’s Stage Awards for Acting Excellence at the Festival Fringe, receiving a total of six entries.

Following closely behind are the Traverse and Pleasance which boast five nominations. Other nominees include the Gilded Balloon, Zoo, C Venues and Underbelly.

News of the Assembly Rooms’ strong performance came just weeks after its director William Burdett-Coutts warned plans to refurbish the council-owned premises could put it “out of business”.

Now in their 13th year The Stage Awards are the only honours for professional theatre presented by a national UK publication at the Fringe.

They include categories for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Ensemble and Best Solo Performer. Nominations are chosen by the newspaper’s review team who view hundreds of productions before making their choice.

Stage Edinburgh team head Jeremy Austin said: “In what has turned out to be a very strong year for drama, there has been deliberation and debate even at the shortlist stage.

“Particularly encouraging is the mixture of performers in the best solo category, now in its second year, and the inclusion of shows from outside the 'big guns' such as The Zoo and C. We are all looking forward to an inspiring and challenging week of judging.”

The winners will be announced at an invitation-only ceremony at the Cafe Hub, Castlehill, Edinburgh, on the evening of Sunday, August 26.

Stage editor Brian Attwood, who will present the awards, added:

“There’s a substantial number of prizes to be won at Edinburgh but few match The Stage’s for credibility.

“All nominees were chosen by our highly experienced team of critics, who between them have seen nearly 350 of the best Fringe shows this year alone. Anyone who makes their shortlist is pretty special.”
The 2007 nominees
Best Actor

* Garry Cooper for Long Time Dead (Traverse)
* James Baxter for Scarborough (Assembly @ George Street)
* Daniel Pirrie for Sting for Nolte (Gilded Balloon Teviot)
* Merryn Owen for World’s End (Pleasance Dome)

Best Actress

* Nathalie Armin for Damascus (Traverse)
* Holly Atkins for Scarborough (Assembly @ George Street)
* Beth Fitzgerald for Follow Me (Assembly @ George Street)
* Dillie Keane for Frank and Dolly (Gilded Balloon Teviot)
* Eugenia Caruso for Truckstop (The Zoo)
* Janet Bamford for Truckstop (Zoo)

Best Ensemble

* Druid for The Walworth Farce (Traverse)
* Nimble Fish for The Container (E4 UdderBELLY’s Pasture)
* Arches Theatre Company for Pit (Traverse)
* Song of the Goat for Lacrimosa (Assembly Aurora Nova)
* Analogue for Mile End (Pleasance Dome)
* Shalimar for La Femme est Morte, or Why I Should Not F**k My Son (Pleasance Dome)
* Angelica for Stonewall (Pleasance Courtyard)

Best Solo Performer

* Linda Marlowe for Believe (Traverse)
* Madi Distefano for Popsicle Departure 1989 (Assembly @ St. George’s West)
* Elisabeth Gray for Wish I Had A Sylvia Plath (Underbelly’s Smirnoff Baby Belly)
* Alexander Campbell for Private Peaceful (Assembly @ George Street)
* Iris Bahr for Dai (Enough) (Pleasance Courtyard)
* Joanna Swain for Talking to Spacehoppers (C soco)

Making Theater History

And once again, a Fringe First OR EVEN THE POSSIBILITY OF IT evades us. Read it, if you dare.

But then we also got this rave from British Theatre Guide. A good reminder that reviews are very subjective.

La Femme Est Morte or why I should not Fuck my Son
Shalimar Productions
Pleasance Dome
****

Seneca never looked so good. Shalimar's production of Phaedra updates the action to modern day America and retells the story in a highly irreverent fashion. The story of the Phaedra the Celebrity-Queen and her love for stepson Hippolytus is told with a giggle and a whimsy that befit the situation all too well, as they try and fail to avoid each other's amorous glances until absentee King Theseus returns from waging war in a far-off but undisclosed land.

What struck me immediately as genius was Joey Williamson's inspired use of popular music, sung by the trio of paparazzi musicians, and set to articulately choreographed dance routines. By interspacing the action with these numbers, the tone is kept jolly and fun even when the doom becomes ever more apparent. In fact, the one moment where the play slips into the tragic mode of the source material comes as such a shock that it genuinely becomes affecting, before being transformed by the most brilliantly inspired visual gag of the play and a Harp rendition of Guns and Roses' Don't Cry.

The acting is decent, but with a carelessness at times that is welcome in an outright comedy as funny as this. Despite all of the comedy, underneath the play still manages to evoke a cutting satirical swipe at the modern celebrity culture and the invasions of privacy and spin used by the mass-media. As such it succeeds on both levels without ever seeming cloying or heavy-handed.

Graeme Strachan

The Guardian blogged about us (a little)!

Guardian Unlimited: Arts blog - theatre

What do you think The Bacchae is about?
Mark Fisher

August 14, 2007 11:23 AM


The Bacchae
Coochie coochie coo ... Tony Curran and Alan Cummings in The Bacchae. Photograph: Murdo Macleod



What's The Bacchae about? It seems it depends on what paper you read. If you take the Daily Telegraph, you will believe it is about "the horrors of religious fundamentalism still being unleashed on the world today". That's the assessment of Charles Spencer who sees in the National Theatre of Scotland production a metaphor for the global tensions of 2007.

If, on the other hand, you are a reader of The Scotsman, you will be in no doubt that Euripides was writing about the challenges to a civic society. In her assessment of the show, Joyce McMillan argued it is "a political parable about the terrible fate that awaits a state which cannot acknowledge and find a balance between the different aspects of human nature."

Or maybe you read my over-night review in the Scotland on Sunday. If so, you'll see the production as a clever bit of programming by Jonathan Mills, artistic director of the Edinburgh International Festival: a play about the bacchanalian excesses of festivals in which the hangover is never far behind the party. "As the Scottish capital heaves with revellers, drinking in the cultural excesses of the world's biggest arts festival, The Bacchae stands both as a defiant shout of "yah-boo-sucks" to those who would rather the whole shebang was buttoned up and put away, and as a salutary warning to the fun-seekers that it is possible to have too much of a good thing," I claimed.

If you stick with the Guardian, however, you will know, like Michael Billington, that it is about "the dangers of repression" and the "fatal result of surrendering to animalistic impulses".

So which is it? Fundamentalism, civic society, festivals or psychological repression? The answer is yes to all of the above. The reason The Bacchae is a classic - 2412 years old and going strong - is that it reveals itself afresh to each new generation and even, in this case, each new viewer. Those of us who have written about this production have revealed our own pre-occupations - mine with the nature of festivals, McMillan's with society's political make-up, and so on - but each reaction is valid. The Bacchae is big enough to take them all.

It's the same with a great little show running at the Pleasance called La Femme est Morte. In Euripides' Hippolytus and Racine's Phèdre, the spirited actors of Shalimar have found a parable about today's celebrity culture and the war in Iraq. They show us the ancient Greek myth filtered through the world of Britney Spears and George W Bush. And they are thrillingly right.

So if they are so open to interpretation, what do these classics mean to you? Is there an aspect of John Tiffany's staging of The Bacchae, for example, that the critics have missed? Or have you come across different meanings in other versions?

Lush

Sometimes we do some drinking.