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I checked this out of the library and saw it last night. The low-budget movie ran in 2006-7 and earned an Oscar. Now, I hear the original stars (who were not professional actors) are adapting it for a Broadway production!! Definitely worth looking in to!
It's not just a long music video, although I loved how the entire songs were played in the movie instead of just snippets. It's also a commentary on multiculturalism and on the newest generation's (the Millennials?) difficulties with communication, lowered attention spans and interpersonal skills in these days of sexting and porn on demand.
While watching, my son made the comment that people are mystified when he holds the door open for them. Afterwards, he seemed very energgized about his future. A great movie to watch with your teen children.
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Oops, forgot the link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0907657/ (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0907657/)
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I checked this out of the library and saw it last night. The low-budget movie ran in 2006-7 and earned an Oscar. Now, I hear the original stars (who were not professional actors) are adapting it for a Broadway production!! Definitely worth looking in to!
It's not just a long music video, although I loved how the entire songs were played in the movie instead of just snippets. It's also a commentary on multiculturalism and on the newest generation's (the Millennials?) difficulties with communication, lowered attention spans and interpersonal skills in these days of sexting and porn on demand.
Lee, I saw the (very brief) New York Theater Workshop production the night after the positive review posted below. It will definitely be on Broadway in 2012, maybe in the Spring. I really, really liked it--'He' was terrific, amazing singer, amazing actor, amazing accent; 'He' could be a big star. 'She'--hmmmm. Not so much. Musically, She's ok, Her acting, hmmm, overly eccentric, Her accent, sorry, awful, fake-y bad. Hate to say it, but--if they change Her, the entire production will be a huge hit.
http://theater.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/theater/reviews/once-the-musical-at-new-york-theater-workshop-review.html?pagewanted=all
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/misc/nytlogo152x23.gif)
Theater Review | 'Once'
A Love Affair With Music,
Maybe With Each Other
By BEN BRANTLEY
Published: December 6, 2011
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/12/07/arts/ONCE/ONCE-articleLarge.jpg)
Once
Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti portray the Guy and the Girl in this musical at the New York
Theater Workshop, inspired by the movie of the same title.
(http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2011/12/07/arts/jump-once/jump-once-popup.jpg)
Steve Kazee, standing at the microphone, with other members of the "Once" cast.
Charm is fragile. What’s enchanting in one context, subjected to stress, exaggeration or self-consciousness, can seem soppy or strident in another.
That’s the big problem faced by the talented creators of “Once,” the gently appealing new musical that opened on Tuesday night at the New York Theater Workshop, and it’s one they’ve only partly resolved. For if ever there was an example of delicately balanced charm, poised to go flat or splat, it is the 2006 Irish movie that inspired this show.
Written and directed by John Carney, the movie “Once” was a low-budget, low-key venture in which a Dublin guy and girl — identified as only Guy and Girl — meet cute (he fixes her vacuum cleaner), make music and almost make love. Both composers (who play songs by the musicians who portray them, Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova), they achieve creative consummation by making a most promising demo tape. A hit at the Sundance Film Festival, “Once” is now a cherished cult favorite, a sort of “Brief Encounter” for the scruffy folk-pop set of the 21st century.
Dangerous clichés are always lurking just beneath the surface of this film, ready to pop up like emoticons in a text message. Only the steady, understated naturalness of the performances, much of which were improvised, keeps the movie from coming down with that bad case of the cutes that often afflicts rom-coms.
Musicals — especially those with aspirations of making it on Broadway, where the stage version of “Once” is now headed — are a different animal from films, even films that spend half their time singing. Subtlety, for instance, has never been considered an asset in musicals. Whimsy, on the other hand, is often allowed to run wild.
In translating “Once” into three dimensions, the playwright Enda Walsh (whose superb “Misterman” is currently at St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn) and the director John Tiffany (“Black Watch”) haven’t steered clear of what were probably inevitable excesses. The script is now steeped in wise and folksy observations about committing to love and taking chances, most of which are given solemn and thickly accented utterance by Girl (played by Cristin Milioti), who is Czech.
Guy, played by Steve Kazee, has been transformed from a shaggy nerd into a figure of leading-man handsomeness, while Girl has turned into a full-fledged version of what she only threatened to be in the film: a kooky, life-affirming waif who is meant to be irresistible. And supporting characters who were allowed scant screen time have been scaled up to become the sort of winsomely wacky background figures you find in fluffy screen fare starring Julia Roberts or Kate Hudson.
But a merciful reversal occurs when “Once” breaks into music, which is often. Characters become less adorably overwrought and more genuinely conflicted, with distinctive personalities instead of standard-issue ones. The songs (written by Mr. Hansard and Ms. Irglova) soar with rough-edged, sweet-and-sad ambivalence that is seldom visited in contemporary American musicals. (And yes, the score still includes “Falling Slowly,” which won the Academy Award for best song.)
The subliminal choreography, by Steven Hoggett, has a fractured individuality. Without overstating itself, it looks as weird as these people feel they are inside. In song, “Once” delivers an original interior view of its characters. And some of the numbers are as fresh and unexpected as anything seen in New York since “Spring Awakening.”
As anyone knows who saw “Black Watch,” a collage portrait of a Scottish Army regiment in Iraq, Mr. Tiffany and Mr. Hoggett are masters of surprising stagecraft. “Once,” designed by the inventive Bob Crowley, turns its stage into a meticulously authentic-looking pub, the kind of place where people gather not so much to forget their sorrows as to expatiate on them, in drink and in song.
The production has a prologue of sorts in which the audience is invited onstage to mingle with cast members, who play their own instruments and are (quite satisfyingly) their own orchestra. Classic drinking numbers are performed casually but spiritedly, setting up a world in which the wall between song and speech is porous.
What follows doesn’t always sustain that aura of permeability and spontaneity. Once you’ve accepted that a fellow as good-looking as Mr. Kazee is a nebbish, Guy is a touching presence, whose self-doubt is as evident as his singing talent. But all the other characters have been rewritten into states of high, and rather generic, idiosyncrasy. (The generic part surprises me, since that is one adjective I would never have applied to Mr. Walsh as a playwright.)
Billy (Paul Whitty), a piano store owner, is a lovable blowhard who regularly throws his back out demonstrating martial arts moves. The bank manager (Andy Taylor) who gives Girl and Guy a loan is built up into a twanging, semi-closeted country-and-western fan.
Girl’s mother, Baruska (Anne L. Nathan), is a folkloric bulldozer of advice. And Girl’s Czech roommates (Will Connolly, Elizabeth A. Davis and Lucas Papaelias) have all been assigned distinguishing eccentricities, which they wear like oversize lapel buttons. Mr. Papaelias’s character, a natural-born mimic, is the only one I truly enjoyed, though all the performers — who also include Claire Candela, David Patrick Kelly, Erikka Walsh and J. Michael Zygo — work honorably within the broad outlines that have been drawn for them.
But it’s with Girl that I had the most problems. Not with Ms. Milioti, who gives what is, under the circumstances, a restrained performance, but with her character as a catalyst.
Guy, who begins the show suicidal, asks her at one point if she isn’t an angel who’s been sent to put his life in order. And that really is her function here, far too conspicuously.
She has a habit of saying inspirational things that make you want to hightail it to the nearest bar (though not the one onstage). “These songs need to be sung for you, for me, for anyone who has lost a love and still wants to love,” she says to Guy. (If that was in the movie, it kindly passed me by.) She also tells him that he is “wasting your life because you’re frightened of it.”
But when she sings, in a haunted voice that brings to mind the Bjork of the movie “Dancer in the Dark,” she becomes a fully realized human being, both mysterious and accessible. In the first act, Girl has a number in which she puts words to music written by Guy that I can’t stop thinking about.
Ms. Milioti performs the song (with Ms. Davis and Ms. Walsh) using ritualized gestures that suggest a soul quietly wrestling with its own sadness, and I thought of the ethereally tormented women painted by Edvard Munch. Unlike most musicals, “Once” is most at home in the depths; it’s on the surface that it feels out of its element.
ONCE
Book by Enda Walsh; music and lyrics by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova; based on the motion picture written and directed by John Carney; directed by John Tiffany; movement by Steven Hoggett; music supervisor/orchestrations by Martin Lowe; sets and costumes by Bob Crowley; lighting by Natasha Katz; sound by Clive Goodwin; dialect coach, Stephen Gabis; vocal supervisor, Liz Caplan Vocal Studios. Presented by the New York Theater Workshop, James C. Nicola, artistic director. At the New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 279-4200; ticketcentral.com. Through Jan. 15. Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes.
WITH: David Abeles (Eamon), Claire Candela (Ivona), Will Connolly (Andrej), Elizabeth A. Davis (Reza), Steve Kazee (Guy), David Patrick Kelly (Da), Cristin Milioti (Girl), Anne L. Nathan (Baruska), Lucas Papaelias (Svec), Andy Taylor (Bank Manager), Erikka Walsh (Ex-Girlfriend), Paul Whitty (Billy) and J. Michael Zygo (Emcee).
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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-07/rowdy-bar-brooding-ballads-fuel-charming-once-jeremy-gerard.html
Rowdy Bar, Moody Ballads
Add Charm to Broadway-Bound ‘Once’
By Jeremy Gerard
Dec 6, 2011 10:00 PM ET
(http://www.bloomberg.com/image/iSQO1M_EF_.Y.jpg)
Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti in "Once," a new musical based on the 2008 film, and now possibly
bound for Broadway. The film was awarded an Oscar for its plaintive song, "Falling Slowly," also
featured in the stage production.
A fine party is underway when you enter the New York Theatre Workshop to see “Once.” Feel free to join in.
The bar onstage is open for business and patrons on guitars, fiddles, drums and accordion are outdoing one another with anthems to the woeful miseries of love soured.
None is more scorching than “Leave,” a cri de coeur delivered by a strumming singer who takes over center stage.
A young woman approaches, asking if he has written this wrenching tune.
Soon we’re in a music shop (suggested merely by rolling an upright piano into the middle of the open pub setting). After a bit of Mendelssohn to prove her chops, Girl -- as she’s called -- has begun playing a melody snatched from the pocket of Guy (no other name, either).
“Falling Slowly” is the soulful, Oscar-winning ballad at the wounded heart of “Once” that helped a $150,000 indie film take in more than $20 million at the box office in 2008.
Like most of the music in this stage adaptation, “Falling Slowly” has never sounded more ethereally resonant. Or more Irish: “Take this sinking boat and point it home,” the song’s narrator urges a distant lover, “you’ve still got time.”
In Tune
As Guy and Girl, Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti are perfect vocal complements to each other. Whenever they’re joined by the rest of this remarkable ensemble, the music is gorgeous.
A recent Czech emigre to Dublin, Girl encounters Guy just as he has decided to throw in the towel. His girlfriend moved to New York and his music is getting him nowhere, certainly not out of the vacuum-repair shop he runs with his widowed “Da.” Girl is so taken with his songs that she arranges a one-shot, 24-hour recording session to make a demonstration disc.
They fall in love, but she’s still married to the absent father of her little girl and Guy has unfinished business with the woman who left him behind.
This happens to parallel the true story of Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who wrote the songs for the movie (and added more for the show). They bristle with desire sublimated by circumstance into art.
Moving On
If you miss it in the East Village, don’t worry: “Once” will surely follow through on plans to move to Broadway by spring. Before then, I hope that book writer Enda Walsh will trim the gratuitous slaps at Josh Groban and “Riverdance.”
Too frequently, the show careers into Tweeland, especially when the otherwise efficient director John Tiffany turns things over to Steven Hoggett, credited with “movement” that resembles a parody of modern dance.
These quibbles are eminently fixable. The inviting pub setting and working-class clothes are by Bob Crowley, the sensuous lighting by Natasha Katz. This is one show where having actors play instruments actually makes sense. “Once” charms us with a rare combination of intelligence, warmth and musicality.
Through Jan. 15, 2012 at 74 E. 4th St. Information: +1-212- 279-4200; http://www.nytw.org (http://www.nytw.org). Rating: ***
What the Stars Mean:
**** Do Not Miss
*** Excellent
** Good
* So-So
(No stars) Avoid
(Jeremy Gerard is the chief U.S. drama for Muse, the arts and leisure section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are their own.)
To contact the writer of this column:
Jeremy Gerard in New York at [email protected] (http://[email protected]).
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http://uk.news.yahoo.com/once-more-falling-slowly-once-043731205.html
(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kjmVjizroQE0M3Nlej7hqQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjc-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/logo/ap/ap_logo_106.png)
Once more,
falling slowly for "Once"
By JOCELYN NOVECK
Wed, Dec 7, 2011
(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kk1Mmr6ZzROomLnLDA_5Qw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0zNDI7cT04NTt3PTUxMg--/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ap_webfeeds/e728f897603b8c1b000f6a706700c6bc.jpg)
Steve Kazee, left, and Cristin Milioti are shown in a scene from "Once,"
performing at the New York Theatre Workshop in New York.
NEW YORK (AP) — Once upon a time, a little indie movie was made for $150,000 about an Irish street musician and a Czech flower-seller in Dublin. Its breezy, improvisational feel, pleasing folk-pop songs and melancholy romance touched the hearts of countless fans, and the film raked in $20 million.
As if that weren't enough, the movie's two stars and composers, 18 years apart, fell in love during filming, adding to the lore. Oh, and they won the 2007 original song Oscar for the hypnotic "Falling Slowly," bringing many to tears once again with their moving acceptance speeches.
That Cinderella of a movie was, of course, "Once," now being lovingly revived at off-Broadway's New York Theatre Workshop to eager audiences, many of whom fell for the film — not slowly, but fast — and are ready to fall yet again. And the fairy tale continues: On opening night Tuesday, producers announced a move to Broadway next year.
Just how die-hard "Once" fans will feel about the inevitable story adjustments the creative team has made in the current production remains an open and subjective question. How faithful does a film-to-stage adaptation need to be? Discuss.
But one thing is clear, despite a few flaws: The sweetness, the charm, and most of all the deceptively addictive songs by Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova are all still there, ready as ever to claim the heart.
Add to that some lovely, original staging by director John Tiffany and choreographer Steven Hoggett (both of whom were behind the terrific "Black Watch" from the National Theatre of Scotland), not to mention excellent orchestrations by Martin Lowe.
The inventiveness of the staging hits you even before the play starts. Walking into the theater, you confront a stage full of musicians — they are also the acting ensemble — playing Irish tunes in a tavern. There are fiddlers (a couple of the best-looking ones you've ever seen), a bassist, a piano player, people drumming on cabinets. It's loud and lusty and joyful, and you can join in onstage — the tavern's bar is ready to serve you real drinks.
Now for a quick story recap, if you haven't seen the film (but hey, at only 88 minutes, you really should): The main characters are Guy and Girl. He's a Hoover vacuum cleaner repairman who sings in the streets in his spare time. She's a Czech immigrant who sells flowers by day, cares for a young daughter at night, and grabs precious minutes to play the piano at a music store.
They are brought together by a love for music and a slowly burning attraction, with personal lives full of obstacles to their romance. Over a short period, they transport each other to a different place, emotionally and professionally, and one of the story's nicest elements is its refusal to tie things up neatly at the end.
In the film, Guy was played by the red-haired, gravelly voiced Hansard, Girl by the winsome and soft-spoken Irglova (only 17 at the time). Neither had acting experience, and many scenes were improvised to fit loosely around the songs.
That freewheeling feel is almost impossible to recreate on a stage — particularly when the production is aimed eventually at a much larger one, on Broadway — and wisely, the creators aren't really trying to do that. And so the scenes (the book is by playwright Enda Walsh) are more structured, and snappier, if sometimes overly forced.
It's also hard to recreate characters who are loved, especially as, in this case, the original leads infused much of their own personalities into the roles. The production confronts the problem by not mimicking the originals. Cristin Milioti as Girl, particularly, gives the role a much feistier, zingier, sometimes comic dimension. (Milioti, who has a beautiful singing voice, has said she purposely didn't see the film when she got the role, to avoid imitating Irglova.)
As Guy, Steve Kazee has a terrific voice as well, much more theatrical — understandably — than Hansard's, and the matinee idol looks to go with it.
The more significant departure from the film is an emphasis on comedy, with the addition or enhancement of several characters for that purpose. Billy, for example, is the music store owner — a character barely seen in the film — and here he's an oafish, lovable giant type, with lots of corny Irish humor thrown his way, not to mention some broad physical comedy that occasionally threatens to overshadow the play's subtler charms.
Other comic characters — sometimes overly so — include a bank officer with a (really bad) song in his heart, and a bunch of kooky flat mates for Girl, who learn English from a soap opera and later become the backup band as Guy and Girl embark on a mammoth recording session.
"Once" lovers will know how the story ends, but we won't spoil it for those who don't. Except to say that of all the songs in the show, some from the film and some not, none resonate with more power and simple emotion than "Falling Slowly."
And so, as first Guy begins a reprise of the song, then Girl joins in, and then the entire ensemble, you're probably not falling slowly by that point. Swept up in the music, you're probably just gone.
Online:
http://nytw.org (http://nytw.org)
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Wow! Obviously they are moving forward much more quickly that I thought, they are opening on Broadway February 28:
(http://nytw.org/imgs/once_homepage_long.gif) (http://nytw.org/once_landing_page.asp)
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/once-theater-review-270127
Once: Theater Review
Adapted for the stage from the 2007 feature film with
Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, the production
makes intelligent decisions at every step.
By David Rooney
5:30 PM PST 12/6/2011
(http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/sites/default/files/2011/12/once_theater_review_a_p_0.jpg)
The Bottom Line: “Once” is amply rewarding,
but this lovingly crafted musical will lure
many audiences back again and again.
UPDATED: A Broadway transfer was officially confirmed soon after the opening-night curtain went up. Following its downtown run, "Once" will move to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre, beginning previews Feb. 28 for a March 18 opening.
NEW YORK – There’s some special theater magic happening in Once. From writers and director through design team and an extraordinary ensemble of actor-musicians, it’s hard to think of another company in town working as such a seamless unit to serve the material. It may sound like heresy to fans of the 2007 Fox Searchlight release, but this bewitching stage adaptation arguably improves on the movie, expanding its emotional breadth and elevating it stylistically while remaining true to the original’s raw fragility.
That comparison intends no disrespect to writer-director John Carney's delicate Irish independent feature. Shot in 17 days on a meager $160,000, the fractured love story about the power of music segued from Sundance discovery to sleeper hit, grossing $9.5 million domestically. Nor is it meant as a slight to the affecting performances of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová, who wrote its gorgeous acoustic song score (including the Oscar-winning “Falling Slowly”) and play partly improvised versions of themselves in the film.
But where so many screen-to-stage adaptations blunder by slavishly replicating their sources or inflating elements of comedy, sentiment or romance to cartoonish proportions, Once makes intelligent decisions at every step. Perhaps the smartest of those was bringing on board the brilliant Irish playwright Enda Walsh to write a book distinguished by his unique brand of pithy lyricism and sharp-edged humor. The result is a show that augments its source – most notably by deepening the secondary characters -- without sacrificing the intensity that is the film’s essence.
The other key forces making this such a full-bodied transformation are director John Tiffany and choreographer Steven Hoggett, who last teamed on Black Watch, the stunningly visceral play about a Scottish regiment in Iraq that became a worldwide sensation. Their collaboration here is no less thrilling. Hoggett’s expressive, gesture-based movement and Tiffany’s precision-tooled direction create an experience in which moments of haunting stillness alternate with pulsing motion, and even the scene changes pack visual poetry.
The question at this point is not if the production should transfer to Broadway but when and how. While they go uncredited in this Off Broadway premiere run at New York Theater Workshop (the birthplace of Rent ), deep-pocketed commercial producers have been behind Once throughout its gestation. Plans are believed to be in place for a fast-track move in the spring. I can’t be alone in hoping the show lands in one of the smaller Broadway houses, preferably under 1,000 seats, to preserve the intimacy that gives this NYTW staging such enveloping warmth.
Designer Bob Crowley has built an Irish pub onstage, with a scuffed red-and-white tile floor and a weathered wooden bar at which theatergoers buy booze and mingle during the pre-show and intermission with actors in character playing rousing folk tunes. This dissolves barriers and raises the spirits even before Once begins. The rear and side walls are hung with framed mirrors, dominated by a large rectangular classic pub mirror tilted directly over the bar, which pulls the audience in even closer.
While Hansard’s screen character, identified only as Guy, was a Dublin busker still hoping to break into the music industry, his similarly no-name stage counterpart (Steve Kazee) has given up. He plays a final song (“Leave”) and puts down his guitar in bitter defeat. But the Girl (Cristin Milioti), a Czech immigrant whose filter-free directness is a force to be reckoned with, is too taken by his music to watch him abandon it.
Learning that he repairs vacuum cleaners for a living, she miraculously produces a broken one and ushers him home to the shop run by his Da (David Patrick Kelly). En route, they visit hot-headed Billy (Paul Whitty), who lets the Girl play piano in his struggling music store. Snatching the Guy’s sheet music, she bullies him into singing and playing with her on “Falling Slowly,” the first of several emotionally ravishing interludes.
Out of a few awkward exchanges, a thwarted romance is hatched in music, bringing both mutual heartache and reciprocal gifts. The Guy still carries a heavy torch for his ex (Erikka Walsh). The inspiration for his tender-hearted songs, she moved to New York six months earlier, leaving their relationship unfinished. The Girl remains loyal to her estranged husband back in the Czech Republic. While the show follows the general trajectory of the movie as she drives him to make a demo recording, the motley band of musicians assembles more organically, absorbing the Girl’s extended family of fellow Czechs. Skeptics bracing for the distortion of a happy ending will be gratified by the integrity with which Walsh touches every poignant note of the film, and then some.
Comparable to what Tom Kitt achieved with Green Day’s music in the stage adaptation of American Idiot, Martin Lowe’s orchestrations build on Hansard and Irglová’s songs with both inventiveness and restraint. The intricate harmonies and layering of instrumentation are glorious. Some numbers, like “Gold,” become quieter and more introspective; others like “Say It to Me Now” and “When Your Mind’s Made Up” acquire breathtaking power, with Kazee capturing Hansard’s melancholy howl without resorting to imitation.
The entire cast doubles as musicians while etching flavorful characterizations. Purists may grumble that Kazee is too buff and pretty to be a down-at-heel Dubliner (he could be Paul Rudd’s hotter brother), but he plays the role with aching tenderness and sings the hell out it. With her lovely, cracked voice and brittle accent, the wonderful Milioti evokes a soulful Björk who’s actually from our planet. The supporting cast is full of memorable turns, notably from Kelly, Anne L. Nathan as the Girl’s feisty mother, Lucas Papaelias as an over-caffeinated death-metal drummer, Andy Taylor as the country music-loving bank manager who provides the loan to cover studio time, and Whitty as wild man Billy.
In one of the show’s most exquisite moments, Crowley and lighting designer Natasha Katz transform the stage, as if by waving a wand, into a seaside cliff top above sparkling waters. It’s one of many times in Once when we are reminded of theater’s singular capacity to enchant and transport us.
Venue: New York Theatre Workshop, New York (Through Jan. 15)
Cast: David Abeles, Claire Candela, Will Connolly, Elizabeth A. Davis, Steve Kazee, David Patrick Kelly, Cristin Milioti, Anne L. Nathan, Lucas Papaelias, Andy Taylor, Erikka Walsh, Paul Whitty, J. Michael Zygo
Director: John Tiffany
Book: Enda Walsh, based on the motion picture written and directed by John Carney
Music and lyrics: Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová
Set and costume designer: Bob Crowley
Lighting designer: Natasha Katz
Sound designer: Clive Goodwin
Movement: Steven Hoggett
Music supervision and orchestrations: Martin Lowe
Presented by New York Theatre Workshop
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Here's the 2007 movie:
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoSL_qayMCc[/youtube]
&feature
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Wow, thank you John for all this excellent information about the upcoming play!! I can't believe I have missed this all this time!!
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Wow, thank you John for all this excellent information about the upcoming play!! I can't believe I have missed this all this time!!
You're welcome, Lee! I really liked the original movie too, and I saw it when it was first released in New York.
Here are a few things I think you would really like:
Firstly: if you still have the DVD at home, listen to the two different commentary tracks (one for the film, one for music, and both with the three principals, Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová and director John Carney) which were made very soon after the film was released, you learn a lot. I also learned (I believe) that Irglová, as VERY young as she was, was not only really very sensitive and tender hearted in the commentaries, she was (and is) VERY smart, and the two GUYS (who have long histories together, and who first initiated the project), also within the commentaries themselves, don't quite realize how smart and insightful She was (and is).
Secondly, read these two wikipedia entries:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_(film)
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Frames
"The Frames" was the band co-founded by Hansard. Carney was one of the early band-members; he left The Frames because he wanted to be a filmmaker. Later, Carney conceived, wrote and directed Once. Much of the music was written by Hansard and other members of The Frames, the rest was written by Hansard and Irglová. Cillian Murphy was supposed to be the male lead in the film; when he pulled out, Hansard reluctantly took the role. So--
Thirdly, read:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glen_Hansard
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark%C3%A9ta_Irglov%C3%A1 (Markéta Irglová)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carney_(director)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_Slowly
Some comments re the new musical version:
Cristin Milioti as Girl, particularly, gives the role a much feistier, zingier, sometimes comic dimension. (Milioti, who has a beautiful singing voice, has said she purposely didn't see the film when she got the role, to avoid imitating Irglova. )
Big. Mistake. BIG.
Sorry, I am seemingly alone on this, but--I think Cristin Milioti as the Girl stinks. Seriously Bad.
As Guy, Steve Kazee has a terrific voice as well, much more theatrical — understandably — than Hansard's, and the matinee idol looks to go with it.
Steve Kazee is so HUGELY good, it's hard to overstate it--he is WHY there is any reason to put the stage production on at all. He sings better than Hansard in Hansard's own songs, and he has completely changed the character (in a very quiet, subtle way) so that the story in the musical is better than the story in the film, despite the fact that there are aspects in the musical that are heavy-handed and even literally dumb compared to aspects that were clever and touching in the film. Oh yeah, one other thing--the photos above do not even begin to show what the reviewers rightly saw in person--Kazee is seriously gorgeous. The fact that he also beautifully plays the Guy (the character) as painfully shy, sad and anguished (but subtly and quietly) AND that he sings like an angel, AND he does an amazing Dublin accent (he's from Kentucky), well--he's unbelievable.
True fact: I managed to get a first row seat dead on center, so I noticed something at the very end, just before the curtain call (no curtain), on the night of the first show after the opening night, when all the amazing reviews had just come out. The theater blocking was such that Kazee and Milioti were both together, immediately in front of me at the very end of the story. Then, just before they and the rest of the cast were to face the audience and bow, very quietly, so only I and maybe one or two other people could have seen, HE turned to her, locked eyes, and silently mouthed 'Thank you!' to her.
Anyway. I guess you get the idea he's pretty terrific. So is the show.
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(http://jerkmag.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/220px-once_2006_filmposter.jpg?w=500) (http://jerkmag.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/once-a-new-musical.jpg?w=300&h=264) (http://www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/images/show/06765_show_portrait.jpg) (http://oncemusical.com/index.html?gclid=COaz9uDgwK0CFVCR7Qod4HnRBQ#googsearch)
To see the trailer, click, then again where indicated:
(http://static.newyorkcitytheatre.com/images/show/06765_show_landscape_01.jpg) (http://www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/theaters/bernardbjacobstheater/once.php)
Click for tickets:
(http://www.newyorkcitytheatre.com/images/venue/00593_seating_chart_large.gif) (http://oncemusical.com/index.html?gclid=CL2R8rHuwK0CFQXd4AodfnVHBw#googsearch)
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As you may have noticed, ALL the reviews were like this. Can you imagine how the cast and crew must have felt that day? Awesome!
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/theater/once-a-sweet-primal-original-musical-1.3370468
'Once,'
a sweet, primal original musical
By LINDA WINER
Published: December 6, 2011 3:25 PM
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Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti in a scene from broadway's musical "Once," directed
by John Tiffany, at the New York Theatre Workshop.
It's getting to look a lot like next year and, all autumn long, there hasn't been a new musical to gift wrap and celebrate beyond the New Year. But wait. Just under the wire comes "Once," a peculiar, original, altogether enchanting little show at the New York Theatre Workshop through Jan. 15 -- with Broadway producers circling for a spring transfer.
You may quibble about the musical's originality, but only in the most literal way. This is adapted from the 2006 indie film about a romance between a Dublin guitarist and a pianist from Czechoslovakia. The movie had songs by Glen Hansard, the real-life Irish guitarist who played Guy, and Markéta Irglová, the Czech immigrant and pianist who played Girl. Their song, "Falling Slowly," won an Oscar, and their breakup was the subject of the 2011 documentary "The Swell Season."
Now, they are offstage as composers of this strangely wonderful, folk-pop, Irish-Middle European chamber musical, set in a big, circular, dark-wood tavern where the audience can buy drinks and get to know the 13 extraordinary actor-musicians before the story begins. (Simple set and perfect cross-cultural costumes by Bob Crowley.)
This time, Guy is played with endearing slacker sweetness by Steve Kazee. Despondent over his career and love life, he is approached by pushy, fast-talking, delightfully solemn Girl -- played with unpredictably lovely forthrightness (if, at times, a bit too much winsomeness) by Cristin Milioti.
He fixes vacuum cleaners. She has a broken one. As directed by John Tiffany, with movement direction by Steven Hoggett (the wizards from Scottish war-masterwork "Black Watch"), her vacuum cleaner mysteriously appears. Cue the song called "Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy."
The book, by prolific Irish playwright Enda Walsh, makes this all seem natural -- including the 11 friends and relatives, all virtuosos on fiddles and banjos and more exotic instruments. We get to know bits of everyone's life in this quietly primal, dreamlike show with the rousing, stomping dances and the odd, silent, ritualized ballets for hands and hearts.
Even when the lyrics get a little banal, the harmonic blends are gorgeous. Remember that "Rent" started in this tiny theater. "Once" is smaller, but destined for big -- we hope not too big -- things.
WHAT "Once"
WHERE New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. Fourth St., Manhattan
INFO $75; 212-279-4200; nytw.org
[email protected] (http://[email protected])
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Meanwhile....
....The movie had songs by Glen Hansard, the real-life Irish guitarist who played Guy, and Markéta Irglová, the Czech immigrant and pianist who played Girl. Their song, "Falling Slowly," won an Oscar, and their breakup was the subject of the 2011 documentary "The Swell Season."
(http://www.newpeopleworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Swell_Season_poster.jpg)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1722476/
The world fell in love with Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová when their songwriting collaboration in the film Once culminated in a jubilant Oscar win. But behind the scenes, where Glen and Mar's on-screen romance became reality, a grueling two-year world tour threatens to fracture their fated bond. Gorgeously filmed in black and white, this music-filled documentary is an intimate look at the exhilaration and turmoil created by both love and fame.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT02bar2zms[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyG6h10hJb8[/youtube]
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Meanwhile meanwhile--in Once the musical, if Cristin Milioti ("who has said she purposely didn't see the [original] film when she got the role, to avoid imitating Irglová") doesn't finally watch this new documentary (at least) and learn something from the amazingly real life 'Girl,' Markéta Irglová, to try to elevate her (Milioti's) buffoonish performance, well, she's a fool.
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.
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http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2011/10/the-swell-season-doc-revisits-couple-from-once.html
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24 Frames
(http://www.latimes.com/media/alternatethumbnails/photo/2010-05/54038503-31093656.jpg)Movies: Past, present and future
'The Swell Season':
Documentary revisits couple from 'Once'
October 7, 2011 | 5:52pm
(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/.a/6a00d8341c630a53ef015435f93e66970c-600wi)
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova ascended from little-known musicians to beloved pop culture couple in the briefest of moments at the 2007 Academy Awards. Hansard, guitarist and vocalist of the Irish rock band the Frames, and Irglova, a Czech singer-songwriter, won the Oscar for best song for “Falling Slowly,” a ballad from their indie musical “Once.” Their heartfelt acceptance speeches — and blossoming offscreen romance — immediately won over audiences.
A new documentary, “The Swell Season,” which opens in Los Angeles today, picks up where the Oscar ceremony left off, as filmmakers Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis follow Hansard and Irglova on tour with their band, the Swell Season. Shot in black and white over a period of three years, the documentary includes performance footage and intimate moments of the duo grappling with their newfound fame and evolving relationship.
August-Perna, Dapkins and Mirabella-Davis spoke with 24 Frames writer Rebecca Keegan.
Question: How did this movie come about?
Mirabella-Davis: I was teaching a class at the New York Film Academy just after the Oscar win and Glen was one of my students. He was learning how to direct short films, and we became friends over the course of the class. After it was over, he approached me and described how he and the rest of the Swell Season were about to embark on this epic tour across America and the rest of the world and he expressed his conflicted feelings, his elation at the journey they were about to embark on but also his fears of being suddenly in the limelight and being under the scrutiny. We got together, Chris, Nick and I, and talked about the possibility of there being a really interesting documentary there, and Glen invited us to go on tour and that’s how it started.
Q: Did Glen and Marketa have oversight over what went in?
August-Perna: They were fairly hands off. We reached a point where we had respectful boundaries with each other when we were shooting. They saw a cut six months into the edit and had some feedback that was mostly about doing some more interviews and trying to capture this quickly evolving perspective that they had on this very intense period of their life.
Q: Why did you shoot it in black and white?
Dapkins: Glen felt black and white would be exciting. It was one more step toward a more narrative, fiction language, contrasted with “Once,” which was a fiction film shot like a documentary. This was the complete opposite.
Q: Was there anything that surprised you about these two people?
Mirabella-Davis: It was interesting to spend time with Glen, someone who had really managed to fulfill the dreams he had when he was a 14-year-old busker on the streets of Ireland and then struggling with the idea that it hadn’t brought him the happiness or the enlightenment that he hoped it would. That was interesting for us as aspiring filmmakers because sometimes we lose sight of that.
Q: You shot a lot of footage of Glen and Marketa interacting with some very avid fans. What did you notice about their relationship to their fans?
August-Perna: When Glen and Marketa fell in love, it was as if the world had watched it happen. In “Once,” people felt like they had watched it come about. There was a sense that they were old friends and people knew them.
Mirabella-Davis: As the touring went on, we saw Marketa become more anxious about being cast in a certain light. It was a struggle for her about finding her place as a private person and a private artist. The trappings of celebrity were a philosophical conflict for her.
August-Perna: She really needed to find her own experience of this time period. Some of that anxiety had to do with wanting to experience that time period differently, not as a couple that went everywhere together.
Q: This movie follows Glen and Marketa as they fall out of love, and some of their songs about lost love turn out to be eerily prescient.
Dapkins: We became quickly aware of the fact that they were working out certain unconscious undercurrents through their art form. So we started shooting the concerts in this intimate way where you couldn’t get a sense of where the venue was, which helped to bring out the commentary that they’re almost unwittingly providing.
Q: After showing them perform together throughout the film, the movie ends with a scene of Marketa watching Glen perform, and over the credits a scene of Marketa watching Glen. Why did you end that way?
August-Perna: It solidified the idea that two people can fall out of love personally and still love watching each other do what they do best. They have that musical relationship that will live on quite possibly forever and that’s what we were trying to capture.
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http://movies.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/movies/swell-season-about-duo-in-musical-once-review.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1326045767-Yjk3Bvdk7DtYCiCTul1bYg
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Movie Review/NYT Critics' Pick
The Swell Season (2011)
How Fame Divided Bandmates in Love
By JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
October 20, 2011
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“The Swell Season” is less a musical documentary than the story of a breakup, even if its makers seem at times frustratingly determined to smother their film’s most valuable emotional hook. Named for the band formed by the Irish-Czech duo Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, whose starring roles in the tiny 2007 musical “Once” and subsequent Academy Award for the beautiful song “Falling Slowly” hoisted them to international stardom, the film glances back at the two-year tour that followed those events.
What emerges is a poignant commentary on the uneasy commingling of love and fame. The couple have always existed in a muddle of art and life, the one feeding off the other, and their songs echo a musical and romantic collaboration that began many years earlier, when Ms. Irglova was barely out of high school.
Taking these songs on the road in the middle of a post-Oscar feeding frenzy, however, exposes personality differences that threaten to disrupt their bond. While Ms. Irglova is increasingly uncomfortable with the fans’ post-show attention (“I’m not a celebrity”), Mr. Hansard laps it up.
“It’s a great life we have, isn’t it?” he asks her brightly at the beginning of the movie, and it’s a beat or two before we hear her whispered “Yeah.”
Just as they did in “Once,” the pair’s lyrics chart their shifting emotions (“And I’m letting myself down by satisfying you”), and from time to time there are glimpses of the earlier film’s fragile charm. Shot in shimmering black and white, the images swaddle the story in a retro glamour as wistful as Ms. Irglova’s voice, making the footage of the tour’s daily grind unfortunately jarring.
Onstage, however, the directors (Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis) shine, their sidling approach to close-ups of Ms. Irglova’s vulnerable vocals contrasting with Mr. Hansard’s dramatic, center-stage solos. As he delivers his trademark blend of whispered phrases swelling to angry yelps, we can see both the former street busker and the present-day star.
We can also see where the anger comes from, as Mr. Hansard struggles to understand his hilariously fame-obsessed mother and the alcoholic father who died before the film was completed but not before leaving his son with the burden of unfulfilled dreams.
“Glen is tough as nails,” a colleague insists, but his songs suggest otherwise, as do his reactions to his partner’s perceptions about the darker corners of his personality. This makes the film’s stinginess with intimate conversations — either uncaptured or unused — especially disappointing.
Lovely but directionless, “The Swell Season” is a time capsule of scattered impressions and isolated moments. More interested in tour-bus parties than in Ms. Irglova’s need to forge her own musical identity, the filmmakers miss an opportunity to document the birth of a butterfly. As her just-released solo album and the band’s continuing European tour attest, fame and Ms. Irglova have at last formed a truce.
THE SWELL SEASON
Opens on Friday in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Directed by Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis; director of photography, Mr. Dapkins; edited by Mr. August-Perna; music by the Swell Season and Iron and Wine; produced by Mr. Mirabella-Davis; released by Seventh Art Releasing. Running time: 1 hour 30 minutes. This film is not rated.
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Video October 18, 2011
A Clip From ‘The Swell Season’
A scene from "The Swell Season," a documentary about the musicians Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard, opening Friday.
Click on:
http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/10/18/movies/100000001119053/exclusive-clip-the-swell-season.html
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/swell-season-film-review-181519
The Swell Season:
Film Review
Documentary does right by fans of
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova,
whose success has outlasted their
relationship
by John DeFore
8:00 PM PDT 4/22/2011
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The Bottom Line: Sensitive doc manages to show "Once"
duo as both blissed-out lovers and post-romance partners
without overdramatizing the transition.
NEW YORK — Tenderly dismantling the romantic mythology surrounding 2006's indie smash Once, The Swell Season chronicles the surprise musical success of that movie's stars Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová and presents a couple that, however deep their bonds, can't live a storybook life for long. An easy sell with viewers who fell for the original film (and the albums it spawned), the doc by Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins and Carlo Mirabella-Davis does right by both fans and subjects and could make a profitable arthouse run.
Fans will know in advance that Hansard and Irglová, still partnered in music, didn't survive as a couple. But the film begins with them very much in love -- her giving him a haircut in a modest room while he marvels, "It's a great life we have, isn't it?" We soon watch the pair at the seaside, running naked into the surf like kids getting away with something.
But from the start, the filmmakers offer Q&A sessions with each singer individually. Though at first we're hearing childhood anecdotes and musings on fame (success came overnight in her case but was hard-earned in his), the solo interviews set the stage psychologically for the breakup to come.
The two spend a satisfying chunk of time recalling the musical spark that led to the Oscar-winning song "Falling Slowly" and resulting success with descriptions of that chemistry are borne out with present-day tour footage. Too successful, in one respect: The youthful vulnerability that makes Irglová so endearing behind a microphone hobbles her at the backstage door, where she can't get comfortable taking photos with fans. Hansard, who gladly accepts any interaction with his new admirers, tires of his partner's reluctance.
Hansard, in turn, suffers more philosophical difficulties with fame — a "what's it worth?" ennui that not only creates friction with his partner but makes for poignant dinner-table scenes with the family he clearly adores. His working-class mother can't stop talking about being the only woman in town whose son has an Oscar, and instead of accepting the pleasure he has given her, Hansard frets over this abstraction of achievement.
If the handsome black-and-white film sensitively captures frictions between characters who continue to love and respect each other, it isn't obsessed with this discomfort zone. The filmmakers are happy for diversions, like a tour-bus dance party and a post-gig song-swapping session where the group's Irish crew go ballad-for-ballad with the stars.
Performance footage may be briefer than some in the audience expect, but what there is is choice, capturing the contrasting kinds of vulnerability -- hers shy but gutsy, his eloquently raw -- that make the pair distinctive. A closing image, with Hansard in the spotlight while Irglová watches contently, can be read as either a newfound equilibrium or a suggestion that the duo will eventually follow different musical paths. Either way, Swell Season makes a bruised-but-sweet flip side to Once 's dreamy love song.
Venue: Tribeca Film Festival (Viewpoints)
Production Company: Elkcreek Cinema
Directors-screenwriters: Nick August-Perna, Chris Dapkins, Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Producer: Carlo Mirabella-Davis
Director of photography: Chris Dapkins
Editor: Nick August-Perna
Sales: Demetri Makoulis, Elephant Eye Films
No rating, 89 minutes
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http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2011/10/the-swell-season.html
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The Swell Season
By Elliot V. Kotek
Published at 12:54 AM on October 4, 2011
Anyone who was knocked backwards by the movie/musical Once will once again be torn apart emotionally by The Swell Season, a documentary finding its way into U.S. theaters this October.
The Swell Season has that same soul-burning effect that fans of the original Sundance hit will recognize and appreciate. Filmed over three years and mostly post Oscar glory, the documentary follows Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová on tour, providing backstory to the album and film that made them famous. At the same time, it chronicles the couple’s struggles with the concept of fame, as well as the intensifying-then-cooling ardor of their own personal relationship.
With a deft hand that’s as much a blessing as a potential weakness, the documentary follows the twosome as they come into and out of the camera’s eye. While this offers the viewer unique insight into the claustrophobic effect of a success that locked the duo together from the moment their music struck a chord with viewers through the requisite touring for an acclaimed album, the closeness with which they’re viewed creates a disconnect between the audience and the greater context of the world at large. The Swell Season is therefore somewhat removed from the happenings of their peers, separated from the news of the world, and bare of commentary from outside the life, love and lyrics of these two musicians in their goldfish bowl.
Ultimately, the documentary is as intimate a portrait of a duo that’s both band and couple as any top-notch biopic. With apt clarity, the film’s three directors celebrate their subjects’ story in crisp black and white, rendering the piece as somehow timeless and somewhat classic, a fitting choice with which to pay tribute to the deeply sincere storytelling of Hansard and Irglová’s music.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Swell_Season
The Swell Season
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(http://www.theswellseason.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/homepageLive5.jpg) (http://www.theswellseason.com/)
The Swell Season is a folk rock duo formed by Irish musician Glen Hansard and Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová. "The Swell Season" name is derived from Hansard's favourite novel by Josef Škvorecký (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_%C5%A0kvoreck%C3%BD) from 1975 bearing the same title. Their debut album goes by the same name.
(http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/1641999-L.jpg) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_%C5%A0kvoreck%C3%BD)
Since their rise to prominence after starring in the 2007 film Once, they increasingly referred to themselves as "The Swell Season" in promotion of their performances until it became the formal name of their collaboration in 2008. (Notably, they still used their separate names when they contributed their cover of Bob Dylan's "You Ain't Goin' Nowhere" to the 2007 soundtrack of I'm Not There. )
During a three year period from 2007 to 2010 a documentary film was made about Irglova and Hansard called The Swell Season which was released in the autumn of 2011 having been premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in June 2011 to very positive review.
History
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The self-titled first album came about after Glen and Marketa were approached by the Czech film director Jan Hřebejk while touring in the Czech Republic, and were asked by him to record songs for his upcoming film Beauty in Trouble. It was the first album that Hansard, the singer for The Frames, had released independent of his band.
Some of the tracks on this album have appeared on other recordings - the track "Falling Slowly" and "When Your Mind's Made Up" on The Frames' album The Cost, and "Falling Slowly", "When Your Mind's Made Up", "Lies" and "Leave" on the Once soundtrack.
Glen and Marketa parodied their roles from Once in The Simpsons episode, In the Name of the Grandfather.
A follow up album, Strict Joy, was released on October 27, 2009 in the United States. Three singles from the album have been released: "In These Arms," "Low Rising," and "Feeling the Pull."
Spin Magazine 's review of Strict Joy gave the album 4 out of 5 stars. "If Glen Hansard's and Markéta Irglová's roles in the hit Irish indie film Once unintentionally wove the tale of their real-life falling in love, their second album as The Swell Season weaves the story of their falling out of it." SPIN.com (http://SPIN.com)
In August 2010, The Swell Season covered Neutral Milk Hotel's "Two-Headed Boy" for The AV Club.
At an August 19, 2010 concert at the Mountain Winery, a concert attendee leapt to his death from the roof of the venue onto the stage. The death was deemed a suicide. The band provided and paid for group counseling sessions for concert attendees who witnessed the event.
Discography
Albums
The Swell Season (2006)
Once Soundtrack (2007)
Strict Joy (2009)
Singles
"Falling Slowly" (2007)
"When Your Mind's Made Up" (2007)
"Falling Slowly" (2008, re-release, #61 Billboard Hot 100)
"Into the Mystic" (2008, part of "Before the Goldrush", the Teach For America Covers Project)
"In These Arms" (2009)
"Low Rising" (2009)
"Feeling the Pull" (2010)
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Wow, how did all this pass me by? I haven't been following the Oscars very closely ever since 2006. And, could it be that I've been preoccupied with another movie so much that I've missed others worth watching...if not countless times, at least once?? ;)
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/11/theater/theaterspecial/musical-once-receives-8-tony-awards.html?_r=1&hp&pagewanted=all
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‘Once’
Basks in Glow of 8 Tony Awards
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: June 11, 2012
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Steve Kazee, on guitar, with the cast of the musical "Once" at the Tony Awards ceremony
on Sunday.
The bittersweet romantic musical “Once” was the unexpectedly dominant winner at the 66th annual Tony Awards on Sunday night, winning best musical, best actor, and six other Tonys, in a highly competitive year for Broadway honors. Many of the celebrated shows, including “Once” and the play “Peter and the Starcatcher,” were notable for their imaginative theatricality, inventive staging and ensembles of little-known theater actors, instead of the big-budget or star-driven productions that often prevail on Tony night.
“Peter and the Starcatcher,” a prequel to the classic Peter Pan story, won five Tonys, the most for any straight play this year, but fell short of winning the top award in its field: the best-play Tony went to “Clybourne Park,” a satire of race relations by Bruce Norris that won the Pulitzer Prize for drama last year. It was the only award for “Clybourne,” reflecting Tony voters’ tendency to spread the good news; 11 musicals and plays won at least one Tony, out of 37 eligible shows.
“Once,” a slowly unfolding tale of two Dublin musicians falling in love, emerged early as the night’s favorite, winning for John Tiffany’s direction and for its book, by the Irish playwright Enda Walsh, as well as for set, lighting, sound design and orchestrations. (The actors in “Once” double as the show’s band.)
Near the end of the broadcast Steve Kazee, who plays the emotionally broken guitarist at the center of “Once,” won for best actor and used his acceptance speech to thank his cast mates for bucking him up after his mother’s death in April, shortly after the musical opened.
“This cast has carried me around, and made me feel alive, and I will never be able to fully repay them,” Mr. Kazee said.
The other lead acting Tonys went to Audra McDonald, winning her fifth Tony (at age 41) as Bess in the musical revival of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess”; James Corden as the comic manservant in the British play “One Man, Two Guvnors”; and Nina Arianda as a sexy, mysterious actress in the play “Venus in Fur.”
Ms. McDonald, who recently returned to Broadway after four years acting on television, delivered a speech that honored the stage as a refuge for actors. “I was a little girl with a potbelly, hyperactive and overdramatic, and I found the theater, and I found my home,” she said.
Ms. Arianda squealed with delight several times during her speech, and paid tribute to, among others, the actor Christopher Plummer, who presented her with the award. “You were my first crush,” she told Mr. Plummer.
The other leading contender for best musical was the Disney production “Newsies,” an audience favorite about New York newsboys on strike in 1899. “Newsies” started the night with eight nominations and won two Tonys, for choreography and score. The latter award gave the eight-time Oscar winner Alan Menken his long-awaited first Tony, shared with the lyricist Jack Feldman.
In his acceptance speech Mr. Menken described the journey of “poor ‘Newsies’ ” — from the 1992 film version “that earned nothing at the box office” to the current Broadway adaptation that is grossing nearly $1 million a week, among the biggest box-office takes of any new show this season.
“We owe it to the generations of kids that have adopted this movie and insisted that it be brought to the stage,” Mr. Menken said, referring to the years of requests to Disney that the film be turned into a musical.
Among the best-known winners on Sunday was Mike Nichols, the Oscar-winning director who had previously earned six Tonys for directing plays and musicals on Broadway; he received a seventh for staging “Death of a Salesman.” When his name was announced, he kissed his wife, Diane Sawyer, and then took the stage and declared himself “extremely touched” by the honor. He recalled that the Beacon Theater, site of the Tony Awards ceremony, was his neighborhood movie house as a kid, where he once won a pie-eating contest during a Saturday matinee.
“It was nice, but this is nicer,” said Mr. Nichols, who is 80. “You see before you a happy man,” he continued, thanking playwright Arthur Miller’s daughter Rebecca and “a cast straight from heaven,” led by Philip Seymour Hoffman as Willy Loman.
“I can’t talk about them,” Mr. Nichols said, choking up. “I love them too much.”
As expected, “Salesman” also won the Tony for best revival of a play, the third time that Miller’s drama has won in that category. (It also won for best play in 1949.) But in something of a surprise, the show’s two male leads — playing a tormented father and son — were defeated by actors giving outsized comic performances: Mr. Hoffman lost to Mr. Corden, and Andrew Garfield, who took on the part of Biff soon after shooting the title role in the forthcoming “Amazing Spider-Man” movie, lost to Christian Borle, a foppish pirate in “Peter and the Starcatcher,” as best supporting actor in a play.
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Christian Borle (with mustache) in a scene from "Peter and the Starcatcher" performed at the
Tony Awards ceremony.
Another surprise was “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess” for best musical revival, a category where the beloved 1971 musical “Follies” had many ardent fans among Tony voters. (“Follies,” which has music by Stephen Sondheim, has now lost once as best musical and twice for its revivals.) “Porgy and Bess” was controversial for efforts to update the show, but it had two acclaimed performers in the title roles, Norm Lewis and Ms. McDonald, as well as the music of George and Ira Gershwin, who producer Jeffrey Richards thanked first in his acceptance speech — along with DuBose Heyward, who created the characters in his original novel “Porgy.”
Mr. Walsh, the “Once” book writer, known for emotionally intense plays like “Misterman,” remarked in his acceptance speech about being an odd choice to write the romance-driven plot of “Once,” which was based on a 2006 Irish film of the same title.
“It’s like getting the rights to ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and then getting Charles Manson to write it,” Mr. Walsh said.
Other featured acting honors went to Judith Light as the acerbic alcoholic aunt in “Other Desert Cities” and to Michael McGrath and Judy Kaye as opposites-who-attract in the musical “Nice Work if You Can Get It.”
Ms. Light, a veteran of television (“Who’s the Boss?,” “One Life to Live”) who was also nominated for an acting Tony last year for the play “Lombardi,” appeared slightly shocked as she took the stage; she won in a competitive field that included Linda Emond, who gave a critically acclaimed performance as Linda Loman in “Salesman.”
“I feel like I’m the luckiest girl in New York tonight,” Ms. Light said, before thanking the cast and crew of “Other Desert Cities” — as well as her father, who died this spring.
Hosted by the television actor Neil Patrick Harris, the Tonys began with a mix of musical numbers that included a song from last year’s winner for best musical, “The Book of Mormon,” and a sampling of Christopher Gattelli’s choreography for “Newsies.”
Mr. Harris’s comic bits included being lowered, upside-down in classic Spider-Man position, and taking a gentle shot at the technical troubles last year in the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.” He continued to hang there during remarks by the actress Angela Lansbury and the theater executive Ted Chapin, who laced their comments with aerial references. As for “Spider-Man” itself, that $75 million musical lost in the categories of musical sets and costumes, its only nominations.
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Neil Patrick Harris, a three-time Tony Awards host, joined Patti LuPone for a tune at the ceremony
As the front-runners for best musical, “Once” and “Newsies” had more in common than many past rivals for the award: both were low budget by Broadway standards, costing about $5 million each, and were based on movies that had ardent fans but not much commercial success.
Enthusiasm was also high among Tony voters for all the best-play nominees: “Clybourne,” “Desert Cities,” “Peter and the Starcatcher” and “Venus in Fur.” The field stood out from past years because the four plays, all by American writers, had their starts at respected Off Broadway theaters and drew critical acclaim for intelligent plotting, character development and weighty roles.
Only Broadway shows are eligible for Tonys, with awards decided by a pool of 851 voters, about 70 percent of whom usually cast ballots. (Many of the others chose not to vote because they did not see enough of the nominated shows.) The voters are a mix of theater producers, directors, designers, actors and tour presenters — some of whom have commercial interests in the nominees.
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I checked this out of the library and saw it last night. The low-budget movie ran in 2006-7 and earned an Oscar. Now, I hear the original stars (who were not professional actors) are adapting it for a Broadway production!! Definitely worth looking in to!
It's not just a long music video, although I loved how the entire songs were played in the movie instead of just snippets. It's also a commentary on multiculturalism and on the newest generation's (the Millennials?) difficulties with communication, lowered attention spans and interpersonal skills in these days of sexting and porn on demand.
Lee, I saw the (very brief) New York Theater Workshop production the night after the positive review posted below. It will definitely be on Broadway in 2012, maybe in the Spring. I really, really liked it--'He' was terrific, amazing singer, amazing actor, amazing accent; 'He' could be a big star. 'She'--hmmmm. Not so much. Musically, She's ok, Her acting, hmmm, overly eccentric, Her accent, sorry, awful, fake-y bad. Hate to say it, but--if they change Her, the entire production will be a huge hit.
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Once
Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti portray the Guy and the Girl in this musical at the New York
Theater Workshop, inspired by the movie of the same title.
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Steve Kazee, standing at the microphone, with other members of the "Once" cast.
Well, I was right! ;) ;D
Steve Kazee is so HUGELY good, it's hard to overstate it--he is WHY there is any reason to put the stage production on at all. He sings better than [Glen] Hansard in Hansard's own songs, and he has completely changed the character (in a very quiet, subtle way) so that the story in the musical is better than the story in the film, despite the fact that there are aspects in the musical that are heavy-handed and even literally dumb compared to aspects that were clever and touching in the film. Oh yeah, one other thing--the photos above do not even begin to show what the reviewers rightly saw in person--Kazee is seriously gorgeous. The fact that he also beautifully plays the Guy (the character) as painfully shy, sad and anguished (but subtly and quietly) AND that he sings like an angel, AND he does an amazing Dublin accent (he's from Kentucky), well--he's unbelievable.
True fact: I managed to get a first row seat dead on center, so I noticed something at the very end, just before the curtain call (no curtain), on the night of the first show after the opening night, when all the amazing reviews had just come out. The theater blocking was such that Kazee and [Cristin] Milioti were both together, immediately in front of me at the very end of the story. Then, just before they and the rest of the cast were to face the audience and bow, very quietly, so only I and maybe one or two other people could have seen, HE turned to her, locked eyes, and silently mouthed 'Thank you!' to her.
Anyway. I guess you get the idea he's pretty terrific. So is the show.
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Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti in "Once," a new musical based on the 2008 film, and now possibly
bound for Broadway. The film was awarded an Oscar for its plaintive song, "Falling Slowly," also
featured in the stage production.
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Steve Kazee, left, and Cristin Milioti are shown in a scene from "Once,"
performing at the New York Theatre Workshop in New York.
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Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti in a scene from broadway's musical "Once," directed
by John Tiffany, at the New York Theatre Workshop.
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The Bottom Line: “Once” is amply rewarding,
but this lovingly crafted musical will lure
many audiences back again and again.
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To see the trailer, click, then again where indicated:
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Click for tickets:
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Wonderful news!! Does Steve convey the tortured agony as well as the original actor, Glen Hansard, did? I'm sure he does!!
I'm just sorry that Andrew Garfield didn't win for supporting actor. Is the Spidey curse striking again?
Would have loved to see Neal Patrick Harris hanging upside down...and hanging...and hanging... :laugh:
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Wonderful news!! Does Steve convey the tortured agony as well as the original actor, Glen Hansard, did? I'm sure he does!!
“Once” star Steve Kazee won his first Tony for lead actor in musical and stole the show with a heartfelt speech dedicated to his mother, who died of cancer this year.
“My mother always told me to stand up there and show them whose little boy you are,” the actor said. “And I’m showing you today that I am the son of Kathy Withrow Kazee who lost the fight with cancer on Easter Sunday this year.”
Yes, there were tears.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&v=wkHLTCNJAYc&NR=1[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=bQ3nI_tZRzY[/youtube]
The second time I saw Steve Kazee in 'Once' as 'Guy' was February 28, the first preview at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre (March 18 was the official opening), and, though as much as I still enjoyed the show and definitely loved him, his performance that night was a bit--distracted, not quite as unbelievably perfect (far better as 'Guy' than Glen Hansard himself) when I had seen him on a VERY rainy night in early December at the New York Theater Workshop on East Fourth Street. But then I didn't know that his mother was battling cancer, and she died April 8, Easter Sunday. Poor Steve! No wonder he was distracted--the character, 'Guy', is also motherless! He is amazingly gifted--now he has won the Tony--brought her photograph, showed it on the red carpet before the Tonys show. His mother must have been so proud.
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Cristin Milioti, left, and Steve Kazee perform in a scene from "Once" at the
66th Annual Tony Awards on Sunday June 10, 2012, in New York.
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http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/13/once-turns-a-profit-faster-than-most/
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‘Once’
Turns a Profit,
Faster Than Most
By PATRICK HEALY
August 13, 2012, 3:40 pm
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Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti in “Once.”
The Tony Award-winning musical “Once” has recouped its $5.5 million capitalization costs on Broadway in less than six months, the producers announced on Monday, becoming one of the few shows to turn a profit and doing so faster than most.
The musical’s box office success – grossing more than $1 million a week since mid-June – is unusual given that the show is unlike most Broadway hits. Rather than a high-kicking crowd pleaser with big-name talents attached, “Once” is a low-key and somber tale of lost love, starring largely unknown actors and featuring minimal sets and nontraditional choreography. Yet “Once,” based on an indie film of the same name from Ireland, enjoyed strong reviews from critics and prominent television exposure on “America’s Got Talent” and other programs after winning eight Tonys – including best musical and best actor – in June.
Only about 30 percent of shows ever turn a profit on Broadway, most needing a year or more, though one of the biggest moneymakers of recent theater seasons, “The Book of Mormon,” recouped its $11.4 million capitalization last year in just nine months. “Book of Mormon” recouped quickly in part from charging premium ticket prices of up to $477; the top premium ticket for “Once” is $275, with only a relative handful of tickets selling at that price so far.
The producers’ statement said that “Once,” which began running in late February, recouped in 21 weeks after 169 performances. The producers said the pace was faster than any other new musical in more than a decade – an apparent reference to the musical “Rent,” which recouped its original capitalization almost immediately in 1996. But the 2005 musical “The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee,” for one, recouped its $3.5 million capitalization in just 18 weeks.
The “Once” producers have benefited from relatively low weekly running costs; they have never said how much the show costs to run each week, but it is believed to be in the mid-six figures. A spokesman for the show said that the advance ticket sales for “Once” were “very healthy” – he declined to provide a figure – and said that its stars, Steve Kazee and Cristin Milioti, were on contract to stay with the show until at least March 2013.
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Yay! I am going to Once, the Musical!! But not on Broadway...in Denver. Since I won't be going to New York anytime soon, I snapped up tickets for closing night of the two-week run in Denver, and friend EDelMar has graciously agreed to go with me. He's learning to play guitar, so I managed to get him to go to hear some good guitar playing, since he hasn't seen the movie.
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Yay! I am going to Once, the Musical!! But not on Broadway...in Denver. Since I won't be going to New York anytime soon, I snapped up tickets for closing night of the two-week run in Denver, and friend EDelMar has graciously agreed to go with me. He's learning to play guitar, so I managed to get him to go to hear some good guitar playing, since he hasn't seen the movie.
Hope you enjoy it Lee! Sadly, you won't be seeing the wonderful Steve Kazee as the 'Guy'
in the original New York production, but--I do hope the Road Show Production is as good!
(As you may remember, I was NOT quite so enamored with Cristin Milioti as the original 'Girl' ::) :laugh: )
http://chicagotheaterbeat.com/2013/10/12/review-once-broadway-in-chicago/#review
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Stuart Ward as 'Guy' and Dani de Waal as 'Girl' in Once
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Broadway in Chicago
presents
Once
Review by Catey Sullivan
Rating: ★★★★
Once breaks all the rules of commercially viable musicals. There are no tap spectaculars, eye-popping costumes or elaborate scene changes. The cast, which performs in more or less regular old street clothes, doubles as the show’s orchestra, a stripped down ensemble of strings and keyboards, with the musicians/actors carrying their instruments around with them. As for the story told through Enda Walsh’s book, it’s slight; a sweet, simple romance that’s as much a love story between people and music as it is between a man and a woman. Once is also a profoundly moving piece of theater, thanks to the cast’s transcendent performance of Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová’s glorious score. This is truly music as the food of love, and when the curtain finally drops on Guy and Girl (the romantic leads don’t even have names), you will want them to play on and on and on.
Based on the film written and directed by John Carney, Once opens in a Dublin pub where Guy (Stuart Ward) is singing his heart out in a love-gone-wrong tune (“Leave”) that tells an old story with wrenching, raw immediacy. What’s extraordinary about the song – and the score as a whole – is the sheer weight of emotion within Irglova and Hansard’s transcendent harmonies. Love-gone-wrong songs are a dime a dozen, but this one, thanks in large part to Ward’s authentically impassioned delivery, will rip you to shreds. Like many of the pieces in Once, it starts hushed, then gradually crescendos to a point of all-but unbearable intensity. This forcefield of music draws the attention of Girl (Dani De Waal), a Czech pianist whose straightforward, unshakable conviction in Guy’s soulful talent will wind up changing both of their lives.
Transpiring over five days, Once tracks Guy’s journey from a place of dark, rudderless, hopelessness to one of transforming joy and soul-affirming purpose, an evolution propelled solely through the power of Girl’s absolute insistence that Guy must share his music with the world. Wisely, Once doesn’t follow Guy’s pursuit of a recording contract or answer the question of whether he ultimately becomes a star. This isn’t a story of starmaking, but of healing and reconnection. What matters isn’t Guy’s success so much as his decision to open himself up to everything – good and awful – that life has to offer.
De Waal is understatedly magnificent as Girl, a luminous force for believing in your dreams and forging unwaveringly ahead to achieve them. When she and Ward combine voices for the delicate, soaring “Falling”, the impact is virtually breathtaking. The piece is a lattice-work of sorry and strength, an aching anthem to the power of love – even if it’s ultimately lost.
Directed by John Tiffany, Once is filled with rich supporting performances. As Girl’s tough, sexy, violinist friend Reza, Claire Wellin (last seen in Lookingglass’s production of Eastland) is a fireball of blazing strings and equally powerful personality. She imbues the character with a profound kindness and a brazen sensuality, and when she lets loose on that violin, the sound sweeps you away like a whirlwind. There’s also amazing musicality from Raymond Bokhour, who opens the show with a sonorous lament that surges through the theater with the gentle but unstoppable power of an incoming tide. As the owner of the pub where Guy and Girl meet and practice, Evan Harrington provides poignant comic relief, while Donna Garner is as expressive with her accordion as she is with her resonant vocals.
The entire production plays out on set designer Bob Crowley’s warm, wood-filled Irish pub, a place that’s at once endearingly homely and cozily homey. Scene changes are indicated by movement director Steven Hoggett’s mesmerizing interludes of dreamlike choreography.
Once is one of those rare shows that deserves to be listened to not just once, but over and over and over again.
Side note: Make sure to arrive early. Before the show starts, the entire cast performs a mini-concert. You’ll be coveting the cast recording before the first scene even begins.
(Note to Lee: If the Road Show Production is the same as the original production, YES, get there early, pile your stuff in your regular seats, then just walk up the steps onto the stage, go to the bar, get yourself a drink and get comfortable! (Of course, you have to go back to your theater seats before the show starts.)
Again, have fun!
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Thanks for the note friend! It sounds like the pre-show is something we won't want to miss!
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I saw this today! It was closing day in Denver and EDelMar and I squeeked in under the wire to see the show with wonderful seats in the orchestra section. We enjoyed going up to have a close look at all the instruments beforehand. EDelMar said all of the guitars were Martins which are made in his hometown of Nazareth, PA. I liked the show even more than the movie because, it was live, of course, and also because it had a couple more beautiful songs than the movie did. One thing I liked better in the movie was that the sound engineer was a real person, more fleshed out. Of course, I loved the haunting music and both Guy and Girl did a great acting job.
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I saw this today! It was closing day in Denver and EDelMar and I squeeked in under the wire to see the show with wonderful seats in the orchestra section. We enjoyed going up to have a close look at all the instruments beforehand. EDelMar said all of the guitars were Martins which are made in his hometown of Nazareth, PA. I liked the show even more than the movie because, it was live, of course, and also because it had a couple more beautiful songs than the movie did. One thing I liked better in the movie was that the sound engineer was a real person, more fleshed out. Of course, I loved the haunting music and both Guy and Girl did a great acting job.
Glad you liked it, Lee!
(If this particular Road Show Production cast ever makes it back to NY, I might go and see it a third time!)
I have to ask--as you were able to go up on stage to see the instruments up close--was there a working bar on stage as in NY so you were able to get a drink before the show? Just wondering!
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Stuart Ward as 'Guy' and Dani de Waal as 'Girl' in Once
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Yes, I could have gotten a drink, but EDelMar is a teetotaller so I never drink when I'm with him. And yes, we could see the instruments up close. There was a vast range of them, several Martins, plus a ukelele, banjo, and other stringed instruments. There was also a drum that looked like an ordinary wooden box, but sounded heavenly!