Theater: Julie Madly Deeply (2019) at 59E59, NYC

By Sarah-Louise Young
Directed by & with contributions from Russell Lucas
Musical Direction by Michael Roulston

With Sarah-Louise Young and Michael Roulston

A charming yet cheeky West End hit about the life and work of showbiz legend Julie Andrews.

This cabaret weaves songs from musicals including Mary Poppins, The Sound of Music, and My Fair Lady as Sarah-Louise Young shares stories and anecdotes about Andrews’s life: from her beginnings as a child star to the recent challenges of losing her famous singing voice. What emerges is a delightfully funny and candid love letter from a super fan to a true show business survivor.

More about Julie Andrews:


Legendary Actress Julie Andrews Reveals Experience with Stage Fright

Theater: Open, by Crystal Skillman 2019

OPEN is a magic act that reveals itself to be a resurrection. A woman called The Magician presents a myriad of tricks for our entertainment, yet her performance seems to be attempting the impossible to save the life of her partner, Jenny. But Is our faith in her illusions enough to rewrite the past? The clock is ticking, the show must go on, and as impossible as it may seem, this Magician’s act may be our last hope against a world filled with intolerance and hate.

Written by Crystal Skillman
Directed by Jessi D. Hill
Featuring Megan Hill

Film: Bellingcat, TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD (2018)

BELLINGCAT – TRUTH IN A POST-TRUTH WORLD explores the promise of open source investigation, taking viewers inside the exclusive world of the “citizen investigative journalist” collective known as Bellingcat. In cases ranging from the MH17 disaster to the poisoning of a Russian spy in the United Kingdom, the Bellingcat team’s quest for truth will shed light on the fight for journalistic integrity in the era of fake news and alternative facts.

WRITTEN, DIRECTED & CAMERA BY
Hans Pool

Trailer: https://vimeo.com/314200168

http://www.bellingcatfilm.com/

Film: One Child Nation, directors: Nanfu Wang and Jialing Zhang

China’s One Child Policy, the extreme population control measure that made it illegal for couples to have more than one child, may have ended in 2015, but the process of dealing with the trauma of its brutal enforcement is only just beginning. From award-winning documentarian Nanfu Wang (Hooligan Sparrow, I Am Another You) and Jialing Zhang, the sweeping One Child Nation explores the ripple effect of this devastating social experiment, uncovering one shocking human rights violation after another - from abandoned newborns, to forced sterilizations and abortions, and government abductions. Wang digs fearlessly into her own personal life, weaving her experience as a new mother and the firsthand accounts of her family members into archival propaganda material and testimony from victims and perpetrators alike, yielding a revelatory and essential record of this chilling, unprecedented moment in human civilization.

One Child Nation is a stunning, nuanced indictment of the mindset that prioritizes national agenda over human life, and serves as a first-of-its-kind oral history of this collective tragedy - bearing witness to the truth as China has already begun to erase the horrors of its “population war” from public record and memory.

https://www.onechildnation.com/about

Theater: Life Sucks by Aaron Posner 2019

From left, Jeff Biehl, Michael Schantz and Stacey Linnartz in Aaron Posner’s “Life Sucks.”CreditCreditRuss Rowland

Austin Pendleton, left, and Nadia Bowers in the play Mr. Posner describes as “sort of adapted from ‘Uncle Vanya.’”CreditRuss Rowland

From the NYT's review: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/01/theater/life-sucks-review.html

Mr. Posner has kept the original play’s basic architecture. The grump is Vanya (Jeff Biehl), and he still shares a home with the plain Sonia (Kimberly Chatterjee), but now we appear to be in the United States since there is talk of dollars and student loans. Both Vanya and the brooding Dr. Aster (formerly known as Astrov, portrayed by Michael Schantz) still pine for Sonia’s stepmother, Ella (the new name of Yelena, played by Nadia Bowers). 

As ever, Sonia feels overlooked by everybody, including her secret crush, Aster, and her own father (Austin Pendleton, confirming once more his status as a New York stage treasure), an academic who specializes in semiotics. “That’s the study of … big trucks?” asks the daffy Pickles (Stacey Linnartz), an artist manqué nursing a broken heart and who appears to be loosely based on Chekhov’s Waffles. The only well-adjusted person is Babs (Barbara Kingsley), a potter. 

The characters and basic plot will be familiar to “Uncle Vanya” fiends. But at the same time, “Life Sucks.” will be familiar to just about anybody. Chekhov’s play has transcended the centuries because it is about timeless concerns: how hard it is to communicate with others, the vagaries — and unfairness — of love, the idea that life is something you must simultaneously endure and make the most of. And underneath the fourth-wall-breaking jokes and contemporary references, Mr. Posner has preserved those elements. He understands full well that there is no date stamp on feeling stranded between regrets and hopes, between fancy dreams and the banality of existence.

Cast
Jeff Biehl, Nadia Bowers, Kimberly Chatterjee, Barbara Kingsley, Stacey Linnartz, Austin Pendleton and Michael Schant