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Copyright © 2007 Press & Reviews Weekly

Shakespeare Remains Goldest Oldie Of Them All

By Anita Gates

I have seen a few productions of ''A Midsummer Night's Dream,'' beginning with Peter Brook's in 1971. On film, I have seen Mickey Rooney as Puck, Calista Flockhart as Helena and Rupert Everett as Oberon. But never has it all been clearer to me than when I watched the Millennium Talent Group's simplified one-act version, ''Fools in Love.''

Early Edition

New York:  Today, sunny, a few after-noon clouds.  High 77.  Tonight, slightly more humid.  Low 65.  Tomorrow, sun then clouds.  High 81.  Yesterday, high 81, low 63.  Weather map, Page C19.

VOL, CL . . No. 51,874                                                      New York, Friday, DECember 27, 2007                                                                   75 CENTS

“Fools in Love” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music

Fools in Love Review

Larger than life and twice as loud, this engaging, high-energy retooling of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream -- meant to appeal to children and adults -- is set in a 50’s diner, where jukebox hits are sung by a doo-wop group.  The love-mad Helena and Hermia (in circle skirts and cardigans) are airheaded teenyboppers; their swains are Grease-style nerds.

A High School Musical That Pre-Dates Disney Smash Gets a NYC Reading May 21

By Kenneth Jones

High School Musical, a stage musical that first surfaced in Texas in 2003, long before a Disney Channel TV movie became an international smash, will get a Manhattan reading May 21.

Writer Paul Cozby's show — a musical comedy about teens staging a high school musical called Cyranose — debuted in a Fort Worth, TX, high school reading in 2004, following a pitch he made in 2003. The hit Disney TV musical, which spawned a hot-selling album, a concert version, a planned touring show and resident Equity and amateur productions, first aired in January 2006.

The Equity-approved Manhattan reading is produced by The Musical Machine, Inc. and NYC-based Republic Theater Company. It's part of an ongoing effort by the author to expose his work in front of "audiences and industry professionals."

Review for Fools In Love

Beats the puck out of most competing adult productions... Elegant...a play that starts with a running jump and ends in a laughing heap.  Every child (and parent) seemed at home with Elizabethan poetry...a most rare vision.

                ...Time Out Starred

                    Critics’ Choice

Fools is “larger than life.”

-Adam Klasfeld,

High School Musi-cal Review

By Randy Kandel

From the first second to the last song, Republic Theater Company’s muscular staged reading of Paul Cozby’s High School Musical (not to be confused with the Disney Channel movie of the same name) pulses with comic can-do and the emotional ups and downs of adolescence. Energy bursts through every twist of triumph and mishap in the complicated script about students producing their first musical.

Midsummer Daydreaming

By Adam Klasfeld

This time of year, productions of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream start popping up like beach balls, but most revivals of the classic don't feature pre-show face-painting, hula hooping, stage combat, and other forms of audience participation. Millennium Talent Group's Fools in Love does, and it proves that introducing children to the classics doesn't have to be like pulling teeth. In fact, during the opening night performance, the kids had so much fun that they wound up literally dancing on the stage, and it looked as if many of the adults wanted to join in.

Fools in Love Review

This delightfully hammy 1950s rendition of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is intended to introduce kids to Shakespeare, and boy, would Grandpa Bard be proud.  Rather than dumbing down the language, Sarah Rosenberg’s production relies on the original text (interspersed with a Greek chorus of doo-wop singers) and a cast more gesticularly explicative than your high school Spanish teacher.  The kids, face-painted and doin’ the locomotion, get a lot of stage time too.

            ...Rated a “Voice Choice”

Millenium Talent Group Finds Home at Manhattan Ensemble

Newest Instance of ‘Resident Theatre’ Trend

By Leonard Jacobs

In the vernacular of the stage, there are theatres (physical plants where productions occur) and theatre companies (typically, nonprofit groups that may or may not own the venues where they do their work).  Given the current era’s stratospheric real estate costs, it may be unsurprising that theatre companies that own their own spaces are thinking about ways to conserve resources.  This is often why a space-owning theatre will name a “resident theatre company”--a separate organization regularly subleasing or at least working in the theatre’s space.

The E.C.: Elsinore County at Cherry Lane 4-play festival.

A New Theater Company Starts Big

The new Republic Theater Company has no intention of easing slowly onto the New York scene:  It is announcing its presence with a “4-Play Festival,” running Dec. 1 to 23 at the Cherry Lane Theater’s Studio space in the West Village.  An ensemble of 41 actors will present productions, in rotating repertory.  The company’s inaugural production has some notable supporters.  The writer Thomas Meehan (“Hairspray”) is credited with the concept for a musical adaptation of “The Tempest,” composed by Daniel Neiden with arrangements by Charles Czarnecki.  The illustrator Dan Yaccarino has contributed scenic elements and original artwork, and Robert Mankoff, the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, advised on an adaptation of James Thurber’s children’s fastasy “The 13 Clocks.”  Also in the lineup are “Elsinore County,” based on “Hamlet” and billed as “a new comedy that was once a tragedy,” and a new translation of Strindberg’s “Miss Julie,” by Akiva Daube. Information is at www.republictheater.org.

Republic Theater Company

115 MacDougal Street, New York, NY  10012

Phone:  (646) 280-9764

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