A & E

Free Theater Tickets on Monday!

At 10 a.m. this morning you need to have your Web browser pointed to www.freenightoftheater.net so you can take advantage of free theater tickets provided by an array of Cincinnati theater companies. Don’t dally — these tickets, mostly for performances on Oct. 16, will be snapped up within an hour or so based on what happened in 2007 when the League of Cincinnati Theatres participated for the first time in the national program “Free Night of Theatre,” an audience-development program sponsored by Theatre Communications Group.

Since TCG began the program in 2005, it has expanded to more than 100 cities, where at least 600 theaters are offering tickets on the same evening. This year’s campaign offers performances in Atlanta, Austin, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Lexington, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Diego, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington, D.C. plus statewide in Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

Black and White

Last weekend I had the singular good fortune to see a theater production out of town that made me think more about what we see here in Cincinnati. I was in Oberlin, Ohio, attending a gathering of alumni of the college. Part of our weekend's entertainment was a production of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman. The 1949 play is now a classic, of course (Cincinnati's New Edgecliff is staging a production that runs Oct. 9-24), and the story of Willy Loman's desperate life is iconic in literature. A revival of the play in 1999 (the show's 50th anniversary) starring Brian Dennehy in the leading role won several Tony Awards. The play seems all the more relevant in today's tough economic climate.

But the Oberlin production I saw on Sept. 20 added another layer: Willy was played by Avery Brooks; his long-suffering wife was enacted by Petronia Paley; their sons were portrayed by Justin Emeka (as Biff) and Darryle Johnson (as Happy). Emeka was also the production's director. Perhaps you recognize Brooks' name: He's starred in several TV series, most notably as Capt. Benjamin Sisko on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine; he also played a streetwise crime fighter named Hawk in Spencer for Hire and A Man Called Hawk. Brooks and Emeka are Oberlin alumni. But the really operative fact is that all four actors in these central roles are African Americans.

Stage Door: Good Things Winding Down

This is the final weekend for SHINING CITY at New New Stage Collective. If you haven't seen it and you like serious contemporary drama (the playwright is Conor McPherson, a Dublin-based writer who is getting everyone's attention), you should try to catch it this weekend.

The hottest ticket around seems to be AMADEUS at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company, which has pretty much sold out this weekend's performances (although I bet you could score a ticket for the Sunday matinee). You still have one more weekend for the show about the rivalry between two 18th-century composers, Wolfgang Mozart and Antonio Salieri. The latter is played by CEA winner Bruce Cromer, and it's a riveting performance — he's onstage for every moment of the play (which runs slightly more than three hours), and worth watching for every one of those moments.

Finally, I'd suggest you check out the quirky GREY GARDENS at Ensemble Theatre, which should be back in the swing of things with a replacement cast member for an actor who departed on the show's opening night. This show is an unusual story about two loopy relatives of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis: It's ultimately about parents and children and how they can love and destroy one another. Read my review here.

One more good prospect: I haven't seen it yet, but REEFER MADNESS: THE MUSICAL, which opens on Saturday night at Know Theatre, sounds like a lot of fun.

There's no excust for sitting around this weekend — or for whining about a lack of good shows to see.

– Rick Pender

Stage Door: Good Choices Abound

You can hardly make a wrong choice if you want to go to the theater this weekend. Four of our topnotch local theaters have opened shows, and every one of them is worth seeing. My top recommendation — in part because it has a short run (its final performance is Sept. 21) — is Conor McPherson's SHINING CITY at New Stage Collective. It's a riveting psychological drama, mostly about two men struggling with lives (and deaths) and relationships: One of them is a psychologist, the other a patient, but their existences overlap and mirror one another in intriguing and imaginative ways. McPherson is a masterful writer of monologues, and the NSC cast features Randy Bailey in several speeches that will leave you marveling at his ability to tell a story and reveal character. Don't miss this one.

Other good choices are Peter Shaffer's AMADEUS, the classic tale of musical and creative rivalry between Wolfgang Mozart and Antonio Salieri (Cincinnati Shakespeare, through Sept. 28); the quirky musical GREY GARDENS, a true story about a mother and daughter, onetime bluebloods but reduced to strange dependency and squalid circumstances in a 28-room mansion (Ensemble Theatre of Cincinnati, through Sept. 28); and a new musical, JANE AUSTEN'S EMMA, a re-creation of one of the beloved novelist's best works in a show that fans of the 19th-century novel are likely to love (Cincinnati Playhouse, through Oct. 3).

Don't wait: There are good shows on just about every stage in town.

– Rick Pender

Toronto Film Festival: Bill Maher vs. Religion

Never one to shy away from provocative views, Bill Maher's new, sure-to-be-controversial documentary Religulous premiered at the Toronto Film Festival the other night. Director Larry Charles -- who was uniquely clad in his copious beard, a suit and a pair of pink crocs -- and Maher were on hand to introduce the film to a sold-out, clearly partisan audience. Maher closed his brief opening remarks by saying, “Mel Gibson did a film for them; this one is for you.” (Maher and Charles sat about four rows behind me during the screening, which caused a mini-raucous among many in my section.)

Religulous gleefully takes on organized religion, as Maher does first-person interviews with everyone from a surprisingly reasonable Catholic priest to a formerly gay pastor who helps people become “normal” again to the guy who runs the Creation Museum in Kentucky. Maher is an effective, often hilarious interrogator, playfully playing devil’s advocate to a host of diehard believers, most of whom do not fare well under his scrutiny. And while there will be those who find his prodding mean-spirited and/or condescending, Maher saves his most pointed questioning for hypocrites, those who try to impose their religious views on others (which often leads to violence) or those who have made faith a profitable business venture.

Yet one question remains in the wake of this entertaining, often incisive documentary: Is Maher preaching to the choir? Religulous is unlikely to reach its target audience — the very fundamentalists that he’s grilling, including the terrorists that attacked us on 9/11. In fact, it might end up emboldening religious ideologues — a small line of picketers holding signs like “Don’t Mock My Religion” and “Make Peace, Not Maher” chanted outside the theater before, during and after the screening.

On the other hand, Maher points out that 16 percent of Americans are not affiliated with an organized religion and millions more keep their faith to themselves. Is Religulous his way of empowering this large block of people to speak up before we reach a religion-induced Armageddon?

For those interested, here’s a link (of admittedly shitty audio quality) to the post-screening Q&A with Charles and Maher, who got off more than a few shots on Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin. Maher didn't hesitate to point out that Palin is “one of the speaking-in-tongues Jesus freaks I talk about in the film.” Download bill_maher.WMA

— Jason Gargano

Toronto Film Festival: Start Your Engines

Thought I'd drop a few quick thoughts while I have a minute between film screenings:

* Toronto is the cleanest big city I've ever been to. It's also one of the most multicultural.

• The Coen brothers’ new one, Burn After Reading, which I saw this morning, reverts back to the screwball leanings of their post-Fargo/pre-No Country for Old Men period. That’s not a good thing.

• There seems to be far fewer high-profile American offerings than usual. Burn After Reading is  one of the exceptions. Even the customs dude at the Toronto International Airport asked me about it: “Hey, you gonna see the Clooney film?”

• Sarah Palin’s name has come up in nearly every extended conversation, including this tidbit from a French friend: “Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon’s character in Election) has come a long way.”

• Caught Waltz with Bashir, Ari Folman’s animated documentary about his own journey to recover lost memories as a soldier in the early-’80s war between Israeli and Lebanon. Powerful, fully realized stuff. Sony Classics, which picked it up after Cannes, could have it out in American art houses by year’s end.

• Tim Robbins is one tall dude.

•  Wong Kar Wai’s Ashes of Time Redux is just as elusive his original version. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing: Yo-Yo Ma’s new score, lush and melancholy, adds emotional depth. FYI: I interview Wong on Sunday; anyone got a question they want asked?

Well, gotta go — a screening of Kelly Reichert’s follow-up to Old Joy is calling, as is my sixth cup of coffee.

— Jason Gargano

Northern Exposure

Groggy after nearly two weeks of wall-to-wall political saturation, I'm ready to shift gears ... and what better way than attending a film festival, an immersive alternate universe where the disturbing visage of Rudy Giuliani can be wiped from one’s brainpan in a matter of moments?

The 33rd Toronto International Film Festival opens this week, armed with another smorgasbord of intriguing works from across the globe. A quick glance at the festival’s 249 films reveals new efforts from the likes of Darren Aronofsky, the Coen brothers, the Dardenne brothers, Terrence Davies, Claire Denis, Arnand Desplechin, Jia Zhang-ke, Spike Lee, Mike Leigh, Richard Linklater, Paul Schrader, Steven Soderbergh and Agnes Varda. And that's just a taste.

Anticipation is just as high for the works of lesser-known directors, including Matteo Garrone’s Gomorrah, Kelly Reichert’s Wendy and Lucy, Steve McQueen’s Hunger (no, not that Steve McQueen) and Ari Folman’s Waltz With Bashir, all of which arrive in Toronto after debuting at the Cannes Film Festival in May.

Two other films that divided audiences at Cannes make their North American premiere: Charlie Kaufman, the singular screenwriter of Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, unveils his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York, an acutely dour metaphysical mindfuck with Philip Seymour Hoffman as an emotionally and physically battered theater director in Manhattan. And perhaps most curious of all is Soderburgh’s Che, an experimental two-part (two hours each) biopic of Che Guevara with Benecio Del Toro as the Latin American revolutionary. Reaction from Cannes ranged from ecstatic to disastrous.

Check this blog for festival updates in the coming days.

— Jason Gargano