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Bridge to Everywhere
BAM’s new “Bridge Project” offers the best and brightest in British and American theater
From left: Josh Hamilton, Richard Easton, Ethan Hawke, Sinead Cusack, Rebecca Hall, and Simon Russell Beale
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Top theater talent from the UK and the US come together this winter for The Bridge Project, a partnership between New York’s Brooklyn Academy of Music and London’s Old Vic Theater and Neal Street Productions. Two classics, The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale, will be staged at BAM and then travel for short runs in Singapore, Madrid, Recklinghausen and Epidaurus, ending with another longer run this spring in London at The Old Vic.
The Old Vic once housed Laurence Olivier’s infamous production of Hamlet. It is now under the artistic direction of Kevin Spacey, a post he received soon after his hit performance on stage in The Iceman Cometh. Spacey’s first two years at The Old Vic were rocky, but he hit his stride, earning rave reviews for his performance alongside Jeff Goldblum in Speed-the-Plow by David Mamet. And The Old Vic’s upcoming production of Joe Sutton’s new play Complicit, starring Richard Dreyfuss, is highly anticipated in London’s West End. Spacey says, “The Bridge Project represents many of the things that are most exciting to me about theatre, not least the bringing together of extraordinary talent to offer audiences new readings of classic work. It also celebrates theatre as an internal language and as a bridge between nations.”
The Bridge Project sticks with combinations that work. Sam Mendes, the director, is well known for his film projects (American Beauty starring Kevin Spacey) and as a theatrical director in London’s West End. Mendes has had indisputable success pairing Chekhov and Shakespeare. In 2002, he chose Uncle Vanya and Twelfth Night for his final productions as artistic director for London’s outstanding Donmar Warehouse. Both plays were critical darlings and transferred to BAM. They won Mendes the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Director in 2003. Of this season’s selections, Mendes says, “I’m delighted to be working on The Cherry Orchard and The Winter’s Tale simultaneously. Two plays about reminiscence, loss and regret. Two plays about time and how it can heal or destroy us. Two plays that begin and end in the nursery. Two plays that continue to confound and amaze in their bottomless complexity and mystery. And two plays that were written at the end of the careers of the two greatest dramatists who ever lived.”
The performers also have had success working with others involved in The Bridge Project or with the material. Simon Russell Beale, leading the cast, won praise in Mendes’s production of Uncle Vanya. Sinead Cusack spent years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and Richard Easton comes fresh off of Tom Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia. Josh Hamilton and Ethan Hawke are also veterans of the epic production of Stoppard’s Coast of Utopia trilogy. Rebecca Hall has experience performing at BAM. Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer of BAM, says, “We welcome back to BAM dear Rebecca Hall, and also Simon Russell Beale, a BAM favorite for his remarkable work in Sam Mendes’s productions of Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya. And, in addition to the exceedingly talented cast, I look forward with great anticipation to the long-overdue debut on our stages of Tom Stoppard’s work, whose immense talent will be perfectly married with Chekhov’s elegant final play.”
Tom Stoppard’s new translation of The Cherry Orchard will be performed. Stoppard’s passion for translation and the language of human experience should shed new light on Chekhov’s last masterwork. Stoppard’s first production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead debuted at The Old Vic in 1967. Pulling from past creative connections to forge new theatrical unions, The Bridge Project should be can’t-miss theater.