‘The Wedding Band’
Stream it on Stratfest@Home.
In 2022, Alice Childress’s play about love and hate, written in 1962, received its first major revival in 50 years, to much acclaim. The following year, “The Wedding Band,” was staged at the Stratford Festival in Ontario, making it a welcome second coming for our theater critic.
The play about an interracial couple — a Black woman, played by Antonette Rudder, and a white man, Cyrus Lane — who, in 1918 South Carolina, can’t wed, is a searing examination of a miscegenation nation. Writing for The New York Times, Jesse Green called the 2023 Stratford production, directed by Sam White, a “revelation,” adding that the festival’s revival “confirms the play’s vitality.”
From Green’s critic’s notebook:
It’s a joyful thing when a great play that seemed to be lost is found. How much more so when its greatness is confirmed and the play takes root in the soil of a new time. That was my experience seeing Alice Childress’s “Wedding Band” … The director Sam White’s production unexpectedly adds another layer of tragedy. Her staging emphasizes the hard-won pleasures of the central relationship, so that something valuable is felt to be lost when the world intervenes. … We see how the tragedy of racism makes victims of everyone.
‘Vanya on 42nd Street’
Stream it on Amazon Prime, Pluto TV or the Roku Channel.
New York is experiencing something of an explosion of Chekhov. “The Seagull” featured prominently in Theaterlab’s recent production of “Nina”; “The Cherry Orchard” is coming to St. Ann’s Warehouse next month, along with “Vanya,” an adaptation of “Uncle Vanya,” starring Andrew Scott, Andrew Scott and Andrew Scott (he plays every role). Its Off Broadway debut comes after a highly praised run in London. The one-man show, adapted by Simon Stephens and directed by Sam Yates, won last year’s Olivier Award — Britain’s equivalent of the Tonys.
But you don’t have to be in a theater to take in Chekhov. If you’ve never seen “Vanya on 42nd Street,” the 1994 Louis Malle film of André Gregory’s production, now is a timely moment to watch.
The movie, starring Wallace Shawn and Julianne Moore, gets a bit heady in its conceit: Over the course of three years, Gregory and a group of actors gather to study Chekhov through performance workshops, then stage the play casually, as if for a rehearsal, in an abandoned theater. The result is a lively experiment with natural, intimate performances. The Times critic Janet Maslin applauded the “visual elegance that seems to isolate and purify its characters and their troubles.”
“This is bare-bones Chekhov,” Maslin wrote, “though it is hardly Chekhov without cachet.”
‘Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays’
Stream it on L.A. Theater Works.
In the 1850s, the scientist Eunice Newton Foote identified carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, an extraordinary breakthrough for climate science — and for women. If only her work wasn’t forgotten by her field. In the newest addition to the L.A. Theater Works’s robust catalog of audio theater, the playwright Amanda Quaid lays bare the real-life, groundbreaking discovery of a little-known scientist whose findings take on new relevance today.
Directed by Anna Lyse Erikson and starring Emily Swallow and Geoffrey Arend, this dramatized portrait of Foote’s work presents a rare look at an early milestone in climate science and a woman brushed aside by history.
‘Smash’
Stream it on BroadwayHD.
The cult TV show “Smash,” about the travails of making of a Broadway musical based on Marilyn Monroe, is getting its own Broadway treatment in a stage adaptation of the series starting previews next month. To understand the obsession or refresh your memory, a binge might be in order. Both seasons are now available on BroadwayHD, where you can catch the Grammy- and Emmy-nominated pilot-closing hit, “Let Me Be Your Star” (which will set the opening number on Broadway).
The streaming platform’s typical fare is live-captured theatrical productions, but the site struck a deal last year with NBCUniversal for streaming rights, so you can watch the soapy drama alongside other new additions, including “Cats,” “Billy Elliot: The Musical,” and the 2021 production “Annie Live!”
‘Obsidian Theater Festival’
Stream it on obsidianfest.org.
Streaming is nothing new for the Detroit-based Obsidian Theater Festival. The program was founded in 2021 during the pandemic as a platform for emerging Black voices in theater and film — the first season featured actors in masks, streamed from a theater to viewers at home — but the idea was germinated the previous summer. Seeking a stage for Black storytelling, the founders began dreaming up a response to protest marches and rallies and to help amplify underrepresented artists.
Each year since, the festival has presented a free weekend of original plays, musicals, cabaret performances and panel discussions across Detroit. Now, the program’s first three seasons are available to watch from anywhere.
