”The Sisters Rosenweig,” a new play by Wendy Wasserstein (”The Heidi Chronicles”) starring Jane Alexander and Madeline Kahn, will be one of the major draws of the upcoming New York theater season, otherwise notable for a string of musicals based on other material, including Bernadette Peters in
”The Goodbye Girl,” Tim Curry and Lainie Kazan in ”My Favorite Year”
and Ann Crumb and Skokie`s Gregg Edelman in an ”Anna Karenina” with song and comedy.
In the Washington area, there`ll even be a musical based on ”Wuthering Heights” and a Graciela Daniele (”Once on This Island”) musical of
”Captains Courageous.”
On the arts scene, New York is staging two huge, guaranteed crowd-pleasers: a 400-work retrospective of Henri Matisse at the Museum of Modern Art and a 150-piece exhibit covering the career of surrealist Rene Magritte at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (The Magritte show comes to the Art Institute on March 16.)
An exhibition of priceless anatomical drawings by Leonardo Da Vinci will be featured at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, while Washington`s National Gallery of Art will display a collection of classical Greek sculpture, on special loan from the Greek government and never before seen in this country. Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Wasserstein`s ”Sisters Rosensweig” is a generational comedic drama centering on a rich woman banker (Alexander) celebrating her 54th birthday in London with her two sisters-one gorgeous, the other sophisticated. Director Daniel Sullivan also directed ”The Heidi Chronicles.” ”Sisters” opens Oct. 22 at the Mitzi Newhouse Theater in Lincoln Center.
The musical ”The Goodbye Girl,” based on Neil Simon`s popular comedy, is expected to rack up enormous advance ticket sales. It opens in Chicago in December and then moves to Broadway`s Marquis Theater in February.
”Anna Karenina,” which has just opened at Broadway`s Circle in the Square Theater, received some mixed advance reviews, with complaints centering on the music. But the show`s creators are credited with making a lively musical of one of Leo Tolstoy`s more mordant tragedies and Edelman, as the peculiar Levin, is said to steal the show.
Stephen Flaherty and Lynn Ahrens, who collaborated ”Once on This Island,” wrote the music and lyrics for ”My Favorite Year,” which is based on the Peter O`Toole movie comedy of the same name about an alcoholic TV star of the 1950s facing up to life. Kazan repeats her film role of the mother. The show opens at the Mitzi Newhouse Dec. 10.
A number of film and TV stars will be turning up on the New York stage. Pat Carroll opens in the George Kelly comedy, ”The Show Off,” Oct. 14 at the Roundabout Theatre, where Natasha Richardson will make her Broadway debut Dec. 23 in ”Anna Christie.”
With ”Guys and Dolls,” ”Crazy for You” and other hits still hogging the Broadway spotlight, major playwrights with new works are expected to turn elsewhere in Manhattan for venues. Look for David Mamet`s ”Oleanna,” Edward Albee`s ”Three Tall Women” and Terrence McNally`s ”A Perfect Ganesh” to open in Off-Broadway houses.
Stephen Sondheim`s revue ”Putting It Together” begins previews at the Manhattan Theater Club City Center Dec. 8 and A. R. Gurney`s ”The Fourth Wall” begins previews at Off-Broadway`s Westside Theater Sept. 23.
On Tuesday, the suburban Washington Olney Theatre opens a world premiere of ”Wuthering Heights,” a musical version of Emily Bronte`s novel, with Charles Pistone as Heathcliff and Donna Kane as Cathy. On Dec. 9, the Arena opens ”The African Company`s Richard III,” an all-black production set in 1821 New York.
The musical ”Captains Courageous” opens Sept. 21 at Ford`s Theatre in Washington, starring John Dossett (”Prelude to a Kiss,” ”Freejack”) as the Portuguese fisherman Manuel. The show was inspired by the Rudyard Kipling novel and the 1937 Spencer Tracy movie of the same name.
Tom Hulce, star of the stage play ”A Few Good Men” and the recent film
”The Inner Circle,” is the major attraction this season of Washington`s Shakespeare Theatre (formerly the Folger). He opens Nov. 17 in ”Hamlet.”
Philadelphia`s much-acclaimed Wilma Theater starts off its season Wednesday with Steven Dietz`s ”Halcyon Days,” a White House suspense comedy, followed Nov. 25 by ”Lady Day at Emerson`s Bar and Grill,” a biographical piece about the life and songs of Billie Holiday set in 1959 and presented as cabaret.
The Arden Theatre Company of Philadelphia is premiering two new plays: on Sept. 24, ”Echoes of the Jazz Age,” a look at the radical side of the 1920s as seen through the work of Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, Langston Hughes and others; and, Nov. 19, Dennis Raymond Smeal`s surreal comedy, ”Change Partners and Dance.” (It features Zippo lighters as sex objects.)
The Museum of Modern Art`s big Matisse show is the first full-scale retrospective of the artist`s work since the centenary exhibition in Paris in 1970. Drawing heavily from museum collections in France and Russia, the show follows Matisse`s progress from Impressionism to the paper cutouts that were his favorite medium in the years before his death in 1954. It runs from Sept. 24-Jan. 12, 1993.
The Metropolitan`s Magritte is the first retrospective of the artist in 25 years and will include such famous pieces as ”The Treachery of Images,”
”The Son of Man” and ”Time Transfixed.” The exhibition opened this weekend and closes Nov. 22.
Opening Friday at the Metropolitan is a major show of the great 17th-Century realist Spanish painter Josepe de Ribera, featuring 72 of his masterpieces, most of which have been seen only in Europe. It closes Nov. 29. After two years of expansion and renovation, the Guggenheim Museum is launching its fall season Sept. 25 with a mammoth, 800-work exhibition: ”The Great Utopia: The Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, 1915-1932,” featuring pieces by Kandinsky, Malevich and others. It closes Dec. 15.
Just opened at New York`s prestigious Pierpont Morgan Library and running through Nov. 29 is ”Fra Bartolommeo: Master Draughtsman of the High Renaissance,” which features a collection of nearly 100 drawings receiving their first public showing.
New York`s Whitney Museum will feature Oct. 23 through Feb. 21, the first American exhibition of the works of Brooklyn-born, Haitian-Puerto Rican artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, a multi-media show that includes paintings, drawings, collages and constructions. Noted for his wit and menace, Basquiat first attracted attention with his Manhattan public wall graffiti art, signed SAMO. The Philadelphia Museum of Art`s show ”Leonardo Da Vinci: The Anatomy of Man,” running Saturday through Nov. 29, features 41 drawings of the male and female body.
Because of Britain`s expropriation of the ”Elgin marbles,” Greece has been reluctant to allow its classical sculptures out of the country, but relented in the case of Washington`s National Gallery show: `The Greek Miracle: Classical Sculpture from the Dawn of Democracy,” which runs from Nov. 22 to Feb. 7. The collection includes such immortal works as
”Contemplative Athena,” ”Cavalry from the Parthenon Frieze” and ”Nike Unbinding Her Sandal.” The loan is one of the Greek government`s
contributions to the celebration of the 2,500th anniversary of the emergence of democracy.
Washington`s Corcoran Gallery, enjoying a renaissance after its recent misadventures following the cancellation of a Robert Mapplethorpe photography show, has a full schedule this fall, including ”Cavaliers and Cardinals:
Nineteenth Century French Anecdotal Paintings,” which opens Saturday and closes Nov. 15; ”Washington by Night: Vintage Photographs from the Thirties,” opening this weekend and running until Jan. 3; ”Covert Obsolesence,” the satirical espionage constructions of Jim Sanborn; and the even more polemical ”Fata Morgana USA: The American Way of Life,” a
”nightmare vision of the American dream” by Spanish artist Josep Renau, now through Nov. 8.
The capital`s National Museum of American Art continues its Ralph Meatyard photography show through Oct. 18, and on Oct. 2 opens a retrospective of the paintings, collages and other works of the African-American artist Romare Bearden (1940-1987).
On Thursday, Washington`s Hirshhorn Museum unveils ”Tim Rollins and K.O.S.: Animal Farm,” a nine-by-45-foot depiction of world leaders cast as the characters in George Orwell`s anti-Communist novel. It continues through Dec. 6.
Baltimore`s Museum of Art began its fall season with ”Paul Klee:
Drawings and Prints,” featuring works from the institution`s collection, which run through Nov. 28. Opening on Sept. 30 is an exhibition of painted freestanding and relief sculptures by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres depicting life in a Bronx neighborhood. On Oct. 25, it begins a print show of works by American painter Brice Marden-the only U.S. showing of this exhibition.
The Boston Museum of Fine Arts continues through Jan. 17 its just-opened
”The Grand Tour: European and American Views of Italy.” It includes some three centuries` worth of paintings of Italian scenes by American and European artists, richly demonstrating why that country has held such appeal for visiting artists. The Boston Museum has taken some of the finest pieces in its world famous ship model collection and put them on display in their own gallery.
