SPRING AWAKENING to sleep: After nearly 900 performances, the award-winning pop musical is set to close January 18th, cast members learned yesterday. The production won eight Tony awards last year, including ones for BILL T. JONES’s choreography, DUNCAN SHEIK and STEVEN SATER’s original score, best musical and best direction of a musical. The announcement comes close on the heels of news that Tony-winning HAIRSPRAY and MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT will also close early next year. [NYT]
MARTHA GRAHAM’s CLYTEMNESTRA celebrating 50-year revival: The Martha Graham Dance Company is reviving Clytemnestra after letting the production lay dormant for 50 years. The world premiere launched yesterday at the Athens Concert Hall in Greece and will run through Saturday before reopening in Washington D.C. The original 1958 production starred Martha Graham herself, and her company’s revival uses her costumes and the music of Egyptian composer HALIM EL-DABHH. The Clytemnestra world tour will include Berlin, Paris, London, Sydney, Melbourne, Beijing and Tokyo. [Xpat Athens]
What is that dance world queen TWYLA THARP up to now?
Geniuses return to Washington: GENIUS2 opened this week at the Kennedy Center after last winter’s GENIUS! performances called for an encore. The program, put on by the Washington Ballet, brings back Twyla Tharp, CHRISTOPHER WHEELDON and MARK MORRIS and introduces NACHO DUATO. WHEELDON’s acclaimed MORPHOSES is staying on from last season, and Tharp’s company premieres her BAKER’S DOZEN. [The Kennedy Center]
DAVID MAMET’s plays open to acclaim: The 20th-anniversary revival of David Mamet’s SPEED-THE-PLOW officially opened yesterday at the Ethel Barrymore Theater. The play delves into the grit of the film industry, exposing those who risk anything for the associated glamour. With an all-star cast including ENTOURAGE‘s JEREMY PIVEN, MAD MEN‘s ELISABETH MOSS and Tony-nominated RAUL ESPARAZA, it’s no surprise this revival is garnering a lot of attention. A big week for Mamet, as his new play NOVEMBER also opened in Boston to critics’ praise of a farcical portrait of a moronic president. [USA TODAY, BOSTON HERALD]
Rapp sheet: ADAM RAPP’s KINDNESS opened this week off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons, marking — as the title suggests — perhaps a more human departure from his usual dystopian subject matter. Starring ANNETTE O’TOOLE and CHRISTOPHER DENHAM, Kindness is being met with mixed reviews: a combination of tepid emotion with ambiguously violent tension. [ATW Digest]