Something Happened on the Way to Bountiful: Everyone Sang Along

From the New York Times-

Not long after the curtain rises on the second act of “The Trip to Bountiful,” the Broadway revival of the Horton Foote play at the Stephen Sondheim Theater, something unusual happens. Cicely Tyson, as Mrs. Carrie Watts, sits on a bus station bench in a small Texas town. She is on the run from her abusive daughter-in-law and henpecked son in Houston, desperate to see the family farm in Bountiful once more before she dies.

Overcome with emotion, she begins singing an old Protestant hymn, “Blessed Assurance.”

From the first note, there’s a palpable stirring among many of the black patrons in the audience, which the play, with its all-black cast, draws in large numbers. When Ms. Tyson jumps to her feet, spreads her arms and picks up the volume, they start singing along. On some nights it’s a muted accompaniment. On other nights, and especially at Sunday matinees, it’s a full-throated chorus that rocks the theater.

“I didn’t realize they were doing it until someone remarked to me how incredible it was that the audience was joining in,” Ms. Tyson said in a recent interview, referring to her preview performances. “I said, ‘Where?’ I was so focused on what I was doing that I didn’t hear it.”

More here-

http://theater.nytimes.com/2013/05/28/theater/cicely-tyson-and-blessed-assurance.html?_r=0

Love the Sinner: Pautz’s plot sometimes seems implausible. The feeling grows that there’s a deeper play to be written about the dilemmas

From the London Times-

We know that the Anglican Communion is in danger of breakup over such issues as women bishops, civil partnerships and gay priests. So Drew Pautz’s Love the Sinner is a timely piece because it begins with a Church conference in an African country, maybe Uganda, where homosexuality may yet become a capital crime. Louis Mahoney’s Bishop Paul forcefully puts a conservative case, though a very general one, and Nancy Crane’s Hannah speaks for liberalism, though she too seems oddly lacking in specifics. Ian Redford’s Bishop Stephen presides, achieving no reconciliation of views.

I was starting to feel that Pautz should be spelling out the arguments with more clarity — he can’t state that what he calls “the organisation” is the Anglican Church itself — when the scene changes to the hotel room of a lay delegate, Jonathan Cullen’s Michael. He’s had sex with a bellboy, Fiston Barek’s Joseph, and Joseph is making demands with menaces. Why won’t Michael, who is married, get him to England and the good life?

Cut to England, where Charlotte Randle’s Shelly, Michael’s wife, is angry because her biological clock is running down and he won’t agree to the IVF that would give her the child she craves. In fact, his Christian fervour is also alienating subordinates at his print business, where he’s pulling down girlie posters and putting up celestial pictures. Inevitably, Joseph makes his own way to Blighty and causes problems for him, his marriage and, with Bishop Stephen appearing in the crypt where he’s hidden the young African, perhaps for the Church itself.

More here-

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/stage/theatre/article7124340.ece