Tony Mastroianni Review Collection
Mrs. Silver to re-stage "Letters Home" in N.Y.
Cleveland Press July 6, 1979
Dorothy Silver, Jewish Community Center cultural arts director, will return to New York City in September to re-stage the play she did there in a workshop production in May.
The play, "Letters Home," was produced as part of the Ford Foundation-funded Women's Project at the prestigious American Place Theater.
The project drew about 400 scripts from women playwrights. Ten were selected for rehearsed readings, another four or five for full productions.
And of those produced in the tiny (fewer than 90 seats) AP Subplot Theater, one, "Letters Home," has been chosen to open the fall-winter season on APT's main stage on Sept. 28.
The play by Rose Goldemberg is an adaptation of poet Sylvia Plath's letters to her mother. It uses Mary McDonnell as the suicidal Sylvia and Doris Belack as her mother.
Reviews of the play generally were good. For Mrs. Silver's direction, they were universally favorable.
"Dorothy Silver crafted a tense, focused production that never wavered from its depressing suicidal end. -- The NOW York Woman.
"Much credit also belongs to director Dorothy Silver who has realized 'Letters Home' beautifully on a small stage." -- The Hollywood Reporter.
"That this works so well is largely to the credit of Dorothy Silver's imaginative direction and stunning performances by Doris Belack and Mary McDonnell." -- SoHo Weekly News
"A gripping piece of theater. Director Dorothy Silver filled this work with nuances." -- WNYCTV
"Letters From Home" will run at least three weeks to take care of APT subscribers and could go beyond that through the rest of the year if it is successful.
"I don't think the play is commercial in any Broadway sense, it's too rarefied," said Mrs. Silver.
She expects to go into New York about Sept. 10 for rehearsals on the larger stage and to remain through opening week.
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Cleveland Orchestra conductor and musical director Lorin Maazel has turned movie maker.
Maazel wrote and directed an 18 minute silent short entitled "A Week in the Life of a Conductor." Variety, the show business newspaper, reports that it has been shown on French television. Maazel is in Paris in his role as guest director of the French National Orchestra.
Variety describes the film as a "comic evocation of what people imagine a famous orchestra conductor's life to be." The paper noted further that Maazel hopes to find a distributor for the film.
