Just a few years later, the surgical-like strikes carried out by Diller, Scofidio + Renfro at Lincoln Center have healed. Now the LED banners on the steps to the main courtyard, the covered ramps at each side, the wooded garden and green-roofed restaurant pavilion in the north courtyard, and even the clipped southeast corner at the Julliard School, all seem entirely natural, as if they’ve been there forever. There’s been one less noticeable intervention after that: the new 112-seat Claire Tow Theater by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, led by Hugh Hardy. It was built right on top of the existing Lincoln Center Theater, which houses the larger Vivian Beaumont and Newhouse Theaters.

The Tow is remarkable for its restraint on both the outside and the inside. So often when I walk into a new building I sense immediately that a professional designer has been there. The place is overcrowded with gestures and even if all of them been executed judiciously there’s simply too much going on, too much to consider, and it weighs down the experience. The Tow isn’t like that. It’s a simple, wood-lined, shoebox-shaped room with rows of fold-down seats and a U-shaped catwalk above. I watched a 90-minute one-act play there seated comfortably in the last row, from where I could see every corner of the stage and hear every word clearly. The new theater, which was built along with support spaces for the other theaters below, is set back on the old theater’s roof so that it’s barely visible from street level. In front there’s an open wood deck where theater-goers can collect before and after performances and observe the fray below, and all around are native plantings. The Tow is planned and finished simply; its refined proportions and one-of-a-kind setting are what bring it to life. Perhaps because Hardy has worked on prominent civic projects like this for four decades, he doesn’t feel the need, as another architect would, to raise his voice or confront the existing building, a beloved one by Eero Saarinen. His discretion is impressive.

Photo by H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture

November 02, 2012 by Nalina Moses

I was not one of those little girl who dreamed of horses, but after seeing War Horse at Lincoln Center I might very well become one. The primary enchantment of the production is the life-size horse puppets, made by Handspring Puppet Company, used to depict the title character, Joey, as he is raised on a farm in the English countryside and moves with a cavalry troop through the battles of World War I. Each puppet is managed by three actors: two crouched inside the torso moving its legs, and one standing outside, in front, moving its head and mane. There’s no attempt to camouflage the actors against the dark stage; they’re dressed like farm hands in boots, caps and suspenders, and move about just as freely as the actors portraying the other (far less compelling) human characters. Yet a minute or so after the curtain rises all you see are the horses, which whinny, stomp, rear, and roam around with all the impetuous majesty of real horses. You just don’t care about anything else.

While the production credits the horses as puppets, that word doesn’t feel entirely adequate. They are brought to life (really, they seem alive) by the transparent work of some very skilled actors, yet they’re not as passive, as inert, as conventional puppets are. Instead, in their condensed, calligraphic movements, they summon something like the essence of horse.

June 11, 2012 by Nalina Moses