"Durango"

Tonight I saw Durango by Julia Cho at the Public Theater. I didn't really know what to expect, as I was unfamiliar with the play and the playwright, but I generally trust the Public Theater to present all-around solid productions. All of the the shows I've seen that were produced by the Public (Two Gentlemen ot Verona, Mother Courage, See What I Wanna See, Stuff Happens, Satellites, Wrecks) have been expertly designed and directed, and Durango was no different. The sets, which slid on and off neatly, really did a good job juxtaposing the closed spaces of a house with wide open desert spaces, and the underscoring was also wonderfully evocative, blending well with the original songs Cho has written for the character of Isaac.

James Saito as Boo-Seng in Durango.

The play follows a family -- an older Asian American man, Boo-Seng, and his two sons, Isaac and Jimmy -- and their revelatory roadtrip from Arizona to Durango, Colorado in the wake of Boo-Seng's losing his job to a layoff. It was a largely satisfying play, especially when the plot took wing in the second half, revealing the characters' failures, losses, and regrets in a mostly successful manner. The acting was top-notch, with veteran actor James Saito commanding fierce attention as Boo-Seng.

My only real problem with the play was that, in including two teenaged main characters, Cho sometimes allows the colloquialisms, overuse of expletives, and cultural references take over to too great of an extent. Obviously she's going for realism, but it almost felt forced, especially during a particularly awkward reference to X-Men. The actors in the roles of these sons do a wonderful job though, particularly Jon Norman Schneider, who really captivated me as Jimmy, the closted gay swimmer struggling to play fit into the roles of "good son" and "happy son" at the same time.

Overall, a fine production of a mostly successful play.

The "Awakening" of musical theatre

A totally original new musical is now on Broadway, leaving me infinitely excited for the future of musical theatre. Its name? Spring Awakening. With a driving rock roll score by singer/songwriter Duncan Sheik ("Barely Breathing" was his big hit) and Steven Sater that for once fulfills the promise of honestly sounding like it could be on the Billboard charts, Spring Awakening manages to chisel its own unique spot next to Rent as a musical addressing timely issues relevant to young people today.

Managing to cover the issues of pregnancy and abortion, homosexuality, masturbation, teen suicide, physical and sexual abuse, and blossoming sexuality within the confines of 2 hours and 25 minutes, the show also manages not to be cloying or overbearing in presenting its messages, instead presenting rather compelling and emotionally complex young characters who suffer terribly for the ignorance bestowed upon them by their overbearing and withholding parents.

Anyway, there's not very much I can say that's negative about the show. The performances by the young cast (some of whom are still in high school) were wonderful. The design was functional and evocative, utilizing exhilerating neon lights and a sparse but effective setting. Michael Mayer's direction was also quite creative, transitioning expertly between the historical setting of the action (1890s Germany) and the modernity that explodes out of their more angsty moments as characters pull microphones from their preppy school jackets and don the roll of inner rock star.

It was a breathtaking night of theatre that I hope as many as possible get to experience. The audience when I saw it gave it such a strong ovation that the cast was forced to return to appease the crowd, which had continued to clap to an empty stage for several minutes once the cast had taken its bows.

Do I smell a hit? I hope so.

"The Clean House," happenings.

Yesterday was a wonderful day.

I woke up late, as is typical for a Saturday. Around mid-afternoon, I went to Starbucks to read The Clean House and Late: A Cowboy Song by Sarah Ruhl. After a while, a homeless man started talking to me about how he had had to buy vodka to help ease the pain of his toothache. He was reading a book about a famous bank robber in Europe who hadn't yet been caught. Anyway, he was an interesting man. After eating dinner, I went to 12th Street Books and then went to head uptown to Lincoln Center to see The Clean House.

At the 1 stop at Christopher Street, there was apparently some sort of crime-related problem, and, in being confused, I sort of gestured to this other guy down near the turnstiles and asked what was going on. So, we struck up a little conversation and walked together to 14th Street. His name was Juan. I have to say it was one of the most affecting conversations I've ever had, and we didn't even really talk about all that much. I just hate people who are all crazily anti-immigration. Much of how our society is today is because of immigrants. New York is such a great city, because every day you meet someone or talk to someone or see something, and it can change your perspective on things in ways you've never thought possible.

Last night, I saw The Clean House at Lincoln Center Theater's Mitzi Newhouse Theater. It's a play by Sarah Ruhl that has caught on across the country and finally arrived in New York. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and Sarah just recently recieved a McArthur Fellowship ("genius grant").

Anyway, that's besides the point. She has a very beautiful vision for writing plays. Though her dialogue is not always the best (and it's often wonderful), she clearly thinks out the structure of her plays and delivers symbolism like no other. She's able to construct symbolic moments in her writing that work so seamlessly theatrically. Rather than hitting you over the head with what you're supposed to think, they manage to be beautifully affecting.

The story concerns a maid, Matilde (pronounced "Ma-chill-gee") who doesn't like to clean; her doctor employer, Lane; Lane's sister, Virginia, who takes over for Matilde; and Lane's husband, who after finding his bashert, runs off with his beautiful cancer patient, Ana. It was a lovely story, melding the simple occurrences of life with moments of magic. I highly recommend the play to any imaginative theatregoer.

Encapsulation of the week thus far

So, it's been a few days since I posted.

Monday, I went to a reading by Sarah Arvio and Mark Strand at KGB Bar -- neither were particularly engaging, but it was still an entertaining enough night. I launched a companion blog to this one called RP Poetry where I'll be posting poems as I refine them.

On Tuesday, I worked tirelessly on a paper for journalism that was finished in the wee hours of the morning.

Wednesday was a day of relief and recovery from the paper-writing process. Patrick Healy, a leading political reporter for The New York Times, came to visit our class and had a lot of interesting things to say. While many of us in class had admired his writing from examples read in class, none of us had expected him to be so wonderfully attractive -- and gay. In fact, he was voted Hottest Gay Journalist in New York on the Left Behinds blog.

Wednesday evening I went to Lincoln Center to see a panel discussion with playwright Sarah Ruhl, a moderator (who, I believe, forgot to introduce herself), and actress Blair Brown (pictured, in that order, at right) about Ruhl's play The Clean House, which is currently playing at Lincoln Center Theater. It was a very interesting discussion about Ruhl's writing, and I bought her book and had her sign it. I'm going to see the play on Saturday, so I'll comment more when I have more to say.

After the discussion, I read Gem of the Ocean by August Wilson in Starbucks and then met up with my friend Ryan, to whom I gave my Suddenly Last Summer opening night ticket. We walked around after he got out of the show for a bit and talked, which was quite fun. On another related note, the show got relatively good reviews!

Today was course registration. I got into all of the classes I wanted besides for Creative Writing, for which I'm third on the waitlist. Those are:

• Major Playwrights: Caryl Churchill, David Hare, and Tom Stoppard
• Intermediate German II
• Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the 19th Century
• and Creative Writing

It seems like it should be a challenging and fun semester overall. I really hope I get into Creative Writing so I've at least got two elective classes that I'm genuinely passionate about.

After class and registration today, I went with Emma to a reading of Zorro, a new musical with music by The Gispy Kings. It was an insider reading, full of people in the theatre business -- the creative team, producers, and other theatre folk. I won a pair of tickets on Broadway.com's Stage Notes blog, so I was sort of excited about it. It seems like it could potentially make an interesting show.

Only not. Ugh, it was so very, very tedious. The music was very repetitious and simplistic. Many of the lyrics were in Spanish, which, though adding to the mood of the show, did nothing for my understanding, and, unlike the use of Italian language in The Light in the Piazza, did nothing to illuminate a language barrier or anything interesting like that. Eden Espinosa was fine as Luisa and Ivan Hernandez was quite good as Diego/Zorro, but the piece is just a hot mess. Characters are not established well enough early on. There is no solid opening number (it's in Spanish), the "I want" song driving the lead character(s) forward is far too late in the show and uninteresting. The show just needs a jolt of energy and craftsmanship. It admittedly got a little better as it went along, but never to a degree where I thought it would be ready for a Broadway stage any time soon. Ideally, it should be back to the books for the creative team of Zorro. Realistically, we'll probably see it treading the boards in the next year or so, another bombastic, underwritten, overproduced mess of shit.

What a week. And it's not even over yet.

"The Flood" and "Annie Hall"

It was a fun Sunday indeed.

I slept late and then went to see The Flood , an off-off-Broadway musical by young writers Peter Mills and Cara Reichel at Prospect Theatre Company's Chernuchin Theatre on W. 54th Street. I had read really, really good things about the score and was intrigued to see an original musical that hasn't yet been cut down and packaged for the masses. That's definitely what I got, a wonderfully theatrical and appropriately folksy score that was just infectious and effective.

A'lisa D. Miles as the River and Matt DeAngelis as Raleigh in The Flood.

On the whole, the book needed a bit of tightening and tweaking, with a few too many details for the audience to latch onto in order to take in the plot in its entirety, but that's pretty much part of the developmental process of a musical. It's all about finding what little brilliant bits need to go to make the work as a whole more succinct and effective.

It was a very interesting subject for a show -- a flood threatens to overtake a small town in Illinois, and, in the second act, does. The main focus of the show was on a middle-aged couple trying to find a way to see eye-to-eye on turning up the burner on their relationship and a young couple in the throes of new love. In Caroline, or Change anthropomorphic style, a black woman played the Mississippi River, historically suppressed and, in overtaking the town, cleaning its slate and showing what, of all our responsibilities and burdens, floats to the surface as truly significant. The cast was uniformly excellent, performing excellently despite the fact that the lighting of the show experienced technical difficulties during the first act, and the show had to eventually switch over to being performed without professional lighting, but, rather, in "work light" (flood lights). Oh, off-off-Broadway, how I wish thee were better funded.

Nonetheless, there were plenty of brilliant bits, especially those between the character of Rosemary (played by Jennifer Blood, pictured with A'lisa D. Miles at left) the mentally challenged sister of the young female love interest, and the River. Early on in the show, they do a sort of choreographed mirror sequence that's really very fascinating, and the flood scene where Rosemary is overtaken was very well done. The use of flapping fabrics to represent water is so often misused in theatre, but this was a case where it was really stunningly put to use.

Anyway, a very, very good day of theatre.

Afterwards, I studied for my midterm tomorrow and bought Annie Hall for $8 at Virgin Megastore, which I watched with Austin. I had pretty much forgotton everything about the movie, but it's really quite funny. It's nice as well that it has a realistic ending that doesn't feel sappy and saccharine. Bravo to Woody Allen!

Samuel Menashe, reading

Today was a pretty slow day. I had brunch and then went to see the poet Samuel Menashe read at Downeast Arts Center at 4. It was very fascinating to hear him read, because he basically just recounts stories from his life and inserts poems spontaneously, having memorized them all. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether he's begun or ended a poem because they blend so seamlessly into his speech.

After that, I bought two books at 12th Street Books, one of my favorite bookstores where used books are priced reasonably (most between $2 and $7): Six Degrees of Separation by John Guare and The Secret Rapture by David Hare. I then went to the Starbucks on Washington Square, got a gingerbread latte, and sat and read the Hare play for a few hours. It's one of the plays that's required reading for the Churchill, Hare, and Stoppard class I'm going to take at all costs next semester, and it was very fascinating and fast-paced. It had some of the in-yer-face elements of plays like Closer but with more realism and convention. It made me excited to try to see The Vertical Hour, Hare's current play on Broadway starring Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy.

I've pretty much decided recently that I want to be a poet and playwright (in addition to whatever I do to actually pay the bills, which will probably be some sort of more conventional theatre-related job). My ultimate artistic goals are to be a published poet who reads regularly and a playwright at least at an esteemed off-Broadway level and a participant in the O'Neill Center's National Playwright's Conference. I've got an idea for a play cooking, and I've been writing some new poems lately, so I'm thinking vaguely of starting to read at open mics in the near future. It's just all so intimidating, because it's hard to judge how your work stands up next to that of others. Poetry is just so subjective yet not.

A night in

Today was a long day. I worked from 10 till 6 with a hectic lunch break because of running to the post office for stamps for my boss. After work, I went to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on 49th Street to get a $25 discount ticket to Spring Awakening on Broadway. The discount was provided to us by NYU because a lot of cast and crew members are affiliated with the university. On the walk home, I stopped into a few stores but didn't buy anything.

I kept thinking to myself, Ricky, you have nothing planned tonight. You have to do something!! That's the voice that speaks to me every time I have a free minute. The city is just so interesting and vibrant that it's hard to resist its call. Tonight, however, I did, and I had a wonderful time doing so.

Bursting with huswifery, I spent the entire evening cleaning my half of the room, which had gotten quite cluttered; doing laundry, which had been building up for several weaks; listening to Nellie McKay; and eating bread and bree from Trader Joe's. Anyway, tomorrow will likely be less blissful -- but that's the way life is.

The Roundabout art is in!

Spring 2007 sees the first Broadway revival of 110 in the Shade with Audra McDonald at Studio 54. This is one of the shows I'm most excited for this season, especially since I work at Roundabout, which is producing the show.

Anyway, the artwork for the show has just been released:

As an intern at Roundabout, I was used, along with my fellow interns, as a sort of a focus group in one of our intern meetings, so I got to see some of the preliminary designs for The Apple Tree and 110 in the Shade.

We saw a lot of early sketches for The Apple Tree using various clipart and people other than Kristin (mock-ups) leading up to the current art (pictured at right). I'm not a big fan of the Apple Tree art because it doesn't feel show-specific. It's Kristin eats an apple on a green background with an odd, generic font. I feel like perhaps a drawing or some sort of bigger concept would have worked better. Of course, at least it's simple and presents the idea of Kristin being in the show (and selling its tickets). When they tried to bring in snakes or trees, things started to get too busy.

After seeing the Apple Tree developing posters, we saw the final four choices for 110. It was down to the chosen design (pictured at top), another that we responded to pretty favorably(dour Audra in a yellow/orange poster with a farmhouse in the background with Audra's eyes closed), and then two more variations on the same themes. The mock-up of the poster seen at the top of this post originally used some concert art featuring Audra in a similar pose, and then they shot the specific photo that they used. That was the one we interns responded to most.

I'm happy that they went with it. I don't know the show too well, but it seems to go well with the theme of blossoming into one's womanhood. The drops of rain are also quite vivid. Also, the concept of the situation of the lettering was intended to brand the show in a way by making the title pop out in an advertisement. Anyway, I'm looking forward to the show a lot more now than I already was (it'll be the last show I experience as an intern there).

My mock-up poster for The Apple Tree.

I spent some time making my own mock-up poster (pictured above) for The Apple Tree in PhotoShop to see if I could do any better. I tried to tie in the titular tree (an image I found here on Google), the Chenoweth photo from the current poster, and the font used for Desperate Housewives (doesn't that picture remind you of Housewives anyway?). It's not much more show-specific, but at least it's a little more interesting without being distracting. Like it better? No? I'm thinking I may start doing this every once in a while when I don't really like a show's artwork.

"Pretty Little Head" by Nellie McKay

Last year, I was exposed in part to the talent that is 24-year-old singer-songwriter Nellie McKay.

I had heard a few of her songs before somehow or other on the internet, including one of her most popular songs, "David," but it wasn't till last year, when Nellie starred in The Threepenny Opera at Studio 54, that I really found out more about her. Having heard me talk about Nellie's starring in Threepenny, ex-roomie David exposed me to a variety of her wonderfully sardonic and catchy songs. I was amused and enjoyed her performance in Threepenny, but for the most part I didn't pursue her music actively.

Recently, that has been changing. I bought a copy of her first album, Get Away From Me at Tower Records for 20% off having spotted it during the closing sale at Tower, and today I bought her latest album, Pretty Little Head, the release of which was delayed because of a split between Nellie and her former record label, Sony, which caused this latest CD to be put out on her own label, Hungry Mouse. Both are tons of fun, and I'm pretty much addicted. She's able to master pop, rock, jazz, and bits and pieces of rap with equal flair. I've heard of her described as a mix between Doris Day and Eminem, which seems just about right, with splashes of Peggy Lee, Regina Spektor (particularly her tricks of vocal range and tone) and Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's thrown in for good measure.

The fun thing about her music is that it manages to tackle activist issues without being bogged down in weightiness. She manages to present a fun listening experience that challenges the listener at the same time, and that's pretty cool.

Anyway, I highly recommend both albums, and Pretty Little Head is currently on sale for $10 at Virgin, so that's a good, cheap way to say howdy-do to one of music's up-and-coming label-turned-indie talents.

"Breakfast at Tiffany's," "Be Like Joe," "Suddenly Last Summer," weekend

So this was a pretty busy and interesting weekend.

On Friday night, Austin and I had originally been planning to see Borat, but we changed our minds and decided to accompany Jon to a student production at Columbia called Everyone's Different. Unfortunately, we took the wrong subway there (the 2 instead of the 1), and we ended up on the wrong side of Manhattan in Harlem. We missed the show, and we walked around in Harlem briefly, passing the Apollo Theatre, before we decided to head back downtown. By that time, of course, Borat was sold out, so we just hung out.

On Saturday I went to see a show called Be Like Joe that Frank Paiva, a friend of Austin's, was in at the Kraine Theatre on E. 4th Street. It was a surprisingly charming musical about a rock star who has taken a love potion that causes people to never tell him "no" and his clash with a fan who causes him to rethink his situation. After seeing the show, I had no idea what else to do and felt terribly bored, so I walked around SoHo and then sat in Starbucks briefly writing a little bit of a poem. I also had my first latte, which I quite enjoyed.

On Sunday I did several things. First I had breakfast at a place called Mimi's on E. 9th Street with Austin. We had French toast, fruit, and eggs, and it all came out to $4.50 each, which was wonderful. Of course, we had to argue about the price, because she attempted to overcharge us. Then we went to see Suddenly Last Summer. It was my second time and Austin's first. I liked it much more the second time. I think I understood it better, and the acting had also improved since I first saw it, particularly Blythe Danner's. Austin thought it was okay, but he had a few issues with the play and its effect on modern audiences that really made me rethink my own stance on the play. At the very least, I really enjoy the language, and the acting and sets were quite impressive.

Then Sunday night I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time ever after having heard so many things about the movie. I believe it was the first Audrey Hepburn movie I've watched in its entirety, though I've always thought she was quite glamorous looking. It was a very entertaining movie about two people, Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak, both of whom are dependent on others for their livelihoods and fall in love. It had a lot of really fun moments and had a really great 1960s style that I just loved. Now I've got to see some other Audrey Hepburn movies to catch up on what I've discovered I've been missing out on. George Peppard was very dashing and wonderful as Varjak, the perfect leading man for Audrey.

Anyway, I highly recommend the movie to anyone else who's been missing out on Breakfast at Tiffany's thus far in their lives.

"The Little Dog Laughed"

This has been such a great week of theatregoing. Yesterday was the delightful Mary Poppins, and tonight was The Little Dog Laughed, a new play by Douglas Carter Beane about a closeted gay actor who, while under pressure from his publicist to stay closeted while playing a gay role, falls in love.

The play stars Tom Everett Scott (That Thing You Do) as the movie star, Julie White as the publicist, Johnny Galecki (David on Roseanne) as the love interest, and Ari Graynor as the female complication to the story. It was a very entertaining play, so utterly non-stop that there wasn't really a moment to get bored. Julie White (pictured at right) was a standout in the hilarious role of the lesbian publicist who wants to make great things happen. She was the actor who really stole the show, however, the acting was great all around.

The set design by Allen Moyer (who also impressed me with his design for Grey Gardens) was also spectacular. Settings for the bedroom slid on and off, and panels in the wall slid open and shut to reveal characters who would deliver wonderfully funny monologues. Everything was very minimal and functional without being bare-bones. The underscore music by Lewis Flinn, beautiful costumes by Jeff Mahshie, and lighting by Donald Holder all came together with the other design elements to just make a very polished, wonderful production.

The play felt a lot like a movie in its pacing, yet it retained its theatricality in its gimmicky and ultimately entertaining use of direct address toward the audience and toward unseen characters. Though not the absolute best play I've seen so far this semester (I think that goes to Seven Guitars at Signature Theatre thus far), it was definitely the most entertaining. I recommend it to anyone with an open mind looking for a night of laughter and fine theatre.

Merry "Poppins"

So, tonight I saw Mary Poppins at the New Amsterdam Theatre on Broadway. I was expecting it to be fun and forgettable, but boy was it supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!

Besides for having such a lovely story with such upstanding moral values to present (respect the poor, make time for your children, understand your parents' hardships), the cast was wonderful, led by Ashley Brown as Mary Poppins and Gavin Lee (from the original London cast) as Bert.

The choreography, by Matthew Bourne, was breathtaking! I typically don't take much note of the dancing within a show, but it was simply magnificent. When someone was dancing, you simply couldn't take your eyes off of them. There were also a lot of wonderful special effects moments (dancing upside-down, a giant umbrella, plenty of flying, etc.). I have to say this is one of the first musicals I've seen in a while (along with Wicked) where I could really see where all the money had gone.

There were so many great moments and people, it's hard to mention them all. "Step in Time," "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious," and "Feed the Birds" were probably my favorite moments in the show. Cass Morgan, who played Bird Woman really did the role justice. That's pretty much always been my favorite moment in the movie and my favorite song, and it was really done very well on stage. The two child performers who played Jane and Michael were Kathryn Faughnan and Henry Hodges at the performance I saw, and they were extraordinarily talented and charistmatic. It's hard to believe kids at their ages can keep up with the intricate dances of the rest of the cast, but they can.

The design of the show was also very cool, and the sets moved pretty seamlessly on and off and up and down and in and out. The lighting always did a good job setting the scene and providing a mood for the scenes. Costumes were lovely and well done.

Anyway, it was a lovely show, and the entire audience (mainly made up of kids and gays) seemed to respond positively. I have such bitter feelings towards overly commercial overblown shows, but this one just seemed overblown in all the right places and had a heart to boot! I'm sure Mary Poppins will be running on Broadway still ten years down the line or longer, but it's definitely worth checking out.

CB I Hate Perfume

So, today I went with Austin to this cool little perfume store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn called CB I Hate Perfume. Austin had found out about it from a blog associated with GQ and was quite excited to go. They sell unisex perfumes in a variety of categories, like water, Earth, green, wood, flower, fruit, zest, smoke, skin, spice, food, sweet, clean, and chemical. The creator of CB, Christopher Brosius comments on the website: "While certain of my scents are more popular with one or the other, I do not define scent by gender. I prefer to let people choose for themselves.

He also comments (quite pretentiously, but wonderfully decadently): "Scent is the record of your own special life – it’s your experience. My mission is to capture that experience. I bottle it so you can have it, use it and love it whenever you wish. I can give you scent experiences you never dreamed possible. I create perfumes as unique & individual as those who wear them. And I use a great many scents never before thought of as 'perfume”.' But I know these are just the scents that really hit us where we live – they’re the ones we remember and love. These scents are life."

Anyway, the store was very sparse, two walls on either side of the front portion lined with bottles in categorized shelves. The top shelves had specialty blended "perfume" scents for more money, and the bottom shelves had individual "accord" scents for reasonable prices (most around $25, but some skewing slightly higher). There were some very odd scents, like Bazooka Joe bubble gum, doll head, dirt, gunsmoke, roast beef, dirt, rubber, crayon, and suntan lotion.

I was going back and forth between golden apple, Bartlett pear, black tea, and pomegranate seed, but I ultimately went with the pomegranate seed. Austin was between English novel and Russian leather, and he went with the Russian leather. They also had a really nice perfume called Russian caravan tea, which was very good.

Bag, scroll, and 15ml bottle from CB I Hate Perfume.

It was amazing how well CB was able to capture the scent of something in liquid form. Going there today made me really glad I didn't waste money on a high-end cologne when I was contemplating doing so, because going to a place like this allows you to make a much more personal decision about what you want to convey in your scent.

Anyway, it was a fun time. Tonight is Mary Poppins, which will warrant another post later tonight, I'm sure.