Ricky in NYC

Dubya and Dionysos

2008-10-18T02:14:00.008-04:00

Lately, I've had Greek drama on the brain.

Tonight I went to see Oliver Stone's film W with an eye on current representations of Iraq and politics in film and theatre. I've seen a number of other shows on the topic: The Vertical Hour and Black Watch come to mind as recent examples on stage. As does Mark Ravenhill's epic cycle of short plays aptly titled Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat.

W, which emphasizes the Oedipal instincts behind Bush, Jr.'s rise to power is sort of a modern-day Oedipus story played as a tragicomedy. There are ha-ha moments of recognition, but mostly because Stone hones his actors in on the truths of their characters. Particularly fine - and notable to one who's viewing the film from a theatrical perspective - are sequences that bring Bush back to the empty ball field of the team he once owned. The crowd is gone, and the balls come flying; his reactions are the variable.

The cast of Hare's Stuff Happens at the Public Theater.

I was struck throughout the film by how many similarities there were between Stone's film and David Hare's 2004 play Stuff Happens. Hare's self-described "history play, which happens to centre on very recent history" also seeks to raise the characters to epic proportions. It's interesting to see how many similar behind-closed-doors moments Hare and Stone have chosen to focus on - particularly the scenes in the White House where the cabinet gathers to discuss politics and pray.

Anyway, I recommend both seeing Stone's film W and reading or seeing Hare's Stuff Happens. Together, they create an interesting dialogue about representations of politics in theatre and film.

After the movie, I finished reading Scotsman David Greig's adaptation of Euripides's The Bacchae as well. The adaptation, which was produced in associate with the National Theatre of Scotland starring Alan Cumming, keeps all of the characters and situations but develops a clarity and fluidity of language that more strict verse translations seem to lose along the way. It's not a modern adaptation per se, but it struck me as more irreverently funny than others like it. I recommend taking a look at Greig's script for a fresh take on The Bacchae, which is a fairly quick, fascinating play to discover.

Revisiting the classics via Robert Fagles

2008-10-15T01:31:00.006-04:00

While this season's off to a tepid start, I have a worthy suggestion for weary theatergoers in search of a reinvigoration of sorts: why not revisit the classics?

In studying Greek drama for a current class I'm taken, I've been struck by how readable and enjoyable Greek plays can be, and I have a few suggestions for interested readers.

My professor, Roger Oliver, recommended to our class that we read Robert Fagles's translations of both Aeschylus's The Oresteia and Sophocles's The Theban Plays (concerning Oedipus), both published by Penguin Classics, and I found his fluid, poetic versions to be quick, satisfying reads.

To see the plays in action in New York is also currently possible! The Pearl Theatre Company is currently featuring The Oedipus Cycle, Sophocles's Theban Plays performed back-to-back (the running time is 3 hours).

Upcoming at one of my current favorite theatre companies, Classic Stage Company, is An Oresteia, an amalgam of plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides chronicling the fall of the house of Atreus.

Oedipus is also currently receiving a Ralph Fiennes-led production at London's National Theatre that promises to be one of the hottest tickets across the pond as well.

Say what you will about Greek plays being stodgy and irrelevant, plays like Agamemnon, Antigone, and Oedipus the King hold underestimated riches for modern readers. Sometimes, as in the case of Oedipus, they even continue to pack 'em in thousands of years on.

Season thus far...

2008-10-15T00:53:00.005-04:00

So far, so...

Well, it's been an interesting beginning of the season on Broadway this fall.

We've had [title of show], A Tale of Two Cities, Equus, The Seagull, 13, A Man For All Seasons, and To Be Or Not To Be.

So far there have been one standout musical ([tos]), several standout play revivals, and the mediocre 13 and To Be Or Not To Be. Still, we're waiting for that big runaway success, critical or otherwise (last season's August: Osage County). Will it come in the form of Billy Elliot? Shrek the Musical? 9 to 5? The answer remains to be seen.

Along the way, we've gotten several fine performances, including Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths in Equus; the ladies of The Seagull; and Frank Langella in A Man For All Seasons; but once again, we're still waiting on that knock-em-dead surefire Tony-winning performance that, in the past few seasons has come in the form of Christine Ebersole (Grey Gardens) and Patti LuPone (Gypsy).

I, for one, am excited, particularly following the tepidly titillating To Be Or Not To Be's opening night tonight, for the opening of All My Sons on Thursday. Though many have expressed their doubts surrounding director Simon McBurney's crafty production choices (underscoring, video projections, etc.), I'm a fan of his (shout out to A Disappearing Number at the Barbican in London) and can't wait to see what he's done with Arthur Miller's postwar drama.

Several recent announcements have spiced up the prospects for the post-holidays season.

Roundabout Theatre Company has just announced a January 12 benefit concert reading of Sondheim's A Little Night Music starring Natasha Richardson, Victor Garber, Christine Baranski, Laura Benanti, Marc Kudisch, and Vanessa Redgrave.

And Angela Lansbury has just been announced as Madame Arcati opposite previously announced Christine Ebersole and Rupert Everett in the upcoming Michael Blakemore-directed revival of Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit.

Reading "All My Sons"

2008-09-24T19:04:00.003-04:00

Somehow, through my four years in high school and first three years of college, I missed -- for the most part -- the Arthur Miller boat. Besides for a few lessons on The Crucible, which I enjoyed at the time but which left little mark on my psyche, most of what I knew of Arthur Miller was the titles of his plays -- The Man Who Had All the Luck, All My Sons, After the Fall, A View From the Bridge, Death of a Salesman...

He'll probably come up in my History of Drama and Theatre II class next semester, but I'm not one to wait around to be taught about something; I like to go out and teach myself whenever possible. So with this aim in mind -- to familiarize myself with All My Sons in advance of the Broadway revival's opening -- I bought Arthur Miller: Collected Plays (1944-1961) with my Barnes and Noble membership discount and sat down to read the play.

Oh. My. God. Arthur Miller is a genius. What a compelling topic -- residual scandal over the blunders of an unlikely war profiteer! Mixed with all kinds of family intrigue! And some of the best goddamn dialogue I've ever read for the theatre. It's been a while since I read a play that was such a page-turner. It reminded me a bit of Shaw's Major Barbara and a little bit of O'Neill, only combining the best elements of each to make for a real theatrical home run.

If Katie Holmes can pull of the plum role of Ann, the rest of the cast seems absolutely spot-on. I say, be there or be square!

"Equus" -- a season of play revivals!

2008-09-24T01:25:00.004-04:00

With the Broadway run of Equus opening Thursday, I'm struck by the number of play revivals we'll be seeing on Broadway this fall.

I count the following: Arthur Miller's All My Sons, David Mamet's American Buffalo and Speed-the-Plow, Peter Shaffer's Equus, Anton Chekhov's The Seagull, and Robert Bolt's A Man For All Seasons.

In winter and spring, those will be supplemented by Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler and Friedrich von Schiller's Mary Stuart.

If last season was the season for musical revivals, with Gypsy, Sunday in the Park with George, and South Pacific each earning rave reviews and multiple Tony nominations, this seems to be the year producers are hoping to bank on audiences' familiarity with classic plays and penchant for star turns. Among those starring in play revivals are: Daniel Radcliffe and Richard Griffiths (Equus); John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest, Katie Holmes, and Patrick Wilson (All My Sons); Cedric the Entertainer, John Leguizamo, and Haley Joel Osment (American Buffalo); Jeremy Piven and Raul Esparza (Speed-the-Plow); Kristin Scott Thomas (The Seagull); and Frank Langella (A Man For All Seasons). Looking ahead, Mary Louise Parker's turn in Hedda Gabler looks particularly poised to create some buzz as well.

At the moment, as its opening night fast approaches, all eyes are turned to Equus. Is Daniel Radcliffe's penis worth paying $120 for? Is he a better actor on stage than he is in the middling Harry Potter adaptations? And how is Radcliffe's costar Richard Griffiths, making his first return to Broadway since his Tony-winning turn in The History Boys? The answers are all forthcoming in my review of the play, but I suspect that a visit of one's own will ultimately be the only way to assuage one's curiosity.

"Mourning Becomes Electra"

2008-09-23T21:50:00.005-04:00

I just this moment finished reading Eugene O'Neill's Mourning Becomes Electra. In my history of drama and theatre course, as we were reading Aeschylus's The Oresteia, my professor mentioned this play as a reinterpretation of Aeschylus worth noting. In the play, O'Neill updates Aeschylus, setting the events in post-Civil War New England.

Now that I've read it, I'm not sure what to think. It's a brilliant exercise in updating an ancient play for modern times, but I'm fast realizing O'Neill's flaws as a dramatic writer. The conceit of the play, the resemblance amongst characters within the Mannon family, relies on heavy amounts of stage direction. This would be totally intolerable to literary departments accepting scripts nowadays and has the averse affect of spelling out too much for a reader.

The speechifying is overwrought; the dialogue is too often either too pedestrian or too erudite. That said, the character of Christine Mannon (the Clytaemnestra character) is fascinating.

All in all, an interesting, flawed read. Apparently it's being revived off-Broadway this season. It'll be interesting to see if they can wade through the muck of O'Neill's melodrama and make this a compelling production.

And another play from the same book (Three Plays) is being revived on Broadway this season with Carla Gugino, Pablo Schreiber, and Brian Dennehy: Desire Under the Elms (awful title, no?)

New York theatre...

2008-09-23T02:17:00.002-04:00

I'd like to start writing on this blog again. There was a time I wrote it in almost nonstop, but recently I've been much busier. Whilst in London, I was running about like a chicken with its head cut off, flitting from one theatre to the next. Now, in New York, I'm balancing classes with my internship at Roundabout Theatre Company and the steady stream of reviews I've been writing for musicOMH.com (my favorite of my obligations).

No matter, I'm determined that I will post here as often as I can. Because I'll be posting most of my lengthy thoughts about productions on musicOMH.com, I'll refrain from detailed reviews on here. Instead, I'll add little tidbits, recommend little things I've stumbled upon, etc. Most of it will be theatre-related; some of it will not be.

First up, as I was wandering through the BC/EFA Broadway Flea Market this year, I stumbled upon a recording done by Corin Redgrave of Oscar Wilde's De Profundis for $5. I read this book over the summer, an extended letter written by Wilde to his lover Lord Alfred "Bosie" Douglas during his term of imprisonment at Reading Gaol. The recording is wonderful. Also included is the "tea scene" from The Importance of Being Earnest, as performed by Vanessa Redgrave and Lynn Redgrave. I recommend reading the book. While the CD seems not to be readily available online, it's possible to find audio recordings of Corin Redgrave reading the letter, and they ought to be worth checking out. He's also performing the letter at the National Theatre again this autumn.

"Top Girls" on Broadway

2008-06-10T10:49:00.009-04:00

When British playwright Caryl Churchill wrote Top Girls in 1982, during the age of Thatcherism and Reaganomics, I expect she must have known that the themes of her play would remain painfully relevant even into the next century. Manhattan Theatre Club's timely revival of Churchill's play comes just as former first lady Hillary Clinton winds down her epic attempt at becoming the first top girl in U.S. history, and it provides a complex and intelligent companion to the debate over the lingering sexism in society today. How much is it important that the leaders of tomorrow be women, the play asks, if those in question don't have women's best interests at heart? Can women be both happy and successful? And should they have to don pants and act like men to get where they want to be?

Read my review of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls on Broadway at musicOMH.com.

Mark Ravenhill and "Boris Godunov"

2008-06-10T10:41:00.004-04:00

Mark Ravenhill has certainly come a long way in the eleven years it's taken him to get from his first play, Shopping and Fucking, to his epic cycle, Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat. In regards to the In-Yer-Face school into which he was siphoned - along with Sarah Kane, amongst others - early in his career, he denies any formal sense of a group at the time and replies, elusively, "I think it was kind of in the air everywhere." But he's never been out to shock. "With each play," he says, "you hope to surprise yourself and explore new stuff, and you're trying to listen to what's happening in the world and trying to put that in your play, and obviously the world doesn't stand still, so it constantly evolves."

Read my interview with in-yer-face playwright Mark Ravenhill at musicOMH.com, where I'm now a contributing writer.

I've also got a review of the recent Cheek by Jowl production of Alexander Pushkin's Boris Godunov at the Barbican up there.

Enjoy!

I'll Be the Devil, Tricycle Theatre, London

2008-03-01T20:50:00.002-05:00

Rating: ***/5

Saturday, 1 March 2008.

It's not as bad as the hype. Leo Butler's new play set in 1762 Limerick is bloody fun at times, though it veers toward melodrama a bit too often.

Concerning family strife in Limerick, Ireland during the The Seven Years' War, when Irish Catholics were mistreated by their British Protestant occupiers and the Irish converts they took along the way, the play has a fairly simple premise.

Catholic Maryanne, mother to Ellen and Dermot, has mothered children by Lieutenant Coyle, who's renounced his Catholic faith.

It's punctuated with brutality, shit, and gore, so it's not for the faint hearted. And I'm not sure it ultimately makes the strong statement it aims for, but I'll Be the Devil has its moments, and those curious about Irish history will certainly relish in what seems to me a fairly vivid portrayal of the times.

The Tempest, The Rose Theatre, Kingston

2008-02-28T19:51:00.003-05:00

Rating: **/5

Thursday, 28 February 2008.

OK, give them credit for reexamining Shakespeare's The Tempest from an Islamic perspective. Interesting enough. Asian company Tara Arts has brought its radical new production to the Rose Theatre in Kingston, but I'm not sure it ought to have left the rehearsal hall.

Director Jatinder Verma has obviously put a lot of thought into this production, but what she gives us is not a considered result. Instead, she's experimented with a sparse -- underwhelming -- set and dangling ropes that, misused, make up the bulk of the properties.

Some of the cast, including Robert Mountford as Prospero, shine in parts, but much of the company seems out of the loop, especially Caroline Kilpatrick as the fairy Ariel.

This Tempest, innately a play plagued by ambivalence and rocky patches, needs a unity of vision that it lacks in its current inception. Hopefully as the production tours it will improve, but I wouldn't hold out hope.

The Vortex, The Apollo Theatre, London

2008-02-28T19:49:00.006-05:00

Rating: ***/5

Saturday, 23 February 2008.

Noel Coward's breakthrough play, The Vortex, is back in London, this time starring TV's Felicity Kendal in the central role of Florence Lancaster in a fairly by-the-books revival by Peter Hall. Though she hams it up at times, Kendal has a ferocious onstage demeanor and a raspy voice that helps her spit lines with an admirable sharpness.

The play centers around Florence, ever a failure in her adulterous love affairs, and her son Nicky Lancaster, newly addicted to cocaine. The two resent each other throughout, coming at the end of the play to a half-hearted promise of mutual redemption.

Dan Stevens as Nicky and Cressida Trew as Bunty Mainwaring, the object of his affection, bring youth and charm to the production, and Daniel Pirrie is churlishly charming as Tom Veryan, Florence's younger lover.

The first act contains all the nail-biting as we wait for the inevitable; the second act is the picking up of the pieces.

The sets are drab: unobtrusive and merely serviceable.

In the end, I found the production reasonably accomplished considering the triviality of it all. Weighty subjects are tossed around lightly -- one of Coward's biggest gifts. But the resolution, all treacle and no tenacity, is lacking in earnestness -- Coward's fault.

Forgive the actors; the lines are set in stone.

Blasted, Queens Hotel, Leeds

2008-02-28T19:49:00.005-05:00

Rating: ***/5

Friday, 22 February 2008.

Stepping into the lobby of the Queens Hotel in Leeds last week, I and the rest of the audience of twelve who'd gathered together for a common purpose felt a strange combination of excitement and fear. We'd been forewarned to expect "scenes of nudity, violence, sexual violence, and defecation." But surely it can't be that extreme. We're here to see a play after all -- even if it is the infamous Blasted by Sarah Kane.

I inquire as to where we're meant to go. There's no signage anywhere, no indication that we're at a theatrical performance. "Room 807," I'm told by the porter on duty. "Just up the elevator, turn left, and then turn left again."

I and my fellow audience members reach the room, expecting to be greeted with detailed instructions. Instead, we drop our coats and bags off haphazardly in one of the suite's two main rooms. A phone rings moments later, and an attendant relays directions to us, supposedly from the hotel concierge. We're to wear a mask resembling a bedsheet, she tells us. And if we experience distress during the performance, we're to raise our hands.

Minutes later, actors burst into the hotel room, launching into Sarah Kane's landmark drama of cruelty. When Blasted, Kane's first play, opened at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs in January 1995, it caused quite a ripple within the theatre community. Never before had such brutal violence, frank language, sexuality, and militaristic brutality come together to such potent effect. The unofficial movement she started, In-Yer-Face Theatre, would be carried on by Mark Ravenhill, Jez Butterworth, and others after her suicide in February 1999.

But it was Blasted that started it all, and this production, executed by young Leeds production company nineteen;twentynine understands the potency of Kane's drama. Directed by Felix Mortimer and featuring a rotating cast of actors for the week's four performances per day, the tone of the production is spot-on: the naturalistic hotel lighting, the blue glow from the bathroom, the sounds of gunfire rattling away in the background during the play's two devastating final scenes, the use of a flashlight for minimalist lighting later in the proceedings. It's all terribly well done.

The cast that I saw, Martin Wickham as Ian, Steph De Whalley as Cate, and Ash Layton as the Soldier, were all well-suited for their parts. Wickham magnificently captures the cruelty of a man stringing along a not-quite-all-there Cate, ultimately harming her beyond repair. And Ash Layton, displaying an angular grimace that could kill, shakes things up in the play's second and third parts in the role of the soldier.

It's a clever concept, a site-specific Blasted, the kind of gleeful gimmick frequent theatergoers dream of. It could even be argued that the voyeuristic perspective of eavesdropping on these thoroughly flawed characters within their own environs seems absolutely fitting in showing an audience the full extent of their cruelty. But it's also sadly a result of the translation from stage to suite that someone forgot the elements of magical realism that Kane's included in the text.

This isn't just the tale of two ex-lovers in a hotel suite for the night. It's about the bursting in of modern warfare on private lives, embodied by the soldier's arrival, and the comparison that this draws between Ian's transgressions upon individuals and soldiers' upon humanity. Kane's writing gets a bit heavy-handed at times, but this is theatre intended to shock, and shock it does. Perhaps, however, a level of distance is required for the piece to have its fullest impact. Can we properly process this shift from reality to a more heightened form when we're so close to the actors and the action?

By the end of the play, the audience is plainly in shock. We're left peering with rapt anticipation into the bathroom, where the final moments of the play are unwisely placed outside the vantage points of most of the audience members.

There's obviously not much that could have been done in regards to setting. After all, the room can't be altered for a mere one-week run. But concessions could have been made for the presence of an audience. The removal of one of two out-of-place flatscreen TVs would have created more seating space for those audience members who really needed it. And more sensitivity to the physical inclusion of the piece's spectators would have created a more productive interaction between actor and audience. Along the way, the audience has been fighting for proper perspectives on the action, which uneasily shifts between the suite's two awkwardly divided rooms. Perhaps the hotel setting is ultimately just too cumbersome to contain such an ambitious project.

This is ultimately a production that delivers a mixed bag of results. On one hand, there's something to be said for a play so brutal being played out within feet -- or even inches -- of you. And the experience is certainly an unforgettable one, with acting and environmental elements that are accomplished. The anticlimax of the ending's awkward setting and the racing-back-and-forth nature of the experience, however, got in the way of what would have been more satisfying, if still inherently flawed, production from an enthusiastic company that shows promise for the future of daring regional English theatre.

Artefacts, The Bush Theatre, London

2008-02-28T19:47:00.002-05:00

Rating: ****/5

Wednesday, 20 February 2008.

Mike Bartlett is one of England's newest playwriting talents. After the success of last year's My Child at the Royal Court, he's back with a new play at the Gate Theatre, Artefacts.

Kelly is your typical London girl, a bit flaky and chronically addicted to her mobile phone. One day, she learns her father is Iraqi. He comes to visit her all of a sudden, bringing with him a strange artefact that will change her life in this transcontinental story that shifts between London and Baghdad.

Bartlett is brave to tackle subjects he's probably never experienced first hand, and his use of Iraqi folklore and Arabic language within the play are extraordinary, bringing us momentarily closer to the experience of these Iraqi people and at the same time allowing us the necessary sense of estrangement.

Lizzy Watts as chatty Kelly and Peter Polycarpou as his sober father Ibrahim give excellent lead performances.

The play is presented in the centre of a theatre-in-the-square setting, the space covered in Persian carpets spliced together and covered with glistening rubble.

One hopes that the play, as it progressed, concluded with a message other than one that's almost apathetic toward our consumer culture, one where Kelly had taken more from this experience, but still it's a play that keeps its audience on its toes and provokes a conversation across cultural borders.

The Sea, Theatre Royal Haymarket, London

2008-02-16T17:59:00.001-05:00

Rating: *****/5

Saturday, 16 February, 2008.

In The Sea I found an unusual pearl of a play. Written by Edward Bond, author of the 1960s Royal Court play Saved that caused so much controversy, The Sea is a tragicomedy richly layered in its writing and enhanced by grand performances.

Set on a coastal town in East Anglia, Mrs. Rafi (a snippy Dame Eileen Atkins) rules the town and its social scene, pitted against Hatch (David Haig) and his cronies, who believe aliens are taking over the town after a minor shipwreck leaves one of the town's sailors dead on the shores. The intrigue that follows, including a romance sparked between Rafi's niece Rose, formerly betrothed to the sailor, and his surviving friend Willy, is awash in mystery and philosophical musing. Interludes with Evens, a hermit living on the shoals, are full of rich dialogue. And David Burke as Evens is spot-on in his drunken earnestness.

It sounds like a weird premise for a play, but the quick pace of things combined with game performances makes things seem almost plausible. Plus, of course, plausibility isn't Bond's foremost aim.

Excellent projected waves keep the scenes hurtling into one another, the shoreline coasting forward and back allowing for smooth transitions between interiors and sparse outdoors scenes.

Beneath the existential ruin of this little-known 1973 play, there's also a sparkling wit, and this cast does well to bring it out while keeping the seriousness that Bond intended. All in all, a spot-on production recommended to all with a love of serious drama.

Speed-the-Plow, The Old Vic, London

2008-02-09T18:56:00.001-05:00

Rating: ****/5

Saturday, 9 February 2008 (in previews).

David Mamet's plays hardly seem a natural fit for the London stage. His characters speak the language of American capitalism -- everything terse and tense, full of acidic sentences spat and interrupted and punctuated with profanity. But what's important to consider when evaluating the place of Mamet on this side of the pond is that maybe his plays don't merely encompass the jargon of American capitalism after all, but rather the universality of greed.

It is ex-pat American film actor and controversial artistic director of the Old Vic Kevin Spacey who has wisely revived Mamet's quick-witted and sharply observant Speed-the-Plow, taking on the role of Charlie Fox opposite fellow American Jeff Goldblum and allowing London audiences a fresh chance to evaluate this hypothesis for themselves.

It was Harold Pinter who originally championed Mamet's work to the National Theatre, where Speed-the-Plow had its London debut in 1989. Indeed Mamet seems to have much in common with Pinter's pared-down style. Speed-the-Plow is representative of drama at its most distilled: three characters, minimal scenery, and overlapping dialogue that cuts like a knife and is perfectly fitting for the wheeling-dealing nature of the film industry. Dripping with 1980s greed, it's a play that investigates the Hollywood studio system past its prime and its obsession with the proverbial bottom line. Bobby Gould, played by Jeff Goldblum, has recently become an upper-level studio exec, when colleague Charlie Fox, played by Spacey, brings him the opportunity of a lifetime -- a major film star willing to cross over from another studio to make a high-profile prison pic.

And it's when Spacey and Goldblum go head-to-head that the play feels most alive. These are two men who've known each other for years, Fox always a few steps behind Gould. All nervous energy, Spacey conveys the raw ambition of his character expertly. As his sits on the office couch, rubbing his hands, tongue waggling, the tension is palpable. And he's matched by lanky Jeff Goldblum, whose manic pacing practically transcends to dance as he puts a face to the images of weaselly studio execs of American film lore.

Where the plot thickens, and also where the production loses its steam, is with the entry of Gould's temporary secretary Karen, played by Laura Michelle Kelly. Karen, on a visit to Gould's house that's part of an office scheme, props up a novel about radiation and the apocalypse by an "Eastern sissy writer" recently submitted to Bobby for what he dubs a "courtesy read." This subsequently causes Gould a mental shake-up as he reexamines his age-old set of methods. It's up to Karen to spawn this shift. She must simultaneously emit the naivety of a fresh-faced secretary and the calculation of a woman with greater ambitions. Kelly manages to fulfill the former but is sorely lacking in the latter category. More hapless victim than vixen, Kelly's apathetic delivery of her portion of Mamet's script causes the play to sag in its middle section.

But things pick up again when Gould and Fox are up to their old tricks in the third and final scene and Karen is once again relegated to a supporting role, making it all the more obvious that male characters are Mamet's forte. Spacey and Goldblum seem to have Mamet in their blood, and their performances are unmissable. It's because of them that this production is undoubtedly deserving of attention. At a slight ninety minutes, any pacing problems therein are minor ones. Still, one wishes casting director Jim Carnahan, a consistent practitioner of celebrity casting, could have found someone with a bit more bite for the role of Karen.

Fast-paced direction from Matthew Warchus keeps the dialogue moving at a breakneck speed nonetheless, and bell-shaped office and bedroom sets from Rob Howell obliquely mimic the shape of the Old Vic auditorium, as if holding a mirror up to the audience.

And that's exactly what this production does, allow us to see in ourselves the greed that, Mamet projects, is thrusting us collectively closer and closer to the apocalypse, whether it be literal or metaphorical. The title Speed-the-Plow, many may be wondering, comes from a traditional English song extolling the virtues of industry. "Industry produces wealth, God speed the plow" is the full original phrasing, a fittingly cross-cultural source material for a play that speaks to Britons and Americans alike. After all, Spacey and Goldblum have brought a bit of Hollywood to London with crackling lead performances, and, as one of Mamet's forerunners wrote in another capitalistic masterpiece, "attention must be paid."

Absurd Person Singular, The Garrick Theatre, London

2008-02-09T18:55:00.002-05:00

Rating: ****/5

Thursday, 7 February 2008.

The holiday season is long gone, but -- lo and behold -- there's still reason to celebrate. Alan Ayckbourn is back in the west end with a revival of Absurd Person Singular, and it's riotous holiday fun.

Though most certainly a comedy, Absurd Person Singular is ultimately something more than that. Sure, there's a laugh a minute. But underneath the laughter is a swift kick in the pants that's sure to keep you in line.

The play focuses on three couples: Jane and Sidney, who are on their way up, Geoffrey and Eva, who are somewhere on the middle of the ladder, and bank manager Ronald and his wife Marion. As we watch them interact in their kitchens on a series of Christmas Eves, we watch the dynamics shift as new money comes into its own.

Jane Horrocks steals the show at times as rubber-gloves-wearing hausfrau Jane, and Lia Williams comes in a close second as suicidal Eva, but the ensemble work is what's truly worth applauding.

It's been a while since Ayckbourn has graced the west end, but he has reason to applaud this new production of one of his seminal works. The director -- Alan Strachan -- has taken an extremely sensitive approach, attempting not only to play for laughs but to play for some degree of emotional truth. And it pays off. Haul out your stockings again, because Absurd Person Singular may have to be a last minute stuffer.

The Importance of Being Earnest, The Vaudeville Theatre, London

2008-02-09T18:54:00.004-05:00

Rating: ***/5

Thursday, 7 February 2008.

Those expecting a revolutionary new production of The Importance of Being Earnest ought to stop reading now, because it ain't happening.

Oscar Wilde's comedy of manners, featuring some of the most frequently quoted lines of dialogue in the history of drama, is a piece that's performed perhaps all too frequently on English stages. And there is a list the size of a phonebook of grand dames who've taken time out of their film and TV schedules to tread the boards as Lady Bracknell, so what makes this production a cut above the rest?

Not much.

Penelope Keith, most known for her role on Britcom To the Manor Born, turns in a perfectly decent performance here as Lady Bracknell, subverting the tradition of hamming it up for her big line ("A handbag?") and providing the right comedic center for the ensemble cast.

The play, which has sometimes been seen as an allegory for repressed 19th century sexuality, is played entirely "straight," as it were, its references to "Bunburying" (see the play to find out) left as ambiguous as could be. Those who are looking for subtexts will find them, but director Peter Gill will leave it up to you, thank you very much.

Special mention ought to go to Rebecca Night, who is sweetly subversive as ingenue Cecily Cardew, and to Harry Hadden-Patton, with a perky upturned nose that's perfect for the role of John Worthing -- or is his name really John?

Though Daisy Haggard hams it up as Gwendolen Fairfax and mars a bit of the ensemble dynamic, for the most part the cast serves the play well and the play goes on without a hitch.

I hadn't seen Earnest before, so, to me, this production was worth seeing. A chance to see Wilde on stage -- though frequent enough -- is almost always rewarding at least for its comedy. And this troupe does a fine job with the material they're given. So, if you're not yet tired of Earnest, this one's an earnest bet. But otherwise, browse the boards -- maybe there's another writer waiting in the wings to succeed Wilde in wit and timing. You never know, eh?

The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other, The National Theatre (Lyttelton), London

2008-02-09T18:54:00.003-05:00

Rating: ***/5

Wednesday, 6 February 2008.

The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other could hardly be defined as a play. By its very nature, it resists pigeonholes like "play" and "plot" with a staunch, experimental skew that's difficult for many mainstream theatergoers to accept.

Its "playwright," possibly better referred to as a "creator" or "formulator," is none other than Peter Handke. Revolutionizing experimental theatre with his 1966 piece, Offending the Audience, Handke's plays are more commonly critical -- rather than popular -- successes.

The inspiration from The Hour... comes from a specific afternoon of observation in Handke's life. His description of the experience, was for me, a key factor in my deriving a deeper understanding of the piece, and so I quote Handke below:

"The trigger for the play was an afternoon several years ago. I'd spent the entire day on a little square in Muggia near Trieste. I sat on the terrace of a cafe and watched life pass by. I got into a state of real observation, perhaps this was helped along a bit by the wine. Every little thing became significant (without being symbolic). The tiniest procedures seemed significant of the world. After three or four hours, a hearse drew up in front of a house, men entered and came out with a coffin, onlookers assembled and then dispersed, the hearse drove away. After that the hustle and bustle continued -- the milling of tourists, natives and workers. Those who came after this occurrence didn't know what had gone on before. But for me, who had seen it, everything that happened after the incident with the hearse seemed somewhat coloured by it. None of the people milling on the square knew anything of each other -- hence the title. But we, the onlookers see them as sculptures who sculpt each other through what goes on before and after. Only through what comes after does that which has gone on before gain contours; and what went on before sculpts what is to come.

And this quote from Handke serves to accurately describe, essentially, what The Hour... comprises. The sparse setting of the town square by Hildegard Bechtler, effectively lit by Jean Kalman, serves as an intersection point for 450 characters played by 27 actors with no dialogue. Some are everyday people; others are characters from myth or the past. And each is shaped by what has come before and shapes what is yet to come.

Does all of this seem a bit artsy fartsy? Well, it is. And it's not a theatrical exercise that will appeal to all. Because of the quick, witty direction from James Macdonald, I came out of the experience having felt I'd grasped this spirit of connection and intersection that Handke set forth, but the piece's ending left me ultimately dissatisfied.

If you're up for a night of avant-garde theatre in London and willing to look outside the box, try out The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other and decide for yourself whether it's a load of bunk or the embodiment of a worthwhile musing on humanity.

The Homecoming, The Almeida Theatre, London

2008-02-09T18:52:00.006-05:00

Danny Dyer, Nigel Lindsay, Kenneth Cranham, and Anthony O'Donnell in the Almeida production of Harold Pinter's The Homecoming.

Rating: ***/5

Friday, 1 February 2008.

Okay, I admit it. I don't know very much Pinter. So it's no wonder that I went into the production of one of Harold Pinter's most noted works, The Homecoming, with a relatively blank slate.

I knew there was a production on in New York at the same time, starring Raul Esparza and Eve Best, but not much more than that.

So faced with this naturalistic production of a play about as far from naturalism in its dialogue as it's possible for a domestic drama to be, needless to say, I was confused.

Set in North London, Teddy brings his new wife, Ruth, back to meet his family, including his father Max, played with vigor by Kenneth Cranham. They meet her with mixed and varied reactions. Ultimately, the thing's supposed to work out to some sort of daughter/mother/whore allegory, by which the character of Ruth is supposed to represent and reflect upon different manifestations of womanhood throughout humanity.

Maybe it was just me, but I didn't really get it.

I was out to drinks when a woman who did her PhD on Pinter and tried to explain his methods to me. "It's not meant to be analyzed," she said. "Just watch it, and make whatever of it you can at the time."

I couldn't make much of it at the time; maybe others will. Fascinating? Yes. Satisfying? No. See for yourself.

Othello, The Donmar Warehouse, London

2008-02-09T18:52:00.004-05:00

Ewan McGregor (standing) and Chiwetel Ejiofor in the Donmar Warehouse's astounding production of Othello.

Rating: *****/5

Tuesday, 29 January 2008.

Let's face it. Everyone wants to see Ewan McGregor. Some of them will pay hundreds -- even thousands -- of pounds sterling to get through the door. What everyone wants to know is simple. Is it worth it?

Yes. Resoundingly yes.

The plays is one of Shakespeare's finest. It has a simple plot and fewer characters than many of the Bard's more elaborate works. The plot is basically this: Iago, being the megalomaniac that he is, turns the Moor Othello against his wife, Desdemona.

Traditionally Iago is the character receiving the most attention in the play. His maniacal schemes are what keep the audience guessing throughout. And McGregor is certainly fine in the role, showing us his wicked plotting primarily through the twinkle in his eye.

But it's Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello that towers over the rest of a very fine cast in giving a most memorable performance. Speaking in a grand African timbre and taking fine physical command of the stage, in the furrow of his brow we read the millions of sorrows he's gathered throughout his life like strung pearls to be retold to his love.

As Desdemona, Kelly Reilly disappoints. She's more wispy than one would want, and outmatched by Michelle Fairely in the role of her servant, Emilia, whose raspy voice commands in a way that Reilly can't. In a fine scene they have together, the intimate stage of the Donmar Warehouse is put to its most effective use. As Emilia disrobes Desdemona, preparing her for bed, Desdemona sings her premonitory willow song to haunting effect.

The production design overall is well done, by Donmar regular Christopher Oram. He's wisely turned the Donmar into a "space" rather than choosing to evoke too much sense of specific place. The wet stones that make up the walls and floor of the playing space dry up throughout the production, leaving us ever more transfixed. And brilliant lighting design pierces at all the right moments, particularly effective shining through decorative windows.

It's nice to see a production where the results match a star's promise. Sure, audiences will go wanting rapturously to catch a glimpse of Ewan McGregor, but, luckily, they'll be met with a production that has a galaxy, rather than just a star, to offer.

Statement of Regret, The National Theatre (Cottesloe), London

2008-01-27T19:54:00.000-05:00

Don Warrington as Kwaku Mackenzie in Statement of Regret.

Rating: ****/5

Saturday, 26 January 2008.

Much like The Vertical Hour, this production in the National's intimate Cottesloe auditorium of the latest Kwame Kwei-Armah play, Statement of Regret, also directed by Jeremy Herrin, blends the personal and the political. Set in the offices of the IBPR, the Institute of Black Policy Research, the play's proceedings follow the institute's leader, Kwaku, his office staff, and their many concerns surrounding the black community in Britain, where Afro-Caribbeans and West Indians are often pitted against one another and resentments within the black community, as well as biases from the white community, are all far too common.

Kwaku, however, is not merely the leader of the IBPR. He is also the patriarch of his family, some of whom are employed in the office, including his wife, Lola; his son, Kwaku Jnr.; and his bastard child, Adrian. Family resentments blend with policy concerns in a way that seems far more seamless than those similar attempts that Hare takes on in The Vertical Hour.

This top-flight cast, especially Don Warrington as Kwaku, deliver the goods in a powerful production directed by The Vertical Hour's Jeremy Herrin with functional sets by that production's designer, Mike Britton. Britton wisely gives us a realistic office setting, placing Kwaku's office ominously above the shared workspace of the others, and allows for the effective disintegration of their common space as the tensions build in the second act. Kudos as well to Chu Omambala in the role of Idrissa, a temperamental but respected member of the office community, who is one of the only intelligent gay black characters in a position of power I've seen on a professional stage in some time. His is a sensitive performance that manages to avoid stereotyping.

I've read reviews of the production that believe it brings up more issues than it can properly tackle, but I think that it tackles it's primary subject, one's heritage in juxtaposition with one's ideals and achievements, very well. Kwaku, who has been dealing poorly with the death of his father, is in constant need of guidance he can only receive through imagined conversations with his father, and his sons, in the wake of his slow and steady decline toward madness, are consequently deprived of their own father's love and council.

It's a fascinating production that moves forward steadily, something with which to credit Herrin. By the end, you're haunted by the ghosts of the characters' pasts in a way that only the late great American August Wilson could have evoked as strongly. It's clear that Kwame Kwei-Armah, whose Elmina's Kitchen was the first play by a black author to transfer to the West End, is a talented new voice in British theatre. Hopefully he'll continue to provoke audiences in years to come in plays as fascinating as this one.

Women of Troy, The National Theatre (Lyttelton), London

2008-01-25T20:03:00.001-05:00

Kate Duchene (second from left) and cast in the National's Women of Troy.

Rating: **/5

Friday, 25 January 2008.

I love being challenged by a piece of theatre possibly more than anything else in the world. To me, theatre has the potential certainly to entertain but most importantly to inform and to provoke. Since morality plays were in vogue in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries - and even earlier - drama has been a source of education. And director Katie Mitchell's latest production at the National Theatre, of a new translation of Women of Troy by Don Taylor, is certainly an interesting if flawed example of the power of theatre to develop in dynamic and thought-provoking new ways.

Favoring mood over plot, this production resets the action of the play from a realistic ancient Troy to an industrial holding bay, complete with a lift and a loading dock. Comments from the chorus, standard to Greek plays, are initiated by the simulated opening of the symbolic fourth wall between the players and the audience, signified by the sound of a door gliding open on mechanical tracks and a sudden concentration of light. This is a production that blends time periods liberally. Swing dancing abounds and pillars of sand spout from above. There is certainly no shortage of stage trickery. You get the picture, but what does it all add up to?

Dressed to the nines in evening gowns, the women of Troy in this production seem more like scorned lovers at a prom than prisoners of war, in limbo as they wait for their assignments as subordinates to the Greeks. Kate Duchene as Hecuba gives the evening's standout performance, full of ragged despair and hope beyond hope as the woman who may have borne the most casualties of all the women. Hers is a performance full of grief. Watching her claw at her dress compulsively, one can sense the profundity of her loss in the mere movement of her hands.

On the flip side of the acting spectrum, as Hecuba's daughter, Cassandra, actress Sinead Matthews performs rather less well, hurrying through dialogue in such a breathy demeanor so as to sacrifice meaning for movement.

The physicality of the production as a whole, however, is impressive. Mitchell has obviously put much thought into the various elements of the play, particularly the integration of design and performance and the abbreviation of the text for her shorter, 80-minute production. She gives us many fascinating images to chew on, but one could chew on them for days on end perhaps without ever reaching any sort of satisfying conclusion.

The final image given to us is one of neat resolutions, but what has come before has been so muddled that such a neat bow at the end seems almost inappropriate. Still I found myself wanting more guidance from Mitchell's directorial hand throughout. Mitchell seems dead set on creating theatre in a way that is distinctly her own, her marks on the text as clear to an audience as John Doyle's in one of his actor-musician productions of a Sondheim musical. But part of what makes the role of director so important in theatre is his or her ability to place a stamp on the production and, like a playwright, to assert a point of view. Mitchell's point of view seems to be heading in divergent directions. She presents us with a wide range of images, but leaves her audience to do its own sorting - compelling perhaps, but not fulfilling. With more consideration for text and less pure aestheticism, Mitchell could be a great theatrical director. For now, though, she seems instead a great visual artist.

The Lover/The Collection, The Comedy Theatre, London

2008-01-25T20:01:00.000-05:00

Rating: ****/5

Thursday, 24 January 2008 (in previews).

Shamefully, I'd never seen a production of a play by eminent British playwright and recent Nobel winner Harold Pinter until attending a preview performance of the star-studded The Lover/The Collection at the West End's Comedy Theatre. Starring Richard Coyle, Gina McKee (Notting Hill), up-and-coming film actor Charlie Cox, and veteran Brit Timothy West, there is no shortage of acting chops on display.

The first play, The Lover, is one of those plays with a twist that carries its game on for a bit too long. But its leads, Richard Coyle and Gina McKee, do the best they can with the material, and they bring out the best in some great one-liners, peppering on a layer of sex appeal as well for added measure.

The Collection, a more ambitious play and far more successful play, focuses on the effects of infidelity on a young couple. McKee and Coyle are once again husband and wife (though their characters differ in some ways from their respective roles in The Lover), while Charlie Cox takes on the role of the lover and Timothy West that of the lover's hilariously stodgy older friend and flatmate.

The two plays display the wit and wordplay that are signature to Pinter's style, and these particular actors seem to be absolute perfection in their respective roles. Director Jamie Lloyd directs the production briskly amidst serviceable designs from Soutra Gilmour. Special note should be given to music and sound designers Ben and Max Ringham, who provide an appropriately jazzy vibes-and-bass-punctuated score.

The moment where the production hits the most spot-on note comes at the end of The Collection. The final moment of the play, which could very easily have ended the evening on a decisive note, without the question mark thusly deserved, but instead Pinter leaves us with a menacing look on McKee's face that leaves an audience pondering the mysteries of love and relationships long after the close of the curtain, a feeling sadly missing from much of today's new plays.

Much Ado About Nothing, The National Theatre (Olivier), London

2008-01-22T19:12:00.000-05:00

Simon Russell Beale as Benedick and Zoe Wanamaker as Beatrice are standouts in Much Ado About Nothing.

Rating: ****/5

Tuesday, 22 January 2008.

The Bard abounds in London this season, the West End alone having already played host to marvelous star-driven productions of Macbeth (with Patrick Stewart), King Lear (with Ian McKellen), and Othello (with Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor). Having written inarguably the most durable canon of English-speaking plays, Shakespeare and his ability to reach even the most modern of audiences with timeless characters and themes, is to be commended for achieveing a four-for-four score so far.

This latest Shakespeare production, on display in repertory at the National's intimately vast Olivier auditorium, relies less so on star power, employing instead the veteran talents of Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker in the comic roles of Benedick and Beatrice respectively. Employing older actors in these two roles than are usually considered, Nicholas Hytner manages to keep the plot rolling along at a swift pace this fast and funny production.

The story, one full of misunderstandings and plenty of ribaldry, allows for Beale and Wanamaker to shine. With their beady eyes and perfect time, this plucky pair gets all of the biggest laughs. Still, the supporting cast, including Oliver Ford Davies as Leonato, Susannah Fielding as Hero, and Daniel Hawksford as Claudio, also get their chance to shine. Though the pair of young lovers have the challenge of animating rather typical romantic comedy roles, the two are lively enough to keep us interested in their rather predictable plot line.

The fantastic rotating set, designed by Vicki Mortimer, is also to be commended for allowing the proceedings to shift from the intimacy of a private room to more public spaces seamlessly. Behind the revolving portion of the set, atmospheric evocations of the Sicilian setting remind us of the locations we're in.

Shakespeare plays are some of the most difficult to stage and to perform well, as evidenced by the great number of bad productions, but the London stage seems to be on a roll this season. It's the ability of the actors and director to step away from preconceived notions of Shakespeare plays as dusty texts, the stuff of what Peter Brook would call "the deadly theatre," and bringing a sense of immediacy to the proceedings that makes this and other recent Shakespeare productions so successful. Resetting the play is not necessary; the past is doomed to repeat itself. The challenge is to change with the times.

The Vertical Hour, The Royal Court Theatre, London

2008-01-21T19:20:00.000-05:00

Anton Lesser and Indira Varma in David Hare's newest play The Vertical Hour.

Rating: ***/5

Monday, 21 January 2008.

When eminent British playwright David Hare's latest play, The Vertical Hour, opened on Broadway last season, it was an event: the first time he'd premiered a play in the United States before a London production. And certainly there was a reason for this choice; Hare's play is all about the interplay between Americans and the British, as much as his last play before this one, Stuff Happens.

Nadia Blye (Indira Varma) is a former war correspondent, having spent time in Bosnia, Iraq, Israel, Palestine -- all of the hot spots of the Middle East. On holiday with her fiance Phillip (Tom Riley) in rural England to meet his father Oliver (Anton Lesser), a general practitioner escaping a murky past, Nadia's relationship is tested by ghosts from their pasts and her fiance's. The vertical hour of the play -- literally the time immediately following a crisis during which redemption is actually possible -- refers metaphorically to a night that Nadia and Oliver spend together late in the wee hours of the night, philosophizing and discussing their pasts together.

When I saw the play on Broadway, I respected the text immensely despite the less than adept performance of the production's Nadia Blye, Julianne Moore. Indira Varma proves a much more emotionally adept Nadia, packing the charm of Julia Roberts and the looks of Idina Menzel, but still I couldn't help but notice flaws in the writing I hadn't quite caught onto before. Hare's use of direct audience address periodically through the piece, for one, seems unnecessary in so long a play with so much time to place exposition within other scenes, and scenes involving Nadia's discourse with students seem heavy-handed in contrast to the more sensitive central scenes.

Another problem of the production, at least in comparison to its Broadway counterpart, is the performance of Anton Lesser as Oliver. While Bill Nighy played the roll as a jittery, imposing figure, Lesser is a much humbler, less physically daunting man, and I had a harder time believing him as a ladies' man as he's described in the text. Where Nighy oozes with lasciviousness, free love, and the concealment of secrets, Lesser seems much more a pent-up poetry-lover at heart.

The design of the production now on view at the Royal Court Theatre, by Mike Britton, is noticeably sparser than that on Broadway, where more literal sets were by Scott Pask, costumes were by Ann Roth, and lighting was by Brian MacDevitt. This production, directed by Jeremy Herrin, strips the play to its bare essentials. Its longest and most adept scenes, those set in the English countryside, feature hazy neon lighting on a sparse set that merely suggests the outdoors, a framed screen obscuring limbs of trees that hover overhead. Tables and chairs are enough to suggest most of the proceedings. Though I appreciated the more sumptuous design of the Broadway production, I'm not sure that the minimal approach isn't an improvement, leaving Hare's words to do the work in a production that, in the end, is so much about the text.

The play is one long sparring match after another, between Nadia and her students, between Nadia and her fiance, between Nadia and Oliver. If one isn't prepared for polemics and plenty of politics, this is not the play to choose for a night out. Going in with an open mind, however, there are plenty of interesting debates that arise to challenge an audience, no matter its political allegiances, in this fascinating play. Most importantly, is it betrayal to a cause to engage in discourse with the enemy in order to affect change or is it betrayal not to, a dilemma Nadia faces head-on when recounting to Oliver her visit to President Bush as a political advisor on the Middle East.

There's no accounting for who will enjoy this production. It's not the best play ever written, and it certainly won't go down in history as such, but Varma's performance and Hare's interesting political dialogue make for what is at the very least an engaging night of theatre.

"Happy Days" are here again.

2008-01-20T20:15:00.000-05:00

Well, after a relatively restful winter break, it's finally back to London for me and my theatre illness. I think I really do have some sort of theatre addiction, but it's definitely not something I'd like to kick any time soon.

Over the winter break, I took two brief trips to New York City to remind myself of how much I love the New York theatre scene. I'm not sure which I love better for theatre: New York or London. But either way, I do have a sentimental attachment to New York, and it was nice to have gotten the chance to visit and to take in two shows, one on Broadway and one off.

August: Osage County, a new play by Tracy Letts, the author of the play-turned-film Bug, is a production that started at the Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago, a theatre known for its ensemble acting. Transfering the play, a property without known actors or a well-known source material, to Broadway was risky, but, because critics have heralded the play, it looks as if its limited run at the Imperial Theatre (a large theatre to fill), will pay off. Personally, I felt that the play, which has been compared to O'Neill's family dramas, was a bit lighter on substance than I would have liked. Its ending packed a wallop and its hard-working cast made it compelling, but the sharp dialogue felt more showy than genuine to me. It's a play sure to be a contender once the time comes for Pulitzer selection and one that's shown up on plenty of critics' top ten lists, but I still think I'll be rooting for the underdogs instead.

The other play I saw in New York this winter break, a production of Samuel Beckett's 1960 play Happy Days, struck my fancy far more. Starring Fiona Shaw and directed by renowned British director Deborah Warner, the production is on tour from the National Theatre in London, a theatre I've come to know and love over the past few months. In New York, it played at Brooklyn Academy of Music in the Harvey Rose Theatre, a space bearing many similarities in its style to Peter Brook's Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris, a theatre that felt to me incredibly lived-in and full of life.

Fiona Shaw gave one of the most thrilling performances I've ever seen in the piece, which focuses on ever-sunny Winnie, buried up to her waist (and later her neck) in sand, and her compulsion for filling the hours between "the bell for waking and the bell for sleeping." It's not a very mainstream play, but at the same time its humor abounds and makes the piece far more accessible than it would seem at first glance. Most importantly the play reflects the truth of its audience's day-to-day routines, so that by the time we've laughed our way through the 100-minute production we realize we've not only been laughing at Winnie, we've also been laughing at ourselves.

This semester is already off to an impressive start!

On Friday night, I went back to the National to see Present Laughter, a production of a 1942 Noel Coward play that was far more remarkably funny than I ever could have expected, having not previously known the joys of Coward. Starring Alex Jennings (most known for playing Prince Charles in The Queen), the production, which features lavish sets, played around with acting types of its time to hilarious effect. For a production that lasted three hours, there wasn't a dull moment in evidence, thanks to the brisk production of Howard Davies's production.

Sitting in my seat at intermission, I couldn't help but think how much I've genuinely come to love the National Theatre, having seen an array of plays in its three variously sized auditoriums (Chatroom/Citizenship; The Emperor Jones; Rafta, Rafta...; War Horse; The Women of Troy; and Present Laughter, with Much Ado About Nothing, Major Barbara, and Statement of Regret soon to come). They really do a great variety of modern and classic works and with consistently sumptuous acting. We really need a national theatre in the U.S., a place where great writers, actors, and directors want to work, and a place where government arts funding is bestowed generously without checks on the productions' content.

On Saturday, I made the long trek out to the Watermill Theatre in the little village of Bagnor out near Newbury, England, in order to see the new John Doyle-directed production of Merrily We Roll Along. It was certainly a good thing I left plenty of time before the show to get there, because, even after the hour-long train ride to Newbury and the twenty-minute bus ride to the Hare and Hounds Inn, there was still a half-hour rural hike by foot into the village before I was finally at the theatre. Savoring a much-needed glass of wine before the show, a nice couple (Tony and Jean) offered me a much-valued ride back to the train station after the show. The trip out of London really served to show how nice the English people are. People were very helpful at the bus station and very friendly at the theatre.

As for the show, I was very much anticipating the production because of the recent Broadway productions of Sweeney Todd and Company that I'd seen, also directed by John Doyle and featuring Stephen Sondheim-penned scores. John Doyle, who frequently makes use of the actor-musician tradition in his productions, is really a very deft director of musical theatre. Some would say his actor-musician technique has worn out its welcome, but I think it really adds opportunities for introspection in regards to plot and character. Why does a particular character play a particular instrument? How do the characters and their instrumentations come together? It's not haphazard in a Doyle production, or, at the very least, an audience is left to read additional levels into the text.

I'd been wanting to go to the Watermill Theatre for years now, and the production certainly wasn't a letdown. It's a show I've seen several times before in college productions, and one that I love even more every new time I see it. Focusing on a group of friends, starting with their disappointing midlife crises and commencing with their optimistic beginnings (running backward in time), Sondheim and book writer George Furth, have really created a deft portrait of the loss of innocence. In his production, Doyle added additional layers to the piece by including filmic production elements, including an ominous and centrally-placed film projector, on which new rolls of film are fitted to unwind during each successive new scene. Characters throughout the piece are also left to unspool rolls of film symbolically, a touch that could have seemed more tedious but which I appreciated within the context of this production, which overall succeeded in stripping away the material to its bare essentials.

What I was most thankful for was the retaining of the brass elements within the show's orchestrations. What left me most cold about the recent revival of Company was its lack of brass. Company and Merrily are Sondheim's two most brass-heavy scores, owing to the New York hustle and bustle evident within both pieces. Without the brass, Company felt entirely too cold, but this Merrily is full of blood and verve and life. Doyle manages to be inventive and faithful at once, and it's really added up to a satisfying production that I hope will transfer to bigger houses in London and/or New York to reach larger audiences. The lucky few who travel out to the Watermill to see it in its original incarnation will most certainly not be disappointed. I know I wasn't.

And so my spring in London is off with a bang! This week, I'm looking forward to the London premiere of David Hare's The Vertical Hour at the Royal Court which I admired during its stint on Broadway in late 2006, and the production of Much Ado About Nothing starring Zoe Wanamaker and Simon Russell Beale at the National Theatre. Next weekend will also be interesting, including a return visit to The Women of Troy at the National and a first trip to Statement of Regret in the smaller Cottesloe Theatre at the National. Next Sunday I'm also taking in Cat Power's concert at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. It's a busy week! I'll be back to report more in the near future!

More catching up to do.

2007-12-24T14:09:00.000-05:00

So, even though I'd been hoping beyond hope that I'd get into the Royal Court Theatre's Young Writers Programme, I was rejected, which was quite a downer. I'm really quite proud of the play I submitted, Empire State, and assumed that most of the work submitted for consideration would be more cursorily written, I suppose, than I should have. Still, I know the piece has its weaknesses, and part of the rejection letter was a notification that I'd be receiving a critique in the coming months, so I'm excited about that. From reading parts of The Royal Court Theatre Inside Out, an in-depth account of the theatre's history from the founding of its resident troupe, the English Stage Company, through last season, I've most enjoyed reading the readers' comments on various scripts submitted to the Royal Court over the years. Oftentimes the most successful plays received the most negative comments off the bat. It's all so arbitrary.

Still, I'm not letting the rejection get me down. I'm a newbie, and I'm sure there are many, many more years of rejection ahead of me. Instead, I've come up with a new idea for a play, one that's more ambitious in its scope, including more characters and more significant themes. The challenge of the piece will be the research that it will require, so I think I'll use this winter break to familiarize myself with the material and begin sketching things out.

It's been a while

2007-12-23T17:29:00.000-05:00

So, it's been a while since I posted here with my lovely insights into popular culture, theatre, film, etc., but I have reason to begin again. I've just spent a very lovely semester in London and am returning soon for a second. Though I won't go into detail on the shows I've seen in London (except for brief notes), I'll list them below just as an update for those who miss my bragging about how much I've seen:

1. Take Flight at Menier Chocolate Factory - A noble attempt at musicalizing the stories of the Wright Brothers and Amelia Earhart that didn't quite get off the ground. Noted London theatre actress was in the audience, however, and she agreed.

2. All About My Mother at the Old Vic - A serviceable-to-good adaptation of Pedro Almodovar's movie of the same name, Todo sobre mi madre. And Diana Rigg stole the show with her closing monologue, lifted by playwright Samuel Adamson from Lorca's Blood Wedding.

3. In Celebration at the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End - Let's just say Orlando Bloom on stage is underwhelming. Though the play, by David Storey, was excellent.

4. Chatroom/Citizenship at the Cottesloe Theatre at the National Theatre - A very youth-oriented double bill of plays by Enda Walsh and Mark Ravenhill respectively that succeeded in not pandering to its younger audience and managed to tackle current issues.

5. Venus as a Boy at the Soho Theatre - A very intimate production of a one-man play about a gypsy transvestite prostitute.

6. Mary Poppins at the Prince Edward Theatre in the West End - Same as on Broadway, only Queen Victoria makes an appearance. Talk about a show with annoying child actors.

7. Parade at the Donmar Warehouse - Jason Robert Brown's large-scale Broadway debut was definitely in top form at the Donmar, in a far more intimate production that highlighted the relationship between Lucille and Leo Frank, the central characters in this musical retelling of the story of the Leo Frank Case in Atlanta.

8. A Disappearing Number at the Barbican Theatre - Complicite, the experimental theatre company headed by actor and director Simon McBurney, managed to create an engaging theatrical experience that spanned continents and stemmed from a love of math.

9. The Emperor Jones at the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre - An impressive performance from Paterson Joseph in the title role made this dated play into a must-see production.

10. The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents at the Gate Theatre - This is one of the most memorable of the productions I saw this semester, mostly for its deft use of extremely limited space and for its tackling of some difficult issues, including mental retardation and abortion.

11. Dealer's Choice at Menier Chocolate Factory - Patrick Marber (Closer) is one of my favorite playwrights, and this sharp play about the dynamics within a family and within a poker game, was right on the money. Particularly notable was Samuel Barnett, of The History Boys fame, who provided ample eye candy.

12. Rhinoceros at the Royal Court Theatre - A very funny revival of Ionesco's classic absurdist play.

13. Rough Crossings at the Lyric Hammersmith - An awful, awful play about the abolition of the slave trade in England. A topic so rich deserves a much less cliche, poorly acted, and poorly directed production than this one, full of triteness and obviousness. Its use of music was its best feature.

14. The Ugly One at the Royal Court Theatre - A play about plastic surgery featuring a bare bones set and a very good cast. During the performance I saw, a woman in the audience passed out, causing the play to be halted and resumed.

15. Awake and Sing! at the Almeida Theatre - Stockard Channing excellently portrayed the matriarch in this Clifford Odets play. It's not the best play and the Brooklyn accents weren't the best either, but the Almeida Theatre provided the right space for this warm family drama.

16. Rafta, Rafta... at the Lyttleton Theatre at the National Theatre - This one played like an Indian-themed episode of a sitcom. Very funny, but without enough substance to sustain my interest fully.

17. Macbeth at the Gielgud Theatre in the West End - A totally rethought version of this all too familiar Shakespeare play. Directed by Rupert Goold, who also helmed the awful play Rough Crossings, Patrick Stewart and his lady Macbeth, Goold's wife Kate Fleetwood, were amazing. The action was given a Soviet resetting and featured interesting audio-visual touches.

18. Water at the Lyric Hammersmith - Created by the group Filter, this play, which played up the baring of theatrical processes, fell flat without a cohesive story. This one confirmed for me how silly plays can turn out as a product of group authorship.

19. All About My Mother at the Old Vic (repeat visit)

20. Joe Guy at the Soho Theatre - A smart play by Roy Williams that tackles black issues similar to those tackled by August Wilson, doing so in a way that expands past the limitations of a "race play."

21. Desperately Seeking Susan at the Novello Theatre in the West End - Oh God. Blondie music in a show. You can imagine how bad this one was. I left at intermission. Thankfully the ticket was free. The only fun thing was that the store Love Saves the Day in the East Village was featured prominently, and I lived across the street from that store last year.

22. Andromaque at the Theatre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris - One of the best theatrical experiences of my life. Directed by Declan Donnelan and performed by his Cheek by Jowl theatre company, the fact that the play, by Racine, was performed in French barely hindered my understanding of the emotional complexities of the drama. The actors nailed it, the designers nailed it.

23. La Catatrice Chauve/La Lecon at the Theatre de la Huchette in Paris - This has played in Paris for 50+ years, and it shows its age. It's a double bill of Ionesco plays, The Bald Soprano and The Lesson. The acting was hammy, but still it was interesting to see.

24. The Arsonists at the Royal Court Theatre - A revival of a play by Max Frisch that tackles issues surrounding World War II in an allegorical way.

25. King Lear by the RSC at the New London Theatre - Ian McKellen starred in this production of King Lear directed by Trevor Nunn. The nude scene was overhyped, the production was excellent, but the play doesn't really do much for me. It lacks focus and feature on too many characters.

26. War Horse at the Olivier Theatre at the National Theatre - Life-size horse puppets were the highlight of this production, the holiday show at the National Theatre (following productions like Coram Boy and His Dark Materials in previous years). The show managed, against all odds, to make us feel for animal characters in a way we rarely feel about humans.

27. Cloud Nine at the Almeida Theatre - A classic Caryl Churchill play directed by Thea Sharrock, who directed the recent London revival of Equus, which is transferring in the fall to Broadway. A very funny, witty production that nailed the spirit of the play.

28. Women of Troy at the Lyttelton Theatre at the National Theatre - Katie Mitchell is a weird director. A warehouse setting for Euripides? It was a fun idea, but the reworking of the text was slight and there wasn't enough to tide me over even for 80-90 minutes. It was interesting to watch but needed additional thought behind it.

29. Glengarry Glen Ross at the Apollo Theatre in the West End - Jonathan Pryce was great in this revival of David Mamet's play about real estate men.

30. Billy Elliot at the Victoria Palace Theatre in the West End - I liked this one a lot less than I expected. The scenographic elements all came together quite well, but the lyrics could have been stronger, and the show overall could have been more focused.

31. The Brothers Size at the Young Vic Theatre - A play by young American playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney, a spring 2007 graduate of Yale Drama, that draws on Yoruba myth. A slight play but an impressive debut.

32. A Christmas Carol at the Young Vic Theatre - A South African-flavored retelling of the classic tale featuring singing and gumboot dancing that were more impressive than the acting of the piece.

33. Dick Whittington and His Cat at the Hackney Empire - I needed to see a pantomime (or simply "panto") before leaving London for winter break, and this was a great choice, I think. Panto is a tradition pretty specific to England. Features include a "pantomime dame" in drag, a leading male character played by a young woman, a horse, and popular songs with reworked lyrics.

34. The Seagull by the RSC at the New London Theatre - This production played in repertoire with Ian McKellen's Lear directed by Trevor Nunn and also features the same cast and director. Anton Chekhov's play is rich in character development and was more satisfying for me as an audience member overall.

35. Othello at the Donmar Warehouse - I waited five hours in the rain from 5:30 AM to 10:30 AM in order to get a day ticket for this production, which starred Ewan McGregor as Iago and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Othello. Both were outstanding. It was one of those productions with big stars that's actually well done, thanks to direction by Donmar artistic director Michael Grandage.

36. The Masque of the Red Death by Punchdrunk at Battersea Arts Centre - Rather than being a play, this one is more of a theatrical experience. Audience members don masks upon arrival and wander a totally redesigned arts center that looks more like a castle, featuring rooms that look like they fit in the Poe stories upon which the piece is based on. You can choose to follow whichever actors you please. An orgy scene, incest, secret doors, and an extremely impressive masked ball added to the devilishness.

Trip to New York

Since I've returned home, I've also been to New York for a few days to visit Christina and my ex-roommate (and one of my favorite people) Austin. It was a lovely few days. We went to the Union Square holiday market and to CB I Hate Perfume and Beacon's Closet in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We also went to see Juno, which is a great movie (more to come later).

August: Osage County

On Saturday, I went to see August: Osage County, a play by up-and-comer Tracy Letts (Bug off-Broadway) at the Imperial Theatre on Broadway. It's a production that's transferred from the Steppenwolf in Chicago, and it's very good. The reviewers, who have ben a bit overenthusiastic, have hailed it one of the best new plays in recent memory, but I would hesitate to go that far.

The troupe of actors from Steppenwolf who executed the piece were obviously very skilled, and the whole thing came together in the places in the script where the comedy was most finely honed. The play is about a family in the Midwest who gather at the family home after the patriarch of the family has gone missing. It's interesting yet typical material, and the play, which runs three hours and twenty minutes could have used some slight trimming.

The play is being touted as one of the plays to beat for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama this year. Overall I think I'd still favor Christopher Shinn's Dying City, another of the major contenders, over this for the Pulitzer, simply because I think Dying City, while certainly less grandiose, provided a more satisfying, compact dramatic experience. If you can say it in 90 minutes, why draw it out to 200+?

Juno

I'd heard good things about this movie, and my heightened expectations were fulfilled. It had a nice indie/twee soundtrack and standout performances. Ellen Page as Juno was snarky and hilarious, and the comic timing of the actors matched the excellent writing. Also notable were Alison Janney as Juno's stepmother Bren and Michael Cera as Juno's beau Paulie Bleeker. Definitely worth seeing!

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Being a huge Sweeney Todd fan, I went into the Tim Burton-directed film adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece with very high expectations, all of which were met.

When Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter were cast through nepotism, I cringed and expected the worst, but Depp is a more than qualified singer and Bonham Carter provides us with a crafty Mrs. Lovett, though she certainly is of "limited wind," in keeping with Sondheim's description of the character in his lyrics to "The Worst Pies in London."

Burton's dark, campy direction and the extreme violence of the film only added to the overall effect. Everything in the film is a bit too much: a bit too much smoke from the chimneys, a bit too many rats on the streets. Hopefully those who go to see the film will be prepared for the fact that the film is most definitely a musical and one that's heavy on music at that. It's most certainly a bleak masterpiece.

Trapped in the Closet

2007-08-19T19:16:00.000-04:00

I've caught on very late, but there's a video masterpiece out there in the music universe, part of a groundbreaking new form called "hip-hopera." R. Kelly calls it...Trapped in the Closet.

Have 40 extra minutes on your hands? Watch parts one through twelve. Savor the adventures of Sylvester, Gwendolyn, Rufus, Cathy, Chuck, James, Big Man, Bridget Twan, and Rosie.

Fasten your seatbelts; it's going to be a bumpy night.

Rufus releases his stars

2007-08-19T11:11:00.000-04:00

So I haven't been keeping up with the blogging as much as I sometimes have. Friday, however, I finally did something interesting again. I went to see Rufus Wainwright in concert at the Mann Center with openers A Fine Frenzy and Neko Case.

It was my second time seeing Rufus in concert, but I was particularly excited this time because the opening acts were more talented (I saw OK Go last time, ugh) and the Mann Center is a really cool to see concerts.

A Fine Frenzy, the stage name of singer-songwriter Alison Sudol and her band, are a good Coldplay-type band with some nice contemplative songs and a few more rousing ones.

Neko Case, whom I knew only slightly from hearing a concert of hers on NPR, was really amazing. She sings alternative country music that's actually thoughtful instead of just stupid, like a lot of country music (with a few exceptions - Lucinda Williams, Dolly Parton).

Rufus performing "Gay Messiah" in Judy Garland drag.

But the main act, Rufus, was absolutely amazing. He began around 9:20ish and played all the way through 11:55 with a short break for a costume change (haha). The most amazing thing about Rufus is his stamina! The last time I saw Rufus, in September 2005, he was recovering still from a cold, but this time he was in absolutely spectacular voice, belting out songs with little effort.

He played all of his most recent album, Release the Stars, and a lot of other songs from prior albums, as well as an Irish folk song and 3 Judy Garland songs.

Most exciting was his encore, for which he came out in a bathrobe, only to reveal toward the end that he was wearing Judy Garland drag, a blazer on top and sexy black stockings below, with an effective Judy hat. He sang "Get Happy" from the movie Summer Stock, a staple in Ms. Garland's catalog, surrounded by his band members performing a choreographed dance. It was amazing. And then, in full Judy Garland drag, he finished off the night with "Gay Messiah."

Fabulousness.

Joni Vivre

2007-08-03T23:28:00.000-04:00

Let it be known that Joni Mitchell is one of the musical loves of my life. Though her early career, marked by exquisite folk albums like Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, Court and Spark, is impressive enough, she experienced continued artistic success with mid-career albums like Hejira and For the Roses, and continued to record even through an artistically rocky patch during the 1980s and 90s, when she experimented heavily with synthesizers (blech).

Though Joni certainly has her musical faults now and then, it would be hard for any level-headed individual to ever call her boring. She doesn't box herself into any genre, experimenting with folk, jazz, rock, and whatever suits her fancy. After "retiring" with 2002's Travelogue, an orchestral reworking of various songs from throughout her career, it was announced this week that she's signed a 2-record deal with Hear Music, the Starbucks music label. Her new album, Shine, will be released September 25!

Lately I've been swooning over the samples for Travelogue, and I finally broke down and forced myself to pay the $19.99 to download the extensive double album on iTunes. Many of the songs are extended reworkings of older songs she feels haven't received the attention they deserve or she believes could be enhanced with more extensive orchestrations. And, while overall I prefer her youthful voice better, with its vibrancy and more extensive range, there's something special about hearing her sing some of her older songs with her raspier, smokier older voice (much like the experience of hearing Elton John sing his greatest hits now that he's older - also thrilling oftentimes).

The point of this post is - if you don't know Joni Mitchell, buy some of her albums. Start out with Blue or Court and Spark, and then work your way through her canon.

The painting above is a self portrait Joni did for the cover of Travelogue.

Ricky Patterson and the Deathly Silence

2007-07-21T16:05:00.001-04:00

Now that I've finished the final book in the Harry Potter series, almost exactly one week after getting the book in the mail at 3 PM on Saturday afternoon, the deathly silence of my room is unnerving.

How a book can manage to be as bafflingly confusing, terribly satisfying, and wonderfully gut-wrenching all in one is beyond me. I still need to suss out the explanations for a few things in the final chapters of the book, but overall it was a much darker read that delivered the exciting climax to the series that readers were expecting -- with a few twists and turns.

After I finished the book's epilogue, I thought back to reading the first few books in middle school and the innocence of young Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and I can't help but believe that J.K. Rowling is a most deft master of the story arc.

A theme that pops up several times in Deathly Hallows is the importance of children's stories and fairy tales. To anyone who dismisses Harry Potter as mere child's play, I would say that, to quote Meg Ryan's character in You've Got Mail (one of my all-time favorite guilty pleasure movies), "When you read a book as a child it becomes part of your identity in a way that no other reading in your life does."

Agreed, Meg. Agreed.

The quality of our children's books reflects upon the quality of generations to come. If Harry Potter is our generation's obsession, maybe we have less to fear from our generation and generations to come than we may fear.

You can't stop the Blonsky!

2007-07-21T16:04:00.000-04:00

Nikki Blonsky is oozing with talent in Hairspray.

Today, while I was waiting for my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows to arrive on my doorstep from Amazon.com, I went to see Hairspray. Having seen the Broadway show based on the John Waters movie, both of which have inspired this new film version, I was expecting it to be light and fun and probably totally forgettable. And the casting of John Travolta as Edna Turnblad, the role originated by Divine in the original John Waters movie and Harvey Fierstein in the Broadway show (a role for which he won the 2003 Tony Award) made me terrified.

My fears were totally baseless. Though certainly there would have been better actors to play Edna Turnblad (Fierstein, in fact, should have reprised his role!), Travolta did a rather appealing job. Despite the fact that audiences will almost definitely fawn over the fact that they're watching noted star John Travolta in a fat suit playing a woman and despite obvious vocal limitations, he really does do a good job disappearing into the role. I believed him as a middle aged woman - no small feat.

Though Travolta, Queen Latifah, Michelle Pfeiffer, Christopher Walken, and Allison Janney in featured adult parts and Elijah Kelley, Zac Efron, Amanda Bynes, and newcomer Taylor Parks in featured young adult parts are all pleasing and adequately talented, there is, however, one shining star hovering over the rest of the cast - newcomer Nikki Blonsky. Shapely, with a powerhouse voice and killer moves to boot, it's astounding that this is her feature film debut. She's worth the price of admission.

The movie is fancifully directed (with realism and nonrealism spectacularly blended), colorfully designed, magnificently choreographed, family friendly while retaining a positive message crusading on behalf of those who are different from the status quo, and very funny. What more is there to say? Go see it!

Everything's Coming Up Roses

2007-07-15T22:49:00.000-04:00

So this weekend was my excursion to New York City. After more than two months of no theatre, it was really nice to have a break from Pennsylvania and to get to see three excellent shows: Gypsy with Patti LuPone, eurydice at 2nd Stage Theatre, and The Drowsy Chaperone.

Patti LuPone in Gypsy.

Everything I expected and more, the production of Gypsy at City Center starring Patti LuPone, Boyd Gaines, and Laura Benanti was outstanding. Patti as Mama Rose, perhaps the most famous female role in Broadway history -- played previously by Ethel Merman, Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, and Bernadette Peters -- brought her indomitable presence and take-no-prisoners voice to the role, and it really, really worked. Benanti was also particularly notable for the marvelous transformation she makes from young, awkward Louise to stripper star Gypsy Rose Lee.

This production was directed by Arthur Laurents, who wrote the book for the show, which originally opened on Broadway in 1959. At 90 years of age, it's amazing that he's still directing for the stage, and his insight must have added a great deal to this production, which seems pitch perfect throughout. Even the somewhat trying kiddie numbers in the show seemed funnier than when I saw the show in 2003 with Bernadette Peters. It's a must-see for those who love musical theatre and want to see one of the greatest shows and greatest performers in its history.

Clips of the show are on view here.

Maria Dizzia and Charles Shaw Ronbinson as Eurydice and her father in eurydice.

Having seen The Clean House at Lincoln Center Theater this past fall, I knew of the tremendous talented that is young playwright Sarah Ruhl. Soon after seeing that whimsically affecting play, I read her collection, The Clean House and Other Plays, published by TCG, but I found the play eurydice rather flat on the page. Still, I looked forward to seeing Ruhl's next New York production -- of that play -- at 2nd Stage Theatre, a nice place to see plays by American playwrights.

And eurydice, which I saw on Saturday night, was definitely much more impressive onstage than it was to read. With stunning costumes, scenery, and music, all of the elements came together to produce a really dazzling and thought-provoking evening at the theatre. The performance were excellent all around, and what's great about Ruhl is that she obviously has the visual side of a play in her mind while she's writing.

There's a moment in the play where Eurydice's father writes her a letter from the Underworld, and as he finishes, he places it on the back wall of the theatre, where what formerly looked like tiles are illuminated and revealed as a litany of letters. So many lovely stage pictures. Ruhl's stage directions are written with a poetic flair, and as directed here by Les Waters, they take on extraordinary life. It's a must-see for those who love imaginative new work.

On Sunday, I revisited The Drowsy Chaperone, which held up very well with age. I think I may even have enjoyed it more this time around. Maybe it was because I was in one of the first-row rush seats.

Shopping in Brooklyn (at CB I Hate Perfume and Beacon's Closet), wonderful Thai food at Pam Real Thai, a trip to Marc by Marc Jacobs, and some very nice weather rounded out a lovely weekend.

Mark (Ronson) my words!

2007-07-12T23:26:00.000-04:00

So, there's this DJ/producer/musician named Mark Ronson, and his new album, Version, is pretty damn sexy. The album is made up of various covers, including one improbably delicious cover of "Toxic" by Britney Spears by Ol' Dirty Bastard and Tiggers. Don't let the mention of Britney scare you off though; even that square song takes on new life. Ronson adds really fresh beats to everything, making formerly slow songs pulse with new life. It's sort of like hip hop meets Motown, with a big brassy feel to many of the moments on the album. Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse make fun appearances. Also particularly notable is "Stop Me," a cover of a song by The Smiths. But the whole album is listenable from start to finish. It's great music to walk to. Check it out!

...and he's handsome. And Jewish. Two cool points.

Toni Collette and the Finish

2007-07-08T22:43:00.000-04:00

Not only is Toni Collette (The Sixth Sense, About a Boy, Little Miss Sunshine, The Hours, Evening, In Her Shoes) a wonderful actress, she's also the lead singer and songwriter for the Australia-based band Toni Collette and the Finish. Check out the video for their latest single, "Look Up," which is very pretty. Reminds me a little bit of the Chicken Little story.

Open Mic a Success

2007-07-06T23:59:00.000-04:00

So, the open mic at MilkBoy went quite well. I had a blast listening to the diversity of voices in attendance, and I thought my poems went over pretty well. I expected to be anxious about the whole thing, but rather than being terribly nervous, I was instead quite invigorated. I'll definitely be going to the next Mad Poets Society event held at MilkBoy, which will be on Thursday, August 2 at 7PM, so mark your calendars.

Mad Poets Society Open Mic

2007-07-04T14:40:00.000-04:00

Just a heads up that I'll be making my open mic poetry debut this Friday night at MilkBoy Acoustic Cafe at 824 W. Lancaster Avenue in Bryn Mawr, PA. The event, hosted by the Mad Poets Society, starts at 7 PM, and I have no idea when I'll be reading, but hopefully people will come check it out. Don't be alarmed if you check out the MilkBoy website and don't see the open mic listed; that calendar is wrong. It's part of the First Friday Main Line arts event that celebrates local arts and music throughout the Main Line, so hopefully there will be some rather talented poets there.

"Evening" should have been put to sleep.

2007-07-01T17:39:00.000-04:00

Settling into my plush stadium-configured seat to see Evening, the star-studded new film adaptation of Susan Minot's novel of the same name, it was clear who the target audience was: old ladies and weepy-eyed girls. And me, the lone gay boy in awe of the distinguished actresses on parade.

The film has a cast that's to die for: Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hugh Dancy, Natasha Richardson, Mamie Gummer, Eileen Atkins, Meryl Streep, and Glenn Close. Wow. I saw three of these people (Redgrave, Streep, and Dancy) on New York stages this year, and each impressed me far more in a theatrical environment. Together, they try their best, but there are but a few glimmers of truth present in this rather disjointed film.

This overcalculated weeper did little for me overall. Almost every member of the cast was in some way or another able to transcend their limitations to make some sort of an impression onscreen; I don't blame them for the overall debacle. I never really felt hopelessly bored, because the actresses were trying their absolute hardest to make what they could of this project. I just felt slightly embarrassed for the hardworking cast.

The movie is about Redgrave (and as her younger self, Danes), who's dying, and her reminiscences over her regrets on the day of her friend Streep's (as her younger self, Gummer's) wedding. Redgrave's daughters, Collette and Richardson, also figure prominently in a present-day storyline that's far weaker than the flashback portions, which involve Danes's involvement with Hugh Dancy and Patrick Wilson, the drunk and the handsome doctor respectively. Sound sort of drippy? Well, it is.

I fault several people with the failure of this movie to hit its mark. Though I've never read the novel of the same name, Minot (who adapted her own book) and her collaborator Michael Cunningham (who wrote The Hours, which was adapted into such a fine film) seem to show little sense of the pacing that their flashback-heavy story should display. The flashbacks seem to come at awkward moments, and the proceedings return to the present day in a haphazard fashion. It's clear that David Hare, who adapted Cunningham's The Hours (which featured another star-studded cast: Streep, Collette, and Danes from Evening, as well as Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore) to such fine effect, would have been a far better choice as screenwriter for Evening. Hare was able to thread together three relatively divergent storylines and keep an audience totally compelled throughout. It's no small feat, as Cunningham and Minot have hopefully learned.

In spite of insurmountable pacing problems, there are bits and pieces of dialogue that come across well, particularly between Streep and Redgrave. But the director, Lajos Koltai, a relative newcomer to the director's chair, does everything he can to mess things up. It seems as if all of the actresses have been instructed to ham it up a bit, and the moodiness of the film makes the whole thing seem like a big overstuffed cream puff with extra powdered sugar on top just to ensure that you leave in tears (which I didn't, though several girls in my row seemed thus effected). The silly Lifetime movie-style music didn't help add much-needed ingenuity to the story at hand.

I tried my absolute hardest to enjoy this movie. I wanted very much to think that the reviewers were probably missing something when they blasted this film so, but I hate to admit that they were mostly right. Though I was delighted to see Streep and her daughter Mamie Gummer playing the older and younger versions of the character Lila, and I also enjoyed seeing Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Natasha Richardson as mother and daughter, the all-star cast couldn't weave a magnificent tapestry out of the disparate threads they were given. It's a royal shame.

Rent The Hours instead.

"Sicko" coughs up some straight talk.

2007-07-01T12:14:00.000-04:00

Yesterday night, I saw Sicko, the latest film by Michael Moore, which takes aim at the U.S. healthcare industry. I'm very glad I did, because it raises a wide variety of important issues that we as enlightened documentary filmgoing Americans should take note of as those responsible for changing things in our fine (but flawed) country.

While fearmongers and conservative pundits will inevitably be spouting off about issues like gay marriage and abortion as the 2008 election nears, trying to use these hot-button issues to ensure that the poor conservative masses vote the conservative big business guy into the Oval Office to run amok as he pleases, Michael Moore is sending out a clarion clear reminder in his latest documentary Sicko that our nation's priorities may be out of whack.

Sure, gay marriage is important to me, just as much as abortion is a very important issue to others, but these issues seem like bourgeois quibbles next to the elephant in the U.S.'s collective room: healthcare. Can anyone enjoy relative comfort in a nation that doesn't take good care of its citizens? When the sad fact is that Canada, Great Britain, France, and -- most surprisingly -- Cuba have socialized healthcare systems that work far better than our own privatized HMO-based ones, it's clear that something is wrong. Shouldn't the case be, Michael Moore asks, that as a country grows more and more economically successful it treats its poorest better and better than other less successful nations? Seems logical enough to me.

What I liked most about Sicko is that, in comparison with the other two Michael Moore movies I've seen, Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11, this seemed like the most bipartisan of them all. While Moore took shots at Richard Nixon for his approval of this privatized healthcare system, he also turned his criticisms toward liberal poster girl Hillary Clinton herself, who, though an early supporter of healthcare reform under Bill Clinton, soon took a much more mum approach, eventually receiving plenty of cash from the healthcare industry itself to keep quiet. It remains to be seen whether she'll live up to her early promise in the area of healthcare reform (she still makes a rousing speech on the subject), but Moore does a good job shaking up his audience's trust in individuals to spearhead the issue of healthcare.

Moore takes sidetrips to show us a handful of medical horror stories and also makes a lively (and far lighter) segue to make a point about the Guantanamo Bay prisoners and their medical treatment. For sure, Moore's movie, while sobering, also offers a dose of lighter moments to keep its viewers from reaching a point of utter dispair (there's hope yet, he reminds us).

The trouble with U.S. healthcare, Moore eventually concludes, is that in many other nations, the government lives in fear of its people, constantly worried that its public will stage an uprising and overturn the powers that be. In the U.S., it's we the people who fear the government, a big bureaucratic jumble that we no longer feel able to stand up against in times of chaos and mass suffering. Have we as Americans become too comfortable, I wonder, to put our feet back down on the pavement and stand up for what we believe? I'm not even sure what I'm willing to get angry about anymore, and I care about a variety of important social issues.

I've believed as such about gay issues for a quite a while now, and Michael Moore has raised some pertinent issues in Sicko that lead me to believe that there need to be a plethora of revolutions in our country before we're up to snuff with other industrialized Western nations.

It's a movie that reminds us that human rights should be fundamental to all people. Now excuse me while I ravage my bastion of freedom fries. What?! Quite staring and check out Michael Moore's Sicko.

Tales of the City!

2007-06-28T20:10:00.000-04:00

I decided out of the blue to read Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series a few weeks ago. I was looking for something funny and a little bit lighter to read, and these six books seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

Little did I know I'd become totally engrossed in the characters' lives. I lapped these books up so quickly I experienced withdrawal symptoms when I had to take a break from reading them for some reason or another.

Originally serialized in the San Francisco Chronicle, the series spans 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s in San Francisco, spanning the time from when casual sex and drug use was acceptable to the mid-1980s, when AIDS was beginning to change the San Francisco landscape drastically for gay and straight residents alike.

The series follows a cast of lovable San Franciscans living at the apartments at 28 Barbary Lane in the Russian Hill neighborhood: Mary Ann, whose arrival in San Francisco sets the plot in motion; Brian, an oversexed neighbor; Mona Ramsey, a whimsical bisexual tenant; Michael, Mona's gay roommate who befriends Mary Ann and Brian; and their lovable pot-smoking landlady, who has a juicy secret of her own, Mrs. Anna Madrigal.

From this brief glimpse into the series, it would probably seem that these books are absolutely lurid and unforgivably hedonistic. Well, despite their provocative subject manner, the characters all come off as being extraordinarily heartfelt while remaining cautious of not stepping over the line into camp. Rather than following the path of "gay literature" and focusing disproportionately on the gay characters, this series is truly a patchwork of plotlines that give all of the characters a fair amount of room to grow.

While the first three books are a portrait of carefree life in San Francisco, the final three take a decidedly darker turn. Despite the shift in tone, however, the series is worth sticking with. Though readers may be surprised by the note Maupin chooses to end Sure of You with, the series remains absolutely compelling up to the bitter end. Babycakes, the fourth in the series, is credited as being the first work of fiction to acknowledge the AIDS crisis, and it's a particularly moving book at that.

Tales of the City comes with my full recommendation. The entire series is a pageturner, and, while the writing isn't quite up there with the likes of Hemingway and Dickens, Maupin has some degree of literary aspiration for his earnest (and very funny) tales.

(t0p) Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, (bottom) Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You.

Lauren Bacall me crazy...

2007-06-27T22:37:00.000-04:00

"You know how to whistle; don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and blow."

- To Have and Have Not

Equally good in Key Largo tonight at Bryn Mawr Film Insitute.

I Heart Threadless

2007-06-25T22:17:00.001-04:00

Today, I got my weekly email from Threadless.com letting me know which T-shirts they'd be releasing for purchase. I've been on Threadless's email list for quite some time now, because I'm a big fan of the concept behind their T-shirts. Everyday designers submit designs for users to vote on, and the winning submissions are printed in limited quantities for purchase. Each week about six or so T-shirts are released, and once they're sold out of a certain design, there's no way to order the shirt unless enough people vote to reprint the shirt. It's T-shirt fashion at its most democratic.

Often the designs are ironic or clever. Most of them are wordless, though others are exclusively "type tees." Plus, if you send in a picture of yourself wearing one of their T-shirts, they'll give you $1.50 credit toward your next purchase. Neat, eh?

Anyway, one of today's designs caught my eye in particular, an image of a teapot releasing steam, as well as an image of a stately gentleman ("Earl Grey") sipping a cup of tea. The image is in monochromatic hues on a grey T-shirt, and it's called "Earl Grey." How nifty!

Earl Grey

Anyway, this is the fifth shirt I've bought from Threadless. My Threadless collection so far is as follows (click on each for a slightly larger view):

Part of what makes shopping at Threadless so horribly addictive is the fact that, if you don't act quickly, the shirt you want may soon be gone! Anyway, I recommend checking out their site. There's at least on T-shirt on there for everyone, I think.

Corinne Bailey Rae!

2007-06-25T22:07:00.001-04:00

Last year, I bought Corinne Bailey Rae's debut self-titled album because I liked a song on it called "Put Your Records On." Rae's voice, to me, exudes the wisdom of an "old soul." She's got a unique British soul/R&B style that should appeal to listeners young and old, as it sounds at once fresh and nostalgic. I suggest music fans check out her CD. Favorite songs of mine are "I'd Like To," "Till It Happens To You," and "Trouble Sleeping," though the whole album is great.

NeoOffice to the rescue

2007-06-24T21:29:00.000-04:00

Having recently invested in a MacBook as a replacement to my curmudgeonly old HP Pavillion laptop, I was experiencing a euphoria over the Mac interface's ease of use. I'm pretty impressed overall with the Mac OS X operating system and with the Safari web browser, as well as many of the keystroke-saving shortcuts that I probably could have figured out on a PC but come especially easily to the Mac.

Despite all of these positive things, however, there was one thing I was missing most about the PC universe - Microsoft Office. If there's one computer program I'm used to, it's Microsoft Word, and it's the one program that I thought I would need the most, especially considering my student status and the countless number of essays and homework assignments I churn out on a daily basis during the school year.

Anyway, there is a substitute, and it's called NeoOffice. Available for free download (though a small donation is suggested), it's just as easy to use as office and includes substitutes for all of the familiar applications in Microsoft Office. So, as a heads up, if you're a new Mac user or even if you just want to save on buying Microsoft Office in general, check out this handy dandy program.

"Paris, Je T'Aime," "To Have and Have Not," "A Mighty Heart"

2007-06-23T23:52:00.000-04:00

Since I last posted about Waitress and Away From Her, I've seen three more intriguing movies at Bryn Mawr Film Institute, my favorite local place to see films. Though it's regrettable that I don't visit Philadelphia more often (or New York for that matter), Bryn Mawr is a reminder that culture does exist outside of large cities.

First is Paris Je T'Aime, a series of 18 French-language short films, each set in a different arrondissement (subdivided section) of Paris. It's hard to imagine 18 short films working together as a cohesive unit, and this movie isn't really able to disprove that kind of logic. There's no really coherent theme tying the shorts together, besides for the concepts of love and Paris that seem entirely too general.

No matter, many of the shorts are effective, witty, or at least visually appealing. Especially charming is the final piece (click to watch the entire section on YouTube), directed by Alexander Payne (Sideways), that tells of a middle-aged American woman's lonely trip to Paris and the bond she forms with the city, one she describes as a love affair in and of itself. The featured actress in that portion is Margo Martindale, an actress who seems to be in an abundance of compelling movies, always in lackluster roles. In this short, you've got to love her bumbag. Many of the pieces are memorable, and it's definitely a film - or, rather, a collection of 18 - that's worth checking out, as much for their artistry as for the quirky, if inconsistent, content.

The second installment of the Hollywood Summer Nights series at BMFI was To Have and Have Not starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Though I was familiar with Bogart's work in Casablanca, I hadn't ever seen Lauren Bacall before, so this film was especially revelatory for that reason. She's got a smoky, brusque quality that's absolutely stunning - the rare case of someone having true star quality. The movie, directed by Howard Hawks, featured a typical formulaic ganster/chase plot, and it was the performances that really stood out. I'm looking forward to seeing Key Largo, also starring Bogart, this coming week.

Last but certainly not least was A Mighty Heart. Having read the Vogue profile of Angelina Jolie last fall, I got a sense that she was not your typical movie star. She prefers to keep to herself, has an overwhelming sense of self and self-responsibility, and, in a way that's in keeping with the outstanding values of this film, a mighty heart that's willing to take in various children from around the world.

I'm not too familiar with Jolie's work overall, but I was suspecting from previews of A Mighty Heart that it would be a good film. I wasn't, however, expecting a movie with quite the impact that this one had. The movie follows the hunt for Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), a Wall Street Journal reporter kidnapped in Afghanistan after leaving one night for a particularly smarmy interview. His wife, Mariane Pearl (Angelina Jolie), and a team of officials, gather in a house rented by Pearl's colleague, stake out their territory in what becomes a non-stop, full-force search for any information they can find. It's a riveting movie that follows the twists and turns of the incoming clues as they come and latches onto particularly affecting bits of dialogue between those searching for Pearl and between Daniel and his wife in flashback.

It's one of those movies, like United 93 before it, where you know the harrowing ending but are ultimately unable to turn away from the proceedings. What really made this film stand out was its absolute unwillingness to sensationalize the events portrayed. Jolie's performance is a fine example of a woman inhabiting a role that's absolutely the heart and center of the movie but who is so humbled by the the part she's playing that one never gets the sense that she's manipulating the audience. It's a tour de force for Jolie.

Though I was very much captivated by the film as a whole, I wished I could have known more about the two characters (Danny Pearl and Mariane Pearl) at its center. I wasn't quite sure why Pearl's heart was so particularly "mighty." In fact, Mariane herself seems to emphasize, particularly through the humility she shows in television interview segments, that Pearl (and herself, and all others for that matters) are part of a global community and that, in many ways, no one man is particularly mightier than any other. Despite that small gripe however, nonetheless, it's a must-see movie.

Jeans Aplenty

2007-06-23T20:05:00.000-04:00

With a week left before my birthday, I went jeans shopping with the girls - Christina and Leah - today. It was tons of fun (+ free gelato) and surprisingly easy to find jeans that fit properly.

I'm a skinny, skinny boy for sure. Most normal stores don't carry jeans that really fit well. I'm of the mind that jeans ought to actually fit rather than drape over your body in some saggy, miscalculated way, so I need to go for skinny jeans. Yet, oftentimes, skinny jeans are just too skinny.

Luckily, I found two pair that were just right:

From left to right, Levi's 511 rail jeans, BDG skinny blue jeans.

Patti's Turn

2007-06-22T20:15:00.001-04:00

I used to hate Patti LuPone. The very thought of her vocal histrionics made me cringe. In the past, she's had a "unique" way of following musical phrasings that hasn't done much to excite me personally. Her performance as Eva on the original Broadway cast recording of Evita, of course, is Patti at her best, but her career has had its highs and lows.The major thing that turned me away from the Cult of Patti was seeing her on the Sweeney Todd in Concert DVD opposite George Hearn. Squawking like the seagulls her character, Mrs. Lovett, sings about in "By the Sea," this was a performance that irked me to the core.

So how, you ask, does one covert back to Patti-fanaticism? For me, it was a three-step program.

1. I watched her giving a stunning, only mildly overacted performance as Fosca opposite Michael Cerveris's Giorgio and Audra McDonald's Clara in Passion on Live at Lincoln Center, in which she emphasized the aching humanity of her character so incredibly passionately.

2. I listened to tracks from her recent album, The Lady with the Torch, which features a more toned-down sound from La Lupone.

3. I saw her twice on Broadway as Mrs. Lovett in the John Doyle-directed production of Sweeney Todd that was on Broadway the season before this last one. Totally expecting to see a repeat performance of what she'd done on the televised version, she totally reinvented herself and gave one of the fiercest performances by a leading lady in a Broadway show I've yet to witness.

Next up for La LuPone?

Mama Rose in Gypsy at City Center, with Boyd Gaines (revelatory this season in Journey's End) as Herbie and Laura Benanti as Louise. Sounds just about perfect to me.

Just got my tickets to see it with Emma July 13th. Could I be more excited?

Awaiting "Across the Universe"

2007-06-17T13:29:00.000-04:00

After having witnessed some of the filming of Broadway and opera director Julie Taymor's upcoming movie Across the Universe last school year, I had no idea what to expect of the movie. I figured it was some low-budget thing for TV and that it wouldn't amount to much. However, the trailer for the movie, which will be released in theatres this fall, and poster have now been released, and it looks like it's shaping up to be something rather special. I love the poster design with the heart/strawberry thing going on. I even like the rendition of "Hey Jude" in the trailer, though I'm not sure how having characters named after Beatles songs is going to strike me when I see the actual movie. Anyway, it looks intriguing and rather inventive, especially considering it's essentially a filmed jukebox musical.

Check out the trailer here.

A snapshot I took of the filming of the Vietnam protest scene by Washington Square Arch, digitally altered in Adobe Photoshop.

"Falling Man" and Summer Reading

2007-06-09T22:00:00.000-04:00

I recently finished reading a novel called Falling Man by Don DeLillo, a popular writer who I'd never before encountered. I'd read some really interesting reviews of the book on Slate and The New York Times Sunday Book Review Online and read the first chapter on The New York Times. I decided to try it out on a whim since I had a coupon for Borders, and I was most certainly not disappointed.

It's a story about September 11th that follows the dual perspectives of a survivor of the attacks who worked in one of the towers, Keith (his story begins on September 11th and proceeds from there), and of one of the terrorists (his story leads up to the September 11th attacks). It would have been easy for an author of less inherent skill to oversentimentalize the attacks. In the collective minds of Americans, September 11th has become a sort of rallying cry for freedom-mongering and rah-rah sentiments, and it's an extraordinary achievement that DeLillo manages to strip the day back to what it was as it was happening - an extraordinarily confusing day full of an indescribable amount of grief and human suffering that has left the world indelibly different and at the same time indescribably the same as before.

Interesting subplots, including one in particular involving the novel's title character, a performance artist who specializes in dangling in formal dress from bridges, scaffolds, and other scary-looking places, and another involving Keith's wife Lianne and the group she runs for Alzheimer's patients involving the chronicling of their thoughts on a variety of democratically decided-upon topics, make this novel something richer and more fulfilling than just another "smoke and ash" chronicle of the events of September 11, 2001.

DeLillo's writing style, which, at times, reminded me of Joan Didion's, is appropriately sparse. Without sounding cold, DeLillo uses particularly cutting language to strip down his prose to the most emotionally intense state possible. It's a short book, coming in at 246 pages, but it packs a wallop that will leave you thinking about the book once its over. Falling Man comes highly recommended. Now I want to check out more of DeLillo's books, perhaps Underworld or White Noise.

Other books I want to read this summer include:

Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
and On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan.

Hopefully I'll be reporting on more of my summer reading shortly! Right now I'm reading Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.

"Away From Her," "Waitress" at BMFI

2007-05-30T22:52:00.000-04:00

First, let me say that I love Bryn Mawr Film Institute. My family has a membership, so we get discounted tickets, and they're just about the only place in Delaware County that gets the kinds of movies I like to see - indie movies and, though to a lesser extent, foreign films. Now and then I like to see a blockbuster, but I mostly like to see more thoughtful movies that may have slipped through the ordinary studio process because they're a little too complex to be homogenized.

This week I saw two very different movies, each worth seeing - Waitress and Away from Her.

Waitress, which easily could've fallen into cliches about diners and listless young women, was charming and well-acted. Keri Russell carried the movie, aided by razor sharp quips by late writer and director Adrienne Shelly, who also took a supporting role in the film. Sequences featuring the baking of creatively-named pies were particularly notable, as was a late career performance by Andy Griffith as the ornery owner of the pie diner in the film.

Away from Her, which was excrutiating to watch, is a wonderfully made movie about a woman who develops Alzheimer's and the way her husband copes with her illness as she takes up residence in a nursing home. The lovely Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent are wonderful in the movie, and the young writer and director Sarah Polley makes sure that the movie doesn't strike one false note. It's astounding that such a young writer could capture so wonderfully the complexities of older adulthood. It was also refreshing to see a movie that dealt head-on with the sex lives of older people, something that gets neglected or joked about in most other films. Everything about Away from Her made it a must-see. I'm a believer in seeing movies even though they may unnerve you (Children of Men and An Inconvenient Truth are recent examples), and this is one you definitely want to suck it up and see.

I also just got done reading a wonderful book, The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi, a comic tale of a young man who's half white and half Indian living in London. It struck me as similar to the humorous writing style of Zadie Smith, and it kept me riveted throughout. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a lighter (yet still stimulating) read - for someone else who refuses to stoop to Danielle Steele or James Patterson for their light reading.

Tony Awards Extravaganza Mega-Post!

2007-05-24T14:46:00.000-04:00

Now that the big night is fast approaching - June 10th - and the nominees for the 61st Annual Antoinette Perry "Tony" Awards have been announced, it's time to speculate as to who will be taking home statuettes this year!

I'll go through each of the 25 categories one by one, predicting the winner and musing a bit on those most deserving or overlooked.

Best Choreography

Rob Ashford, Curtains
Matthew Bourne & Stephen Mear, Mary Poppins
*Bill T. Jones, Spring Awakening
Jerry Mitchell, Legally Blonde The Musical

To me, it seems likely that, despite a relatively competitive year for choreography, the inventive choreography of Bill T. Jones will take home the Tony this year. Though I was very much impressed by the tremendously energetic choreography for Legally Blonde and by some of the inventive dances in Mary Poppins, I thought that Jones's choreography for Spring Awakening did the best job of adding an extra layer to the show, especially the sensual choreography for "Touch Me" and the spastic dance moves for "Totally F****d."

Best Orchestrations

Bruce Coughlin, Grey Gardens
*Duncan Sheik, Spring Awakening
Jonathan Tunick, LoveMusik
Jonathan Tunick, 110 in the Shade

While Jonathan Tunick is renowned in the Broadway community for his consistent excellence as an orchestrator, this year I think that the voters will acknowledge the work of Duncan Sheik, who managed to meld computerized music with the use of a live band to create a fresh sound for Spring Awakening. While many lament the downsizing of Broadway orchestras in favor of computer-enhanced orchestrations, in this case, the use of computer enhancement adds palpably to the effect of the music. I'm surprised not to see Mary-Mitchell Campbell's orchestrations for Company among those in the running for this award. Despite the fact that I missed the brassiness of the orchestrations on the original Broadway cast recording, orchestrating a John Doyle-directed show is no easy task. Jonathan Tunick (for LoveMusik) and Campbell tied for the Drama Desk Awards, so I suppose Tunick still has a chance, but I think it's likely that the Tony voters will have a different view of the orchestration race than the Drama Desk.

Best Book of a Musical

Rupert Holmes & Peter Stone, Curtains
*Doug Wright, Grey Gardens
Heather Hach, Legally Blonde The Musical
Steven Sater, Spring Awakening

I was terribly surprised when Rupert Holmes and Peter Stone won the Drama Desk for Curtains. I thought that the book for Curtains was perhaps one of the most trite and unfunny (especially for a comedy) that I'd ever come across. Any of the other nominees would, to me, be preferable, but I think that Doug Wright still has a chance at the Tony Award. Wright's book is lovely and subtle, underscoring brilliantly the blurring of the line between the past and the present. Steven Sater still has a shot as well. His book for Spring Awakening captures the feel of 1890s Germany evocatively without losing sight of the updated quality that this modern adaptation employs.

Best Score

Fred Ebb, John Kander & Rupert Holmes, Curtains
Scott Frankel and Michael Korie, Grey Gardens
Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin, Legally Blonde The Musical
*Duncan Sheik and Steven Sater, Spring Awakening

This award, hands down, will go to Spring Awakening. Despite the sentimantality toward Kander & Ebb's score for Curtains, particularly since Fred Ebb died just a few years ago, rewarding a score of this lackluster quality would be criminal. There will still be at least one or two more new Kander & Ebb musicals on Broadway, so I figure the Tony voters figure they'll still have another shot to reward Ebb posthumously. In the meantime, Spring Awakening's score, while perhaps lyrically imperfect, does a perfect job of upholding the production's conceit that, once the musical's 1890s German characters pull their microphones out of their school jackets, they're rock stars, able to express the angsty emotions they've kept pent up inside. The lovely pastiche score for Grey Gardens is also notable, but not to the degree that Spring Awakening's is.

Best Scenic Design (Play)

*Bob Crowley & Scott Pask, The Coast of Utopia
Jonathan Fensom, Journey's End
David Gallo, Radio Golf
Ti Green and Melly Still, Coram Boy

While I liked very much David Gallo's set for Radio Golf, which, besides for being extraordinarily naturalistic, also placed the play's campaign office setting in context within the overall Hill District setting of the play, the voters will likely reward Crowley & Pask for their work on the epic The Coast of Utopia. These design awards are often the most appropriate outlets to reward the more overblown shows on Broadway (they say it's best artistically not to leave humming the sets, and sometimes that's just what you end up doing). Whatever I have to say about the quality of The Coast of Utopia as a play, Lincoln Center Theater certainly devoted a lot of attention to the intricacies of their production, and it showed stunningly.

Best Scenic Design (Musical)

*Bob Crowley, Mary Poppins
Christine Jones, Spring Awakening
Anna Louizos, High Fidelity
Allen Moyer, Grey Gardens

It's likely that Crowley will win for the whimsy and efficiency of his sets for Mary Poppins. I suppose there's a chance that voters will recognize the sparse but highly effective set for Spring Awakening, heavily researched by designer Christine Jones and utilizing on-stage audience seating, but it seems like a long shot.

Best Costume Design (Play)

Ti Green and Melly Still, Coram Boy
Jane Greenwood, Heartbreak House
Santo Loquasto, Inherit the Wind
*Catherine Zuber, The Coast of Utopia

This is another category where spectacle is sure to win out. The Coast of Utopia was a jaw-droppingly large production for Lincoln Center Theater this past season, and its costumes were no exception. The shear number of costumes alone -- 450 -- is insane! And they are quite attractive.

Best Costume Design (Musical)

Gregg Barnes, Legally Blonde The Musical
*Bob Crowley, Mary Poppins
Susan Hilferty, Spring Awakening
William Ivey Long, Grey Gardens

My guess is that Bob Crowley may be taking home several awards on Tony night. His costumes for Mary Poppins are the best bet for a win in this category. It's one of the shows most reliant on splashy costumes, and Crowley's were particularly effective for Poppins. William Ivey Long may also have a shot at the award; his costumes for Grey Gardens were handsome and effective.

Best Special Theatrical Event

*Jay Johnson: The Two and Only
Kiki & Herb Alive on Broadway

I'm not familiar with Kiki & Herb, but The Two and Only was a charming, earnest little show. I went into it thinking, Oh, God, not a show with a ventriloquist, but I was very much pleasantly surprised. Johnson has winning personality and considerable talent. I'm not really sure who will win, but neither of these were particularly noteworthy in the 2006-2007 season.

Best Lighting Design (Play)

Paule Constable, Coram Boy
Brian MacDevitt, Inherit the Wind
*Brian MacDevitt, Kenneth Posner and Natasha Katz, The Coast of Utopia
Jason Taylor, Journey's End

Another win for The Coast of Utopia, I suspect. What more is there to say -- the production was spectacular.

Best Lighting Design (Musical)

*Kevin Adams, Spring Awakening
Christopher Akerlind, 110 in the Shade
Howard Harrison, Mary Poppins
Peter Kaczorowski, Grey Gardens

Kevin Adams is sure to win this award. His inventive use of neon lighting (most effective when viewed from the mezzanine) absolutely enhanced Spring Awakening's already potent brand of theatrical magic. What, for me, constitutes what is considered the "best" in design categories is the success of a design element's integration into the whole of the theatrical experience at hand. If anyone else has a shot, it's Christopher Akerlind, who masterfully lit the gigantic sun onstage at Studio 54 during 110 in the Shade.

Best Direction (Play)

Michael Grandage, Froxt/Nixon
David Grindley, Journey's End
*Jack O'Brien, The Coast of Utopia
Melly Still, Coram Boy

The Coast of Utopia. Tired of hearing that title? So am I. But it takes a strong director to make a good case for a bloated, overblown play like The Coast of Utopia, and Jack O'Brien, a Broadway veteran, was that man. Perhaps Grandage or Grindley have a chance, but I suspect that O'Brien will be rewarded for taking on such a massive undertaking.

Best Direction (Musical)

John Doyle, Company
Scott Ellis, Curtains
Michael Greif, Grey Gardens
*Michael Mayer, Spring Awakening

Michael Mayer looks to be the frontrunner in the Best Director race. His guidance helped a vibrant young cast and inspired creative team put on one hell of a show. Ellis and Greif are longshots, but Doyle, whose inventive Sondheim stagings are all the rage nowadays, may have a chance at the statue for his actor-musician staging of Company.

Best Featured Actor (Play)

Anthony Chisholm, Radio Golf
*Billy Crudup, The Coast of Utopia
Ethan Hawke, The Coast of Utopia
John Earl Jelks, Radio Golf
Stark Sands, Journey's End

This is one category that seems like a wide open playing field. Chisholm and Jelks were both standouts in Radio Golf, and Crudup (and Hawke, to a lesser degree) were adequate in The Coast of Utopia. Sands was also quite effective in Journey's End. My guess is that Crudup will take home the award, but I think Chisholm and Stark Sands also have a palpable chance. This is an award I'm looking forward to.

Best Featured Actress (Play)

*Jennifer Ehle, The Coast of Utopia
Xanthe Elbrick, Coram Boy
Dana Ivey, Butley
Jan Maxwell, Coram Boy
Martha Plimpton, The Coast of Utopia

Though Martha Plimpton took home this award at the Drama Desk Awards (Ehle wasn't nominated), I think that Jennifer Ehle will probably take home the Tony. I'm not familiar with the work of Elbrick, Ivey, or Maxwell, but Ehle was one of the best things about Utopia. I wish she had had a more prominent role throughout the trilogy, but as Natalie Herzen in Shipwreck, she more than proved her acting chops. It was one of the most thrilling performances I saw all year.

Best Featured Actor (Musical)

Brooks Ashmanskas, Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me
Christian Borle, Legally Blonde The Musical
John Cullum, 110 in the Shade
*John Gallagher, Jr., Spring Awakening
David Pittu, LoveMusik

In order to reward, in some form, the talents of the young cast of Spring Awakening, I think it will be Gallagher who takes home this award. He's excellent as Moritz, the misfit character, and has excellent comic timing. Borle was winning in Blonde, as was Cullum in 110.

Best Featured Actress (Musical)

Charlotte d'Amboise, A Chorus Line
Rebecca Luker, Mary Poppins
Orfeh, Legally Blonde The Musical
*Mary Louise Wilson, Grey Gardens
Karen Ziemba, Curtains

Mary Louise Wilson was probably the most favorably reviewed among these nominees; she's excellent as Big Edie in the second act of Grey Gardens, just as formidable as Christine Ebersole, who plays her daughter. I guess Ziemba also has a shot, but Wilson looks to be the clear frontrunner.

Best Actor (Play)

Boyd Gaines, Journey's End
*Frank Langella, Frost/Nixon
Brian F. O'Byrne, The Coast of Utopia
Christopher Plummer, Inherit the Wind
Liev Schreiber, Talk Radio

Here is one of the most competitive categories. All five of these actors got very favorable reviews for their performances. It will likely be Frank Langella, who, despite very little physical resemblance to President Nixon, manages to be absolutely believable in Frost/Nixon. Schreiber also seems like a likely winner, but I'd really like to see Boyd Gaines, who gave a stunningly subdued performance in Journey's End take home this award. Both Langella and Gaines (who was, for the Drama Desk Awards, placed in the featured category) took home Drama Desk Awards last Sunday.

Best Actress (Play)

*Eve Best, A Moon for the Misbegotten
Swoosie Kurtz, Heartbreak House
Angela Lansbury, Deuce
Vanessa Redgrave, The Year of Magical Thinking
Julie White, The Little Dog Laughed

This has to be one of the hardest categories to predict. Kurtz is unlikely to win, but the other four all have a good shot. White gave a brilliant comic performance in The Little Dog Laughed, and Lansbury and Redgrave both reminded audiences of their "legend" statuses. Eve Best, in her first New York role, however, may just take home this award for her brilliant performance as Josie in A Moon for the Misbegotten. Though she doesn't meet the character's brutish character description requirements, her absolute commitment to the role really shone through. This one is hard to predict, but my money is ever so slightly on Best to best the rest. If I got what I wanted, it would probably be Lansbury.

Best Actor (Musical)

Michael Cerveris, LoveMusik
*Raul Esparza, Company
Jonathan Groff, Spring Awakening
Gavin Lee, Mary Poppins
David Hyde Pierce, Curtains

Esparza is the frontrunner in this category. He's brilliant in Company and long overdue for some Broadway recognition. Cerveris and Pierce may be possible winners, but it's most likely that Esparza will finally take home a Tony. Though his piano-playing is minimal in Company, he really allows an audience to tap into his vulerability. Plus, his singing is superb.

Best Actress (Musical)

Laura Bell Bundy, Legally Blonde The Musical
*Christine Ebersole, Grey Gardens
Audra McDonald, 110 in the Shade
Debra Monk, Curtains
Donna Murphy, LoveMusik

There was Tony buzz surrounding Christine Ebersole this time last year, around the time when she was in Grey Gardens off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons. She's brilliant as Big Edie in the first act and Little Edie in the second act, and it seems almost certain that she'll take home her second Tony (the first was for 42nd Street). I think that Audra McDonald still has a fighting chance in the Best Actress category. She and Donna Murphy tied at the Drama Desk Awards (Ebersole won last year when Grey Gardens was off-Broadway and was therefore ineligible this time around), so there's a possibility of a shake-up, particularly since Grey Gardens opened so long ago, but Ebersole still seems to be the name on everybody's lips, so we'll have to wait to find out. Everyone in the category, however, is strong.

Best Play Revival

Inherit the Wind
*Journey's End
Talk Radio
Translations

Journey's End was this season's little play that couldn't. I had no idea what it would be about before I saw it. The playwright and director (and most of the cast) are all unknown, and it's a depressing-looking play about World War I. Journey's End has had a consistently hard time attaining an audience (most weeks, it played to 30% or less capacity), but I think it will be recognized for its superb quality come Tony night (which happens to fall on the same night as its closing performance). Boyd Gaines, Hugh Dancy, and Stark Sands, head a cast that is uniformly excellent, and the design elements all came together to present a stunningly powerful production. That reminds me that I've been thinking recently about how egregious it is that there's no category for Best Sound Design. Sound is an integral element to a great Broadway production, and Journey's End was a stunning example of what a great sound designer, in this case Gregory Clarke, can do.

Best Musical Revival

The Apple Tree
A Chorus Line
*Company
110 in the Shade

This one's probably going to John Doyle's inventive staging of Company. I found the overall production to be quite cold and distancing and the actor-musicianship to be inferior to that on display in last season's Sweeney Todd, but Company has favorable reviews and Raul Esparza going for it. With a flimsy book that barely holds up after 37 years, it's a wonder Doyle could salvage Company as well as he could. 110 in the Shade also has a shot, I think, but reviewers (and perhaps Tony voters) found the show a bit too quaint, with the star turn from its leading actress Audra McDonald the major standout of the production.

Best Play

*The Coast of Utopia
Frost/Nixon
The Little Dog Laughed
Radio Golf

When Tom Stoppard set out to write The Coast of Utopia, he was obviously feeling grandiose. He set out to write a play about Russian history and ended up with an 8-hour epic. The play is one huge demonstration of what happens when you're too vainglorious to subject yourself to a sensible regiment of good old-fashioned editing. There is no major story arc, and the play feels like a bloated, obscure history lesson. Nonetheless, it was a hit with critics and audiences alike, most of whom probably felt proud that they were able to sit upright for that long in a theatre. Whatever I found at fault in regards to playwright, however, was at least in part redeemed by a beautiful, well-executed production headed by Jack O'Brien. My pick would be for Radio Golf, the final play in August Wilson's 10-play cycle chronicling African-American life in the United States, but critics found the play to be less engaging than others in the cycle.

Best Musical

Curtains
Grey Gardens
Mary Poppins
*Spring Awakening

There was talk early on in speculation over the Tony race this year that Legally Blonde was going to give Spring Awakening a run for its money. Good out-of-town reviews and appeal to venues that host national tours across the country would have given Legally Blonde a huge leg up, but perhaps the nominators sensed the possibility of an upset and purposefully excluded Blonde. Spring Awakening will almost certainly take home top honors for its revolutionary Broadway production. If it doesn't, it'll be one of the biggest crimes in Tony history (I'd also be satified if Grey Gardens won, but that seems unlikely). I'm surprised by the amount of people who feel that Curtains still has a shot at the award, but Curtains and Poppins have the advantage of being more family-oriented shows with splashy productions that would be more popular for tour audiences (it's the tour producers who ultimately seem to have the greatest hand in these things). I hope Tony voters stick to their artistic guns and reward the show that's truly the best, Spring Awakening, which would also likely do good business in a national tour.

New Music

2007-05-22T00:13:00.000-04:00

So, some stuff has come up in my personal life that I won't really go into on here, but I wanted to comment a bit on two new CDs that come highly recommended.

1. Release the Stars by Rufus Wainwright

His first album since 2004's Want Two was supposed to usher in a different, more understated sound for Rufus, but instead of playing down his grand operatic qualities, he came back with this lovely, overstated album. It's my favorite of his so far, in keeping with the level of introspection (some may call it self-indulgence) of his past releases. Besides for the album-stopping "Between My Legs," the other two standouts are "Not Ready To Love" and "Slideshow," the former quiet and lovely, leading seamlessly into the bombast of the latter. The first single, "Going to A Town" is a thoughtful and challenging love letter to the United States. Rufus is a master at integrating his operatic sensibilities into his own uniquely intelligent brand of pop.

2. The Reminder by Feist

Unlike Rufus, with whom I've been familiar for several years by now, I wasn't aware of Feist (whose full non-stage name is Leslie Feist -- she's also the lead singer for Broken Social Scene, a band I'm not familiar with) before buying this album. Apparently, she made a splash amongst indie aficionados with her second album, Let It Die. I'm not familiar with that album, but I was alerted to her newest, The Reminder, by several close sources, and I haven't been disappointed. I had a hard time getting used to her unconventionally raspy voice at first, but the album as a whole grows on me with each new listen. Feist's songwriting skills are on vivid display here with this varied and impressive album. As with Release the Stars, my favorite sequence on this album is a segue from a subdued song into an upbeat one, more specifically the songs "Limit to Your Love" and "1 2 3 4," which also has a fun music video! This, along with Rufus's Release the Stars, is definitely one of those must-hear albums.

Final Theatre Report, My Top Ten List

2007-05-12T18:49:00.000-04:00

It's that time of year when I weigh in on my favorite theatregoing experiences of the year. Though I missed out on a few shows I wanted to see (Talk Radio, Inherit the Wind, Coram Boy) and some that I didn't (A Chorus Line, The Pirate Queen), I still caught a great deal of theatre (see the complete list below). Here are my top ten:

1. Spring Awakening

There hasn't been a show like Spring Awakening on Broadway before. Sure, the style is in the vein of Rent, but Spring Awakening pushes the limits of what Broadway theatre should be, integrating classical acting styles with a uniquely contemporary score that highlights the timelessness of teen angst and confusion.

2. Journey's End

I hadn't expected to like Journey's End at all, but it ended up being the most visceral theatrical experience of the season for me with a top-notch cast headed by Hugh Dancy and Boyd Gaines to boot. Nothing could quite beat the thrill of seeing Spring Awakening for the first time, but Journey's End hit me in the gut and really does a good job of recreating a wartime experience for its audience within the confines of the theatre space.

3. Grey Gardens

Christine Ebersole's performance as the Edies in Grey Gardens was the most talked about of the season, considered as a frontrunner for the Tony Award for Best Actress since her off-Broadway run in the show. It's a wonderful performance, but the rest of the production that supports her is equally solid, with a supporting cast that includes Mary Louise Wilson and John McMartin, as well as Erin Davie, who is stunning as Little Edie in the first act. The score is a lovely pastiche, and the book manages to be haunting and camp concurrently.

4. Blackbird

This play won the Olivier Award for Best Play in London last season, so I had high expectations. Needless to say, they were met. Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill act the hell out of this play, which was probably the most thought-provoking of the season to me. This play definitely deserves a Broadway transferin the hopes of its reaching a wider audience, though its immediacy might be lost in the fray.

5. 110 in the Shade

As was the case with The Apple Tree, the last Roundabout production at Studio 54, 110 in the Shade could be called dated. It also has its flaws. But Audra McDonald (who may have a chance against Christine Ebersole at the Tonys) and John Cullum, as well as Audra's leading men, Steve Kazee and Christopher Innvar, make a great case for this old-fashioned musical with a tuneful Western-influenced score. Its "old maid" themes may seem old hat, but McDonald's performance brings out the nuances of this show, which is also supported by a simple yet first-rate production at Studio 54.

6. Radio Golf

Bringing Wilson's ten-play cycle of plays to a close with its 1990s installment, Radio Golf has a cultural immediacy that some of his other plays lack because of their historical perspective. Radio Golf is the most contemporary of Wilson's plays, and the Broadway production it's being given, featuring Harry Lennix and Anthony Chisholm, is first rate. These actors are intimately familiar with Wilson's poetic dialogue, which they imbue with an absolutely appropriate air of heritage forgotten. It may seem that Wilson's window into African-American life has been cracked due to the death of Aunt Ester in King Hedley II, the 1980s Wilson play, but take a closer look and the blues are still there.

7. The Clean House

Along with Christopher Shinn, Sarah Ruhl seems to me among the most inventive of playwrights working today. She just won the MacArthur Grant, and I think she's absolutely deserving. With The Clean House, which circulated the country with regional productions before its New York City debut at Lincoln Center, uses a sort of magical realism in order to mix everyday mishaps with the extraordinary. Jill Clayburgh and Blair Brown headed this wonderfully talented cast. Even when Ruhl's dialogue is less than brilliant, her sense of theatricality and inventiveness are to be lauded.

8. Frost/Nixon

Though I thought that Frost/Nixon as a play was mostly a serviceable docudrama about a subject that may or may not deserve extra special attention, it's most certainly a showcase for two extraordinarily talented actors. Michael Sheen as David Frost, no stranger to the work of Peter Morgan, holds his own in opposition to Frank Langella, who elevates his portrayal of Richard Nixon above mere mimickry. Though the play wasn't my favorite, it was still tautly woven and definitely worth seeing.

9. Dying City

Since seeing Dying City, I've read all of Christopher Shinn's other published plays, and that experience has only made me think more fondly of my experience seeing Dying City. Shinn is able to take an ordinary convention (double casting an actor as identical twins) and make it work absolutely organically within the confines of the tiny rotating stage at the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre. His dialogue almost always feels true to life, and there are some absolutely heartbreaking moments within Dying City. It's a play that will be worth reading for the intricacies of its text once it's published, and I'm looking forward to my next opportunity to see a Shinn play.

10. Legally Blonde

Considering how much I was anticipating LoveMusik because of all the talent involved in its production (Hal Prince, Michael Cerveris, Donna Murphy, Alfred Uhry), I had to say I'm unable to include it on my Top 10 list. Despite all its bubblegum kitsch, Legally Blonde absolutely won me over as the feel-good show of the season. It's not the best show by any means, but the production is very solidly constructed and feels genuinely intentioned. It was definitely the most flat-out fun I've had at the theatre this season, and I think that Laura Bell Bundy is a formidable successor to Reese Witherspoon, who played the role of Elle in the movie version.

Pure Fun Runner-Up (11.) Deuce

Last year, my pure fun choice was Lennon. It wasn't the best show, but I had a blast seeing it. This year, my pick is Deuce. No, it's not the best play, but I never felt the play was less than enjoyable. Mostly, it was quite brisk. But the real reason this gets my pick is that I finally got to see Angela Lansbury on a Broadway stage. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I think that her performance will be up against Eve Best's (a standout in A Moon For the Misbegotten) as a leading contender for the Best Actress Tony. Surely, this play had more emotional resonance to me than the chilly The Year of Magical Thinking. It was a fun play in a season that, headed by Lincoln Center's bloated The Coast of Utopia, could have used some much-needed lightening-up (provided in part by Douglas Carter Beane's The Little Dog Laughed).

My final Broadway/off-Broadway/off-off-Broadway Report is as follows:

1. Mother Courage and Her Children
2. Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me
3. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
4. Seven Guitars
5. Seven Guitars
6. The Guys
7. Jay Johnson: The Two and Only
8. Heartbreak House
9. Nixon's Nixon
10. The Times They Are A-Changin'
11. Grey Gardens
12. Wrecks
13. My Name Is Rachel Corrie
14. Suddenly Last Summer
15. subUrbia
16. The Voyage of the Carcass
17. Mary Poppins
18. The Little Dog Laughed
19. Suddenly Last Summer
20. Company
21. The Flood
22. The Clean House
23. Spring Awakening
24. Durango
25. Spring Awakening
26. Two Trains Running
27. High Fidelity
28. The Vertical Hour
29. The Apple Tree
30. The Apple Tree
31. Spring Awakening
32. The Fever
33. Howard Katz
34. The Coast of Utopia -Voyage
35. Follies (Encores)
36. The Coast of Utopia - Shipwreck
37. Spring Awakening
38. King Hedley II
39. The Coast of Utopia - Salvage
40. Prelude to a Kiss
41. Dying City
42. Grey Gardens
43. Jack Goes Boating
44. A Moon for the Misbegotten
45. Blackbird
46. Curtains
47. Frost/Nixon
48. Exits and Entrances
49. All the Wrong Reasons
50. LoveMusik
51. Journey's End
52. Deuce
53. Entrances and Exits
54. In the Heights
55. The Year of Magical Thinking
56. Legally Blonde
57. Radio Golf
58. 110 in the Shade
59. 110 in the Shade

In addition, I saw a performance of La Boheme at New York City Opera and readings of the musical Zorro at 37 Arts and The Marriage of Bette and Boo for Roundabout Theatre Company at the Laura Pels Theatre. I attended or volunteered for the opening nights of Heartbreak House, The Apple Tree, and 110 in the Shade, as well as the 2007 Roundabout Gala at Roseland Ballroom, Beyond the Velvet Rope, featuring disco performances from Broadway favorites in commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the opening of Studio 54.

I've seen 33 Broadway and 25 off-Broadway performances this year in addition to one off-off-Broadway performance.

Those in blue are on Broadway.
Those in red are off-Broadway.
Those in black are off-off-Broadway
Plays are in bold.
All others are musicals.

Statistics/Facts:
- The average price paid per show was $18.26.
- 21 performances were free or complimentary.
- The highest prices paid were $69 for The Year of Magical Thinking and $53 for Deuce.
- Celebrities seen who are notable from film and TV include Meryl Streep (Mother Courage), Martin Short (Fame Becomes Me), Ed Harris (Wrecks), Blythe Danner (Suddenly Last Summer), Bill Nighy (The Vertical Hour), Julianne Moore (The Vertical Hour), Kristin Chenoweth (The Apple Tree), Wallace Shawn (The Fever), Alfred Molina (Howard Katz), Ethan Hawke (The Coast of Utopia), Jennifer Ehle (The Coast of Utopia), Billy Crudup (The Coast of Utopia), John Mahoney (Prelude to a Kiss), Philip Semour Hoffman (Jack Goes Boating), Kevin Spacey (A Moon for the Misbegotten), Jeff Daniels (Blackbird), David Hyde Pierce (Curtains), Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon), Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon), Angela Lansbury (Deuce), Marian Seldes (Deuce), and Vanessa Redgrave (The Year of Magical Thinking).

"110 in the Shade"

2007-05-12T17:57:00.000-04:00

In the last few days before returning home to Pennsylvania, I had the opportunity to see 110 in the Shade, the last Roundabout show of the season, twice at Studio 54. I had very much been anticipating this production, mostly because I'd never before seen Audra McDonald live on stage. I had very little familiarity with the show, so I wasn't sure at all what to expect. I was able to extend my stay in New York by a few extra days with special permission from NYU Housing in order to finish up my term as business intern at Roundabout and to volunteer at the 110 in the Shade opening night, so 110 was very much a major part of my last week in New York.

As a show, 110 in the Shade doesn't have the makings of a "hit." It's a simple tale about a self-described "plain" girl, Lizzie Curry, who is caught between her allegiance to her father (played by Broadway legend John Cullum) and brothers and the hearts of two very different men - the sheriff, File (Christopher Innvar) and a wandering con man named Starbuck (Steve Kazee).

It's a simple story with simple songs, but there were several really key elements to the production that make it stand out as one of the highlights of the season to me. First and foremost was Audra McDonald, a beautiful woman who manages to pull off playing a plain country gal thanks in part to Santo Loquasto's humble Western-style costumes. Even more so, it's her wonderful acting skills that keep Lizzie an interesting multi-dimensional character despite the limits of an old-fashioned book. She sings beautifully and makes you believe she's right at home on a Western farm. As File, Innvar is appropriately buttoned-up, and Kazee plays Starbuck with just the right amount of whimsy to make you believe that Lizzie would fall under his spell.

John Cullum is also particularly effective. I'd seen him before in Urinetown, and he was appropriately devilish then. But here, in a much more restrained role, he's absolutely winning as H.C. Curry, Lizzie's father. He's able to give his character the appropriate amounts of shading for an audience to believe he's fooled himself and his daughter with fanciful talk all their lives and still believe that he's got the best of intentions all along.

The design elements of the show are also among the highlights of the production for me. The set, featuring a sparse wooden turntable and a giant moving elliptical sun, is simple but beautiful, able to morph appropriately throughout the production and accommodate the quick succession of scene changes, aided by the scorching warm tones used by lighting designer Christopher Akerlind.

Despite all of what I have to say about how slight the show is, however, the music is still beautiful and appropriately simple in concordance with the plot, featuring standouts like "Old Maid," "Raunchy," and "Wonderful Music" that highlight a cast of wonderful singers.

Overall, though the show is a bit out of date, it's still worth seeing. Its "old maid" themes may seem antiquated, but they still speak to the lonely hearts of today. First and foremost, it's Audra McDonald and the beautiful design of the production, though, that should draw audiences in.

Fore!

2007-05-06T01:58:00.000-04:00

So tonight I went to see Radio Golf, the last of the plays in August Wilson's ten-play "Pittsburgh Cycle" chronicling the African-American experience throughout each decade of the twentieth century. After being introduced to August Wilson shortly after his death when I attended the renaming of the Virginia Theatre as the August Wilson Theatre (the first Broadway theatre to be named after an African-American), I also had a class on Wilson last semester, during which we attended three other Wilson plays at the Signature Theatre Company (Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, King Hedley II). Wilson is one of my absolute favorite playwrights, so I was very much anticipating Radio Golf.

I'd read the play in advance and was aware of the way that it relates to Gem of the Ocean, the play in Wilson's cycle set during the 1910s, but seeing Radio Golf, which is set in the 1990s, was a much more poignant experience than I'd expected. When reading the play as part of my Wilson class, I felt that it provided a satisfying conclusion to his cycle, and seeing the play only reinforced that notion - the actors do a terrific job breathing life into a play that, while well-written, is more straightforward than some of his other plays, closer to the work of Eugene O'Neill.

The play focuses on Pittsburgh politician Harmond Wilks, who's seeking election as the mayor of the city. Aided by his wife, an up-and-coming publicist, and his best friend Roosevelt Hicks, he's building a name for himself. Besides for his political career, he's also helping to spearhead a development project entailing the demolition of the house at 1839 Wylie. Here lies the central conflict of the play. Local Elder Joseph Barlow wants to reclaim the land his mother, Aunt Ester Tyler owned, and handyman Sterling Johnson is willing to stand behind him.

As Harmond, Harry Lennix provides an emotional center for the play, but Anthony Chisholm is the reason to see the play. His Elder Barlow is full of gusto and gives the play the sense of historical groundedness that is so essential to the text. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent, aided by realistic sets by David Gallo that succeed in presenting Wilks's office as a moral center in the midst of a blighted community.

Ritual and ancestry play an integral role in Radio Golf as in many of Wilson's other works. There is nothing as grandiose as the "City of Bones" scene in Gem of the Ocean, the 1910s Wilson play that was the last Wilson play to reach Broadway before this one, but watch how Wilson uses paint within the play, and it's easy to see how Wilson feels that even modern characters haven't truly strayed from their African/ritualistic roots.

While having experienced other Wilson plays is certainly helpful before seeing Radio Golf, I don't imagine it would impede someone from enjoying the play. It's perhaps my favorite new play of the season, and I'd encourage theatregoers who may even be a bit skeptical about August Wilson to check out Radio Golf. Despite the fact that Wilson gears his drama toward the African-American community, there are pleasures to be had by all people in the intricacies of his richly woven human dramas.

Illegally Magical Heights

2007-05-03T23:53:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've checked in, but there are plenty shows I've seen that need to be reviewed!

In the Heights

I'd read the reviews for In the Heights, a new off-Broadway musical about the return of Nina, a freshman at Stanford in California, for her first summer back home in Brooklyn Heights, Manhattan, but what I initially read about the show didn't really impress me. In a last-ditch effort to see a few more musicals before returning home for the summer, however, I made a trip to the 37Arts theatre complex to check out this earnest little musical which is rumored for a Broadway transfer (we'll see how that pans out). Besides for the question of whether or not Nina will return to school in California, the other modest but captivating dilemmae of the show include the love life of local shopkeeper Usnavi, played by the show's creator Lin-Manuel Miranda (at the center of the photo above and at right), and the lottery win of Abuela Claudia, Usnavi's grandmother and the earth mother figure of the neighborhood, who relies on her overwhelming store of pacienca y fe - patience and faith.

It's an extraordinarily energetic show, with a score full of Latin- and hip hop-inspired songs by creator and star Lin-Manuel Miranda, who has an unconventional underdog charm about him. The set by Anna Louizos, another great asset of the show, is evocative of a vibrant neighborhood and its storefronts, a lovely likeness of the Brooklyn Bridge featured prominently in the background.

Though the show is a bit loud and it's hard to really take in every lyric of the show, it has a well-meaning quality about it similar to Rent. Its story is easy enough to follow, and I could see the show appealing to just about any urban young person - provided you could get many of these urban young people to go to the theatre in the first place. It's certainly a production worthy of a home on Broadway where it could appeal to a broader audience, but the people who made the brief (but tourist-unfriendly) trek over to the West Side seemed to enjoy what they saw!

The Year of Magical Thinking

The one play that I wanted to see this year was The Year of Magical Thinking. Joan Didion is one of my favorite authors, David Hare is one of my favorite playwrights, and Vanessa Redgrave is one of the actors I most admire, so I took the plunge and bought myself a second row seat. With Didion adapting her Award-winning memoir for the stage, Hare directing, and Redgrave starring, what could go wrong?

The answer: not a lot. But something at the play's heart. It's hard for me to place exactly what I found unsatisfying about The Year of Magical Thinking. It's a very well-shaped one-woman play, expressly calculated to move the audience and cut to the emotional core of the grieving process. The play is about the character of Joan Didion (played by Vanessa Redgrave - confused?) and the way she copes with the death of her husband and the illness and subsequent death of her daughter Quintana. Redgrave delivers most of the dialogue from a deck chair at center stage, ploughing through the material like a real trooper. For the most part she succeeds, and the production that surrounds her is often impressive.

While the sets by Bob Crowley were evocative of the somber mood of the show, they were ultimately a distraction to the proceedings. The show's single costume by Ann Roth was lovely and flattering. The lighting of Jean Kalman deserves special mention, particularly during a stunning scene in which Redgrave abandons her sitting position to wander in the darkness, her figure illuminated by the flashes of light from nearby fireworks, a wonderful evocation of Didion's fractured thinking - the punctures of memories that arise and fall away as quickly as bursts of light.

This is where Redgrave's acting succeeds most - when she is most vulnerable to the snares of memory and "magical thinking," a psychological term describing the "what if" thinking of a grieving individual. There are icy moments when Redgrave seems utterly caught by the "vortex" effect she describes in the play, as if she's performing the play for the very first time and has suddenly fallen prey to her memories.

Ultimately, however, I'm unable to call the evening an unwavering success. Though many of the show's parts are exquisite, there is something I can't entirely put my finger on that's missing from the whole of the show. Though Joan Didion has written a play that is certainly well-crafted, she has, to me at least, missed the heart of the subject. Never once was I left discomfited, and this was a play where I went in expecting to be absolutely rended by the material. At times, the play even achieves a level of humor utterly absent from the source material, and while I wasn't so much bothered by the lighter feel of the play, I wished Didion would have dug deeper during the play's darker, more stream-of-conscious-influenced moments (especially a particularly powerful "vortex" moment in the play).

Overall, it was great to see Vanessa Redgrave work her magic, and the play was different enough from the book to hold my interest thoughout, but I left the play unmoved. Guiltily enough, I had a far better time at Deuce, a play by which I was genuinely moved despite its far inferior quality and craftmanship. Both plays featured equally effective actresses, but there was something about the earnestness of the characters in Deuce, a play similarly focused on the topic of aging and death, that I never got from the "cool customer" Didion character at the heart of of The Year of Magical Thinking.

Legally Blonde

When I first heard that the 2001 film Legally Blonde, which starred then up-and-coming Reese Witherspoon, was being adapted into a musical, I cringed. Why, God, why? I lamented. Broadway is already so rife with movie adaptations and jukebox musicals - write something original already! Still, the show's music was being co-written by Laurence O'Keefe, composer of the hilarious off-Broadway musial Bat Boy, and his songwriting partner Nell Benjamin, so I kept my hopes up.

It turns out this show is an absolute winner. In the vein of long-runner Hairspray and High Fidelity, the latest of the movie adaptation musicals to open (and close) on Broadway, Legally Blonde utilizes a high energy pop-rock score to tell a familiar story. There is an earnestness, however, behind this production that isn't always on display in movie-to-musical adaptations. We as audience members really do get behind brainy sorority blonde Elle Woods as she learns to embrace who she is.

At the heart of Legally Blonde is relative newcomer Laura Bell Bundy (featured at right), best known to little girl Broadway fans as one of the original standbys for Glinda in the musical Wicked. Bundy is an excellent choice for the role of Elle Woods, a sorority girl who follows her ex-boyfriend from UCLA to Harvard Law School in order to win him over with her charm and social prowess. Soon enough, Elle learns it's going to take more thinking and less drinking to win her way into the arms of her man. Bundy plays her character's highs and lows with high energy, proving herself worthy of a leading role in a musical. She has a certain perky charm that even succeeds in exceeding that of Reese Witherspoon (in my unpopular opinion).

Along the way, Elle meets Emmett, a Harvard grad who helps her along the way. Emmett is played excellently by Christian Borle, who never lets his geeky character descend into caricature. Emmett's song "Chip on My Shoulder," about his drive to better himself despite a checkered past, is one of the highlights of the show, a bouncy ballad that proves that the show may be full of pop songs, but it's still able to maintain a quality of groundedness.

In the role of Paulette, portrayed hilariously on screen by Jennifer Coolidge, Orfeh falls a bit short, failing to rise to the comedic heights of Coolidge, but still she's a talented performer and a winning personality. Richard H. Blake, Kate Shindle, Nikki Snelson, and Broadway vet Michael Rupert provide excellent support, and Leslie Kritzer, Annaleigh Ashford, and DeQuina Moore are highlights as the "Greek" (get it?) chorus in Elle's mind.

The production that backs this fabulous cast is well-oiled and stunning. Directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, the show's production numbers are bright and bouncy, punctuated by snap, crackle, and pop hip hop dance moves that play out in harmony with bright over-the-top sets by Hairspray designer David Rockwell. Though the musical, like the movie, never takes itself too seriously, its characters are always endearing. Mitchell at times allows the show to descend into gooey Hollywood hilarity, but never for long enough to lose the audience (the closest to this disaster was a courtroom scene in which Elle attempts to peg the pool boy witness as either "gay or European" - funny, but too drawn out).

Overall, Legally Blonde is a return to form for the movie-to-musical genre. It's sometimes over-the-top and sometimes lacking in the lyrics department, but try to stop yourself from having an absolute blast. And, thanks to the talented cast and more than adequate book by Heather Hach, you actually care about the characters - how about that? Spring Awakening is still my pick for Best Musical, but omigod you guys, I think I just found the most fun musical of the season. If only there were a Tony Award category for that!

In other news...

Last Saturday, I went with a gaggle of friends to Coney Island, which was lovely. It was so nice to be by the ocean for a day, and the weather was beautiful. We saw the freak show, which was certainly a unique "theatrical" experience.

I also saw two good movies: The Lives of Others and Year of the Dog. Both come highly recommended.

Summer is fast approaching (less than 5 days left), but I'm still soldiering on! I'm seeing August Wilson's Radio Golf tomorrow night and then 110 in the Shade on Sunday and also on its opening night, Wednesday, May 9!

Does "Deuce" double-fault? Advantage Lansbury.

2007-04-17T22:56:00.000-04:00

I don't know any of Terrence McNally's prior work, but I'd been hearing bad things about Some Men, his play currently at 2nd Stage and Deuce, the new star vehicle for Marian Seldes and for Angela Lansbury's long-awaited return to Broadway. I'd heard such negative things about Deuce's first week in previews, that I was afraid I would be totally unsatisfied with seeing the play, which I had so wanted to be good from the moment I heard the cast announced and the subject matter - women's doubles tennis, which I'm quite fond of. The play is in previews, so what I saw was a work in progress, but I think it's too late to solve some of the play's problems.

The play concerns a women's doubles team, Midge Barker (Seldes) and Leona Mullen (Lansbury), who have reunited in the stands of the U.S. Open to be honored for their record-breaking careers. Accompanied by the distracting pops of tennis balls and the constant snapping of heads in order to follow the game, the two partners begin to speak about the past. Leona is reluctant; the past is behind her. But somehow the two can't help themselves, and soon enough it's as good as if they were back in the clubhouse 30 years ago. The two recall their marriages and their careers, which stopped just short of a Grand Slam title when Leona double-faulted at the Australian Open. Regret and remembrance are the themes of the evening. This is set out clearly to start with and carried throughout.

And when the two women are left to bandy their dialogue back and forth on their lackluster tennis court set, the play is fulfilling. There's nothing too noteworthy about McNally's dialogue, but watching Lansbury and Seldes go head-to-head transcends what they're given to say. They discuss how tennis used to be, before corporate sponsorship and the homogenization of the game. They discuss lesbianism in tennis and the great trailblazers for women in the sport. Sometimes things become a little too sentimental, but the audience is watching a play starring the legendary Angela Lansbury, who is back on Broadway for the first time in twenty years and may (who knows) never return again, so sentimentalism seems appropriate.

By the end of the play, Angela Lansbury, I realized, had made me believe her character. In the penultimate moments of the play, Lansbury calls out to one of the young players not to let her mistakes become her lifelong regrets, and, as I felt a few tears accumulate in my eyes, I realized I was crying for Angela Lansbury's character, not the actress, as I had feared.

Where the play fails is in introducing too many superfluous secondary characters. The play is about the doubles partners and no one else. McNally brings in two sports commentators, Ryan and Kelly, whose names I hadn't come to know well enough to recall them off-hand. They delivered stock tennis commentary in order to show the contrast between the new ways of tennis and the old. Boring. Also introduced is "An Admirer," played by the likable Michael Mulheren. He's amiable enough, but his purpose is simply to be the fan who comments on how there will never be anyone quite like these two women. Unless cast members are unexpectedly fired before opening night, there's no way to fix the problem of these set piece characters. Their diversion of attention wasn't enough to ruin the play for me, just a nuisance, but the play would be much tighter without an interruption to the build in the relationship between Midge and Leona. Their histories are strong enough and the topics discussed are pertinent enough that we don't need outside characters to tell us what we should be thinking. We're already thinking it.

As the lights dimmed on the play, the final line of dialogue is delivered by the character of the admirer, and it's a line specifically written to plumb the founts of audience tears, and it works, or at least it did for me and for the woman behind me. This time around, I felt I had been slightly cheated as an audience member, ribbed along by an easy sentimental punch in the kisser, but I was happy enough that the play had even gone so far as to move me that much - once genuinely and once contrivedly - that it didn't bother me too much.

I have to say, despite some flaws in the writing, Deuce was still a fulfilling night at the theatre. With lesser actresses, the play would most likely be a dud, but it has some important things to say about aging and how we treat older people in our society that should not be overlooked. These subjects could have been plumbed immeasurably more, but what we get as an audience is still thought-provoking. In the end, it's a chance to see Angela Lansbury back where she belongs on Broadway. And in that department, Deuce doesn't double-fault.

I got the chance to meet the lovely Ms. Lansbury after the show, and she was just as charming as you'd imagine. She looked quite spritely and was dressed in a fetching tweed jacket. I joked that we should have brought tennis balls for her to sign (a reference to a line in the play), and she came back with, "Don't think I would've signed it." Made me laugh. She's a class act.

On another note, I went to see the "Friends of Roundabout" reading of Christopher Durang's play The Marriage of Bette and Boo at the Laura Pels Theatre on Monday. The reading starred Sigourney Weaver, Tyne Daly, T.R. Knight, Jame Naughton, Dick Latessa, and others, all talented. I have to say it was one of the funniest plays I've experienced in a while, and the audience seemed pretty uniformly to be loving it. The acting was great all around, with particular merit to be given to Heather Goldenhersh's quirky performance and Broadway legend Dick Latessa's side-splitting impersonation of a strip of bacon a frying pan. The cast was uniformly excellent, and I'd be surprised not to see this gem of a play on one of Roundabout's upcoming season rosters.

"Journey's End"

2007-04-15T18:46:00.000-04:00

John Ahlin as Trotter, Stark Sands as Raleigh, Boyd Gaines as Osborne, and Hugh Dancy as Stanhope in Journey's End. Shown is the bulk of the set, which remains surrounded entirely by darkness throughout.

Several people had extolled the virtues of Journey's End on Broadway - friends, teachers, and theatre professionals. All that I knew about the play, written by unknown playwright R.C. Sheriff in 1928, was that it was about World War I soldiers in the trenches. Last night, I went on a whim. I hadn't been too eager, since I knew it was going to be depressing, but sometimes you just have to bear it for the sake of theatre.

The play focuses on a group of British soldiers fighting the Germans in 1918 during World War I. Second Lieutenant Raleigh (Stark Sands) reports for duty under his long-time schoolmate and hero Captain Stanhope (Hugh Dancy), reunited against all odds within the military structure, especially improbably because Raleigh's sister is waiting for Stanhope to return home to enter into a potential engagement. The men are left to wait for an imminent attack by the Germans, counting down the hours and attempting to distract themselves with books and talk of home (some of the most effective moments of the play). A rivalry also presents itself between Stanhope and Raleigh, who, Stanhope fears, may report home to his potential fiance about his constant drunkenness. As the action propels at breakneck speed, Stanhope's second-in-command, Lieutenant Osborne (the inherently charming Boyd Gaines), and Raleigh are chosen to conduct a raid that spells almost certain death for the both of them. What proceeds is terrifically powerful, aided by the near-perfect integration of theatrical elements that combine to present this squalid dugout.

Talk about PTSD: Post-Theatrical Stress Disorder. The play absolutely shook me to the core, physically and emotionally (you have to see it to believe it; I know it sounds silly). It's a play that absolutely needs to be experienced by those who love theatre. I generally hate wartime dramas, so I was most especially leery, but, like many works of art, the play essentially boils down to a study of humanity. I felt that I had gotten to know the characters extremely well by the end of the play, which is an underrated virtue in a work for theatre, where oftentimes stagecraft and design overpower emphasis on truthfulness.

While I consider myself a sophisticated theatregoer, I found myself succumbing to the same sorts of celebrity obssession that a lot of theatregoers nowadays seem to indulge in over the past few weeks, and Journey's End was an absolute shock to my system. It's nothing big or splashy, just sparse (but effective) sets and lighting (and especially sound effects) and a group of exquisite actors. Two thirds of the stage were taken up by darkness, and the audience is left in the dark just about as much as the actors onstage are, waiting by candlelight for the bombs that sound in the distance. It's unusual for me to even taken note of the sound design for a play, but for this one, the sound effects were absolutely spectacular and had a direct effect on the impact of the piece as a whole.

Word of mouth should be propelling this show, which has been running to shockingly small audiences (only the orchestra was full the night I saw it - a Saturday). For the most part, an average of about 35% of the house is filled over the course of a week. If you're a student and have $20 (cheaper than most rush policies), go take advantage of the rush policy. The seats in the first few rows provide an absolutely powerful experience, and you don't have to get there well before the show to get them. Take my word for it, especially if you're sitting nearby the speakers.

Go see Journey's End! Hands down the absolute most visceral theatrical experience on Broadway this season.

Another busy week: "Exits and Entrances," "All the Wrong Reasons," and "LoveMusik"

2007-04-13T19:34:00.000-04:00

This has been one long week.

On Tuesday, I went to the Met (museum) with Ryan, who was an excellent tour guide. We saw the new exhibition, Barcelona and Modernity: Gaudi to Dali. It was quite cool. I hadn't known much about Joan Miro, and the exhibit introduced me to him.

That night, since I was already on the Upper East Side, I decided to go to 59E59 Theaters to see the new play by Athol Fugard, Exits and Entrances. I hadn't been familiar with Fugard, besides for knowing that he wrote the play "MASTER HAROLD"...and the boys. Having read the favorable reviews of this latest offering, I bought a copy of the play and read it and enjoyed it. Seeing it live was even better.

The play stars William Dennis Hurley as the Playwright, a character modeled after Fugard in his early years. The Playwright, a South African with dreams of an integrated South African theatre, befriends aging actor Andre Huguenot, played with great skill by Morlan Higgins, whose career is coming to an end just as his is skyrocketing. The play's subject matter -- the older mentor and his youthful charge -- is familiar, but the treatment is sensitive and well-written, at times quite poetic. It's definitely worth checking out, especially for those considering a career in theatre.

On Wednesday, I went to see John Fugelsang's one-man show All the Wrong Reasons at NYTW. I had no idea what to expect going into it. At first, his personality struck me as grating, but I got used to him over the course of the show and ultimately found much of what he said quite funny. The show's narrative also took quite a few unexpected turns that made the evening more interesting. He talked mostly about religion, politics, and his family, creating a pretty compelling portrait of his parents and their decision to turn away from their vows of celibacy to have him. It's not something I'd run out to see if I had to pay for it, but I enjoyed it considering I got a comp ticket.

Thursday was my most interesting evening of theatregoing this week. When a new Hal Prince show comes to Broadway, it's an event. The man, who has produced and directed more than a dozen landmark shows (a good number of original productions of Sondheim musicals, Evita, The Phantom of the Opera, Cabaret, and more), is a legend, having won a record-breaking 21 Tony Awards for directing and producing and in special categories (the Lifetime Achievement Award last year, for example). LoveMusik at Manhattan Theatre Club is his latest project as director.

The team assembled for the project is extraordinary: Hal Prince, book writer Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy, The Last Night of Ballyhoo, Parade), and stars Michael Cerveris and Donna Murphy.

The show focuses on the life of composer Kurt Weill (Cerveris) -- most famous for composing "Mack the Knife" and The Threepenny Opera -- and his wife, actress Lotte Lenya (Murphy), detailing their life together and their complicated relationship, as well as the highs and lows of their careers. It's technically a "jukebox musical," using Weill's songs to tell the story despite the fact that jukeboxes weren't really around (I don't think) when Weill's music was written.

The scenery (by Beowulf Boritt) is particularly imaginative and works well with the sylistic staging of Prince, who ventures to tell the tale of Weill, a frequent collaborator of Bertolt Brecht's, in a style similar to how Brecht's works are often presented, using a proscenium within a proscenium to alienate the audience from the proceedings and utilizing a variety of methods of visual storytelling to change things up a bit. As the piece moves along and the couple move to America, the piece becomes more and more "mainstream," turning away from the odd style of Brecht's works toward a more classic Broadway style.

The cast does an excellent job. Cerveris is wonderful as Weill, though Donna Murphy absolutely steals the show as Lenya. It's a role unlike any other she's played, and she may just give Christine Ebersole a run for her money in the race for Best Actress this year.

As for what needed to be fixed, the biggest thing is that the show needs some tightening. Last night was only the first preview, so the show started late and the intermission ran long. That's not out of the ordinary for a first preview, but other than that there were a few too many songs, some of which didn't really move the plot forward and probably could have been excised. The book was, for the most part, very smart and effective. The sound quality also varied through the evening.

It was an evening of ups and downs. Overall, though, for a first preview, I think LoveMusik is going to be an absolute artistic success. It remains to be seen whether audience will really catch on (I doubt it), but it definitely deserves to be seen, probably even more so in a few weeks, when the show is a little bit tighter. I'm thinking of revisiting it before I go home for the summer to see how the show will change between now and when it's frozen.

Anyway, as I said, it's been a busy week. I'm looking forward to relaxing some this weekend.

"Frost/Nixon"

2007-04-06T00:21:00.000-04:00

After taking the night off from theatre last night to watch The Departed, to which I felt rather indifferent (I much preferred Babel as Best Picture nominees go), I high-tailed it back up to the theatre district tonight to rush Frost/Nixon at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre.

This show had many promising things going for it to my mind: a script by Peter Morgan (who wrote the screenplay for The Queen), Michael Sheen (who played Blair in The Queen) as talk show host David Frost, and the legendary Frank Langella as Richard Nixon.

That said, the show was ultimately a worthwhile experience, but there were plenty of things I found lacking. The show centers around washed-up British talk show host David Frost, who hopes to revive his career by conducting a six-hour interview with former President Richard Nixon on national television. I hadn't known going into the play what a big deal this interview was at the time, especially since I don't immediately recognize the name David Frost, and it was interesting to hear what the play had to say about the impact of the interview, in which Frost gets Nixon to admit his shortcomings and failures in office and essentially apologize to the American people.

At first, I wasn't sure that I'd be able to accept Frank Langella as Nixon. I'd already seen another Nixon-themed play this year (Nixon's Nixon at MCC downtown), and the man playing Nixon in that production had a close physical resemblance to the former President. Langella has a more lanky frame and a longer face, but as the play goes along, his commitment to Nixon's intellectual and emotional misgivings, as well as his acute attention to Nixon's verbal cues, help to allow the audience to go along for the ride. He ultimately gives an extraordinarily nuanced performances, managing to transcend the label of "mimic" and tap into the pain that Nixon hid behind his defensive outer shell. He and Sheen, who's incredibly personable in the role of Frost, are the reasons to catch this show above all else.

Making the most of a drab 1970s set and overcoming the relatively distracting use of a 6-by-6 set of television screens on which short scenic segments and the interview sessions in progress are shown, the cast makes the most of a script that, after an overlong segment of exposition in the beginning, fails to pick up sufficient steam and never really transcends the level of docudrama. Stephen Kunken, as anti-Nixon writer Jim Reston, is given the role of narrator for much of the play, and, though he's an amiable enough presence, the use of this device grounds the piece awkwardly in a static, overly calculated sort of way. The play picks up steam as Sheen and Langella face off in front of the cameras, but even these more exciting sequences can't ultimately make up for the shaky start that Frost/Nixon gets off to.

Bottom line: Frost/Nixon is worth seeing if you're a fan of these actors, as they really do a formidable job in their respective roles, but it's not a play to see if one is looking to marvel at great writing.

Hanging "Curtains," Hello "Blackbird"

2007-04-03T22:45:00.000-04:00

I'm on a theatrical roll, and boy is it exciting. Nothing excites me more than live theatre, good, bad, or mediocre. I'm here to report that, of the last two shows I've seen, one fell in the "good" category (Blackbird at Manhattan Theatre Club) and one in the "mediocre" (Curtains on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre).

In an effort to see three famous movie actors on three consecutive nights (after Philip Seymour Hoffman in Jack Goes Boating on Thursday and Kevin Spacey in A Moon for the Misbegotten on Friday), I did student rush on Saturday night with Austin for Blackbird starring Jeff Daniels and up-and-coming actress Alison Pill.

All I knew about the play was that it was about pederasty and that it won the Olivier Award for Best New Play last year. Swayed by the latter and by the two actors, both of whom I've admired in past projects, I took a leap, and boy was it worth it.

The play centers around Ray, played by Jeff Daniels, a 50-something-year-old office worker who gets an unexpected break room visit from Una, with whom he carried out an illicit affair when she was only 12 years old. As played by Daniels, Ray, a character who would be easy to flat-out villanize, is, thanks to the astute direction of Joe Mantello, humanized and given an inner life. We can at least identify his motivations, even if we don't condone them. As Una, Pill, whom I loved last season in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, gave a wonderful performance as a broken girl of a woman left to pick up the pieces of her life in the aftermath of this relationship that, though she needs so badly to turn away from, she ultimately finds herself still entranced with.

What was ultimately so great about the play was that it was ambiguous enough that my roommate and I were able to have a really heated debate about the ethics of the situation at hand and the characters' motivations. In that regard, it reminded me of Doubt by John Patrick Shanley, another show that I lauded for its ability to spark a social conversation.

The audience at the preview performance I attended seemed to be mostly older subscribers, and I think it's a shame this show won't reach a wider audience. It's a show that belongs Broadway, I think, particularly since it has something so different to say. No matter, the student rush policy allows those with an ID to buy tickets for $25. I recommend people check it out.

On the Broadway message board All That Chat, one poster recently posed the question, "What's David Hyde Pierce doing these days?" Another poster's response was, "A new musical called Drapes," which was followed up with, "Miss it and your life hangs in the valence."

Drapes could be the alternate title of Curtains, the new Kander & Ebb musical that recently opened on Broadway starring David Hyde Pierce of Frasier fame and Broadway vet Debra Monk. Though the sets are lovely, the costumes fine, and the cast superb, something is missing behind the pretty packaging.

Mostly: the music. Kander & Ebb, the pair that brought us such Broadway staples as Cabaret and Chicago have written a score that recalls other scores, some theirs and some not, and ultimately ends up falling flat. Though there are toe-tapping moments, they never pay off. Where are those classic Kander & Ebb vamps we're used to? In Curtains, they're nowhere to be found. One has to admire that there's artistry in the attention to the lyrics here, but the cleverness in the rhymes never translates to genuine storytelling and sentiment. To quote a Damn Yankees lyric, first and foremost, "you gotta have heart."

The cast, especially the bold and brassy Debra Monk, keeps the show going at a reasonable pace in this murder mystery musical. We're meant to care about the suspence ratcheted up surrounding the murders of several key players in an out-of-town tryout of a musical in Boston, investigated by musical theatre-loving Detective Cioffi (Pierce) but the plot lacks in suspence and too many of the book's jokes fall flat and rely too heavily on tired cliches.

The closest Curtains comes to achieving the genuine thrill of musical theatre is in the fantastical dance and romance dream sequence, "A Tough Act to Follow," which features David Hyde Pierce and Jill Paice in an earnest and artful duet that came closest to whetting my appetite for some good old fashioned musical theatre magic. Don't get me wrong, I love plenty of different forms of musical theatre. This season, I was entralled most with unconventional musicals like Grey Gardens and Spring Awakening, but with this team assembled for this particular show, my expectations were high and specific -- for some classy, brassy Broadway fun -- and they were most certainly left unfulfilled. This is by no means a bad show, but there's something missing behind the curtains -- maybe a heart.

Playing theatre catch-up

2007-03-31T00:58:00.000-04:00

After the winter doldrums, during which I saw very little theatre (comparatively) and experienced more than a few slight mental hangups, the grass is green again and the mercury is rising.

Only appropos in the face of such lovely weather is a return to my voracious theatregoing. Now that the theatre season is really picking up its pace in the rollercoaster ride toward Tony season, I'm about to get back in the saddle and start seeing a lot more plays.

On Wednesday, I went to Lincoln Center to attend the latest installment in their Platform Series, a talk with Christopher Shinn, writer of the subtle and heartbreaking Dying City at Lincoln Center. I had previously seen Michael John LaChiusa and Sarah Ruhl at this Platform Series, and it was nice to see Shinn, particularly since he's such a young talent (and I need to learn how to get as far in the theatre world as quickly as he did). The moderator for the discussion was John Guare, playwright of Six Degrees of Separation, who was very charming and witty. Shinn is a great talent. I'm currently making my way through his book of plays, Where Do We Live, and it's pretty riveting stuff -- definitely recommended to avid playgoers.

Thursday night, I went to see Jack Goes Boating at the Public Theater, one of my favorite venues to see plays (I've also seen See What I Wanna See, Satellites, Stuff Happens, Wrecks, and Durango there in their various spaces). The play starred Philip Seymour Hoffman (Capote, Magnolia, Boogie Nights) and Daphne Rubin-Vega (original Mimi in Rent), as well as John Ortiz and Beth Cole. It was a pretty slight play overall. The actors made the most of a rather negligible text, but they did a good job. Gimmicks (like nervous throat-clearing on the part of Hoffman) that could have been obnoxious were actually endearing. Ultimately, the play didn't strike me as anything all that special, but it was charming and innofensive enough, and it was nice to see two of my favorite actors on-stage (Rubin-Vega was also excellent in Bernarda Alba at Lincoln Center last year).

Tonight, Friday, I saw A Moon for the Misbegotten on Broadway. I was desperate to see another play tonight, and I went to see the show on a whim after striking out at rush or standing room for The Year of Magical Thinking and Curtains. I had really been looking forward to seeing this show, particularly since I've never seen anything by Eugene O'Neill prior to this show. It's a production by the Old Vic in London (Kevin Spacey is their artistic director) that has now transferred to Broadway, starring Kevin Spacey, Eve Best, and Colm Meany. I found the first act pretty lackluster, but things really picked up for the second act, which was perhaps one of the most effective pieces of theatrical writing I've ever seen. When Spacey and Best go head-to-head, steeped in their insecurities beneath the "damned moon," which Spacey's character, Jim Tyrone, describes as "an ad for the past," these actors give off unbelievable sparks. The performance I attended was only the first preview, but these actors had obviously already delved incredibly deeply into these roles, having played them before. It was definitely worth the student rate of $26.50 to see these spectacular talents take on O'Neill's masterpiece.

Tomorrow, I'm thinking of seeing Blackbird at Manhattan Theatre Club with Jeff Daniels and Alison Pill. Whether that ends up happening or not remains to be seen, but I'll definitely be reporting back more often about my theatrical experiences now that things are heating up.

Most exciting is the fact that I got my ticket for The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion starring Vanessa Redgrave and directed by David Hare for May 2! Second row. Jealous? You should be.

Tata for now.

"Dying City," "Prelude to a Kiss"

2007-03-10T11:42:00.000-05:00

So, I've been quite busy lately, between midterms and an unusually busy week and finishing up the second of my short stories for my creative writing class.

Thursday was my busiest day in a while, and I managed to fit in a trip to Dying City at Lincoln Center Theatre. I had heard good things about the play, and the New York Times review was wonderful. I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The play is by Christopher Shinn, 31, whose plays, have already received a good number of productions both in London and in New York (this play originated at the Royal Court in London). The play is about the widow of a soldier in Iraq, played by Rebecca Brooksher, who is visited, a year after her husband's death, by her husband's identical twin brother, played by Pablo Schreiber, who also plays her husband in flashback segments. The play utilizes time and space excellently within the confines of the set: a sparse apartment on a slowly revolving turntable.

Though the conceit may sound a bit heavy-handed or cliched, Shinn manages to sidestep the possible pitfalls with a particularly good sense for the spaces between people where things are left unsaid. The actors, as well, manage to imbue their characters with the necessary tautness of grieving people without bypassing an occasional lapse into wistfulness and remembrance.

All in all, it's a play I recommend highly by a playwright I'll be keeping an eye on.

Last Thursday, I went to see Prelude to a Kiss by Craig Lucas, the latest show at Roundabout Theatre Company. It's a show that the company put into production at breakneck speed after their proposed production of Harold Pinter's Old Times starring Alan Rickman collapsed.

Anyway, I had no idea what the play was about, and the only cast member I really recognized was John Mahoney, so I went into the show with an unusually open mind.

All in all, I really enjoyed it! I knew it was a romantic comedy, and it was actually ultimately a lot funnier than I had expected based on the rather dour poster art. The play is about a young couple (played with excellent chemistry by Annie Parisse and Alan Tudyk), who, after a strange event at their wedding, experience an unusual supernatural occurrence that leads them on an unexpected emotional (and amusingly physical) journey.

John Mahoney as the Old Man (pictured at left), a mysterious character within the play, gives the most touching of the evening's performances and deserves particular recognition.

What I liked most about the play was that I didn't quite know what to expect and that it managed to include a hopeful ending, while remaining honest and avoiding saccharinity. It seemed like the perfect show to see on a date or if one's in the mood for something a little lighter.

It's been a while

2007-02-27T23:47:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I last posted. Much has happened.

Follies in Concert rocked my world. The Coast of Utopia bored me beyond belief (besides for the riveting performance of Jennifer Ehle as Natalie Herzen in part two, entitled Shipwreck, featured at right with Brian F O'Byrne).

King Hedley II at Signature Theatre Company was similarly impressive. It's been a particularly good season for August Wilson, and I've still yet to see Radio Golf, which will be coming soon to the Cort Theatre on Broadway with Tonya Pinkins.

I've been hopelessly addicted to the comforts of Joni Mitchell lately as well. I got a few more of her albums, each of which is growing on me. She's such a wonderful and varied artist.

I've also been to a few poetry readings, and a freelance "family style" rapper rapped to me about heterosexual anal sex ("the pole and the hole") in the middle of Union Square, filling in my name and clothing in order to impress me. It didn't work.

The Follies concert at City Center, featuring Victoria Clark and Victor Garber (older couple shown above), as well as Michael McGrath and Donna Murphy, was absolutely spectacular. The show, with a score by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman, tells the interweaving stories of characters' present and past selves at a reunion for follies girls as their theatre is about to be razed and turned into a parking lot. I hadn't been fully aware of the integration of the device of having characters' older and younger selves playing out scenes concurrently, and I have to say it really rocked my world. Very fascinating and emotionally volatile!

Otherwise, up to my same quick-witted tricks.

Much to catch y'all up on

2007-02-10T17:10:00.000-05:00

So last Thursday, I saw the final dress rehearsal of Howard Katz at Roundabout with Emma. It starred Alfred Molina and is by the writer of Closer and the screenplay for Notes on a Scandal, Patrick Marber. It was quite good -- Molina is a powerhouse. The play was about a man going through a midlife crisis, and the writing, particularly at the end, saved the play from going down the slippery slope of triteness.

Last Saturday, I saw the first part of The Coast of Utopia, a trilogy of plays by Tom Stoppard about Russian philosophers. The first part was called Voyage, and it certainly left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, a lot of the ideas brought up in the play were interesting and well-written. On the other, the characters came and went so fleetingly, that it was hard to follow who people were and to genuinely care about them as individuals rather than as talking heads. Besides for that, time jumped around and flew by so sporadically that it felt more like a movie than a play. I still have two parts left to see, so I'll be able to pass judgment more accurately later, but I just thought it was a pain that I had to read a three-page synopsis to understand what was going on by intermission. The man next to me fell asleep.

Time has generally been flying. I finished my first short story for Creative Writing class, and I think it's pretty good. On Tuesday, it'll be workshopped by my class, so I'm both excited and nervous.

Tonight, I'm going to see Follies in concert at City Center with Victoria Clark, Victor Garber, and Donna Murphy, so I'm sure I'll be posting soon enough with my reactions to that.

Weekend, "Venus"

2007-01-28T23:59:00.000-05:00

This weekend, I was sick. I spent most of my time writing my short story for Creative Writing class, which is due the Tuesday after this coming one. In between, I also got plenty of cups of coffee and tea and saw the movie Venus.

On Saturday night, Austin's cute-as-a-button friend Shea came to visit us and watch You've Got Mail, which was, as always, delightful. Oh, newly-sharpened pencils, that movie has 152 insights to my soul.

Venus was a wonderful character study of Maurice, played by Peter O'Toole, and his unlikely friendship with a young woman to whom he bestows the name "Venus," played by Jodie Whittaker. It was definitely one of the best movies I've seen this year, if not the best, and I'm actually quite astonished it was recognized with more Academy Award nominations (it received only one -- for O'Toole). It did a wonderful job portraying an unlikely relationship and imbuing that relationship, as well as the subjects of death and aging, with great dignity. Vanessa Redgrave, Leslie Phillips, and Richard Griffiths also make memorable appearances.

Hillary!

2007-01-22T11:30:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton for President in 2008: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/feature/video/ . Girlfriend's in it to win it. Vagina in the White House!

Weekend Update

2007-01-21T18:33:00.000-05:00

So, it's been a lovely weekend. A recap:

Friday night, I went to see The Fever, a one-man play written and performed by Wallace Shawn (that schlumpy looking character actor who shows up in Woody Allen movies/was in The Princess Bride/was in My Dinner with Andre, pictured below). Anyway, Austin and I had just been talking about Wallace Shawn after watching the Before Sunrise/Before Sunset movies, so he came with me.

There was an onstage champagne reception before the show and then a brief humorous introduction to the play by Shawn before he launched into his 90-minute diatribe against the privileged. I suppose that was his way of making you feel luxurious before plunging you into his serious message. It was a pretty heavy-handed affair with some standout moments interspersed. The lighting, by Jennifer Tipton, was especially notable, helping to transition between the moods of the piece. It was an overall worthwhile experience, but mostly as a sort of lesson on theatre and what works and what doesn't. I was glad it was a comp ticket; I wouldn't have paid to see it.

On Saturday, I spent a fair while shopping for some used Tom Stoppard plays for one of my classes with only partial success. I was also looking for some poetry books by Rainer Maria Rilke and Li-Young Lee (a book called Rose -- why is it so hard to find!?), but I didn't find very much by either, which was surprising, especially in the case of Rilke. I feel really bad paying full price for books that are so short. Most plays/books of poetry are under 100 pages, and you often pay as much as $15 per book. I also like the feeling of supporting used bookstores, which often struggle financially.

After shopping for a bit, I met up with Emma and got tea at the Tea Spot on MacDougal Street directly below Washington Square Park. Much fun ensued.

In the evening, I went uptown to visit Christina, Richard, and Olga. We played Cranium, and I won each of the three games I played, one while teamed with each of the three. Thus, we were all winners. It was quite a bit of fun.

Today, I went to the Annie Leibovitz exhibit at Brooklyn Museum. It was the last day, so it was pretty crowded. Besides for the fact that there was a wait of somewhere between 90 minute and 2 hours, it was worth it. Despite her notability for photographs of celebrities for magazines, the ones I ended up liking the best were the photos of her friend (lover?) Susan Sontag (at right) and her parents and children. It was a great exhibit. Also notable were the Dippin' Dots at the museum.

Another busy week ahead.

New beginnings

2007-01-17T00:48:00.000-05:00

Today was the first day of a new semester.

My classes for spring are as follows:

Monday:
8-9:15 Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the 19th Century Recitation
9:30-10:45 Major Playwrights: Caryl Churchill, David Hare, and Tom Stoppard

Tuesday:
9:30-10:45 Creative Writing
11-12:15 Intermediate German II
12:30-1:45 Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the 19th Century

Wednesday:
9:30-10:45 Major Playwrights: Caryl Churchill, David Hare, and Tom Stoppard
11-12:15 Intermediate German II

Thursday:
9:30-10:45 Creative Writing
11-12:15 Intermediate German II
12:30-1:45 Conversations of the West: Antiquity and the 19th Century

Between classes and work, I have a relatively busy schedule, probably about as bad as last semester. I have Tuesdays off from work, and I'm thinking of asking to have Thursdays off as well.

Anyway, I mainly wanted to post to write about my first impressions of classes. So far, I've had three out of four, so I'll write about Churchill/Hare/Stoppard tomorrow.

Creative Writing

I was really nervous to find out about exactly what this class would be about. It turns out, it doesn't seem nearly as scary as I thought it would. Each of us has to write two short stories and five poems over the course of the semester, which doesn't seem like it's going to be too bad. One of our short stories will be workshopped with the class in addition to the poems. I had thought that we'd have to read our work aloud to the class though, which seemed scary, but we don't. We just have to provide copies for outside reading. That means that the reading load will be pretty hefty, but it should be fine. My teacher, Matt, seems nice and laid-back.

Intermediate German II

So, I was absolutely terrified as I sat down for this class, especially because I haven't really spoken any German for about nine months. Turns out, however, that I had no need to be. I always freak out and think I'm going to be the worst student of German in the room, but inevitably there are a few people who still can't grasp basic concepts. Also, the German teachers, for some reason, seem to be nothing but friendly and funny. My teacher this semester, Natalie, seems quite funny and personable. I'm sure it'll be a good class. The only drawback is that we have a tiny little classroom that feels a bit cramped. We played a name game to introduce ourselves and did a few little interview exercises, which seems to be the norm for first days of German. Overall, it was harmless. I guess I always assume I'll have a harder time with German classes than I end up actually having.

Conversations of the West ("Con West"): Antiquity and the 19th Century

So, admittedly this class might be a little bit harder for me to get into than my other classes, but it also seems genuinely interesting. My teacher, Professor Ertman, did a good job providing a clear outline of the course. We're going to study antiquity (ancient Greece, Israel, and Rome) and then the 19th Century (Marx, Freud, Nietzsche, John Stuart Mill, Darwin) keeping the comparisons between the two periods in mind. A lot of the readings will probably be hard to trudge through, but they're all things that anyone studying liberal arts should probably be familiar with (On Liberty, Plato's Republic, The Origin of Species, The Communist Manifesto, the Bible, etc.) I'm sure it will inform my general knowledge base and maybe even my writing. While Professor Ertman doesn't seem overaly jovial, he seems like he'll at least keep my attention and command the classroom, which is more than I can say for some of my previous lectures.

Overall, it looks to be a good semester. I'm looking forward to the second day of classes!

Lazy days are going, going, gone

2007-01-16T00:13:00.000-05:00

So, today was the last of my lazy days. Starting tomorrow, I have class and work most days and will have plenty of academic pursuits to keep up with: writing stories and poems, reading plays and other books, speaking in German (good God, I'm rusty!).

Today I saw Emma, which was nice. We had coffee at Bowery Poetry Club and then wandered around for a bit. While we were walking along on Lafayette Street, a crazy lady threw a milkshake (or other milky-looking drink?) directly behind her legs, splashing her with its contents. She then tried to pretend it was a mistake. It was bizarre.

I'm addicted to a new song, "Murder on the Dance Floor" (check out the awesome YouTube video) by Sophie Ellis Bextor. It's infectious! I also discovered Joanna Newsom, an up-and-coming harpist and folk singer/songwriter who's quite good. her latest album is called Ys, and it's worth checking out.

I also checked out a lot of the fashion week collections for men that are starting to come out of the woodworks: Dolce and Gabbana (bizarre), Burberry Prorsum (mostly good), Roberto Cavalli (odd), Jil Sander (simple and tasteful), Costume National (eccentric but fun), Missoni (ugh), and Versace, which was probably my favorite. I'm really into a lot of the double-breasted coats I've seen lately.

I had Thai food with Austin for dinner at this place on Avenue A near Tompkin's Square Park that's consistently good. Then I took a long walk and contemplated the busy coming days, relishing the final hours of my leisure. It's going to be a challenging semester, but I think it'll be a worthwhile one as well.

Met

2007-01-14T18:50:00.000-05:00

Today, I went to the Met. It was a lazy day, and it was nice to feel like I was doing something productive.

Then I painted for a little while.

Last night, I hung out with Christina, Richard, Austin, and Jacob uptown. We had quite a bit of fun as well.

Tomorrow I'm meeting up with Emma for coffee, and on Tuesday classes start up again. I guess I'll have more to write about once classes are in full swing.

It's also been an excrutiatingly long time since I've seen a play or musical.

"Notes on a Scandal," dabbling

2007-01-12T23:32:00.000-05:00

So last night I finally saw Notes on a Scandal, one of the films I had most been anticipating lately. Since I generally love both Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench I went in expecting to love the movie, and I wasn't disappointed.

With a screenplay by Patrick Marber, who wrote the play Closer and the screen play for its adaptation as well as the upcoming Howard Katz at Roundabout Theatre Company, based on a book by Zoe Heller, the movie works as a sort of quasi-camp but seriously thrilling pulp movie, with Judi Dench playing the pervy old dyke and Cate Blanchett as her younger confidant and crush. Blanchett's character has gone off and cheated on her older husband (played sharply and sympathetically by Bill Nighy) with one of her students, bringing her dangerously close to Dench once she spies the two together in one of the classrooms during a school assembly.

Dench is the strongest asset of the movie though Blanchett is certainly formidable. Watching her character's build throughout the plot was thrilling, and the ending really gave the movie its punch.

Anyway, today was nice as well. After a long day of work, I sat around my room painting with watercolors and listening to Joni Mitchell. Then I got some sushi. So restful. I'm looking forward to the long weekend.

Here's the first successful watercolor painting of my adult life:

Stuff

2007-01-11T00:56:00.000-05:00

So, this week is nice since I don't yet have classes and my work schedule is relatively limited. I'm also looking forward to the long weekend because of Martin Luther King Day.

Yesterday, I met up with Lisa, Peter, and two of their friends to hang out for a while before work. We did a little bit of shopping, and I got a pretty new cardigan and a new white shirt to replace the tuxedo-style shirt that I'm sensing will soon be too ratty to wear in civilized society.

After work yesterday, I went and invested in a huge bottle of Viktor and Rolf's cologne, Antidote, which I've been eyeing for a while:

I read Rabbit Hole by David Lindsay-Abaire today, which is a wonderful play. Cynthia Nixon won the Best Actress Tony Award for the lead role last season, which Nicole Kidman is going to play in the upcoming movie version. I have to say I don't really see her in the role, but I'm still interested to see the result.

Today was a nice day for quite a few reasons.

Break

2007-01-08T01:28:00.000-05:00

So, winter break was nice.

I read some: The Emperor's Children by Claire Messud, which is a wonderful novel about young professionals and socialites in New York City and some various poetry by Ted Hughes, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, and others. It's always nice to have some more time to read again. Breaks are always useful for that purpose.

As far as movies go, I saw Children of Men, Dreamgirls, The Queen, and Charlotte's Web, which I enjoyed in that order (from best to worst), though they were all quite good. Children of Men was extraordinarily unnerving, and I recommend that everyone go see it. It just won't be the same on DVD. Dreamgirls was also spectacularly entertaining, but I guess a lot of people have some odd aversion to musicals and will avoid it for that reason. But they shouldn't! The Queen was a bit slow for my tastes, but Helen Mirren was quite good as Queen Elizabeth.

I fell in love (guiltily) with "Irreplaceable" by Beyonce, and also listened to a good deal more of Joni Mitchell's music.

I also fell in love with the show Ugly Betty, which was recommended to me by Khiem before I left for break, as well as the old Carol Burnett spinoff Mama's Family starring Vicki Lawrence, who's absolutely hilarious.

Overall, I'm glad to be back in New York City, but there will be things and people I'll miss.

"Time to Leave," happenings

2006-12-21T02:51:00.000-05:00

So, finals are over. Freedom has set over me.

This morning, I walked with Christina in Central Park. Then I hung out with Khiem, window shopping, eating at Spice, window shopping some more, eating at the bakery, visiting the Charmin Restrooms. It was quite a bit of fun. I need to make a return trip to Marc by Marc Jacobs.

Tonight I watched a depressing but wonderful movie, Time to Leave (Le Temps Qui Reste), a French movie directed by Francois Ozon about a gay photographer struck with terminal cancer and his methods of coping and subsequent death. It was one of the most beautiful movies about death I've ever seen and just a beautiful and thought-provoking movie overall. Melvil Poupaud was wonderful as Romain, the photographer, and Jeanne Moreau was also beautiful as his grandmother, Laura. I recommend the movie highly and will most definitely check out some more of Ozon's films soon.

The past week

2006-12-16T00:12:00.000-05:00

So, this his been a fun and stressful week.

Midweek, Wednesday and Thursday, I had to write a humungous paper for my journalism class, but now I'm finally totally done with that junk.

Thursday night, I went to the opening night of The Apple Tree. I liked it a lot better the second time. Everyone was really "on" for opening night, and I sort of settled into the material in a way that I wasn't able to the first time I saw it. It was also good to see Ryan again for the first time in about a month.

Tonight (Friday), I went to see Spring Awakening for the third time. Jaron, John D. Carrion, and Malorie from the 12th floor last year were all there, so it was fun to see them. This time was my first time sitting in the mezzanine, and, though the seats up there were very, very cramped, it provided a unique perspective. I was able to notice how great the choreography by Bill T. Jones and lighting were. I also noticed a few little plot-related moments that I hadn't caught from the other perspectives from which I've seen the show (in the right orchestra, and sitting on stage left). There's also a new verse that the character of Ilse sings leading into the finale, "The Song of Purple Summer," that was pretty good. Spring Awakening is definitely my favorite current show. I think it's time to take a rest for a few weeks though. I also want to revisit Grey Gardens.

In comes mixed "Company"

2006-12-11T01:32:00.000-05:00

On November 9, I saw the current Broadway revival of "Company" on Broadway. I withheld comment on the blog because I knew I'd have to write a more in-depth analysis as the second paper for my musical theatre class. Below, I'm reprinting that analysis, slightly revised, which is pretty much a straightforward review. To the right is my mock-up for an improved poster for the revival (as I promised I would do after my Apple Tree mock-up). Enjoy:

John Doyle’s latest actor-musician revival to hit Broadway, of Stephen Sondheim and George Furth’s 1970 musical Company, works. It works very hard. Whether or not it works well is a different question with no cut-and-dry answer.

Though John Doyle’s directorial style of choice, which utilizes the actors within a musical as the show’s orchestra, originally arose as a financial necessity, this concept was subsequently put to use as a way to shed new light on works of musical theatre that Doyle felt were worth revisiting.

His production of Sondheim’s masterpiece Sweeney Todd last season using the same technique was widely hailed by critics. This new production of Company cannot escape comparison with Sweeney, a juxtaposition which sheds light on Company’s weaknesses, though there are also some considerable assets to be considered.

Company, unlike Sweeney Todd, is most certainly a musical of its time. Though Sweeney has been at a remove from the time period in which it was set – London during the industrial revolution – since its first Broadway production in 1979, Company was created in 1970 as a comment on the current state of things, focusing on a group of Manhattan urbanites, and, more specifically, the relationships between a group of married friends and their bachelor friend Bobby.

Much like Rent will most likely lose its relevance over time as a comment on the AIDS epidemic and the 1990s over time, Company has lost something over the years, perhaps a reason for the limited success of other recent revivals of the show, like those at Donmar Warehouse in London and at Roundabout Theatre Company on Broadway, both in the mid-1990s.

While the show remains funny enough, its jokes land more for their kitschy remove from relevance than for their genuine punchiness. A scene about experimentation with pot between the characters of David, Jenny, and Bobby, which is by all means funny, doesn’t have the same impact that it must have had during the musical’s original 1970 run. Various other period references, as to phone answering services in “Another Hundred People,” leave the show firmly rooted in the past.

Though surely its themes of relationships and connectedness transcend its time period, an attempt to transport the show to a sort of ambiguously timeless setting through the use of barebones black costumes by Ann Hould-Ward are marred by the show’s book. Besides for being dated, the show is also loosely structured, with little in the way of conventional plot, fully fleshed-out characters replaced by stereotypical glimpses at 1970s urbanites.

The show’s drawbacks seem almost insurmountable, and surely the piece is so often revived because of the strength of its score rather than the contributions of George Furth, which serve merely as a frothy mortar for Sondheim’s often incisive musical comments on society.

Songs like “Ladies Who Lunch,” with its cutting criticism of society dames “clutching their copies of Life just to keep in touch,” as well as “Sorry Grateful,” “Another Hundred People,” and the most famous song of the score, “Being Alive,” are like little nuggets of Broadway gold. With effective lyrics that seem effortless in their quick wit and haunting and engaging melodies, it’s hard not to at least relish the chance to hear these songs presented on the Broadway stage, and at the very least I was thrilled to witness this production in order to hear these songs that I’ve grown to love. Energetic songs like “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” (pictured at left), “Side by Side by Side,” and “What Would We Do Without You?” make this one of Sondheim’s most varied and likeable scores, with plenty of variation between more subdued songs of yearning or regret, and angrier or more lively ones.

Conceptually, I enjoyed the use of pared-down orchestrations in last season’s production of Sweeney Todd much more so than in Company. Sarah Travis, the musical director of that production did wonderful work to the end of making the show seem frighteningly claustrophobic, strains of melody acting like haunting shimmers of light reflected and refracted by Sweeney’s razor.

Though Sweeney is better known than Company for the lushness of its sound, I thought that overall the reduction of its orchestrations was more successful. The bold, brassy sounds of Company with which I had become so familiar from repeated listens to the original cast album were sorely missed, the appropriately busy feeling of the music replaced by a duller, more string-influenced sound that seemed inappropriate within the hustle and bustle of the show’s direction.

In addition, the actor-musicians left much to be desired in comparison to those of Sweeney. Where Company got its musical concept right was in the decision to use orchestral pairings to set the various couplings of characters apart from the central character of Bobby, who restrains from joining the band until his triumphant final song, “Being Alive.” It was in the fleshing out of the relationships between characters (Johanna and Anthony as a couple of young string-playing lovers, Sweeney’s deliberate guitar like a conspiratorial whisper behind the tense duet of “Not While I’m Around” between Mrs. Lovett and Tobias) that I thought Sweeney was most successful in utilizing this construct, and this felt less affecting within the cacophonous company behind Company, with orchestrations and musical supervision provided by Mary-Mitchell Campbell this time around.

On the positive side, there are several winning elements to the credit of this production of Company. Most notable are the fine leading performance of Raul Esparza as the prolonged bachelor Bobby and some winning contributions on the part of the design team and director Doyle.

Like a diamond in the rough amongst an otherwise satisfactory if mostly unimpressionable cast, Raul Esparza (pictured at right) stands out as a charismatic and nuanced Bobby. He is able to keep the audience firmly on his side and in the palm of his hand while remaining at a measured distance from the company of the couples that he keeps at hand for dinner parties and other social functions.

My biggest disappointment in the cast was in Barbara Walsh’s one-note portrayal of Joanne. Standing in the daunting shoes of Elaine Stritch, who originated her role, Walsh (pictured at left) seems overwhelmed by the task of making her mark, and, in doing so, ends up just another voice in the crowd, failing even to land her biggest number, “The Ladies Who Lunch.”

Jane Pfitsch, who played Amy on the night I saw the show, on the other hand, stopped the show with her brilliant and manic performance of “Getting Married Today,” and Angel Desai was fine as Marta in her spirited rendition of “Another Hundred People,” oddly split into segments by book writer George Furth, which detracted from the full impact of the song’s build.

The design of the show and some of the elements of its staging were the most thrilling parts for me. Manhattan, the general setting of the show, can seem a cold and unforgiving place, and David Gallo’s set is brilliantly simplistic in its delivery of this impression. The bulk of the action takes place on a wood-paneled diamond set at center stage. Upstage left on this main platform stands a prominent white column atop a circular radiator, serving as a sort of arguably phallic presence looming over the proceedings.

Surrounding this main playing area is a field of black reflective marble, spare like the void of the city at night and capturing the flashes of light from the action on the main platform. At a remove from the central wooden playing are two matte black diamonds, one on either side of the stage, where Bobby can stand at a remove when necessary, as when he is encouraged by his male friends in “Have I Got a Girl For You.”

Behind all this sit a number of ice cube-like platforms serving as a sort of orchestra pit to which the musicians retreat when not involved in the proceedings. Reflected in the black of the stage floor, the cubes almost seem to take on the quality of half empty (or half full) glasses.

The sets work well with Doyle’s directorial style, allowing for divisions to be set between the characters. Sending actors in various processions around the outer edges of the center diamond, Doyle’s production pulses with an underlying collective energy much like that of the rhythms of a New York City street; his design team has most certainly aided in putting this across.

David Gallo's impressive minimalist set.

Another inventive choice in this production was the use of a single spotlight onstage by lighting designer Thomas Hase to serve as a symbolic birthday candle for Bobby. Serving as a beacon of isolation early in the piece, it is with the use of this device in the final birthday scene that Doyle strikes at the heart of the piece. After joining in on the collective orchestra of the production in the song “Being Alive,” the lights onstage fade to only that of the candle and an atmospheric blue on the looming pillar upstage. Bringing the show to a thrilling close, the lights fade to black just as Bobby steps in a new direction into the flickering spotlight and blows out his candle.

Though some of the urgency of the piece may have been lost over time and his assembled cast may not be ideal, Doyle makes an attempt to enliven and enrich Company through this current production. It’s possible to pinpoint successes and failures throughout this anticipated revival, which had the daunting challenge of living up to the success of Sweeney Todd. In the end, however, it was a more exhilarating experience, for me at least, to witness a revival that makes a daring attempt to reinvigorate a troubled show with mixed success than a cookie-cutter production of a show that makes little attempt to present anything new as food for thought for its audience. This may be a mixed Company, but what’s a party without its oddballs and mishaps?

"The Apple Tree"

2006-12-10T00:02:00.000-05:00

Tonight I saw Roundabout's third show of the season (and first musical!), The Apple Tree, starring Kristin Chenoweth. I wasn't too familiar with the show before seeing it, but I had anticipated another chance to see Kristin on stage after having loved her performance as Glinda in Wicked. She most definitely sells the show to maximum effect.

It's a musical made up of three different movements (one-act musicals, essentially), each a different story about the roles of men and women.

The first part, "The Diary of Adam and Eve," is based on a story by Mark Twain. It chronicles the early struggles of Adam and Eve in a humorous way (naming animals, building shelter, discovering fire, etc.).

The second part, "The Lady or the Tiger?" is based on a story by Frank R. Stockton that tells of a woman's dilemma as she chooses whether to send her lover into the arms of another woman or the jaws of a tiger.

The third part, "Passionella," is based on a story by Jules Feiffer, and it tells the story of a nerdy chimney sweep who, during certain hours of the day, is transformed into a glamorous movie star.

Altogether, the throughline was cute but underwhelming, with a few running gags being the unifying thread between the various stories. It's mostly just a frothy excuse for a star vehicle for whatever excellent female performer is currently available for a Broadway engagement, and it's a decent one at that, written by the composing team of Bock and Harnick reponsible for Fiddler on the Roof, She Loves Me, and others.

The Broadway and film ingenue currently available for a Broadway production of The Apple Tree is Kristin Chenoweth, a versatile performer who was able to move between these different roles with ease. Known for winning the Tony for her role as Sally in You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown and her star turn as Glinda in Wicked, she's a spectacular performer and sure to create box office boffo, even if starring in The Phone Book the Musical. The men of the show, Brian D'Arcy James and Marc Kudisch (Chenoweth's ex-fiance) complemented her well.

Overall, the score is forgettable, though it's pretty enough so as to be listenable and has a few standouts though no showstoppers. The design of the show, which was relatively sparse, was effective.

For me, the standout piece was "Passionella," as Chenoweth really felt comfortable with the transition between geek and movie star. It was thrilling to watch her transformation -- less because of the thinly veiled physically transformative moment and more for the gifted acting skills that were employed. She is a woman of impeccable comic timing, with the ability to arouse a belly laugh from the littlest movement of her tiny body.

Kristin Chenoweth as Ella and Passionella in the "Passionella" segment of The Apple Tree

Overall, The Apple Tree makes for a fun evening at the theatre. I question why, of all musicals, this was the one considered most valuable for Roundabout to revive, but it's definitely a cute enough vehicle for Kristin Chenoweth, who is the main reason to see the show.

I'll be seeing it again on opening night (next Thursday), so if anything new occurs to me, I'll post it then. I predict the reviews will be favorable at least for Kristin.

On a completely different note, Emma and I visited the Charmin Restrooms (the holiday event of the year) before the show:

It's alarmin' how Charmin I feel.

"Spring Awakening" CD

2006-12-09T17:36:00.000-05:00

So, today, the major task I gave myself was to go to the Eugene O'Neill Theatre today and pick up a copy of the Spring Awakening cast recording, which they're now selling at the theatre in advance of the official store release date of Tuesday, December 12.

So the show is pretty much my current favorite. I'm going for my third time next Friday, and I can't wait. I'll be seeing it from the mezzanine this time, so I'll have seen it from on the stage, in the orchestra, and in the mezzanine. The show opens tomorrow night, so we'll see how the reviews are and if the show takes off or gets any extra buzz.

Anyway, I pretty much couldn't have rushed home any faster after getting my hands on a copy of the CD, and I'm already obsessed. At least now I don't have to spend money just to hear the songs. I also think that the CD is going to spread a sort of grassroots movement for the show, as the music is pretty much the highlight of the overall experience. I think that the CDs for shows like Rent and Wicked made a big difference in getting the word out and filling seats. A CD makes a show accessible to people across the nation. The fact that Spring Awakening has songs like "The Bitch of Living" and "Totally Fucked" and even has a parental advisory notice will probably also help its appeal (even if those aren't necessarily the best songs in the show).

Anyway, what I've noticed from the CD is that, while it's great overall, the flimsiness of some of the lyrics is more obvious when you're not taking the music in along with the visuals and engaged in the moment. It's not a replacement for the live experience by any means, but it's a nice way to tide myself over between visits. And I'm sure it'll also be great for the walks to and from work.

Anyway, go out and get the CD as soon as possible (Tuesday in stores, now at the theatre). I guarantee if there's one theatre CD you must get this year, this is it, and you won't regret buying it. Christmas gifts, anyone? Then go out and see the show for yourself.

Also, on Wednesday, December 13 from 6 till 7:30, the cast and Duncan Sheik will be at the SoHo Apple Store for an in-store performance celebrating the CD release, so be there or be square!

In other news I went to see Merrily We Roll Along by Sondheim and George Furth at Columbia last night, which was a lot of fun. One of my friends from Summer Stage, Claire, played the lead role of Mary, and she was great. It's a show where the plot moves backwards, chronicalling the relationships between three best friends and their lovers. It's such a wonderful show; it manages to be depressing in that you see through the backwards movement of the plot that everyone ends up unhappy, yet that the show ends on a hopeful note with the beautiful song "Our Time." Anyway, Austin loved it too, which really surprised me.

Afterwards we hung out with Christina and Richard. Yay!

Tonight is The Apple Tree with Kristin Chenoweth with Emma, and tomorrow I'm probably going to see Cabaret at NYU. Yay!