Loney's Show Notes
By Glenn Loney, June 1, 2006
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Caricature of Glenn Loney by Sam Norkin. |
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Please click on " * " to skip to
each subject in this index:
Plays New & Old-- *
Alan Bennett's THE HISTORY BOYS [*****] *
Buy
History Boys tickets
US Theatre Project's COLUMBINUS [****] *
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's BASED ON A TOTALLY TRUE STORY [****] *
C J Hopkins' SCREWMACHINE/EYECANDY [****] *
Conor McPherson's SHINING CITY [***] *
Claudia Dey's TROUT STANLEY [**] *
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's FAUST I & II [****] *
Oscar Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST [***] *
Herman Wouk's THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL [****] *
Brian Friel's FAITH HEALER [****] *
Howard Brenton's SORE THROATS [****] *
Musicals New & Old-- *
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE [*****] *
Walt Disney's TARZAN [***] * Buy
Tarzan tickets
THE WEDDING SINGER [***] *
HOT FEET [**] *
LESTAT [*] *
JACQUES BREL [***] *
Operas Old and New: *
At the Manhattan School of Music: *
Massenet's CENDRILLON [***] *
At the Juilliard School Opera Theatre: *
Liebermann's MISS LONELYHEARTS [**] *
At the New Victory Theatre: *
Sendak, Kushner, & Krása's BRUNDIBAR [***] *
Monologues & Monodramas-- *
Adrienne Barbeau in THE PROPERTY KNOWN AS GARLAND [****] *
Marga Gomez in LOS BIG NAMES [**] *
Brits Off-Broadway at 59E59-- *
Sarah Niles in THE BOGUS WOMAN [*****] *
Ian Kelly in COOKING FOR KINGS [*****] *
Rupert Wickham in DEFYING HITLER [***] *
Ian Kelly & Ryan Early in BEAU BRUMMELL [*****] *
Gecko's THE RACE [****] *
Other Entertainments-- *
On Randall's Island: *
Cirque du Soleil's CORTEO [****] *
Buy
Cirque de Soleil Corteo tickets
At Ellen Stewart's LaMaMa e.t.c.: *
Watoku Ueno's SUNDOWN [****] *
Mitchell Polin's MUSTARD [*] *
Mario Fratti's SISTER *
At Ellen Stewart's LaMaMa Umbria International/Spoleto: *
7th Annual International Symposium for Directors: *
Advance Event Info: *
Mae West & Texas Guinan Coming Up! *
Alan Bennett's THE HISTORY BOYS [*****] Buy History Boys tickets
Although Alan Bennett's The Madness of George III and Talking Heads were both outstanding works of theatre, his satiric vision of a traditional English Public-School--where a group of Unlikely Lads are being prepped to get into Oxford or Cambridge--is his best play to date.
The History Boys provides an amusing--but nonetheless serious--confrontation of two Concepts of Education. It also has some tart things to say about Social Class & Success. The drama plays out largely in the history classroom that the overweight, aging Hector shares with a clever newcomer.
Richard Griffiths is wonderful as the shambling teacher who encourages His Boys to survey the History of Western Civilization through the varied lenses of Classic Old Movies, Vintage Music-Hall Songs, French practice-lessons, and other non-curricular explorations.
These scenes are often wildly amusing--and it's clear the boys are learning much more about the Past, Present, and their Lives to Come than they would in any conventional class. Nonetheless, the stern, almost caricatured Head-Master [Clive Merrison] is determined that they be thoroughly coached to win places at Oxbridge.
Unfortunately, they look and act more like candidates for the Provincial Universities of Hull, Sussex, or East Anglia. Or maybe Manchester? One loutish but athletic lad seems unlikely for any major university. [In the event, he's already accepted for Oxford, as his dad used to work in one of the colleges there!]
Frances de la Tour has a tart-tongued turn as a no-nonsense History Teacher, a contrast to Hector, but no match for the newcomer, played by Stephen Campbell Moore--who has been engaged to edge out Hector and get the boys prime placements.
He shows them how to ace exams with a thoroughly cynical approach to using what they've learnt about the past. Or indeed, about any subject. When a motorbike accident cripples him, he becomes a Discovery-style TV Host, later going into Politics--which he instead insists is actually Government!
What finally undoes Hector is his unfortunate habit of giving the boys rides home on his bike, groping one of them behind him as he steers. He is long-married, and he never exposes himself. He only gropes, and the boys are used to taking turns to humor him.
But the Head-Master's wife spots him doing this at a stop-light. It's The End, in more ways than one.
Nicholas Hytner has brilliantly orchestrated this outstanding cast, adults and boys alike. Notable are Dominic Cooper as the teen-age Lothario and Samuel Barnett, as Posner, the boy who adores him and a possible Alan Bennett stand-in. Bob Crowley designed--and his artistry is more impressive here than it is in Disney's Tarzan!
US Theatre Project's COLUMBINUS [****]
Quite another kind of school is explored in Columbinus, created by the United States Theatre Project--with an outstanding young cast that brings to vibrant life students involved in that murderous moment at Colorado's now infamous Columbine High-School. But this is not a scene-by-scene re-enactment.
Instead, it begins in a fictional high-school, exploring contemporary teen-attitudes and values, concluding with the dreadful events of April 20, 1999. The dynamic ensemble of five boys and three girls--in split-second timing--evokes in short-takes the lives of random modern teens and moves on to Columbine and the teen-frictions that helped send killer/suicides Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris over the edge.
The entire company is outstanding: Anna Camp, James Flanagan, Carmen M. Herlihy, Nicole Lowrance, Karl Miller, Joaquín Pérez-Campbell, Will Rogers, & Bobby Steggert.
PJ Paparelli--who conceived and directed this powerhouse production--notes that it's something like the Laramie Project, which involved the torture and murder of a gay teen-ager, but it's not the same kind of story exactly: The Nerds' Revenge on the Jocks. Everything in the show, however, is based on fact, actual records, videos, and interviews.
The present production at the New York Theatre Workshop has been developing since July 2002, beginning with interviews with high-school teens in various states--including Littleton, Colorado. It has been workshopped at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Washington's Arena Stage, the Kennedy Center, and Denver's Curious Theatre--with survivors, parents, and Columbine students in the audience.
Columbinus had its co-World Premiere in Maryland and in Alaska. It then had a fifth workshop in Juneau, with a sixth at NYTW last November. It makes the History Boys look like Charming Intellectuals.
This is a tremendously shattering staging--when Klebold and Harris begin to fire, the entire auditorium seems to shake with the impact of the bullets. It also suggests how tough it is to grow up in today's TV & Mall Culture. It should tour widely--especially to high-schools, although it might give newer Nerds the wrong ideas…
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa's BASED ON A TOTALLY TRUE STORY [****]
This charming Bi-Coastal Comedy could be bracketed with The Little Dog Laughed, dealing, as it does, with the hazards of Gay Artists trying to achieve success in New York and Hollywood. Yes, they will ruin your play if it's adapted for the movies.
And if you have an idea for a screenplay, you may be asked to ruin it yourself. Yes, your agent/producer will continue to encourage you but constantly demand rewrites. And more rewrites…
Yes, your TV concept will be trashed for the Series Pilot…
And there's also the problem of Personal Priorities: if you really love someone, will you find time for him in your mad pursuit of Fame & Wealth? Will there be an hour or two free for him in your busy schedule?
Of course, this is hardly a situation that afflicts only Gay Couples.
It has been a Source of Conflict for Hetero-Couples--onstage and off--for centuries. Consider the busy schedule of Queen Elizabeth I: she might have married King Philip of Spain, but she had other things on her mind. With a half-mad Mary Todd Lincoln as his wife, Honest Abe may have welcomed a tour of the Union Troops with Ulysses Simpson Grant at the Battlefront.
This script could make an amusing Indie movie. For the Manhattan Theatre Club, Michael Bush ably staged a very able cast: Carson Elrod, Erik Heger, Pedro Pascal, Michael Tucker, and Kristine Nielsen--also fabulous in Christopher Durang's Miss Witherspoon, earlier in the season.
C J Hopkins' SCREWMACHINE/EYECANDY [****]
After the religious-outrages of The DaVinci Code, devout, self-flagellating members of Opus Dei might love to see Dan Brown be clubbed to death on Prime-Time Television.
This was a high-point in CJ Hopkins' disturbing drama, srewmachine/eyecandy, or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Big Bob.
But it wasn't that Dan Brown at all. Hopkins' Brown--along with his loving wife, Maura--are eager contestants for all those wonderful prizes on Big Bob's famed TV quiz-show.
David Calvitto is almost terrifying as Big Bob, a fast-talking, demon-driven Quiz MC. At the outset, it is announced that the customary rules have been suspended, so Big Bob can push the show in any direction he likes.
Commercials are pushed with the insistence of a pile-driver, but so are the two contestants, whom Bob alternately flatters and humiliates. He also flatters and mocks the TV-Audience, for whom he has the Utmost Contempt.
As the TV-Audience is effectively the paying-audience at 59E59, this makes for a very uncomfortable Viewing-Experience.
Large handfuls of money are given and taken-away, as both Dan and Maura [Bill Coelius & Nancy Walsh] are mocked with increasing cruelty. When Dan demands to see the wonderful prizes promised on the show, Bob's assistant, Vera--a brute in drag--begins clubbing and kicking the now prostrate Dan.
Horrified, Maura turns to the audience to beg them to stop this attack: Please call 911! But the theatre-audience obviously can do nothing at all--by this time, not even laugh at the plight of these unfortunate greedy Middle-Americans. In any case, the spectators--as requested before the show--had turned off their cell-phones…
The play functions as an indictment of the cynical manipulations of TV-producers in devising Quiz & Reality TV Shows. But it is also a slap in the face for the American TV Public that obviously craves such viewing-fare.
Staged by John Clancy, the level of furious energy--approaching melt-down--was almost as devastating as the playing-out of the plot. Brilliant but very disturbing…
Conor McPherson's SHINING CITY [***]
Although Martin McDonough was actually born in England, his dramas seem more demonically Erse than those of Conor McPherson, who was born in Dublin. With such plays as The Weir, however, McPherson appears more than a little influenced by the success of McDonough's unsettling visions of Eire and the Irish.
Reviews of Shining City--McPherson can't be meaning Dublin, can he?--have been glowing, both for the play itself and for the central performances of Brían F. O'Byrne and Oliver Platt. I suspect the lavish praise for O'Byrne's low-key agony is really retrospective spill-over from his award-winning performances in Frozen and Doubt.
Frankly, I was not much impressed by the play or the performances. O'Byrne--especially de-energized--plays Ian, a failed priest or seminarian, who has become a Mental-Therapist. As he cannot deal with his own problems, he seems ill-equipped to help others.
Platt's troubled John has been seeing the ghost of his dead wife around the house, so he's had to move out. In the meantime, advising and dossing-down in premises lent by his brother, Ian has broken with his pregnant girlfriend and had a session with a male-hustler.
At the close, a grateful John brings a gift to thank Ian. He no longer sees the ghost. As Ian closes the door behind him, a hanged woman is behind the door. Oh!
Very Irish! Very Martin McDonough Irish!
The drama was previously mounted at London's Royal Court Theatre and at Dublin's Gate Theatre: a Very Good Pedigree! Robert Falls staged.
Claudia Dey's TROUT STANLEY [**]
Trout Stanley is one of those Canadian Plays which seem imbued with a different sensibility than new dramas South of the Border. At the Pan-Canadian New Play Festival in Calgary, I've been amazed at the variety of unusual Canadian theatre-visions, especially those of One Yellow Rabbit.
Claudia Dey's bizarre drama premiered in Nova Scotia, later revised for Toronto. It seems to be set in some rural outback where an Amazonian twin-sister runs a garbage-dump, while her repressed sibling sits at home, not having left the house for ten years. She is waiting for True Love to strike.
These are Sugar and Grace, the Ducharme Sisters--but their charms are more French-Canadian than Tennessee Williams' New Orleansian. They would have been triplets, but "Ugly Duckling," the third, died in their mother's birth-canal. Well, you get the idea…
Into their cramped ménage intrudes Trout Stanley, a rootless wanderer, in search of the Lake Up North where his parents died many years ago, electrocuted when they applied their metal-detectors to the lake-surface from a small canoe, while standing up.
The script sounds like one of the most ambitious of the Absurdist Avant-garde from the Early Days of LaMaMa ETC. It is not quite Lanford Wilsonesque, but close. Dey's diction--in the mouths of all three characters--aspires to both the poetic and the fantastic. Often, it is arresting, but it comes very close--as with the characters and plot--to playful parody.
What is most amazing about this visually-cluttered production is/are the over-the-top performances of Kelly McAndrew, Erika Rolfsrud, & Warren Sulatycky, as the man with the Fish-Name.
Incidental Note: Mid-June, the American Theatre Critics Assn. will be having its annual Conference in Canada. At the Shaw Festival, at Niagara-on-the Lake; at Stratford, at what used to be the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, and with a side-trip to Toronoto to sample the musical-version of Lord of the Rings! There may be some New Canadian Plays also on the program!
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's FAUST I & II [****]
The late, great critic Walter Kerr--there's a theatre named for him!--once wrote a book called How's Your Second Act? This was back in the days when plays had three acts, and the problem was to fashion a Dramatic-Hook to get the audience back in their seats for Act III.
When the much earlier--and very much greater--Johann Wolfgang Goethe began his exploration of the Medieval Faust Legend, however, he could have had little inkling of the trouble he'd have with His Second Act.
He might have foreseen the problem in the earlier dramatic versions: the Ur-Faust and Christopher Marlowe's History of Doctor Faustus…
Goethe's Faust: Part I--one of the greatest poetic dramas of Western Civilization--was an immediate success, especially with the French, and more especially with the French composers Charles Gounod and Hector Berlioz: Faust and The Damnation of Faust, respectively.
German taste-makers were so outraged at Gounod's romanticizing of Goethe's essentially philosophical-moral fable that the opera, when performed on German opera-stages, is still often called Marguerite!
The Mainspring of Part I is the determination of the aging Scholar-Alchemist Faust to encompass All Knowable Knowledge. Tenure at the University of Wittenberg--Hamlet was a student here!--has not been enough reward for him, apparently.
Equally determined is Mephistopheles, who longs to win Faust's Soul for his Collection of the Damned.
Faust is willing to strike a bargain with the Devil--who demands a Draculonian Blood-Signature--with one Curious Condition: Mephisto wins only if Faust is ever completely satisfied with any of the Entertainments, Honors, Secrets, Sexual-blandishments, or Powers he offers Faust.
Part I focuses largely on Faust's being restored to youth and winning the love of the innocent lass, Gretchen/Marguerite, through the connivance of Mephisto. She becomes pregnant; Faust abandons her; she is spurned by her neighbors; she drowns her infant; she is condemned to death. But, at the moment of leaving this life, she calls for Heavenly Pardon--and she is Redeemed: Sie ist gerettet!
Not so Faust, who could not save her. Even a miraculous session with Helen of Troy is only a transitory pleasure. In Faust: Part II, the demonic adventures continue. But Faust is never sated, never satisfied.
Toward the close of this very, very long Second Act, he has become deeply involved in a Major Environmental Project--draining Wetlands, essentially--but this is not so much for his own gratification as for the Good of Mankind.
So also is Faust finally saved: and Mephistopheles cheated of his prize…
Goethe was still working on Faust: Part II at the close of his life. He never saw it performed, and it was published posthumously. Although the first part of Faust was then--and has continued to be--frequently performed, both as play and opera, Part II has seldom been staged, either alone, or with Part I.
One of the most memorable Post World War II productions of both parts featured the brilliant German actor, Gustav Gründgens, memorialized in Klaus Mann's novel and in film as Mephisto. He performed Goethe's Mephistopheles in Hamburg and again at the Salzburg Festival, productions I was privileged to witness. His Mephisto was so over-powering I cannot remember who played Faust. Thomas Holtzmann, perhaps?
When Christopher Martin produced Faust: Parts I & II when he was Artistic Director of the CSC--the Classic Stage Company--he announced this theatrical-event as "The American Premiere." That was not quite the case, however, as I pointed out to him.
But how could Chris Martin have known that the son of the great Austrian playwright, Dr. Arthur Schnitzler, had staged both parts of Goethe's Faust in the late 1940s in Royce Hall at UCLA? Professor Henry Schnitzler--Heinrich, when he returned to Vienna to take charge of Max Reinhardt's Theater in der Josefstadt--had been my favorite drama-prof at UC/Berkeley, so I naturally Greyhounded down to Westwood to see his impressive staging of this Great German Epic.
Martin's CSC staging was amazingly effective, scenically-suggestive, rather than visually over-powering, as CSC has none of the amazing technical-equipment of major German & Austrian stages.
Recently, a newer and even more starkly suggestive production arrived on the CSC stage, the result of two years of work-shopping by David Herskovits' Target Margin Theatre. The first section--opening in Faust's Wittenberg Study/Laboratory--was initially shown in the basement-theatre at HERE.
It seemed incredibly and unnecessarily cluttered with odd props. The clutter has survived all the workshops, unfortunately. The Village Voice's Michael Feingold--who otherwise admired the intelligence and ingenuity of Herskovits' directorial-vision--noted this as well.
The second section, encapsuling Marguerite's sad fate, was shown at the Ohio Theatre, and it proved a great improvement over the initial effort. What stood out--as it does now even more--was the remarkable performance of David Greenspan as Mephistopheles.
Although Herskovits has both an Old and a Young Faust--both of whom admirably and clearly speak the ringing lines of Goethe, in Douglas Langworthy's able American-English translation--it is Greenspan who most magnificently, memorably, incisively, and intelligently interprets the suggestive significances of the verbal-arias Goethe has created for Mephisto.
This is not one of Greenspan's Wicked Queen impersonations, although there is a Feline Dark Shadow looming over Mephistopheles' prophetic judgments about Mankind
Faust has been variously translated into English over the generations, but most often by academics, so that the dramatic-diction works best when read. Not when actors try to mouth it…
Douglas Langworthy's intention in making yet-another translation was to create a text that really could be played--without sounding like Poetry Standing on Two Legs. He has largely succeeded.
Herskovits' talented cast included the two Fausts, Will Badgett and Ty Jones, and Eunice Wong, as a fragile, trusting Gretchen/Marguerite.
Oscar Wilde's THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST [***]
After Lynn Redgrave's radiant performance earlier on Broadway--in Somerset Maugham's The Constant Wife--her lackluster interpretation at BAM of one of Oscar Wilde's most powerful comedic-caricatures, Lady Bracknell, was a distinct disappointment.
Of course, assuming this role is a challenge for anyone who has seen the classic cinema-version of The Importance of Being Earnest: Dame Edith Evans' magisterial portrait cannot be bettered. Or forgotten, by anyone who has seen the film.
What was even more disappointing than the way Redgrave carried herself as Lady Bracknell was the way she tossed off major satiric quips--Vintage Wilde!--with no deliciously, maliciously satiric inflections.
But then the entire production--including its design--was second-rate and not very amusing. Labored, Effortful come to mind. Even the usually dependable Miriam Margolyes seemed to be working too hard as Miss Prism. Nor did Terence Rigby, as Canon Chasuble, rise to the occasion.
Perhaps the fact that BAM imported this production from the small-staged Theatre Royal Bath had something to do with its distinctly Provincial quality? Sir Peter Hall staged, which makes the disappointment of the production all the more puzzling. Is he losing his directorial-touch?
Herman Wouk's THE CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL [****]
First, there was Herman Wouk's best-selling novel, then the play, and then the film--starring Humphrey Bogart, as the ball-bearing-rolling Captain Queeg. If Wouk is remembered for nothing else--Marjorie Morningstar, anyone?--he can lay claim to creating a character that has since become a Symbol of Crazed Incompetence.
Imagine our current Commander-in-Chief furiously handling two steel balls. Not necessarily those of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld…
When your Scribe was an Infantry Rifleman, MOS 1745, in the US Army, during the Korean "Police-Action," any oppressive Officer or NCO would be instantly christened Queeg. And not only in the Military…
I thought the film was definitive and could put Wouk's instructive fable of Justified Mutiny to rest. So I wasn't looking forward to a stage-revival. It looked like another one of those "Limited Runs," designed to keep Dark Theatres open and make it look like Broadway was really Doing OK.
Had they decided--as a lady-director once did with Twelve Angry Women--to rework Wouk's drama with Wave Officers court-martialing Wave Mutineers, the novelty would have been required viewing.
As your Scribe keeps healthy by not Smoking, Drinking, or Watching Television, I did not realize that a major reason for seeing the current revival is the presence in the cast of David Schwimmer, who has been a star of the TV sit-com, Friends.
As the Marine Corps Legal-Officer, Barney Greenwald, who defends the young Naval Lieutenant who removed Captain Queeg from command of the U. S. S. Caine, when it was in danger of sinking under duress, Schwimmer is certainly impressive.
Even more so is Zeljko Ivanek--recently of Pillowman--as an understated, but overstressed, Queeg. In fact, all the actors in Jerry Zaks' tautly-staged production are admirable.
Forget about getting a DVD with Bogart as Queeg. Go see this excellent--like the First Time--revival!
One thing about Wouk's stage-version that bothered me when I first saw the show--on tour years ago in San Francisco--still seems awkward, even unearned. It also drew the attention of several critics of the current production.
By his ingenious defense-strategy, Greenwald induces an increasingly defensive, squirming Queeg to effectively destroy himself before the Military Court. The accused naval lieutenant is acquitted. And rightly so, as his action saved the ship and its men.
But there is also an issue of Anti-Semitism that has nothing to do with Queeg himself. The Navy's prosecutor had suggested Greenwald as defense because he admired him as a law-school colleague. During the trial, however, as he is clearly being bested by Greenwald, he objects to his "Shyster Tactics."
At the subsequent Acquittal Celebration, Greenwald is hailed as the hero of the victory, but he rounds on one of the Caine's officers, a Wasp Ivy Leaguer--who now plans to write a presumably best-selling novel about the Misadventure. [In the Post War Era, weren't many Wasp Ivy Leaguers supposed to be submerged, silent Anti-Semites?]
Greenwald accuses this smug, self-satisfied, privileged young man of urging the raw lieutenant to remove Queeg from command, taking no responsibility himself for the action. Or for the charge of Mutiny… [If you went to City College instead of Yale or Harvard, wouldn't you resent such Creatures of Privilege?]
He then praises the long years of dedicated service of Unsung Officers like Queeg--the 1930s, when America was Isolationist and had no thoughts of War or the Men who served in the Army & Navy. And now Queeg has been destroyed, effectively through a writer who will profit from the sad events.
Even as fiction, Queeg was incompetent, vengeful, obsessive, finally a danger to his ship and his men. How does long service as an Obsessive Incompetent merit praise? Was there some submerged guilt in Wouk's own mind as he wrote his best-selling novel?
Brian Friel's FAITH HEALER [****]
As with his Molly Sweeny, Brian Friel's Faith Healer fable is unfolded in Rashomon-like monologues, rather than interactive discourse.
Ralph Fiennes is low-key but bitterly intense as he describes his life and mission as an itinerant Faith Healer, who sometimes knew The Gift was with him. But who most often felt hollow, empty, powerless, confronted with a scattering of miserable, suffering people--expecting miracles in a small, damp village hall.
Ian McDiarmid is wistfully charming, even roguish, as Teddy, the Cockney Advance-Man, who facilitated Frank Hardy's personal-appearances for years in villages and towns, in halls and barns. For him, as with work in the Music-Halls, this was another form of Show Business. But Frank did have the Gift, on occasion…
Cherry Jones, alas, is out of her league as Frank's common-law wife, Grace. Her version of their lives together contrasts with both Teddy's and Frank's. Each has had a different experience of the same events. Unfortunately, the usually admirable Ms. Jones doesn't, however, seem the least bit Irish or British. She may be in a different play entirely, although all three actors were directed by Jonathan Kent.
This is a production originating at Dublin's Gate Theatre, as is Shining City.
What's the matter with the historic Abbey Theatre? Why don't they send us some Irish productions of their own?
Howard Brenton's SORE THROATS [****]
Howard Brenton has never had much of a public in the United States. His best effort, Pravda--with playwright David Hare--exposing the power-hungry intrigues of a British Press-Lord very much like Rupert Murdoch, combined with the late "Captain" Bob Maxwell, was a stunning sensation in London at the Royal National Theatre.
It was the Stuff Happens of its time, but it never came to Broadway as it should have. But then Stuff Happens also didn't come to Broadway, did it? The Public Theatre is really more East Village…
The painful shocking brutality of Sore Throats hardly made it a Crowd-Pleaser on either side of the Atlantic way back when, so it's a puzzle why Theatre for a New Audience would want to revive it now.
Possibly increased awareness of Spouse-Abuse? Or of Kinky Sex Practices and Bizarre Longings?
Actually, Brenton's unnecessarily unpleasant play does offer three actors the opportunity to impersonate quite contrasting personalities, while playing the same characters in South London in 1979 and again in 1980.
As an unhappily-married Police-Officer, Bill Camp is vicious & violent in his brutal beatings of his defenseless wife, played by Laila Robins. Things change when the Swinging Sally of Meredith Zinner moves in with the now separated wife Judy, enjoying a life of clutter and sexual-excess…
Evan Yionnoulis staged.
Canada's charming Bob Martin should win every award available for his zany book and his campy onstage narration of The Drowsy Chaperone. This delightful pastiche of a 1920s British musical-comedy is just what Broadway has been waiting for all season.
But the lovely Sutton Foster had better be careful: she could become type-cast as a Jazz-Age Flapper.
First, she conquered the Great White Way in Thoroughly Modern Millie, and now this further excursion into the magical musical world of Arrow-Collar-Ad Heroes, Scintillating Stars in elegant gowns with bouncing beaded-fringes, Gangster Comedians, Harried Producers, and Empty-Headed Chorines in outrageous outfits they could never afford on their own pitiful salaries.
The entirely enchanting conceit of the show is that the Original Cast Recording on LPs is being played for the theatre-audience by the Man in Chair, who describes the onstage action of a show he has never seen, but knows only from his long-gone mother's memory of it.
He is huddled by the record-player, wearing an old sweater, in his shabby one-room Manhattan apartment--with a Murphy-Bed in the stage-left wall. Suddenly, out of his refrigerator step the Drowsy Chaperone characters he is describing, as colorful Twenties settings descend into the dank space, creating a magical world.
But the show opens in Total Darkness, as he begins to rhapsodize about how Broadway Musicals used to be. Back in the Good Old Days, when there were great shows at the Morosco. This gets a laugh from Insiders, as that famous theatre once stood on this very site: now the Marriott-Marquis Hotel & Theatre!
Of course the plot of The Drowsy Chaperone is mindless, even obvious, but the charming songs, ingenious dances, and vintage comic-antics are a total treat. A welcome change from Juke-Box Musicals!
The Chaperone in question is the famous musical-star, Dame Beatrice Stockwell [Beth Leavel], who is always slightly drunk. Even though it's the height of Prohibition, she has her own portable-bar always at hand.
Another conceit of this inventive production is that all action stops--the entire cast freezes in place--when Man in Chair interrupts to explain a priceless moment.
Once, when he puts on the wrong record, a lavish Chinese Musical Number--in which an American lady confronts an Emperor or General--suddenly appears onstage. Horrified at his mistake, he halts the performance and dismisses the actors.
What a pity! The costumes must have cost a fortune: why not let the whole scene run its course?
That's what happens in Spamalot, where the first dance-number is set in Finland by mistake, rather than Medieval England.
One of the most engaging musical-numbers features the soon-to-be-wed Toothpaste-Ad Hero--dancing blindfolded and on roller-skates--in An Accident Waiting To Happen!
The entire cast is great. Lisa Lambert & Greg Morrison's songs are Vintage Pastiche Twenties--parodic but charming. David Gallo's wacky sets transform the apartment, and Gregg Barnes' flashy costumes work wonderfully on the bodies of the talented performers.
If you don't have a parlor-piano and can't get sheet-music for this wonderful show, do get the CD or DVD! Of course, do see it--either before or after getting the Original Cast Recording!
Walt Disney's TARZAN [***] Buy Tarzan tickets
Your Scribe had planned to salute the closing moments of Disney's over-costly and super-hyped production of Tarzan at the Richard Rodgers Theatre with an admiring comment on the order of: The Audience Went Ape!
Alas, that was not the case--even with apes on bungee-cords swinging all over the stage and out into the audience. After the first few flying apes, the effect palled. One almost longed for the Flying Monkeys of The Wizard of Oz instead.
Despite all the advance-excitement about the Scenic-Wonders to be unveiled at the former 46th Street Theatre, the renowned Bob Crowley's scenic-solution looked very much like a Giant Green Box, with green streamers to suggest African Jungle Vegetation.
His Giant Exotic Jungle Flowers, however, were charming, as was the pretty little ingénue [Jenn Gambatese] who discovered them on an Ape-Hunting Expedition with her Doting Anthropologist Father [Tim Jerome].
Still, this is no Julie Taymor/Lion King Extravaganza. Even with all the flying, it's not quite a Cirque du Soleil Spectacle either. Crowley staged--as well as having designed the entire production.
The mature, if unsophisticated, Tarzan, was athletically played by Josh Strickland. His youthful counterpart, Daniel Manche, was impressive both as actor and singer.
David Henry Hwang's book broke no New Ground, neither in terms of wit or insight. Sample humor: "You have a termite in your hair!" "You eat it; I'm not hungry."
Tarzan's love for his adoptive ape-mother--and her need of him--were fairly sensitively suggested, given the circumstances of the production.
But you do not have to be a devotee of the Tarzan Series by Edgar Rice Burroughs to know How It Will All Turn Out. Of course Tarzan will go back to England with Jane to claim his inheritance as Lord Greystoke. Leaving a heartbroken foster-mother…
Fortunately, although Phil Collins is no Richard Rodgers--even though his songs echo through Mr. Rodgers' Theatre--several of them proved quite serviceable. If not memorable…
I didn't see the movie of The Wedding Singer, so I cannot say how accurate a musicalisation this show really is. Unfortunately, I did see the Previews of Coming-Attractions trailer for the film and suddenly realized that it was another Adam Sandler Special. Which is why I avoided this cinematic-amusement.
Growing up in the Far West, where they'd never heard of Sweet Sixteen Parties--or Wedding-Singers--I missed out on some of the Defining Rituals of New York Area Culture. Also, I'd never even seen a bagel or a knish…
Nonetheless, this musical-commodity has to be judged on what's actually on stage, not its Provenance. Newcomer Stephen Lynch is easier to take as the Titular-Singer than Sandler in any form. His charming love-interest, Laura Benanti, has already proven herself on Broadway--in Nine and Into the Woods.
What was initially most astonishing--and visually daunting--was the frenetic dance-routine that opens this hyper-active production. It could have been an Act One Finale. At this over-the-top level of energy and eagerness to "push" the show, where could the attractive cast go from here?
With a few quieter moments--for contrast and breath-catching--the ensemble kept the energy-level on High for the entire show. This was a good idea, as the story is not all that entrancing. Nor the characters all that original and engaging.
This was yet another New Jersey Musical--the second this season, after Jersey Boys--but there was no effective comparison between the two. Chad Beguelin & Tim Herlihy's book is no match for the wit & cleverness of Marshall Brickman's for JB. Nor are Beguelin's lyrics, to Matthew Sklar's music, the equal of JB's Juke-Box Hits.
My favorite song was Come Out of the Dumpster, which displayed at least a mordant sense of humor. And Rita Gardner had a certain grandmotherly charm in Rosie's Note.
Scott Pask and Gregory Gale's colorful sets & costumes helped a lot in giving the show a sense of fun. Rob Ashford's conventional choreography--or was it too many dancers in the ensemble?--often made the stage seem too small, too cluttered for what was being celebrated. John Rando staged.
At least The Wedding Singer keeps the Al Hirschfeld Theatre alit, after the departure of Christina Applegate & Sweet Charity. But how long this show will keep the marquee glowing is anybody's guess.
If enough New Jerseyans buy tix, the company may be OK till Autumn… These easy-to-please folks from across the Hudson River are certainly raising the roof over at the August Wilson Theatre, where Frankie Valli is Young Again!
Preferring the music of Mozart and Carl Orff to most of the most popular composers of recent years has its hazards for an aged-reviewer. Also, not watching TV can be a severe limitation in savoring what American Popular Culture has to offer the Innocent Bystander.
When I shuffled off to see Hot Feet at the renamed Hilton Theatre--it was once the Ford Center, but that motor-company isn't doing so well--I had no idea who Maurice White was. Nor what his songs of Earth, Wind, and Fire--all the elements except Water, not even Hot-Water--were all about.
Another Juke-Box Musical, but not with the crowd-pleasing songs of ABBA, as in the worldwide long-running hit, Mama Mia! Additional songs have also been devised by five other talents…
What this show does have, however, is a brilliant young dancing-star, Vivian Nixon! Debbie Allen's girl!
Despite the trite book by Heru Ptah, director-choreographer Maurice Hines has devised some dance-numbers that strenuously put the ensemble through a challenging variety of paces. Paul Tazewell's colorful and imaginative costumes do much to highlight these routines.
Why do Transylvanian Vampires--and Parisians of their Ilk--continue to haunt Broadway? After the double-debacles of Dance of the Vampires and Frank Wildhorn's Dracula--both of which did have some interesting Production Values, if not outstanding scores--you'd think producers might have learned a valuable lesson…
It's too easy to say that Lestat Sucks! In any case, that dismissive two-word review was already used for Dance and for Dracula.
The poster-slogan for Lestat has been: Die Young. Live Forever. The NY Post's ingenious Broadway-Watcher, Michael Riedel, has reworked & improved that to: Die Young. Live Forever. Close Early!
He has proved prophetic once again: Lestat closed on Sunday, 29 May 2006--just in time for Memorial Day visits to New York's cemeteries.
I had never read any of the Vampire novels of Anne Rice, but I had seen the film inspired by them. This should have helped me to figure out what was going on onstage, as I had no clue from Linda Woolverton's odd book. Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out what was happening in the movie--much less why…
To appreciate this show, I think you must really have had to read Rice's Collected Works over and over. Why did Lestat's brother die, instead of becoming a vampire himself? The explanation was not very clear.
The idea of Gay Vampires is certainly intriguing, given their Mythic Penchant for Sucking. But I didn't really sense that kind of a relationship on stage, even with the songs of Sir Elton John, who surely understands the Gay Sensibility better than most.
I asked the Village Voice's Michael Feingold for guidance in understanding the inexplicable plot, but he said he'd not been able to get through more than a few pages of Rice's Interview with a Vampire, the experience being the reading-equivalent of Eating Sawdust.
What's going wrong with the American Musical? Is it too much to hope for an Original Score--if not an Original Book--with some outstanding songs you would really like to learn to sing yourself? Is that too much to ask?
In Days Gone By--when every family had a Parlor-Piano--you would have gone out and bought the sheet-music and learned to play the hits yourself.
Even musical-fans who couldn't make it to Manhattan--or afford Broadway tickets--had heard the songs on the radio and rushed out to get the words & music from the local music-store. What happened to the Local Music Store, by the way?
OK, so the full title of Jacques Brel was already ironic when this unkillable-vampire of a musical-anthology first came to life: …Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Brel has been dead for a very long time, but his songs live on forever, it seems.
At least If We Only Have Love seems durable, and others, such as Marieke, have haunting qualities.
But what is a stage-director to do when there is no real plot and invoking a musical-biography may be of little interest to audiences who know nothing of the man, Jacques Brel? And who may not be dying to know more about him…
Well, as with the recent and recently-closed Johnny Cash Musical, Ring of Fire, you have your cast Act Out the Lyrics!
Unfortunately, in the current revival at the Zipper Theatre, this seems effortful in the extreme. It is almost embarrassing to see such proven talents as Robert Jekyll & Hyde Cuccioli, Rodney Hicks, and Natascia Diaz try so hard to Sell Brel's Songs.
At the Manhattan School of Music:
The competent recent staging of Massenet's Cendrillon at the Manhattan School of Music made it clear why Rossini's Cenerentola is the favorite operatic-version of the Cinderella Story. Although both comic operas are based on Charles Perrault's famed fairytale, Rossini had the best librettist: Massenet's Henri Cain wasn't able to dramatize the moral fable effectively.
Nor is Massenet's score as attractive. Nonetheless, conductor Laurent Pillot supported the student actor/singers ably with the student-orchestra. Yoosun Park was a lovely Lucette-Cendrillon, with Renée Lenore Tatum as her breeches-role Prince Charming.
The staging could have been more interesting, but that was partly a problem of the basic set and the effortful changes it had to endure. The talented cast generally rose above such inconveniences. Among the other able performers: Rebecca Jo Leob, Emily Albrink, Krysty Swann, Jessica Norris, & Michael Certo.
At the Juilliard School Opera Theatre:
Liebermann's MISS LONELYHEARTS [**]
The Juilliard School is celebrating its 100th Anniversary, and commissioning a New American Opera must have seemed a splendid way to salute this Major American Training-Ground for young talents.
Composer Lowell Liebermann and librettist J. D. McClatchy must also have thought they had a splendid idea in adapting Nathaniel West's novella, Miss Lonelyhearts, for the Music-Theatre stage.
Unfortunately, they were mistaken.
Perhaps there is a good reason no one has tried this before? Is it something composers Douglas Moore or Robert Ward could have done better? But thought better of trying to do it?
Maybe Adam Guettel or Michael John LoChiuso should have been given the commission? They seem the Hot Young Composers of the Moment…
Although Liebermann has had a succession of well-received compositions--including another opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray--his Lonelyhearts score is not dramatically powerful or even very interesting. In the second half, however, it does have some good set-pieces, including a bucolic aria for the girl who loves the bedeviled male journalist who has to answer the letters of the lovelorn and the desperate under the Miss Lonelyhearts rubric. There is also a comic newsmen's trio.
The major problem is the libretto, abetted by stage-direction strong on Sex & Violence. The stage-action would seem more germane to a black-&-white film-version of The Front Page. Knocking furniture and people about is no substitute for powerful tensions in the characters made manifest in dramatic interactions in words & music.
Why Liebermann and McClatchy decided to let three letter-writers speak--instead of sing--their plaintive letters to the paper seems a totally anti-dramatic choice for an opera. These letters cry out for arias…
The most interesting aspect of the premiere-evening was reading the self-congratulatory bios of Liebermann and McClatchy in the program. Indeed, McClatchy's note on his approach to the task of creating an opera-libretto is more revelatory than his actual text, whether spoken or sung.
Jeremy Little and Katherine White were, however, moving as Miss L and Betty. As the demonic editor, Shrike, Mathew Worth was over the top. Andreas Delfs conducted the Juilliard Orchestra.
Sendak, Kushner, & Krása's BRUNDIBAR [***]
Had Hans Krása and Adolf Hoffmeister's children's opera, Brundibar, not been performed in the Nazi Theresienstadt Concentration-Camp--and by a cast of adults and children, many of whom were later exterminated at Auschwitz--it would not now be attracting so much attention.
It is charming enough, but no match for Hansel & Gretel. Or Amahl and the Night-Visitors.
Two small children desperately need fresh milk for their gravely ill mother, but they have no money with which to buy it. Going into the village, they try to sing songs to earn a few pence, but they are opposed by the evil scheming Brundibar. The name means Bumblebee. Fortunately, with the help of The Cat and The Sparrow, they win the day--and the bully Brundibar departs, threatening to return another day.
What absolutely makes the current revival a must-see are the sets and costumes inspired by the Brundibar book-designs of Maurice Sendak, a great admirer of the opera and its troubling history.
But the fanciful and powerful visual-effects are not the only production-values. There is also an amusing, if elemental, libretto by Tony Angels in America Kushner. And outstanding performances by both adults and kids, including Rosie's Broadway Kids.
Because Brundibar is a short opera, Kushner has devised an unnecessary curtain-raiser, But the Giraffe. Surely something already in the short-opera repertoire might have been used instead?
In this seemingly endless evocation of packing the single suitcase permitted for Nazi Transportation to a Concentration-Camp, the Little Girl keeps trying to pack her toy-giraffe--with huge wooden wheels and base--into a case, instead of the libretto of a new opera: Brundibar!
Children in the audience surely could have had no idea what this was really all about, even if the Little Girl's family-members re-appeared from time to time, wearing Yellow Stars of David, as required by the Gestapo.
Brundibar was a co-production with the Berkeley Rep--headed by Tony Taccone, who staged the two works--and the Yale Rep. Unfortunately, there are no plans for a national tour.
For the Record: Czechoslovakia's Terezín , or Theresienstadt, was a "Model City" for Jews "relocated" from Aryan Germany to Eastern Europe. The arts were encouraged, and an International Red Cross inspector of Nazi Camps was impressed with living-conditions and with the production of Brundibar--which had 55 performances in the camp. Later, the composer and all the children in the cast were murdered in Auschwitz.
In recent years, both in America and Europe, there have been dedicated efforts in reviving--or even premiering--in performance the music, the operas, and musicals of Jews who were either exterminated by the Nazis, or who fled abroad when their works were denounced as Entartete Kunst, or Degenerate Art.
Some, like Erich Wolfgang Korngold, fled to Hollywood. But, with the Nazi ban, his once celebrated Die tote Stadt--The Dead City--was soon forgotten, only recently to have been given important modern productions. But there are other forgotten or neglected Nazi-condemned Jewish works that deserve revival as well.
Adrienne Barbeau in THE PROPERTY KNOWN AS GARLAND [****]
Hans Vangkilde, of Danish Radio, years ago gave me a tape he'd made, interviewing Judy Garland on her last night in Copenhagen, following a very successful show. Adrienne Barbeau recreates the tense minutes leading up to her last stage-appearance there, when she is using every kind of zany strategy to avoid going out before her eager Danish audience.
This is not entirely a monodrama, though Barbeau does recap Judy's Last Years, making-up at her dressing-table and revisiting her earlier M-G-M & OZ experiences. There is also a very nervous young man from the theatre-management who has to get Garland to perform.
She says she cannot, unless she has some Mashed-Potatoes--an American food unknown to the Danes. Stalling and stalling, she effectively covers her Biographical Territory.
I found Barbeau convincing and compelling as the Late Miss Garland.
What was, for me at least, most convincing were many of her recollections--delivered to the young man and/or the audience at Actors' Playhouse. They could have been lifted from Hans' interview-tape!
In fact, program-notes indicate that the playwright, Billy Van Zandt--also Ms. Barbeau's husband--based his script on Garland's own comments, taken from print and taped sources.
The Playbill notes: "This was Miss Garland's final concert appearance. She passed away three months later, twelve days after her forty-seventh birthday."
This was, to me, very interesting information, as Hans had told me that she died several days later in London, from an overdose of pills, for which he felt personally responsible.
Obviously very giggly and euphoric on Hans' tape, Judy seems eager to put her new husband, Mickey Deans, in the spotlight for Danish Radio. She also had been drinking: Hans says she went through a whole bottle of vodka.
After Judy and Mickey left for the airport, Hans was shocked to find she'd taken his very powerful pain-killer pills: toxic to most mortals. These, he believed, caused her death…
Did she instead swallow them three months later? Or was Hans just making a good story more impressive?
The pills were so very potent because the terrible pain from the torture Hans Vangkilde had suffered from the Gestapo never abated. He'd trained as a concert-pianist but was helping Danish Jews escape at night in small boats across the sea to Sweden.
When the Nazis caught him, they jabbed wooden splints under his fingernails and lit them. He would never play the piano again. And the pain never stopped. But he surely never killed Judy Garland!
She was her own Instrument of Self-Destruction.
Adrienne Barbeau's The Property Known as Garland should tour widely. Many of Judy's Enduring Fans will want to see it!
Marga Gomez in LOS BIG NAMES [**]
Colleagues had raved about Marga Gomez' reprise of her parents' Lives in Latino Show-Business, though I found this less than riveting. But she is certainly an attractive and capable monologist, able to suggest a range of personalities.
And it is good that what used to be Miriam Colon's Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre--an old fire-house--is still being used for Hispanic/Latino entertainments. There is certainly an audience for such shows, even if some of the specialty productions are not of Mainstream Interest.
Sarah Niles in THE BOGUS WOMAN [*****]
First there was Anna Deveare Smith, with one-woman monodramas, artfully suggesting a strongly contrasting variety of personalities. Her visions of Los Angeles Riots and racial trouble in Crown Heights were arresting and vivid. They also Made a Point.
Sarah Jones has followed in Smith's footsteps with the award-winning Bridge & Tunnel, shown first at 45 Bleecker and now extended at the Helen Hayes Theatre.
Now, from Great Britain, comes Sarah Niles, who excels them both in her vocal and physical recreations of Native Brits and Illegal African Immigrants. What is more, her physical involvement includes recreating the brutal treatment meted out to a baffled African woman whose story and emotions are so confused that the Authorities don't know how to deal with her.
Prison is one odious option. Or Detention Centers, which are essentially little different…
The victim/refugee, seeking safe-harbor in England, initially represents herself as a tourist on a short visit, with a fake passport. But nothing quite adds-up, and her subsequent attempts to correct the record are even more confusing.
What is at stake, however, is the difference between Survival and Death.
If such a woman is deported, she often faces death when she is forced to return to her tribe. The desperate flight to Britain of many African women has been to escape Familial or Tribal Abuse, even rape by their own husbands.
Speaking out against oppressive regimes--such as Mugabe's in Zimbabwe--can also put a price on a woman's head…
The bogus woman is frightened and desperate, and Niles certainly makes the audience share her traumas and emotions.
But Kay Adshead's script is based on the experiences of more than one African woman, so the composite is ultimately puzzling for the audience--as well as for the Police and Immigration Officials.
Nonetheless, Sarah Niles' performance is most impressive!
Ian Kelly in COOKING FOR KINGS [*****]
"Four-and-twenty blackbirds/Baked in a pie…" may have been a dainty-dish to set before the Queen, but Ian Kelly's evocation of Antonin Carême--the world's first Celebrity Chef--make it clear that his Haute Cuisine was far more imaginative than the fodder of Mother Goose rhymes.
Antonin Carême was not only the first notable Cook for Kings, but he was also the first chef to make a small fortune in publishing his remarkable recipes in cookbooks! What is more, he also told his readers how to select the best pots & pans, the finest ingredients, and how to combine them for maximum success.
Few of his readers could have had at their disposal, however, the kitchens of Napoleon Bonaparte, those of The Tsar of All the Russias, and of the King of England, George IV--especially in orchestrating one of the grandest of all Royal Meals for the former Prince Regent in the Royal Pavilion at Brighton.
This Grand Banquet was never to be served: The Queen and the longed-for Royal Heir had died in childbirth in London…
Any theatre-lover and food-fanatic who remembers British playwright Arnold Wesker's frenetic cooks & waiters in The Kitchen will be even more amazed at the complexity, the tremendous stress, the fantastic skills, and the frantic activity involved in preparing sumptuous meals for Royalty. Even afternoon-snacks present nuanced challenges!
What's most amazing about Cooking for Kings is that the ingenious and charming Ian Kelly does it all by himself. He is not visibly surrounded by cadres of sous-chefs, vegetable-peelers, waiters, and footmen.
In his--and our--imaginations, of course, they are all ready to hand. Even the intrusion into his kitchen of great potentates seems very real.
This is all the more remarkable as Kelly's playing-space at 59E59 is only a bit larger than a Park Avenue walk-in closet. Its focal-point is a great silver crown overhead, with racks of hanging pots & pans, from which Kelly conjures up some of Antonin Carême's most celebrated dishes.
He makes his entry from behind the audience, striding down the stairs, with an upside-down dessert-mold. Center-stage, he gingerly places the mold on a dish, ready to unveil his Blanc-mange. Disaster! It has not yet set: globby substances flubber all over the plate. At the close of the Kelly/Carême rant, however, this mess has set good and hard!
What is most ingenious about Kelly's evocation of Carême's career is that it moves backward and forward in time, rather than: "And then I cooked for… And then I cooked for… And then my child was born… And so on and on…"
But this is not entirely about fabulous cooking or the extended menus of the most famous Royal Banquets, which might feature 14 soups, 74 entrées, and more desserts than one can now imagine.
Kelly is deftly ably to interweave major historical events into his narrative. After all, considering that Napoleon and his Imperial Armies marched across Russia to conquer Moscow--and he was subsequently exiled to Elba, and to St. Helena, after the definitive defeat at Waterloo--how did Carême manage to shuttle from Russian to French to British Royal Kitchens with such ease?
This rapid Grand Tour through European History and Classic Cuisine is brilliantly and strenuously conducted by a seemingly tireless Ian Kelly.
This one-man show should be widely seen, but Kelly's best-selling book about Carême--Cooking for Kings, translated into six-languages--is available at your nearest Barnes & Noble. His expertise is also on view in the TV documentary, Regency Banquet.
During Kelly's frenetic monologue, he had been busily preparing some pastries. As the audience left the theatre, each spectator received a tiny Swan cream-puff.
Rupert Wickham in DEFYING HITLER [***]
Raimund Pretzel--his real name!--was no Sophie Scholl, whose courageous and open stand against the Nazis at the University in Munich earned her a brutal execution. Nonetheless, as a young journalist, in 1933--the year Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP came to power--he began writing for a Berlin newspaper.
What he did not at first realize was that he was effectually sitting at the typewriter of a Jewish journalist who had been forbidden by the Nazis to write anything at all. The next year, Propadanda Minister Joseph Goebels' censors closed the paper, but he continued to write columns elsewhere.
Unlike many of his contemporaries--who either kept their mouths shut about increasingly savage Nazi attacks against Jews, Socialists, & Communists, or who actually co-operated--Pretzel was very disturbed at the appalling changes in daily-life and Weimar Democracy.
In 1938, he was able to escape to England, where--to protect family remaining in Germany--he took the pen-name of Sebastian Haffner. He was able to marry his German-Jewish sweetheart and to continue writing, ultimately for the prestigious Observer.
After World War II, he returned to his homeland to write for the equally prestigious Die Zeit and Stern magazine. After his death, his son discovered a manuscript he'd written about Berlin in the 1930s.
This was then published as Story of a German and became a best-seller. Rupert Wickham has adapted this as a monodrama, but it's not as powerful as it could have been were Pretzel a Scholl, instead of an appalled bystander.
Ian Kelly & Ryan Early in BEAU BRUMMELL [*****]
Considering Ian Kelly's ability to suggest kitchens full of frantic workers and chefs all by himself, he could have recalled the great days of Beau Brummell, "The First Gentleman," in another of his ingenious monologues.
Instead, as the Beau is now across the English Channel, in miserable, shabby exile from his former patron, the Prince Regent, Kelly has cleverly chosen to pair him with his unpaid valet [the long-suffering but entirely marvelous Ryan Early], to provide a voice of Clear-Recall to parry the Beau's increasingly grandiose memories.
In his own time--and even now, for those who know something about Men's Fashion--Beau Brummell was the Mirror of Male Fashion, the Arbiter of Stylish and Correct Dress. Each season, what the Beau chose to wear was rapidly what any Gentleman of Quality would also don. Fashions changed as the Beau changed his cravats, vests, or chapeaux…
As Brummell was not nobly-born, his success was assured by the favor of the Prince Regent, Heir-Apparent to the Mad King George III. Seen in the Prince's company, helping the Regent to dress more stylishly himself, the Beau's tastes immediately had tremendous effect.
But his pride and immense self-assurance--the latter only a surface, as developments showed--were his own Undoing. When he perceived a snub from the Regent at a social-event, he pointedly asked the apparent new favorite: "Who's your fat friend?"
The future King George IV was famously corpulent. Not even the finest of fashions could disguise that. But no one in aristocratic circles ever remarked on this in the Prince's Presence. Only "Penny Plain/Tuppence Coloured" Political Caricaturists dared do that.
What gradually emerges from the Beau's rants--and his valet's complaints, as a kind of Sancho Panza to his Quixotic master--is that Beau Brummell is now not only exiled and penniless, but certifiably mad, existing in a convent-home run by Catholic nuns…
This physically-exhausting exploration of the Human Rat-Race--especially that of an Everyman, confronted with fathering an infant--is beyond Mime, beyond Running-in-Place. Although there is some of both in The Race.
Co-directed by Amit Lahav & Al Nedjari--and developed by Gecko's talented ensemble of James Flynn, Katharine Markee, Natalie Ayton, and Lahav & Nedjari--this strenuous work recreates all aspects of the Rat-Race: in the Office, at Home, in the Pub. But most notably in the biological and social progress from Conception to Childbirth--followed by Nursing & Nurturing…
The banalities and clichés of daily-life are all surveyed in frantic motion and often wordless utterances. The old clichés, "Words Fail Me" or "There aren't words to describe…", are corporeally illustrated again and again.
The frequently frenetic ensemble-movements are carefully choreographed: one mis-step and someone could suffer serious injury! Some body-movements are acrobatic; others are almost balletic, even Hip-Hop. A very special entertainment, embodying a Visual--rather than Verbal--Message about the business of Living & Surviving… And of Fatherhood!
Cirque du Soleil's CORTEO [****] Buy Cirque de Soleil Corteo tickets
Is there no place in the Civilized World that the Cirque du Soleil has not visited with one of its ingenious, imaginative shows? They have not been to Zimbabwe, but what civilization there was when it was still Colonial Rhodesia has been completely eroded.
Indeed, after enjoying Alegría in Manhattan, a year or so later I saw it again in a big tent in Berlin--pitched almost over the exact spot where Adolf Hitler & Eva Braun had committed suicide! Some seasons after that--after photographing Angkor Wat & Angkor Thom in Cambodia--I again encountered Alegría in Singapore, of all places!
Also eternally on the road--not to be confused with Max Reinhardt's The Eternal Road--are Cirque du Soleil's Varekai, Dralion, Quidam, and Saltimbanco. As is Corteo, briefly on Randall's Island in the East River, as part of its North American Tour.
At Walt Disney World© in Orlando, Le Cirque's La Nouba is in Permanent Residence. Perhaps Disney's Broadway Tarzan can join it when tourists have tired of Apemen on Bungee-cords in Manhattan?
Las Vegas already has four Cirque shows in permanent theatres, with a fifth show set to open 2006 at the Mirage Resort! "O" is at the Bellagio. Mystère is at Treasure Island. KÀ is at the MGM Grand, with ZUMANITY at New York New York Hotel & Casino. [Avenue Q--instead of going on a national-tour--was also given a permanent Las Vegas theatre, but apparently not enough tourists wanted to see a musical about Gay Puppets to fill the seats, so it was cancelled.]
And what about Corteo, under canvas at Randall's Island? It has its special charms, but it is a bit too much like "déjà vu all over again."
The title refers to a Spanish Funeral Procession, as in the French Cortège… The Central Figure is a Latino Man in a White Suit--middle-aged and possibly a bit overweight, but not quite a Gordo yet. He dies, and Flights of Angels descend on wires to hover over his death-bed. Which also can levitate…
Several critic-colleagues commented that Cirque du Soleil had stolen this visual concept from Tony Kushner's Angels in America.
But the idea of Angelic Hosts coming down from the Highest Heavens to carry the Souls of the Just off to McMansions in the Sky is as old as Christianity itself. Older, maybe, as Angels are also found in Greek & Roman artworks…
The usual Chinese & Russian circus-acts were imaginatively on view. But--as critic John Simon once complained--there are no real live circus-animals in these shows. There are two people-powered Panto Horses, but no Siegfried & Roy Tiger-Taming; no Daring Equestrian Feats; no Snake-Charmers…
There were, however, endless recyclings of the Funeral Procession, featuring both Giants & Dwarfs, among other distinctive figures. This was even mistily evoked on the double-curtain that veiled--but did not entirely conceal--the central stage-area.
Corteo's curtain-designer, Jean Rabasse, was inspired by The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown, seen in Canada's National Gallery, an 1885 Paris Salon painting by Adolphe Willette--with additional motifs borrowed from Tiepolo & Picasso, among others…
Yes, the Acrobats are all very good, the Comics less so. And there is a cute Theatre-Wagon featuring really gross, amateurish buffoonery that is embarrassing rather than hysterically amusing… And the Clowns do go into the audience and squirt water on the spectators.
There are some 55 artists in the show, and the performer/characters have some 131 costumes at their disposal, using over 900 fabrics! They come "from 16 different [sic] countries," including Kenya, Romania, Israel, Belarus, Argentina, the Ukraine--and, of course, Canada, le Cirque's homeland.
Daniele Finzi Pasca staged this complex show.
As with the Big Apple Circus--which has also been inspired by the one-ring circuses of Europe--Cirque's early productions played against a backdrop, with audiences spread out before a broad semi-circular stage.
In Corteo, however, the stage--called the Grand Chapiteau--is in the center, with arcs of audience on either side of it. This conformation is a first for Cirque du Soleil--and it works very well. The spectators are to imagine that they, like the performances, are between Heaven and Earth.
Above the Grand Chapiteau is the Patience, "a massive arched technical structure made of steel…used to transport various scenic-elements and pieces of acrobatic-equipment on and off stage from above." Also, the Bands of Angels fly down from the Patience.
The stage itself is 104 feet long, with two in-built turntables. In the center of the circular stage is a Labyrinth which "exactly reproduces the proportions and size of the classic design on the floor of the aisle in Chartres Cathedral."
[As Chartres is famed as a mystical architecture, constructed over a Center of Great Cosmic Power--including a Sacred Spring--this is something DaVinci Code's Dan Brown should look into: Do the producers & designers of Corteo know something they aren't telling paying-customers?]
At Ellen Stewart's LaMaMa e.t.c:
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| Photo by Hikoma Ueno, circa 1866 |
I had the good fortune one afternoon--wandering down Lower Second Avenue in the East Village--to be called into a tiny hole-in-the-wall eatery by Jonathan Slaff, Editor/Proprietor of this website. He was in conference with Watoku Ueno, a noted Japanese photographer/poet, who was planning an avant-garde drama about Japan's First Photographer, Hikoma Ueno.
Ueno showed me a fascinating book--in Japanese--with impressive photos made by Ueno. Some of these were visually--and sometimes textually--evoked in Ueno's haunting Sundown at LaMaMa. The show itself was based on Hikoma Ueno's adventures in discovering how to master the technical difficulties of this new European medium--and his varied encounters with subjects as well.
His Family Tradition involved the painting of portraits, but in his time--the Era of the Tokugowa Shogunate--most Japanese were suspicious of having their image captured by a camera. With the rise of rebels, leading to the Meiji Restoration of the Emperor's Power--vide Pacific Overtures--leaders who might be killed in battle very much wanted portrait-photos made.
Ueno had studied chemistry with a Dutch Navy doctor in Nagasaki. That's how he found out about the magic of the camera. This East-West contact was possible only because Nagasaki was the only Port-city open to Westerners, in a time when Japan was deliberately cut off from the rest of the world.
Unfortunately, despite his chemical instruction, he did not know how European photographers actually made the materials needed to for photographic-plates. This he had to discover by himself, creating a method rather different from that used abroad.
Among its oddities, it required the slaughter of a lot of cows. But he did find a viable solution for wet-plate photography and opened Japan's first photo-studio in 1862.
These matters are touched upon in Sundown, but Ueno's playing-text and physical-production are so poetically ephemeral, that this is not, in effect, an Avant-garde Documentary. Nick Bosco was effective as Hikoma himself.
This strange--almost amateurish--production was based, supposedly, on Ibsen's Doll's House, reduced in size, content, intent, & import--but served with Mustard!
At one point, some of the cast-members seemed to be spreading it on some hot-dogs. Or, as they say in Vienna: Wieners.
Flamboyant Michael Burke, sporting a Mohawk, was the only cast-member with real Presence, dynamic Movement, surging Energy, and incisive Expression. This is an original talent worth watching! His program-credits are also impressive.
Otherwise, I could not tell whether one of the women's de-energized & painful vocalism was deliberate, or if she really had no sense of how to sing at all. Others in the cast were similarly lackluster--but this may well have been Mitchell Polin's Distinctive Trade-mark Style?
This recalled some dreadful dramatic miscalculations forty years ago at LaMaMa, when the Theatre of the Absurd was in its Infancy…
My dear old friend, critic-colleague, and fellow Outer Critics Circle Executive-Board member, Mario Fratti, has done it again! Mario is perhaps most famous for the musical Nine, for which he and composer Maury Yeston won the Richard Rodgers Award years ago.
Not only was he able to charm Federico Fellini into giving him the rights to make his classic film, 8 ½, into a musical, but he also crafted an admirable libretto. Unfortunately, this book was not used on Broadway, not initially, nor in the recent premiere.
Somehow, the terminally-ill Lehman Engel--under whose BMI Musical Workshop supervision the team had created book, lyrics, and score--convinced the composer & potential producers that the show needed a different librettist, namely Arthur Kopit, of Indians fame.
As a longtime fan and friend of Mario Fratti, I am waiting for the day that Nine can be performed with its original book!
Many of Mario's more than 80 dramas deal with very important Political & Social Issues of our day. After Heiress Patricia Hearst was kidnapped on the UC/Berkeley campus by Cinque and the Symbionese Liberation Army, Mario created a musical called Tanya, Ms. Hearst's rebel-name.
He even dealt with the Love-Life of Federico Fellini, in Passionate Women. This LaMaMa production was partly notable for the chubby nudity of Rip Torn's son, Tony Torn.
His plays include Che Guevera, Porno, The Cage, Seducers, Eleanora Duse, Mafia, Mothers & Daughters, Family, Young Wife, and now, Sister, a complex family-drama set in Milan in the 1960s.
The semi-tragic plot of Sister turns on a relationship-gimmick that I must not disclose. But I could see it coming, early in the play… Shân Willis was impressive as Rosanna, the daughter/sister.
At Ellen Stewart's LaMaMa Umbria International/Spoleto:
7th Annual International Symposium for Directors:
When Ellen Stewart was honored with a MacArthur "Genius" Grant, she did something typically LaMaMa: she used the money to buy a Monastery in Umbria, not far from Spoleto, home of Gian-Carlo Menotti's famed Spoleto Festival. This convent is some 700 years old!
The $500,000 award is spread over five years. Many winners use this welcome funding to further their careers as artists, writers, and even scientists.
Typically, LaMaMa Ellen Stewart used the money to help others create and advance their careers! In fact, soon after she had sealed the deal, she told me I was welcome to go there and write a novel or a play, staying as long as I liked, rent-free, responsible only for Keeping My Area Clean and providing my own food.
Unfortunately, I've never had any Free-Time to do this, always seeing & reviewing shows for New York Theatre-Wire and reporting on new Museum & Gallery installations for its sister-site: New York Museums.com…
Over time, the special Symposiums for Directors have been developed. This summer will be the Seventh in the on-going series, co-ordinated by David Diamond & Mia Yoo.
Special workshops will be conducted by noted international avant-garde artists, all of whom have had memorable productions at LaMaMa, down on East 4th Street. Among the talents applicants can work with are the remarkable Ping Chong: Creating Works in Time and Space.
Tina Landau will explore Visual Literacy, while Israel's Rina Yerushalmi will provide her expertise on Poetics of the Body.
Arben Kumbaro's special workshop deals with Documentary & Socially-Engaged Theatre. John Jesurun is scheduled for Camera, Space, and the Innocent Eye.
There will also be a special evening with LaMaMa Ellen Stewart, recalling her remarkable life & work in avant-garde theatre. No one on either side of the Atlantic has worked so long and so selflessly to create opportunities and performance-spaces for young--and even aging--artists & performers as has Ellen.
Many of the most memorable of Adventures in the International Avant-Garde Theatre have been unveiled down on East 4th Street! Not to overlook those created by LaMaMa centers abroad.
Your scribe accompanied Ellen all the way down to Maricaibo once to see the World-Premiere of Bolivar! Powerful! So powerful that all the Bishops, Monsignors, & Priests left as soon as they could escape from the theatre!
Previous Symposia have featured such LaMaMa artists and alumni as Theodora Skipitares, Yuri Lyubimov, Anne Bogart, Denise Stoklos, Richard Schechner, Jean-Claude van Itallie, & Maxine Klein.
Activities include late-night working-interactions with artists and other participants, plus excursions to famed Umbrian cities and towns, including Assissi, Perugia, & Todi.
Registration costs only $3,200--including three weeks of workshops, housing, and meals--but the deadline was 15 May "at the latest." Your scribe only just found out about this great opportunity, but there are almost always last-minute cancellations.
Or you can get on the mailing-list for next summer, 2007, if Donald Rumsfeld doesn't decide to Bomb Italy…
The registration-form and more information from the symposium co-ordinators can be found online at: www.lamama.org
Why not Plan Ahead for Next Summer?
Mae West & Texas Guinan Coming Up!
Somebody must actually read Glenn Loney's Show-Notes, for here is a press-release from Conrad Bradford urging me to let readers know about the upcoming celebration of Mae West's Birthday, on 17 August 2006. This is planned for the Village Restaurant, 62 West 9th Street. Not too far from LaMaMa and New York Theatre Workshop, but still West Village, not the Exotic East…
This event will be in conjunction with the unveiling of an exhibition: Onstage Outlaws: Mae West and Texas Guinan during the Lawless Decade.
Having advised Dr. Richard Helfer on his CUNY Grad Center PhD dissertation on Mae West and her scandalous plays, I now feel like a minor expert, but, alas, I will be at the Salzburg Festival on that August date.
Those who will be in town, however, may wish to find out more from http://MaeWest.blogspot.com
Bradford also has a cell-phone: 917-403-0980. It may not cause brain-cancer, but you never know about these things…
Copyright Glenn Loney, 2006. No re-publication or broadcast use without proper credit of authorship. Suggested credit line: "Glenn Loney, New York Theatre Wire." Reproduction rights please contact: jslaff@nytheatre-wire.com.
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