Here's a first-world problem for you: living in a vibrant city and being reluctant to take a vacation to visit other vibrant cities, because there are so many fun artsy events in your home city that you'll miss out on when you go away.
I'm going to be on vacation the last 2 weeks of April (3 days in NYC, 7 days in Paris, 3 days in Oxford), and I'm really excited about it, but that doesn't prevent me from wishing that I could somehow also experience all of these other things that are happening in San Francisco while I'm gone.
1. Independent Bookstore Day -- This started in California two years ago and has expanded nationwide: 400+ indie bookstores host special community events and sell exclusive merchandise. Last year, I went to my local indie bookstore, Green Apple Books on the Park, and bought some tea towels with a quote from San Francisco's own Lemony Snicket: "It is likely I will die next to a pile of things I was meaning to read." (Truth.) A hopeful, optimistic, literary-themed event, Independent Bookstore Day makes me feel a little better about my community and about the world. Happening this year on Saturday, April 30.
2. 826 + KML = BFFs -- This is another thing I did last year and would repeat if I were in town. Sketch-comedy troupe Killing My Lobster (KML) teams up with the kids'-literacy organization 826 Valencia, teaches some adorable children how to write sketches, and then stages their work. The kids' sketches are absurd, hilarious, bizarre, and proof that comedy doesn't require sex, cursing, or antisocial behavior to be funny. I saw this show last year with my friend Sam Bertken, who loved it so much that he's acting in it this year, and I wish I could see that, because it promises to be delightful. Happening at Pianofight, April 28, 29, and 30.
3. Love & Friendship -- Whit Stillman's new film, a Jane Austen adaptation, is the opening-night attraction at the SF International Film Festival on April 21. I'll be seeing it when it's released in mid-May, of course, but how cool would it be to see it at the Castro Theater with an audience of film buffs, in the presence of Stillman and his leading lady Kate Beckinsale? If you go and mingle with the stars, be sure to tell me so that I can be jealous.
4. t. gondii presents the lovesickness circus -- For the first time in 5+ years, I have to miss a Theater Pub show! This is a world premiere by Katharine Sherman, starring Soren Shane Santos as a rat who takes a cat (Marlene Yarosh) to a circus hosted by a parasite (Jeunee Simon). It sounds like one of the more off-kilter things Theater Pub has ever done and I wish I could spend a night at the Lovesickness Circus for myself! Happening at PianoFight, April 18, 19, 25, and 26. $10 suggested donation.
5. Colossal -- I have heard nothing but good things about San Francisco Playhouse's latest show, a 60-minute, hybrid dance/theater piece about football, fathers and sons, and toxic masculinity. Yeah, there's a part of me that thinks "This is so short, I could still find time to see it in the next few days," but I'm so busy running around town preparing for my trip that I don't think I can make that happen. But it runs through April 30, so you still have time to get tickets and see it!
6. The bunnies at Civic Center -- This is another thing that's already around, but I probably will not have time to experience before I leave. A new public art installation, at Civic Center Plaza through April 25, consists of giant inflatable white rabbits. Pagan symbols of springtime fertility? Postmodern kitsch geared toward Instagram selfies? An allusion to the song "White Rabbit" by classic S.F. band Jefferson Airplane? I wish I could see and decide for myself.
7. ShortLived Championship Round -- A play of mine competed in Round 3 of ShortLived but narrowly lost to "Goodsell, Good Life" by Tommy Lazer and Suzil Von -- now the 6 winning plays of the last 6 weeks will compete against one another for the $5000 grand prize. I'm kind of rooting for Tommy and Suzil, because there is more dignity and prestige in losing to a play that goes on to win the grand prize, right? Another event that I probably won't be able to squeeze in before I go, this is happening at PianoFight on April 14, 15, and 16, and I hear tickets are going fast.
8. What Rhymes With America -- The Bay Area premiere of this Melissa James Gibson play, directed by my friend and fellow Theater Pub writer Robert Estes, is playing in Berkeley through April 24. I am way overdue to see Robert's work as a director and feel bad that, once more, I must decline his invitation! As a "painfully funny portrayal of everyday people working through what it means to be human in America today," it sounds like it might make a good companion piece for Will Eno's Middletown, which I DID manage to catch last week, and is at the Custom Made Theatre through April 30.
9. The Lion -- Why you gotta play me like this, ACT? You open a new theater in 2015, you emphasize that all the shows there will have longer runs (2-3 months) than the typical ACT show, and just when we all get used to that idea, you book a show there for only two weeks? I want to see The Lion as part of my burgeoning fascination with the genre that my friend Stuart has dubbed "the hipster musical," and also because the pull-quote they're using, "Only the hardest-hearted could resist!" makes me feel like I must go if I don't want to be considered an unfeeling Scrooge. Unfortunately, it closes May 1.
10. Home Invasion -- The first production by 6NewPlays, a collective of playwright-producers, is by the prolific local writer Christopher Chen, and it sounds very cool: a Hitchcock-inspired surreal murder mystery play that is being staged in living rooms around the Bay Area. Check out the interview my friend Barbara did with Chris Chen for the Theater Pub blog. Most of the performances are sold out, so I really hope they might choose to revive it at a later date! For more: 6NewPlays.com.
Showing posts with label american conservatory theater. Show all posts
Showing posts with label american conservatory theater. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Sunday, February 1, 2015
Miss Fisher and Miss Crewe
In my most recent Theater Pub column, I wrote about some of the non-theater things that kept me sane/happy/entertained in January: the f.lux app, trying new hairdos, cleaning my room, and watching Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries on Netflix.
I saw some enjoyable theater, too: Indian Ink at ACT is a good play in a lovely production. Though Arcadia will always be my all-time favorite Stoppard, this one is still smart and entertaining and well worth your time.
And I got to thinking about how Flora Crewe, the heroine of Indian Ink, and Phryne Fisher, the title character of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, feel like variations on an archetype: confident, independent-minded, adventurous women of the between-the-wars period. They pursue careers that aren't quite "respectable" (Flora is a poet, Phryne a private detective), but which still allow them to dress glamorously and mingle with interesting people. Flora gets denigrated as an empty-headed "flapper poet" and Phryne gets patronized as a meddlesome amateur, but they do their best to shake off such criticisms and go on with being their awesome selves. They are single but have many lovers; they are not ashamed of their sexuality. They are very fond of stylish automobiles.
Their biographical details are similar too. Indian Ink gives Flora's birth year as 1895; she is 35 when the play takes place in 1930. The Miss Fisher show takes place in 1928 Melbourne, at which time Phryne seems to be in her mid-to-late 30s. (Per Wikipedia, Phryne's birth year is 1900, so she's 28 when we meet her, but maybe that's just for the novels the TV show is based on -- actress Essie Davis is great and looks younger than her real age, but I don't think she can pass for 28.) They both have a beloved younger sister, though Phryne's sister was murdered in childhood while Flora's sister is alive and well. After spending childhood and adolescence in an English-speaking country (England/Australia), they run off to France during World War I and join an ambulance unit. They both remain in France for a bit after the war ends, too, living the bohemian life in Paris and working as artists' models.
Here's where the parallels get really crazy. In Paris, Flora poses nude for Modigliani and when the painting is later exhibited, it infuriates her fiancé so much that he buys it and burns it in a bathtub at the Ritz. Phryne poses nude for a fictitious artist, Pierre Sarcelle, which infuriates her lover so much that he resorts to murder to get his hands on the painting. Okay, I can understand how this is a trope (jealous sexist man commits violence when he learns his girlfriend has posed nude for someone else), but it was very odd to see Indian Ink and the Miss Fisher episode about the nude painting less than a week apart, and to note all of these similarities in terms of character, era, etc.
Are both Flora Crewe and Phryne Fisher based on a real-life woman that I should know about? Is there some well-known story about a young Anglo woman who drove an ambulance in France during World War I, then posed for a nude painting that was later at the center of some scandal?
And, to compound the hall-of-mirrors effect, I first became aware of the Miss Fisher actress Essie Davis when I saw her star in a different Tom Stoppard play, Jumpers, on Broadway in 2004. (Her character had a nude scene in that one, too. Stoppard has a reputation as a super-cerebral playwright but there's enough female nudity written into his scripts -- Jumpers, Indian Ink, Coast of Utopia -- that it seems he also has quite an eye for the ladies.)
At any rate, I have two new fictional heroines to inspire me with their independence, courage, and flair.
I saw some enjoyable theater, too: Indian Ink at ACT is a good play in a lovely production. Though Arcadia will always be my all-time favorite Stoppard, this one is still smart and entertaining and well worth your time.
 |
| Brenda Meaney as Flora Crewe, in ACT's production of Indian Ink. Photo by Kevin Berne. |
And I got to thinking about how Flora Crewe, the heroine of Indian Ink, and Phryne Fisher, the title character of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, feel like variations on an archetype: confident, independent-minded, adventurous women of the between-the-wars period. They pursue careers that aren't quite "respectable" (Flora is a poet, Phryne a private detective), but which still allow them to dress glamorously and mingle with interesting people. Flora gets denigrated as an empty-headed "flapper poet" and Phryne gets patronized as a meddlesome amateur, but they do their best to shake off such criticisms and go on with being their awesome selves. They are single but have many lovers; they are not ashamed of their sexuality. They are very fond of stylish automobiles.
Their biographical details are similar too. Indian Ink gives Flora's birth year as 1895; she is 35 when the play takes place in 1930. The Miss Fisher show takes place in 1928 Melbourne, at which time Phryne seems to be in her mid-to-late 30s. (Per Wikipedia, Phryne's birth year is 1900, so she's 28 when we meet her, but maybe that's just for the novels the TV show is based on -- actress Essie Davis is great and looks younger than her real age, but I don't think she can pass for 28.) They both have a beloved younger sister, though Phryne's sister was murdered in childhood while Flora's sister is alive and well. After spending childhood and adolescence in an English-speaking country (England/Australia), they run off to France during World War I and join an ambulance unit. They both remain in France for a bit after the war ends, too, living the bohemian life in Paris and working as artists' models.
 |
| Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher. |
Here's where the parallels get really crazy. In Paris, Flora poses nude for Modigliani and when the painting is later exhibited, it infuriates her fiancé so much that he buys it and burns it in a bathtub at the Ritz. Phryne poses nude for a fictitious artist, Pierre Sarcelle, which infuriates her lover so much that he resorts to murder to get his hands on the painting. Okay, I can understand how this is a trope (jealous sexist man commits violence when he learns his girlfriend has posed nude for someone else), but it was very odd to see Indian Ink and the Miss Fisher episode about the nude painting less than a week apart, and to note all of these similarities in terms of character, era, etc.
Are both Flora Crewe and Phryne Fisher based on a real-life woman that I should know about? Is there some well-known story about a young Anglo woman who drove an ambulance in France during World War I, then posed for a nude painting that was later at the center of some scandal?
And, to compound the hall-of-mirrors effect, I first became aware of the Miss Fisher actress Essie Davis when I saw her star in a different Tom Stoppard play, Jumpers, on Broadway in 2004. (Her character had a nude scene in that one, too. Stoppard has a reputation as a super-cerebral playwright but there's enough female nudity written into his scripts -- Jumpers, Indian Ink, Coast of Utopia -- that it seems he also has quite an eye for the ladies.)
At any rate, I have two new fictional heroines to inspire me with their independence, courage, and flair.
Friday, June 7, 2013
A Decade of Loving Arcadia (and Septimus) @ SF Theater Pub Blog
I am really, really proud of my latest Theater Pub column. In it, I write about seeing ACT's production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia exactly ten years after I read the play for the first time, and having So Many Feelings.
If you've ever experienced a decade-long love for a work of art, wondered if a staged production of your favorite play would live up to your expectations, or just had a massive crush on Arcadia's Septimus Hodge, this one is for you.
I was also glad to finally take the opportunity to write about one of my favorite plays, and my biggest literary crush of all time, at length. Here are some links to other, briefer posts I've written that have to do with Arcadia:
If you've ever experienced a decade-long love for a work of art, wondered if a staged production of your favorite play would live up to your expectations, or just had a massive crush on Arcadia's Septimus Hodge, this one is for you.
I was also glad to finally take the opportunity to write about one of my favorite plays, and my biggest literary crush of all time, at length. Here are some links to other, briefer posts I've written that have to do with Arcadia:
- Arcadia on the brain (May 30, 2009)
- Inspiration's Promise, Fulfilled (March 23, 2009)
- A rolling stone in Arcadia (October 18, 2007) -- I reused a bit of this in the conclusion of my new Arcadia essay
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Top 10 Cultural Experiences - July 2012
Trying something a little different here with my blog (After 5 years, can't I mix it up a bit?). I want to keep writing about the things I am seeing and doing that inspire, entertain and stimulate me, but I don't feel up to the challenge of cranking out thousand-word essays multiple times a week, the way I used to do. So I'm thinking that each month, I'll post a round-up of my top 10 cultural experiences, with a short explanation of why I enjoyed each one.
The list will be eclectic and draw from a variety of genres. A brilliant episode of a new TV show could be sandwiched between an old movie I just saw for the first time and a particularly thought-provoking Internet essay. The only rule is that I have to have read/seen/experienced this thing during the designated month, and I have to have enjoyed it.
So here goes: Top 10 Cultural Experiences - July 2012
1. "Black Box" by Jennifer Egan (short fiction). When is the last time I got so excited about a New Yorker short story? Oh yeah -- "Escape from Spiderhead," by George Saunders, December 2010. Clearly I have a thing for futuristic sci-fi stories about people with things implanted in their brains -- not what most people think of when they hear the phrase "New Yorker story."
Indeed, in its structure and its voice, "Black Box" is like no story I've ever read before. It is masterfully controlled, a distanced and elliptical way of narrating a thrilling spy-adventure plot. Somehow, this only serves to ratchet up the tension even more. I started reading it on my lunch hour and didn't have time to finish -- I was in agony for the rest of the afternoon!
Though the story was published in June and I didn't read it until July, I'd somehow managed to avoid hearing that the unnamed narrator is a grown-up version of Lulu from A Visit from the Goon Squad. Reading the story, I was very proud of myself for figuring out that connection on my own. And the themes of "Black Box" dovetail with those of Lulu's Goon Squad chapter in interesting ways -- I wonder if Egan would ever consider adding this story as an addendum to Goon Squad, that novel's praise and Pulitzer notwithstanding? Because this story deserves to be read by as many people as possible.
2. Pint-Sized Plays at San Francisco Theater Pub (theater). Is it OK to put your own show on a list like this? Oh well, I'm doing it anyway, because the Pint-Sized Plays were a big part of my month. They represented the longest run ever of one of my plays: 7 performances, including a special presentation last Saturday at the Red Poppy Art House. And, because I didn't attend every performance, it's also the first time my work has been performed without me present. The five performances I did attend, however, caused a surprising range of reactions in the audience, which taught me a lot (I hope to do a longer post on this later).
Moreover, I was honored to be included among so many other funny, idiosyncratic plays. Highlights included Megan Cohen's BEEEEAR, starring Allison Page as a dancing bear who gets "growling-tipsy after the day's grueling toil," and Tim Bauer's Play It Again, Friend, a character study of a douchebaggy businessman (played by Cooper Carlson) who nonetheless claims "I see the good and then reflect it back -- I'm a mirror with eyes!" Special mentions also to Neil Higgins' hard work directing one play (Bill Bivins' Celia Shits) and acting in three others; and Matt Gunnison and Kirsten Broadbear's performances as the title characters in Sunil Patel's witty Man vs. Beer.
3. Olympics Opening Ceremony (TV/theater). I had a ridiculous amount of fun watching the Olympics ceremony while lying on my couch, drinking Cabernet, and live-tweeting it with some friends. Danny Boyle certainly knows how to put on a show! (I wasn't too fond of the screenplay or acting in Slumdog Millionaire, but thought that that movie gained whatever merit it had from Boyle's kinetic direction.) And I do consider this a piece of theater that just happened to be televised, with many astounding moments of stagecraft. Although it paid tribute to the expected, beloved icons of British culture, it managed to seem offbeat and loopy and idiosyncratic rather than corporate. I especially loved how uncontroversial its liberal political slant (with tributes to suffragettes and the NHS) turned out to be. And the Parade of Nations moved quickly while allowing me to indulge my Geography Nerd, French Nerd, and Fashion Nerd tendencies all at once.
4. The Scottsboro Boys, at ACT (musical). It's difficult to say that you "enjoyed" this show without sounding like you are making light of a very dark moment in our nation's history, so maybe "admired" is a better word. Kander and Ebb can still deliver biting but catchy songs, although as a whole the musical does feel like a bit of a throwback to their '70s "concept musical" heyday. Susan Stroman's minimalist staging was lively and brilliant, and Clifton Duncan gave a powerful performance in the leading role. Due to the subject matter and the casting and staging demands, I doubt that this musical will get many future productions after this tour is over, and I feel grateful to have seen it.
5. The Song is You, by Arthur Phillips (novel). I really love Arthur Phillips' writing: above all, when you read his novels, you can tell that he had fun writing them, devising plots and characters and set-pieces and opportunities to deploy puns and other curlicues of language. Yet his worldview also contains a sense of melancholy and loss. I am a total sucker for playful-but-melancholy art, because it chimes with my own worldview, so Phillips' novels really speak to me. And as it happens, the theme of The Song is You is about how it feels to find art (music) that speaks to you and changes your life. The main character is an emotionally numb middle-aged man who becomes obsessed with an up-and-coming rock singer and turns into a kind of anonymous Svengali for her. While the plot is a bit preposterous, Phillips gets a lot of other things right about our contemporary culture. I liked how he portrays the singer, Cait, as a hardworking young artist rather than just an object of desire; and how what she wants (or thinks she wants) more than anything is someone to mentor her and call her on her bullshit. And the novel wraps up in the way that I was rooting for, too.
6. The Canadian, at the SF Silent Film Festival (movie). On my birthday, I won a pair of free tickets to the screening of this obscure silent movie. I invited a Canadian-born friend of mine along to the screening, which packed the Castro Theater on a Saturday afternoon. We enjoyed it, with no need for any caveats like "it was really good for a silent movie." (Although the live musical accompaniment on piano and accordion was terrific!) The leading actress had a neat trick of looking out from under half-closed eyelids, which she used to great effect to look haughty and supercilious (in the first part of the movie); and stricken and pained (in the second part of the movie). Also, the weekend we saw this, that whole controversy about Daniel Tosh telling a rape joke had just blown up, and in the movie, the main character rapes his wife. (They've entered into a marriage of convenience where she locks herself in the bedroom and makes him sleep on a bench -- but it's the kind of movie where once you see that bedroom door close, you know it's going to get broken down.) After this startling scene, there's an intertitle: "The next morning wasn't just any day." And because of the hilarious understatement of this -- of course the day after you get raped is not going to be just any day -- everyone in the theater laughed. "Now that is how you make a rape joke," I said afterwards.
7. Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter (novel). Angela Carter is another author I really like. I began reading Nights at the Circus in London -- appropriate, as its larger-than-life heroine is a proud Cockney -- but finished it back in the U.S. This book has all the magical realism, stories-within-stories, theatricality, glorious excess, and love of life that you expect from Carter -- just a terrifically good yarn, full of vivid detail. The opulence, intricacy and fantasy of a Faberge egg -- an object which actually ends up playing a role in the story. Oh, I just know that I'm reiterating everything that has ever been written about Carter, but it's all true, even if her books are fantastical.
8. Cling to Me Like Ivy, by Samantha Ellis (play script). A few days after I met my blog-friend Samantha in person for the first time, I bought a copy of her play Cling to Me Like Ivy at the National Theatre bookshop. It's the story of a young Orthodox Jewish woman in crisis just before her wedding day -- a fairly intimate tale of family and friendships, though there's a stunningly theatrical climax at the end of Act Two. The heroine is believably caught between her respect for her cultural traditions and the temptations of modern-day London culture (represented by her best friend, who was born in India but is now thoroughly assimilated). Also, you know the old adage "To write a play, put a man up a tree at the end of Act One, throw stones at him in Act Two, and get him down in Act Three"? Well, Ellis does exactly that in this play, only with a woman instead of a man -- can't help but think this is a clever playwriting in-joke.
9. Brave (Pixar film). I saw Brave toward the end of July, so was not able to read or participate in all of the discussion earlier in the month about The Feminist Implications of Pixar's First Female-Driven Story. Which might be just as well, because that seems almost like too much freight for one movie to bear. (Pun on "bear" not intended.) Brave is not my favorite Pixar, I think because its script and story are more predictable, less dazzlingly constructed, than their best films. As someone who read a lot of fantasy stories about Rebellious Tomboy Princesses when I was a girl, I felt like Merida's struggle was somewhat familiar, even if I found her sympathetic and wanted to cheer when she stepped up at the archery contest to defend her right to remain unmarried. But the movie was gorgeous to look at and I liked the complexity that they gave to the character of the mother, positing that "feminine" skills like diplomacy are as valuable as "masculine" skills like fighting. More than anything, I hope the movie's box-office success will allow more female-driven movies to be made, till we get to the point where they are no longer remarkable or anomalous.
10. Salomania, at the Aurora Theater (play). Mark Jackson's latest play takes the #10 slot on my list, partly due to residual affection from how much I loved his play God's Plot earlier this year. Also because it allows me to note that I am having a surprisingly Salome-ish 2012: the "Cult of Beauty" exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor featured Aubrey Beardsley's original illustrations for Salome, and I attended the premiere of Al Pacino's Wilde Salome at the Castro Theater in March. (Both the exhibition and the film would have appeared on earlier editions of my "Top 10 Cultural Experiences" list had I been doing it back then.) I found Salomania a weaker play than God's Plot -- it didn't hang together as well -- but I like Jackson's approach to complex historical dramas that show how life and art influence one another.
The list will be eclectic and draw from a variety of genres. A brilliant episode of a new TV show could be sandwiched between an old movie I just saw for the first time and a particularly thought-provoking Internet essay. The only rule is that I have to have read/seen/experienced this thing during the designated month, and I have to have enjoyed it.
So here goes: Top 10 Cultural Experiences - July 2012
1. "Black Box" by Jennifer Egan (short fiction). When is the last time I got so excited about a New Yorker short story? Oh yeah -- "Escape from Spiderhead," by George Saunders, December 2010. Clearly I have a thing for futuristic sci-fi stories about people with things implanted in their brains -- not what most people think of when they hear the phrase "New Yorker story."
Indeed, in its structure and its voice, "Black Box" is like no story I've ever read before. It is masterfully controlled, a distanced and elliptical way of narrating a thrilling spy-adventure plot. Somehow, this only serves to ratchet up the tension even more. I started reading it on my lunch hour and didn't have time to finish -- I was in agony for the rest of the afternoon!
Though the story was published in June and I didn't read it until July, I'd somehow managed to avoid hearing that the unnamed narrator is a grown-up version of Lulu from A Visit from the Goon Squad. Reading the story, I was very proud of myself for figuring out that connection on my own. And the themes of "Black Box" dovetail with those of Lulu's Goon Squad chapter in interesting ways -- I wonder if Egan would ever consider adding this story as an addendum to Goon Squad, that novel's praise and Pulitzer notwithstanding? Because this story deserves to be read by as many people as possible.
2. Pint-Sized Plays at San Francisco Theater Pub (theater). Is it OK to put your own show on a list like this? Oh well, I'm doing it anyway, because the Pint-Sized Plays were a big part of my month. They represented the longest run ever of one of my plays: 7 performances, including a special presentation last Saturday at the Red Poppy Art House. And, because I didn't attend every performance, it's also the first time my work has been performed without me present. The five performances I did attend, however, caused a surprising range of reactions in the audience, which taught me a lot (I hope to do a longer post on this later).
Moreover, I was honored to be included among so many other funny, idiosyncratic plays. Highlights included Megan Cohen's BEEEEAR, starring Allison Page as a dancing bear who gets "growling-tipsy after the day's grueling toil," and Tim Bauer's Play It Again, Friend, a character study of a douchebaggy businessman (played by Cooper Carlson) who nonetheless claims "I see the good and then reflect it back -- I'm a mirror with eyes!" Special mentions also to Neil Higgins' hard work directing one play (Bill Bivins' Celia Shits) and acting in three others; and Matt Gunnison and Kirsten Broadbear's performances as the title characters in Sunil Patel's witty Man vs. Beer.
3. Olympics Opening Ceremony (TV/theater). I had a ridiculous amount of fun watching the Olympics ceremony while lying on my couch, drinking Cabernet, and live-tweeting it with some friends. Danny Boyle certainly knows how to put on a show! (I wasn't too fond of the screenplay or acting in Slumdog Millionaire, but thought that that movie gained whatever merit it had from Boyle's kinetic direction.) And I do consider this a piece of theater that just happened to be televised, with many astounding moments of stagecraft. Although it paid tribute to the expected, beloved icons of British culture, it managed to seem offbeat and loopy and idiosyncratic rather than corporate. I especially loved how uncontroversial its liberal political slant (with tributes to suffragettes and the NHS) turned out to be. And the Parade of Nations moved quickly while allowing me to indulge my Geography Nerd, French Nerd, and Fashion Nerd tendencies all at once.
4. The Scottsboro Boys, at ACT (musical). It's difficult to say that you "enjoyed" this show without sounding like you are making light of a very dark moment in our nation's history, so maybe "admired" is a better word. Kander and Ebb can still deliver biting but catchy songs, although as a whole the musical does feel like a bit of a throwback to their '70s "concept musical" heyday. Susan Stroman's minimalist staging was lively and brilliant, and Clifton Duncan gave a powerful performance in the leading role. Due to the subject matter and the casting and staging demands, I doubt that this musical will get many future productions after this tour is over, and I feel grateful to have seen it.
5. The Song is You, by Arthur Phillips (novel). I really love Arthur Phillips' writing: above all, when you read his novels, you can tell that he had fun writing them, devising plots and characters and set-pieces and opportunities to deploy puns and other curlicues of language. Yet his worldview also contains a sense of melancholy and loss. I am a total sucker for playful-but-melancholy art, because it chimes with my own worldview, so Phillips' novels really speak to me. And as it happens, the theme of The Song is You is about how it feels to find art (music) that speaks to you and changes your life. The main character is an emotionally numb middle-aged man who becomes obsessed with an up-and-coming rock singer and turns into a kind of anonymous Svengali for her. While the plot is a bit preposterous, Phillips gets a lot of other things right about our contemporary culture. I liked how he portrays the singer, Cait, as a hardworking young artist rather than just an object of desire; and how what she wants (or thinks she wants) more than anything is someone to mentor her and call her on her bullshit. And the novel wraps up in the way that I was rooting for, too.
6. The Canadian, at the SF Silent Film Festival (movie). On my birthday, I won a pair of free tickets to the screening of this obscure silent movie. I invited a Canadian-born friend of mine along to the screening, which packed the Castro Theater on a Saturday afternoon. We enjoyed it, with no need for any caveats like "it was really good for a silent movie." (Although the live musical accompaniment on piano and accordion was terrific!) The leading actress had a neat trick of looking out from under half-closed eyelids, which she used to great effect to look haughty and supercilious (in the first part of the movie); and stricken and pained (in the second part of the movie). Also, the weekend we saw this, that whole controversy about Daniel Tosh telling a rape joke had just blown up, and in the movie, the main character rapes his wife. (They've entered into a marriage of convenience where she locks herself in the bedroom and makes him sleep on a bench -- but it's the kind of movie where once you see that bedroom door close, you know it's going to get broken down.) After this startling scene, there's an intertitle: "The next morning wasn't just any day." And because of the hilarious understatement of this -- of course the day after you get raped is not going to be just any day -- everyone in the theater laughed. "Now that is how you make a rape joke," I said afterwards.
7. Nights at the Circus, by Angela Carter (novel). Angela Carter is another author I really like. I began reading Nights at the Circus in London -- appropriate, as its larger-than-life heroine is a proud Cockney -- but finished it back in the U.S. This book has all the magical realism, stories-within-stories, theatricality, glorious excess, and love of life that you expect from Carter -- just a terrifically good yarn, full of vivid detail. The opulence, intricacy and fantasy of a Faberge egg -- an object which actually ends up playing a role in the story. Oh, I just know that I'm reiterating everything that has ever been written about Carter, but it's all true, even if her books are fantastical.
8. Cling to Me Like Ivy, by Samantha Ellis (play script). A few days after I met my blog-friend Samantha in person for the first time, I bought a copy of her play Cling to Me Like Ivy at the National Theatre bookshop. It's the story of a young Orthodox Jewish woman in crisis just before her wedding day -- a fairly intimate tale of family and friendships, though there's a stunningly theatrical climax at the end of Act Two. The heroine is believably caught between her respect for her cultural traditions and the temptations of modern-day London culture (represented by her best friend, who was born in India but is now thoroughly assimilated). Also, you know the old adage "To write a play, put a man up a tree at the end of Act One, throw stones at him in Act Two, and get him down in Act Three"? Well, Ellis does exactly that in this play, only with a woman instead of a man -- can't help but think this is a clever playwriting in-joke.
9. Brave (Pixar film). I saw Brave toward the end of July, so was not able to read or participate in all of the discussion earlier in the month about The Feminist Implications of Pixar's First Female-Driven Story. Which might be just as well, because that seems almost like too much freight for one movie to bear. (Pun on "bear" not intended.) Brave is not my favorite Pixar, I think because its script and story are more predictable, less dazzlingly constructed, than their best films. As someone who read a lot of fantasy stories about Rebellious Tomboy Princesses when I was a girl, I felt like Merida's struggle was somewhat familiar, even if I found her sympathetic and wanted to cheer when she stepped up at the archery contest to defend her right to remain unmarried. But the movie was gorgeous to look at and I liked the complexity that they gave to the character of the mother, positing that "feminine" skills like diplomacy are as valuable as "masculine" skills like fighting. More than anything, I hope the movie's box-office success will allow more female-driven movies to be made, till we get to the point where they are no longer remarkable or anomalous.
10. Salomania, at the Aurora Theater (play). Mark Jackson's latest play takes the #10 slot on my list, partly due to residual affection from how much I loved his play God's Plot earlier this year. Also because it allows me to note that I am having a surprisingly Salome-ish 2012: the "Cult of Beauty" exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor featured Aubrey Beardsley's original illustrations for Salome, and I attended the premiere of Al Pacino's Wilde Salome at the Castro Theater in March. (Both the exhibition and the film would have appeared on earlier editions of my "Top 10 Cultural Experiences" list had I been doing it back then.) I found Salomania a weaker play than God's Plot -- it didn't hang together as well -- but I like Jackson's approach to complex historical dramas that show how life and art influence one another.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Leap Day Headlines
Additional links for the day:
Fun story about a French leap-year tradition: a newspaper that only publishes on February 29
My own leap-year post from 4 years ago, recounting a leap year that happened 8 years before that -- still the most memorable one I've had.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
"Tales of the City: A New Musical" - San Francisco in Song
Shortly after moving to San Francisco in 2008, I read Armistead Maupin's first Tales of the City book and then learned that it was being adapted into a musical -- which I thought was a great idea. So I was very excited to see the world premiere, at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT) here in town through the end of the month.
Adapted from Armistead Maupin's columns and novels, the musical has a libretto by Jeff Whitty and a score by Jake Shears and John Garden, of the 1970s-influenced band Scissor Sisters. (After writing this and Avenue Q, Whitty has cornered the market on musicals about young urbanites exploring their identities while living in a crazy apartment house presided over by a gender-ambiguous proprietor.) Shears and Garden draw on a mix of musical styles for the score, not limiting themselves to Scissor Sisters' glam-rock/disco sound. In an interview in the playbill, they make the point that the 1970s were a diverse era in music and that '70s Broadway composers (Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, John Kander) wrote music influenced by pop, rock, folk, jazz, traditional Broadway, etc. Thus, the score includes such items as a thumping disco number for the famous scene where Michael "Mouse" Tolliver participates in a jockey shorts dance contest, Janis Joplin-style blues-rock for Mona Ramsey's songs, and an outrageously campy Broadway-gospel song called "Homosexual Convalescent Center." Lyrics are more functional than brilliant, though I liked the rhyme of "marijuana / co-ed sauna" in a song where Mary Ann Singleton's friends enumerate the good things about San Francisco.
The Tales of the City characters are so beloved that it must be intimidating for actors to portray them, but this new musical is perfectly cast in its central roles. Betsy Wolfe is a sunny Mary Ann and her clear, pure voice suits her character's innocence. Wesley Taylor is an adorable Mouse, making his character's romantic woes instantly sympathetic. Judy Kaye is warm and dignified as Mrs. Anna Madrigal. At first, for all her kindness, she seems somehow distant from the other characters, but when Mrs. Madrigal's big secret is revealed at the end of Act 1, everything makes sense. Mary Birdsong captures Mona Ramsey's cynical, self-destructive side and delivers the funniest lines in the show.
The smaller roles sometimes suffer for not giving the performers enough to do or otherwise being underwritten. The character of DeDe Halcyon-Day gets two broadly comic songs and Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone plays them to the hilt, but she functions more as comic relief than as an integral part of the show. DeDe's husband Beauchamp (Andrew Samonsky) duly performs his plot function of seducing Mary Ann, then basically disappears from the show. A brief scene in Act II shows Jon Fielding (Josh Breckinridge) and Beauchamp hooking up at a gay bathhouse, but this should probably be cut because it raises more questions than it answers. One of the key features of the Tales of the City stories is their blend of high-society characters with marginalized, outsider characters. But the musical often seems to wish that the upper-crust characters didn't exist, in order to go back to having more fun with those crazy and wild folks on Barbary Lane.
Indeed, that's the pitfall of adapting Tales of the City into a musical. Yes, the '70s atmosphere is fun, yes, the characters are lovable and relatable, yes, the big events of the plot give them something to sing about. But there's just too much plot and the creators still haven't found the best way to shape and balance it.
For instance, most of the reviews have mentioned as an emotional high point Mouse's "Dear Mama," where he sings his coming-out letter in the form of a simple folk ballad, unrhymed and all the more affecting because of it. I could hear grown men in the audience crying during this song. But the trouble, from a storytelling perspective, is that we never find out Mouse's mother's reaction to the letter. Does she accept her gay son, or spurn him? It's a good song, but a weak choice to have Mouse sing it to Mary Ann and Mrs. Madrigal (he wants them to hear the letter before he sends it). Much better for him to sing it as a soliloquy, or else directly to his mom.
Then there's the question of whose story this really is: Mary Ann's, Mouse's, or Mrs. Madrigal's? The musical starts off seeming like it will be Mary Ann's story (the "wide-eyed girl in the big city" opening number that I predicted back in 2008) but by Act II, the other characters' stories have become more compelling. The different storylines also present conflicting messages. Mouse and Mrs. Madrigal gain the courage to stop hiding who they really are; they tell the truth and are rewarded for it. Meanwhile, Mary Ann learns that she needs to hide who she is, to tone down her innate good cheer and stop being so trusting. In most of Tales of the City, San Francisco is portrayed as a hippie paradise of love and acceptance, but in Mary Ann's story, it's full of horrible people who try to take advantage of her. Does this make the musical intriguingly complex -- or thematically muddled?
A friend of mine says that she thinks the treatment of Mary Ann, vis-a-vis Mouse, is unfair. By the end of the musical, Mouse has acquired a handsome, successful, loving boyfriend, while Mary Ann has had relationships with two complete scumbags. I can see my friend's point -- as a straight woman, I too identify with Mary Ann and want her to be happy. However, I also appreciate seeing an ingenue heroine whose character arc is not "move to the big city and find Mr. Right." In San Francisco, Mary Ann learns to stand up for herself and acquires wonderful new friends, but she also becomes increasingly hardened and cynical. In her eleven-o-clock number, "Paper Faces," she laments how we all put on masks and personae in order to survive. "Paper Faces" also makes use of one of my favorite musical-theater tricks: the chorus joins in, the orchestra drops out, and everyone keeps singing in soaring harmonies. It gets me every time.
I talked about the characters' arcs, and while that's a good thing to have in a conventional play or musical, maybe that's wrong for Tales of the City -- which after all is based on a loose, rambling, episodic narrative, the first serialized story in a daily newspaper since the 19th century. Though Tales of the City sounded like a slam-bang idea for a musical, it really did take a lot of work to squeeze it into a conventional musical-comedy shape, with character arcs, a happy ending, and a 3-hour running time. To their credit, the creators have obviously worked hard, and not just coasted on the nostalgia that some San Franciscans feel for this era and these characters. (Even though Tales of the City is not a great musical, it could be far worse than it is and still make money in this town, due to the nostalgia factor.) But just as Mary Ann Singleton learns that a 5-day vacation in San Francisco cannot compare with actually living here, a 3-hour musical of Tales of the City, by definition, cannot really be Tales of the City.
Photos by Kevin Berne. Top: Judy Kaye as Anna Madrigal and Mary Birdsong as Mona Ramsey. Bottom: Patrick Lane as Brian Hawkins, Betsy Wolfe as Mary Ann Singleton, Wesley Taylor as Michael "Mouse" Tolliver and Josh Breckinridge as Jon Fielding.
Adapted from Armistead Maupin's columns and novels, the musical has a libretto by Jeff Whitty and a score by Jake Shears and John Garden, of the 1970s-influenced band Scissor Sisters. (After writing this and Avenue Q, Whitty has cornered the market on musicals about young urbanites exploring their identities while living in a crazy apartment house presided over by a gender-ambiguous proprietor.) Shears and Garden draw on a mix of musical styles for the score, not limiting themselves to Scissor Sisters' glam-rock/disco sound. In an interview in the playbill, they make the point that the 1970s were a diverse era in music and that '70s Broadway composers (Sondheim, Stephen Schwartz, John Kander) wrote music influenced by pop, rock, folk, jazz, traditional Broadway, etc. Thus, the score includes such items as a thumping disco number for the famous scene where Michael "Mouse" Tolliver participates in a jockey shorts dance contest, Janis Joplin-style blues-rock for Mona Ramsey's songs, and an outrageously campy Broadway-gospel song called "Homosexual Convalescent Center." Lyrics are more functional than brilliant, though I liked the rhyme of "marijuana / co-ed sauna" in a song where Mary Ann Singleton's friends enumerate the good things about San Francisco.The Tales of the City characters are so beloved that it must be intimidating for actors to portray them, but this new musical is perfectly cast in its central roles. Betsy Wolfe is a sunny Mary Ann and her clear, pure voice suits her character's innocence. Wesley Taylor is an adorable Mouse, making his character's romantic woes instantly sympathetic. Judy Kaye is warm and dignified as Mrs. Anna Madrigal. At first, for all her kindness, she seems somehow distant from the other characters, but when Mrs. Madrigal's big secret is revealed at the end of Act 1, everything makes sense. Mary Birdsong captures Mona Ramsey's cynical, self-destructive side and delivers the funniest lines in the show.
The smaller roles sometimes suffer for not giving the performers enough to do or otherwise being underwritten. The character of DeDe Halcyon-Day gets two broadly comic songs and Kathleen Elizabeth Monteleone plays them to the hilt, but she functions more as comic relief than as an integral part of the show. DeDe's husband Beauchamp (Andrew Samonsky) duly performs his plot function of seducing Mary Ann, then basically disappears from the show. A brief scene in Act II shows Jon Fielding (Josh Breckinridge) and Beauchamp hooking up at a gay bathhouse, but this should probably be cut because it raises more questions than it answers. One of the key features of the Tales of the City stories is their blend of high-society characters with marginalized, outsider characters. But the musical often seems to wish that the upper-crust characters didn't exist, in order to go back to having more fun with those crazy and wild folks on Barbary Lane.
Indeed, that's the pitfall of adapting Tales of the City into a musical. Yes, the '70s atmosphere is fun, yes, the characters are lovable and relatable, yes, the big events of the plot give them something to sing about. But there's just too much plot and the creators still haven't found the best way to shape and balance it.
For instance, most of the reviews have mentioned as an emotional high point Mouse's "Dear Mama," where he sings his coming-out letter in the form of a simple folk ballad, unrhymed and all the more affecting because of it. I could hear grown men in the audience crying during this song. But the trouble, from a storytelling perspective, is that we never find out Mouse's mother's reaction to the letter. Does she accept her gay son, or spurn him? It's a good song, but a weak choice to have Mouse sing it to Mary Ann and Mrs. Madrigal (he wants them to hear the letter before he sends it). Much better for him to sing it as a soliloquy, or else directly to his mom.Then there's the question of whose story this really is: Mary Ann's, Mouse's, or Mrs. Madrigal's? The musical starts off seeming like it will be Mary Ann's story (the "wide-eyed girl in the big city" opening number that I predicted back in 2008) but by Act II, the other characters' stories have become more compelling. The different storylines also present conflicting messages. Mouse and Mrs. Madrigal gain the courage to stop hiding who they really are; they tell the truth and are rewarded for it. Meanwhile, Mary Ann learns that she needs to hide who she is, to tone down her innate good cheer and stop being so trusting. In most of Tales of the City, San Francisco is portrayed as a hippie paradise of love and acceptance, but in Mary Ann's story, it's full of horrible people who try to take advantage of her. Does this make the musical intriguingly complex -- or thematically muddled?
A friend of mine says that she thinks the treatment of Mary Ann, vis-a-vis Mouse, is unfair. By the end of the musical, Mouse has acquired a handsome, successful, loving boyfriend, while Mary Ann has had relationships with two complete scumbags. I can see my friend's point -- as a straight woman, I too identify with Mary Ann and want her to be happy. However, I also appreciate seeing an ingenue heroine whose character arc is not "move to the big city and find Mr. Right." In San Francisco, Mary Ann learns to stand up for herself and acquires wonderful new friends, but she also becomes increasingly hardened and cynical. In her eleven-o-clock number, "Paper Faces," she laments how we all put on masks and personae in order to survive. "Paper Faces" also makes use of one of my favorite musical-theater tricks: the chorus joins in, the orchestra drops out, and everyone keeps singing in soaring harmonies. It gets me every time.
I talked about the characters' arcs, and while that's a good thing to have in a conventional play or musical, maybe that's wrong for Tales of the City -- which after all is based on a loose, rambling, episodic narrative, the first serialized story in a daily newspaper since the 19th century. Though Tales of the City sounded like a slam-bang idea for a musical, it really did take a lot of work to squeeze it into a conventional musical-comedy shape, with character arcs, a happy ending, and a 3-hour running time. To their credit, the creators have obviously worked hard, and not just coasted on the nostalgia that some San Franciscans feel for this era and these characters. (Even though Tales of the City is not a great musical, it could be far worse than it is and still make money in this town, due to the nostalgia factor.) But just as Mary Ann Singleton learns that a 5-day vacation in San Francisco cannot compare with actually living here, a 3-hour musical of Tales of the City, by definition, cannot really be Tales of the City.
Photos by Kevin Berne. Top: Judy Kaye as Anna Madrigal and Mary Birdsong as Mona Ramsey. Bottom: Patrick Lane as Brian Hawkins, Betsy Wolfe as Mary Ann Singleton, Wesley Taylor as Michael "Mouse" Tolliver and Josh Breckinridge as Jon Fielding.
Monday, February 16, 2009
The Playwright's Nightmare, part 2: "Rich and Famous"
A.C.T.'s blurb for their production of John Guare's Rich and Famous contained several phrases that are always right up my alley. Phrases like "dark comedy," "nightmarish phantasmagoria," "twisted humor, rapid-fire dialogue, and outrageous songs." Well, I guess I got my hopes up too high, for what turned out to be a weird hybrid of absurdist comedy and shticky vaudeville, with a rather obvious moral: "If wealth and fame are your reasons for becoming an artist, maybe you shouldn't be one." Though the play deals with a poor schnook whose life is falling apart, it lacked the edge and the menace that I associate with the term "dark comedy," and the shifts in tone made it hard to know what's really at stake.
Said schnook, Bing Ringling, is "the world's oldest promising playwright," about to have his first Off-Off-Broadway production. In the course of the evening, he experiences the Playwright's Nightmare in its purest form: his actors are terrible, the critics savage his play, his girlfriend breaks up with him, he learns that his producer produced his play for basically the same reason that Max Bialystock produced Springtime for Hitler, etc. etc.
Some of John Guare's dialogue is funny, with appealing observations about the playwright's life and the type of people who take up this profession. (When Bing says that he wishes life were like "a Truffaut movie with songs," I thought Yes! Of course!) But I realize that my warm feelings are attributable more to my own sentimentality about being a playwright, than to the quality of the script. It's no different than a doctor enjoying a lousy TV medical drama because it happened to get something right about working in a hospital. That doesn't mean it's good.
Mostly, Rich and Famous seems confused about what tone to adopt: broad-but-still-plausible humor, or all-out exaggerated absurdism? Example of the former: The star of Bing's play is a terrible actor who moonlights as a transsexual hooker. Examples of the latter: Bing has written over 800 unproduced plays, and his parents are so over-doting that they have saved and bronzed all of his old diapers. When the play becomes untethered from the real world like this, it becomes hard to care about the characters, or even to know what to think of them.
Bing Ringling himself is a muddled figure. He is collaborating with famous composer Anatol Torah (a wicked lampoon of Leonard Bernstein) on a musical comedy, but the joke is that all of Anatol's songs sound exactly the same. So when Bing fawns over Anatol's music, does that mean that he realizes Anatol is a hack but is trying to flatter him, or are we meant to think that Bing actually believes Anatol's hype? Neither option is very flattering to our hero--it means that Bing is either a hypocrite or an idiot--but worse than that, the play doesn't discernibly choose one option over the other. Also, say what you will about Bernstein, but I've never heard anyone accuse him of writing the same song over and over. This joke falls flat.
Even more confused is the question of whether Bing is any good as a playwright. Like Guare, he is fascinated with the ancient Etruscans, and he is proud of a showpiece speech in his play that goes "If I could have been born anybody--my pick of a Kennedy or a Frank Sinatra or a Henry Ford or the King of Greece--out of that whole hat of births, I still would've picked to be an Etruscan." But what we see of Bing's play, The Etruscan Conundrum, makes it look like a mess that combines this ancient civilization with Dante's Inferno with awful costumes that look like rejects from Xanadu, all enacted by two talentless performers--so why should we care whether this guy succeeds or fails?
(The Etruscan passages are new to this production of Rich and Famous. According to Guare, the original 1974 production never showed us what Bing's play was, but when he revised the script for ACT, he decided to incorporate parts of his own first play, Muzeeka. I suspect that owing to the fact that nobody performs Muzeeka anymore, Guare wanted to preserve the speech about the Etruscans in another play that had a better chance of success--but unfortunately, as I said, it just muddies things up.)
I did like the last scene of Rich and Famous, which took place far above Times Square and featured a nifty set design, as well as making a good satirical point about the toll fame can take on people who have reached the pinnacle of success. Other than that, though, the play is very uneven. The lead essay in the ACT playbill tries to make a case for the work as a profound exploration of "our own self-created myths of progress and vision," which I think is unbearably pretentious for something that is basically an absurdist vaudeville, but I will be saving my playbill anyway because of John Guare's essay and interview, which are quite chatty and informative.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)