tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-26031671828956745432024-03-27T16:48:00.066-07:00New York CriticSteve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comBlogger194125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-16521305135815399082024-03-27T16:45:00.000-07:002024-03-27T16:47:59.243-07:00<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf9S23IsCg12rX9fppURnkAELBtGs9825dBXYla7ZWQVt3gBHMgVvIs2Np7L_32AJ8BVKtkY0hhnfkJgiQO4UJtexP2AH0GYvMdvRTZJIGVUjU0ScOY9ekEMeBz0s6JuEsY30-dA2j6iUAJtKi1ih5LlkfGYKPmH1EbxSVMA1_XDJGX0dwGfbsUQee3Wk/s1230/Fool's%20Mass.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="1230" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf9S23IsCg12rX9fppURnkAELBtGs9825dBXYla7ZWQVt3gBHMgVvIs2Np7L_32AJ8BVKtkY0hhnfkJgiQO4UJtexP2AH0GYvMdvRTZJIGVUjU0ScOY9ekEMeBz0s6JuEsY30-dA2j6iUAJtKi1ih5LlkfGYKPmH1EbxSVMA1_XDJGX0dwGfbsUQee3Wk/s320/Fool's%20Mass.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Fool's Mass<br /><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">= From Dzieci Theatre<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">= at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, NYC<br /></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">= December 2023</span></b></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">= December brought one of my favorite NYC theater events — the 25th iteration of Dzieci Theatre’s production of <i>Fool’s Mass</i>. I saw this movable feast in a side chapel of the majestic Cathedral of St. John the Divine (that is, a side chapel itself the size of a small church).</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b></b><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The production takes off from <i>Marat/Sade</i>, putting the lunatics in a sacred ambience and adding glorious irreverence. Ten or so actors play idiots — in the sense of “village idiots” — who’ve lost their priest and have to slug their way through a mass themselves. Dressed in colorless rags, almost all with caps and sporting dirty faces, they’re the picture of medieval bedlam. They give us masterful ensemble work, sometimes moving with the unity of a school of fish, sometimes freezing in lovely <i>tableaux vivants</i>.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">The iconography of religion indicates what the ersatz ceremony refers to: there’s a table in the audience with a loaf of bread, a bell and a metal cup, and there are seven candles on white-clothed table onstage.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Alternating between buffoonery and genuine devotion, the fools create a sort of anarchy that seems tenuously controlled and benefits from a little bit of luck. The outline follows the pattern of the mass — complete with a gospel and a Kyrie and the breaking of bread. The congregation sing music that combines medieval Gregorian chant with Renaissance harmony — and, for all the confusion, the singing is meticulous.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">They ensemble works in waves of energy. One starts acting out — well, like a manic — and the others join them until they’re tired. There are moments of silence and moments with words, intelligible or otherwise. They involve the audience with instructions — we’re led to rise and sit to the point of absurdity. One madman prods us repeatedly to raise our hands in praise until the others, exasperated, gang up on him. One or two audiences members are drafted to read to us, and some of us get hugs.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">What a terrific combination of buffoonery and religion <i>Fool’s Mass</i> is! The unbridled emotions of the lunatics — expressed in the real mannerisms of psychiatric pathology — resolve themselves into unexpected reverence. And it’s all set among the granite saints of St. John’s. We’re looking forward to another 25 years from Dzieci Theatre.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 21px;"><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">- Steve Capra</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">Review</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: large;">December 2023</span></p>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-90722360608120502832023-07-02T12:20:00.003-07:002023-07-02T12:23:09.825-07:00Hamlet<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcleQEFPbef66w8lIOCm_ENZyzh6MAZe7pV5M7K2-nicBPcA-2e_COvQEt9fzD-ekdjjzH9f4QWbAVJdm5Aoo0ELPA9kQ2RlQZ46DlvtjcXGZMY4YzwUF6XoZPpnSkBzfLDn-zTriGtarCGF3wFu3fPLWkZNsPwsddWnyfccWc9bh3nxs_oR9LYmFFKw/s1933/Hamlet.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1457" data-original-width="1933" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdcleQEFPbef66w8lIOCm_ENZyzh6MAZe7pV5M7K2-nicBPcA-2e_COvQEt9fzD-ekdjjzH9f4QWbAVJdm5Aoo0ELPA9kQ2RlQZ46DlvtjcXGZMY4YzwUF6XoZPpnSkBzfLDn-zTriGtarCGF3wFu3fPLWkZNsPwsddWnyfccWc9bh3nxs_oR9LYmFFKw/s320/Hamlet.png" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>Hamlet</i></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- By William Shakespeare</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- The Public Theater Shakespeare in the Park</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Directed by Kenny Leon</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Costumes by Jessica Jahn</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Set by Beowulf Boritt</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- With:</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Ato Blankson-Wood<span class="s1" style="color: #191c1f;"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="color: #191c1f; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Nick Rehberger</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Daniel Pearce</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Solea Pfeiffer</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- John Douglas Thompson</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Lorraine Toussaint</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i><br /></i></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>-- Hamlet</i> is The Public Theater’s major production in Central Park this summer. I saw it in preview. Director Kenny Leon has given us an interpretation with a solid foundation as a domestic tragedy. There’s some terrific acting. But Mr. Leon peppers the production with such a variety of spices that we’re sometimes bewildered. His combining of styles that we find in the show is simultaneously post-modernist and Elizabethan.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">To begin with, the set is inscrutable — a modern mansion that seems to have half-fallen into a fissure of the earth. To indicate that we’re in Atlanta in 2020, there’s a large <i>Stacey Abrams 2020</i> sign that’s half-buried in the lawn. There’s also a Jeep that’s been driven into the shore water of a pond. How are we to interpret these icons? Are they intended to indicate decay? The failure of the progressive movement?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Mr. Leon has said (In The Atlantic) “It was important to me to have Hamlet’s side of the family be Black and Polonius’s side of the family be white or mixed race.” But what are we to make of this choice? Does the American Black community relate to the American white community as Old King Hamlet’s family relates to Polonius’ family? In what way?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Songs turn up from time to time — wonderful! The show opens with a quartet singing at old King Hamlet’s coffin. It’s great that they sing “For everything there is a season…” and “When you go, you have to go alone”.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">We see something of old King Hamlet’s ghost projected on to the face of that house. It’s a miasma, like a parody of a 50’s sci-fi movie — it’s too weird. But when the ghost speaks, the young Hamlet becomes <i>possessed</i> and speaks the ghost’s words, wildly amped and distorted<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>— great!</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There’s sound beneath much of the dialogue. It’s not intrusive; it’s merely superfluous.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Some of Jessica Jahn’s costumes are wonderful — gorgeous, flowing gowns for Gertrude. But Guildernstern looks like he just stepped out of the cast of <i>Rent</i>, with plaid pants and a yellow jacket. Some of the men wear fezes — very nice — but some wear vizor caps.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The entire first scene is cut, so that the first lines are “Though yet of <i>Hamlet</i> our dear brother’s death.” This is a careful choice and it defines the play as a domestic tragedy.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But, inevitably, I have disagreements with Mr. Leon’s cuts. Ophelia’s wonderful speech “What a noble mind is here overthrown” is drastically cut; I miss those wonderful lines about “th’ observed of all observers.” And there are many other familiar lines that we miss.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And where is Fortinbras? Like Hamlet, Fortinbras is avenging the death of his father — wherever we look in this incredible play, the same thing its happening. Mr. Leon has paid a price to make this a family drama.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">As Hamlet, Ato Blankson-Wood<span class="s1" style="color: #191c1f;"> </span>has strong moments in the pitch of emotion, but he seems not to have decided precisely who his Hamlet is, and sometimes looks lost. As Laertes, Nick Rehberger, as well, is interesting but hasn’t fully defined his choices.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The great strengths of this production are the other principals. Daniel Pearce gives us a fascinating, creative interpretation of Polonius, making him simultaneously recognizable and unique. As Ophelia, Solea Pfeiffer is superb — intelligent and mature. In the Play Scene her conversation with Hamlet is a <i>sparring</i>. Even her madness is that of a grown woman who was once confident — not the victim personality that actresses so often play Ophelia to be.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">John Douglas Thompson as Claudius and Lorraine Toussaint as Gertrude give tremendous, stunning performances. In his “My offence is rank —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>it smells to heaven” speech, Mr. Thompson expresses monumental emotions, showing us such depth of character that we almost sympathize with Claudius (Shakespeare has such contempt for him that no character speaks his name).<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And Ms. Toussaint gives a bravura performance as Gertrude. Shakespeare hasn’t been entirely frank with us regarding Gertrude; we never get to see her inner life as well as the other principals. But in the Closet Scene Ms. Toussaint expresses a depth of character that’s scary. What “black and grained spots” does she see? When Claudius tells her not to drink the poisoned cup meant for Hamlet she delivers her crucial line — “I will, my Lord” — with a willfulness that reveals why she’s behaved with such matrimonial abandon.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">When Hamlet returns from his aborted trip to England he must be profoundly changed. Being captured by pirates — an unlikely, chance event — has a profound effect on him. He has, after all, committed murderer. Shakespeare is expressing the mystery by hiding it from us, but directors gloss over this strange piece of dramatic action. This production, like nearly all I’ve seen, doesn’t acknowledge that something intense has happened to the young man.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Of all plays, <i>Hamlet</i> is the last to need directorial embellishment. Sometimes Mr. Leon’s choices give this production an interesting texture and sometimes they obscure the text. At any rate — Congratulations to The Public. Shakespeare in the Park — because it’s Shakespeare in the park — is never less than wonderful.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— Steve Capra</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">June 2023</p>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-11222712351681542822023-06-20T11:28:00.007-07:002023-06-20T11:35:39.532-07:00Tennessee Rising<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnwdaYrmUMf2W9mY5RWNNNbRkEiugTzk7OQGMEw4IJe-rXrMdKtDhrcPQHaZ5yL8eoSzJipu5S-cXgVeNmgxAdPddqK8tVKbhPIRLkyB48smWEucSEU-V38TrjmARdFLc68oeoGc_2AgkiMM7IOnMk7TFG_THksx1o_lFZmO1VXc2seD5ygK93x2Ygmrk/s300/Tennessee%20Rising.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="175" data-original-width="300" height="175" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnwdaYrmUMf2W9mY5RWNNNbRkEiugTzk7OQGMEw4IJe-rXrMdKtDhrcPQHaZ5yL8eoSzJipu5S-cXgVeNmgxAdPddqK8tVKbhPIRLkyB48smWEucSEU-V38TrjmARdFLc68oeoGc_2AgkiMM7IOnMk7TFG_THksx1o_lFZmO1VXc2seD5ygK93x2Ygmrk/s1600/Tennessee%20Rising.jpeg" width="300" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>Tennessee Rising</b></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>— Written and performed by Jacob Storms<br />— Directed by Alan Cumming<br />— June 2 to June 23 <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br />— AMT Theatre, NYC</b></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><br /></b></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s1" style="font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">— Elaine Stritch (whose one-woman show show<i> Elaine Stritch at </i></span><i>Liberty</i> was highly successful) was once asked what dramaturgical rules make a successful one-person show. She replied "Don't bother with any of that, honey. Get 'em to like you."<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">And this is just what Jacob Storms does in his one-man show <i>Tennessee Rising</i>. In this brief solo play, which he wrote and performs, he presents us with the young Tennessee Williams from the period from 1939, when he arrived in New Orleans, to 1945, when <i>The Glass Menagerie</i> opened on Broadway. Mr. Storms enters holding a drink and impishly saying "Look what I found”.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The young Williams tells us about his many experiences. Some of what we’re told is familiar, some not, and what is familiar bears repetition in Mr. Jacobs’ soft southern dialect</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There’s much name-dropping, some famous — Lana Turner, Mae West, Laurette Taylor (referencing her work in <i>Menagerie</i>) — and some important for no other reason than that Williams knew them, such as his “traveling companion”, Jim Parrot. And of course, poignant references to his sister Rose, whose lobotomy is suggested in <i>Suddenly Last Summer</i>.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Indeed, Storms makes much of experiences that echo in the plays. Williams tells us the true story of his landlady pouring hot water through the floor boards on the the revelers below, a story that found its way into <i>Vieux Carré</i>. And he tells us about meeting a woman called Maggie the Cat and a fellow called Big Daddy — these stories are factual as well. We learn that he was “inspired” in a different way by the sand dunes in Provincetown — and indeed, Williams loved to entertain with provocative remarks during interviews.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The only surprise is Williams’ political consciousness. He comments on the government’s preparation for the War (which preparation was denied) and his disdain for American fascism. These are the only passages that give us a more complete profile of Williams’ personality than is generally known.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Mr. Jacobs’ acting, as directed by Alan Cumming, is understated but absorbing. In certain passages he might have chosen anger, but he chooses only resentment, supporting his amiability. Indeed, although we learn about Williams’ boyhood relationship with his sister, Mr. Storms’ avoids the unfortunate elements of the boy Thomas Williams’ early life (his father called him “Miss Nancy”).</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Of course, Mr. Jacobs can only get limited mileage from his charm. As an actor has neither range nor depth of emotion, but as a playwright he doesn’t ask for it. Much of the script is merely reporting, interesting because of Mr. Storms’ personification of the America’s greatest playwright.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>Tennessee Rising</i> is not a meal but a delicious snack. Peach cobbler, perhaps.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">— Steve Capra</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">June 2023</p></div>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-53961168843812008242023-05-31T10:31:00.010-07:002023-05-31T10:48:39.558-07:00Club Dada/Kabaret Kaput<h2 style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><b style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;">Club DaDA/Kabaret Kaput</span></b></h2><div><b style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: x-large;"><br /></span></b></div><div><b style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6ajNDbn9ltDcmKYmPUrwHrSUC90R0bcsOZodwSepIBhqYVldQX3OAaqq-7Lw3qD7X9QxT-aQ_n0AYQQA1A3AfrayGEu6jqtugH3wr-Lc8pVef5iG5q7EukY6t1Aw_9jeOfKlg9IDlssOEelSYJzwmbp21ln1XWA25cbjM9JPrmIXNxjDAbJW0nyn/s320/Weimar%20Dada%20cabaret.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="279" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgG6ajNDbn9ltDcmKYmPUrwHrSUC90R0bcsOZodwSepIBhqYVldQX3OAaqq-7Lw3qD7X9QxT-aQ_n0AYQQA1A3AfrayGEu6jqtugH3wr-Lc8pVef5iG5q7EukY6t1Aw_9jeOfKlg9IDlssOEelSYJzwmbp21ln1XWA25cbjM9JPrmIXNxjDAbJW0nyn/s1600/Weimar%20Dada%20cabaret.jpeg" width="279" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></b></div><h3 style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Club DaDA/ Kabaret Kaput</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is appearing for five performances at Dixon Place in NYC. It calls itself "a 'cabaret' in the Kurt Weil Weimar sense of the word". But audiences expecting the Kit Kat Club from </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Cabaret</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> will be disappointed. The two performers haven't bothered to hire a trio or even a pianist; they sing accompanied by recorded instrumentals. When an audience buys tickets to a cabaret, they expect cabaret, not karaoke. Singing to recorded tracks is unacceptable at open mike night; in cabaret it's unknown. They've played a bait-and-switch trick on the audience.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></span></span></h3><h3 style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>Ellen Foley and Robert I Rubinsky are senior singers who take on the characters of bedraggled, stressed vaudevillians, "always singing — never stopping". "Nobody likes old people," they tell us, "We'll be exiled or worse."</span></span></h3><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px; text-align: left;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">They sing a string of pop/rock songs from the 1960's onward. Not all these songs lend themselves to the cabaret stage and within the above limitation the duo succeed to varying degrees. They keep finding themselves in "an indeterminate time"; from time to time they put on funny German accents; but the songs are modern. It's quite confusing.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">They're tolerably good singers but, inexplicably, they sometimes sing with mikes in their hands or on stands although they're wearing body mikes. Ms. Foley looks like Lotte Lenya and that is <i>great</i>. From time to time she reveals herself and makes contact with her audience. But she lacks dynamic differentiation and almost always sounds the same.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">Mr Rubinsky lays on the dejected mask so heavily that we hardly ever get to know who he is. He's at his best singing Laura Nyro's <i>Poverty Train</i>, a great choice, one of the best and weirdest songs of the 1960's: "I swear there's something better than — Gettin' off on sweet cocaine." For a moment at least, the singer reveals himself instead of wailing.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">At another engaging moment they sing <i>What a Piece of Work is Man</i>, the <i>Hamlet</i> soliloquy sung in <i>Hair</i> (Mr. Rubinsky was in the original Broadway production). And they sing <i>White Rabbit</i> — another weird song — intertwined with Cream's <i>In the White Room</i>. Other songs are less well chosen.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">A disembodied voice interjects every now and then over the sound system — "Things have really changed since the last ice age," it tells us. But it remains unclear who the speaker is.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">And there are jokes. "Who needs the young when we're spending the rest of our wonderful lives learning to die." What? One joke — about a hospice — is inexcusably tasteless.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">In the encore the two performers finally make contact with one another and he finally smiles. But they need to redesign this show.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">— Steve Capra</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">May 2023</span></p><p></p>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-67546715637683814352023-05-12T11:40:00.009-07:002023-05-31T10:40:38.435-07:00The Knight of the Burning Pestle<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJSCEx57YRviB6cEBQg39HOz9cRuUqW9Ww24qQuAu1cOj7xCMFE2WosrCtkWvGjzRRhVP0oAvMXlwM64WaoiOpnH4RlPymgZ1ux0V5CgV_lIDhpqt6lnLj_1Kp7Nw6tvZlSnVWr_1cQGpfoeL6oFgPMzo08cyq6d-QVt2roL3N7qqXEmfymuQD78VU/s2048/Knight%20Pestle.webp" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1385" data-original-width="2048" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJSCEx57YRviB6cEBQg39HOz9cRuUqW9Ww24qQuAu1cOj7xCMFE2WosrCtkWvGjzRRhVP0oAvMXlwM64WaoiOpnH4RlPymgZ1ux0V5CgV_lIDhpqt6lnLj_1Kp7Nw6tvZlSnVWr_1cQGpfoeL6oFgPMzo08cyq6d-QVt2roL3N7qqXEmfymuQD78VU/s320/Knight%20Pestle.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><h1 style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #4c1130;">The Knight of the Burning Pestle</span><br /></h1><div><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">= By Francis Beaumont<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></b></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">= Produced by Red Bull Theater and Fiasco Theater</span></b></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">= Directed by Noah Brody and Emily Young</span></b></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">= Lucille Lortel Theatre, NYC, Off-Broadway</span></b></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">= Shakespeare eclipsed the other Elizabethan dramatists, but their plays are nonetheless very rewarding. If they're less rewarding than Shakespeare, they're also less challenging — the syntax is simpler. And being more accessible is itself a strength.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">Francis Beaumont was one of the best of these playwrights He wrote <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i> in 1607. It's a terrific comedy. It uses the technique of a play-within-a-play several years after Shakespeare experimented with it (and then abandoned it) in <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i>.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><i>Knight</i> opens with he actors announcing the play they're about to present, <i>The London Merchant</i>. They're soon interrupted by The Citizen and his Wife who insist on that their son, Rafe, be included in the cast. Throughout, they interrupt the play — the woman doesn't seem to be able to tell the difference between stage life and real life. They even insist on rewriting the script. And this 350 years before Bertolt Brecht!</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">The scheduled play concerns an elopement in the middle class — but the two middle class Citizens (he's a grocer) have a taste for spectacle. And so Beaumont satirizes the boorish <i>petite</i> <i>bourgeoisie</i>; the two Citizens remind us of the modern stereotype of rude Americans in Europe.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">The grocer ands his wife want a chivalric romance ("Let him kill a lion with a pestle") and under their influence the play that we actually see parodies that form. The first part of <i>Don Quixote </i>had been published only two years before <i>Knight</i> appeared and Rafe, who insists on being called The Knight of the Burning Pestle, is clearly an alternative manifestation of de Cervantes' idealistic hero. The word "pestle", by the way, was suggestive to the Elizabethans.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">Red Bull Theater and Fiasco Theater have taken on the challenge of presenting the play and their production is terrifically funny. It's played in modern dress on a very nice set. The two directors, Noah Brody and Emily Young, have directed their actors to play broad comedy <i>allegro con brio</i>. They throw their arms around and have a good time — and we have a good time as well.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">The cast of ten are — to a man — remarkably adept at clowning in iambic pentameter. Every line, every action, is clear. They speak the verse spontaneously and with gusto. The actors playing the grocer and his wife (Darius Pierce and Jessie Austrian) are great, one step from circus clowns. Another charismatic actor, Ben Steinfeld, gets the audience to sing Bobby McFerrin's song <i>Don't Worry Be Happy </i>with him. This is just the sort of thing Beaumont intended.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">The adaptation is very good, very meticulously crafted. For example, one particular: the grocer's name is George and in the script The Knight has a dwarf slyly named George. Here, the name's been assigned to The Knight's pretend horse.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">It would take a specialist to appreciate all the nuances of the adaptation —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>but, for thing, the cast sings <i>Let's Misbehave</i> — certainly not in the original! And Beaumont certainly didn't write "Parting is such sweet sorrow", which our bride-to-be says here. Great! Aside from the cuts and additions, there's been some rearranging done.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">The only problem is that the show is too long. There are whole passages that could well have been cut. No clown show can go on for two-and-a-half hours without serious moments holding it together. There are a few of these, to be sure — our bride has a lovely moment, played straight, with a speech beginning ""Come, come oh death bring me to thy peace" — but not enough to give the long show substance. After a while the show gets overly silly.</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">But no matter — Red Bull and Fiasco are to be congratulated on <i>The Knight of the Burning Pestle</i>. Were he here with us today, the late Mr. Beaumont would certainly be delighted.</span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;"><br /></span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">— Steve Capra</span></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="color: #4c1130; font-size: medium;">May third, 2023</span></p></div><div><br /></div>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-42479547316146289672022-06-04T10:41:00.001-07:002022-06-04T10:41:25.057-07:00Rockefeller and I<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-Bf43n2UwH1d0GlezKN_0m2lkV1Dpbnrp8BgBMqHWPLmIGZ8TMH-jhHYlPcwZwrBSfyHjcu2yJdKGblRDIqjkeOJx3oIT4yeX_hp18-QYCSK8j0oPkbS1M6EyEOX8rs4vSAqvDpDvS4fQb7gFVkA1xAnF7vNIqiGhaWr-Gt4qn9NelMy7IuTv6jn/s771/282723664_10160256236214935_8418795232781088334_n.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="771" height="167" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4-Bf43n2UwH1d0GlezKN_0m2lkV1Dpbnrp8BgBMqHWPLmIGZ8TMH-jhHYlPcwZwrBSfyHjcu2yJdKGblRDIqjkeOJx3oIT4yeX_hp18-QYCSK8j0oPkbS1M6EyEOX8rs4vSAqvDpDvS4fQb7gFVkA1xAnF7vNIqiGhaWr-Gt4qn9NelMy7IuTv6jn/s320/282723664_10160256236214935_8418795232781088334_n.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>Rockefeller and I</i> is a solo performance presented on the sidewalk in front of the theater, La MaMa, NYC. The actor is John Maria Gutierrez and he’s directed by Uwe Mengel. Both take credit for writing the script.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The script is 20 minutes long. Mr. Gutierrez repeats it twice — verbatim — to create an hour-long performance.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Mr. Gutierrez has a relaxed presence. It’s not commanding; it invites us to examine what this strange man is doing, pacing back and forth on the sidewalk along a 12-foot white line. He makes eye contact with us only occasionally, but he never leaves us by retreating into his own reverie.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">“Two billion plus two billion is four billion,” he begins, and chalks “Rockefeller and I” on the wall.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">He continues: “I have no problem with white people. Some of my best friends are white people.” His mother says that Jesus had blue eyes and blond hair. He tells us that he’s lucky because he has light skin. These comments are ruminations, not expressions of resentment.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">He riffs on the wealthy and on his background. He repeats “I’m tired” several times, sounding like James Tyrone in O’Neill’s <i>Long Day’s Journey</i> or like George in Albee’s <i>Virginia Woolf</i>. It seems to be characteristically American, this weariness. But for a moment the actor is too young for us to believe him.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><b></b><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Sometimes Mr. Gutierrez sort of dances along his possessive white line; sometimes he sort of sings; at one point he seems to be speaking in free verse. He does a cartwheel and stands on his head and lies on the sidewalk lithely.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">He recites the net financial worth of billionaires. It would take an Amazon employee four-and-a-half-million years to earn the worth of Jeff Besos — 7.2 billion dollars. “Better to be rich and healthy than poor and sick,” he tells us.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">He identifies himself: “John Rafael Maria Gutierrez. 1992.” And he names the hospital where he was born. He does this without commenting on himself, as if he were curious about this tiny biography.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The script often quotes Rockefeller, ascribing the quotes to John D. Rockefeller Junior: “Let every thought be subject to profitable motives,” and “The road to hell is paved with kindness.” Good heavens! This would make Ayn Rand blush!<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There seems to be some confusion, however, about to whom these aphorisms should be credited. One website (<a href="https://blog.birost.com/a?ID=00750-4cddb035-34f0-4e17-9d95-64daa8669c16"><span class="s1">https://blog.birost.com/a?ID=00750-4cddb035-34f0-4e17-9d95-64daa8669c16</span></a>) credits the second aphorism to a letter from Rockefeller Senior to his son, and both are likely properly credited to him.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Rockefeller is an American icon, a <i>bête</i> <i>noire</i> of progressives. But Messrs. Gutierrez and Mengel refer to him without rancor. Indeed, they let him speak for himsef. I was reminded of the references to J.R. in pop culture, from <i>The Sunny Side of the Street</i> and the blues song <i>I will Turn your Mooney</i> <i>Green </i>to Bette Midler ’s <i>Mr. Rockefeller</i>: “Please won’t you answer me?… Mr. Rockefeller, won’t you please pick up the phone?”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The obsessiveness of <i>Rockefeller and I </i>implies a futility, like Beckett’s play <i>Play</i>, in which characters, deceased, obsess about their relationships, talking to no one in particular. The <i>Play</i> script is repeated, and begins to repeat a second time.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>Rockefeller and I</i> is terrific street theater, a sort I’ve never seen before. It’s not like The Theater for the New City’s street theater — “controlled anarchy.” with a large cast on a stage. Nor is it like The Living Theater’s direct, focused street theater — in one play we shook hands with individuals in the crowd.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>This is a sort of natural urban phenomenon, like a public sculpture, casual and ruminative. It reflects life artistically in the way a glass building reflects the city literally — as a matter of urban course.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">___________________________________</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">According to Amazon, a book was published in 2020 called <i>John Davison Rockefeller King of Oil and the Biggest Fortune in History Estimated at 340 Billion Dollars Reveals Us </i>[<i>sic</i>]<i> the Ten Business Succes </i>[<i>sic</i>]<i> Commandments: Lessons on How to Make Money from one of the Wealthiest historical </i>[<i>sic</i>]<i> man </i>[<i>sic</i>]. Author credit is given to John Davison Rockefeller and Achille Wealth Phd<span class="s2" style="color: #1a1a1a;">. The promotion tells us: “In this groundbreaking and new book, John D. Rockefeller plunges us into the heart of the ‘Ten Commandments of Business Success’ ”.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></p><p class="p3" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p4" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The heart of darkness, presumably.</p><p class="p3" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><i></i><br /></p><p class="p4" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Although the book is called “groundbreaking and new” we’re told that it’s the 10th ANNIVERSARY EDITION, REVISED, CORRECTED AND EXPANDED [capitals in original promotion]”. The book is “independently published.”</p><p class="p3" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p4" style="color: #1a1a1a; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Mr. R., then, wrote the first edition book in 2010, 73 years after his death. Amazon doesn’t tell us if Achilles Wealth PhD. is still with us. There’s presumably some confusion here involving the firm Achilles Wealth Management, which has apparently been <i>incarnated</i>.</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">_____________________________________</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I had the good fortune to interview Mssrs. Gutierrez Mengel after the show:</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC: </b>Is your earlier work like this?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JG: </b>Somewhat, in that it has me infused within it. I think that every new piece that I make is pushing something that I’ve been working on from prior pieces or maybe things didn’t think I could do before — especially the collaboration with Uwe Mengel here, who’s known me a very long time. We’ve been trying to collaborate for about six years. A piece like this wouldn’t be possible without both of us coming together and him allowing me to push to my edges and explore some of the things that I think have been a little bit more — I’ve been a little more fearful of venturing into.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC:</b> Was it designed from the beginning, from the genesis, to be repeated?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>UM: </b>Yes, that was the idea — the very early idea. We didn’t know how many loops — that was the question.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It was just by accident that I found in Rockefeller Center many years ago a little piece of paper with the Ten Commandments by Rockefeller Jr. — <i>How to Live your Life</i>. We said “How about if we juxtapose this life and your life, where you come from, and let’s see what we come out with.” So that was the basis where we started.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC:</b> I’m interested in the looping. It reminded me of Beckett’s play called <i>Play</i>. They’re both obsessive.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JG: </b>And so are we.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC: </b>Well, artists would be!</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>UM:</b> One of our visitors — I cannot call them audience when you’re on the street —<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SG:</b> Oh, yes, we are an audience!</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>UM: </b>— when she saw the first loop, she said “Oh, it’s kind of a parody,” but the third time, it really got to her. This is not a play that says “Oh, how bad is capitalism, how good is this,” or “Look at my poor life.” Instead, it gives you snippets. You hear it again and again and again, and you start building your own play.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JG: </b>It starts to chip away at something I think.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC: </b>Yes, yes. However, this obsessiveness — and I think this is what Beckett was talking about — seems futile. Is that what you had in mind?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>UM:</b> It is true, in a certain way, yeah. I mean, look at the world we live in. Is there any hope? We don’t want to give answers. That was our idea. We don’t want to give answers.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC:</b> As a matter of mechanics, how many of your audience stay for all three loops?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JG:</b> At least a third. Some of them have been just people off the street who stumble by and then stay. Some people have come back — we’ll engage with them and give them a small program and they’ll return the next day.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC: </b>I’m so glad you’re doing street theater. I used to work with Judith Malina (and The Living Theater). And of course we did a lot of street theater — but who’s doing it now?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>UM: </b>As for street theater, you have to do it very differently than Judith Malina did. Theater was very different then. We have different times, now. Street theater — that’s why we have it so small. There’s not a lot of props whatever.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>JG:</b> We wanted to do as little theater as possible in some ways.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>UM: </b>So that people can just walk by and not even recognize it. That’s what I’m more interested in.</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>SC: </b>And you think that’s a sign of the times?</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><b>UM:</b> Yeah. Look at Bread and Puppet (Bread and Puppet Theater) When you see Bread and Puppet today you would say it’s too easy. It’s so <i>clear</i>.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>Rockefeller and I</i></p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">By John Maria Gutierrez and Use Mengel</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Directed by Uwe Mengel</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">With John Maria Gutierrez</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Presented by La MaMa</p><p class="p1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">May 25th, 27th and 28th, 2022</p><p class="p2" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br /></p><ul class="ul1"><li class="li1" style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 16px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span class="s3" style="font-size: 19.2px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;"></span>Steve Capra<br />Review / Interview</li></ul>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-82358733467366376962021-07-20T11:34:00.006-07:002021-07-20T11:34:40.713-07:00<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Todd Robbins’ Haunt Quest</span></i></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Produced by The Soho Playhouse</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">A solo show with Todd Robbins</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">at The Soho Playhouse</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">15 Vandam Street</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;">New York</span></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Todd Robbins is our host for and the only cast in <i>Haunt Quest</i>, a “séance play.” The evening I attended there was an audience of ten, socially-distanced on folding chairs in a bare room. This arrangement is part of the event’s idiosyncratic charm. We’re not in a show; we’re at a séance, a paranormal inquiry, with nothing so vulgar as a program.</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Mr. Robbins spends most of the first half of the show addressing us. He tells us about the estate the theater’s building was built on: the former residence of Aaron Burr and John Astor. And there used to be speakeasy in the basement of this 200 year-old building.</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Then our raconteur tells us about the ghost sightings. I would have liked more of this. The passage is great until he trivializes his story by telling us that the ghost responds to a shot of whisky left on the bar. And yet he expects us to take it seriously.</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Mr. Robbins eschews a spirit box and moves on to “arcane retro-paranormal ghost hunting techniques,” presenting a magic square. Then things begin to get more involving as he engages a couple of audience in working a spirit glass and gives each of us a skull-head pendulum. But none of these passages episodes are developed; the first half of the event is merely preparation for the second.</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">There’s a sort of central climax to the event and what happened then surprised me so much that I’m not going to tell you about it. Suffice it to say that this immersive event involves us more — and becomes a lot more interesting. I’ll give you a hint, though — I half expected to see Giulietta Masina appear in the room in her tan trench coat.</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Now, Mr. Robbins is nothing like Fellini’s variety show barker in <i>Nights of Cabiria.</i> An imposing man, he looks smashing in his three-piece black suit with the black shirt. He has nearly academic dignity, and this is what gives his address authority and gravity. Inexplicably, he imperils his dignity with a snickering off-color joke.</p><p style="color: #202020; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><i>Todd Robbins’ Haunt Quest</i>, then, is unique. If not entirely successful, it’s nonetheless such an interesting concept that it has its place among the fascinating oddities we find off-off-Broadway.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">-- Steve Capra</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">July 14, 2021</p>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-43424030764861059622020-11-28T11:11:00.002-08:002020-11-28T11:12:32.347-08:00The Great Divorce<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ONG-I5QXMYQ/X8Kgi1pdA6I/AAAAAAAAAps/z9zeUZ0q0XMRWOdEwSJKMbGZux2O1Ui9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s1000/The%2BGreat%2BDivorce.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="562" data-original-width="1000" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ONG-I5QXMYQ/X8Kgi1pdA6I/AAAAAAAAAps/z9zeUZ0q0XMRWOdEwSJKMbGZux2O1Ui9wCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/The%2BGreat%2BDivorce.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small; text-align: left;">photo: FPA</span></div><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">C.S. Lewis wrote </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">The Great Divorce</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">, a novel, in 1945. The title derives from William Blake’s 1793 poem </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">. It presents us with a set of travelers who take a bus from Hell to the outskirts of heaven and are offered the opportunity to enter heaven if they repent - that is, acknowledge their error. Most of the travelers decline the offer, wedded to their tragic flaw.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">Max McLean, Artistic Director of the OOB theater Fellowship for Performing Arts, adapted the novel into a play for his company several years ago and FPA recently presented it as an online event. Using green screen technology, the actors were videoed separately and these videos combined with background to form the finished piece. The technique worked quite well, given its obvious limitations.</p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">FPA presents intelligent, inquiring theater from a Christian perspective, and they’re partial to C.S. Lewis, having presented a play about him and an adaptation of <i>The Screwtape Letters</i>. </p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The adaptation<i> </i>works nicely. The play<i> </i>opens with Lewis’ opening lines: “I seemed to be standing in a bus queue<i>….” </i>Four actors play all 20 roles. Joel Rainwater gives terrific work in the lead role of the “Narrator”. The other actors, as well, are very good, Jonathan Hadley, Carol Halstead and Tom Souhrada dividing the other 19 roles among themselves. Christa Scott-Reed directs with surety, ably meeting the challenges of a technology in which only one actor appears in a frame.</p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Each traveler meets a spirit guide who offers them eternal happiness if they’ll abandon their tragic flaw. Each clings to is <i>hamartia</i> except for one who agrees to abandon his pet lizard for salvation. Critics of the novel interpret his sin as lust. I’m not familiar with the source material, but this play gives us no discernible hint as to what the lizard symbolizes. And in this day and age, does anyone really believe that lust sends us to hell?</p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Lewis’ range of concerns is wide and we recognize many parallels with other writers. “It’s scarcity that enables a society to exist,” for example, echoes Marx, while “They don’t want to end the so-called war; the whole game depends on keeping it going,” predates <i>1984</i> by four years. </p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">But above all, when you dramatize <i>The Great Divorce</i> you end up with something very much like <i>Don Juan in Hell</i>, the dream sequence from Shaw’s play <i>Man and Superman</i>. In both works the characters engage in debate as they choose between heaven and hell. And the the two writers share the same concept of hell:</p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Shaw: “Heaven is the home of the masters of reality.”</p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Lewis: “Heaven is reality itself”.</p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">They agree, as well, that “All who are in hell choose it.” Lewis even shares Shaw’s characteristic heartlessness when he tells us “Love, the way mortals understand the word, is not enough.”</p>
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<p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Whether we agree with Lewis’ points or not, this is great, thought-provoking work from FPA.</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Steve Capra</p><p style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">November 2020</p>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-34515496040129873012020-09-27T16:02:00.003-07:002020-09-27T16:02:47.451-07:00Insulted. Belarus(sia)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--7gWh5bNXFw/X3EZ-IXtqkI/AAAAAAAAAos/KBxgQj6uSpI7TgB88bIy6vyjGjCD3gNewCLcBGAsYHQ/s403/Insulted%2BBelarus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="403" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--7gWh5bNXFw/X3EZ-IXtqkI/AAAAAAAAAos/KBxgQj6uSpI7TgB88bIy6vyjGjCD3gNewCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Insulted%2BBelarus.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">photo: Arlekin Players Theatre</span></i></div><p><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">Online readings are our theater's response to the covid crisis. Arlekin Players Theatre and Cherry Orchard Festival do a very fine job of it in their reading - presented on Zoom - of </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">Insulted. Belarus(sia)</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px;">, a new play by Andrei Kureichik that examines the current political events in Belarus - the demonstrations and arrests following the bogus re-election of Aleksandr Lukashenko. The playwright, Andrei Kureichik, sits on the coordinating council of the protest movement. The reading was screened twice - once in Russian and once in English. I opted for the English translation.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The cast of characters is comprised of actual people and fictitious people. We find Aleksandr Lukashenko and his young son, as well as Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, his losing opponent in the election and - this is well documented - the favorite of the people. In addition, there are fictitious - but no less true - characters on either side of the political divide: two election monitors (one on either candidate's side); a brutal soldier; two other demonstrators.</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The play is well-suited for the medium. Nearly every line is in a monologue; there's little interaction between the characters. The actors address the camera. The video is in black-and-white, quite suitably.</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The play takes place in the “first month of the Belarusian revolution on the eve of the inevitable democratization of the country after 26 years of dictatorship”. Time passes in the play, perhaps a few days before and during the election and the initial demonstrations.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Mr. Kureichik has skillfully kept the longer monologues in the first, expository act. In the Second Act, which opens with the dictator's victory speech, the speeches are shorter and the action of the play (the demonstration, the arrests) occurs. The shorter speeches give us a sense of urgency.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The play doesn't depend on its dramatic action. It works through the powerful expression of the characters' points of view as filtered by their personalities and their politicals. Lukashenko opens the play with a tirade against the theater: “What good comes from some painted-up guy wiggling his ass on stage?” Later in the play he tells us “The people always want one thing - stability." He goes on to say “You don’t become president. You’re born president." Much credit to the playwright and the actor - he clearly believes what he's saying.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The second scene opens with a fresh-faced young woman in a white dress saying “You can change anything.” The soldier confronting the demonstrators tells us “We'll push these guys back. We will make mincemeat out of them," and "We're educating the dick brains."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Tsikhanouskaya, the politician with a larger awareness, tells us “The TV says one thing but life is completely different," and “Can we possibly make peace with such injustice?"</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The most complex character is an election official who supports the dictator. “He pays our salary," she tells the election staff. She tells them how many votes each candidate will receive and says "Memorize the numbers for each candidate and put that precise number in each pile.” She says that Putin is propping up Merkel and that there is no coronavirus in Belarus - but does she really believe these things? After all, her job and pension depend on the old guard. When the election is over she sighs "I am safe."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We witness the disaster through these characters - the police abuse, the Black Maria, the cell, that white dress stained with blood. The interpersonal network that binds the fictitious characters is revealed. Most importantly, the teacher's daughter is missing, having been arrested. Talking frantically to the authorities, she says "I don’t want your pension. I don’t want your job." She, at least, learns something. As for the soldier - well, it's not clear.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The play closes with Tsikhanouskaya saying “I am the president of Belarus. What are you willing to do for love?".</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The video's director, Blair Cadden, understands the form of Zoom video monologues well and she keeps the acting neither too big nor too small. Mercifully, she's eschewed special video effects. The translator, John Freedman, writes some characters in a colloquial dialect that makes the obscenities totally germaine to the characters. And much credit to the entire cast, who are, unfortunately, unnamed.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This is great political theater. But the company should know better than to tell us that the play is set "on the eve of the inevitable democratization of the country after 26 years of dictatorship." Let the play make its point without propaganda. And the promotion for the piece calls it "a staged reading". There's nothing "staged" about it.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Insulted. Belarus(sia)</i> is the second cool Zoom video I've seen from Arlekin Players Theatre. What's next from this company?</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">- Steve Capra</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">September 2020</span></p>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-19326314489618128172020-08-22T15:41:00.001-07:002020-08-22T15:46:12.574-07:00State vs Natasha Banina<p> </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IAeKs3S1nyI/X0GeqOKXi7I/AAAAAAAAAn8/gNS1qsjZH8MqnVClupsjsEs0GSC5RoEfACLcBGAsYHQ/s1920/State%2Bv%2BNatasha.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1920" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IAeKs3S1nyI/X0GeqOKXi7I/AAAAAAAAAn8/gNS1qsjZH8MqnVClupsjsEs0GSC5RoEfACLcBGAsYHQ/s640/State%2Bv%2BNatasha.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;">photo: Mark Soucy</span></div><p><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px;"><br /></i></p><p><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px;">State vs Natasha Banina</i><span face="" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px;"> is a livestream monologue presented by The Arlekin Players Theatre. The script is based on </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px;">Natasha’s Dream</i><span face="" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px;"> by the Russian playwright Yaroslava Pulinovich. The monologue is directed by Igor Golyak and performed by Darya Denisova.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The video monologue was streamed twice this month on Zoooom - once in Russian with subtitles, and once in English. Of course, I watched the Russian. I had the great advantage of not understanding the Russian, and the event was enhanced by language as intonation.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The title screen reads "State, plaintiff, versus Natasha Bernina, defendant". Then a mellow voice says, several times, "Welcome. By joining us today you have self-selected to be a part of our trial.… Court will be in session in just a moment." Then, "The live feed from the confinement will commence momentarily."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The date of the livestream is given as the date of this trial. Then, "Due to the COVID-19 pandemic you, the jury, are tasked with coming to a verdict based on the live testimony given from inside confinement. Natasha Bernina, 16, is accused of attempted manslaughter."</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We, the jury, are asked to complete a 10-question survey, the most salient question being "Have you formed an opinion about Russian orphans or adoption?" Then we discover Natasha Banina in her bare "confinement", and she addresses us throughout, relating her story to great effect.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Natasha is a 16-year-old orphan who jumps out of third-story window on a dare. The resulting news story acquaints her with a journalist who pays her some minor attentions in a series of visits she makes to him. Then she stops being admitted to his office and soon she finds him kissing a girl in the park.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The unfortunate story is enhanced by the irony of our fore-knowledge. We know it will end badly. This is, after all, her trial.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Natasha's story exposes her impoverished life. The orphanage she lives in offers her not a suggestion of nurturance. "Maybe you’d like it better in reform school," the head mistress tells Natasha when the girl is non-compliant. It's no wonder that she's helpless in the face of a little attention. Her obsession is that this fellow whom she hardly knows will say "Natasha, you are the baddest damn chick on earth. Will you marry me?" And her memory of her mother is heart-breaking. We see how the abuse to which she's been subject has damaged her to the point of criminalizing her.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The presentation is heightened by video effects. The videographer plays with black-and-white versus color, for example, and there are other special effects. It's interesting to watch her draw a cigarette on the wall and then light her real cigarette from its self-lit top, and then snuff it out. And there are strictly ornamental effects as well, which are superfluous.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Indeed, Darya Denisova's bravura performance needs no ornamentation. It's splendid, mesmerizing acting. So layered is this performance that we see simultaneously Natasha's conflicting emotions - her need for attention, her enjoyment at talking to us, her embarrassment at exposing herself emotionally. She seems never to have had anyone to confide in before this trial. It's only a criminal jury that cares to listen.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Igor Golyak has directed Ms. Denisova with great understanding and sensitivity. Her stage life never rushes and never dwells on the moment. The play is never sentimental, never judgmental.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Finally the disembodied voice says "I appeal to you, the court, to review the evidence," and we, the audience/jury (we numbered more than 100, I think) vote <i>Guilty</i> or <i>Not Guilty</i>. At this performance, the poor girl was found guilty. And indeed, we learned during the talk-back that there has been only one audience/jury who acquitted her. Do the exigencies of the criminal justice system trump the needs of a child? Are we always responsible for what we do?</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The play ends with the voiceover "Your jury duty is now complete. We appreciate your service. Thank you and have a wonderful day." Its impassivity is the ideal coda.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I'm pleased to report that <i>State vs Natasha Banina </i>is always streamed live online. Theater is something that artists and audience do <i>together</i>. We don't need to be together in space; we do need to be together in time.</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Congratulation to The Arlekin Players Theatre for this terrific work!</span></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p><p style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; color: #454545; font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra<br />
August, 2020</span></p>Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-26921343974430389232020-05-24T17:14:00.002-07:002020-05-25T12:04:28.449-07:00Candida - Gingold Theatrical Group<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Candida - </span>The Gingold Theatrical Group</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><img alt="" border="0" class="" hspace="0" src="https://files.constantcontact.com/8d540b69001/12010d44-a3f5-4c0c-9443-c7db8f30c8bb.jpg" style="display: block; height: auto !important; max-width: 100%; text-align: center;" vspace="0" width="597" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The Gingold Theatrical Group (GTG), New York, has for years been producing monthly readings of Shaw's plays on stage. In this time of the plague, they're one of the innovative companies adapting to the lock-down by going digital. Starting on May 20th and available online for five days, they presented a reading of Shaw's <i>Candida</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Candida </i>was the fifth of Shaw's plays, written in 1894 and published in 1898 as one of the <i>Plays Pleasant</i>. Its first success was in new York in 1903, and a second success followed in London the next year. Both cities were said to be struck with <i>Candidamania</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And, indeed, it's a delightful play. The inspirational cleric James Morell and his wife Candida are joined in a cerebral ménage à trois by a young romantic, Eugene Marchbanks, who thinks Morell doesn't deserve her. This early play anticipates the later Shavian classics. Morell foreshadows Shaw's socialists such as John Tanner from <i>Man and Superman</i>: Marchbanks talks of the minister's "everlasting preaching, preaching, words, words, words".</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">GTG's reading is terrific, adapted and directed by the company's AD, David Staller. He's kept the dialogue - and, after all, an online reading is nothing but dialogue and acting - brisk and intelligent. For the most part, the performances are classically Shavian. Renée Elise Goldsberry as Candida is charming and confident; Santino Fontana as Morell is upright and, as Marchbanks calls him, self-complacent; Andréa Burns as the secretary who discovers the joys of champagne is complex; Jay O. Sanders is suitably in the line of Shaw's vulgar businessmen; Michael Benjamin Washington makes the most of a minor role. Of course, all the characters are smart. These actors understand the detachment in Shavian acting - the creation of an <i>attitude</i>. Only Andrew Keenan-Bolger falters; he doesn't understand Shavian acting and his Marchbanks is just silly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That's more, the cast is adept at the upper-class British dialect that Shaw demands; they never lay it on too heavy. However, Candida's father is clearly meant to speak cockney - he says "Garn", like Eliza Dolittle - and Mr. Sanders, inexplicably, barely suggests it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">If online readings aren't new, i</span>t's interesting to watch the form being developed by our community. It must be like seeing the creation of natural acting under Stanislavski. Mr. Staller and The GTG adjust to its demands. Congratulations to them for this.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">- Steve Capra<br />
May 2020</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-30232595083420197202020-02-02T14:15:00.002-08:002020-02-04T22:06:14.886-08:00Ich kann nicht anders<div style="background-color: white; color: #0a0402; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">photo: <span style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">Carlos Cardona</span></span></div>
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<i>Ich kann nicht anders</i> is a strange production that La MaMa presented in January. It comes from Beton Ltd., a company from Slovenia, and another producer, Bunker, Ljubljana. The set (by sonda4 and Toni Soprano) is richly textured - it looks like a sort of messy warehouse, with lots of plastic hanging about and cigarette packs strewn on the floor. On it we find two actors and an actress, all barefoot. </div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">An actor opens, addressing us: “In the following 75 minutes, I will try to convince you that I am not me but someone else.” He continues in a complex speech saying “Some of you will find it boring - which will mean that you have chosen the wrong event for this evening.” He tells us the show is “75 minutes of just words”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Indeed, there’s no plot to the play. There’s intensely emotional or intellectual conversation with no clear train of thought and faulty logic. Nothing makes dramatic sense. But it’s not just words - there is dramatic action. There’s 75 minutes of the intense moment-to-moment life of the actors as they argue, challenge and castigate one another, feign suicide, make a sexual proposition, et al.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The cultural references are scattered to the point of being random: the Yugoslav Wars, the 2016 Munich shooting, bitcoin… And there’s a sound overlay. Often it means nothing, but it includes explosions that startle our nameless characters, and, most importantly, sounds of the street. These last put the trio in the context of the outside world they’re avoiding.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Much of their hyper-educated conversation concerns philosophy (“A human being has only four existential problems.”) and art (“Art cannot discuss some life experiences - such as steak.”) And of course sex. There’s quite some vulgarity, and for a time the characters prance around the stage naked for no reason.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Superficials aside, the script resembles <i>Waiting for Godot</i>. Like Didi and Gogo, these characters go on “blathering about nothing in particular”. Of course, they’re infinitely smarter than Beckett’s characters, but their dialogue has the same quality of being merely an <i>activity</i>, something to pass the time. It’s never translated into a decision. Indeed, toward the end of the piece one character says “Will we do something or not? Will we take responsibility or not?” But there’s no clear reference in the line. Do something about what? And in a moment of insight, he says “We shut ourselves in but we are doing the same shit as everyone else.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Beton Ltd. has conceived a piece that deliberately bores and confuses. They throw ideas and words at us like a barrage of arrows and javelins in siege warfare. No one could possibly assimilate all this. They’ve executed the conceit meticulously. And no one could fault the acting of the cast (Primož Bezjak, Branko Jordan and Katarina Stegnar). If nothing else, it’s a grand feat of memorization. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But <i>Waiting for Godot</i> succeeds because it never bores. <i>Ich kann nicht anders</i> fails because it leaves the audience out. The company has pursued their creative vision single-mindedly, like good avant-gardists, but they haven’t considered us. If this all means something, they haven’t let us in on the secret. Boredom and confusion fail utterly as dramatic techniques. It’s all self-indulgent. We don’t care about these smart, nervous characters, and with nothing to absorb us, we stop listening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The title, by the way - <i>I can do nothing else</i> - is a reference to Martin Luther’s defense that he must follow his conscience. It’s intriguing, and the only key to interpretation that the play gives us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January 2020</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-42674072958604551222020-01-31T21:28:00.002-08:002020-02-04T22:07:37.297-08:00Paradise Lost<div style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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John Milton wrote <i>Paradise Lost </i>in 1667. It’s based on the Genesis story from the rebellion of Lucifer to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. The story is greatly enhanced in over 10,000 lines of verse. Lucifer and the paradisiacal couple have distinct personalities: Lucifer is charismatic, Adam infatuated by Eve, and Eve, most interestingly, curious and intelligent.</div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Fellowship for Performing Arts, one of my favorite NYC companies, produces theater from an intelligent Christian perspective. The company is presenting a stage adaptation of <i>Paradise Lost</i> by Tom Dulack. Its six characters - Lucifer (“Satan” is his “hell-name”), Beelzebub, Sin (that is, sin herself), Adam, Eve and Gabriel - make the Genesis myth personal. The domestic story of Adam and Eve in <i>Paradise Lost</i> was a new sort of material for an epic. This production, hardly epic by any standard, personalizes the entire myth from the fall of Lucifer to the expulsion from Paradise more than Milton ever could.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And yet this isn’t domestic melodrama. Mr. Dulack’s dialogue is heightened, not colloquial, prose, and the cast does a terrific job of speaking it trippingly on the tongue. The lines are simultaneously personal and grand. From time to time we hear echoes of the source material: in the play’s best moment, Satan realizes “Whichever way I fly is hell as I myself am hell.” And we hear him tell his side-kick, Beelzebub “It is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.” We even hear that famous line (not entirely relevant here) from Milton’s Sonnet 19: “They also serve who only stand and wait.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Wisely, Mr. Dulack has respected the Milton. The story doesn’t deviate from the familiar tale of don't-talk-to-strangers. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">All the cast is very fine indeed: David Andrew Macdonald, particularly, as the haughty, charming Lucifer (we’re not surprised Eve is seduced by him); Lou Libatore as Beelzebub (a comic character with a New York dialect); Alison Fraser as Sin (she’d be comic in her fright wig if she weren’t, well, sin); Robbie Simpson as Adam (simple and admirable, like us); Mel Johnson Jr. as Gabriel (avuncular and transcendent with his gorgeous wings).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mr. Dulack has chosen to focus on Eve. As in Milton, she’s curious and intellectual. When Gabriel speaks of God’s “boundless love and magnanimity”, she wonders if it extends to Satan. As he leaves, she tells him “I’ll do my best to keep my waking mind from wandering into conjecture.” Marin Shay plays her wonderfully, with commitment and clarity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Henry Feiner’s set is very nice. The projection on the backdrop starts with that famous God-creates-Adam scene from the Sistine and moves on to hell and Paradise. When our archetypical ancestors are expelled, leaved drop sadly from Paradise’ trees. The Tree of Life an the Tree of Knowledge, however, are disappointing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This <i>Paradise Lost</i> is a fable, not a theological workout. When Eve mentions “decisions freely arrived at”, we might think that Mr. Dulack is revisionist, but no - he has Gabriel tell Eve that, as part of her punishment, she will bear children “in great pain and suffering”, paraphrasing Milton. He even uses the phrase “original sin”, which Milton does not. Mercifully, he's eschewed God’s line in Milton’s sentencing of Eve, “to thy Husbands will - Thine shall submit”.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Paradise Lost</i> lacks the intellectual beef of the other FPA’s productions that I’ve seen. The story, even in this adaptation, is too familiar for that. At any rate, even with his characterization of Eve, Milton has nothing to say to the 21st century. We’ve made some progress since 1667.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Still, the production is smart, entertaining and meticulously executed. Indeed, it provoked a lively and educated audience talk-back. Good for FPA!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January 21, 2020</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-69001349454579078802020-01-13T21:30:00.003-08:002020-01-13T21:30:26.796-08:00Sounds of Siberia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On January tenth The Rubin Museum of Art (which presents art of the Himalayan regions), New York, presented an extraordinary concert called <i>Sounds of Siberia</i>. Two performers, Yuliyana Krivoshapkina and Nachyn Choreve, demonstrated the throat singing of the Tuva, a republic within The Russian Federation bordering on Mongolia. They accompanied themselves on two instruments: Ms. Krivoshapkina played the khomus (a type of jaw harp) and both she and Mr. Choreve played a string instrument which I believe was a balalaika, with three strings.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ms.<b> </b>Krivoshapkina sang the opening song in vocalese - that is, without words, with only a vowel sound. She accompanied herself with elegant arm gestures suggesting flying. It was a marvelous choice to open the concert.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This was followed by a song in which Ms.<b> </b>Krivoshapkina sang words, presumably Tuvan. Mr. Choreve introduced his first balalaika, which had a boat-shaped body. He would later switch to one with a rectangular body. Sometimes he bowed the instrument, and this was particularly interesting when he was singing those prolonged vowel sounds of throat singing. At other times he plucked or picked.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the third song Mr. Choreve introduced an extraordinary technique in which he sang in the throat-singing style and simultaneously whistled. The effect is so unlikely that I wondered if the whistling was superimposed on the sound system. But no - both the singing and the whistling were functions of his breath phrases.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In a later song Ms.<b> </b>Krivoshapkina played the khomus. Holding the instrument up to her mouth with the left hand, she made lovely, extravagant gestures with her right arm as she stroked the reed with her right hand. On another song she played the khomus while making the sounds of birds, including shrieking like a barred owl. In another song, She imitated the sound of the wind. Absolutely marvelous!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Later, both played the balalaika and sang a duet, including a passage of call-response. In another song, they sang in unison. Only a few of the few songs were introduced, but Mr. Choreve introduced a particularly beautiful song calling it a lament. It expressed the universality of grief.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Mr. Choreve’s singing was identifiably throat singing, but rather more mellifluous than what I’ve heard before. Ms.<b> </b>Krivoshapkina’s singing was more varied and sometimes sounded western, legit. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The three general styles of Tuvan throat singing are khoomei, kargyraa and sygyt. The singers did not tell us which style they were singing, but Mr. Choreve did introduce one song as being of a particular type, (I didn’t catch specifically what he said). This was the throat singing that I was familiar with, very gruff and a bit hard to listen to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of the most interesting things about this singing is that the singers sometimes sang words but prolonged the vowels for so long that it sounded like vocalese. They even prolonged the vowels between breath phrases. Many songs ended with a humorous button, like a horse’s neigh. One was sung so staccato that it sounded like a Gilbert and Sullivan patter song. During their encore, Ms.<b> </b>Krivoshapkina invited the audience to join in the response of a call-response song - and we happily did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ms.<b> </b>Krivoshapkina wore a gorgeous, elaborate, layered blue-green and gold dress with white fur trim and a wide skirt. Mr. Choreve was in a russet robe.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There were two drawbacks to the concert. One was that the amplification was so loud and the echo so high that it distorted the sound. The second was that The Rubin gave us not a word of explanation about the songs - not even a program.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Still, the Rubin is to be congratulated in bringing <i>Sounds of Siberia</i> to New York - a rare, superb concert. It was a wonderful evening!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">January 2020</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-13593828068075007272019-12-27T18:29:00.001-08:002019-12-27T18:29:31.816-08:00Winter Songs on Mars<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Photo by Waldemart Klyuzko</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Koliada is a solstice ritual from Eastern Europe that predates Christianity in some aprts. Koliadnyky is a Ukrainian vocal group that sings Koliada songs. The group has teamed up with The Yara Arts Group to present for one performance the show <i>Winter Songs on Mars</i> at La MaMa.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The text is adapted from a 1780 puppet show, a nativity play called <i>Vertep</i>, and it’s fused with traditional Koliada songs. It’s all put into a clever context of Martians discovering their ancestors were Ukrainian - it’s silly but it gives the play a nice frame.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Of course, those ancestors show up - with drums, vibes, piano, a bass, a cello, more drums, and specially tuned fiddles. The traditional instruments are a <i>trambita</i> (a “mountain horn”), the <i>duda</i> (bagpipes made from a goat), <i>drymby</i> (jaw harps) and a tylynka (an “overtone flute”). And there’s a large hammer dulcimer - at one point the musician turns it over and raps on the wooden back.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The grand, full-bodied singing is largely from men and almost always in unison. At one point there’s an interesting call-and-response passage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The play is the tory of The Holy Innocents, and it’s inventively presented. In one scene Herod speaks Ukrainian but his sooth-sayer speaks English. We don’t need to understand Herod because we know what he’s saying, and the technique gives an interesting distancing effect.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This wonderful show is created and directed by Virlana Tkacz, Yara’s Artisti Director. The costumes are designed by Keiko Obremski - she’s created a gorgeous gown for Alida, the rightful queen of Mars.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The whole event is joyous, life-affirming. When the chorus sings “Ring the bells” the assembly does so. And the announcement “Awake and fear not for great joy is upon us!” - well, <i>Winter Songs on Mars</i> is great! Thank you, Yara and Koliadnyky!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">December 2019</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-30011105165124498162019-12-23T12:06:00.001-08:002019-12-23T13:40:13.884-08:00Paul Winter’s 40th Annual Winter Solstice Celebration<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Paul Winter’s 40th Annual Winter Solstice Celebration</i> opened with Paul Winter’s soprano saxophone heard in darkness. Then he was spotlit in his white jacket. It was the start of a marvelous one-night-only three-hour concert at St. John the Divine’s Cathedral, the largest cathedral in the world. The venue is monumental and the jazz concert matched its grandness.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">From where I sat, I could see the seven sanctuary lamps in the apse burning behind the players. Audience on the other side of the players saw the entrance to the cathedral dimly lit. There was an organ by the raised playing area, and on scaffolding on the area’s sides were the other musicians, The Paul Winter Consort. There was a bass, a euphonium, an alto sax, a cello, keys, drums and more drums. And gongs - three on each side.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The tone of the pieces ranged from fragile to ecstatic, some of the best moments coming from Mr. Winter’s sax solos and a lovely cello solo by Eugene Friesen. Friesen not only bows - he strums and plucks the cello. Clark Goering had a tasty solo on the euphonium - a brass instrument like the tuba or the French horn.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Noel Paul Stookey sang, accompanying himself on the guitar. It’s extraordinary what good shape his voice is in! His first album with the trio <i>Peter, Paul and Mary</i> was recorded in 1962, and he still has the baritone of a young man. He sang his most popular composition, <i>The Wedding Song</i> (<i>There is Love</i>), with simplicity and grace, as well as <i>Silent Night</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Teresa Thomason, a wonderful gospel singer, was superb singing <i>How can I keep from Singing</i>. Another song, however, sounded rather harsh if you were sitting near the speakers. The huge church had only two speakers on my side of the players, so that your auditory experience varied greatly depending on where you sat. Mr. Winter told me that he preferred to play without amplification, but it was necessary with a large audience.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Forces of Nature Dance Theater</i> gave the evening some exciting visuals, with sometimes nine dancers, sometimes 11, sometimes more, including young girls. They were impeccable. It was joyous when the Consort accompanied them. However, when they were accompanied only by percussion, the troupe’s drums began <i>forte</i> and stayed that way. Percussion needs to begin reservedly and grow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There were some lovely costumes, such as the white dresses of the dancers. Other costumes needed to be reconsidered.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Happily, Mr. Winter’s delicious, mysterious sax was never far away. He took the lead on Joni Mitchell’s <i>Both Sides Now</i> in one of the evening’s best moments.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The concert ended with the audience howling in the new year and singing <i>Olde Lang Syne</i>. What a joy the concert was - technically unimpeachable (where did that word come from?) and life-affirming! We’ll look forward to another 40 winter solstice celebrations with St. John’s grand artist-in-residence, Paul Winter.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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December 2019<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></div>
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<br />Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-40454996614670658902019-11-23T18:53:00.001-08:002019-11-23T18:53:22.370-08:00World Music Institute: Discover the Pipa<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r16wpZWtqJ0/XdnwSREumEI/AAAAAAAAAhs/oXH-ZilTJPE9Xt3tqLIISN-ttot0sLPUACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/WMI.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="488" height="288" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r16wpZWtqJ0/XdnwSREumEI/AAAAAAAAAhs/oXH-ZilTJPE9Xt3tqLIISN-ttot0sLPUACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/WMI.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The pipa (<i>pee</i>-pah) is an ancient Chinese instrument similar to a lute, with four strings, played almost vertically. Pear-shaped, it has four tuning pegs and about 30 frets, and modern ones have a small sound hole under the bridge. Its sound is haunting, like the sound of nature.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Its origins are debated, but it evolved as a combination of many instruments, the earliest a hand mallet drum to which animal gut strings were added. We first hear of it in documents of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 to 220 AD). Its master, Ruan Xian, lived in the fifth century. It was most important in the Tang Dynasty (618 to 907) and repopularized in the Middle Ages, during the Ming Dynasty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And it’s still played today - most notably in the hands of Zhou Yi, who’s been winning awards since childhood for her virtuosity. On November 20 she gave a marvelous concert at The China Institute in New York, <i>Discover the Pipa</i>, produced by The World Music Institute.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Her first piece was similar to a round - the last pitch of one section was the first of the next, reflecting the cyclical Buddhist philosophy of life. The second was a 20th-century piece. On the third she was joined by Yimin Miniao, himself a highly acclaimed musician, on the dizi (bamboo flute). The dizi is blown from the end and has an gentle, mysterious sound. Mr. Yimin joined her again later in the set with the dizi, and, for one song, with a hand drum.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">One of the loveliest moments of the evening happened when Ms. Zhou, accompanying herself, sang, in a charming, delicate voice, a song based on <i>Song of the Pipa</i>, a poem by Bai Juyi (Tang Dynasty). It’s a lovely sad ballad reading in part:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Suddenly we heard a pipa across the water.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>I, the host, forgot my return, the guest his journey on.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>In the darkness we asked for the player.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The evening was educational as well as entertaining, with Ms. Zhou instructing us on the pipa. She showed us a score from the Tang Dynasty (which look like Chinese characters to the untutored) and modern “numbered notation” which looked unlike standard sheet music. She spoke in standard musical terms - “strumming”, “minor third”, “staccato”. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The pipa imitates the sounds of nature specifically - its tremulo imitates breeze, its strumming the wave. It uses much sliding to reflect the four tunes of spoken Mandarin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Pipa sheet music indicates melody, not rhythm, and musicians interpret freely. Using a pentatonic scale, it has two classes of song: a slow elegant style (<i>Song of the Pipa</i>) and a martial style heard in a song Ms. Zhou played called <i>Ambushing from Ten Sides</i>. Ms. Zhou even encouraged us to step up on the small stage and play the instrument ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But the instruction was merely an addenda to the enchanting music itself. What a wonderful concert from Ms. Zhou, Mr. Yimin and The World Music Institute!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-52844705366772421662019-11-12T15:01:00.001-08:002019-11-23T19:11:09.937-08:00Druid Shakespeare: Richard III<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>Richard III</i> has never been my favorite Shakespeare, but the current production in Lincoln Center’s White Light Festival, produced by Druid, a theater from Ireland, has shown me how great this unwieldy play can be. <i>Druid Shakespeare: Richard III</i> is brilliant, bordering on expressionism, directed meticulously by Druid’s Artistic Director, Garry Hynes. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Queen Margaret skulks across stage before Richard enters, looking like a ghost in diaphanous gauze, in the play’s most surreal moment. Only then Richard enters from the floor with the famous soliloquy. This isn’t the text-based delivery of the 19th-century nor the rushed gone-before-you-know-it delivery that’s currently the rage in some circles. It’s metered, controlled verse supported by character and emotion. This Richard is bragging, not threatening, daring or confiding, and we become complicit in his crimes.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And that complicity remains throughout the play. Richard is <i>a wise guy</i>, his lines, with some exceptions, mocking the listener, dripping with ironic insincerity. No one would fall for his lies. But the Richard we hear is not the Richard the characters hear. We’re in on his plot from the beginning and throughout we experience the play through him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Aaron Monaghan’s performance as the limping Richard is fascinating - an idiosyncratic interpretation - usually on one or two canes. His voice squeaks - indeed, some whole lines are delivered in falsetto - but he bellows in the final act, when he’s panicking.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Francis O’Connor and Doreen McKenna’s costumes almost exclusively dark. Mr. O’Connor’s set has steely walls imprisoning the characters with one another. The stage is nearly bare, with a simple chair, and a wine cask, inevitable and premonitory. There’s light smoke throughout, and a skull suspended from the ceiling in a box. As one of Sartre’s characters, imprisoned with <i>les autres</i>, says, “We’re in hell, my pets.” My only objection is the use of anomalous florescent tubes to represent the tents on the battlefield.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ms. Hynes has made cuts - naturally, mercifully and selectively. Lady Anne enters alone, dragging the corpse of the late king on her train, and delivers her speech “Set down, set down your honourable load” to no one. Only the ghosts of the two murdered princes appear in the Act V dream. And Clarence’s murderers never speak to him after their banter with one another. The play runs only three hours, with a 20 minute intermission.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Much is made of Catesby, played by the slight Marty Rea. He’s wearing a bowler and eyeglasses, the only character in contemporary drag. He murders Richard’s victims with a sort of staple gun because he’s ordered to. He’s a bureaucrat - the banality of evil.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There used to be a critical tradition of referring to Queen Elizabeth, Lady Anne and Queen Margaret as “the wailing women of Richard III.” In that marvelous scene with the three of them they lie on the floor, collapsed with grief. Marie Mullen is particularly striking as Queen Margaret, probably Shakespeare’s most vituperative senior citizen - “Out, devil! … A murderous villain, and so still thou art,” she brays.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After killing Richard and winning the Battle of Bosworth Field, Richmond limps off leaning on two swords, a second incarnation of Richard - great!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Ms. Hynes production of the play formerly known as </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The Tragedy of King Richard III</i><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">is clear, specific, impeccable. Congratulations to her and Druid!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">November 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Druid Shakespeare: Richard III</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">produced by Druid (Ireland)</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">for The Lincoln Center White Light Festival</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; -webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: black;">524</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> West 59th Street, New York</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">directed by Garry Hynes</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">with: Aaron Monaghan as Richard</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Marie Mullen as Queen Margaret</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Marty Rea as Catesby</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">lights: James F. Ingalls</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">sound: Gregory Clarke</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">set: Francis O’Connor</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">costume: Francis O’Connor and Doreen McKenna</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">opens November 7, 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">closes November 23, 2019</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.lincolncenter.org/white-light-festival/show/druidshakespeare-richard-iii">http://www.lincolncenter.org/white-light-festival/show/druidshakespeare-richard-iii</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">212.721.6500</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">three hours with 20 min intermission</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">reviewed November 9, 2019</span></div>
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Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-14871371760856583222019-11-05T19:02:00.002-08:002019-11-05T19:03:33.984-08:00The Catastrophe Club<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GfErYuadODE/XcI3kozEq3I/AAAAAAAAAgk/Sg0C3SYVahcMzcaNT0QP7cTEllElrX5xQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Catastrophe%2BClub%2Bphoto%2Bby%2BJeremy%2BVarne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="179" data-original-width="250" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-GfErYuadODE/XcI3kozEq3I/AAAAAAAAAgk/Sg0C3SYVahcMzcaNT0QP7cTEllElrX5xQCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Catastrophe%2BClub%2Bphoto%2Bby%2BJeremy%2BVarne.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo by Jeremy Varne</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The future of the theater lies largely in immersive theater. Sea Dog Theater (along with Janelle Garcia Domig and Christopher Domig) has just produced a very interesting immersive production called <i>The Catastrophe Club</i>. It’s written by David Burnam and directed by Shaun Fauntleroy - in both cases quite well - and produced at a location undisclosed until the day before the individual audience member sees it. You get an email telling you where to report. Very intriguing…</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The small audience nearly surrounds the small main playing area. The lighting is suitably harsh. The time is 2520. We’re welcomed by our hostess, Ruth: “Hello, criminal,” she says. Peaceful assembly, it seems, is outlawed in 2520: “The last time there was an infraction for public congregation was 25 years ago. It was a wedding.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">That’s the outer frame of the play: we’ve assembled here to watch in the inner frame: four simulated people from the year 2019. Simulated, but based on “real” people - climate scientists, our contemporaries, who videoed an evening they spent in a space very much like the one we’re in. They chat about nothing specific, sniff cocaine, do some stand-up comedy for our entertainment (we’re <i>there with them</i>) and discuss the climate crisis while they wait for a mysterious phone call. They’re educated scientists, but their discussion borders on cryptic, paranoid conspiracy theory: “Some night is going to be the last night of civilization.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ruth, it seems, has discovered their video 500 years later and recreated the evening by programming these simulations who are are acting it out for us. “This is my life’s work,” she tells us, “to bring these old people to life.” … “I stayed as true as I could to what they left behind.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The characteristics of this particular 2520 utopia are revealed throughout the show in some very nice delayed exposition, and part of the fun is piecing together these hints. Ruth has several revealing lines:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Curiosity - a human trait that is essentially outlawed”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Trust is an outdated technology because we have certainty.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“Disease is barely heard of… We scrub the memories of the dead.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“I struggle to make sense of the pain these people lived on.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Only once does she express any real anxiety about holding this verboten gathering: “They’ll come to shut me down,” she says cryptically And she has two mysterious lines regarding the present-day frame we’re watching: “I want to say to them <i>Run!</i>,” and “The world is ending.” Maybe they aren’t so paranoid after all. Or us.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In the play’s best moments, the playwright plays with the tension between the two frames very nicely. Ruth orders “Halt” and “Resume” to stop and to animate her simulations, but sometimes they malfunction. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In its worst moment, two of our friends slide into the bathroom to have sex. First of all, that’s disgusting. Moreover, the actors stand in a corner of the playing area when they’re supposed to be in the bathroom, and the show breaks the convention - this is <i>the real space</i> - that it’s so carefully set up. In another ill-advised moment, Ruth <i>mimes</i> reprogramming one of the scientists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Indeed, the specifics of the conceit - our relationship to the “old people” - are sometimes murky. The company needs to clarify this style, this <i>fictional</i> <i>actualism</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The other problem is with the script. The inner frame - the stage life of the four climate scientists - has no drama, no story. There are events, but they have no <i>arc</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But no matter. <i>The Catastrophe Club</i> is so creative that it’s important notwithstanding its flaws. Its conceit is intriguing and its dialogue is skillful - one character even quotes from The Book of Ruth. The ending is very nice indeed, and exploits the script’s clever design. If it needs development, its because it’s so promising that we want to see its next manifestation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">November 2019</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-50164452339890813402019-10-23T20:40:00.000-07:002019-10-23T20:40:06.630-07:00A Performance for One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MdV1cQ4kZnE/XbEcsQvkHeI/AAAAAAAAAgM/NP_KkutOedUSNmgUQIxSXI2Nt43jmgKZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Performance%2Bfor%2BOne.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="888" data-original-width="1200" height="236" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MdV1cQ4kZnE/XbEcsQvkHeI/AAAAAAAAAgM/NP_KkutOedUSNmgUQIxSXI2Nt43jmgKZgCLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Performance%2Bfor%2BOne.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo: Untitled Theater Company #61</span></div>
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<i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman";">A Performance for One</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> is a ten-minute performance - a sort of performance - from Untitled Theater Company #61, conceived by Edward Einhorn and Yvonne Roen, and written and directed by Mr. Einhorn. It’s an intriguing example of New York's creative </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman";">avant-garde</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> sensibility. It’s designed for an audience of, well, one. He sits in a small space with the performer - in my case Ms. Roen - who speaks to him for nearly ten minutes about her memory of her father’s hands. It’s not actually her memory, she points out, but the memory of the writer, Edward Einhorn. But “The writer,” she tells her audience, “has abandoned us.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There’s a lovely passage about this memory becoming <i>our</i> memory. Some of the monologue is a discussion of the role of the audience, the audience as performer, experiencing the actress’ experience of the performance, as she experiences his.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The audience member, who is sitting nearly knee-to-knee across from the actress, is invited to look at her eyes, or her face, or her hands. He is invited to speak. I spoke only once during her monologue, and I also spoke at Ms. Roen's second invitation, after she had finished the monologue. She has a wonderful, living connection with her audience. She does not create a specific relationship with him - say, mother/son or daughter/father - other than the performer/audience relationship.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I asked Edward Einhorn how he came to write the piece. This is what he said:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">“I’ve had some experiences just being the only person in the audience and it made me really think about what the responsibility of an audience member is. I became hyperaware of yourself when I was the only person there. I felt like I had to be fully engaged and fully responsive every moment just to give the actors something to bounce off of. It made me think about how that’s always true - I just didn’t think about it because other people can share the responsibility with me. The whole idea of the audience member being the other actor in the space really came home to me with that. I wanted to have a piece that examined that.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>A Performance for One</i> is intriguing for the theater practitioner, less so for the civilian, who must be seduced into accepting a daring conceit like this. It’s too academic - too much precious time is spent discussing the concept. What’s more, I spoke once during the actress’ monologue, but my comment was ignored. It’s surprising that Ms. Roen passed up the opportunity to create a bespoke, improvised event <i>with</i> me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For all the show’s marvelous creativity, ten minutes isn’t enough for us to identify our response to the event. What will Mr. Einhorn and Ms. Roen make of <i>A Performance for One</i> when they develop it? I’m keen to know.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">October 2019</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-25643192576912529342019-10-22T22:40:00.000-07:002019-10-22T22:48:26.186-07:00Theater in the Dark: Carpe Diem<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Theater in the Dark: Carpe Diem</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> is one of those creative, cutting edge theater productions that New York is so good at nurturing. It’s conceived and directed by Erin B. Mee and produced by her company This is not a Theatre Company at the TheaterLab space, off-off-Broadway.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">For this show, audience members are blindfolded and then led into the theater, which, we learn later, is a large room with tables and chairs by them, as if for dinner. As we sit, we’re led through experience a series of olfactory, gustatory, aural and sometimes tactile experiences, in ten “scenes”. In each scene, something to eat or drink is placed in our hands.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Here’s the outline:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Drink</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Jasmine </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Green Tea</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Gather Ye Rosebuds</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Rose Petals </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Turkish Delight</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Dance of Chocolate</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Vanilla </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Chocolate</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Bottle-Vase</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Lavender </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Wine</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Do I Dare?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Perfume </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Prosecco and Pear Juice</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Tree </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Dirt </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Sage</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Sympathy </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Grass </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Ginger</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Ripe Time</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Rose Perfume </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Mandarin Orange</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: I Love You</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Lavender </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Tomato Juice</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Scene Name: Ocean </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Smell: Ocean </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Taste: Salt</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In addition, we hear either recorded voice or music in each scene - <i>Prufrock</i>; <i>To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time</i> (“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may”, from which the production derives its name); whimsical, almost nonsensical dialogue; a whisper in our ear.<i> </i>And sometimes we feel the light sensation of something touching us, like a feather.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ms. Mee relates the production to the Indian concept of <i>rasa</i> - translated as “flavor”, “essence” or “extract”, and applied to the performing arts. When the show was presented in India, Ms. Mee told the Indian Express that it “literalize the notion of rasa.” She explained that just as different combinations of food elicit different tastes, so do they produce different combinations of emotions. In this show, she expands on this idea to include sound and touch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This concept is refreshing and interesting. It could be exciting if it were more developed. It’s fascinating to the theater professional, but Ms. Mee’s concept is so academic that it leaves the general audience behind. For one thing, the swift succession of scenes lacks gravity. Each scene - each taste - needs to be framed in time; we need literally to cleanse our palate, like at a wine tasting. What’s more, the meaning of the experience needs to be more explicit and the scenes need to progress in a way that we can comprehend. We’re given the outline above only after the show, and even then the scene names mean nothing to us. We’ve enjoyed this delicate, meditative experience, but we have no idea if it means anything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Is this theater? It certainly stretches the definition of theater to mean something it hasn’t meant before. But if not us - who?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The show’s best moment, though, creates a lovely metaphysical metaphor: the lights are turned on while we’re still blindfolded so that we know that there’s light but we can’t see anything.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">These articles clarify Ms. Mee’s ideas:</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://howlround.com/immersive-and-interactive-performance">https://howlround.com/immersive-and-interactive-performance</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://howlround.com/towards-sustainable-aesthetic-theory">https://howlround.com/towards-sustainable-aesthetic-theory</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I expect that Ms. Mee and This is not a Theatre Company will make the conceit behind <i>Theatre in the Dark: Carpe Diem</i> more accessible<i>,</i> and I’ll be sure to “see” it then.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 14px;">October 2019</span><br />
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Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-85215395848698047372019-10-20T21:48:00.003-07:002019-10-20T21:48:32.813-07:00Sugimoto Nunraku Sonezaki Shinju - The Love Suicides at Sonezaki <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vhzw8lyyAvM/Xa04UAd0gII/AAAAAAAAAfY/jHCCRBk9P-wutWgwPVwwgWGgfdsI5SYQACLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/Love%2BSuicides.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1067" height="320" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Vhzw8lyyAvM/Xa04UAd0gII/AAAAAAAAAfY/jHCCRBk9P-wutWgwPVwwgWGgfdsI5SYQACLcBGAsYHQ/s320/Love%2BSuicides.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo: Michelle Tabnick</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Bunraku puppetry, a traditional Japanese form, established itself in the 17th century. Its three elements are the familiar large puppets, narrators (or chanters), and shamisen musicians (the shamisen is a three-stringed instrument resembling a guitar). The proper name for the form is <i>ningyō jōruri</i> (<i>bunraku</i> is a 19th-century name). <i>Jōruri</i> refers to the narrative chanting in the play and ningyō means <i>puppet</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The master playwright of the bunraku was Chikamatsu Monzaemon. In the early 18th century he introduced believable characters to Japanese puppetry who dealt with the real-world situations that his audience faced: the conflict between feudal tradition and human nature.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Chikamatsu (as he is known) produced <i>The</i> <i>Love Suicides at Sonezaki</i> in 1703. The play recounts the story of 25-year-old Tokubei and his 19-year-old lady friend Ohatsu (who happens to be a courtesan). Like Romeo and Juliet, they can’t be together, so they kill themselves at Sonezaki.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">New York’s Lincoln Center is producing this puppet play as part of its White Light Festival in association with The Japan Foundation and Odawara Art Foundation, under the title <i>Sugimoto Nunraku Sonezaki Shinju</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Each nearly human-sized Bunraku puppet is puppetted by two or three puppeteers. The gorgeous puppets would have been three or four feet tall had they been stood up, but they were usually held by the puppeteers in such a way that they were nearly sitting on the arm of one of them. The puppeteers, of course, wear black, with black hoods. One puppeteer whose job is a sort of stage maintenance - removing materials the characters drop on the ground - scampers in such a way that his knees are never straight and his thighs are often horizontal. A bunraku puppeteer’s training can take decades. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Bunraku puppets are delicate and complex. There are no bodies attached to the beautiful, pale faces, only kimono. One puppeteer manipulates the left arm, another the right, and a third manages the lower body. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The three scenes of <i>Love Suicides at Sonezaki</i> are preceded by a musical prologue - two shamisen stage left, with flute and bells off-stage. The chanting begins with “Hear this truth,” and we know that this is a myth. In the first scene, which uses a single shamisen and a narrator next to him, we meet the lovers and the villain who cheats Tokubei. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">After the intermission, the second scene involves complications of the plot, again with a shamisen and a narrator. The final presents the suicides - three shamisen are used, as well as three narrators, sometimes chanting as a chorus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">There’s little set in the first scene, but the second and third have expressionist indications of place. Aside from the set pieces, the stage is black except for two pints when there are projections on the back wall.The first is an abstract, kinetic modernist design suggesting computer graphics, and this is the single choice that I disliked; it conflicted with the tone of the puppetry. The second projection showed the lovely trees, out-of-focus, in Tenjin Woods, on the road to Sonezaki.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The chanted <i>jōruri</i> (Japanese, with English surtitles) is a combination of third-person narrative and dramatic dialogue, with no differentiation in style between them. Some of the poetry is lovely: “rapeseed wearied by the dew”; “The zephyrs of love are inescapable” “Painful indeed is reality’s darkness”. The chanting sounds closer to throat singing than to Western singing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Aside from the principles, the cast of characters includes puppet prostitutes, puppet thugs, and a naked servant. The movement ranges from the thugs’ drunken staggering to the furtive creep of Ohatsu as she goes to meet Tokubei. Interestingly, this known prostitute is worried that people will learn she has a lover: “There are enough rumors about you,” the other women say.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The puppets in <i>Love Suicides</i> are at their best when they rush into one another’s arms, or when Ohatsu, creeping to meet Tokubei, turns her head to be sure that no one see her. Simple, clean, clear gestures.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And their suicide is heart-wrenching. Chikamatsu has them cut Ohatsu’s sash so that Tokubei can tie her hands, and the puppets really do this with their small, delicate hands. Their lifeless bodies crumple on one another. There’s a prolonged whistle, alarming and mournful, for most of the scene.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The production is directed by under the direction of Seiji Tsurusawa, and his direction is impeccable - meticulous, never rushed, never dwelling. The chanting, while alien to our Western ears, is mesmerizing. Classical Japanese music suggests the sounds of nature, and the show’s haunting shamisen music was composed by Seiji Tsurusawa. The entire company numbered about 25.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Frankly, it took me a while to become absorbed in the puppets. For one thing, I was fascinated by the chanting and the still tableau of the shamisen in their elaborate costumes. Moreover, the first half of the first scene is exposition, giving the puppets little to do.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">By the second scene I scene believed the reality of these puppet characters. And in the suicide scene I was totally absorbed. The scene is long and poetic. She is in a lovely white kimono; he is in a pattern. There are torches on the road to Sonezaki, eerie on the black stage - and our lovers know they’re spirits. They speak of their parents, and Tokubei wants to ensure that they both “look beautiful in the end”. “Kill me! Kill me now!” she cries. What 18th-century European puppet had this sort of pathos or psychology?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What brilliant work this is! <i>The Love Suicides at Sonezaki</i> is one of the foremost American puppetry events of the year. Many thanks to Lincoln Center and Hiroshi Sugimoto, Artistic Director of The Odawara Art Foundation, for presenting it!</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">October 2019</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-73107929658572932552019-07-20T11:37:00.002-07:002019-07-20T11:38:39.514-07:00Baharat at Djam NYC<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none;">Djam NYC is a weekly world music (actually, middle Eastern music) event at The Engine Room in NYC. It features Baharat, a Brooklyn-based band, and Bellyqueen, a bellydance company.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Baharat is a four-musician band, and their marvelous Arabic music includes tones and rhythms not found in western music. It centers on Mr. Burdi’s <i>oud</i>, a lovely pear-shaped 12-string instrument with ancient origins, like a lute, that epitomizes the dazzling sound of middle Eastern music. Mr. Burdi told me that it’s more difficult to play than the guitar, and it’s certainly worth the effort. Its glittering timbre, although somewhat acerbic compared to a guitar, is hypnotic.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">On percussion, Adam Maalouf plays a <i>riq</i> (a sort of tambourine), a cymbal with holes in it that alter its sound, and a frame drum called a <i>droombek</i>. They give the music a wide rhythmic range. Sometimes he hits the wooden edge of the drum with is hand for even more variety.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The violin, of course, is not an authentic middle Eastern instrument, but it has a long history in the modern age of inclusion in middle Eastern music. In Baharat, Ben Sutin plays it, often doubling with the <i>oud</i> - and that terrific doubling is traditional.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Enrique Mancia plays the bass guitar in the group, and its presence is neither authentic nor expected. I asked Mr. Burdi why he includes it, and he answered “I like rock and roll. Eastern music is missing a bass element.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">As a purist, I disagree. One of the mesmerizing things about Eastern music is that it’s weightless - it floats - and that guitar weighs down Baharat like a ton of hummus.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This music is at its best at its transitions of rhythm and tempo. It’s thrilling to hear Baharat suddenly slow down and then speed up again in a new tempo. I don’t deny that part of this music’s attraction is its novelty - but part of the attraction of Western music is its familiarity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Bellyqueen, the bellydance troupe, is headed by Kaeshi, and her gracefulness is the visual partner to the bewitching music. All the dancers - the bellydancers and the jazz dancers - enhance this entertaining, informal evening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">July 2019</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-74179891986066013062019-07-20T09:59:00.003-07:002019-07-20T10:16:40.967-07:00A Doll's House: A New Opera<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">photo by Justin McCallum</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Making Ibsen’s play </span><i style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A Doll’s House</i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> into an opera is an intriguing project. The play is melodramatic - Ibsen had a long way to go before he freed himself of that weakness - and the emotions and giant and varied, sometimes repressed, sometimes explosive.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">You’ll recall that this scandalous play relates the story of how Nora sacrifices herself to save her husband, Torvald, through a minor crime, and is blackmailed by Krogstad. To make a long and convoluted plot short, Torvald finds out, and instead of himself taking blame for the crime, as the naive Nora expected, blows up in a fit of abusive recrimination. Fortunately, Nora’s BFF, Mrs. Linde, convinces Krogstad to forget the whole damn thing, and everything would be fine except that Nora’s going to have no more of this arrangement. She storms out, abandoning her children, famously slamming the door after her. Oh, and Dr. Rank is involved too, adding more to symbolism than to plot. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">This month The Corkscrew Theater Festival is producing a fine opera, <i>A Doll’s House: A New Opera</i>, off-off-Broadway in a small space on East 4th Street. The music and libretto are by Grace Oberhofer and the production is meticulously directed by Allison Benko. We find a pale, bare stage with a single bench center (I suspect this is due to budgetary and space constraints, but, still, it’s the wise choice under the circumstances). The children are represented on the upstage screen as shadow puppets, as is an all-important important letter-box. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The source material has been cut down to 90 minutes, and the libretto, for the most part, stays close to the source material. The Ibsen scholar will recognize lines about “borrowing and debt” and “How like your father, letting money slip away.”And it’s delicious to hear Torvald call Nora “my singing bird”! </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">In fact, the singing is marvelous - Kristin Renee Young and Elijah Graham in the leads, Maria Lacey as Mrs. Linde, Amy Weintraub as Dr. Rank, Scott McCreary as Krogstad (a role George Bernard Shaw played in <i>A Doll’s House</i> in London). </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">What’s more, Allison Benko has directed her cast to act as well as to sing. Elijah Graham deftly manages one of the most absurd transitions in the modern dramatic canon when Torvald turns from furious tyrant back to overgrown baby in a moment. Ms. Young can barely tolerate his embrace (“Torvald, you must let me go at once!”), her face registers every emotion, and she dances the tarantella, singing in vocalese, with the requisite desperation. Scott McCreary starts as scowling, swaggering villain, and transitions to smiling nice guy through - what else? - love. It’s no wonder that Mrs. Linde sings after he leaves “What a difference I’m making!” Indeed, the transitions of all the characters have been made clear. Only the world-weary Mrs. Linde seems unaffected by the events of this fateful Christmas.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Ms. Oberhofer has included a wordless dancer in the pivotal scenes. She presumably represents Nora’s inner life, but occasionally Nora or Torvald acknowledge her presence. What does this mean?</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The orchestra consists of viola, flute (nice choice), cello and piano. The contemporary music, although I didn’t find it extraordinary, responds to the changing senses of the libretto. It takes on the required silliness when Nora plays the child, and it thunders when Torvald reproaches her with “Do you know what you have done?” The lines are almost always short, with a few short arias, duets and trios and the occasional line <i>a cappella</i>. And the music nearly attacks us when Torvald barks “Look straight” (a line direct from the source material).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The <i>coup de théâtre</i> occurs near the end, when the disillusioned Nora says “Torvald, you and I have much to say to one another.” Before the line, the house lights go up, the music goes silent - and then Nora <i>speaks</i> the line. Brilliant! It was on this line, after all, that modern drama was born, on December 21, 1879, in Copenhagen, at the play’s premiere.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The problem is that Ms. Oberhofer has written the role of Dr. Rank for a woman. For a moment we think the doctor in those pants is a lesbian (the character confesses love for Nora), but the character is referred to in the masculine pronoun. Part of the point of the play is that Nora and Mrs. Linde live in a male-dominated culture, and whatever point Ms. Oberhofer is making, it’s clear only to her.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">When Nora walks out at the end of the show, she walks through the audience and bangs the door to the theater. Great idea. She’s followed by the nanny, Mrs. Linde and that inexplicable Dr. Rank.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">I’m not sure that Ms. Oberhofer’s music has mined the source play for all it’s worth, and her libretto hasn’t overcome the weaknesses of the Ibsen’s script. We’d need to be familiar with the source material to understand why Nora is doing that famous tarantella (she’s stalling to give Mrs. Linde time to convince Krogstad to relent).</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">But whatever its shortcomings, <i>A Doll’s House: A New Opera</i> is a success, and we applaud the entire company.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">July 2019</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2603167182895674543.post-84549531853714066112019-07-03T22:26:00.002-07:002019-07-03T22:32:52.737-07:00Afterparty: The Rothko Studio<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">The future of the theater lies in immersive, site-specific work. The Peculiar Works Project gave us a terrific example of this recently, off-off-Broadway, called <i>Afterparty: The Rothko Studio</i>. It was presented at 22 Bowery. The address is important because the building has housed many artists’ studios - most notably that of Mark Rothko.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We’re an audience of about 25. We’re introduced to the space in the street-level galleries hung with work of contemporary artists, and another with sort of secular altars and a man lying under a small pyramid wearing headphones. We’re in classic New York Bohemia. Then we’re welcomed by an actress in a wild headpiece - I believe the program refers to her as “The Muse” - and ushered into the next room, where we’re entertained by dancers, starting with biomechanics and progressing to interpretive dance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">A host greets us: “Welcome to the Bunker. … This is John’s night. … We wanted to do something special to honor his first show!” Such is the conceit of the evening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">We’re ushered upstairs, past a woman on a swing and up a stairway where an actress reads text I didn’t recognize, to a large room where a woman sings from a balcony and some of the cast sing to the text of <i>A Recipe for a Work of Art</i>, which Rothko wrote in 1958: “There must be clear preoccupation with death…”</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">And then the pith of the show: we’re guests at a dinner, cold but tasty manicotti which we never get to finish. I was lucky enough to sit between the guest of honor, John, at the head of the table, and, on my other side, none other than Mark Rothko himself, played superbly by Jason Howard.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Besides we audience, there are other artists at table, the actors playing actual people or amalgams of actual people, and one playing an affected art teacher spewing art-speak. The actors are sometimes working with scripted text and sometimes improvising, talking to us as fellow guests. As the conversation develops, Rothko becomes increasingly annoyed with dilettantism, not to mention the food: “I tried to eat that overpriced, pretentious slop.” And much - perhaps all - of Mr. Howard’s scripted dialogue comes from the Mr. Rothko himself. He painted the Seagram murals here, and much of the character’s rant refers to them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">S.M. Dale is credited with the “story” of <i>Afterparty</i>, whatever that means, and it’s directed by Ralph Lewis. This is great work, theater that does what the electronic arts cannot: immerse us in a space, in an event. Let’s hope that the new generation of theater devisers emulate the creative Peculiar Works Project.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">review</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">Steve Capra</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;">June 2019</span></div>
Steve Caprahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16317729289214811410noreply@blogger.com