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Cotton Club Parade – Review

19 Nov

Last night I stepped into a magical way-back machine and found myself at The Cotton Club in the 1930s.  The Duke Ellington’s Cotton Club Parade is a phenomenal collaboration of Jazz at Lincoln Center (JALC) and City Center Encores.  These two organizations, on their own, produce some of the finest arts experiences in New York City.  Together, they have created an astounding evening.

The newly renovated N.Y. City Center was a packed house dotted with celebrities and what appeared to be audience members from the actual Cotton Club’s opening night.  The crowd’s reaction was equal parts stunned silence and pounding ovation.  Warren Carlyle directed the evening, with an old fashioned show biz sensibility.  Two dozen numbers were performed by the Wynton Marsalis Orchestra and a powerhouse cast of singers and dancers.  Lighting and one portable set of five steps were the only devices in play.  The voices were pure and perfect and the dancing was simply not to be believed.  I relished my fourth row view of tap dancing feet, which reinforced that yes, these men really were defying the laws of physics.

All the numbers had Mr. Ellington’s fingerprints on them (either through composition or arrangement) and some were recognizable classics.  Even more enjoyable however, were the new (to my ears) numbers that rarely receive play anymore.  The interplay between orchestra, singers and dancers was lovely and organic.  I was at times reminded of the show Black and Blue (1989) a revue of the music of Paris in the 1930s.  From the very first note, I longed to be seated at a cabaret table sipping champagne.  My feet tapped the rhythm uncontrollably and my fingers drummed the melody as I itched to bound onto a dance floor.

Like all Encores productions, Cotton Club Parade has a very limited run.  There is a bitter-sweetness about seeing this production.  It is a jarring reminder that excellent theatrical experiences can be created, if people so chose.  Shows with nary a gimmick, a video projection, an engineered voice or a television personality can sell out and be enthusiastically received.  I do hope that this JALC and Encores collaboration is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

 

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2011 in Uncategorized

 

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Seminar – Review

10 Nov

Not all writing is the same.  To write effective fiction (plays, stories, novels,) one must create a believable world.  The writer starts with nothing and creates a reality.  It can be a lonely and torturous task fraught with countless potential missteps.  It is no wonder that there is a robust cottage industry of workshops, salons, colonies and retreats for these people.

One of these workshops is the setting for the new Theresa Rebeck play Seminar.  Four young(ish) fiction writers are gathering weekly in an upper west side apartment to reap the wisdom and guidance of a larger than life writer/editor.  The bombastic arrogant tutor, Leonard (Alan Rickman) creates a centrifuge where only the talented survive.  The four writers; Lily Rabe, Hamish Linklater, Jerry O’Connell and Hettienne Park are easily recognizable types.  Kate (Rabe) is our Bennington graduate host.  She lives in her parent’s nine room rent – controlled apartment, presumably alone.  Rabe is an absolutely delightful actress.  (The part of Kate is somewhat mannered and at times Ms. Rabe’s similarity to her mother was staggering.)  Martin (Linklater,) Kate’s friend from high school is quiet, insecure, stewing in his own juices.  Douglas (O’Connell) is an amusing blowhard with a family name, connections and penchant for unknowingly inventing words.  Izzy (Park) carries her sexuality like a miniature chihuahua.  She is never without it and uses it as if she’s invented it.  Three guesses which one of these people is the one with the earth shattering talent.

Seminar, directed by Sam Gold hits every performance note perfectly, yet it did not move me.  The acting is superb, without question.  And while, talking about writing is tantamount to dancing about architecture, that wasn’t entirely the issue.   Let’s be clear though, navel gazing gets old fast, particular on a large Broadway stage.  I think it was the cleanliness that left me cold.  All but the last 20 minutes of the play are set in the sprawling overly decorated apartment.  We never meet the rightful “owners” nor know anything about them.  But would parents who sired a Bennington writer and have called the upper west side home for decades, really decorate with color coordinated books?  I understand the point designer David Zinn was making, particularly at the reveal of Leonard’s dark loft groaning under the weight of thousands of books.  But believability was sacrificed to make that particular point.  None of the writers spoke of jobs or any means of support.  Where on earth they did come up with 5,000 dollars each for this seminar?  The only character who convinced me was Douglas.  He’s been around the block.  He is not a novice, having done his time at Yaddo and currently in conversations with The New Yorker.  Making a connection with Leonard is a solid investment for Douglas and one no doubt paid for by his family. For the most part, the characters were too predictable as were their sexual dalliances.  It was all a bit too tidy.

Taking nothing away from the performances or even the production as a whole, the play left me cold.  However, I also walked out on Midnight in Paris.  Please do not let the fact that I don’t consider “look how clever I am” to be a sufficiently entertaining premise, prevent you from enjoying this very solid and beautifully acted production.

 
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Posted by on November 10, 2011 in Uncategorized

 

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Man and Boy – Review

16 Oct

The Rondabout Theatre Company has mounted a revival of Terence Rattigan’s Man and Boy.  For those with a pressing engagement or abbreviated attention span, I will cut to the chase: it is phenomenal.

Frank Langella (‘nough said?) stars in this drama set in Greenwich Village in 1934.  Directed by Maria Aiken, the fluid and balanced action unfolds in real time one October evening.  Man and Boy, written in 1961, feels terribly modern both in its storyline and style.  Langella’s character, Gregor Antonescu is an international financier, credited with resuscitating the European markets after World War I.  He is debonair, larger than life, steely, and by his own admission, without conscious.  Things have come to a bit of a nasty head for G.A., as he is known to his trusty assistant Sven Johnson (Michael Siberry) who bears a second cousin resemblance to Max in Sunset Boulevard.  Sven seeks out the Greenwich Village apartment of G.A.’s estranged son Basil (Adam Driver) for a clandestine business meeting.  Basil has denounced his lineage and lives as a piano playing socialist in a dreary basement apartment (designed by Derek McLane.)  Underneath the thin layer of his disguise is Basil’s adulation of dear old dad.

Not surprisingly G.A.’s impulse upon seeing his son for the first time in five years, is to offer the young man to his closeted business adversary.  Prostituting one’s young, does not earn any parenting awards, but it feels completely in character for G.A.  There is nothing surprising about the turn in the story, yet it must be said that the matinee audience (of a certain age and with just a hint of bridge and tunnel A.O.C.) giggled nervously with the implications.  This storyline is not meant to be funny, and in 1934 Greenwich Village socialist circles, homosexual activity would not be unknown.  I suspect a different audience would have a different response.

The cast is perfectly balanced out by Basil’s girlfriend Carol (Virginia Kull,) the business nemesis Mark (Zach Grenier) his accountant Beeston (Brian Hutchinson) and  G.A.’s second wife the (purchased title of) Countess (Francesca Faridany.)  The relationships and interactions between these characters is completely thought out and believable.  Most of us won’t commandeer a basement apartment in an attempt to rescue our international financial empire, but we can relate and understand the words and actions of all of these characters.  That is the mark of truth in writing.

This production has an overall British feel to it, no accident considering the lineage of some of the creative team.  There is a simple intelligence to the production that this play richly deserves.  There are plays that take (well rewarded) effort on the part of the audience.  I love Martin McDonagh, but you better not blink for 2 hours or you will be lost.  Additionally, plays steeped in symbolism can be a delicious intellectual exercise.  But there is something to say for clean, emotionally true drama.  And when it’s exquisitely executed, it is a must see.

 
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Posted by on October 16, 2011 in Uncategorized

 

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Lemon Sky – Review

13 Oct

Lanford Wilson’s Lemon Sky has been revived by the Keen Company and is playing at Theatre Row.  This play is considered the most autobiographical of Mr. Wilson and was last revived in 1985.  The play, told in flashback and predominantly set in the late 1950s, is the story of a brief reunion between a father and son.  Directed by Jonathan Silverstein, this very lovely play falls a bit short of brilliant.  There are some beautifully directed and acted moments, but there is also a small collection of distractions.

Our narrator, Alan (Keith Nobbs) is brimming with charisma and poignancy (I found him much more in his element than I did in Lombardi.)  His narration, and at times the drama, is intentionally self-conscious, a device considered quite novel in 1970.  (Narration and self-consciousness is now mainstreamed into reality television.)  The role of Alan needs to be entirely captivating and ingratiating, and in Mr. Nobbs he most definitely is.  While Mr. Nobbs does indulge in a small amount of Ferris Bueller interpretation, I found this less distracting than I did illuminating (I had not realized how effeminate Ferris Bueller was.)  Alan slips gracefully in an out of the narrator role and insinuates himself into the household drama.  A lengthy bus trip has delivered Alan (from Nebraska to San Diego) to the home of his estranged father Doug (Kevin Kilner.)  Mr. Kilner’s interpretation of a, not very likable Doug, is simply wonderful.  It would have been an easy one-dimensional portrayal, but Mr. Kilner goes deep.  He gregariously welcomes his heretofore ignored teenage son into his new family.  His light and cautious wife Ronnie (Kellie Overbey) is an eager step-mother, quick with the party line and a cup of coffee.  The household is rounded out by Ronnie and Doug’s two sons (a fabulous Zachary Mackiewicz as Jack and the older Logan Riley Bruner as Jerry) and two foster daughters (Penny, brilliantly portrayed by Amie Tedesco, and Carol, portrayed by Alyssa May Gold.)

The characters, their interactions and dialogue are drawn so realistically.  While we suspect what’s coming at every turn, the discovery is not really the point.  The point is how people connect, or disconnect, and what stories they tell themselves along the way.

This production has enormous potential, but falls just a bit short.  When mounting a small ensemble production, it is imperative that the onstage talent is in balance.  This is simply not the case with this production.  Eldest child Mr. Bruner is a very self conscious child actor.  Had he been the only child, one would chalk it up to child blindness (for some reason, casting directors often can not discern talent in children, going for appearance only) but Mr. Bruner is paired with the excellent Zachary Mackiewicz.  Ms. Gold is awkward and ill at ease, playing the fragile, potentially fascinating Carol with an extreme heavy hand.  Adding to this distraction is the fact that Ms. Gold is simply not the right physical type for this role.  She is not done any favors with the costume padding and “bump-it” hairstyling device.  Carol’s costuming doesn’t hit the right note any more than the set does.  Doug works third shift in a factory, the mortgage is paid with the foster child allotment.  There is no way that their home would be furnished with such obvious 1950s items.  Furniture was expensive back then, and new furniture would not have been within reach for a working class family.

Distractions aside, this is a very good play and a fine production.  If the past is any indication of the future, it does not get produced often.  For this reason, I encourage you to see it.

 
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Posted by on October 13, 2011 in Uncategorized

 

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Giving Judgment a Pass

11 Oct

Have you ever been accused of being judgmental?  The accuser usually has flung the “judgment” handle as a reflex.  Teased apart, the accuser usually means to say; “Yikes, that hit a bit close to home.”

Calling people judgmental, and meaning it as an insult, is a new phenomenon.  The antipathy of judgment seems to have cropped up in that organic garden which has also sprouted trophies for every player and honor student bumper stickers.  Everyone is above average!  Now clearly, in our most logical moments we can all agree that to be a force for good in the world you need to have judgment.  I don’t think the casual bon mots of “don’t judge me!” “you’re so judgmental!” are really meant as the rallying cry of a movement.  No thinking person actually would posit that humans are meant to go through life NOT processing information coming into their senses.  I suspect these cries are more of the “I’m too fragile to process your opinion” ilk.

What’s stunning about this development is that it seems to have happened during the cruelest of trends in entertainment and media.  How many television and radio shows, have ridicule as their raison d’etre?  How many magazine and newspaper articles are at their core, simply picking on people.  A governor’s weight is made fun of in the news cycle!  And lo, what the internet has wrought.  Websites dedicated to the fine art of snark.  Quasi-anonymous (they need to use catchy handles, so you know whom to consider pithy) posters, take an obvious glee in simply maligning others.  They are like an uncontrolled infection, leaping from opportunity to opportunity.  Few people, excluding shock jocks and cable news pundits, would ever spew the venom they do.

We, the spectator, are not much better.  We watch, with glee; the accidents, the vulgar child-killer trials, the reality shows, the talk shows.  It is our appetite for some bastardized form of schadenfreude that drives us to “Addiction” “Intervention” “Hoarding.”  We watch these shows because they are the ultimate judgment.  “You there on the television, you are not normal.”  We have a voracious appetite for ridicule when it serves our purposes.  But when judgment is not for entertainment purposes?  Or not cruel, but instead, instructive?  That’s just too harsh.

Truth is, critique is only welcome if it is in the abstract (film, theatre, television, restaurant reviews) or about others.  But in real life?  All finger paintings are works of genius.

 
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Posted by on October 11, 2011 in Cultural Critique, Media/Marketing

 

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