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Now that we’ve established that I missed A Steady Rain, what did I see and, more importantly, of what I saw, what should you see?
Love, Loss, and What I Wore
Unless you see or read everything Nora Ephron produces or are an Eileen-Fisher-wearing, lunch-date-having, Upper-West-Side-living woman over 55, you can probably miss Love, Loss, and What I Wore.
I’m in the former group, mostly because of her non-fiction - her early essays, to be more precise - and some because of When Harry Met Sally and My Blue Heaven. In the last several years, Ephron’s writing has become more specialized to her demographic group (I Feel Bad About My Neck), which is unfortunate for me since I’m 30 years younger than she is, and she’s been doing a lot more collaborating with her sister Delia, which usually spells disaster (Bewitched, Hanging Up). This play - more of a reading, really - is a combo My Demographic / Delia project.
Briefly, a woman wrote a little book for her daughter and granddaughter about defining moments in her life and illustrated it with drawings of what she was wearing at the time. It got picked up by a publisher. Nora and Delia got their hands on it, did a bunch of additional interviews with women and turned it into a five-woman show. The actresses sit on-stage and read/perform from the script.
A couple of the stories - not from the book - are touching or have some unexpected twists (breast cancer, same-sex marriage), and the cast (which switches out monthly) is high-quality enough to keep the audience’s attention, but I doubt it would have been produced without the Ephron name attached. It’s the kind of thing you go to with your aunt after you’ve had an overpriced lunch uptown. I was the youngest person - woman, actually: I think I saw two men - in the theater by, I’d bet, fifteen years.
At the West Side Theater Downstairs. Tickets. Through October 18th with Tyne Daly, Rosie O’Donnell, Samantha Bee, Natasha Lyonne, Katie Finneran. If you’re going to go, I’d go between October 21st and November 15th to catch Jane Lynch in the group.
Hamlet
I made a half-hearted effort see Michael Grandage’s (Frost/Nixon) production of Hamlet, starring Jude Law (co-interview here), in London over the summer but, predictably, it was sold out, presumably to nannies and models.
The production moved to Broadway last month (US interview and overview here), so off I went.
The word I’d use is “accessible.” Heavy on the crazy, light on the darkness, this is a good intro Hamlet. Not too much brooding, a lot of jumping around and an excellent reading of the text. Too often, even in practiced hands, antique language can slip by, passage after passage, with only the gist of the speech understood by half the audience. I’ve done the play: I’ve dug about with directors and dramaturges locating the original meanings of colloquialisms and out-of-use words, distinguishing them from the intentional enigmas of Hamlet’s madness. That comprehension can help an actor immeasurably, but it often stops there. The audience, unschooled, smiles and nods and misses out. Not so here. Well, not so for Hamlet’s part, anyway.
Law, flexible and agile, illustrates his words to very good effect, but something of Hamlet’s agony is lost with all the physicality. Who hasn’t read an article in Self or Men’s Fitness about how exercise improves the mood? Law’s Hamlet should, by rights, be surfing an endorphin high by the middle of Act I. Aside from that, time to think is at a minimum when Hamlet is manic, reducing the tragedy to the frame of, say, a runaway train rather than the more agonizing progress through layers of guilt, filial love, maternal betrayal, aimless youth, fate vs. intentionality, political position, and all the other issues more cerebral Hamlets contend with.
I can’t say I’ve seen the definitive Hamlet - is there one? - or even one I felt did all the angles justice. I dare say most people would agree, which is why the play is so obsessively produced. There’s no getting it all in. (If pressed, I’d say Kenneth Branagh’s uncut film comes closest to including all the angles, possibly because the text remained intact. Maybe because he had the best Horatio. Wish I’d seen Simon Russel Beale.)
So yes, it’s worth a viewing, although I’m not sure it’s worth $125. Take your teenagers or novice friends, if you have them.
Gertrude and Ophelia are unfortunately forgettable, as are Laertes and Horatio, and Peter Eyre as the Ghost/Player King delivers a truly awful performance in the worst tradition of classical theater - mumbling, rushing, overblown delivery in false stentorian tones - that grates disruptively against the accessibility of the rest of the production. Ron Cook as Polonius/the Gravedigger however is quite good, chipper and precise.
Donmar Warehouse production at the Broadhurst Theater, 235 West 44th Street, until December 6.
Superior Donuts
Tracy Letts’ new play, Superior Donuts, was never going to be August: Osage County, so it’s just as well he got it out of the way early.
For the record, August: Osage County is the best new play I’ve seen in my lifetime. I used to prevaricate on that point because it sounds like the kind of overstatement only idiots make, but, after further reflection, it is the fact of it so I’m going public with it. I went to Superior Donuts, then, as a general vote of support for Mr. Letts and knowing the play would be flawed. It’s just statistically unlikely you’d get two in a row and, as a working writer, I know it takes courage to plow ahead anyway. Write it, get it out there, move on.
Also, I have an irrational love of donuts.
The reason to see it is Jon Michael Hill. He plays France Wicks, the young, fast-talking black kid bringing new ideas to the aging donut shop run by Arthur Przybyszewski, played by Michael McKean. He’s the only reason to see it. He has the best lines, the best arc and delivers a performance that provides the play’s only heartbeat.
I was disappointed in McKean, but I’m pretty sure that’s a result of his limited options playing the tired, been there done that role of the aging hippie and his blah blah blah principles. I’m pretty well sick to death of the sixties and the self-righteous baby boomer ideals that all went to hell in the Reagan years anyway. Thank Oliver Stone, Tom Brokaw and the sheer volume - in numbers and noise - of that generation for talking so long and loud that there’s nothing interesting left to say about themselves and their awakening. I’m not clear what Letts was after in returning to that infertile ground.
What I can say for McKean is that he has almost teleportation level abilities to move around Manhattan. R and I ran into him on 73rd and Amsterdam not half an hour after the curtain came down. Of course, that’s not a reason to go see the play, but still impressive.
In sum, the play’s eminently missable, but I’m looking forward to the next one now that “The One After Osage” is sorted.
Music Box Theatre, 239 West 45th Street through, unbelievably and optimistically, March 28. Tickets here. Make sure you get the $49.50 deal.
There’s this thing I do with tickets that’s very annoying. I know what plays are going up. I know which ones I will want to see. I know some of them are going to be popular and maybe sell out, so I…do nothing. The reviews come out, the general public joins the fray, some of the plays sell out and then I scramble to find seats. It’s like a twisted hobby I’ve adopted, like water skiing with one ski or kiteboarding with a bed sheet. Maybe it’s because I’m over-competitive and scoring seats doesn’t feel satisfying unless I’ve had to fight for them. Weird.
In this case, I’d had my sights set on A Steady Rain since the summer. Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig in a new play by Keith Huff about two Chicago cops, a he said/he said drama.
Generally, I don’t like going to see shows with celebrities, especially ones without stage cred, because a.) they often suck, b.) I disagree, in principle, with giving plum roles to unqualified actors just so the producers can pay the Broadway bills (although I agree that bills need to be paid and, no, I don’t have an alternate suggestion), and c.) intermission is a hot mess of groupies misquoting the star’s latest movie and talking about how hot s/he is.
Lately though, there have been a number of serious plays produced featuring screen stars who do have backgrounds on the stage, so I’ve anted up. Waiting for Godot in London with Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan this summer was excellent. The other Waiting for Godot in New York last spring with Nathan Lane and John Goodman was OK. God of Carnage with James Gandolfini, Hope Davis et al was a waste of time. Macbeth with Patrick Stewart in New York last year was unexpectedly weak. You win some, you lose some.
I wanted to see A Steady Rain on the strength of Daniel Craig, who had a successful stage career pre-Bond and is, by all accounts, very, very good. Hugh Jackman though is a wild card. He’s endearing, I’ll agree. Charming, yes. But he’s a musicals guy and that’s not usually a plus in a gritty drama. Plus, the play looked dubious and not up my alley, probably because I’m already saturated with CSI and Law & Order.
So I prevaricated on tickets. Our dates weren’t 100%. I tried to imagine Jackman, all bulked up from Wolverine, all smiles at the Oscars, toning it down for an intense tete-a-tete. I couldn’t. The show sold out.
Then, of course, I kicked into gear. I had to go. Tickets on eBay and Craigslist were going for $350-600. For a 90-minute, no-intermission show. Seriously? You would need to give me a Tony for that price. Or at least a full day at a spa with the massage administered by one of the stars. Maybe the three of us could get full-body waxes together.
I’ve had absurdly good luck scoring last-minute tickets this year, so I let it ride until we got to Manhattan. (Some research, some flexibility and a willingness to show up early and risk disappointment have yielded excellent results.) New York’s a busy place: someone was bound to have a scheduling conflict. Sure enough, face-value tickets for a matinee came up on Craigslist on Wednesday.
I didn’t buy them and I didn’t go.
Why?
Because Ben Brantley at the Times said exactly what I thought he might - weak play, weak Jackman, annoying audience. Because life is short and money’s tight. Because I’m perverse or edgy or just a New Yorker: when something’s wildly popular, it makes me want it less. Because life is short and I’m trying not to do any more things just to say that I did, just because they’re there just so I don’t theoretically regret not having done them.
So there.
Until next time, James Bond.
I’ll get into the chaos another time; first, let’s talk about the Guggenheim. The Peggy Guggenheim Collection was on the top of my list of things to see in Venice, right after “as much Palladio as possible”, but we didn’t get there until the afternoon before we left. In fact, I was so afraid we wouldn’t get there (because others - who shall remain nameless - were dragging their feet) that I felt the need to add a small motivational tantrum to the mix. I don’t know if it helped, but it seemed in keeping with Ms. Guggenheim’s eccentricity.
The collection is in Guggenheim’s gorgeous house which fronts on the Grand Canal but looks nothing like most of the surrounding Venetian palazzos: it’s white, it’s angular and it’s modern, modern, modern. (Not that I’d be averse to living in one of those other palazzos, mind you. If you’re offering, I’m in.)
I fell for Rauschenberg at the Guggenheim’s retrospective in New York in 1997. I joined the museum that year, even though I was a pauper, so that I could get the exhibition catalog and go back to meet Rauschenberg at the reception (and by “meet” I mean, “look at from the first floor while he spoke in the lobby.”)
I loved the Combines the most, constructions of found materials (including, infamously, a stuffed goat), original paintings, recycled print, and photography. A close second was the amazing Hiccups, a set of 97 segments of handmade paper printed with images and zippered together. The constructions struck me as imaginative and somehow dynamic (literally, in the case of Hiccups, which can be rezippered in any configuration). Rauschenberg seemed…happy, I guess. Curious. Conflicted, but funny, not tortured. His work noted what was going on around him not by representing it or reducing it, but by collecting it. It felt like he saw what other people missed - junk, goats, discarded newsprint, tires - and accepted it all into his work without shying away from its grime or rust, elevating it to notice by recycling it.
(Slideshow overview of some of his work, including that goat, here.)
A few years later, the Whitney bought Synapsis Shuffle, another moveable work. Rauschenberg created fifty two 9.5’ panels (each 5’ or less wide), each its own piece of art. When it came time to show it, he’d collect a set of people - mostly famous, all from different walks of life - and stage a lottery. Each person drew a set of two numbers: the first indicating how many panels they’d get and the other a rank denoting in what order they’d be able to select their panels. Then they’d construct what they liked from their panels or barter with the other participants to get different panels.
I love the flexibility of that idea. Every time it shows, it’s different but it’s still absolutely that same work underneath. It’s done - for now and until the next time it’s done.
Gluts is a series of sculptures (for lack of a better word) produced from the mid-eighties until Rauschenberg’s death last year. The Guggenheim Collection is exhibiting a fraction of the huge series. Over twenty-odd years, Rauschenberg pillaged junkyards for materials - twisted bumpers, discarded signs, bits of wrought iron metalwork - took them back to his studio and constructed these pieces - some enormous, some small - a testament to glut, to overproduction and the abandonment of the resulting goods. The pieces are a criticism and a resurrection all in one, a whimsical and substantial response to the issue.
(An excellent virtual tour through the exhibition here. A good, albeit very flatly lit, set of images from Gluts here.)
The standing collection at the Guggenheim house is wonderful as well. I love museums of personal collections - the Frick in New York and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston are two of my other favorites. For me, there is something intimate and human in visiting a personally curated collection that is very different from visiting a professionally curated exhibition in a museum. There are always lovely surprises among the selections and combinations.
The Rauschenberg is up through September 20th.
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Apparently, he’s also a great father.
This is quite possibly the only time in your life that you will ever want to have sex with Geoffrey Rush. He didn’t get all Wolverine-buff or have work done or anything. He’s still scattered looking and a little creepy intense. But praise Jesus is competence sexy. And this is beyond competence. This is take-me-now excellence.
You have to go. You must. I don’t care what excuse you have to give your Aunt Delia who’s in town for a weekend show, but scalp your Wicked tickets and go see some absurdist theater instead. She might even accept “celebrities” as a category trade-in for “endless mic’d singing about my feelings.”
The celebrities in question are Rush as the King, Lauren Ambrose (Six Feet Under) turning in a very good histrionic performance as the King’s younger wife, Susan Sarandon anteing up a with an unconvincing offering as the original wife, and William Sadler whose resume you won’t remember but whose face you will (Die Hard II, suit-wearing villains on small and large screens) as the doctor.
I was disappointed with Sarandon. I’ve generally thought that she was better than her on-screen material, that she had an authority that would play well on-stage. Her work here doesn’t support either of those assumptions. She is definitely the weak link and Rush would have done better to cast someone with a stronger, weirder hand to match the rest of the performances.
The play is not easy. It’s absurd and bleak and funny (think Godot but with more running around) and about death, which is not a straightforward sell. Ionesco said, “I told myself that one could learn to die, that I could learn to die, that one can also help other people to die. This seems to me the most important thing we can do, since we’re all of us dying men who refuse to die. The play is an attempt at an apprenticeship in dying.”
Entertaining stuff, right? In point of fact, yes. Really. Rush is very, very funny and very, very good at it. He’s had the original production in Sydney and a run in London to perfect his performance and it’s a tour de force. Suffice to say that there’s a lot of dancing about interspersed with the pathos. See video clips here.
Rush and the director, Neil Armfield, did a new translation for this revival and it’s impossible not to see the relevance of the play today after eight years of criminally bad leadership (in this country anyway) and the popular obsession with self-expression (blog, anyone?) and with leaving your mark on the world. Sarandon’s uncertainty with the material undermines the crucial final path to the King’s demise and the text itself becomes more if-y and out of reach, but I’m not sure I could do better and I can’t imagine a better production, so plan for an evening of drinking afterwards and go see this one.
Interestingly, they’re both directed by the same person, Matthew Warchus, which gives him a better than average chance of winning that Tony, since he’s two fifths of the five man field rather than just one. Good plan, Matt. Get the math on your side. That’s what I always say.
The Norman Conquests, Table Manners, by Alan Ayckbourn at Circle in the Square. The trilogy part is tricky. Each play takes place in a different room of the house over the course of the same day with the same cast but can be seen independently. Table Manners is the one in the dining room.
In brief, a weekend with three sibling couples at their invalid mother’s country home. Norman hits on everyone.
Even briefer: Go.
This is the British half of my domestic disaster double bill and it’s the one to see. The British start from a position of repression, so devolution into their lesser selves still keeps them entertaining, interesting to watch, and above that Jerry Springer bar. You will not feel the need to drink heavily or never get married/immediately seek a divorce when you leave the theater.
Overall, I agree with everything the Times reviewer said, most prominently that this is not a brilliant trilogy of plays that can survive an American cast or a poor staging well, so this is the time to see it. It’s a great production with an outstanding British cast and you’ll like it even if you don’t much like theater.
The weak link, unfortunately, is the titular Norman (Stephen Mangan, inexplicably nominated for a Tony last week), but he’s more than made up for by Ben Miles and Paul Ritter who make brilliant business of being, respectively, wincingly awkward and hale fellow well met. Amanda Root (remember Persuasion?) is excellent as the worried, pushy wife trying to keep things on track and off the inevitable, dysfunctional rails.
Full disclosure: I saw this at a Wednesday matinee, which is often a recipe for disaster because the audience is packed with can’t-sit-still, I’ve-been-dragged-here, don’t-you-love-gum? classes of teenagers to supplement the usual weekend matinee crowd of out-for-the-day, in-from-the-suburbs, lunching-with-friends, don’t-really-“get”-the-play ladies. (To whom, for the record, I am - when not sitting next to them and their comments - grateful for supporting live theater with their full-price tickets.)
Even allowing for the matinee distraction factor, I didn’t think much of the play. It’s been a successful and well-received production, but I chalk that up to the presence of screen stars (James Gandolfini, Hope Davis, Marcia Gay Harden and Jeff Daniels) and Reza’s talk-show script, both of which make it highly accessible. Sadly, they don’t make it meaningful or even really very entertaining, unless, like my matinee crowd, a.) you have never before thought about the potential vacuousness of middle-class marriage and this play is therefore a revelation, or b.) you think profanity is hilarious.
Imagine Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? without the cleverness, the pathos or the dialogue. That’s God of Carnage. There’s nothing particularly tragic or even interesting about pretentious couples being mean to each other about nothing much. And by “mean”, I mean yelling and throwing tulips and saying nasty things about cell phones, which just isn’t that mean. Watching it was like overhearing a particularly vicious squabble in a restaurant: it’s uncomfortable, you’re embarrassed for the participants, but there doesn’t seem to be a point beyond a Seinfeld-ian, “What is the deal with people? Geesh!” No new ground, no hidden meaning, not even a buried skeleton.
I knew I’d like Hope Davis, and she did the best with the script of any of them, but I was disappointed with Gandolfini who I know has a range beyond Tony Soprano but has the diction of a drunk second grader, and Harden who seems to be having too much fun throwing herself around to be believably distraught. Maybe it all comes back to the script, but the production felt like everyone was waiting for the editor to fix all the sloppiness before the final print.
All of that said, there’s a silver lining to new plays of inferior quality being produced on Broadway: it makes success that much more realistic for the rest of us. Hooray mediocrity!
My evening with Christopher Durang started on a happy note: I scored the last rush ticket after tearing up from Washington, ditching my bags at the apartment and sprinting across town to get there.
It turns out that that rush ticket saved me more than $50. It saved me the pain of regretting spending an extra $50 to see what is, let’s be honest, a wildly uneven offering. David Mamet got away with bringing November to Broadway last year just on the strength of his name, and Durang’s following suit.
I can’t blame him. If I were famous and could get anything I doodled on a napkin published and produced, who’s to say I wouldn’t take advantage too? This is why you have to make honest friends before you get famous, so they’re there to tell you you’re writing garbage but that they love you anyway and you should go back to your desk and work for another month or so to tune your jokes and get it right.
The characters are supposed to be absurd, over-the-top stereotypes (the earnest daughter, the possible terrorist, the out of touch suburban mother, the rabid Republican dad, etc.) in an absurd, over-the top plot about (what else) torture in the Bush years, but, what with the script being so weak, everyone founders. Only one of the cast - Kristine Nielsen, a Durang favorite as the mom - is able to raise her performance above the script’s faults and be truly bizarre and entertaining. She made it worth the price of admission, but barely, and I wouldn’t recommend the show to anyone but a die-hard theater go-er.
(If you are a die hard theater go-er, by the way, you will enjoy the mother’s dumptruck of insider references to recent plays by other playwrights. The audience I went with did, as did I, but I knew while I was giggling knowingly that those kinds of references, like the political ones elsewhere in the play, have a short shelf life and a limited audience.)
To top off my disappointment, I did not run into Oskar Eustis (profile here), the artistic director of the Public. I like his hair and I have a crush on his steamroller energy, but no such luck. Not that I’d have had anything to say to him if I had seen him. I should come up with some cocktail patter for those situations. Like, “I love your hair. My, you are energetic!” Do you think that would work? If someone said that to me, I’d probably let them into my Emerging Playwrights program. Wouldn’t you?
No? Really? You didn’t? You have no plans?? You don’t know what to see or who’s in it?? You’re not getting on a plane to New York just to catch a show? What?? You are not one of the eight people outside New York who watch the Tony Awards? Not possible! Are you being honest with me or are you putting me on??
Huh. Well, that hurts me a little. It pains me, I won’t deny it. But I’m here to help. Really. I saw everything. Nearly everything anyway. And I have things to say about even the things I didn’t see (naturally), so let me help.
Let’s get one thing clear right up front: I loathe musicals. I see them because R’s brother is an actor, a successful one and a good one, and he is sometimes in musicals and we love him, so I go. (See here, for Manoel’s latest.) Some of the voices are amazing. I can appreciate that. But all the stopping and dancing and singing about feelings gets in the way of the narrative and drives me batty. Which is to say that I didn’t see anything musical in New York, so if you’re looking for my thoughts on Shrek: The Musical or 9 to 5 (even though it does star Allison Janney), you’re out of luck.
Also, while we’re on the subject, let’s be clear about a couple of other things I can’t stand. Times Square and the tourists who crowd the sidewalks gawking at the things that are not cool about New York, the terrible restaurants up there, people who wear printed T-shirts to the theater, and the new trend of clapping at celebrities’ entrances and exits and speeches and so on as if they’re doing something above and beyond by just showing up.
There. I’m done. Now let’s move on.
I just came from New York and saw precious little theater, mostly because I was a.) really disorganized (see leaving job), and b.) a bunch of shows were opening the day I left. Nice work. Thanks very much. Congratulations to me.
So, in the spirit of sharing wealth I don’t actually have, here are a couple of noteworthy productions you might want to catch if you’re on Manhattan in the snowy month of March.
A word of caution: Ethan Hawke is in it (albeit in a small part) and, in my experience (and, it sounds like, Ben Brantley’s as well), his take on stage acting is to overdo it with bluster and spittle. God deliver us from slacker movie stars taking to the stage.
Theater for a New Audience has put up a production of Othello that sounds great. If you like that sort of thing. By which I mean men being morons over inconceivably angelic women. If you’re in the mood for jealous rage to thaw a snowy evening, this sounds like a great bet.
I have to get this off my chest before the election. I’ve been mad at David Mamet for a while now. I know I shouldn’t be: if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have won that playwriting award (twice). I can’t help it though. He’s disappointed me like if my oldest kid started coming home with F’s. No - like if Madeline Albright dropped states(wo)manship and took up juggling. No - that’s not right: juggling’s rough. Like if Madeline Albright took up hacky sacking. That’s what it’s like.
First there were the unfunny cartoons on the The Huffington Post. Diletantish but whatever. I got over it.
Then, in February, I made the mistake of going to see his new play, November, in its inaugural run on Broadway. It’s about an idiot president during his run for re-election. I ignored the mixed reviews and went because if there were ever a girl with a soft spot for Mamet, it’s me. I shouldn’t have ignored the reviews. It sucked. It was the worst thing I’ve seen in a long time. Was it really that bad? you may ask. Yes. Yes it was. Was it worse than the stuff I’ve seen at fringe festivals? Really? Honestly? Yes. Because, I expected more of him than his start-up brethren, that’s why.
In case I haven’t been clear, it was fucking terrible. It was glib, cheap and played to the worst of the audience. It said nothing important and it wasn’t even well-written. I cringed at every stupid, stupid punchline. If he weren’t David Mamet, it never would have made it to a reading, let alone the stage. (Of course, I’d like to be powerful enough to get whatever I write produced too, but with rights come responsibilities, David. Keep that in mind.)
Then, he published “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal’” in the Village Voice in March. He went from being someone who shared my liberal political views - regulated freedom and shared burden - to being a free-market conservative. He posits that the marketplace will work itself out without any regulation, whether you define the marketplace as an economy, a theater of actors or a stranded bus and its passengers, to pick up two of his examples. Let ‘em fight it out without the benefit of a director or a bus driver.
(On a side note, Mamet’s a big fan of guns, which adds a level of threat to the proceedings that doesn’t help his case with me.)
I think we all now know where unfettered free markets have gotten us. Even Alan Greenspan’s not on that sinking ship anymore. And God love him for being willing to admit his mistake. Mamet says in his piece that he’s a fan of changing your mind once corrected. Maybe, in light of the collapse of the free market system, Mamet will come around too.
I don’t know if the banality and populist humor of November were a result of Mamet’s free-market thinking, i.e. I can get away with writing beneath my talents because people will pay for it. I hope so. Because that means that if he does change his mind again, his writing will improve. And I would like that. I really would.
In case you didn’t know, Eddie Izzard is in town. Right now. He’s here in San Francisco (that’s me with him a few years ago in the photo) and you should go see him if you can. As far as I can tell, the shows are sold out but there’s still hope on craigslist, which is where we sold two inexplicably extra tickets we had.
If you don’t know Eddie Izzard, you should rent Dress to Kill, which is his best act so far. Or you can rent the first season of The Riches, which is very good but, except for the bizarre premise of the series, doesn’t much resemble his stand-up work. Or his British accent. (Minnie Driver is excellent in it as well, so you should rent it whether or not you agree with me about Eddie. You can stream it on Hulu.com if you don’t have Netflix.)
“Stand-up” is not quite what his work is. It is comedy and, and as such you will laugh, but it’s got more of a story line than most stand-up and generally it’s more polished, although not always. I’ll rush to say that it’s not a one-man show though either. Although he is one man and he’s all there is. One-man shows always make me think of terrible, self-involved middle-aged men mounting shows with their own money and talking about how they can’t get dates, which is always perfectly understandable to me since they’re repellent in every way and why did they have to waste my evening telling me what I could have told them after five minutes?
I like to think I found Eddie before most of America the same way I like to think I caught The Flight of the Conchords before everyone else, but while I was an early adopter and an enthusiastic evangelist to everyone in my circle (none of whom knew about either of them), it can’t be true that I was the first since I saw both of them on late, late night HBO. So someone at HBO was definitely ahead of me. By a little bit.
Anyway, now he’s famous and successful but his act is still outstanding, which is more than I can say for a lot of famous comedians. If you can’t snag tickets, he’s in Vegas next week and there are plenty of seats available, so you can head to the desert in the middle of July (lucky you!), get a massage, bet on things AND catch a great live act all in one weekend.
Macbeth, at the Lyceum Theatre, New York. Tickets at Telecharge.com.
If you haven’t read Macbeth, this is your show. If you haven’t seen Macbeth, this is your show. If you’re a fan of Macbeth, this may also be your show. It’s big, it’s accessible, it’s well-done from casting to staging and it’s original enough that it’ll keep you interested.
It’s set in the first half of the last century in a chilly basement, so no moors and highland mania. The institutional staging is excellently suited to all the blood: dingy white tile and metal furniture on wheels. (The sink downstage stays put, which is just as well given the aforementioned blood.) The tile provides a backdrop for projections of bloody smoke and the forest, among other things. Nice work there. Less so with the extreme sound effects. They are so jacked up that they lose whatever original effect they might have had and register only as, “Goddamn that’s loud.”
Lady Macbeth wears those silky bias-cut dresses that only women with no thighs can rock and her sexy ambition is a convincing reading of the pushy missus. Patrick Stewart is a solid thane and king and does not tug his jacket down once. I appreciate that his Macbeth unravels with sanity. Macbeth is too-often wild-eyed and wild-haired (not an issue with Stewart, needless to say), as if he were not the maker of his own demise. The wilder Macbeths are sexier but Stewart’s makes more sense. The witches are standouts, creepily decked out as nurses, white whimples and grey dresses and all. Their sinister incantations are all the creepier for the saintly uniforms and their handling of the ill and injured and, finally, the dead.
It is big and bloody. It is timely. (Macbeth is a Shakesperean for the Bush age - blood and torture and ambition in the face of clear error.) It is all the things I hope Shakespeare will be. It will draw new fans; it explicates the play. Why, then, was I unmoved? Why did I check my watch every fifteen minutes? Why did I leave with the feeling that I did the right thing but did not enjoy doing it?. After thinking about it for a while, I don’t think it’s the production. I think it’s Macbeth. I’m just not that into him.
As I tried to pin down why, something I’ve noticed in corporations came to mind: the skillsets that make a good worker are not the same set that make a good manager. Good workers get promoted to management because it’s the natural next step up the corporate ladder. They fail because they are unsuited for the role - a role for which they were not hired.
So goes Macbeth. Suited for the battlefield, he brings only battle skills to his promotion, with predictable results. I prefer my heroes paralyzed with misgivings (Hamlet) or evil but clever (Richard III). There’s more drama in their predicaments, more suspense. Macbeth is tragic but not that interesting because the deterioration is so predictable. Given the choice, I’ll go for a story whose ending is less obvious, a story whose progress is less foreordained. This is probably the same reason I’ve never enjoyed the Greek plays much either. Where there is choice, there is agony but where there is no choice, there’s also less interest for me. Macbeth feels to me like a particularly brutal children’s story, a cautionary tale about what will happen when you overreach…or slaughter kings and kids…or listen to witches and your wife…no, wait, that’s not it. Just witches. Which I wasn’t going to do anyway. So I’m in the clear.
Now that I’ve sorted that out, I’m still sticking with my recommendation: if you’re ever going to see Macbeth, see this one. Also, don’t kill your boss. Or children.
Almost an Evening by Ethan Coen, directed by Neil Pepe, playing through June 1 at The Theatres at 45 Bleecker, New York, NY. For description and background, click here. For the inevitable Times review, click here.
Go. That’s it. Go. Just go already. There’s no reason not to go, so put on some shoes and get on the subway and go. Even if you’re not a rabid theater-goer, you should go, because this is Coen brother(s) theater, so it’s not what you think it’s gonna be. Stop thinking about it. You could have gotten on your pants already and be out the door.
For one, it’s completely entertaining. Three short plays by Ethan Coen with an all-star-ish cast that includes all kinds of people whose names you won’t recognize but whose faces you will. (Joey Slotnick, Johanna Day, Mark Linn-Baker, and Tim Hopper, who replaced the tasty Jonathan Cake* when the show moved from The Atlantic Theater.)The notable exception here is F. Murray Abraham. His features have gotten even bigger over the years since Salieri, he plays God among other roles and he yells a lot of profanity. What’s not to love?
For two, even if you don’t love live theater, it’s brief - an hour and a half - so it won’t cut into your evening. And it’s not rocket science, so you won’t be depressed afterwards or argue with your date or say things like, “I didn’t get it,” or, “I’m going to have to think about that,” or, “Next time, we’re going to the kung fu festival at the Film Forum.”
On the other hand, if you do froth at the mouth when you talk about the theater, as I do, you will not be left out. It’s clever, it’s interesting and the acting and writing are of a consistently high quality, (even if you there are notable moments when you’re aware that Coen is used to writing for the screen). The plays are a testament to what quick material can be in the hands of capable actors.
For three, it’s at The Theatres at 45 Bleecker (cross street Lafayette), so you’ll already be in a hip neighborhood for drinks afterwards.
For four, R and I are on their web site laughing it up. Click on the Audience Testimonials link on the home page - we’re about halfway through.
*Cake played a a buff and be-toweled Iachimo in the Lincoln Center production of Cymbeline last year. The Coen role also calls for a towel (see photo). That must say something about specialization opportunities in the theater, right? “Well, there’s a towel in the scene…let’s call our man Cake!” I need a go-to niche like that. Please send suggestions if you see them.
The reading was last weekend. We were offered seats at the performance of Speed the Plow that preceded the reading.
This was the plan. I was going to wear a crown. (Yes, I have one, and not a mass-manufactured one either, thank you very much.) R was going to go to the trophy store and score the tallest trophy he could find. I made it clear that nothing shorter than four feet would be acceptable, it must sport blue marbelized pillars and, if at all possible, it would have a bowler in mid-stride on top. I would settle for a boxer or a tennis player but no mainstream athletes. This was a special night and I was going to have a special trophy.
While he was hitting the trophy emporium, I would be at the Jessica McClintock outlet I’ve been dying to visit ever since we moved to the neighborhood and I would find a lovely gown for the event. I was really hoping to find something in a shiny peach like the dress I wore to homecoming in high school. It was too much to expect that it would come with a bolero jacket in a matching peach brocade like the original. Still, if it had had short puff sleeves and a very wide sash I would have been satisfied. I’d have shoes dyed to match and would pick out a tasteful wrist corsage of tinted carnations and baby’s breath.
We considered renting a red carpet.
I won’t pretend there weren’t challenges in the plan. Where would the trophy be stored during the performance? How would we carry both the trophy and a rolled-up carpet, especially with me in heels? Would it seem ostentatious to wear my crown to the performance as well as the reading or should I just put it on before the reading? We felt equal to it all though. You have to be prepared to step up when duty calls. Like Dolly Parton says, you can’t disappoint your public. They love you for your work but they also love you for your eyeshadow.
I don’t know what happened, but the day got away from us and none of that happened.
Edward Albee is the man. He was my gateway drug into modern theater. When I read The Zoo Story in high school, it almost convinced me to go to Rice because that’s where Albee was teaching at the time. Rice. In Texas. Texas, people. Where the weather is hot and where our President picked up that phony accent. And we all know how I feel about hot weather and our President.
Anyway, a few years ago, Albee wrote a lead-in play for The Zoo Story called Homelife. It covers the hour or so Peter spends with his wife at home before he goes to the park and meets Jerry. Homelife and The Zoo Story are up as a double bill at Second Stage in New York and, if you can, you should go. They close this weekend, so you’ll have to get on the stick quickly.
Oh - and avoid a matinee if at all possible. I didn’t manage that and was subject to a long line of horrifying, substantial matrons waiting for the bathroom and saying things like, “Well, that was strange,” “What happened?” and, “We can talk about it in the cab.” I know these women are the life’s blood of the theater - they like an afternoon out and the play’s the thing - but Lord save me. Also, these women take forever to pee, with their wraps to unwrap and girdles and jackets and pantyhose. So help me God, when I am 70, I will be trim and quick and wear excellent, bold jewelry, swish pants and well-cut sweaters.
The Zoo Story is just as good as it’s always been and the acting is top-notch. Dallas Roberts* carries the day with a pitch-perfect, insistent Jerry. He threatens and sulks and dodges around the minimal set looking scruffy and sad and frightening all at once. It’s a performance to remember. Bill Pullman as Peter is appropriately conventional and nervous and uses his long stretches of silence to good effect.
I can understand why Albee wrote Homelife. The subjects of The Zoo Story - alienation, artifice, failures of communication - attract expansion, as does the nearly silent character of Peter. Despite very good performances by both Pullman and Johanna Day, the execution felt too explicative, which seems to be a feature of the aging male, onstage and off. The pauses in the conversations between the married couple felt more like failing momentum than breakdowns laden with meaning. However, I was glad to have seen the piece and it is still a far stretch better than a lot of what’s out there.
(A day later, I talked to a young actor who had seen the show and thought the reverse - that The Zoo Story was the weaker link and Homelife a triumph. He was by far the most pretentious person I have met in the last few months however, so I’m sticking with my opinion. Perhaps it’s a guy thing, this preoccupation with bringing the point home. I’ll have to think about that one…)
*Google would have us know that Dallas Roberts is also the name of an Academy of Hair Design and Aesthetics in Provo, Utah. In case you look up Dallas, let me remind you that I am referring not to the hair design but to the actor. Despite being preoccupied with Aesthetics, the Academy does not feature in this production.
Anyone in the path of the tour of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? should go. It stars Kathleen Turner, who is predictably at home in the boozy, buxom Martha and Bill Irwin who is fluid and excellent as George. (Am I the only one who read the books about the hippos when I was a kid?) It is a rare opportunity to see Mr. Irwin, who trained, as I did, at the Circus Center in San Francisco. His rubbery and precise physicality serves George well. I saw this same production last year in New York with Nicole Kidman and it was exactly as painful as it should be and just a little more brilliant than that.
No, that’s not right. I didn’t see it “with Nicole Kidman” as in, “she was in the show.” I saw it “with Nicole Kidman” in that we went to see it together. I mean, I didn’t actually see it with Ms. Kidman per se. We were both there. We both stood in line for the bathroom. We sat a couple of rows away from each other, which I’ve done with people I do know, so it might have been like we were together. Except for her not knowing my name. And being there with other people. Except for that, we were there together. Just like me and Mats Wilander were dating when I was 11. Like that kind of “together.” You know what I mean.
Like a good New Yorker, I studiously avoided granting her any special attention, unlike the middle-aged woman from Omaha or Debuque or Tampa or who cares where because it was clearly Not New York in front of me, who chattered relentlessly at Ms. Kidman. I do not do this with celebrities. I feel that it would bring shame upon me and upon my family, although I’m unclear on what form that might take, since I do not usually offer both attention and my home address in the same breath.
For the record, I do not enjoy Ms. Kidman’s work. If you knew me, you would know this because I can’t stop myself from saying something cutting and personal every time she wafts onto a screen. I find her brittle. I also wish she would acknowledge the fact that she’s gay instead of continuing to marry men as if she weren’t. (I have third-hand confirmation on this, but I can’t tell you from who because I promised I wouldn’t, even though my source is notoriously indiscreet. And a psychiatrist, which, now that I’m thinking about it, is a little disturbing.)
On the other hand, I am in love with Edward Albee. In an unfortunate turn, I am taken and he is gay, but who’s counting? I have loved him since I read The Zoo Story when I was sixteen and seeing this production renews my love.
The tour will be in San Francisco for now and then move to Tucson in mid-May.
Picture this: an empty stage designed for a full orchestra, three long banners vaguely depicting strips of St. Peter’s Square at the very back, music piped in from some Eastern European disco still playing remixes of tracks from the early 90’s, costumes that look like they were designed by a crazed lunatic let loose in a spandex factory with a pair of scissors and a bad case of colorblindness, a set of ten performers only three of whom appear on the cavernous stage at one time, no choreographer, no set designer, and no artistic director. What’s that spell?? FUN FOR THE WHOLE FAMILY!!! NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES!!! A GREAT WAY TO SPEND $36 AND A SUNDAY AFTERNOON!!! Welcome to the Moscow Circus.*
I had the misfortune to attend their final performance at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall last week, and, let me tell you, by the end I was just grateful no one had died or been raped. It’s too late to hope that they weren’t all dropped on their heads because, judging by the quality of the show, most of them already have been. All the acts were either downright disturbing or just a series of stop-and-start moves and poses with very little to connect them.
In the first category was the family of two jugglers/acrobats and their “son.” I use quotation marks because after bringing him out in a full clown suit and tossing him around like a doll - including throwing him down on a table, grabbing his ankles and bouncing his legs beyond the edges of the table repeatedly, spinning him around and doing it again - I doubt he’s going to be functionally male for much longer. For the record, forced contortion is about as entertaining as watching videos of skateboarders riding railings and landing on their crotches. It’s even more unsettling when the person doing the molesting is the kid’s mother and she’s wearing what appears to be a bright yellow G-string panel bikini over a skin-tight, wildly striped bodysuit.
The boy appeared later in a hand-balancing act with his dad. I don’t think he set a trick (meaning hit the position and held firm) through the whole routine, a clear indication that he was not performance ready. It wasn’t a surprise then that on his second trick, he fell from about shoulder height to the floor in a heap. His dad gave him an arch look, they went on, and three or four tricks later, the kid lost his balance again and came down like a sack of potatoes. I’m just hoping that my $36 is going into a fund for his future therapy or catastrophic accident insurance.
The rest of the acts - a couple of silks routines, two redundant hand-balancing bits, some low-level clowning - were old-school circus, and not the good kind with elephants that can count, a guy with six heads, and lots of raucous tearing around. This kind is a bunch of unrelated acts performed back to back like a talent show. The performances follow the same formula: they consist of a series of tricks and almost no choreography. You can almost hear the aerialists whispering, “Ta DA!”
The thing is, no one likes a show-off. It just makes you want to take the guy out back and kick his ass for being such an arrogant prick. If the event - like the ski jump or the 100-meter dash - is purely technical, a demonstration of strength or fitness, fine. We all know what we’re getting when we buy our tickets.
In contrast, when I go to a performance, I expect, well, a performance. Not a demonstration. A performance. And a performance does not consist of you and your boyfriend climbing up to the ceiling on bands of silk, spending a minute or two setting up some complicated contraption for hanging from your neck and then, well, hanging from your neck. I’m excited for you that you can hang from your neck - go you! - but that’s not a performance, that’s a trick. Plus, the obvious during-act set-up thing is a no-no in my book. It’s like someone explaining the mechanics of a magic trick and then yelling, “Surprise!” I’m just not that surprised. Go figure.
It’s clear why we’re all so excited about Cirque du Soleil if this is what was on offer before they came along.
*Don’t be fooled by their web site: there were no trapeze acts, no bars, no rings and no dogs on this tour. Probably just as well for the dogs, given how it’s working out for the kids.
This was my winning submission to American Conservatory Theater’s (ACT) Mamet Writing Competition. The charter was to write a three-page scene in the style of Mamet within the stated parameters of one the categories. I chose, “A scene depicting a family (fictional or non-fictional) facing an ethical crisis, written in the style of Mamet (i.e. the Simpson’s or the Bush family).”
Two men are standing behind a counter in a diner. The Father, about 60, reads a newspaper on the counter. The Son, half his age, busies himself with the coffee machine and then the cash register before turning to his parent.
Son: (abruptly) Here’s the thing.
The Father looks up.
Son: Three men walk into a hardware store and buy a machine - a coffee machine - for $30 from the kid behind the counter. They each pay ten dollars. They leave. The owner comes back. He sees the receipt, turns to the clerk and - here it is - says, “That machine - that coffee machine - is $25. You go find the guy, pay him back.”
The Son is gesturing with pens and a receipt pad.
Son: With me?
Father: Right.
Son: The clerk takes five dollars, takes five ones, and leaves. He’s thinkin’, the clerk, “Can’t divide five three ways, and here’s me runnin’ after ‘em.” So he finds ‘em, the guys, gives each of ‘em a dollar, pockets $2 for himself, hmm? Done deal. No funny change, no one the wiser.
Father: Right.
Son: Now here’s the thing. Three times nine, right? Each guy paid nine now - is 27. But $30 - the total price, you with me? - minus $2 - the clerk’s take - is 28. See?
Father: See what?
Son: How does it make sense? 27 or 28. It should work out. You see?
Father: All right.
The Father goes back to reading his paper with no change in demeanor. A phone rings. The son disappears halfway through the doorway to the kitchen, stage left, picks up the phone on the wall.
Son: No. Nope. We’re open… We’re twenty-four hours… What? No….we don’t close…at any particular…no, twenty-four hours in a row… No, that means we’re always… Right. Always here… No, that’s OK.
Beat. The son reappears in the same doorway.
Son: It’s about character.
Father: Hello again.
Son: I say, it’s about character, not about math. The math is tricky, a small trick at that. You’ve missed the point: the clerk is a thief, an opportunist.
Father: I haven’t missed… (straightening, turning from his paper)
Son: You have. It’s about character. (After this last statement he points his finger at the Father.) A certain kind of character. You gotta work for your place.
Father: That’s what I believe.
Son: Work’s the thing. But it’s not enough. That’s what I’m saying. But the clerk - the man who doesn’t just work for it - he still profits. It’s not wrong.
Father: He does work. There is nothing harder, being a good clerk. He should have stuck there.
Son: But he’s not a good clerk. My point. He’s a thief. In this story, he’s a thief.
Father: Still, he’s a clerk and that’s hard. He might…
Son: Yeah, that’s the goddam mess of it, the curse of working: if you don’t succeed, you didn’t work hard enough. Your fault, no matter how hard you worked, that you didn’t succeed.
Father: That…
Son: Couldn’t it be that you did work hard and still didn’t get ahead, like this guy, the clerk? His thieving is no reflection on his clerking, the hard life of a clerk. You said it yourself.
Father: (Serious, turning to the Son.) It is. It’s the opposite of it.
Son: Nope, no…it’s the result of it. You can’t get around it, you’ll always lose. It’s a catch 22, hopeless: you’re down ‘cause you blew it somehow. (Beat.) You know what it is?
Father: Nope.
Son: It’s the American Dream. You can be a goddam clerk, you can be a loser, a drunk: you can still get ahead. The all-American, the optimist, the smorgasbord catch 22. It’s what keeps us here, separates us from the animals, from the socialists. It’s what makes him a clerk ’ those guys on the bottom ’ the poor guys who wanna win that lottery, who think they can be President. Work a lifetime hoping American good luck’ll kick in and save ‘em, that someone’ll recognize their goodness and bring ‘em up. No fucking way. No fucking way.
Father: There’s work, I’m saying…
Son: No. That’s just messing with it, saying you’re successful ‘cause you already worked as hard as you did. Bullshit. Opportunism, I’m telling you. The clerk, he’s the guy who broke the code. He’s getting ahead as he can. That’s what I’m saying, what I’ve been saying - that you can’t get ahead without…
Father: Theft? (Losing interest again, turning back to his paper.)
Son: It isn’t cheating. He’s gotta look after his interests. He needs his two bucks. He’s the American Dream, that guy. He’s the dream we all have…
Father: …of stealing.
Son: No. No. Of working. Of getting forward with it, getting away with it. Getting away. Moving along in an unfair…
Father: Not impossible that he could get ahead without cheating. Not impossible.
Son: It’s not impossible but it’s more than work. A different kind of work. That’s my point.
Father: The crime isn’t work, it’s crime.
Son: No, it’s not good work. By your definition, because you said so. But we’re ignoring the quality of the theft, the ingenious math that I’m standin’ here running through with you: the math that doesn’t make sense, however you run it. The math covers the crime. Plus, he might’ve had to hustle to get to the guys. How’d he find the guys? All three guys? That’s my point. He worked harder at the crime than at the sale, but the crime’s where the profit went. And who’s to say it’s a crime?
Father: Me.
Son: Yeah, well, good thing you weren’t tellin’ the joke. Here…
Father: Good thing. You’re a goddam criminal. I wouldn’t trust you to tell a joke.
Son: …here’s the last fact of it: it’s wrong. The whole thing’s wrong. You’re looking at it wrong. (He lays out the math in saucers and napkins on the counter, a mess.) It’s not three guys times nine dollars is twenty-seven versus thirty dollars minus two dollars for the kid is twenty-eight. That’s the goddam beauty of it! Start from the other end - and here it is - which is fucking brilliant, just goddam brilliant.Take the cost of the thing, the machine - twenty-five, right? - and add on the discount for the guys plus the profit for the kid. Twenty-five plus three plus two. That’s what equals thirty. It’s all how you tell it. The kid’s in the clear ‘cause it all works together: discount coffee plus refund plus something extra for the guy making it all happen. There’s nothing wrong in that. (Finished, he clears the counter with conviction.)
Father: It’s all in how you tell it. Yup yup. (Re-engrossed in newspaper.)
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On "To The Mean Lady in the Bathroom",
em commented: What a lovely sentiment and so kindly worded. I, too, have been on the receiving end of such nonsense - though in a som... (continues)