GOING NOWHERE

Regarded as one of Bruce Springsteen’s best works, the 1982 album Nebraska has inspired tributes from Johnny Cash, Aimee Mann, Chris Cornell and other artists moved by its bleak look at ordinary life. Now Tympanic Theatre Company has brought its tales of murder, mortality and the unfairness of life to the stage with a series of 10 short plays, each inspired by a song from the album. Unfortunately, Deliver Us From Nowhere: Tales From Nebraska has more misses than hits.

The show’s first two plays are particularly weak. Taking inspiration from Nebraska’s title song, which tells the true story of the killing spree perpetuated by Charles Starkweather and his girlfriend Caril Ann Fugate, Justin Gerber’s “Man Will Meddle” focuses on a woman reliving her days spent on the run with a murderer. This potential-filled concept is stifled by feeble dialogue that Sarah Mayhan delivers as if she’s reading from the pages of a romance novel rather than recounting a story that actually happened to her.

“Resurrecting Beauty” is the show’s lowest point, a total waste of the excellent song “Atlantic City.” Whatever writer Adam Webster meant to say, or even depict, is lost in the bizarre spectacle that includes a man bleeding on a corpse and two women stripping into nude tights and exchanging dresses. The same applies to “Daughters of Necessity,” which appears later in the show: it features a trio of women –the Fates, perhaps, or maybe just bored diner waitresses – and just feels weird rather than profound.

Deliver Us From Nowhere finally delivers in its third play, “When You’re Dead.” The simple monologue performed by Nate White as he unpacks a series of suitcases, is the show’s highest point, making use of the theater’s small space to really connect with the audience. It’s the one play that embodies the spirit of a Springsteen song, recounting tales of shuttered factories and downtown stores as a backdrop for a tale of family tragedy and life’s injustices. White shines again in “The Drive,” playing the father on a family trip whose purpose is not revealed until a dark twist towards the end; despite its brief length, the crackling tension between the characters produces a riveting experience.

Nebraska is an album of sparse, low-budget recordings that shine amidst the lack of ornamentation, and Deliver Us From Nowhere is also at its best when it tells stripped down simple stories. “Gospel Hour” is the most dramatic example of this, featuring a single actor sitting beneath one light playing a state trooper who communicates with his wife and his girlfriend through the static of his car radio. It’s one of the many stories that contains murder, but its realism makes it feel more dramatic than “Winning Ugly,” a campy tale based on “Johnny 99;” you’re supposed to feel for the death row inmate, Johnny, and the girlfriend that tries to avenge him, but the comically large gavel used as a murder weapon, and Sergio Soltero’s self-righteous judge (reminiscent of King Lear), keep the play from offering anything but giggles.

The inconsistent Deliver Us From Nowhere: Tales From Nebraska has some stirring moments that will linger with you, but the high points aren’t enough to compensate for the low.

photos by Paul E. Martinez

Deliver Us From Nowhere: Tales from Nebraska
Tympanic Theatre at Right Brain Project in Chicago
Scheduled to close on May 20, 2012
for tickets, visit http://www.tympanictheatre.org/

for info on this and other Chicago theater, visit http://www.TheatreinChicago.com

A CAPTIVATING GENDER-BENDING STORY

In Michael Premsrirat’s thoroughly engaging The Girl Most Likely To, an unnamed teenage Boy (a winning Tobit Raphael) is, and always has been, in the wrong body. Donning women’s clothes is so natural to him, that he puts on a wig, slips on a skimpy outfit (which shows off his comely young legs), and heads off to school. Because there is no discussion about the possible ramifications of this act, the spectator can safely assume that danger lies ahead for this brave lad. But The Boy’s outcome is not what this play is about. This is no preachy, moralistic, cautionary, coming-of-age tale about the travails of an adolescent  transvestite; it’s a fascinating story in which Premsrirat’s well-drawn characters (both the good and bad guys) grapple with self-awareness and pride.

The Boy makes an acquaintance at school with The Girl (Mandela Bellamy), who has troubles of her own. She’s fat, black, overly-opinionated and desperately needy. This unlikely pair doesn’t seem quite compatible, yet they are both in need of an alliance – this is, after all, the bully-infested waters of school (Eric Shulman is quite watchable as the sexy jock/bully; he rounds out his shallow character with an underpinning of self-doubt). The dialogue is so fresh, real and funny that we don’t feel sorry for The Boy, who gloms onto what seems to be a fickle friend (Bellamy needed to show us more pain beneath her sarcastic demeanor so we could relate to The Girl’s harsh antics).

At home, The Boy is castigated by his single-mother (a strong and vulnerable Fran de Leon). Her criticizing stems not from a lack of love, but from her first-hand knowledge that the life of a transvestite is not an easy one. Back in the Philippines, which Li’l Mama left to give her boy better opportunities, her uncle was a drag performer named Mama Cid (the amazing Ramón de Ocampo), and although drag was far more accepted in 1950’s Manila than now in the States, that doesn’t mean your heart can’t be broken by an ill-at-ease American beau (Nicholas Downs).

Jon Lawrence Rivera elicits durable performances from his cast as the action bounces back and forth between The Boy’s life and Mama Cid’s relationship woes in the Phillippines. The turntable that Rivera uses to switch locations is not so successful, however well the beautiful drag performers TeJay McGrath and Matthew Thompson revolve the set. This thrilling new work would do well to have all the modern references (such as The View) trimmed from the script; there is a poetic quality in Premsrirat’s extremely encouraging writing that transcends the need for easy references.

photos by Adam Blumenthal

The Girl Most Likely To
Presented by Playwright’s Arena and The Latino Theater Company (in association with PAE Live!) at the Los Angeles Theatre Center
scheduled to end on May 20
for tickets, call 866.811.4111 or visit http://thelatc.org

THE PAINT JOB ON THIS PROMISING MUSICAL NEEDS DARKER COLORS

NPR’s This American Life is where I first heard about the 1997 film Hands on a Hard Body, which documented a 1995 dealership-sponsored contest in Texas. The rules were simple: whoever could keep their hand on a brand-new pickup truck the longest got the keys; there was a 15-minute break every six hours and a five-minute break every hour; white gloves had to be worn at all times to protect the car, and there was no leaning and no crouching. The theme of Ira Glass’ radio show was “Something-for-Nothing,” and the interviewee was Benny Perkins, a man who had won the truck in a previous 1992 contest and was now set to try his hand(s) at winning another truck.

Among his many fascinating revelations about the contest, the confident and wily Perkins made most clear that winning isn’t about holding onto the truck, it’s about holding onto one’s sanity – that is, if your legs don’t go numb first. Benny also revealed two sides to his nature, both a sympathetic kind of bonding with other participants, and a wickedly competitive drive. It speaks volumes when Benny admitted, “I told Dan, the guy I was with, I said ‘You’re standing next to the devil and this is the ride to hell. I’ll stand here ’til the day you die, so you might as well drop out now.’”

Benny becomes, by default, a quasi-protagonist of the documentary, due to his stamina, lengthy commentary and having won before. Now, in 2012, Benny is a lead character once again in the film’s musical adaptation, also titled Hands on a Hardbody, which had its world premiere over the weekend at La Jolla Playhouse. The broad spectrum of the ten Texan contestants on stage may seem like an unbelievable trick on the part of bookwriter Doug Wright, but they are based directly on those in the documentary, participants who were chosen by random drawing. They include the proud son of Mexican immigrants, a stout, evangelistic woman who has hundreds of people praying for her, a stoic ex-military man, a cigarette-smoking ex-oilrigger, and a bouncy but hard-edged ex-cheerleader.

But if you think the libretto contains an unlikely mélange of characters, check out the creators. Along with Wright, the lyricist is Amanda Green, who co-composed the music with Trey Anastasio, the frontman and songwriter for the band Phish. I’m happy to report that they are on the right track, but there are some major bumps in the road. Just as with the Nissan truck that sits center stage for the majority of the production, Hardbody looks good and has a motor capable of reaching far destinations, but doesn’t have the fuel it needs to get off the lot. In order to do that, the creators need to dig deeper into the American psyche.

Wright is best-known for his plays Quills and I Am My Own Wife, but he must have learned some lessons penning the books for Grey Gardens and The Little Mermaid, because Hardbody is his best libretto yet. With such a stagnant story, Wright is surprisingly the most successful contributor of the night. His characters, for the most part, are well-drawn and likeable, and his book is fresh, fun, unforced and the main reason why this musical has a hopeful future. Still, there are problems. One is that the musical lacks a central character’s journey: Benny still dominates the drama, but Wright hasn’t decided if the man is a joker or a rogue, protagonist or antagonist; as such, any attempts to make Benny a sympathetic character towards the end are thwarted (nonetheless, a nearly unrecognizable Hunter Foster completely loses himself in the role). Other characters, such as the car dealers, veer towards obvious stereotypes (he’s the womanizer, she’s the racist), and still others remain underdeveloped, such as a young couple who find romance while clutching the truck and dream of hightailing it to California in their new car.

A radio announcer in the play calls the contest a “heart-pounding, white-knuckle battle of wills,” yet there is little tension on stage, and the whole enterprise is fluffier than it should be. By deciding who his central character is, Wright can hopefully have the dramatic arc he needs to rev up the suspense.

It also feels as if Wright doesn’t yet know exactly what the show is about. In order for the audience to truly relate to so many individual dramas, the book needs to focus on the one drama that seems to unite every character on the stage: the death of the American Dream. Instead, we have the show defined by “It’s a Human Drama Thing,” the vague opening number that starts the show off with a whimper.

Green contributed uninspired lyrics to High Fidelity and Bring it On: The Musical, but somehow they suited the bubblegum pop/rock themes of those shows. Her lyrics have improved for Hardbody, but still they can safely be called only serviceable. Even in “If I Had A Truck,” where Green shrewdly has contestants tell us why they need to win, I wish her lyrics were craftier, with more insight and intelligence. As for rhyming, what Green may see as clever, I see as distracting: in High Fidelity, she rhymed intervention with frenchin’, and in Hardbody, a character drawls turnip with burn up. This style of lyricism may suit some of her sillier songs performed in New York cabarets, but Hardbody’s characters need to be fleshed-out; greater lyrics will bring them greater dimension. I’ve heard some of her lyrics for non-theater songs, so she is no doubt capable. Only time will tell, but the daughter of Singin’ in the Rain’s Adolph Green may not have a true acumen for writing theater lyrics. My hope is that she will re-invent herself with this project.

The music, alas, is generally generic country, inoffensive and unmemorable, with little weight melodically. Certainly acceptable music, had the lyrics been more profound, but the first number to light up the theatre simply because of its music was number nine out of eleven songs in the first act: “Joy of the Lord.” To my knowledge, neither Green nor Anastasio have composed for a book-musical before, yet here they are. The number of producers who give free rein to first-time composers because of their successful pop career is disquieting; the quantity of lousy sensations and flops as the outcome is not so surprising. Most pop composers have extreme difficulty writing for situation and character: Paul Simon/The Capeman, Bono/Spiderman, Jake Shears/Tales of the City, and Glen Ballard/Ghost, to name a few.

“Used To Be” is the one song that perfectly encapsulates both the strength and weaknesses of the show, and how it can be readily fixed. JD Drew, played with grizzled perfection by Keith Carradine, fell off an oil rig and is physically incapable of working anymore, yet there is no pension to support him and Virginia, his wife of 30 years (Mary Gordon Murray). A decent ballad between the two (“Alone With Me”) already established that the couple is growing apart. Now, well into the contest, an exhausted JD ruminates on how Corporate America has redefined what home means: Wal-Mart and Wendy’s have glutted our cities, making everything look the same, prompting JD to sing the most haunting question of the night: “How do you know when you’re home anymore?” But the song, which should break our hearts, is written with a chorus (just as with pop) that repeats “Wal-Mart” and “Wendy’s” over and over. As it stands, the song is too generic and could use a more plaintive melody. It should not be about how things used to be, but rather about JD’s sense of displacement, given the state of America today and his failing relationship, health and career. On top of that, it’s a perfect chance to shine the irony on an American who bemoans Corporate America, yet is in a contest sponsored by the same beast. (Besides, the song should be retitled, “How Do You Know You’re Home?” because Charlene and Stevie Wonder already had a hit called “Used To Be.”)

Director Neil Pepe needs to experiment more and decide what to do about that truck. Clearly, it’s a weak choice theatrically to have hands on the truck at all times. The 15-minute breaks allow characters to leave the car, and some actors do have songs away from the truck (demarcated by Kevin Adams’ lighting), but songs and dialogue occur willy-nilly with hands on and off that neon-blue pickup, which, to be honest, becomes a tiring stage picture. Pepe did put the car on ball-bearings so actors can push it around the stage or rotate it (scenic design by Christine Jones), but this is a musical, for crying out loud, and begs to be opened up even more.

As it stands, Benjamin Millepied’s “musical staging” is weak when actors use their hands to grapevine around the car, but showed strength in the aforementioned gospel number, “Joy of the Lord,” which used two actors to buck their legs high in the air while grasping the truck. With a good amount of corpulent and aged characters, I’m fascinated to see what Pepe and Millepied can do to solve the staging. What if all the songs were done off the truck and all the dialogue was delivered from the truck? Who knows?

I truly believe the staging could be resolved if the writers were to ensure that the contest becomes a life-defining moment for the characters. While the audience is left breathless by a some of the dropouts, it’s positively anti-climactic when other contestants remove their hands from the car. The creators now must plumb the depths of the American soul, make the show darker, and stray further from their source material. The creators actually got the original contestants from the film to give consent to use their name and story – with a small financial stake in the musical, should it go on to Broadway. The biggest issue for me is that the creative team seems more concerned with honoring the original contestants than they are in truly breaking ground in American Musical Theater.

According to the Associated Press, it turns out that the contest was discontinued in 2005 because one contestant, Richard Thomas Vega II, crossed a street, broke into a Kmart store, took a gun from a case and shot himself. His wife sued and settled in 2008 with Patterson Nissan of Longview, Texas. She alleged that the dealership was negligent in organizing and conducting the contest and likened the stress and sleep deprivation to “brainwashing,” adding that the dealership failed to provide a safe environment for contestants who “temporarily lost their sanity.” In the musical, when a somnambulant participant wanders off towards the highway, the lack of supervision at the dealership was not satisfactorily addressed, and took me out of the play.

OK, the suicide may have happened at another contest, but what if it had happened in this musical? Take a risk! Do you have to be Sondheim to have a character put a gun to his head? What if it’s just attempted suicide, after which the guy has an epiphany that most Americans need to hear: “Maybe it’s my materialism that is killing me.” Good grief, what a wasted opportunity! America is starving for a great story, not another pop-driven, family-friendly musical.

Host Ira Glass summed up his “Something-For-Nothing” program thusly: “This is the thing about something-for-nothing schemes. Once you get the details, once you get involved, it’s not something for nothing. You pay. One way or another, you pay. And we all know that. But even though we all know that, we just want to believe.” Even though Hands on a Hardbody rarely takes off, it’s on the right track, a phenomenon rarely seen in new musicals written by pop-song writers. I want to believe that this unlikely collaborative trio can tap into the universal themes that the musical currently skirts, and tweak their material in such a way that it effects our heart, mind and spirit.

photos by Kevin Berne

Hands on a Hardbody
La Jolla Playhouse (Regional Theater)
scheduled to end on June 17
for tickets, call 858.550.1010 or visit http://www.lajollaplayhouse.org

RIGHT UP HALF-BAKED ALLEY

Keith Stevenson’s writing in Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Rd. unsteadily walks a line between high and low comedy, veering more often toward sit-comism.  More skit than play, this quasi-story tells of a redneck saint who uses doe urine for cologne (Mr Stevenson) and the bottom-feeders he attempts to redeem in a rural West Virginia motel, including a meth-smoking fine artist (Kendrah McKay), her New Jersey hooligan poet boyfriend (Jason Huber), and their new neighbor, a chronically sweaty spork quality-control supervisor (Neil McGowan).  If these characters interacted this way as a spontaneous exercise in your improv class, you’d feel that something special had happened.  You might think it was good enough to stage.  But to someone not already in love with it, or who hadn’t smoked a joint right before the show, Fried Meat sustains interest more by its outre choices than for sound dramatic construction.  The conceit – that there’s more to backwoods denizens than meets the eye – is not remarkable for its freshness or, in this treatment, for its consistency of vision.  But if you don’t expect much it may be funny enough to warrant the price of a ticket.

When it’s good, it’s very good, but that’s about five times in its sixty-odd minutes – and really, an hour’s a problem in itself.  It’s just not enough time to introduce this many unlikely characters, set up this many implausible scenarios, and have them perform any meaningful function.  Worse, the comedy’s too willing to sacrifice its integrity for a cheap laugh to deserve respectful consideration:  some of the characters are complicated and dissonant, but their dissonance isn’t in service of anything.  They’re not people, they’re jokes with no punchline.  And they’re joined by another hick (Michael Prichard) so far from complex as to be a plain-and-simple bigot, just as amusing and interesting as the ones you meet in real life.  Some of the jokes involve cleverly dizzying turns of fate, like the great moment when Mr McGowan prays for deliverance and finds and loses it all in less time than it takes to read of it.  But a depressing number of the gags are of the “I’m not afraid of you!” – a gun is aimed at him – “Now I’m afraid” variety; and the extremely contrived ending winds up the foregone conclusions, but leaves the theme and the point as open questions.

As directed by Guillermo Cienfuegos, who’s done such excellent work next door on Concealing Judy Holliday, this show is well-performed and interesting to look at.  But it drags when it needs to fly: this kind of hit-and-miss material must move faster than the audience’s ability to get ahead of it.  Fried Meat could have been a couple of minutes shorter and several laughs funnier, but without a considerable rewrite to give these characters something to do, it still wouldn’t be memorable.

photos by Alex Fernandez

Out There on Fried Meat Ridge Rd.
Pacific Resident Theatre in Venice (Los Angeles Theater)
scheduled to end on May 27, 2012
for tickets, visit http://www.PacificResidentTheatre.com

DEAFTRAP

Writer Stephen Sachs and the Fountain Theatre have come up with what would appear to be a fresh approach to Rostand’s classic play, Cyrano de Bergerac. In this modern-day version, Cyrano is no longer the joyful poet, soldier, and owner of a humongous proboscis, but a frustrated poet who happens to be deaf. He falls for the poetry-loving Roxy, who is hearing, but she’s hot for his brother Chris, a hard-rocking, alcoholic musician who reciprocates Roxy’s affections. Chris is based on Christian, the gorgeous, elegant soldier who adores Roxanne, but lacks aesthetics; Rostand’s Christian states, “I must find some way of meeting her. I am dying of love!” Sachs’ Chris states, “She’s, like, a freak. Insane. Gets my bone hard. Big time.” Yuck.

Cyrano, ashamed to pursue Roxy because of his deafness, decides to express his love for her through Chris’ text-messages, even as Cyrano despises social media. Roxy sleeps with the drug-consuming, dim-witted loser Chris, which naturally upsets Cyrano even more. After Chris departs for a tour with his band, a series of events leads to Cyrano’s new-found pride in his deafness. The dialogue is told in a variety of formats, from American Sign Language (ASL) to video monitor displays. A fresh approach which sounds inspiring, right?

Yes, it’s a great idea and a commendable attempt, with a stunning and marvelous central performance by deaf actor Troy Kotsur. There are indeed some lovely moments of humor and pathos, with some fascinating insights into modern technology and communication, but the enterprise, as a whole, left a bad taste in my mouth.

It collapses upon itself for a number of reasons: Sachs’ writing incorporates some lovely poetic passages for Cyrano, but they appear alongside choppy, churlish dialogue; lead characters with little to no back story are hyper-self-aware and mostly unsympathetic, shallow and/or unnecessarily vulgar; and lesser characters are so underdeveloped that they don’t even have names, such as Deafie #4 and Hearing #1 (which is fine with the huge cast of almost 50 in Rostand’s version, but not on a tiny stage with 13 actors).

Sachs subtitled his play “a modern-day deaf/hearing fable.” A fable is designed to teach us a lesson, but it must be credible and grounded in truth. Cyrano never feels believable, not just due to the dialogue, but because of Simon Levy’s unfocused direction and a substandard speaking cast which recites lines haltingly, as if they were addressing children on Sesame Street – an incontrovertible irony since the character of Cyrano accuses another character of trying to speak to him as if he were a child himself.

This is a co-production with Deaf West, which, since 1990, incorporates a device in their productions that is so simple and captivatingly original that it caught the attention of the nation: when deaf actors sign their dialogue, other strategically-placed hearing actors recite the lines aloud. In A Streetcar Named Desire, the inimitable Mr. Kotsur signed Stanley’s dialogue, while a French Quarter neighbor spoke his lines from above. The effect was uncanny because the voice soon appeared to be emanating from Kotsur’s expressive hands. The brilliant gooseflesh-inducing moment occurred when Kotsur spoke out loud for the first time: “Stella-a-a-a!”

The same applied to Deaf West’s ASL adaptations of musicals, namely Oliver! and Big River, the latter which even moved to Broadway. At one point in Big River, the entire chorus sang the same refrain over and over while signing the lyrics. Suddenly, they stopped singing, but continued signing; it was as if we could hear their voices flying from their gesticulation. It was another of my favorite theater moments of all time.

However, without great source material, Deaf West’s stunningly original concept feels particularly gimmicky, as it did with the more recent Pippin (at Mark Taper Forum) and Pinocchio (which suffered from the same identity problem as Cyrano: it smacks of Children’s Theatre with adult themes).

When it comes to assigning voices, this is one of the most confusing Deaf West productions I have seen – there were too many times in the crowd scenes that I couldn’t figure out who was speaking for whom. And while Mr. Levy could have done more to set a proper tone and clarify the proceedings, he is contending with an extremely troubling script, as evidenced in the first scene:

The far-fetched action begins when Cyrano rudely interrupts a conceited poet named Monty during a poetry jam in a café (paralleling the original in which Cyrano forbids the actor Montfleury to take the stage). Cyrano’s outburst (we will discover later) is motivated by his jealousy: Roxy is in the audience and the published poet Monty has eyes for her. The problem is that I felt sympathy for Monty – his poetry may have been pretentious, but it was also amusing: “I choke on stink, I breathe the rot, as putrid vapors rise, a fetid cloud burns the airways of my soul.” And although Cyrano is later chastised by both Chris and a friend named Bill for his inappropriate behavior, it’s difficult to glom onto this protagonist’s journey; Cyrano doesn’t come off as frustrated and desperate, he appears as a self-pitying, self-righteous bully.

Right away, Cyrano’s poetic dialogue feels out of context in Sachs’ contemporary re-imagining. Using brother Chris as Cyrano’s speaking voice, Sachs has the deaf poet taunt Monty with such quips as, “I may be deaf but will pummel you mute if you don’t plug your hole and its pretentious diarrhea.” To which Monty later responds, “Who the fuck do you think you are? Some deaf motherfucker telling me what poetry is? I am a published poet, god damnit! I’m not going to take this shit from you! You want to settle this? Step outside, you fucking deaf pussy! I’ll show you who the real man is!” I still shudder at the excessive and avoidable crassness in the script. Is Monty’s grossness supposed to make us appreciate Cyrano that much more? Well, it doesn’t.

And what does it matter to Monty that Cyrano is deaf? If some asshole came in and interrupted and heckled a performer, can you imagine him fleeing in sissified fear, as Monty does? Can you imagine patrons silently sitting by? Can you imagine the café owner canceling the poetry jam because of that incessantly obnoxious interferer? There was nowhere in that first long scene that I could get on board with the play.

Next up in the first scene, Sachs’ writing shines: instead of the 1897 Cyrano describing the many clever ways one can insult his nose, the present Cyrano lists the cunning ways to refer to his being deaf:

“Curious: ‘How do you stop a deaf argument at night, switch off the light?’

Zoological: ‘Do deaf pigs speak swine language?’

Paternal: ‘If a deaf child swears, do you wash his hands out with soap?’”

Then, we return to the incongruities: Cyrano improvises a poem while he fistfights with a complete stranger (named Man), who is upset that the jam was cancelled. Up to now, Chris has been voicing Cyrano’s dialogue for the patrons of the bar, but how can Chris magically convert his brother’s flailing hands into perfect rhymes? And the staging of Cyrano’s somehow magical ability to fight and sign at the same time came off as awkward; it was one of the most uncomfortable stage combats I have ever witnessed, compounded by the actors in the background, whose reactions as the patrons can best be described as amateurish.

Later, at a Starbuck’s, Cyrano meets up with Roxy for the first time; naturally they have trouble communicating because she doesn’t know ASL. They whip out their phones and begin texting to each other, the missives being displayed on monitors behind them. It’s a very clever conceit, but with a major issue that slackened the pace: Roxy just discovered that Cyrano reads lips, so why does she take an interminable amount of time to text him? Why not just caption her voice on the monitor, as is done in later scenes?

Then there’s the issue with so much truncated, halting dialogue. My guess is that Sachs was writing as literal interpretations of ASL. Here are some examples: Chris – “I’ve learned a lot. From you. I got this. I’ll take over from here;” Cyrano – “A trifle, a doodle. Weeks ago. Not sent.” It’s even weird when Roxie, who is practicing ASL, is given dialogue that sounds like Hollywood’s version of Native Americans: “My signing. Bad” (which would have been a funny line – were it not for the other characters who already spoke in that same pattern).

There’s more, but enough. It’s as if much of Cyrano was written with a deaf audience in mind. Even so, that doesn’t excuse the gross tactlessness in the writing, the highly unnecessary insults toward deaf people, or the gratuitous profanity.

photos by Ed Krieger

Cyrano
Fountain Theatre in Los Angeles Theater
scheduled to end on July 8
for tickets, call (323) 663-1525 or visit http://www.FountainTheatre.com

THE PROBLEM WITH BEING TOO WELL-MANNERED

David Auburn‘s The Columnist gets the good part over with in the first scene and then proceeds to become exactly the sort of play we might have expected from the author of Proof: clean, articulate, measured, intelligent, carefully researched, and, finally, Saharan-dry and as dull as a persistently cloudy day at the beach.

It helps immeasurably that Auburn gets the glossiest production possible: Dan Sullivan‘s immaculate direction, John Lee Beatty‘s gleaming sets, and as superb a cast as any playwright could dream of, doing everything it can to make their characters vivid and render the play lucid. You can’t help but feel that everything that possibly could have been done to make this a satisfying evening of theater has been done. And there is every reason to expect that an audience leaves the theater, well, satisfied.

But what about the play?  Although this is ostensibly the story of famed journalist and New Deal liberal Joseph Alsop, who was at one with the patrician image of his adored FDR right down to the elegant cigarette holder, it possesses a progressively conservative tone as it winds its way toward the sort of perplexing ending which makes one wonder why Auburn wrote the play at all and what Alsop ultimately is about in the playwright’s view. If it’s his intention to merely give a contradictory person his moment in the theatrical sun, he has, at least, partially succeeded, even if he never makes clear why we should care about the contradictions.

If you could possibly arch both eyebrows at the same time, John Lithgow is the one actor to be counted on to do that precisely; the unfortunate thing is that the play doesn’t allow Lithgow to relax either brow, except, as aforementioned, in that first scene.

I guess we better get to that first scene. In it, Alsop is in bed in a hotel room in Moscow, having just enjoyed a sexual encounter with an attractive young Russian male. We are privy, then, to his real nature, hidden from the world most certainly and from his party, almost certainly. The scene is the only one in which Alsop displays his vulnerability and, for a few precious moments, is free of the arrogance which defines his every other move, politically and emotionally.

And though the subject of Alsop’s homosexuality is certain to find its way into the ensuing drama, the play spins an intricate web in which Alsop’s commitment to the Vietnam War becomes anathema to the Democrats, so much so that the esteemed David Halberstam (does the playwright consider him hero or villain?) wages a war against him. At the possibility that the revelation about his being gay will come into play, Alsop himself reveals that truth to the public (again, while it robs the play of a certain amount of drama, it gives credence to the portrait of Alsop as a complex figure). It turns out that his youthful Russian paramour is a KGB agent and his true betrayer.

All of this plays havoc with his wife (the marvelous Margaret Colin) and his brother and fellow journalist Stewart (the reliably excellent Boyd Gaines) but, despite the potential confrontations, all of this is treated with a certain remove, a certain politeness that keeps the juices of these characters from freely flowing. It’s as if the more we want to know, the more is kept from us. And what we do get to know, while interesting enough, just never seems to be enough to engage us on a gut level. Less is definitely not more, in this instance.

If Lithgow were given more than two notes to play, he would be as great as the casting of him was perfect. But, alas, all I remember are those arched eyebrows and the traces of humanity in a scene that comes way too soon in the play and from which the rest of the play never fully recovers. And when Alsop insists that he knows more than the public about Vietnam, the rigidity of his stand makes him seem less like the New Deal pundit he was and more like a latter-day Republican.

Was that, then, what Auburn was trying to say? Why, then, I ask? The Columnist never really deals with the soiled laundry it hints at. Being well mannered is not necessarily the way to get to the deeper truths, without which the theater becomes a safe place, and, consequently, so does the world. And everyone knows the world is anything but safe.

photos by Joan Marcus

The Columnist
on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre
open run
for tickets, visit http://thecolumnistbroadway.com/

THE UNEXPECTED JOYS OF CHILDREN AT PLAY

It would be easy to say, given his new film, I Wish, and his other classic film about children, Nobody Knows, that Hirokazu Kore-Eda has a way with children; but given the small body of authentic masterpieces he has directed – Maborosi, After Life, Still Walking – it is just as well to say that he has a way with the human condition. Kore-Eda’s uniqueness lies in the tension he creates between his loose and casual visual style and his drum-tight thematic focus. And I Wish is a beautiful example of that directorial vision.

The story of his newest film couldn’t be simpler. Brothers Koichi and Ryunosake are separated by their parents’ divorce, Koichi living in Kagoshima with his mother and grandparents, Ryunosake in Hakata with his father. Koichi’s dream is to see his family reunited, his memory of their life together having less to do with reality than with some romantic sense of familial love, and with his real passion to be reunited with his younger brother. Seen though his eyes, his mother seems to have been cast adrift by the divorce; but just how true that may be is left to our own intuition. It is Koichi’s world we are entering, and there is always a thin line between the behavior of his new family and the way Koichi perceives them.

Ryunosake is as cheerful as Koichi is serious; life with his father is seen more as it probably really is: hardly perfect, the father being an itinerant musician with a devil-may-care attitude; but not without its pleasant side, since it allows Ryunosake a certain freedom which Koichi doesn’t really let himself take pleasure in.

And into their lives comes this new bullet train, which connects Kagoshima with Hakata, and which Koichi overhears can create miracles when the trains, at top speed, pass each other. To make his desire real, Koichi decides it will take such a miracle. And with a group of his friends, each hoping to find his or her own miracle, Koichi sets out to go half-way, where he meets Ryunosake and his friends (who seem more bent on having an adventure than searching for a miracle).

But, ultimately, the epiphanies that come to these children have everything to do with the miracle of growing up. Kore-Eda never lets us forget that these are not only children but children at play. It is their playfulness that is captured so brilliantly. And the real gravity of the film comes in the remarkable performances of Koki Maeda and his real-life brother Ohshiro Maeda as Koichi and Ryunosake; they are so natural that, as with all the children who have been so beautifully cast, they make the ordinariness of everyday life shine with the sheer buoyancy of their unformed youth and the high spirits they display, even when they are utterly sober-minded.

This is a film about what children want to do, what they can do, what they must do, and how, eventually, they find their own way; the real miracle, of course, lies in self-discovery. The lightness of tone reminds one of another revered Japanese director – Yasujiro Ozu – whose melancholy comedies – Passing Fancy and I Was Born, But… – like, Kore-Eda’s I Wish, stand tall among the greatest films on the subject of childhood.

I  Wish (Kiseki)
rated PG
now playing in New York and Los Angeles
expands weekly
for upcoming cities and more information, visit http://www.magpictures.com/iwish/

PLENTY OF NOTHING

Even before The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway, it was fraught with controversy.  A New York Times puff piece on the Boston American Repertory Theater production was pitched in such a way that director Diane Paulus, adaptor Suzan Lori-Parks, and star Audra McDonald came across as arrogant, which inspired Stephen Sondheim to write a critical rebuttal letter to the Times castigating the three ladies for their lack of respect for the source material.  This set off a maelstrom, creating opposing camps – champions and haters – of the new production.  The controversy had so overshadowed the show itself that I had decided to stay away entirely.  With the announcement of the Tony Awards, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess now looks to be in a two-way race with Follies for Best Musical Revival honors.  Not to be left out of that conversation, I ventured to the Richard Rogers Theatre to see for myself what all the fuss was about.

First the good news.  What remains of the Gershwin score in this production is undeniably glorious.  David Loud has supervised a expert team to give us the opportunity to experience the pure pleasures of the score.  The heart of the rich folk opera beats superbly, even in this Readers Digest condensed incarnation of Porgy and Bess.  The music remains beautiful, timeless, and classy.

Now for the bad news.  The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess should actually be called Paulus, Parks, and McDonald’s Porgy and Bess because it is a far cry from the gift the Gershwin brothers – along with librettists/lyricists Dorothy and DuBose Heyward – originally served us in 1935.  The original Porgy and Bess was meant to be the story of Porgy, who lives in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina, and his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her pimp, and Sporting Life, a drug dealer.  The original show was nine scenes performed in three acts.  Several standards emerged from the show including “Summertime,” “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” “I Got Plenty of Nothing,” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”  Because the new production seems to be edited and revised around creating a vehicle for Audra McDonald, it would have been more apt to re-title it Bess and Porgy.

According to interviews, Paulus & Parks wanted to create a new and improved version of the opera that gave Bess more focus and a more contemporary sense of personhood.  While I applaud and attempt to rediscover the work’s relevance, Bess is hardly a prototype for a modern female role model.  The character of Bess, self-centered and powerless over cocaine and bad men, is ultimately so irresponsible that Paulus & Parks have created an impossible task for themselves.  Ultimately, this production does not enhance the original; instead of clarifying Bess’ character arc, the story is muddied and the dramatic impact of the show is diluted.

Most of the performers comport themselves with competence.  Gavin Gregory (understudy for Tony-nominated Phillip Boykin) is a stand-out as Crown, Bess’ pimp.  Fierce and powerful as both actor and singer, he commands the stage, grounding the villain in honest rage.  Nikki Rene Daniels is a lovely Clara.  Her phrasing of “Summertime” is one of the highlights of the show.  David Alan Grier acts Sporting Life with great skill, but his singing is no match for the score as he occasionally sings flat.  As Porgy, Norm Lewis unfortunately doesn’t rise to the occasion.  He’s not helped by Paulus & Parks’ collaborative choices.  With the libretto thrown off-balance (the narrative lens now re-focused on Bess), Lewis’ Porgy is covertly emasculated by the text.  Lewis is a solid Broadway baritone, but when paired next to McDonald’s classically trained soprano and the show’s operatic ensemble, he comes off as weak in a production where he’s already having to battle the text edits simply to maintain his duties as protagonist.

Which brings us to Bess.  Audra McDonald is one of the legends of Broadway.  Numerous Tony Awards, indelible original performances, reinventions of classic characters – she has a track record that implies she can do it all.  McDonald exudes a warmth and humanity that is only matched by her tremendous vocal power and terrific acting chops.  None of this can distract from the fact that she is horribly miscast.  Bess is simply not her role.  You desperately want to believe her in her first entrance in Act One, swilling liquor dressed in a whorish red dress, but McDonald is never able to turn off her decency and kind heart for us to believe her as a drug-addicted prostitute who will exploit the ones who love her and abandon a baby she loves.  Bess has been worn out and weathered by the circumstances of her life.  It’s incongruous to have her played by an actress whose star wattage can never be dimmed.  Paulus & Parks don’t do McDonald any favors as their deep cuts speed Bess’ transition toward respectability so fast as to render it absurd.

McDonald does have one thrillingly believable scene with Crown on Kittawah Island where she fends off his advances as long as she can, but ultimately acquiesces to the inevitable.  By the end of the show when McDonald is groveling on the ground to satisfy her addiction to cocaine, the audience is left wondering how such a together woman could be led by such base instincts.  If Paulus & Parks wanted to develop a Bess so different from the original character, they might have been wise to start from scratch and write an entirely new musical specifically for McDonald’s strengths.  As it stands, the re-invention of Bess turns out to be an unfortunate misstep.

Adding to the disappointment, the design team is not up to Broadway standards.  The proceedings look like a regional production that lost its funding midway through the rehearsal process.  Catfish Row is reduced to wooden planks and rusting wall pieces with random cornices and a haphazard water pump.  When the action shifts to Kittawah Island in Act Two, designer Ricardo Hernandez throws up a simple blue backdrop to let us know the location has changed.  That would be fine if he didn’t later give us state-of-the-art projections during and after the hurricane.  The inconsistent design elements only serve to confuse and alienate an audience already grasping for an organic concept to hold onto.

ESosa’s costumes are generic and predictable at best.  Getting rid of the original Porgy’s goat cart does no one any favors, actor or audience.  When Porgy’s brace is thrown on the floor, it looks disturbingly like an errant prosthesis.  Without Porgy’s goat cart, the final image of Porgy heading off in search of his Bess becomes much too literal.  Reduced of Porgy’s story in just about every way, the mythic qualities that make Porgy and Bess a transcendent work of art are completely lost.

The ultimate question regarding a revival always comes down to justification.  Why revive this piece at this point in time?  Besides an opportunity to see one of our greatest musical theatre performers on stage, Paulus, Parks & Company have not only given us a production that does not merit restoration, they have also given us a production that justifies the Sondheim criticism.

photos by Michael J. Lutch

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
American Repertory Theater at the Richard Rogers in New York City
open run
for tickets, visit http://www.porgyandbessonbroadway.com/

A SMALL LITTLE CREATES HUGE RESULTS

For its scintillating revival of A Little Night Music, the Writers’ Theatre has condensed the Stephen Sondheim classic into a chamber musical. The action is played out on a small thrust stage enclosed by lacy floor-to-ceiling curtains. The only set is a raised two-step platform in the middle of the playing area. The intimacy of the staging brings the audience into close touch with the wit, sophistication, and gentle eroticism of this most worldly and elegant of American musicals.

A Little Night Music is Sondheim’s adaptation of the Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night, a droll story of sexual musical chairs among the middle- and lower-classes in provincial Sweden at the turn of the last century. Three generations of characters assemble and reassemble romantic relationships until everyone is reasonably paired up at the end. But along the way there are shouting matches, tears, trysts, and even a game of Russian roulette.

Sondheim conveys this complex sexual merry-go-round with some of his most brilliant and exquisite lyrics. The only hit to come out of the score is “Send In the Clowns” (whose international popularity mystified the composer), but his graceful quasi-operetta is a continuous flow of comic, wise, dramatic, and romantic songs.

The core characters are a middle-aged Swedish lawyer named Fredrik Egerman and his ex-lover, actress Desiree Armfeldt. Egerman has a 20-year old son named Henrik by his first marriage and, as a widower, married 18-year old Anne, a lass he had known since childhood. The marriage is in its 11th month and still unconsummated because Ann is wary of being deflowered. Henrik is a divinity student tortured by raging hormones, exacerbated by both his passion for his teen-aged stepmother, and his desire to experiment with the household’s sexy maid Petra, who leads the below stairs characters, and happens to be the only person having a good time for the entire duration of the story.

Desiree stops in the town to perform with her acting company and she and Fredrik meet, igniting the old flame of their love affair. Desiree is currently the mistress of Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm, a pompous and preening dragoon. Charlotte, the count’s wife, is in constant agony over her husband’s infidelities and general boorishness. He’s a lout but she loves him.

Presiding over the romantic couplings around her is Desiree’s mother, the aged Madame Armfeldt, a famous and successful courtesan in her time. She now lives in opulent retirement with her memories of happier days and her granddaughter Fredrika, Desiree’s child (the peremptory dowager took custody of the girl to insulate her from Desiree’s bohemian lifestyle). Add Madame Armfeldt’s butler Frid, a man who matches Petra’s lusty nature, and you have a combustible mix of sexually charged personalities, all of whom gather at a weekend house party called by Madame Armfeldt at her daughter’s insistence. It’s at this weekend in the country that the characters rearrange themselves into proper romantic combinations. Some of the newly assembled relationships may not last long but they grant the characters at least momentary respite from their jealousies and sexual longings.

William Brown has demonstrated a deft hand at directing high comedy at the Writers’ Theatre and elsewhere, and his staging gives A Little Night Music a proper veneer of wry wisdom, lust, and humanity. He does end the show on an unexpected note that may startle fans of the musical. The audience can decide whether it adds or detracts from the final mood.

The production is spot-on in its casting. Area theatergoers will be familiar with the three featured performers—Jonathan Weir as Fredrik, Shannon Cochran as Desiree, and Deanna Dunagan as Madame Armfeldt, and they do not disappoint. Weir is best known as a classical actor but he displays a surprisingly strong voice to enhance his portrait of the beleaguered Fredrik, dealing simultaneously with a kittenish wife less than half his age and a son roiling with turbulent emotions. Cochran fits Desiree’s personality to perfection, a woman in early middle-age who has seen much and done much, droll and very delightful. Her yearning and expressive take on “Send In the Clowns” is a production highlight. I’ve seen more acerbic Madame Armfeldt’s than Dunagan’s portrayal, but the actress deftly conveys the old woman’s imperious nature, cynicism, and urbanity.

The others in the cast are well up to the mark, especially as vocalists (neither Weir, Cochran, or Dunagan are primarily singers). Tiffany Scott is terrific as the unhappy Charlotte, trying to keep a civilized facade to conceal her hurt and anger over Carl-Magnus’s crass conduct. Her rendition of the “Every Day a Little Death” says everything that needs saying about loving an inattentive and insensitive husband. There is real bite and intelligence in her performance. Royen Kent succeeds in the difficult role of the anguished Henrik, a young man who is the butt of the older characters around him as he burns with longing.

Kristen French is fine as the immature and feckless Anne, a young lady emotionally unprepared to be the wife of a successful middle-aged man. Brandon Dahlquist throws himself into the role of the officious Carl-Magnus with lip-smacking relish, and he has one of the best voices in the company. And a special round of applause goes to Brianna Borger as Petra, who stops the show with her stirring rendition of “The Miller’s Son.” The ensemble is handsomely rounded out by Shannon Corey as Desiree’s daughter, J. Michael Finley as Frid, and Cory Goodrich as Desiree’s maid Malla.

The story is worldly, charming, and rueful–emotions eloquently displayed by Sondheim’s score, abetted by Hugh Wheeler’s underrated book. At the Writers’ Theatre the show moves largely through the music with almost no choreography. The production dispenses with the Greek chorus of five lieder singers seen in the Broadway version; their singing interludes are now performed by the main characters. The elegance of the show is handsomely reinforced by Rachel Anne Healy’s stunning costume designs. Kevin Depinet is the scenic designer but most of the set consists of Nick Heggestad’s properties design, a sumptuous collection of furniture and carpets and candelabras. Jesse Klug’s lighting design bathes the production in a mellow midsummer Scandinavian glow. Andrew Hansen is the sound designer and Valerie Maze conducts the superb chamber music quintet that does great credit to Sondheim’s lilting waltz-driven score.

photos by Michael Brosilow

A Little Night Music
Writers’ Theatre in Glencoe (Chicago Theater)
scheduled to end on July 8
for tickets, call 847 242 6000 or visit http://www.writerstheatre.org

for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit http://www.TheatreinChicago.com

A WAR OF IDEAS

For the first forty-five minutes of City Lit’s OPUS 1861, a miracle occurred: I wept. Consistently. The simple but mighty idea is this: six actors dressed in simple army fatigues (T-shirts, camouflage pants) perform an amalgamation of Civil War songs with letters from U.S. soldiers serving in Afghanistan. The letters varied in nature, from a soldier’s description of the heartbreaking loss of a comrade, to the amazement that citizens of a war-torn land could be so generous and grateful. Four men and two women delivered the missives with stark simplicity, occasionally veering dangerously close towards a home-spun, shy, self-effacing, often unsophisticated manner. The emotional punch occurred when the harrowing and upsetting realities of all wars was brought to the fore with the wistful (and sometimes rousing) songs that came into being during the Civil war years: 1861 to 1865.

It’s amazing that, up until twenty-five minutes before show’s end, the military revue never felt like a jamboree. This was due in no small part to Gary Powell’s elegant and stirring arrangements, which, when performed by the astoundingly strong vocalists, served up an air of reflection and sorrow. Within the context of the show, devised and directed by Elizabeth Margolius, rowing songs, marching songs, “answer” songs, and Negro spirituals resounded with universal anguish that all war is hell. The terrific cast – who also played instruments – were Stephen Barker, Erin Renee Baumrucker, Ryan Gaffney, Varris Holmes, Elizabeth Morgan and Tyler Thompson.

But just as I was prepared to see to it that this show found a life in every theater in the country, it took a disquieting and jarring turn, culminating in the overwrought reading of a letter that sounded more like a GOP stump speech than a youngster’s bitterness about those who don’t support the troops back home; slow-motion salutes by the cast in the background didn’t help either. The elements that made the show, at first, so exiting and poignant – eternal themes of freedom and slavery and racism – disappeared, and we were left with a bumper sticker that screams, “Support Our Troops.” Sadly, my most unfailingly effective theatrical experience had become an army-recruitment commercial.

I don’t remember the last time I felt this strong about a show’s potential to be one of the most moving experiences at the theater. Fortunately, the issue can be readily fixed: Margolius (along with co-deviser Terry McCabe), should veer from any viewpoint that only speaks to a modern, right-wing, political perspective, such as the aforementioned “yellow-ribbon” letter. The evening will resonate most if the creators stick to the parallels between the two wars: the everlasting themes of homesickness, a cause worth dying for, war’s senselessness, and, the most powerful for me, that youthful gung-ho attitude which is soon replaced with disenchantment – the same embitterment that I experienced leaving the theater, but for the wrong reasons.

photos by Anita Evans

Opus 1861: the Civil War in Symphony
City Lit Theater in Chicago (Chicago Theater)
scheduled to end on May 13
for tickets, call 773.293.3682 or visit http://www.CityLit.org

for info on this and other Chicago Theater, visit http://www.TheatreinChicago.com