There are currently seven shows on Broadway whose two leads are of a single sex. They are: The Producers, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, La Cage Aux Folles, Chicago, Democracy, Hairspray and Wicked.
In only one of these (La Cage) are the lead characters gay. Of course, the novel that Wicked is nominally based on has lesbian overtones, but these have been completely expunged from the text of the musical.
And in Hairspray, one of the two leads is played by a man, but is a woman nonetheless.
I find this fascinating. Have audiences tired of traditional boy-girl entertainments on Broadway? Have the men and women who create plays and musicals exhausted all possible avenues for heterosexual expression?
Hmmm...
The Gates.
Okay, I live right around the corner from Central Park and it's difficult miss this much-talked-about art installation courtesy of Christo and his wife Jean-Claude. I haven't actually walked through a Gate, but I've seen them many times passing the park from the street.
And I don't get it.
I admire it as a feat of logistics and I guess it's an interesting idea in a dreamscape sort of way, but I just don't see the art in it.
I keep reading various assessments of it that talk about seeing a familiar landscape in a new way, but...no. All I see is the same landscape with a bunch of gates on it. It seems to me that it would have been a much better idea to wait till the weather is warmer so that people would be using the park more. Then you'd have people hanging out on the grass, etc. and then people might be seeing the park in a new way.
And...
It's snowing...again. And it's fuck cold out. I told you that Mother Nature was just fooling us with the nice weather. I miss Florida. And the pool at my parents' complex.
I've seen some theatre. Tell you about it later.
Saturday was a lot of fun.
I had my first rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera for a Verdi piece called Don Carlo, about which I know very little other than that it takes place during the Spanish Inquisition. I'm playing a Black Monk in the second scene of the second act, which is an elaborate ceremony celebrating the burning of some heretics. Fun stuff.
Basically, I march in as part of a processional carrying a cross on top of a pole. And that is it. Welcome to being a Supernumerary.
After rehearsal, I met my friend and reader Randy at El Azteca on 9th Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd for a delicious Mexican lunch. If you are unfamiliar with El Azteca, I urge you to stop in and give the place a try. The atmosphere, perhaps best described as "suburban shopping center Mexican place," may leave something to be desired, but the food is delicious and the margaritas are spectacular! And the prices are fairly reasonable. Go Go Go!
Randy and I then headed down to 45th Street to catch a performance of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a new musical now in previews at the Imperial Theatre. Because this show is still a work-in-progress, I will not be going into detail here about it at this time. I will, however, make some general comments about what I saw. If anyone reading this is associated with the production and would like a detailed analysis, I would be happy to provide one. Contact me via email.
Okay, the show is very funny and a lot of fun. But that said, it does need some work. Not major work, mind you, but some tightening and some focusing would be beneficial.
In case you don't know, this is a comedy based on the 1980's film starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin about two rival thieves in a seaside resort town on the French Riviera as they compete to see which of them can fleece an unsuspecting tourist of $50,000 first.
Music is by David Yazbek, who also provided the score for The Full Monty a few years ago, libretto is courtesy of Jeffrey Lane. Direction and choreography is from Jack O'Brien and Jerry Mitchell, who also did the same for The Full Monty. The stars are New York theatre regulars John Lithgow and Norbert Leo Butz (as the two leads), Sherie Rene Scott as the pretty blonde tourist they set their sights on, and Joanna Gleason and Gregory Jbara as a rich American and corrupt French policeman.
Okay, here it is...
The show is fun and the cast is good, but everyone seem to be working very hard at what should be breezy, fun comedy. This may come as they get more comfortable with the material.
Butz's first number is almost there, but not quite, and should be more on the order of Scott's.
Sherie Rene Scott needs to watch her enunciation.
In addition to the main plot, there is a traditional romantic subplot involving two of the characters that doesn't mesh with or even intersect at all with the rest of the show.
There is another character who is set up as a lead, but who disappears 3/4 of the way through the first act and whose presence delays the arrival of Scott's character. This character could be combined with another, which would allow Scott an earlier entrance as well as solving the last issue I mentioned. (I think.)
A few of the songs, especially toward the end of the second act, sound like rejects from The Full Monty.
But there is a lot of good stuff here. The show is indeed a lot of fun and the cast is excellent. At the performance I attended, every one of the leads received entrance applause and the audience was very much with them.
I find it interesting that so many of the creative staff were involved with The Full Monty, a production that had the unfortunate luck to open in the same season as that 1000 pound gorilla/PR jauggernaut The Producers. As you probably remember, The Full Monty, a very worthy, and some might say superior, show did not win a single Tony Award and seemed to get buried in they hype afforded its rival.
Well, it seems that The Full Monty creative team decided, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," and have created their very own Producers. Here also we have two men engaged in nefarious, illegal activities and competing as rivals for a blonde girl.
I can't wait to go back and see this at some point and see what changes are made between now and the opening next week. Plenty of time to fix!
After the show, Randy and I walked around a bit and ended up heading into John's on 44th Street to grab a pizza. Of course, we forgot that we were there in between shows on a matinee day...and the place was PACKED. Luckily, as a party of only two, we were seated pretty quickly.
I left Randy after dinner and headed home for a quick nap before heading out to Therapy on 52nd Street, where I joined a party thrown by MAK in honour of his recent birthday. I got to meet a lot of great guys, included MAK's boyfriend, K. I with I could remember the other guys, many of whom were bloggers, but it was late and I had been drinking. Perhaps MAK will chime in here on this.
I had a really great time that night with all those folks, but especially with MAK and K, who are terrific guys and a very cute couple.
Fun!
Snow. I hate snow.
When I was younger, I didn't hate snow nearly as much as I do now. Back then it served a purpose. And that purpose was to close the schools.
Once, when I was in the fourth grade, the west central part of Alabama where I lived then actually got some snow. It wasn't much, maybe a couple of inches, but it was the only accumulation the area had experienced in memory. And probably the first and only chance in their lives that some of my classmates would have to play in the snow.
Snow plows were brought in from as far away as North Carolina, because our county didn't have means to deal with the precipitation itself and my elementary school was closed for a week.
That was the power of snow used for good.
When I was even younger, a toddler, a kindergartener, we lived in upstate Pennsylvania where it would routinely snow multiple feet at a time. There was one year when we returned home from a vacation, probably to Florida visiting my grandparents, and discovered that we could not enter our house. My Dad had to find a shovel and tunnel his way through to the front door.
We never used the front door of that house. We always entered through the carport into the kitchen and this is possibly the only time that I can remember that front door being open. I'm guessing that while tunneling through what could have been six feet of snow, the front door was simply easier to reach than the kitchen door in the carport.
It must have been scary making my way through the tunnel in the snow to house. The snow was far over my head, but I was still young enough to know that Mommy and Daddy would protect me and I don't actually remember being scared. Maybe I found it exciting. Hopefully, my snowsuit protected me from the bitter cold.
But, in that place, the harsh winters were an annual occurance, much like the spring floods in our basement when the snows would begin to melt. I think I always felt the cold rather acutely and that's how I started drinking tea. It was my mother's way of trying to keep me warm.
My father is a tea drinker and my mother is a coffee drinker. Their mixed marriage has never really been an issue, although I don't really remember my mother making coffee at home when I was a child. Possibly, this was because it took a whole other special machine to make coffee whereas tea could be made simply by boiling water on the stove. We didn't have much money, you see, and the price of a coffeemaker may not have been in the budget.
Anyway, whether because she didn't have any to offer or because she felt some societal taboo at preparing her toddler a cup of coffee, my mother started me on tea, just like daddy. And I drank it just the way she made it for me, which was, presumably, the way my father took it. Two spoonfuls of sugar and enough milk to fill the mug.
This was, of course, regular old orange pekoe in a teabag, probably made by Lipton or Tetley or whatever brand was on sale that week. I can't remember when I learned that there were actually different kinds of tea. Certainly not then. It was not a fancy household. In our house, "tea" didn't even mean the cold variety, of which there were always two kinds in the refridgerator. That was "iced tea," of which you could have "unsweet," without sugar and fairly self-explanatory or "sweet," the same general concoction, but supersatuated with sugar as is done in the South from whence my father came. And, yes, this is different from simply taking the "unsweet" and mixing in some sugar.
I believe the secret is to mix the sugar in when the tea is hot, before it goes into the refridgerator because hot liquid will absorb more sugar than cold liquid. More than one visitor to our family's home as opted to add a bit of sugar to the "unsweet" after trying to choke down a few sips of the "sweet" that is normal for my father and brother.
But anyway, because of the severe cold weather and multiple feet of snow in the rural part of upstate Pennsylvania where we lived when I was very young, my mother fortified her toddler almost daily with hot steaming cups of sugar and caffeine. I'm sure that today, someone would report her to some Social Services agency.
Anyway, I never did develop a taste for coffee and dislike it immensely to this day. Smells delicious, tastes foul. And what is that bitter aftertaste? Yuck!
And I still hate the snow and the cold. Which is what prompted me to take this turn down Memory Lane. I'm sitting here in my apartment in a snow covered Manhattan trying to figure out if I want to go out at all today.
Whatever appeal snow may have had as a closer of schools died the day I was graduated from college. Now, if I can't get into work, I don't get paid.
Of course, the ironic thing is that today is Presidents Day, a national holiday, and the schools are closed anyway. So this snow today is the worst kind of snow: Wasted snow.
So Happy Presidents Day, Everyone. I hope you don't have to spend your day off from work shoveling.
I was lucky enough tonight to go revisit the revival of Chicago, currently playing at the Ambassador Theatre on Broadway. I used to go to the show on a fairly regular basis, but haven't been in a couple of years, not since the show transferred to this third theatre of its near-decade long run.
And I'm pleased to report that Chicago is holding up beautifully. The cast did a terrific show to a near-sold out house.
Tonight's Roxie and Velma were the ever-dependable Charlotte D'Amboise and Donna Marie Asbury, both of whom have been with the production on and off since its opening in 1996. Though neither exhibits the out-sized personality of a star, both have easy command of the stage. Asbury has a way of making petulance look sexy that I wish I could master. D'Amboise is looser and seems to be having more fun than when I last saw her Roxie several years ago. During the famous "Roxie" monologue in the first act, she took the solo dance section, changed or improvised by each actress who does it, and performed this weird pseudo-puppet show without the actual puppets. It was odd, but fun and she popped right back into the monologue when Roxie suddenly remembers the presence of the audience.
Brent Barrett is back in the show as Billy Flynn and he's as good as ever. He's another one who's been doing the show on and off for years. His held note at the end of "They Both Reached For The Gun," was held so long that the other cast members were starting to lose their composure. Barrett has got to be best Billy this production has yet fielded, which is probably why he keeps returning. He exudes the exact combination of charm and smarm that keeps you loving Billy, no matter what he does as he orchestrates the clearly guilty Roxie's court case.
Broadway regular Carol Woods is back in town playing Matron Mama Morton and she's clearly having a blast. Woods interpolates more jazz riffing into the role than any other actress I've seen do it, but I had less of a problem with it here than when African-American actresses do this in other kinds of shows. For one thing, it's pretty true to the period. For another, Woods strides the line between embellishment and going over the top admirably. Anyway, in this show full of vaudeville star turns, Woods' work fits right in, in a way that might be out of place if this were a more traditionally constructed piece.
Whenever I go see Chicago, I always have fun checking out the ensemble, the sexiest group of dancers on Broadway. Among the men, there's been almost a complete turnover since I saw the show last and this new bunch is very very cute, if less diverse in age and body type. It always fun to see what different actors do in the improvised sections and what they are wearing...or not wearing. While the costumes are all variations on black spandex, I don't think I've ever seen any two actors in identical costumes.
My favorite guy this time out was an adorable dancer named Josh Rhodes, who has this geeky hot thing going on and whose costume includes a shirt open practically to his waist. Ahem. I'm sorry...where was I?
My pick for favorite lady of the ensemble was a tie. I've loved Michelle M. Robinson in the show for years and her breathy, off-center take on Liz (the "pop" girl in "The Cell Block Tango") was hysterical. But I also loved Roxane Carrasco as Annie (the "six" girl). She played it with a Hispanic accent, something I've never seen anyone do with any of the girls. The accent, coupled with her righteous indignation at her man's not only not being single, but also having six wives ("One of those Mormons, you know?"), was damn funny.
Aside from a couple of technical issues, there was not a thing wrong with Chicago tonight. It was pretty tight and is holding together well. If anyone cares there is now a woman (Leslie Stifelman) conducting the orchestra, which wouldn't matter a bit if the orchestra were not on stage and if the conductor didn't do a fair amount of interacting with the cast. Can't decide if I didn't like her or if it was just odd seeing a woman at the podium and it took me some time to get used to it.
It's always more fun me at Chicago to sit in the front row, which was sold as day-of-performance rush tickets when the show played at the Shubert Theatre. It's too close for some people, but I like being so close as to almost interact with the cast. There was one performance where Sandy Duncan and Ruthie Henshall played the entire show to me right there in the front row. And I love that shit. It's just not as much fun sitting further back.
But, yeah...go see Chicago again and be surprised at how good it still is.
So it was snowing when I came out of rehearsal tonight! No fair! I knew Mother Nature was just tricking us with the nice weather. Ugh. Luckily it didn't last long.
Conversation overheard while emerging from the subway at the West 4 Station in the West Village:
Man (to his companion): Do you know where we're going? I don't want to spend too much time walking around in this neighbourhood.
Me: (sliding past the Man and his companion): Excuse me.
Man (to his companion): See?
This I don't get at all.
I finally got a bit.
Of course, I'm referring to my role in the ensemble of Villiage Light Opera Group's upcoming production of the musical My Favorite Year.
In the opening song, a huge production number called "Twenty Million People," I have been assigned the role of "Cue Card Boy."
You see the show is set around the production of a tv variety series not unlike Your Show of Shows or Caesar's Hour, Sid Caesar's landmark programs of the 1950's whose writing staffs, including such luminaries as Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon, proceeded to define the term comedy from that time to this.
This number musicalizes the controlled chaos that materializes in the final minutes before a live tv show goes on air. And I am..."Cue Card Boy."
Whoopee!
Now, if you were to come see the show, you'd have at least a 50/50 shot at picking me out of the crowd. At least for 2 minutes at the beginning.
Sigh.
So I've been to the theatre...
On Sunday, I went over to City Center to check out Encores!'s first entry for the season, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, a 1951 musical with a score by Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields and a book by George Abbott and Betty Smith (adapted here by David Ives), based on Smith's popular novel of the same name.
It was fine. The show itself is not very good, but the production was Encores!'s usual sterling offering and it was interesting to see a show that I'm probably never going to see again anywhere. But the most telling thing to me was how the evening pointed up both Encores!'s strengths and where they have somehow lost their way over the years.
While I didn't like the show itself, I would much rather have sat there taking in a show I didn't know and that is unlikely for major revival than a concert staging of Bye Bye Birdie or The Pajama Game (neither of which were top drawer Encores! anyway).
But a big deal was made over how Encores! had originally meant to base their production on a heavily revised version of the show that premiered a few years ago at the Goodspeed Opera House. The problem was that the revised libretto cut too much of the score and there was no way to reconcile them. So the choice was made to go back to the original version.
Except, of course, for the entr'acte, which was completely rewritten because it was felt that the original one was just a retread of the overture and wasn't developed enough. Also, the ending was rewritten to give it a more hopeful tone.
Huh? What? Isn't one of Encores! raisons d'etre to present these shows in as close to their original format as possible? If you'll excuse me for saying it, their purpose is NOT to put on the best possible show, but rather to present, as much as possible, what the show's original audience heard and saw.
It's one thing to have to make an educated guess when materials are incomplete, but quite another to make changes or write new material simply because you don't like it...especially when you're starting from a point of looking at material that perhaps isn't as strong (or else the show would have been a bigger hit or stood the test of time) as it could have been.
The production was fully costumed and choreographed, even though the cast still went through the motions of carrying their scripts.
Now I like nice production values as much as the next guy, but this is a "concert." The show could easily have been done in simple formal wear as was the custom when Encores! began in the mid-1990's. Why are they spending money on costumes? There was nothing especially necessary about costumes for this show. And then, like every other arts organization, I bet they go to their donors and cry poor every year. Well, if you didn't spend so frickin' much money on unnecessary items then maybe you'd have the cash to, I don't know, restore a score or two. You remember? One of the reasons your organization was founded? Argh...
Like I said...this was a pretty good production of a so-so show. The cast did their best and it was not their fault that A Tree Grows in Brooklyn plays like Carousel-lite. Basically the setting is 1900's Brooklyn and good girl Katie marries bad boy Johnny and they try to make a life together despite his drunkeness and irresponsibility. He tries to reform for the sake of their daughter and things...don't go so well for him. Also amongst the colourful neighbourhood folk are Katie's sister, Cissy, and Cissy's latest live-in lover, "Harry." (She has called each one of a long succession of lovers "Harry" in memory of her first, whom she lost. When he went back to his wife.)
Emily Skinner provided her usual stellar comic turn as Cissy, a role created by Shirley Booth. Interestingly enough, Skinner seemed to have actually been playing the role AS Shirley Booth, not the worst choice in the world considering that the role was written and rewritten especially for the mid-century star. She adopted Booth's vocal inflections and did a pretty near approximation of her voice as well. Her high point came in the second act comic number "He Had Refinement," which is almost a play unto itself.
Jason Danieley and Sally Murphy were terrific as the lovers, but their story is written in stone from the moment they meet-cute and it's hard to really care since you know exactly where this is going from the first scene.
Sigh. But I'm glad I saw it. I'll probably never have a chance to see it again. And that's okay.
The other theatrical event I've recently attended was last night's The WYSIWYG Talent Show, a monthly event down at P.S. 122 that allows a host of bloggers from the NYC area the opportunity to get up in front of people and perform their own work. You see, blogging is like masturbation. It's solitary and something you do from the privacy of your own space and you can be anyone or indulge any fantasy. And an event like this is more the equivalent of full-on, hot and steamy SEX. It's connecting with people and responding to their energy and accepting their love and applause for a job well done. Oh, wait...is that just sex with me? Nevermind...
Coincidentally, the topic at this month's WYSIWYG was sex...specifically, Worst. Sex. Ever!!, a reprise of the topic that got the series off with a bang (Hee!) last year at its inception. All the performers were terrific, but I especially liked the story told by this guy and the original song performed by this guy. Love them. Lots. I want to be them when I grow up.
I also saw many fellow bloggers in the crowd and it's always nice to re-connect with people. Not to go all Romper Room on your ass, but I saw him, and him, and him and him and he was there, I later found out, but I didn't see him.
A great time was had by all. Really great! You should be sorry you missed it. And try to catch the next one. And invite me to go with you.
Happy Valentine's Day, Everyone!
I hope all of you who got flowers at work today or who will be having dinner and/or sexual intercourse with your husband, wife, lover, partner, or trick this evening will take a moment to remember your friends who are alone.
Chances are that no matter how awful your partner is, you have friends who envy you simply for having him or her in your life.
So don't forget us on this very pink of holidays...singletons are people too (and we don't have a special day to commemorate it).
So I got back into town tonight. Absolutely no problems with the flight or getting the bus or train back into town from LaGuardia. The flight crew wasn't as nice or as accomodating as the crew on the way down. Sigh.
Both the bus and train I had to take back into Manhattan came very quickly and I got home in good time. Whee.
The sublet this time left the place a mess and I'm wondering what the hell went on here while I was gone. Nothing seems broken or stolen, but things are moved around and there's trash everywhere.
Sigh.
So I went with my parents to see a local production of the classic Rodgers and Hammerstein warhorse Oklahoma! at the Lyric Theatre here in downtown Stuart, FL.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOh no!
I was going to call this production "community theatre," but a quick glance at the program reveals that Starstuck, the production company, pays its actors and staff. So this actually qualifies as a professional non-Equity theatre.
Whoa! Did this production have problem?! Yikes!
Okay, first of all, I have to confess that Oklahoma! has never been one of my favorite shows. The score is lovely, but the book is clunky and awkward and definitely not up to Oscar Hammerstein II's work on the librettos of their later shows like South Pacific, Carousel, and The King and I.
The characters here are cardboard cut-outs with little or no motivation for anything they do. And this presents a challenge to any actors who might be approaching them, as well as any audience who might be asked to care about them.
I was going to start this paragraph with "The biggest problem with this production is...," but I'm sitting here trying to figure out which problem might be the biggest. Where would I start if I had to try to fix this? Aside from selecting another show, of course.
So I'm just going to dive in and see when or if I come up for air.
Can we talk about the ending of the show for a moment? This production ended the show after the triumphant "Oklahoma!" number at Curly and Laurey's wedding, thereby lopping off the last 20 or so minutes of the show. Wha...?! I was speechless. Do they have permission from the Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization to do this? In my experience, R&H are VERY protective of their shows and would NEVER allow such a thing. So no return of Jud, no climatic fight, no accidental death, and no court hearing on the lawn. I was appalled. How the fuck do they get off doing this? I mean, if you're going to be doing the clunky old warhorse musical, you can't then decide you don't like how it ends. Fuck Fuck Fuck!
Okay, next...
The program and posters for this production featured the logo and art from the recent Broadway revival, a production that transferred from the Royal National Theatre in London. Again, I wonder if they paid for this? If so, fine. If not, rot in Hell again. The problem? They included as a part of their program covers and posters a picture of actor Patrick Wilson, who played Curly in the Broadway production and whom you may know from the current film version of The Phantom of the Opera in which he plays Raoul. Now, rest assured, that Patrick Wilson is not appearing in this production. What the hell? Do you think he's being compensated for the use of his image here? Somehow I doubt it.
Next...One thing I noticed. The producer/musical director, the director (a local husband and wife team...shades of Waiting for Guffman?), and the choreographer all appeared in the show, the first two as Will and Ado Annie and the third in the ensemble. So you might ask, as I did, who was watching the show once they started doing run throughs and got into tech in the theatre? The answer? Probably no one...and it showed.
The direction was lackluster at best and nearly every number had the singer standing in a particular spot right down center, practically at the lip of the stage, singing right to the audience. Imagine Oklahoma!: The Opera. I kept willing actors to look at whomever they were supposed to be singing to with the power of my mind. Surprisingly, sometimes it worked.
The actors knew their lines and lyrics (mostly), but I have no idea whom to blame for some of the bad acting choices on display. Perhaps the director was too busy playing her role to direct.
Here goes...The Aunt Eller was playing the role as Carol Burnett with all the attendent schtick. Horrendous mistake. The Laurey played almost every scene with this annoying giggle that would have been more appropriate for the character of Gertie. The Will and Ado Annie (the producer and director) were too old for their roles.
Both Will and Curly were given BLACK cowboy hats to wear, which was bizarre considering that the villianous Jud wore a white hat. That was just odd, but perhaps meant to be a statement of some sort. The worse problem was that no one told the leading men that cowboy hats cast huge shadows over the whole face. You've got to picture this...an entire production where the leading men could not be seen from the nose up. The simple solution, of course, is to either push the hats back on the head to free up the face, or, alternately, ditch the hats at some point during the scene. But there was no one out front to notice this detail since the entire artistic staff was in the show.
Remember the famous box social? The raison d'etre of the thin plot? Well, this production had that event take place at Aunt Eller and Laurey's farm, thereby negating all the scenes in the first act, basically the ENTIRE first act, where Laurey must decide who is driving her to the dance. No need for ANYONE to drive Laurey to a dance that's happening right outside her front door. I guess someone on the artistic staff forgot to actually read the script.
Geez, they all cast themselves in the damn thing, you'd think they'd find a half hour to sit down and read it. This wasn't the only example of the production working against or flat out ignoring the text, but it was the nuttiest.
The famous ballet "Laurey Makes Up Her Mind" that closes the first act? Yep, they did it, but with a weird lack of...what's the word?...oh, yes...BALLET. There was no Dream Laurey or Curly here, in the style of the recent revival, but the lack of real dance just sort of made the whole sequence lie there like a dead dog. It was as if we'd suddenly shifted from watching a musical to watching a silent movie. Even my mother commented on this one.
And it was as if the choreographer had no idea what the dance is supposed to represent. This is the darkest reaches of Laurey's imagination and her worst nightmare. There's nothing fun or pretty about it. It was all wrong.
Ugh...was there anything good here? Yes...the guy playing Ali Hakim, the peddler, was terrific and really made the most of a cliche-ridden part. The actor was playing it real, again in the style of the recent revival, rather than borscht belt comic as has been done traditionally. The Curly was mostly fine, although he didn't quite do Rodgers' soaring melodies justice.
And that's all I'm going to say about that. Could I have fixed this production? Some of it, but...mostly probably not.
So...what else?
Went on a bike ride with my Dad and then did some time at the pool. I'm going to miss this place. Home tomorrow night. Sigh.
I love swimming and the time I've be able to spend in the pool here has been my favourite part of this vacation. The pool in my parents' condo complex is heated so the water is comfortable at all times, no matter the temperture outside. It's heaven not having to spend the first minutes of your swim freezing your ass off while you acclimate to the cold water.
I love swimming under water. It's like flying. Or rather it's like every dream I've ever had that included me flying. And it's quiet.
Pools in New York are either too small or too crowded or both. I wish I had access to some kind of private swimming facility so that I could swim on a regular basis. It's great exercise, but hard to indulge in at home.
So I spent another day sleeping late, basking in the sun by the pool, swimming and reading. Ahhhhhh...
For dinner, we went to a barbeque place called Bono's here in Stuart. It's right across the street from another barbeque place called Sonny's. Uh-Huh.
You have no idea how much I wish I were making that up.
It was a beautiful day here in Stuart, FL and I spent most of it lolling by the pool getting very excited about a new book I've just started and taking laps in the pool as the spirit moved me.
The book is Last Summer by Michael Thomas Ford and I definitely recommend it, even though I'm not even halfway through yet. It's the interconnected stories of a bunch of folks, gay and straight, who are spending a summer in Provincetown, MA. Everyone has different reasons for being in P-town at this particular time and Ford seems to be amazing at sketching whole lives and backstories in a single chapter.
I just can't wait to see how it all comes out. I wish it would get made into a film, because there's totally a role for me here.
Anyway, I ignored my mother's concerns about the sun, and didn't put on sunscreen till quite late in the day. Subsequently, I have turned a not-so-attractive shade of scarlet. And I don't know nuthin' about birthin' babies either.
But it doesn't hurt, so I'm okay.
And so the moral of today's story is "Always Listen to Your Mother." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Have we gotten that out of our systems now?
No disrespect to my mom, but...no.
The real moral here is to respect the sun and use the sunscreen, even when you think you don't need it.
Oh, and Happy Ash Wednesday. I decided to decline the parents' invitation to join them at church tonight. Once per vacation is fine, thank you.
This morning my parents and I piled into the car and drove about 3 hours north to the coastal town of New Smyrna Beach to see my aunt (Dad's sister) and her partner. I'd never been to their house and was really interested in checking the place out.
Great house, right on a canal and overlooking wetlands!
Aunt Lois took us on a tour of the town, which included (naturally) a lot of devestation from the fall hurricanes. Much of the town, which, by the way, includes the word "Beach" in its name, no longer has any beach. We saw a variety of homes, restaurants, and hotels all or part of which had fallen into the sea or otherwise been destroyed.
Afterward, we headed back to their house and sifted through a trunk of family pictures and artifacts and listened to family stories.
I learned that one of my great uncles, my grandmother's eldest sister's first husband, was gay. Not only was this man, whom I never met, gay, but it turns out that he didn't "retire" from the military as has been the official story thus far, but rather he was caught at some point on base (maybe somewhere in France, but I was unclear on this point) with a younger man. Ahem. My great-aunt's divorce (sometime in the 1940's), still the only one ever on that side of the family, was never talked about and no one really knew why the marriage ended. But, as my father said tonight, it all makes sense now.
As it turns out we also have had a lesbian in the family as early as the nineteenth century. My grandfather's great-aunt was known in the family as an independent single lady who went to college, taught school (I think), and generally led a life of her own. Based on what little we know about her, Aunt Lois suspects that Aunt Kate may indeed have been a lesbian at a time when this was a love that dared not speak its name.
On the way home, my Dad jokingly suggested that Aunt Lois put together a gay and lesbian family tree for our family.
He also suggested that she put together some sort of paperwork documenting the family secrets so that these juicy morsels don't die with the elder members of our family.
I also learned of two separate incidents of child molestation in the family, which wasn't as pleasant. Both took place many years ago before I was born, but one of the molestors was a great-uncle that I actually knew. And that weirds me out a little. I just cannot reconcile the gruff, but kindly man I knew with the image of child molestor. It's not as though I was ever in danger (both family offenders were decidedly hetero), but still...
By the way, the other child molestor was the SECOND husband of the great-aunt whose FIRST husband turned out to be gay. Yep. Some people have all the luck. I hope I have better luck husband hunting than she did.
So, it was Family Secret Day here in Florida.
And if this is the stuff I know about, can you imagine the shit I have no idea about? And here, I totally thought my Mayflower-descended family was mostly normal and boring. Thank God we're not...turns out we're just like the Kennedys, only not Irish, not Catholic, and not rich. Scandalicious!
After leaving my aunt's place, we got home in time to see Freddy and Kendra win the current edition of The Amazing Race. Eh. I liked them well enough, even though Kendra had a tendancy to say the most ignorant things about other cultures. After this race around the world, she had the audacity to complain about the pizza in Chicago. Couldn't believe it? Does she not remember any of the earlier legs when much more objectionable local delicacies were eaten? I was hoping that Kris and Jon would pull it out, but some bad luck with transportation in the final leg doomed them to second place. The less said about third place Adam and Rebecca the better.
Anyone want to sign up for The Amazing Race with me?
Wow...I did almost nothing today.
Got a haircut, helped my Dad with some errands, spent some time in the pool, walked down by the river with my Mom, ate lunch and dinner, watched 24 and that's kind of it.
I love vacation.
So I'm watching the Super Bowl, something I'm not sure I've ever done before. You would think that I, a former Philadelphian, would feel some need to glue myself to the game and route for the Eagles to emerge victorious over the New England Patriots. Eh. Not so much. While I do consider myself a Phillies Phan, I've never felt strongly about the Eagles, or, indeed, football in general.
I've never quite understood why anyone would want to subject themselves to the frigid temperatures of a live football game when you get a much better view on television. Baseball, on the other hand, is played during the spring and summer and much more pleasant to go out to the ballpark and watch.
Just saw a cute FedEx commerical starring Burt Reynolds and a talking bear. Don't ask.
Had a bizarre dreamlet last night about my becoming Assistant to Dwight Eisenhower. You see, Eisenhower couldn't decide what he wanted in an assistant and it was stressing me out.
Went to church with my parents this morning. Ugh. This was an "informal" service with lots of modern music, not much of which was to my taste. They use PowerPoint to project lyrics onto giant screens. The altar is more like a stage. There were a lot of what I call "rollar coaster Christians." Every now and then through the service someone would raise their arms as if they were on a rollar coaster approaching the top, just before a big plunge. I don't get it at all, but whatever...
After an hour or so of this (thank God that Protestants keep one eye on heaven and the other on the clock), we headed off to the monied enclave of Palm Beach to visit the Henry Morrison Flagler Museam, the converted Beaux Arts winter mansion of Flagler, one of the early architects of Florida. He built a railroad (and made it run, made it race against time) all the way out to Key West, as well as a series of grand hotels to house passengers all along the way. Oh, and he was one of the original partner with John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil. Yeah, the guy was loaded.
We went to hear a lecture on the Great Chicago Fire. The speaker, the author of a new book that incorporates a lot of new evidence about how it started, was not the best, but I grasped his main points. The most important idea here was that the legend of Mrs. O'Leary and her cow is most likely untrue. The fire was probably started by aliens. What? Did I nod off during that part? What I meant to say was that it was started by some random guy hanging out in the neighbourhood. And there was a shoddy investigation/massive coverup by the Chicago Fire Department that perpetuated the whole O'Leary myth rather than ferreting out the actual truth.
Yeah, not as exciting as my theory about aliens.
We came back and I jumped into the pool for a bit before return to watch the Super Bowl. Does anyone outside Boston and Philadelphia really care about this game? I can't imagine so.
While it may now be rightfully overshadowed by the destruction wrought by the December tsunami in Asia, Florida has still not recovered from the four hurricanes that swept through this state in September.
Evidence of the storms is everywhere. Destruction around every corner.
My parents' condo escaped serious damage, but the carports in their complex were left in various states of disrepair, most of the roofs gone.
Drive down any street here and you'll be stuck by the lack of signs advertising local businesses. Sometimes you'll seen an empty frame high in the air above a business. Sometimes you'll see the sign bent over double. Few of these have been replaced because there simply hasn't been time.
We drove past a local airfield and noticed a hanger that had been partially ripped apart. Signs attached to buildings are partially missing. We stopped into a restaurant that looked abandoned from the road. Plywood, instead of glass in the window frames, signs blown out. But they were open for business.
It was really bad here, folks. In some ways, it still is.
People don't even seem to notice it anymore.
But I'm sure it's even worse in Asia.
Flying down to Florida was much faster and easier than I was expecting, due mainly to the fact that I flew directly to West Palm Beach from LaGuardia. It's so much faster when you don't have to change planes en route somewhere. It was also my first time flying song, the low fare subsidiary of Delta Air Lines.
I was pretty impressed with them. There were televisions in all the seatbacks and I had a great time checking out the selection of music, tracking the progress and stats of our flight, and playing trivia against my fellow passengers. (I won several games and, at one point en route, had the highest score in the system.)
And one of the flight attendants was flirting with me pretty shamelessly. After some eye contact, the guy, not really my type, but nice nonetheless, brought me a cosmo completely free of charge. This on a flight where there was a extra charge for practically every extra, especially alcohol. It was pretty good too. You know how some cosmos are a bit heavy on the vodka, which then overpowers the other flavours? None of that here. Mmmm...if everyone could make a cosmo like this, I'd order them more often.
Oh, and then he brought me another one, again without charging me, and without even asking if I wanted another one. I couldn't even finish Cosmo #2 before landing in West Palm Beach. Yum.
It was late, so we returned to my parents' condo and I had something to eat. And exhale. It's a little chilly here, but nothing like what's going on at home.
Thursday, my parents had gotten us tickets to a production of the revue Beehive at Riverside Theatre, a small professional venue in Vero Beach.
If you've never seen Beehive, basically it's an excuse for six women to run through a catalogue of girl group numbers from the 1960's and femme-centric pop and rock from the 1970's. It was fun and entertaining, if not great theatre or even terribly exciting. The six women in the cast did a good job projecting their personalities and executing many costume and wig changes in what is essentially a glorified theme park or cruise ship show.
I thought it was curious that this theatre performs matinees on Thursdays, rather than (or, possibly, in addition to) the more traditional Wednesdays. And, indeed the place was 2/3 empty. I wonder if people just don't think of going to the theatre on a Thursday afternoon?
The other highlights of Thursday included me getting a flu shot, which is widely available now down here for anyone with $20. Hadn't had a flu shot in years, not since I was working at the Swiss bank and they vaccinated employees for free one year. That was surprisingly fast and easy, thanks to Martha, the preternaturally cheerful nurse who was the one to stick me with the needle.
And then there was the Banana Republic factory outlet store that we hit. Ooh, baby. I went straight to the clearance racks and picked up some shirts for less than $5 and pants for less than $10. Whoo-Hoo! Love this, even though I spent way too much money.
We returned after the matinee and did some time in the pool, which I loved. There's nothing like a heated pool.
Today was a bit overcast, so I took my Dad to the movies for his recent birthday. He chose Meet the Fockers, which was fun. It was nice to see Barbra Streisand being a funny girl again. She does comedy so effortlessly that it's really a shame that, with a few notable exceptions, she's abandoned the form for the last 30 years.
Robert De Niro was just doing what he does these days. I wonder if this period is a permanent retirement from actual acting or just a respite from an acclaimed performer who either can't find better roles or is too tired to act anymore? He's been playing this same role for years now. Time to go back to work for Scorsese, Bobby.
Blythe Danner has had a career renaissance this past decade playing the mother of the star of any given movie or television show. At the moment, she can be seen as Eric McCormack's mother on Will and Grace and Hank Azaria's in Huff. Perhaps this new career direction is inspired by her real-life status as the mother of Gwyneth Paltrow. Anyway, Danner is doing her patented upper crust WASPy mom thing here as elsewhere. Nothing challenging, but still fun.
Dustin Hoffman was just having a wild time as the enthusiastically goofy dad of Ben Stiller. Hoffman, like Streisand, is an actor who really needs to let go like this every now and then and have some fun.
Anyway, it was chilly enough today to keep us out of the pool. Sigh. Tomorrow will be better. It must be.
I made it to Florida in one piece and I'll start writing about that later, but I wanted to answer some questions that a couple of readers have asked me through the comments sections. If anyone has any questions for me in future, please feel free to ask away.
Seth Christenfeld and someone named Ed (no idea if this is one of the Ed Joneses or someone else) wanted to know what DVD Ginger Carlucci, my errant former sublet, left in my DVD player.
It was David Gilmour In Concert. I have no idea who David Gilmour is, nor have I looked at the DVD. A google search reveals that Gilmour is a singer in a band called Pink Floyd. I vaguely recall hearing of this band (I think) when I was in high school. Anyone have any thoughts?
And, no, I have not heard from her since the last communication.
A reader in Los Angeles called AC wanted to know what specifically I hated so much about Wicked, the musical currently packing them in at the Gershwin Theatre on Broadway and soon to be seen in a city near you. Perhaps some of my other readers can chime in here with their own thoughts. This means YOU Jess, MAK, and Famous Author Rob Brynes.
Okay, AC...I assume you read my original review published here.
Since I have not revisted the show, something I do intend to do at some point, if only to catch the performance of Jennifer Laura Thompson as Glinda, I don't have much more to add.
It has stuck me since that Wicked is less an adaptation of Gregory Maguire's novel than a retread of the Elton John/Tim Rice Aida, another bad musical that, regardless of its utter lack of redeeming qualities, nonetheless had its partisans. You see in both shows we have a golden boy who first falls for a golden girl before discovering a deeper kind of love with the golden girl's friend, the social outcast. Golden boy and social outcast attempt to hide their love from golden girl, but she finds out anyway and there's hell to pay. And a more serious golden girl is left alone at the end to pick up the pieces and go forth wiser than before.
Aida, at least, has an honest ending, albeit with a tacked on Disney coda. Wicked tries the exact same thing, but the way that its tacked on ending is incorporated into the story rings more and more false every time I think about it.
Incidentally, both shows feature(d) (nearly identical) choreography courtesy of Wayne Cilento.
I advise anyone who's seen Wicked on Broadway to check out Gregory Maguire's novel. While I realize that no adaptation of any book, for stage or film, is going to be as fleshed out or take every characterization and subplot into consideration, the creators of Wicked seem to have bought the title and the idea, but made up their own story.
Now, if you're looking for a primer on adapting a cumbersome novel for the stage, I'd advise looking no further than the popular Les Miserables, a terrific boiling down of a bloated masterpiece. All the high points are hit, the various storylines included in the show make sense, but nothing really deviates from Hugo's novel in any important way.
Okay, here concludes today's rant on Wicked.
By the way, I know this show has its defenders who feel passionately that it's, at the very least, competent. While I do not feel that competency is something that the creators were burdened with here, if someone would like to defend the musical by buying me a ticket and taking me to dinner, I'd be happy to argue the point in person.
I'm just sayin'.
So I'm decamping for Florida tomorrow to spend about a week and a half visiting my parents at their winter condo in Stuart. I am very much looking forward to spending a lot of time hanging by the pool and spending time in the warmth.
Oh, and today is my Dad's 68th birthday! Happy Birthday, Dad!
I'm taking the laptop with me and I expect to be able to post fairly regularly. Lucky You. :)
More later...
So I got the following email from Ginger Carlucci today:
i just got released from the hospital. i can't respond, or write emails, except for the subject line. i'm working on sending you some money this week.
This entire message was indeed contained within the subject line and there was nothing in the body of the email.
No idea if there's even a grain of truth here, but we'll see.
I'm heading to Florida tomorrow and I have gotten the entire fee upfront this time from the new sublet. Yep. Life's a bitch and now so am I.
FURTHER: The thing is...even if this chick was hospitalized the moment she left my apartment, she knew that she owed me the money, so she could have either told the boyfriend to get in touch and let me know what was going on or done so herself however it was that she contacted me today.
I am the easiest boy in New York to contact. I'm even in the phone book. And these folks know where I live.
Also, I discovered over the weekend that she'd left a DVD in the DVD player and I sent email to let her know. I wonder if her getting in contact is possibly to keep me from chucking the DVD and trying to figure out how to get it back without actually paying what she owes me?
So I'm skeptical. I'll believe this money when I see it. Life is a bitch...and it starts in third grade.
I recently had the opportunity to check in with two musicals that I'd seen before, one that I love and for which a friend happened to have an extra ticket, and one I wasn't sure about at which I'd made the decision to volunteer usher again in hopes of being able to process better.
These would be...Avenue Q and Pacific Overtures.
This was my third visit to Avenue Q (interestingly enough, I have yet to pay for a ticket to this) and the show (retaining its entire original cast thus far) is holding up nicely. To be fair, I caught one of lead John Tartaglia's final performances. He's gone now, replaced by his understudy Barrett Foa, who is, by all accounts, excellent in his own right. Carmen Ruby Floyd was also on as Gary Coleman, replacing an absent Natalie Venetia Belcon.
Performance-wise, things are as nearly perfect as they always have been. Tartaglia was giving it his all and showing us why he's emerged as the production's charismatic star. He even got applause on his entrance, something none of the other actors or have ever gotten at the other performances I've attended. Stephanie D'Abruzzo seemed to have lower energy than normal, but it didn't really affect her playing that much. In retrospect, it may have only seemed so because she spends much of the show standing next to Tartaglia who was in the final stretch of his time with the production and putting out enough energy to light Philadelphia for a week.
Floyd was a fine Gary Coleman, even if she lacked the pinpoint timing of Belcon. I'm so used to hearing Belcon's voice in this part from having seen the show twice before and listening to the cast album that it was strange to have some of the lines delivered just a hair off from where they should be. Doesn't sound horrible, I know, and it wasn't. But some of her jokes just didn't land as they should have and that was a shame. No one seeing this for the first time, as my friend was, would even have noticed. I'm guessing that this is just because Floyd hasn't been playing this part day in and day out for 2 years in front of audiences and hasn't quite gotten to the level of Belcon, who has been.
So Avenue Q is still the sharpest show in town and still a prime example of that dying genre, parody that comes from a place of love and respect for its source. Go see it again, especially if you're one of those Wicked acolytes who think that that bloated sequin is the best musical since you learned to spell "theatre" way back in the olden days of 2002.
I had wanted to take in a second performance of Pacific Overtures because I just wasn't sure what I thought of this obscure, challenging Sondheim piece the first time. There was so much to take in that I had trouble processing it all.
Upon second viewing, I like it very much. I can definitely hear that it was composed in the same era as Sweeney Todd, Sondheim's next show after it.
I think the return visit allowed me to "tune out" the visual aspects of the production and focus on the words and music. I don't mean that the physical production was bad or took away from the show in any way, just that there is much to see here and my tiny brain can only take in so much at one time.
While I understand that this show isn't everyone's cup of tea (there were numerous walk-outs at intermission), I get it now. It's never going to be my favourite musical, or even my favourite Sondheim, but I do see why this piece is considered every bit as brilliant in its own way as Sweeney Todd or Sunday in the Park with George.
The episodic structure put me off somewhat the first time. This time, rather than concentrating on what disjoined the scenes, I was able to see what unites them. My friend compared this aspect of the show to Titanic, meaning that we are introduced to a random set of characters united only by a cataclysmic event at which they all happen by chance to be present. The characters and their reactions to this event represent society as a whole.
The cast was much the same as when I saw the show before. B.D. Wong continued (the production has since closed) as the Reciter, a narrator-like character who is the audience's guide to this foreign world. I loved Wong's performance the first time and he was equally good the second. With the force of his personality, he serves to draw in the audience who go along with him as he narrates, recites proverbs and poetry, and plays various parts in the action. He's like a more benign version of Cabaret's infamous Emcee.
Okay, so there were problems...mainly poor enunication of Sondheim's complex lyrics. This was especially apparent in the fast paced "Please Hello" number in the second act when much of the comedy comes from the lyrics and much of which was lost when we couldn't quite understand them. I also lost some of the spoken word parts in the finale, and I couldn't tell if that was an actor problem, a sound problem, or simply due to the fact that I was sitting too near the percussion section of the orchestra.
This production should have run longer. But I understand why it didn't. It's too much like theatre oatmeal ("Eat this, it's good for you"). Even I, a Sondheim fan, had to see it twice in order to fully grasp it and give it a unqualified rave. I can definitely imagine that a casual theatregoer would not have the patience for it.
I'm so glad that the Roundabout has established this relationship that it seems to now have with Sondheim. Starting with their controversial revival of Follies a few seasons back, they have been regularly presenting Sondheim works on Broadway and will continue to do so with their importing of the current London production of Sweeney Todd next season.
Dare I hope for an Anyone Can Whistle sometime soon?
Just in from a rehearsal for My Favorite Year. We were working on staging a song called "Manhattan," which is the biggest "dance" number in the show. Actually, it's more about traffic control than dancing. Anyway, you'll notice that I haven't written much about my experience thus far doing this show. Just no desire to write about it so far. Nothing exciting really to report.
On Saturday, I took in a matinee of Democracy, the new Michael Frayn play on Broadway at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre courtesy of London's Royal National Theatre. You probably know Frayn from his plays Copenhagen and Noises Off, his two biggest hits to date. This play, a meditation on German politics in the 1960's and 1970's, definitely falls more into the Copenhagen millieu of mixing fact and fiction in an attempt to illuminate history.
The play has gotten mixed reviews here in New York (the one point of agreement being that the London production was better), but I really liked it and found it very compelling. Although after seeing Twelve Angry Men last week, it was weird to be seeing yet another play featuring a large group of white guys (10, in this case) talking.
Though this is very much an ensemble piece, James Naughton and Richard Thomas are at its center playing West German chancellor Willy Brandt and his assistant Gunter Guillaume, who was later convicted of spying for East Germany. Much of the play is framed as conversation between Thomas' Guillaume and his espionage contact, Arno Kretschmann, played by New York theatre mainstay Michael Cumpsty.
I have to admit that, on paper, this play, with its neverending discussion of the minutiae of German politics of the day, sounds stultifyingly dull. But the relationships created between the characters and the audience's knowledge of Guillaume's true intentions manage to create an air of tension that engages the audience almost immediately.
The set is a two level representation of various offices in Bonn and perfectly recreates the utilitarian atmosphere of a post-war Germany. There's a scenic effect in the second act when the espionage shit hits the fan that I found to be a particularly apt metaphor for the goings-on on stage. I won't reveal exactly what it is, but it reminded me of a similar moment in the revival of the J.B. Priestley play An Inspector Calls (another Royal National Theatre production) from a few seasons ago.
Naughton is terrific as Brandt, Germany's first liberal chancellor since before World War II. This Brandt comes to power as a grass roots hero of the people, only to become mired in indecision and scandal. He really makes you see the man behind the politician who genuinely wants to help his people, and has no idea how to do it. He is thwarted at every turn by the need to maintain his party's fragile coalition and controversy over establishing relations with the Soviet Union, Poland, and, most of all, East Germany.
Richard Thomas is also terrific as that nice, unassuming, helpful guy from the office...who turns out to be an East German spy. (If I had a nickel for every time THAT happened...) The audience is let in on this fact almost from the beginning of the play, and yet, it's impossible not to like Thomas' Gunter Guillaume. His genuine amazement at the random forces of chance that allow him to become Brandt's right hand man is infectious and I found myself having to remember that the man was a top ranked espionage officer.
The irony here is that Guillaume isn't really spilling secrets to the East. The Brandt government was sympathetic to the East Germans and wanted to open ties to the country for the betterment of all Germans. And the East Germans (shown to be very pro-Brandt) weren't trying to bring Brandt down, but rather just wanted a conduit into the highest reaches of West German government in order to keep tabs on things. That Guillaume's unmasking as a spy proved to be one of the final nails in Brandt's political coffin would prove to be another irony.
Michael Frayn has a way with this sort of play. Just as Copenhagen wasn't really about nuclear physics, Democracy isn't really about cold war German politics. At the heart of both plays are real people with real relationships who have to question who they are and what they stand for and why. And that's why you should go and check this out.
Hey, Folks!...It's an actual play...on Broadway even...a rare species in this age of theme park shows passing for musicals. If you're lamenting a theatrical future of Mamma Mia clones and live Disney cartoons, go see this. You'll be glad you did.