In my various anorak confessions yesterday, I didn’t mention what is undoubtedly my favorite medium: television. Yes, when I was planning our London vacation for February 2006, I spent quite a bit of time studying theatrical offerings, but the timing of the trip was determined by TV: I wanted to watch the BBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics. (I also happened to find myself in Britain in August 2004 for the two weeks of the Athens Olympics!)
Once again, in no particular order, some of my favorite shows from 2006:
The Wire. I have a bit of a prejudice against the Sunday night offerings of the premium channels—for some reason, people who don’t normally watch television tune into HBO (and very occasionally Showtime) on the Christian sabbath, deem what they see worthy of their attention, and immediately declare the shows they choose to watch to be superior television—even though they don’t watch any other television, and thus have nothing against which to compare them. Me? I usually watch three hours of telly each weeknight, and probably a little more on weekends, so, believe me, I have something to compare these shows with, and The Wire is definitely superior television.
I don’t understand why The Wire isn’t more popular—its writing is superb, which should win over intellectuals; it’s about gritty situations, which should appeal to fans of “urban” culture (yes, I know, that’s a lazy euphemism, but it’s New Year’s Eve); and the acting is fantastic, which should appeal to, well, everyone. Whatever. I kind of resent the Johnny- and Junie-Come-Latelies who got into the show by watching previous seasons on DVD (we TV hard-core-ists are terrible snobs about folks who watch television on DVD), but that bit of personal nonsense aside, I recommend The Wire to everyone and anyone.
I’ll add just two things: 1) For a show that at least appears to be written entirely by straight white men, it does an amazing job of presenting credible, complicated, and attractive gay, black characters—Omar, Kima, and Snoop (and remember we also once saw Rawls in a gay bar—I wonder if that will be the center of the next series, which will focus on the Baltimore media; you heard it here first, folks). 2) A lot is made of HBO’s ability to use profanity giving its shows an unfair advantage, but Wire writer David Mills made a great point in this Slate dialogue: What’s different about HBO is that writers don’t have to chop their stories into seven pieces. As he put it, “The ability to tell a tale from start to finish without interruption allows for much denser, much more nuanced writing.” He also mentions multiplays—I do appreciate that cable shows rerun new episodes several times over the course of a week—but I was fascinated by HBO’s decision to make episodes of The Wire available on demand six days before the episode went out over the air. I don’t think I ever actually watched a show on Sunday night. I could’ve, but I didn’t want to wait that long for my Wire fix. (By contrast, Showtime’s weird scheduling of the second series of Sleeper Cell, one episode per night over the course of eight days, with all episodes available on demand the day after the premier, just made me think that Showtime didn’t believe that it was compelling enough to bring viewers back week after week.)
The Closer. TNT did something really brave with the first episodes of The Closer—they introduced the character of Brenda Leigh to viewers just as she would’ve appeared to the LA detectives she’d been brought from Atlanta to supervise: like a twitchy, unconvincingly polite, sugar-scoffing weirdo. As she won over the cops during course of the first season, she also won the confidence of viewers—that Southern charm wasn’t entirely fake, but it was a way of disarming people. The second season was even better. Every good long-running TV show follows a pattern, and if it’s well-written and directed, viewers don’t necessarily realize there’s a template. In The Closer, the who/howdunnit of the case she’s working on comes to Brenda when she’s doing something in her messed-up private life. I also loved the two-hour special that aired a month or so ago—well, the plot was a bit silly, and the two hours were out of balance (I guess they were cut up that way so they could be re-run as two separate episodes)—but I loved the beginning when the veterans of Brenda’s squad were so frustrated by Commander Taylor’s lazy, take-the-solution-that’s-available attitude. That had been their attitude before Brenda came along, but she’d changed the way they thought.
Pilot season is my favorite time of the year, but this year I was in a terrible funk about the misogynist, homophobic, and just not funny sitcoms that the networks rolled out. Then came 30 Rock, which has me laughing out loud and nodding in appreciation of the intelligence of the humor (there are often sight gags that you have to freeze the frame to even see). (I did a Slate "Spoiler Special" podcast with TV critic Troy Patterson about the show back in October.) Speaking of superior sitcoms, I’m loving the sophomore season of How I Met Your Mother, which improved by leaps and bounds from the first series. At first, the writers were too stuck on the gimmick of a dad telling his kids about … how he met their mother. They still lean on that crutch from time to time, but it’s now comfortable being a smart series about couples and singles, which is pretty much all of modern life, isn’t it?
When Ugly Betty first started, I was skeptical. Oh, it was fine—likable enough, but inessential somehow. Then I realized that not only was I pretty much always watching it the night it aired (something I do less than half the time), I was also quoting the show to friends who hadn’t seen it. It’s the TV equivalent of an earworm, in other words. Two moments from the show stand out—when camp assistant Marc asked Betty’s fashion- and musical-theater-loving cousin Justin if he got picked on at school, and the outraged tone in which Wilhemina (played by Vanessa Williams) asked Daniel if he'd been looking at her when he suggested a Kwanzaa-themed issue of Mode. Both would’ve been easy to overplay (and, let’s face it, the show might get bigger numbers if they laid things on with a trowel), but they kept things relatively light and subtle.
South of Nowhere. Kids today don’t know they’re born. When I was growing up, there were no homos on television—except that one Sunday when ITV played The Killing of Sister George and the papers were full of outrage. Today’s youth can tune into their own tween channel, the N, and live in a fantasy world where two haut young teens can have a lesbian relationship where the biggest problem is that now Spencer is out to her parents, they never really have time alone together. Their friends all treat their relationship with respect, they get to go to the prom together with nary a raised eyebrow, and when Spencer’s mother freaks out when she finds the girls making out, it’s clear that her response is irrational, ergo homophobia is irrational. (Honorable mention: Noah’s Arc, Logo’s soap opera about a tight-knit group of gay black men in Los Angeles. Also a fantasy, but also a lovely one.)
I avoided the reality-TV trend. Knowing that I’m basically powerless over television, I just didn’t watch them, and when I did catch an episode, hopelessly out of context, the shows always seemed, well, dumb. Then I started to watch Project Runway. I guess the appeal is that even the most hopeless contestants demonstrate vision and practical skills, and the best of them have moments of mind-blowing creativity. I know that the shows are edited for maximum drama, and that they’ll always keep a bitch, a crazy person, and a regular person in the final stages (even if the crazy person’s skillz aren’t that mad), but it’s GOOD! The challenges are usually smart, the catwalk is an awesome climax (much better than the always rather anticlimactic tasting on Top Chef, which I also like), the judges are likable even when they’re bitchy, and Tim Gunn rocks the show.
After the disappointing penultimate season of The Sopranos, I was down on HBO and had low expectations for Big Love, but it won me over. Although the show didn’t ignore the big questions of polygamy (fear of discovery, the rights of the “wives” whose marriages aren’t registered with the state, the abuse of young women bonded to old men, the driving off of the young men of the communities to keep the young women for the old bucks, etc.), its strength was in the psychological portrayal of the characters—especially Bill and the three sister wives—and the representation of faith.
I guess I should also find a place on this list for the shows that I watch every single week, even if I think they’re kind of dumb. Pride of place goes to ESPN’s The Sports Reporters—the guests are often cliché-spouting blowhards, some of whom are so sure that they’re right about everything that you fear for their health (cf John Feinstein’s red-faced rant about the ridiculousness of the World Cup being decided by penalty kicks)—but I stick around for Mitch Albom’s ears, the opportunity to count how many lines from his Sunday Daily News column Mike Lupica can recite on the show, and John Saunders’ Canadianity. Also in this category: On Stage and Theater Talk.
I’ll give the last slot to British detective shows—those short-run series that show up out of the blue on that unfathomable mystery that is the BBC America schedule or on the sickly beast known as PBS. The standout from the last year was, of course, the final Prime Suspect, but the Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Waking the Dead, The Night Detective, and even Rosemary and Thyme get rapt attention in our house. At least a couple of those shows are products of commercial television, but the BBC programs do have that advantage of uninterrupted narrative—that is, no false “now we go to commercial” climaxes to reach every 12 minutes—and rather more robust language than I can imagine hearing on U.S. network shows.
Let’s start this little trek down memory lane with a look at my favorite books of 2006. (And, to state the obvious, not all were published in 2006; that’s just when I read them.)
I start here because I had a wonderful year of reading. When I anally add a title to my list(s), I give it a simple A-C listing (I suppose I could go below C, but the chances of my finishing something that wasn’t even worth a C are slim). At the end of the year, I try to stick with the contemporaneous rating, even though I sometimes feel I’ve been rather harsh—or perhaps it’s that I get more generous as the memory fades. This year, of the 57 titles that I read, I only awarded one C—to Piers Morgan’s The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade—and really, the failing grade was awarded to the odious Mr. Morgan; the diaries themselves, although clearly bogus in that they were written long after the events occurred, were hideously compelling. I also only gave five B- ratings, along with 29 B’s, 20 B+s, and two well-deserved A’s.
Not necessarily in order of preference, 10 (more or less) favorites from 2006:
Arguments With England: A Memoir, by Michael Blakemore. I have to admit, I didn’t know who Michael Blakemore was when I first came across this book, but the copy that came to the office included the glowing review Simon Callow wrote for the Guardian, which convinced me to give it a whirl. What a fantastic book! Blakemore is a wonderfully evocative writer—about acting (both doing it and witnessing it), family, promiscuity, relationships, leaving home, England in the 1950s and ‘60s. Ach, he’s great about pretty much everything, actually. It’s one of those memoirs that feels honest (how can we ever really know?) because he doesn’t pretend that he didn’t fail at some things or that he wasn’t sometimes a bit silly or pompous, but he also avoids that annoying memoirist’s trick of pretending that everyone got along wonderfully and life was always peachy. The young Blakemore is often broke and feuding (most entertainingly with Peter Hall) and involved in messy love triangles (most entertainingly with Vanessa Redgrave and Peter Hall), but by the end of the book, he’s starting to have some success as a director. I hope he’s working on another volume right now, because after spending nearly 400 pages on his early stumblings, I want to know what happened as he became more sure-footed. (His novel Next Season is also very entertaining. Read it after you’ve read the memoir, so you recognize the real folks behind the fictional characters.)
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, by Alison Bechdel If there’s a You Say Tomato books of the year list, there’s an Alison Bechdel title onit. After more than 20 years and at least 11 volumes of Dykes to Watch Out For, her intricately detailed (and very funny) social history that sparkled in relative obscurity, the wonderful Fun Home—a graphic memoir—got the plaudits and attention that Alison has always deserved. (Time magazine’s book of the year, Entertainment Weekly’s nonfiction book of the year, and a million Top 10 lists.) Still, I can’t help wondering if a) the word “dykes” hadn’t been in the titles; b) there’d been a man at the center of those earlier books, she might’ve avoided all those years of obscurity.
Obedience, Struggle and Revolt, by David Hare. I know, it sounds like a report from the B&D committee of a Spartacist splinter group, and no one could accuse David Hare of being a comedian, but there’s some wonderful stuff in this collection of lectures. (Yes, lectures.) I could’ve done with a little less John Osborne worship (Sir David, baby, make your case and move on), but Hare is a clear thinker and (sometimes) a devastating case-maker.
Primo Time, by Antony Sher. Obviously, a lot of this year’s reading was focused, in one way or another, on the theater. Of the “actorly” books that I took in, I particularly enjoyed Sher’s account of developing his one-man show Primo—fashioned from Primo Levi’s writings about his time in Auschwitz. It seems silly to complain about the author being self-absorbed—that’s kind of the point of the book—but if any of my friends were contemplating becoming involved with an actor, I’d get a copy of this book into their hands, stat! Years ago, I read Sher’s wonderful novel Middlepost. I’m not sure if it was in Primo Time or Year of the King that Sher talks openly about his frustration at the low effort-to-response ratio of fiction-writing and his hopes that his diaries might be a profitable side line (I’m being much more crass about it than he was). I hope they do—like Simon Callow (with whom he has a ton in common and with whom, I understand, he has quite a rivalry)—it’s astonishing that such a talented actor would be such an excellent writer.
Fifth Row Center: A Critic’s Year On and Off Broadway, by Benedict Nightingale, and The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway, by William Goldman. Nightingale comes across as the nicer chap (or perhaps it’s my soft spot for writers who confess their flaws) and Goldman is the more astute phenomenon-namer, but both these books taught me a lot about commercial theater, New York, and the life of the theater critic.
Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq, by Rory Stewart. It was a bit of a year for memoirs for me. I also enjoyed Stewart’s The Places in Between, but this account of his time as vice-governor of the Iraqi province of Maysan is astonishing. The conflict in Iraq has brought us some great books (The Assassin’s Gate, Imperial Life in the Emerald City, to name but a couple), but Stewart wasn’t a journalist or an academic (like Larry Diamond, whose Squandered Victory is also about how bureaucracy and meddling politicians made a tough challenge impossible); he’s a traveler who wants to make a difference by listening to people and taking account of history and trying to do the right thing. He doesn’t have a career to make or points to score, and he has to admit defeat pretty early. (Read excerpts from the book at Slate.)
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11, by Lawrence Wright. The chapters about the philosophical origins of al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden’s path to infamy are fabulous. As interesting as the latter sections on flawed FBI agent John O’Neill are, that part of the book felt overpowered by the brilliance of the al-Qaida section. Still, as everyone says, it’s a total page-turner.
The Q Guide to Broadway, by Seth Rudetsky. I bought this book to give to a musical-theater-loving British friend who’s coming to New York in the spring. In the end, I had to buy a new copy to give away, because I couldn’t bear to part with it. It’s a small, unpretentious book, and Rudetsky wears his expertise lightly. Not only does he have musical-theater trivia down flat, he really knows music and does a great job of explaining why some songs or musicals work while others don’t. It’s also laugh-out-loud-on-the-subway funny.
What Was She Thinking?: Notes on a Scandal, by Zoe Heller. I picked up the novel, which I’d been wanting to read for a while, in anticipation of the movie. I inhaled the book—it’s smart, it’s beautifully observed, and it’s deliciously creepy—but having finally seen a trailer for the movie and read some reviews, I won’t be seeing it, as much as I love Dame Judi and Dame-to-be Cate. The book is a classic example of an unreliable narrator, which I guess you have to clarify when making a movie, but making a predatory friend into a predatory lesbian is not cool.
The Shadow of the Sun, by Ryszard Kapuscinski. If the beginning of the year was all about theatrical tomes, the last month or two has been dominated by Africa. In January, I’m off to Nigeria, so I’ve been boning up by reading books with such cheery titles as The Open Sore of a Continent, This House Has Fallen, and Where Vultures Feast. Someone recommended Kapuscinski, and all I can say is, “Why haven’t I read him before?” I immediately ordered four other collections—and have loved Shah of Shahs, about Iran. Wonderful writing, and a great translation by Klara Glowczewska.
The Emperor’s Children, by Claire Messud. It’s been a while since I read the big novel of the moment and truly enjoyed it. Hideous and yet irresistible characters, a relentless narrative, and lovely observation. I haven’t had a chance to listen to the Slate Audio Book Club discussion of the book yet, but I will, very soon.
The final rundown on my 2006 reading was: 57 books, of which 22 were works of fiction (including four young-adult novels), 28 were nonfiction (including two works of graphic nonfiction), and seven were plays.
As I said about this time last year, I’m more than a little embarrassed by my habit of making compulsive lists of the movies and plays that I see and the books that I read. (Actually, I’ve only been keeping a list of the plays that I see for a couple of years now—I wish I had a better record of what I’d seen in London, Madrid, Seattle, and on my quick jaunts to New York when I still lived on the West Coast.)
Anyhoo, what’s the point of feeling self-conscious about my anorak tendencies, may as well just revel in them and reveal them. (And it’s not like I’m providing a pivot table or offering any complicated correlations.)
In 2006, I saw 71 plays (confession: this does count five constituent plays of Druid/Synge separately; second confession, yes, five, I left before the last one!); I saw 22 movies; and I read 57 books.
Movie-going has taken a huge hit since we moved to New York. I saw 106 movies in 2004, my last full year in Seattle; then 42 in 2005; then 22 in this first full year here. New York is a great movie city—but so is Seattle. There’s nothing like the magnificent SIFF on my New York cultural agenda, nor is there anything like the Warren Report —at least that I’m aware of. (The one time I went to a New York ObserverCinema Club screening, the line was ridiculous. We didn’t make it into the movie, despite arriving early—I decided right then that it wasn’t worth saving the price of admission.) But the biggest reason for the low movie count, of course, was that I spent more than 65 afternoons and evenings in the theater.
I don’t think I’ll do a series of Top 10 lists or anything quite so formal, but check back over the next couple of days for my thoughts on the most memorable—and sometimes disappointing—plays, books, movies, TV shows, and music of 2006.
Last week I read David Hare's amazing collection of lectures (that's right, lectures), Obedience, Struggle & Revolt.
I'm not usually the kind of person to copy things out of books, but this collection had me reaching for pen and paper every few pages.
I definitely, and unfortunately, recognized myself in this:
To an extent the theater will always be a magnet for hobbyists, people who are drawn like trainspotters or matchbox fans to compare different performances of Hamlet. They form, if you like, a core audience, who survive over the years. Their overriding interest is in the maintenance and improvement of their collections, and so they will direct their attention not so much at what is said, as to the skills which are being used to say it.
My favorite books of 2005, in no particular order:
Rumpole and the Penge Bungalow Murders, by John Mortimer I’ve been reading Rumpole since I was skiving off school more than 30 years ago. In the early—it now seems glory—days of British daytime television, they mostly ran old films, nostalgic TV shows that might appeal to old folks (Sam, World at War, that kind of thing) and mysteries—including the fabulous Crown Court and Rumpole of the Bailey. Even though Leo McKern has left the Bailey, when I’m reading these books, I still see his crumpled old one-eyed face in Rumpole’s, the second Hilda, and the haughty Patricia Hodge as Phyllida Erskine-Brown, “the Portia of our chambers.” What’s the sports cliché—we shouldn’t have gotten this far, so the rest is just gravy. But such tasty gravy! (On another note—I was shocked to learn recently that Emily Mortimer, one of my favorite actresses, is John Mortimer’s daughter. And that he had a son with Wendy Craig of Butterflies fame!)
The Strange Death of Tory England, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft The very beginning is rather hard going, but once he’s established his theme, it’s terribly readable and extremely interesting. Wheatcroft sure has a way with a sentence. I still can’t really tell where his sympathies lie—which is a good thing, I suppose.
Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America, by Sarah Schulman This book had been sitting on my shelves for years, and as the movie version of Rent neared, I thought I’d better read it for research purposes. What an amazing exposé of homophobia in culture and commerce. Utterly convincing and utterly devastating.
Popco, by Scarlett Thomas Popco started off wonderfully—full of ideas about the way girls play and learn, codes, parenting, work, etc.—and buckled under the weight of too many ideas/plot strands about halfway through. That first half was really exciting, though!
Incendiary, by Chris Cleave Incendiary got a bad rap (but a lot of attention) because of timing—it’s a book about terrorism (a woman who has lost her husband and son in a terrorist attack writes a letter to Osama Bin Laden), and its pub date was July 7, the day of the London subway and bus bombings. The publicity campaign (complete with posters in the Underground) got canceled, the New York Timescalled the book “a case of simple tastelessness,” but I really enjoyed it. At first I was suspicious—it’s a book by a man (and my guess is a middle-class man) in the voice of a working-class woman. I’m not sure that American readers will get the cultural references—OK, the class references—but the book’s publisher told the Guardian that more than half of the 25,000 copies sold have been to the export market, which “perhaps confirms that distance has enabled people to read this brilliant debut novel on its own terms."
Invasion of the Dykes to Watch Out For, by Alison Bechdel Another series that has become part of my life. This is the 11th installment in a series that I hope will go on forever. Mo, c’est moi, even if we have less and less in common, at least politically. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to go Log Cabin, but my views on the Iraq war have little in common with Mo’s.) I love all the little details and jokes in the drawings—you have to read each panel at least five times to experience the five stages of DTWOF appreciation.
The Night Watch, by Sarah Waters Shockingly, perhaps, this is the first Sarah Waters novel I’ve read. It’s a story about World War II, more or less, and it’s told backward, in three sections set in 1947, 1944, and 1942, respectively. Waters is clearly a fantastic writer, and she was able to make me think about a well-trod subject, the war, in new ways. My only frustration is that about three-quarters of the way through, you realize that you’re never going to know how the various characters resolved their lives—you’ll be able to explain their behavior in 1947, but not how they’re going to move on. It’s funny how much messing with the traditional conflict/resolution arc frustrates a reader (this one, anyway).
The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, by George Packer The first draft of history, only this one’s almost perfect. Packer is tremendously thoughtful, a remarkable reporter, and a beautiful writer. A fantastic portrait of what the administration did in Iraq after the war “ended.”
"I Didn't Do It for You": How the World Betrayed a Small African Nation, by Michela Wrong I hate the title of this book—it doesn’t even mention Eritrea, the small nation under discussion, but I loved the content. After you read this book, it’s tempting to look at every news event and wonder how exactly Eritrea is going to be dragged into it—because history suggests it eventually will.
And one I didn’t like at all:
A Necessary Spectacle: Billie Jean King, Bobby Riggs, and the Tennis Match That Leveled the Game, by Selena Roberts It’s really too bad Roberts used the word “necessary” in the title, because that’s the last thing this book is. Its publication is inexplicable to me—there’s no anniversary, there’s no new insight into the match, into women’s tennis, and certainly not into Billie Jean King. If there’s one person I’d like to read a good biography of—one that really explains her personality and motivations, it’s BJK, but this book provides absolutely nothing that we haven’t known for decades.
The complete list. Breakdown: Fiction 11; Nonfiction 13; Comic 2; Play 1; Hybrid (the utterly misbegotten Hotel Babylon) 1.
Before I move on to my best-of other media, a few words about one play/performance that I did not enjoy:
Abigail’s Party was a great disappointment—as it was almost certainly destined to be; I spent a good deal of the sixth form “doing” the dialogue with my classmates, one of whom was named Ange (though she was nothing like either Mousy Ange or Take-Charge Ange—I believe she lives with a formerly drug-addicted Britpop star these days), so there was a lot of “Like Feliciano, Ange? Good, inne? Sexy!” Jennifer Jason Leigh was physically perfect for the role of Beverly (it’s no doubt telling that I originally typed “Alison” there), but her voice was just awful. What accent was that supposed to be? Either way, it was all wrong in terms of class and social signifiers—the only thing it had in common with Alison Steadman’s perfect pitch was that it was hard on the ears. Jennifer, sweetie, there’s more to it than just sounding obnoxious. Without any social/class context, the play meant absolutely nothing. Still, it was just extended for the second time.
I gave a C to the preview version of Sarah Schulman’s Manic Flight Reaction, which now feels rather unfair—it was a preview after all (when I saw it for real a few weeks later, it was clear to me that the lead actress hadn’t really known her lines in that second performance of the run!). I really admire Sarah, and I like her work very much indeed, but some parts of the play seemed just too broad—there was nothing to redeem the “character” of the tabloid journalist, and I didn’t care for the flashback with the main character, Marge’s, mother—but I loved the intention of the play, I really enjoyed the relationship between the mother and daughter at the center of the work, and I loved the scene in which Marge reconnects with Cookie, the woman who “opened [her] up sexually” (as Annie Hall might’ve put it), now the Republican-cliché-spouting wife of a Republican presidential nominee. There were an enormous number of things that I liked about the play (and to a lesser extent about the production), but there were also a lot of elements that I didn’t like at all. There were about 10 times more ideas in Manic Flight Reaction as there are in most American plays—but it would probably have been a better work with only four times as many as the norm.
Since I left the ratings that I gave to the plays/operas I saw in 2005 on the list I posted, in theory this is the easiest group from which to extract my favorites. Of the 29 productions I saw last year, the following received a B+ or higher. They’re in the order I saw them.
The Pillowman, by Martin McDonagh, seen on Broadway An amazing piece of work—but is it really a play? Despite fantastic staging and great acting, including some fine performances from actors more known for their work on the big screen (Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum), this struck me as more of a staged horror story than a play. For distressingly common reasons (specifically, a deaf audience member sitting on the front row of the balcony getting into a loud argument with the folks sitting next to him—I mention his deafness because it meant he was unwittingly loud in his remonstrations; so loud I was afraid the actors might stop the performance, as they did when I saw Copenhagen in London), a layer of the “real world” prevented me from fully engaging with the play, especially in the first act, but given the grotesqueries, perhaps I should’ve been glad for the unwanted distance. I always get the sense that even more than for most actors, Jeff Goldblum’s acting style is determined by his height—his physical presence seems to drive all his choices, from the way he controls his voice to the way he sits, the way he walks. In this play, his default state was a great fit for his role—he had to be a man who conveyed a sense of barely restrained power, both physical and bureaucratic, that the poor sap on the receiving end had to be very careful not to set off.
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, by David Yazbek/Jeffrey Lane, seen on Broadway Ah, the joy of low expectations. I’d never been very fond of musicals—I can probably count how many I’ve seen before moving to New York on the fingers of both hands, and the ones I’ve been impressed by on one—and we got tickets for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels for the sake of an out-of-town visitor. What fun! A cool set, genuinely funny lines, good acting (we went to the pre-Tony show, and you could really tell that everyone was pleasantly nervous, especially Norbert Leo Butz, who was heavily favored to win—and did), and singing that amazed me (I just couldn’t believe the quality of Sherie Rene Scott’s voice).
Hecuba, by Euripides, adapted by Tony Harrison, seen at BAM There was just one reason I got these tickets—Vanessa Redgrave. I’ve seen her in comedies, dramas, and tragedies, and she’s never let me down. The most striking thing about this production was technique—it really is what separates British actors, especially in the classical repertoire. The performance was unamplified, and even thought it was staged in the BAM Opera House, it was a little difficult to catch some of the dialogue, or should I say declamations. I stupidly bought tickets in the cheap seats, and BAM management annoyingly allowed people to enter up to 45 minutes into the performance, which meant the spell kept getting broken, but even with the heavy-handed Iraq symbolism, I enjoyed it immensely.
Border/Clash: A Litany of Desires, by Staceyann Chin, seen off-Broadway The biggest problem with one-person shows is what the actor does with him- or herself while they’re speaking—even an actor of Antony Sher’s caliber didn’t quite succeed in overcoming dangling-arm syndrome (in this sense it helps to if your character’s an alcoholic so you can keep a glass in your hand at all times). Staceyann Chin’s performance in her autobiographical show was particularly impressive for what she did with her body—tremendous energy used in the service of her words (it didn’t hurt that she stripped down to bra and panties a couple of times, either). And as moronic as it makes me seem to say this, the fact that I only realized toward the end of the show that she was reciting poetry rather than performing a script seemed like a good thing.
Das Rheingold, Die Walkure, Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung, by Richard Wagner, seen at Seattle Opera My third complete Ring cycle (all at Seattle), and I can’t imagine a more amazing live "show." The special effects of the movies (swimming Rheinmaidens, fire-belching dragons, sometimes flying horses), the compelling story of a really high-quality elemental soap opera, amazing music, wonderful singers, and the required immersion of a "properly" mounted cycle—four operas performed over the space of six nights—there’s absolutely nothing to compare. Alan Woodrow as Seigfried couldn’t act for toffee, but his voice was just right, and Jane Eaglen was magnificent (I can’t believe I was worried after Walkure, when she’d seemed to be holding back to a worrying degree—she’s done this before and knew what she needed to do to keep the voice going for the later operas that she needed to carry). Greer Grimsley, who I’d seen several times before and thought so-so on was the best Wotan I’ve seen—clearly he’s found his perfect role.
Doubt: A Parable, by John Patrick Shanley, seen on Broadway Cherry Jones is such a goddess—an unparalleled actress and an out lesbian (LOVE the smooch at the Tonys), I wanted so much to like it that I was afraid I’d be disappointed. No worries. A beautifully spare throwback to the days of well-made plays and yet with themes that are absolutely contemporary. I must say I’m a little shock that Eileen Atkins, that is, Dame Eileen Atkins, is taking over next week when Cherry Jones moves on—she seems shockingly overqualified to be a replacement, but I guess it’s a testament to the appeal of the role.
Sweeney Todd, by Stephen Sondheim/Hugh Wheeler, seen in preview on Broadway This had so many strikes against it—a musical (and Sondheim to boot, I remember years ago accompanying a Sondheim queen to a performance of Sunday in the Park With George on the West End and his being absolutely exasperated that I wasn’t transported by its genius), a novelty staging (I’d just seen Rent—strictly for research purposes—the week before and was exasperated by all the faffing around with the set), a high concept, and all that buzz about Patti LuPone (who I mostly know as a minor player on Oz) and her tuba. I thought it magnificent—the conceit really worked for me, I couldn’t believe how well the cast performed musically (playing sans score, of course), the songs were great. I loved it. In the couple of months before I’d seen several shows that I really liked but that were critically panned (for example, A Naked Girl on the Appian Way), but I had absolutely no doubt that this would be a hit.
4:48 Psychose, by Sarah Kane, performed in French at BAM Talk about forebodings of doom—a month or so after I bought tickets for this, a letter came from BAM basically warning the audience-to-be that this was going to be a difficult play, performed by Isabelle Huppert in French with very limited subtitles. Maybe I did what the director, Claude Régy (I don’t know for sure that the letter was his doing, but I strongly suspect it) intended and came to the play prepared. I bought the script in advance, I read up on Sarah Kane’s life and work; I can’t say that I did anything about my very rusty French, but I at least thought about it. When we arrived at the theater, it was, as one of the ushers put it, “under heavy manners”—constant warnings that there’d be no late seating, forceful reminders that there’d be no re-entry if audience-members left, even rather motherly inquiries from the ushers if we’d been to the bathroom. All theaters should do this (save, perhaps, for the toilet police)—before the play began, there was a palpable sense that something mysterious and amazing was about to happen. I’ll never forget the look of “what the hell’s going on” on the faces of the ushers when, even before the lights went down, the audience went into a profound anticipatory silence as if by consensus. Régy’s direction and Huppert’s performance were peculiar to say the least—she effectively stood absolutely immobile (other than very occasional random-seeming hand spasms) speaking and shouting her lines amid long pauses. I was absolutely haunted by it—for days after I thought about the play, I re-read it, I attended the “chat” with Régy a couple of days later. Unfortunately, it seems that toward the end of the run they relaxed the heavy manners and completely lost the magic. A colleague who went on the last day told me that they were allowing late entries more than halfway into the performance, which made it impossible to connect with the work. If it hadn’t been for the Ring, this would be my favorite theatrical experience of 2005.
I’ve always been a bit embarrassed by my compulsion to keep track of the movies I see and the books I read. My dad, who has always had food issues (if I’d never left England, no doubt that last clause would’ve read “who’s a fat bastard” or possibly, if I were feeling kinder, “who’s a greedy bugger”) has this thing about writing down everything he eats, so my own semi-compulsive list-keeping has always struck me as a bit dysfunctional or maybe just embarrassing. Nevertheless, I do it, as do many other fully functional humans, so rather than hide and deny, I should just be cop to it—and at least get some blog posts out of it to help with the New Year resolutions.
In 2005, distractions at the beginning of the year (you know, the whole packing up and moving 3,000 miles from Seattle to New York thing), missing SIFF, having a later-ending workday, and the endless alternative options here meant that I saw fewer than half as many movies in 2005 as I did in 2004—42 as compared to 106. (I don’t care how good televisions get, I only consider myself to have “seen” a movie when I watch it in a movie theater—if you can pause or do a so doku while you’re watching, it’s just not the same.) Books were comparable—28 in 2005 versus 30 in 2004—but once again I only counted books that I finished; I often read almost all of a book, usually for work purposes, but if I don’t read every last word, it doesn’t make the list. This is a shockingly pathetic total, but I suppose that’s the price of podcasting and hour upon hour of television every night. New in 2005, I attended 29 theatrical productions—mostly what Variety would call “Legit” theater, but I cheated slightly and included the four operas that I saw this year—Seattle Opera’s magnificent Ring cycle.
Tomorrow (or soon thereafter), I’ll offer my bests and worsts of the year, but for now enjoy the list of movies, books, and theatrical/operatic works I experienced in 2005. Later I'll get to the media that I'm not so compulsive, though no less enthusiastic, about: television and music.
