I saw 71 shows in 2006—24 on Broadway, 36 other shows in New York, 10 shows in London, and one in Manchester, England. 59 were plays, 11 musicals, and one could probably best be described as a play with music (the wonderful Nights at the Circus, which I saw at the Lyric, Hammersmith). Looking back on the letter grade I assigned to the shows when I got home from seeing them (I’ve made only slight tweaks to the original grades on the list I posted), a lot of them seem off. Partly it’s a comparison thing—I said Bridge & Tunnel was better than Awake and Sing!?—and partly I notice that I’m stingier with ratings when I’m seeing a lot of shows in a short period; but theater being a fleeting medium, perhaps the shows and performances that linger are the “best.”
Rather than a Top 10 list, this is more of a list of the shows that I saw in the 2006 calendar year that stuck with me most. For the moment, I’ll stick to New York shows.
TWELFTH NIGHT (Chekhov International Theatre Festival at BAM, dir. Declan Donnellan). This Russian troupe gave a master class in acting technique.
THE BOGUS WOMAN (by Kay Adshead, seen at 59E59 in the Brits Off-Broadway series). Some critics found this play over-the-top and unbelievable; I found it all too credible. In a year of outstanding one-woman performances, Sarah Niles’ tour-de-force was shiver-inducing.
DRUID/SYNGE (Lincoln Center Festival). The marathon aspect didn’t bother me one bit; in fact, I’m sure I got a lot more out of the plays by seeing them in succession. The outstanding elements were Riders to the Sea and, especially, The Playboy of the Western World. (Yes, of course I'm seeing The Coast of Utopia in a marathon—I'm a Wagenerian!)
IN THE CONTINUUM (Danai Gurira & Nikkole Salter, seen at the Perry Street Theater, RIP). Beautifully subtle acting and writing from two young artists on a subject that tends to repel subtlety.
SATELLITES (by Diana Son at the Public Theater). Yes, this play took on a LOT of topics—gentrification, “mixed” marriages, the difficulty of finding a nanny (recently the subject of a smart story in the NYT), how children affect marriages and work dynamics, just to name a few—many more than it could satisfactorily resolve, but I regularly find myself thinking back to moments in the play. A ton of smart ideas and difficult dilemmas in a short work.
WELL (by Lisa Kron, seen at the Longacre). It depresses me no end that Broadway wasn’t the right spot for this play.
HISTORY BOYS (Alan Bennett, Broadhurst). I’d’ve trimmed a little at the top and the tail, but there were moments of such transcendence that I almost forgot my reservations.
THE DROWSY CHAPERONE (for simplicity's sake, let's say the folks behind Slings and Arrows, at the Marquis)—Obviously, I’m more drawn to plays than to musicals, but I loved this goofy story. Great music, clever script, talented cast … I found it wonderfully entertaining.
CHRISTINE JORGENSON REVEALS (performed by Bradford Louryk, seen at what was then Dodger Stages). Who knew lip-synching could be so entertaining and thought-provoking?
THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE—I don’t think I want to see that much blood on a stage ever again, but shock value can be very refreshing. And, of course, it wasn’t just shock value. Up there with the blood and gore were some serious discussions of the often skimpy motivations for acts of hideous violence.
Special Mentions:
I can’t quite bring myself to put them on the main list, but I loved both KIKI & HERB ON BROADWAY and JAY JOHNSON: MY TWO AND ONLY. Kiki & Herb’s Broadway show would’ve been on my list, but then I went to their Christmas show at the Bowery Ballroom—one-fifth the price and nearly twice as long (which was kind of annoying, quite honestly; don’t folks who go to downtown clubs have jobs to go to the next mornings?), and suddenly those “This show doesn’t belong on Broadway” complaints took on a new light—it’s not that Broadway’s too good for them, it’s that seeing them there costs way too much. I think My Two and Only was the only Broadway show I saw this year that made me cry!
Outstanding Performances Not Mentioned Above:
Logan Marshall-Green in Dog Sees God and Pig Farm Christine Ebersole in Grey Gardens (No, really, how do you sing so beautifully with tears and snot streaming down your face?) Lee Pace in Guardians Cate Blanchett in Hedda Gabler (she overpowered the other players, but …) Megan Dodds in My Name Is Rachel Corrie Ian McDiarmid in Faith Healer (Cherry Jones got a bum rap, but it’s hard to win plaudits for underplaying a character; McDiarmid chewed the scenery, but entertainingly) Zoe Wanamaker in Awake and Sing! Sandra Oh in Satellites Liev Schreiber in Macbeth The cast of High Fidelity once the closing notice was up—irrepressible high-energy enthusiasm. I liked the show!
FESTEN—Great reviews from the London version, so I don’t know what happened over the Atlantic, but the New York production was dreadful.
CAINE MUTINY COURT-MARTIAL—Inert and utterly lifeless even though the actors were apparently told to EMOTE!! at all times. I’ve seen better high-school shows.
BURLEIGH GRIME$ (more like Burleigh Grimezzzz)—When people talk about cynical shows, this should be the prime example.
LOSING LOUIE—Just after seeing this, I wrote somewhere that this mess “wasn’t as bad as people are saying.” That thought has changed with time. It was awful, and MTC was crazy to put it on their schedule.
THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’—A lot of critics gave Twyla Tharp all kinds of credit for being a “serious artist.” She undoubtedly is, but this show was misconceived and misplayed from start to finish. I rate it worse that the bad-in-almost-exactly-the-same-way Ring of Fire, because it attempted to tart things up with MEANING. Tharp’s biggest mistake was taking Dylan at his word.
Final Whine: I’ve ranted before about how the appalling British accents in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Abigail’s Party ruined the shows for me. Well, I must add a couple of other horrors to dialect coach Stephen Gabis’ record: I realized that he was also responsible for Stuff Happens (where working-class Jack Straw sounded totally plummy and, for some inexplicable reason Scot Robin Cook sounded like an Ulsterman—and yes it does matter in a show that is trumpeting its verisimilitude) and Butley, where Nathan Lane’s normal accent was fine, but his impersonations of Northern Britons were laughable. (OK, not to harp on this too much, but … I know the role probably called for an imperfect impression, but when a Northern accent is written as “goin’ to’t’ dogs” you don’t pronounce it “going to T dogs.” It’s “goin tuht dogs.” I don’t know why the English actor in the cast didn’t say something about this.)
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.
Who should I trust: trophy cabinets or my own lying eyes and ears? Since I moved to New York 18 months ago, I’ve seen two shows directed by Jerry Zaks—a man with a good reputation and four Tonys—and both were dreadful. The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and Losing Louie were inert, old-fashioned, and badly cast. So, it’s hard for me to have a terribly high opinion of Mr. Zaks.
Similarly, Scott Elliott seems to be a downtown hero, the artistic director of the New Group and Mike Leigh’s anointed American interpreter (though their relationship was stealthily undermined in a New York Observerprofile). And yet, the two plays of his that I’ve seen—Abigail’s Party and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie—have been extremely disappointing.
John Doyle isn’t the only director who has a “thing.” In his negative review of Brodie, the Times’ Ben Brantley called Elliott “a director known for eliciting (or forcing) the perversity in chestnuts as conventional as Present Laughter and The Women.”
His productions of Abigail and Brodie have even more in common—both are period pieces with a well-regarded indie actress cast in a huge part around which the entire play constellates. And in both cases, there’s an easily available, much-loved video version of the work—the magnificent original 1977 TV version of Abigail’s Party with Leigh’s ex-partner Alison Steadman as Beverly, and Maggie Smith’s Oscar-winning turn in the movie version of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (though my own favorite version is the late-‘70s TV series with Geraldine McEwan as MJB). They’re also both full of lines that devotees love to quote—“Like Feliciano, Ange? Yeah, he’s good, isn’t he? Sexy!” or “My gerrils are the crème de la crème,” etc.
Elliott seems to be good at physical direction—Jennifer Jason Leigh, who played Beverly in his Abigail’s Party, had the look and the movements down just right—the pantherian swagger, the lust for cigarettes and drinks, her utter exasperation with her stupid yet snobbish, uptight, estate-agent husband, Laurence. If Jennifer Jason Leigh had kept her trap shut and just smoked and danced and tortured the guests, the show would’ve been wonderful—but instead she opened her mouth and out came that unbearable braying. The braying gave no indication that Leigh understood Beverly. Why Beverly took such pleasure in taunting her husband and her neighbors. Why she wanted to humiliate Susan, the upper-middle-class remnant of the sort of people who used to live in the neighborhood before oiks like Laurence and Beverly moved in. Leigh gave no clue why Beverly was so desperate to act like Lady Bountiful in front of Angie and her inarticulate but sexy former-footballer husband. Why was she hee-hawing like a donkey? Alison Steadman brayed to express the pain and rage and shattering disappointment inside the character. Jennifer Jason Leigh brayed because Alison Steadman had brayed. And that’s Scott Elliott’s fault.
When it comes to The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, Cynthia Nixon looks right for the part—graceful and glamorous enough to shine like a spot of brilliant color in a gray Northern world. Her passion for the south, for beauty and adventure is alluring. But then she opens her mouth.
The play itself is a bit of a clunker—the flashback structure (essentially the action of the play is the recollection of an aging nun who was once part of the Brodie set) is heavy-handed and clumsy, and it has the most discomfiting nude scene I’ve ever seen. But Miss Jean Brodie, a woman in her prime, an educator, a leader of young women—and a crazy, romantic (in the worst sense), manipulative bitch—is a great character that even the most cack-handed director and the most uncomfortable actress can’t totally fuck up. They came pretty close, though.
Stephen Gabis is credited as the dialect coach (for both shows), and if I were Mr. Gabis, I’d leave the business, because the accents were absolutely, totally, and utterly preposterous. Bourgeois Edinburgh is probably the easiest Scottish accent to assume, and yet the female cast members (the one male actor who had to adopt a brogue did so quite convincingly) were all New Zealand vowels, pinched faces, and strangled sounds. At the intermission, the older couple behind me complained that they couldn’t hear the dialogue. I could barely restrain myself from turning around and yelling, “You lucky bastards!”
So, instead of embodying the characters, the actresses seemed to expend all their efforts on delivering their lines in “the accent.” Consequently, not a single one of them was remotely convincing. Consequently, Miss Brodie was neither charismatic nor demonic; the headmistress of Marcia Blane School for Girls was neither sincere nor scheming, and the girls were likable but very far from the crème de la crème. And, for my money, that’s Scott Elliott’s fault.
Update, Oct. 22: I must quote a lovely line from Maud Newton's take on this Brodie: "Nixon is slight rather than imposing, flirtatious rather than steely, and, were it not for the cast of Brigadoon, she might very well take the award for most ridiculous Scottish accent ever to be affected in the theater district."
Update, Jan. 1, 2007: Thanks to Mark for pointing out an error (now removed) in the original version of this post. Scott Elliott didn't direct Avenue Q, he was a co-producer of the show.
Erm, is it just me, or was Harry Connick Jr. totally off-key in the initial “Tonight” section of his medley. Or as Randy would say “Pitchy, dawg.”
Hey, they just showed us a photo! Sure, it’s of the gathering of more than 100 previous Tony winners, but we can’t actually see it!
When accepting the Tony for Best Score (for Drowsy Chaperone), Greg Morrison’s speech, in which he thanked his parents for buying him a piano, was the first verkempt-making moment of the night. (Of course, if they’re back home in PEI, they won’t be able to watch, except via Webcast.)
Receiving the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical, John Doyle gives the first homo shoutout of the night--wishing his partner, Rob, a happy anniversary (and getting a round of applause for it). We had two last year (Edward Albee dedicating his award to his late partner and Cherry Jones snogging her girlfriend when her name was read). Will we beat that total tonight? Ooh, another gay moment: Harvey Fierstein say, "A gay man's work is never done" when releasing Audra McDonald's train.
I know that reviews always mention Hal Holbrooke's amazing memory (he apparently has massive quantities of Twain memorized and trots out different bits each night depending on the audience or his mood), but I was really worried he was going to lose his train of thought in his rambling preamble. I guess CBS wasn't too worried, though, he got the best guest cutaway guest shots of the night--Les Moonves, Julie Chen, and Brian Stokes Mitchell. Also, a very cool co-presenter, Veronica Mars herself, Kirsten Bell.
Hmm, so Clifford Odets now joins the pantheon of great American playwrights because he has a Tony?
Beth Leavel's speech was lovely, but even nicer were the closeups of Drowsy Chaperone director, Casey Nicholaw, shedding a tear at her joy.
So far, most of the musical numbers have seemed pretty lame--Jersey Boys, especially.
Could the excerpts from the best play nominees have been any shorter? Answer: NO!
Oh, the first political joke--from a puppet, no less! (Not that I'm calling the miraculous Christine Ebersole a puppet.) I suppose a gay puppet counts as a homo moment.
Wow, seeing Christian Hoff I wonder why I sometimes find goofy, emotional speeches irresistible and sometimes find them embarrassing. This was the latter.
LOVE the human tableaux in the Hal Prince lifetime achievement award. A new high in camp (which is saying something at the Tonys).
Hey, another homo moment thanks to Cynthia Nixon! And we're only two-thirds through the telecast. But she didn't thank her girlfriend!
LOVED seeing Julia Roberts get yanked out of camera shot by the award-guardian.
OK, the speeches have been longish, but the musical interruption of Richard Griffiths' speech was inexcusable. As The Playgoer has said, what exactly do they have in mind for the next hour?
In the zippy catch-up on the technical awards, it was heart-breaking to see the winners holding speeches (of which we heard approximately 3 seconds each from just some of them) but not being able to hear them. Bob Crowley's "I should've won it for the other one" was particularly interesting.
Alfre Woodard's dress made it a little difficult for me to focus on James Earl Jones' and Cynthia Nixon's Wilson and Wasserstein excerpts.
Nice writing from whomever came up with this description of the folks in the "in memoriam" section (too bad it was kind of hard to see the photos): "talented partners whose collaboration shall be missed."
Say what you like about Oprah, but she sure can make a speech, and the number from The Color Purple was the best of tonight's live musical presentations.
I have so little interest in Jersey Boys, I can barely bring myself to type out its full title, but I must admit producer Michael David's speech was appreciative and respectful. (And if he's ever short a few bucks for one of his productions, I have an idea for a way he could make some money in December.)
So, the final count was: History Boys - 6, Drowsy Chaperone - 5, Jersey Boys - 4 (but good ones, Best Musical the two actor awards, and the biggest one of all, lighting), Awake and Sing! - 2, Pajama Game - 2, Sweeney Todd - 2, and one each for Color Purple, Faith Healer, and Rabbit Hole. Oh, I almost forgot the special award for Bridge & Tunnel.
In the light of the speech by Eduardo Machado that was the talk of the theaterblogosphere this week, I got a weird frisson when I watched this weekend’s repeat of a 2005 American Theater Wing seminar about “Off-Broadway,” and discovered that two of the panelists were Eduardo Machado, representing INTAR, and James C. Nicola, representing the New York Theatre Workshop. (The others were Tisa Chang of the Pan Asian Repertory Company, Loretta Greco of Women’s Project and Productions, Virginia Louloudes of ART-NY, and Neil Pepe of Atlantic Theater Co.)
It started off well: The various artistic directors all seemed willing, keen even, to talk about money (I was particularly fascinated by Greco’s mention of the theater community’s unquenchable thirst for comps damaging companies' ability to plan), but that talk never really went anywhere. Instead, there were a lot of generalizations about passion and theater being about people getting together in the dark—and I have to say I blame Nicola for the move toward speechifying.
I’d never seen Nicola before, and I must preface the coming judgmental statements with the obvious proviso that I know I shouldn’t judge people from a 90-minute taped seminar. Yeah, right. He freaked me out! It seemed to me that either consciously or unconsciously he ignored any “real” conversation about money or the challenges of working with other professionals and instead launched into a series of odd set-piece statements that came across as anodyne up-with-people manifesto pledges. Worse almost, despite all the histrionic body language, he was depressingly inarticulate (and one thing you can usually say for artistic directors, especially ones who’ve held onto their jobs for a number of years, is that they’re indisputably articulate).
Take, for example, his speech after the moderator asked for panelists’ views on nontraditional casting (I urge you to check this out on tape, it starts around the 1:00:43 mark). He said:
Well, I think … I think [clears throat, shuffles in seat as though his piles are acting up] ... It’s interesting, in our process [another throat-clear] of casting in my time doing this, erm, what has emerged, is that every, almost every, with the exceptions you [Tisa Chang, who’d just spoken] talk about, where there are specific things [massive hand gestures] things to be achieved in a script … but in general we start with “any actors can play these roles,” and we bring in actors of all different … [pauses for so long, looking for the safe word, that the moderator takes pity and offers “backgrounds?”] yep, and erm, that has happened, and there’s often a lot of discussion around that, and I think this is an interesting reflection of contemporary life, that this is where we are and that we do find with our audiences that we are learning a new etiquette that will become unconscious, about when we’re supposed to notice the race of the person or not. Erm [clears throat] and it’s been very interesting to work with directors from other countries who have different ethnic and cultural situations and their perception of American culture, and for the most part, even the most enlightened and progressive people are very retrograde about this issue. [Swings head, triumphantly slaps thighs.]
Now, if you can tell me what the hell he was talking about there—except perhaps, “We’re really right on and a lot of foreigners aren’t”—good work!
In fairness, I should also add that later in the show, Machado made an unprompted tribute to the NYTW in which he praised the warm and respectful way they have treated him and other playwrights.
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.
When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with women’s tennis. I use the word “obsessed” advisedly. I barely thought of anything else, and I did quite a lot of thinking back then. In 1979 and 1980, I went to about 10 tournaments per year (including three-quarters of the Grand Slam in ’80)—and I would go for the duration of the tournaments, not a cameo for the finals. (Those weren’t my only years of tournament-hopping, just my heyday.)
By 1980, I’d gotten to know several players—very superficially, I hasten to add—and even played soccer with a bunch of obscure players (and a rather more well-known striver whom I’ll call Martina N.) at the pre-pre-Wimbledon warm-up in Chichester (the game was taken up again a week later in Eastbourne, but I stayed off the pitch that time).
There were many occasions where I was the only person watching “my” players (I tended to like the smart ones, regardless of their skills/success), and then at Wimbledon, one of them was on the verge of a major doubles upset, and I couldn’t get anywhere near the court. Wimbledon’s always hideously and randomly crowded, but usually you could figure out some sneaky way through the bottleneck. Not this time—every trick I attempted failed, so I missed my pal’s big triumph.
I mention all this because today I was trying to figure out if I should try to finagle tickets to Three Days of Rain, Julia Roberts’ big Broadway adventure. (Tickets are on sale, but only to AmEx card holders; though they’re also showing up on eBay and on ticket brokers’ sites.)
Now, there’s no comparison between my youthful obsession with women’s tennis and my affection for the theater—I am an enthusiastic playgoer, but there’s a lot I don’t know and frankly don’t care about. I don’t feel a need to see everything, nor can I afford to. I have no interest in seeing a lot of the Broadway productions, so I don’t mind that shows like Spamalot or The Odd Couple are out of bounds. But Three Days of Rain is off-Broadway. It’s by Richard Greenberg, whose plays I almost always see (and mostly like). Even though it’s irrational, I feel swizzed that I’m probably not going to be able to go to the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre to gaze upon a Hollywood star, a former Friends second-stringer, and a guy whose TV sitcom was canceled by Fox after only a few episodes.
Eh, I’ll either figure it out or get over it. I did buy tickets for Borderline at the Royal Court.
Update, Dec. 30, 2006: Of course, the Bernard B. Jacobs Theatre is a Broadway house. Just ignore that bit!
Years ago, when I worked at a feminist magazine in D.C.—and later in the same circumstances in London—I was often entreated to attend feminist theater performances. I can’t remember seeing anything bad, but I also don’t remember being knocked out; in fact, I don’t really remember anything about any of the productions. The only concrete thing I remember about all those trips to the theater is embarrassing myself by asking for a kir royale at the bar of a London theater when the publicist offered me a drink and then having to admit that I didn’t really know what it was when the bar worker wasn’t sure how to make one.
(I should say that I was reluctant to review the pieces because the magazines I worked at were aimed at a national audience, so most of our readers wouldn’t care how good the local production of Franca Rama’s latest was. The publicists never really took that for an answer, though, and it was easier to say you’d go. This situation seems much more attractive in retrospect than it was at the time.)
It was always so tricky to write about the plays. You knew the producers weren’t inviting you to their shows for your artistic edification; they wanted reviews to generate ticket sales and to excerpt in their ads or, more likely, grant applications. If you appreciated their underpaid, underappreciated efforts, as I did, you didn’t want to pee on their parade—and I really would’ve preferred potential theater-goers to see a feminist play rather than a “mainstream” show, so I wanted to help encourage that. But now I feel like the manager who doesn’t confront an underperforming report and thus does nothing to get the worker to self-actualize. (As someone who had to be jolted into making an effort at the age of 35, let me tell you, it’s a good thing, but the boss has to take a chance on someone in whom they see potential and then has to be willing to be a bitch to get that person to really try.) Most of the time, I either didn’t write a review (I hope I wrote about that London play after I made them open a bottle of champagne for me), or I was kind.
Now I feel bad, because those “kind” critiques undermine the credibility of the many fine reviews of In the Continuum (and probably explain all those reviewers’ preambles about how appalling political theater usually is). Yes, it’s a play with a purpose—to make audiences think about the effect of HIV/AIDS on women around the world—but it’s good; really good, not “gosh, I really wish you’d go see this instead of the more mainstream, well-funded piece of entertainment a few blocks uptown” good.
The play, written and performed by Danai Gurira and Nikkole Salter consists of two parallel stories—Gurira tells the story of Abigail, an upper-middle-class Zimbabwean who has a catch of a husband (handsome, well-bred, and employed), a son, and a job as a newsreader on ZBC; while Salter focuses on Nia, a creative Los Angeles teenager who lives in a shelter, works at Nordstrom, and has a high-school basketball star for a boyfriend. Within 90 minutes they both learn that they’ve been deceived, realize that they’ve deceived themselves, and try to stand up and change things. The parallel structure is very tight—the whole thing is incredibly mature for two such young artists.
What’s most impressive is the subtlety of both the writing and the performances—Gurira does a great job of establishing the class signifiers that are so important to Abigail, and Salter is amazing at conjuring Nia’s circle—a social worker, her cold mother, a cousin, her boyfriend’s mother—with the slightest changes of “look” (essentially the refolding of a bandana) and a change of attitude/accent. Now, I’m looking forward to seeing Bridge & Tunnel, but judging from the Web, Sarah Jones makes use of quite a few costume props—and it’s relatively easy to distinguish between a Pakistani cab driver and a Jewish grandmother—signaling to the audience that she’s no longer the teenager, but her mother (or her cousin, or whatever) is much more of a challenge. And I was never confused.
I’m sure other people have written about this, but what’s with the dueling Florence Foster Jenkins plays? Souvenir, by Stephen Temperley, is on Broadway, and Glorious, starring the divine Maureen Lipman, is at London’s Duchess Theatre. Now, I yield to no one in my admiration of Maureen Lipman, but unlike Judy Kaye, the star of Souvenir, as far as I know, she has no particular gift for singing. Well, neither did FFJ, true, but having seen Judy Kaye on Theater Talk, I now think you have to be able to sing well in order to sing badly.
My love of Lipman will no doubt take me to the Duchess when we’re in London next month, so now I can’t decide whether I should see Souvenir before it closes this weekend to provide a comparison. We’re going to the theater on Saturday (following Webloge’s advice and seeing Christine Jorgensen Reveals), so chances are laziness will overcome curiosity and Maureen Lipman will be my one and only Florence Foster Jenkins. But I think one is probably enough for me.
On New Year’s Day R and I went to see Edward Albee’s Seascape (I wonder which is nicer, the Pulitzers, the Tonys, or having your name before the play title on the Playbill) at the Booth Theater.
My motivations for seeing the play were a bit iffy—a process-of-elimination (I’ve seen that, I won’t be able to get into that; I can’t be bothered to go down there, and this one’s run ends next Sunday). So (join in with me please …) my expectations were pretty low, and thus I had a wonderful time.
This is the play where a seventysomething couple, Nancy and George (played in this production by Frances “Bunny” Sternhagen and George Grizzard), are on a beach, lovingly bickering about their future, when two huge lizards, Sarah and Leslie (Elizabeth Marvel and Frederick Weller, who, I learned from the program has achieved the Law & Order trifecta—in so many ways, it’s great that Trial by Jury’s run was so short, since it makes the four-peat a real achievement) crawl over the dunes.
I think I may only have seen The Zoo Story and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf from Albee’s big bag of plays, but even with those two in my head, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the wit of the dialogue. Sternhagen was great, but Grizzard stood out because he was the nay-sayer—it’s easy for Nancy to seem interesting, she’s adventurous and creative; George is a former depressive who just wants to sit in the sun doing crosswords, but the actor made it work. George wasn’t a bore or a whiner, he was a tired realist. And once the lizards appeared, George reckoned the liver-paste sandwiches had done them in, and anyone who blames the liver paste is by definition sympathetic. Casting actors who are themselves in their 70s really made a difference—I am way too nervous about actors and sets generally (especially when large and not terribly mobile opera singers are scrambling on steeply banked sets), but I really worried for their hips every time someone got a foot tangled on the unruly corner of the beach blanket.
And talking lizards? Amazingly un-gimmicky. The focus was on their reactions to the newness of what the humans had to tell them about the world, not on the fact that they were talking lizards.
In these days when evolution is embattled (in schools and textbooks at least), the final images of Nancy and George imploring Sarah and Leslie not to give into to their instinctual desire to return to the sea was especially moving.
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.
Sammy and Rosie Got Laid--the movie, the script, the Granta story about the making off--is one of my favorite works of art; it's funny, it's hot, and it uses non-realistic acting, speech, and events to present the most evocative portrayal of the middle-to-late days of Thatcher that I'm aware of. I used to be a massive fan of Hanif Kureishi's--and I still am of that early work, but the later stuff (post-Intimacy, really) didn't grab me in the same way.
I'm thinking I should give his work another chance after reading about the postcard from Kureishi that the proprietor of Bookish found in a used copy of one of his books.
I had a similar experience this summer. After I wrote about his short story/movie My Son the Fanatic, I got a very sweet note from the man himself.
Being a New Yorker certainly makes watching the Tonys more interesting, since for once I’d seen several of the nominated works and have the chance of seeing more whenever I can snag tickets.
I think the ceremony set a new high for same-sex kisses and shout-outs, which makes me feel even better about the world of theater. Jerry Mitchell, who won the Best Choreography award (for La Cage aux Folles; he was also nominated for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) had a big smooch with his boyfriend before he went up for his statuette, and he thanked him by name (as bland as that sounds, it’s hard to imagine a winner using his partner’s name on national TV until very recently—even if the Tony ceremony isn’t exactly the Oscar telecast); Edward Albee dedicated his lifetime achievement award to his "life partner," who died last month; and the magnificent Cherry Jones snogged her girlfriend (who she also name-checked in her acceptance speech) when she heard she’d won Best Actress.
It’s funny how worked up we can get strictly on the basis of hype. Since I’d seen just a handful of the nominated productions, it was a little absurd for me to have strong feelings about the winners—but even having only seen The Pillowman among the works in which the five Best Actor in a Play nominees appear, I still had a sharp intake of breath when they announced Bill Irwin over Brian F. O’Byrne. And while I haven’t seen—and have no plans to see—Spamalot, the craptacular number they performed during the Tony telecast confirmed every snobbish preconceived notion I had about the show. I was really hoping for an upset by Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (which I saw and enjoyed much more than I expected to) or The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, and I was actually disappointed when Spamalot’s name was called—even though it would’ve been a major upset for anything else to take the trophy. (And talk about a dreadful speech—even the fawning audience at Radio City couldn’t feign amusement at that appalling display; leave the jokes to the professionals, money man.)
