Criticism and its critics

Hi, all:

I thought I'd tip you off, if you are interested, to a lively, interesting, and occasionally maddening discussion that was sparked a few weeks ago by an essay titled "Critical Generosity" that the scholar Jill Dolan wrote for the premier issue of Public: A Journal of Imagining America. The essay, which is fairly clearly positioned as Dolan's individual take on contemporary theater criticism, was in turn cited in scholar Polly Carl's essay, "A New Year's Diet for the Theater" on the blog HowlRound. This essay is a bit broader and more general than Dolan's in its suggestions, but basically, it, too, suggests that harsh criticism might be fun and easy and good for a belly laugh, but that it's not helping theater.

Carl's essay inspired a response by George Hunka, whose "We Are All Victims Now" was posted on his blog on 7 January. He focuses--perhaps overmuch, perhaps not, depending on your interpretation--on "niceness," which is a term Carl uses, but that Dolan does not, and that is, I think, not the real point of either Dolan's nor Carl's posts.

Dolan responds with as much on Feminist Spectator with "Criticism Redux Redux Redux"; Hunka responds in turn with "Jill Dolan Responds." The back-and-forth results in some twitter discussion by critics including Peter Marks, Jonathan Mandell and Jason Zinoman, as well as Hunka and Dolan, the last of whom ends the discussion with an explanation that she doesn't find twitter an appropriate medium for productive debate. I tend to agree with her, at least in this case, since the debate now strikes me as a lot of people arguing slightly different if interconnected points from a number of angles and ideologies.

At any rate, the debate will culminate (or not) with  HowlRound's weekly howl, "Critical Generosity and the Spectre of Niceness," the title of which seems to cut to the very heart of the shades of discrepancy surrounding the argument. It starts at 2pm est, and I suspect it will be--much like the essays that have prompted it, and I guess much like theater criticism itself--lively, interesting, and (maybe not so) occasionally maddening.

Check it out, why don't you? Unless, of course, this sort of thing makes rolling around naked in ground glass seem more appealing, in which case I'd strongly encourage you to skip it and, instead, take to bed. 

Machinal

The brilliant revival of Machinal, Sophie Treadwell's expressionistic 1928 dissection of a woman's life, climbs off the stage and under your skin. This nerve-rattling production is directed by Lyndsey Turner, who has worked closely with a superb team of designers and a strong cast to bring the plight of the Young Woman (she and the other characters are never named) to vivid, multidimensional, heartbreaking, claustrophobic life.

The strength of the production is apparent from its first seconds, as the Young Woman travels on a crowded train, which somehow is convincingly right there, on stage, as noisy and overwhelming as the actual subways that run far below the theatre. The show continues to present an almost miraculous amount of realistic emotion through its expressionistic means.

The story, inspired by the tale of the real-life husband-murderer Ruth Snyder, is simple, and unfortunately still relevant in many women's lives. The Young Woman is expected always to put herself last, and she mostly does, as each of the people and situations in her life fail her, from her mother to her husband to her lover to being a mother herself. Even women who have had many more options--myself included--can feel her plight in our bones, particularly as presented in this superb production. I imagine many men can, too.

In all fairness, I should mention that I found this show painful and unpleasant to sit through, although I admired it from the first. As time has passed, my respect for it has grown, leading to this rave review. Despite the show's unpleasantness, I am grateful to have seen it for the brilliance of the work.

Theater with Children: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Photo: Gerry Goodstein

When I was a kid, my parents took my sister and me to a lot of theater in our hometown of Pittsburgh, which has a much stronger arts scene than I think most people assume. My folks subscribed (and still do) to Pittsburgh Public Theater, and sometimes took us to summer stock productions under a huge tent at Hartwood Acres. They frequently took us to shows at Carnegie-Mellon University, which had consistently excellent offerings (and has sent about a gazillion starry-eyed graduates to New York over the years). They also took us, for a couple of years, to a great Shakespeare festival. Now sadly defunct, the Three Rivers Shakespeare Festival operated, at least through the late 1980s, out of the lovely little Stephen Foster Memorial Theatre on the University of Pittsburgh campus.

A few days before we'd attend a particular Shakespeare play, my mother would haul the dark gray, heavily inked copy of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare that she had purchased as a college student out from the study and read through it. Then, over dinner or in the car en route to the show, she'd tell us a chatty, child-friendly synopsis of what we were about to see: "Lear was a king, and he had three daughters. Can you guess, just by hearing their names, which one we are supposed to like best?" or, "Wait until you see what an awful man Iago is. Just a terrible guy. Here's what he does to Othello." Her synopses were typically bookended with impassioned reminders that we were not going to be able to understand everything the characters said because they spoke in an older form of English, but that we shouldn't worry about that. Her approach didn't always work (I clearly remember my dad shushing me with growing irritation while I squirmed my way through Richard III, a play I have grown to appreciate but still really don't love), but it helped more often than it didn't. At the very least, whether we connected with the play or not, my sister and I always had some inkling of what the hell was going on at any given time.

Simple Dreams (Book Review)

Simple Dreams is Linda Ronstadt's "musical memoir," and in it, she discusses her forays into light opera (The Pirates of Penzance) and opera (La Boheme). Ronstadt is remarkably modest for someone with her many successes, and she is clear as to her limitations. When she is offered Pirates, she insists on auditioning. When she does Boheme, she writes, "I realized that I should have insisted on auditioning for this production, too, as it was beginning to dawn on me how difficult the singing was going to be." She later quotes Frank Rich's criticism of her performance and agrees with him!

I was an usher at the Public Theatre in the 1970s and still had many friends there when Pirates was done in the early 1980s. By all accounts, Ronstadt was a lovely, unassuming woman. That comes through in Simple Dreams, as does her sheer love of music. It's far from a great book, but its 200 or so pages include enough interesting stories to make it worth the while of anyone interested in Rondstadt or in music in general.

(library book)

The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence

Madeleine George's latest play, The (Curious Case of the) Watson Intelligence is by turns breathtaking, annoying, beautiful, overwritten, and gorgeous. A mash-up riff on three Watsons--the Jeopardy-winning computer, Alexander Bell's assistant, and Sherlock Holmes' buddy--The Watson Intelligence wanders hither and yon, taking on romantic relationships, deep friendships, sanity, emotional bravery, and the meaning of being human. In some ways, it's a mess. But, oh, the writing.

David Costabile, John Ellison Conlee
Photo: Joan Marcus

The Watson Intelligence is stuffed full (overfull?) with glorious monologues, each of which could stand alone as a short play. A case in point is Bell's Watson explaining why he feels neither humiliated nor put-upon to always stand in the great man's shadow. This monologue handily tells a story, reveals character, and provides insight into the human condition--all in luxuriously rich language.

Ultimately, the show fails to coalesce, and its sheer wordiness becomes overwhelming. It was also weakened in its recent Playwright Horizon's production by Amanda Quaid's unimpressive performance, which paled beside the strength of her costars, David Costabile and the protean John Ellison Conlee, leaving the triangle unbalanced.

But, never mind. The strengths of The Watson Intelligence far outweigh its weaknesses. And Madeleine George deserves the nurture and support given to her by Playwrights, which makes a habit of presenting the future of dramatic writing. (Playwrights also presents many female playwrights and hires many female directors, without making a big deal out of it. Like women are people, or something weird like that! Bravo!)

I can't wait to see George's next play.

(second row, membership ticket)

Fun Home

Joan Marcus

The composer Jeanine Tesori has a knack for capturing, in her scores, the ebbs and flows of complex, imbalanced relationships. Through recurring motifs, overlapping melodic lines, and a flow of orchestral support that frequently allows characters to segue imperceptibly between aria and recitative, she deftly mimics the voices of people who love one another deeply, fight with one another viciously, try desperately to understand one another, erupt in frustration when they fail. Her ensemble harmonies clash with heartbreaking dissonance when crises occur, and melt luxuriously when there is consolation. Her particular talent for capturing the endless nuances of complicated families--which means all families, I guess--struck me during the first few minutes of Fun Home. Like the brilliant Caroline, or Change, Fun Home focuses largely on the strained domestic life of a child. As far as I'm concerned, Caroline was a landmark work--one that took the musical theater genre in new directions and raised its aesthetic stakes. And damn if Fun Home isn't just as beautiful, moving, and nuanced. Since seeing it, I have come to believe that Tesori is not just a wonderful composer, but one of monumental importance. People who dismiss the musical theater outright with a roll of the eyes and a terse "I HATE musicals"--as if the entire genre can be easily boiled down to a late-run performance by a second-rate touring company of Cats--have clearly never encountered the work of Jeanine Tesori.

Yet in raving as blatheringly as I do about Tesori, I hope not to imply that she is on some kind of creative pedestal, towering above the people with whom she has collaborated. Part of brilliance is knowing how to listen to and work with other brilliant people. Tony Kushner's no slouch, after all, and neither is George Wolfe. And like Caroline, or Change, Fun Home doesn't really have any weak links. I've read a few reviews arguing that Michael Cerveris was miscast, which I think is bullshit. And I've read others that place Judy Kuhn in the "thankless" role of the mother, which I think is a slightly smaller bunch of bullshit, but bullshit nonetheless. Sure, the musical explores, even more intensely than the graphic novel does, the relationship between a father and a daughter, and this kind of gives the mother figure short shrift in some respects--and this is the case even more in the musical than it was in the book. That being said, Kuhn's final number brings the whole show home; it (and, in the role, she) is a carefully controlled masterpiece of sorrow, fury, and frustration.