Short Takes

Nyack High School presented an excellent production of The Laramie Project for two performances this month. The pacing could have been quicker, but many of the performances were top-notch, and my devastation by the end was testimony to the quality of the work. I salute Nyack High and director Joe Egan for their ambition and for the consistently high level of their productions. (Full disclosure: my niece was the production stage manager and my nephew performed.)

I don't know why the folks at Encores! felt a need to produce Bells Are Ringing, since the show had a Broadway revival less than ten years ago. But I'm glad they did, since their production was head-and-shoulders above that revival, being a delight from start to finish. Bells Are Ringing is not a masterpiece. In fact, it is deeply silly. But it is vintage, brilliant silliness, courtesy of Comden and Green and Jule Styne, with such wonderful songs as "The Party's Over" and "Just in Time." Kelli O'Hara may have lacked a level of zaniness, but she was lovely, and Will Chase did nicely as the leading man. Katherine Marshall's choreography and the wonderful dancers brought energy and excitement to the stage, and David Pittu and Judy Kaye provided first-class support. It was a treat to see the charming Encores! stalwart J.D. Webster do a solo turn.

I saw Stephen Sondheim interviewed twice in a week--once by Frank Rich (part of the Times Talk series) and once by Tony Kushner (part of the Public Forum). The Rich interview covered familiar ground, but Rich's questions were smart and insightful. The Kushner interview went hither and yon, to the great delight of the audience. Sondheim, in addition to his other talents, is a great raconteur and a fair mimic. His stories in the interviews included an imitation of Elaine Stritch calling for her lines when she had a prompter in A Little Night Music ("in the villa of the Baron . . . MARY!"); a riff on how Ethel Merman might have "danced" in the finale to Gypsy if Jerome Robbins had stuck to his original plan to end the show with a summation ballet; a tale of being (literally!) hissed in England because he had criticized Noel Coward's and W.S. Gilbert's lyric writing; and a paean to the joys of collaboration and rewriting. With Rich, Sondheim was laid-back and comfortable, and their friendship was evident. With Kushner, he was more playful and bantering, even a little competitive in a friendly way. Both evenings were wonderful, but I wish I could have joined them for drinks or dinner afterward and heard the stories Sondheim doesn't tell in public.

A Free Man of Color

photo: T. Charles Erickson

No one can fault John Guare for being ambitious. His play A Free Man of Color, which has been in gestation for over twenty years, represents not only two decades of work, but a sweeping amalgamation of 200 years of Euro-American history. In doing so, however--and especially in choosing to use restoration comedy as his framing device--Guare has offered his audience moments of beautiful clarity buried within an everest of pomp and circumstance. The main action is centered around the life of Jacques Cornet (Jeffrey Wright, brilliant as usual), the titular emancipated mulatto; unfortunately, the playwright seems unclear as to how the other aspects of the drama--which includes Thomas Jefferson and Touissant L'Ouverture, Napoleon and Josephine Bonaparte, and the melding of racial impropriety--fit into Cornet's journey towards self-discovery and a realization of the changing times. Wright gives a mammoth, herculean performance (I spent much of the performance imagining which Shakespearean heroes I'd love to see him play), and the supporting cast (featuring Mos Def, John McMartin, Paul Dano, and the wonderful newcomer Nicole Beharie) do uniformly fine work. Unfortunately, though, there is nothing that can be done to make Guare's divergent strands of plot coalesce. Like the world of opulence it portrays, the play is alluring but ultimately hollow.

(Seen at the matinee on November 26. TDF tickets; Orchestra Row F)

The Merchant of Venice

Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice is a choleric, cynical play.

First, of course, there is the ugly anti-Semitism. Shylock, more frequently known as "The Jew," has spent his life being called "Jew cur" and other such lovely epithets. His anger has been simmering for years, and why shouldn't he require of Antonio a pound of flesh? Antonio has no problem taking a metaphysical, emotional pound or two from Shylock; even in the role of financial supplicant, Antonio harangues and criticizes Shylock. (If Antonio possessed even the most basic of good manners, the plot would not be set in motion.)

Then Shakespeare depicts Shylock as more upset at the loss of his ducats than of his daughter (though Shylock is arguably hiding the loss he cannot face by focusing on the loss he can). By the end of the play, Shakespeare has stripped Shylock of everything he loves and believes in. The bigoted, self-satisfied Antonio, on the other hand, gets a happy ending.

Continuing his choleric mood, Shakespeare has little use for love in this play. Portia, the brilliant, emotional Portia (who somehow manages to become a knowledgeable lawyer on the trip from Belmont to Venice), responds to her true love Bassanio by tricking him into betraying her. Even though she has seen him totally devastated, even though he has just almost lost his best friend Antonio to a gruesome death (for which he is at least somewhat responsible!), she uses her disguise to pressure and deceive him. Is she jealous of his love for his best friend? Possibly. Is she just upset and angry? Possibly. Is she merely manipulative by nature? Possibly. None of the options is anything but ugly.

And why would Nerissa then trick her great love as well? To show that true love is impossible? Or that men can't be trusted? Perhaps. And what of Jessica and Lorenzo? Did they ever love each other, really, for even a moment? The only true love in this play is that between the ne'er-do-well Bassanio and the arrogant Antonio.

The Merchant of Venice was initially termed a comedy, I guess because the romantic leads end up together and the non-Jews get to live happily ever after. At the performance I saw, the European gentleman standing next to me (three hours is a long time to stand, by the way), chortled uproariously as Shylock was forced to his knees to be baptized as a Christian. It was only self-control and theatre etiquette that stopped me from turning to him and demanding, "Just what exactly is funny?"

The current production, smoothly directed by Daniel Sullivan and extremely well-acted by Al Pacino, Lily Rabe, and the rest of the company, gives The Merchant of Venice as good a showing as I could imagine it receiving.

One last thing: as I looked at the orchestra section in front of me, I was astonished to realize that everyone there, every single person, had spend a minimum of $131.50 per ticket. Some probably spent over $200. Isn't that kind of . . . insane? And isn't it kind of disgusting that dinner and a Broadway show for a couple costs as much as the average yearly income in India? And who are the usurers when credit cards charge as much as 30% interest, legally? Who are the villains when banks push ridiculous mortgages and then take people's homes when the poor fools fall for the banks' dishonest sales pitches? What would Shakespeare think of today's attitudes toward money? What would Shylock?

Notes from Underground

Dostoevsky's grim novella is here blasted to unexpectedly brilliant life in a stage adaptation by Robert Woodruff and the amazing actor Bill Camp. The unnamed Man poses a test: "Is it possible to be perfectly candid with oneself?" Camp uses movement like a dancer, speaking chapter and verse with a raised arm or a tumble down the stairs. And he talks, and he talks, twistedly and unlikeably yet with massive force, for close to two hours. It's a stunning performance, fitted into a masterfully conceived staging enlivened by Peter Nigrini's projections. No, you don't need to have read the book. Yes, come prepared to be moved, even shaken. Like Büchner with the even-earlier Woyzeck, Dostoevsky thrusts a proto-modernist fist from the deep past into our modern-day world of freedom and relative plenty. Has the human condition fundamentally changed? Signs point to no.

Excerpted from Theater Review (NYC): Notes from Underground on Blogcritics. Also be sure to see Wendy Caster's review below.

Sondheim! The Birthday Concert (DVD Review)

Wow!

Last March a few thousand people were lucky enough to experience the truly staggering Sondheim birthday celebration at the New York Philharmonic. Many who saw it (most?) judged it one of the most thrilling evenings they had ever spent in a theatre (I was one of those fortunate people). And now, through the miracle of modern technology, that amazing event can be revisited, over and over again, forever.

I was a tad nervous putting the disc in the DVD player. Could the recording possibly live up to my memory of the event? No. But yes. No, because live is live, and there is nothing like it. But yes, because the pictures and sound are clear and vivid, because the beauty of the performances has been captured, and because I am so grateful that this wonderful record of this wonderful evening exists! I am old enough to remember life before DVDs, before video recordings, before cable. I remember setting my alarm clock for two in the morning to catch a show or movie that might never be on again. I remember trying to memorize live performances, knowing that there might not even be an album. I do not take this DVD for granted.

If forced at gunpoint to identify my favorite performances, I might be able to get it down to a handful:

• Marin Mazzie: "Losing My Mind."
• John McMartin: "The Road You Didn't Take."
• Bernadette Peters: "Not a Day Goes By."
• Mandy Patinkin: "Finishing the Hat."
• Scores of Broadway performers: "Sunday."

But how could I leave out Donna Murphy singing "Could I Leave You?", or Audra McDonald singing "The Glamorous Life," or McDonald and Nathan Gunn singing "Too Many Mornings"? How could I exclude Patti LuPone's "Ladies Who Lunch" or Elaine Stritch jumping up and down while declaring that she is, indeed, still here? What about Peters and Patinkin recreating "Move On"? It was evening of highlight after highlight, or, as a friend of mine put it, an evening of 11:00 numbers.

Of course, the event wasn't, and the DVD isn't, perfect. Producer-director-writer Lonnie Price, as he always does, littered the show with juvenile, downright-painful gags and running "jokes." And some of his editing choices are flat-out annoying, as when he cuts to the orchestra during "Losing My Mind," a delicate song of subtle build during which Mazzie's nonsinging moments are as important as her singing ones. Or when he interrupts the flow of the dancing in "America" with odd and awkward and all-too-frequent cuts. But if Price's weaknesses are the price (pun unintended?) of getting to enjoy an event and a DVD this wonderful, they are a small enough price (hmm) to pay.

Thanks are owed to producers Ellen M. Krass Productions and Thirteen, in association with WNET.org, for giving us this precious DVD. It would be nice if there were some extras, but, really, it's a treasure.

Oh, and I did I mention that that Sondheim guy is brilliant?

One Night With Joan

Photo: Holly Caster

Joan Collins is a force to be reckoned with. She turned down Darryl Zanuck's (staggeringly coarse) sexual advances, even though she knew she might be risking her career. She responded to a Joan Crawford snub by mentioning that Collins' mother was such a Crawford fan that she named Joan after her. When her then-husband lost his job, she went back to performing to support the family (they had a total of six children), starring in such classics as The Stud and The Bitch. She wore her hair with bangs and did so many nude scenes that Oscar Levant commented that the only part of her he hadn't seen was her forehead. Oh, and her first husband tried to sell her to a sheik.

These are only some of the many stories that the effervescent Collins shares in her night of reminiscences at Feinstein's at the Regency. Still glamorous in her late 70s (and married to a man in his 40s), she is entertaining and in her own way a role model: she began fashioning her life to her own design in the days when women were supposed to force themselves into society's pre-assigned template, and she still lives life on her own terms.

On Tuesday Collins clearly had opening night jitters, and she would do well to tell her stories rather than act them. She also might get more laughs by underplaying rather than overplaying her punch lines. But, hey, she's Joan Collins. And if you're a fan, you'll have a great time.