Dame Judi Dench
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
A Little Illness Music
I've got this cold or flu kind of thing. You can't count on a regular cold pattern anymore, apparently--they seem to have their individual characteristics, and ups and downs. But I've never been a suck-it-up and soldier-on type. I don't get sick very often, but when I do, I do it up big. I stay in bed longer, and the rest is resting. "Feed a cold" is also advice I've made into a lifestyle.
So I don't do much. This time around I spent several hours watching a VHS tape I made from TV programs in the 90s, back when the A&E cable channel actually tried to be an Arts & Entertainment channel, and Bravo! was about performance arts. Now they all play the same CSI reruns and have their own perverse "reality" shows. But there was a time that one or both of them ran imported programs from England, where an interviewer called Melvyn Bragg did interviews and so on with notable actors and other theatre artists.
I watched his interview/lunch with Albert Finney, and two fascinating pieces following Ian McKellen (then a youthful 45) in rep at the National Theatre over a season, and Judi Dench rehearsing and playing in A Little Night Music. The McKellen piece was a good insight into that life (in which he might be playing one part, rehearsing the next play, and learning lines for one after that on the same day) as well as a peek into his working process. One of the plays he was working on was Michael Frayn's translation and edited version of Chekhov's first and unproduced play, which Frayn dubbed Wild Honey. As he rehearsed, McKellen was driving himself crazy trying to understand the character he was playing, even going back to a full translation of Chekhov's script, with many long philosophical speeches. He was afraid he would be a disaster and bring down the production. He noted ruefully into his tape recorder that Frayn had shown up for a run-through and had simply grinned. But when the play opened, McKellen was astonished to hear the audience laughing--they had just revealed to him that the play was a comedy. It was also a hit. (Frayn himself tells this story about McKellen in the introduction to his "Plays: Two" volume.)
The Dench piece went back into her acting history with some wonderful clips from old productions. Olivier's "cry" as Oedipus is well-known theatrical legend, but Dench as Lady MacBeth let out a truly terrifying and prolonged scream that deserves its own fame: it said volumes about the character. Dame Dench played Mother Courage in 2005, which must have been something to see, and hear. In this film piece, director Sir Peter Hall says that Dench was blessed with an extraordinary voice, "and in theatre, voice is very nearly all."
I've got this cold or flu kind of thing. You can't count on a regular cold pattern anymore, apparently--they seem to have their individual characteristics, and ups and downs. But I've never been a suck-it-up and soldier-on type. I don't get sick very often, but when I do, I do it up big. I stay in bed longer, and the rest is resting. "Feed a cold" is also advice I've made into a lifestyle.
So I don't do much. This time around I spent several hours watching a VHS tape I made from TV programs in the 90s, back when the A&E cable channel actually tried to be an Arts & Entertainment channel, and Bravo! was about performance arts. Now they all play the same CSI reruns and have their own perverse "reality" shows. But there was a time that one or both of them ran imported programs from England, where an interviewer called Melvyn Bragg did interviews and so on with notable actors and other theatre artists.
I watched his interview/lunch with Albert Finney, and two fascinating pieces following Ian McKellen (then a youthful 45) in rep at the National Theatre over a season, and Judi Dench rehearsing and playing in A Little Night Music. The McKellen piece was a good insight into that life (in which he might be playing one part, rehearsing the next play, and learning lines for one after that on the same day) as well as a peek into his working process. One of the plays he was working on was Michael Frayn's translation and edited version of Chekhov's first and unproduced play, which Frayn dubbed Wild Honey. As he rehearsed, McKellen was driving himself crazy trying to understand the character he was playing, even going back to a full translation of Chekhov's script, with many long philosophical speeches. He was afraid he would be a disaster and bring down the production. He noted ruefully into his tape recorder that Frayn had shown up for a run-through and had simply grinned. But when the play opened, McKellen was astonished to hear the audience laughing--they had just revealed to him that the play was a comedy. It was also a hit. (Frayn himself tells this story about McKellen in the introduction to his "Plays: Two" volume.)
The Dench piece went back into her acting history with some wonderful clips from old productions. Olivier's "cry" as Oedipus is well-known theatrical legend, but Dench as Lady MacBeth let out a truly terrifying and prolonged scream that deserves its own fame: it said volumes about the character. Dame Dench played Mother Courage in 2005, which must have been something to see, and hear. In this film piece, director Sir Peter Hall says that Dench was blessed with an extraordinary voice, "and in theatre, voice is very nearly all."
First Principles
Eric Bentley
The Jan./Feb. issue of The Dramatist includes an interview with Eric Bentley, now 91 years old. For me, Bentley is the benchmark of theatre criticism and scholarship. He's an extraordinary writer, fair and yet with strong opinions, eloquent and writerly, yet direct. His books, such as The Playwright as Thinker (and Thinking about the Playwright), In Search of Theater and The Life of the Drama are invaluable and indispensible--and in that peculiar way that the best books on theatre can be: exciting. Bentley was also a scholar and a playwright of the 1950s Blacklist in America, and it was when researching that subject that I first came upon his work (though it wouldn't be until the 1990s that I read his theatre criticism. I haven't yet read his books specifically on Brecht and Shaw.) Bentley has a clear vision of what he believes theatre should be and do, but he is also nuanced and generous.
It's a short interview, touching on some of his history. He was interested in music and languages first, and more or less slid into theatre by meeting Brecht in California and agreeing to translate some of his work from German into English. He also acted a few small parts in Shakespeare repertory-- plays which happened to be directed by John Geilgud. Right place, right time, and he was off.
Bentley became Brecht's first and persistent champion, although he is clear that he disapproved of Brecht's continued fascination with Stalinist Communism (he faults the elderly G. B. Shaw for the same blind spot.) He also championed Shaw when he was unpopular, as apparently he is again on the English stage.
In this interview Bentley had these comments on Brecht's Mother Courage, which was seen here at HSU, directed by John Heckel: "The songs in Brecht's plays are quite unlike songs in anybody else's plays [in which they are] incidental...but in Mother Courage... they are pillars on which the whole play stands. They are not secondary but primary. It's the songs plus some dialogue--not dialogue with a few songs."
His comments on his own career are clear-eyed and instructive. He says that his plays are more often read than staged, but this is typical for plays that last. But he is disappointed that his later books haven't had the impact of his earlier ones. "...as a writer facing a public, it is easier to be young than to be old. It is easier to be immature and wild rather than to be controlled and have a bit of common sense. All my first efforts were received much more favorably than my later efforts. That's something that disappoints me very much, because I feel that my later efforts were better."
This interview isn't on line, but others are, like this one specifically on Brecht. And since the Young Actors Guild production of A Dream Play just concluded, while John Heckel is preparing his next production for later this month at HSU (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9), here's a link to my essay on the two Brecht productions done here last year, Heckel's Mother Courage and the Young Actors Guild adaptation of Caucasian Chalk Circle.
The Jan./Feb. issue of The Dramatist includes an interview with Eric Bentley, now 91 years old. For me, Bentley is the benchmark of theatre criticism and scholarship. He's an extraordinary writer, fair and yet with strong opinions, eloquent and writerly, yet direct. His books, such as The Playwright as Thinker (and Thinking about the Playwright), In Search of Theater and The Life of the Drama are invaluable and indispensible--and in that peculiar way that the best books on theatre can be: exciting. Bentley was also a scholar and a playwright of the 1950s Blacklist in America, and it was when researching that subject that I first came upon his work (though it wouldn't be until the 1990s that I read his theatre criticism. I haven't yet read his books specifically on Brecht and Shaw.) Bentley has a clear vision of what he believes theatre should be and do, but he is also nuanced and generous.
It's a short interview, touching on some of his history. He was interested in music and languages first, and more or less slid into theatre by meeting Brecht in California and agreeing to translate some of his work from German into English. He also acted a few small parts in Shakespeare repertory-- plays which happened to be directed by John Geilgud. Right place, right time, and he was off.
Bentley became Brecht's first and persistent champion, although he is clear that he disapproved of Brecht's continued fascination with Stalinist Communism (he faults the elderly G. B. Shaw for the same blind spot.) He also championed Shaw when he was unpopular, as apparently he is again on the English stage.
In this interview Bentley had these comments on Brecht's Mother Courage, which was seen here at HSU, directed by John Heckel: "The songs in Brecht's plays are quite unlike songs in anybody else's plays [in which they are] incidental...but in Mother Courage... they are pillars on which the whole play stands. They are not secondary but primary. It's the songs plus some dialogue--not dialogue with a few songs."
His comments on his own career are clear-eyed and instructive. He says that his plays are more often read than staged, but this is typical for plays that last. But he is disappointed that his later books haven't had the impact of his earlier ones. "...as a writer facing a public, it is easier to be young than to be old. It is easier to be immature and wild rather than to be controlled and have a bit of common sense. All my first efforts were received much more favorably than my later efforts. That's something that disappoints me very much, because I feel that my later efforts were better."
This interview isn't on line, but others are, like this one specifically on Brecht. And since the Young Actors Guild production of A Dream Play just concluded, while John Heckel is preparing his next production for later this month at HSU (Caryl Churchill's Cloud 9), here's a link to my essay on the two Brecht productions done here last year, Heckel's Mother Courage and the Young Actors Guild adaptation of Caucasian Chalk Circle.
Monday, January 29, 2007
Translations
Brian Friel's Translations has been revived on Broadway, and was reviewed in the New York Times recently. This photo is from the HSU production in 2005, directed by Bernadette Cheyne, with Bob Wells. Thursday, January 25, 2007
The Dream Play and North Coast Prep
The play’s not the only thing of interest on the stage. As with performances of other high school, junior high and young people’s group (such as those at Dell’Arte, Ferndale Rep and NCRT) that aren’t reviewed here, the experience of witnessing young people discovering themselves on stage can be inspiring, resonant and educational for the audience as well as the students.
The play in turn can itself be infused with more meaning by youthful enthusiasm and sincerity. The Dream Play has all of that, plus an efficiently flowing, focused production, and Beck and Bazemore’s magnificent stage pictures: there’s a scene with a trapezoidal door suspended in space, with similarly shaped screens floating above an elegantly composed set of actors that’s breath-taking.
These are juniors and seniors, some of them in their fourth or fifth play, and some on stage for the first time. The cast also includes exchange students from China, Germany and Ghana. A school production allows large casts, and there are as many as 20 actors on the stage in this one, with a Greek-style chorus that big enough to suggest the power of the people’s voice, whether used for good or ill.
I saw Saturday’s performance, with Isaiah Cooper deftly expressing the Officer’s changing moods and circumstances (he alternates with Sterling Johnson-Brown), and Tehya Wood, stately, radiant and beautifully costumed as the Daughter of the god Indra (she alternates with Hanna Nielsen and Nicky Vakilova.)
Bohdan Banducci, blessed with a fine stage voice and presence, plays the impoverished Lawyer whose marriage to the Daughter reveals earthly woes. Fiona Ryder’s aria wowed the crowd, student James Forrest composed the dramatically effective video projections, and all the actors capably brought out the humanity and the humor of the characters and the play.
This isn’t pure Strindberg—there are musical interpolations and a much different ending, extolling the virtues of relationship and group action rather than the author’s emphasis on the eternal tensions of the human condition. But that’s also fitting for a youthful vision, and I found that seeing this play in action illuminated a further reading of Strindberg’s text.
Saturday’s audience, which was clearly involved in each stage moment, included a certain couple with an extra interest. Joyce Hough and Fred Neighbor are familiar figures in the North Coast music scene. Jean Bazemore directed an HSU production of A Dream Play in the Van Duzer in 1969. Joyce Hough played the Daughter, and Neighbor was the Lawyer. They met while doing the play, and their nightly 20 minutes alone crouched in a crawlspace waiting for their entrance might have had something to do with an ensuing romance and marriage a year or so later. They were there together Saturday, sitting in front near Gerry Beck, who also designed the 1969 production.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Opening on the North Coast
Jake's Women by Neil Simon comes to North Coast Repertory on January 25, with Michael Thomas, Jolene Hayes, Shelley Stewart, Suza Lambert Bowser, Kim Hodel, Theresa Ireland, Condry Whisenhunt and Derby McLaughlin, directed by James Read. Details on dates and times here. Pictured is the Broadway cast playbill from 1992.
First Principles
Let's Hear It for the Audience
I've just finished writing a review for the San Francisco Chronicle of British playwright Michael Frayn's new book, The Human Touch, which is a book of philosophy. Though he writes nonfiction, fiction and screenplays, Frayn is most famous in the U. S. for his comic farce, Noises Off (which I saw on Broadway, and had a seat so far from the stage that I vowed never to economize again with rush tickets; I see Broadway plays so rarely that it makes no sense to ruin the experience with a bad seat) and his intellectual drama, Copenhagen (which I would love to see on stage; I saw the much truncated film version, and I admire the play I read.) Though this book is about the nature of knowledge and even reality, I see the playwright in it--or such is a premise of my review.
Though the central point of the book is a central preoccupation of many of his plays, it may have been especially inspired by aspects of the quantum physics and the ensuing philosophy in Copenhagen, which is about two giants of atomic and quantum physics, Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in World War II. The uncertainity of what they each said about the Allied and German atomic bomb programs remains an international mystery and inspired the dramatic action of the play. (The mystery and Frayn's involvement in it became the basis of an elaborate hoax perpetrated on him, which he describes with good humor in his little book with David Burke, The Copenhagen Papers. )
However, the point of mentioning all this here is a passage I came across in the introduction to Frayn's first volume of his collected plays, and wanted to share. It's about the role of the audience in theatre. Here's Frayn:
"I sometimes feel that the skill of audiences is not always sufficiently noted. Some theatregoers arrive late, certainly, some of them comment on the performances aloud and wait for the laugh-lines to cough. But the suprising thing is how few behave like this, and how many understand the conventions and are prepared to abide by them. To find two, or five, or ten good actors to perform a play is difficult; to find two hundred, five hundred, or a thousand good people to watch it, night after night, is a miracle. So many people in one room who will sit quietly and listen for two hours---not calling out slogans, not breaking down under the strain of so much communal self-discipline! To be a member of a good audience is exhilarating."
I've just finished writing a review for the San Francisco Chronicle of British playwright Michael Frayn's new book, The Human Touch, which is a book of philosophy. Though he writes nonfiction, fiction and screenplays, Frayn is most famous in the U. S. for his comic farce, Noises Off (which I saw on Broadway, and had a seat so far from the stage that I vowed never to economize again with rush tickets; I see Broadway plays so rarely that it makes no sense to ruin the experience with a bad seat) and his intellectual drama, Copenhagen (which I would love to see on stage; I saw the much truncated film version, and I admire the play I read.) Though this book is about the nature of knowledge and even reality, I see the playwright in it--or such is a premise of my review.
Though the central point of the book is a central preoccupation of many of his plays, it may have been especially inspired by aspects of the quantum physics and the ensuing philosophy in Copenhagen, which is about two giants of atomic and quantum physics, Neils Bohr and Werner Heisenberg, in World War II. The uncertainity of what they each said about the Allied and German atomic bomb programs remains an international mystery and inspired the dramatic action of the play. (The mystery and Frayn's involvement in it became the basis of an elaborate hoax perpetrated on him, which he describes with good humor in his little book with David Burke, The Copenhagen Papers. )
However, the point of mentioning all this here is a passage I came across in the introduction to Frayn's first volume of his collected plays, and wanted to share. It's about the role of the audience in theatre. Here's Frayn:
"I sometimes feel that the skill of audiences is not always sufficiently noted. Some theatregoers arrive late, certainly, some of them comment on the performances aloud and wait for the laugh-lines to cough. But the suprising thing is how few behave like this, and how many understand the conventions and are prepared to abide by them. To find two, or five, or ten good actors to perform a play is difficult; to find two hundred, five hundred, or a thousand good people to watch it, night after night, is a miracle. So many people in one room who will sit quietly and listen for two hours---not calling out slogans, not breaking down under the strain of so much communal self-discipline! To be a member of a good audience is exhilarating."
Thursday, January 18, 2007
O'Toole on the Tube
"Actors are people, only more so." So said Peter O'Toole on the latest in a series of fascinating conversations with Charlie Rose, broadcast last night. If you missed it, you can see it here. This is O'Toole in probably his most famous film role, as Lawrence of Arabia. Despite 8 nominations for brilliant lead acting, he's never won an Oscar--but hopes are high for his new film, Venus. In the interview he talks about the importance of his first love: the theatre.
Maggie and Me (and Lettice & Lovage)
Familiar to a new generation as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies, she was then known as the Oscar-nominated star of Travels With My Aunt, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and other films. I was actually supping with Pat Mitchell, then the entertainment reporter for a Boston television station, now the head of PBS. The restaurant catered to Boston's theatre people, including those participating in touring shows. It was a lively place. At one point in the evening I heard someone playing the piano and singing who sounded a lot like Joel Grey, fresh from his Cabaret fame. I turned around: It was Joel Grey.
I was seated next to Pat but at the next table, across from me and a little to the left, was Maggie Smith, in town starring in Noel Coward's Private Lives. She was dining with a man older than both of us who I didn't recognize. I had an unobstructed view of her any time I turned my head that way, but Pat was on my right and quite attractive as well, so I wasn't tempted to stare. But I did turn to see her looking at her companion with those large, empathetic blue eyes, both hands on his arm.
I thought of that moment when reading that British playwright Peter Schaffer wrote Lettice and Lovage for Maggie Smith, at her request. I could readily believe she could be very persuasive.
Shaffer was already famous for Equus and Amadeus, both serious plays focused on male characters (perhaps that's why they both end in "us.") But Lettice and Lovage would be a comedy principally featuring older women. The risk worked out well for both author and actor. The play won a Best of the Year award in London, and when it came to Broadway in 1990, Maggie Smith (who played Lettice) won the Best Actress Tony.
This week Lettice and Lovage comes to Ferndale Rep, with Marilyn Foot as Lettice and the Rep's artistic director Marilyn McCormick reprising her role as Lotte from the Rep's production a decade ago.
"It's a sweet story about two women who basically don't fit into society, " says director Rene Grinnell. "They form a friendship that eventually becomes what saves them."
Lettice (a name derived from the Latin word for gladness) Douffet is the dramatically-inclined and history-minded daughter of a Frenchwoman who ran an all-women theatrical troupe that performed Shakespeare in French. But now she is a tour guide at a London house of historical significance, if not much interest. As the play begins she is livening up her patter with flamboyant inaccuracies. Lotte, her temperamental opposite, is her boss who fires her for this transgression. This of course turns out to be the beginning rather than the end of their relationship.
The play deals playfully but meaningfully with issues of reality and fantasy, an authentic versus a conventional life, the present versus the past, and more topically, with the ugliness of contemporary buildings and the need to preserve classic architecture.
It is also very English in its references and humor (or humour) but the Ferndale production took this as a challenge. "Everyone had a lot of fun doing the research on the history, the architecture and most of all on British life," Grinnell said. Since Lettice and Lovage is still produced often in America, it must translate pretty well.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Camelot Revisited
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| from an HSU production of Camelot in 2003 |
Camelot was the first Broadway show I saw, on my first visit to New York when I was a freshman in high school. I saw the original production with the original cast, which included Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet. With its romantic updating and contemporary meaning of the Arthurian myth, and the wit of both the music and lyrics, it remains my favorite stage musical. For me, not many measure up to it.
I remember being completely transported by the first act, and then feeling a little lost in the second act, until the very end. I always thought it was because of my inexperience, but apparently this was a more common impression. I saw the HSU production a few years ago and thoroughly enjoyed it. The new version is currently trying out at the La Mirada Theatre in southern California, starring Michael York.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
First Principles
The Invention of Empathy
The January issue of American Theatre contains a remarkable essay by Oskar Eustis, the new artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York. It's actually excerpted from a speech he gave at a Theatre Communications Group forum--and I urge you to read it all here.
Eustis talks about Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival (the free festival in the park that revolutionized American theatre) and the nonprofit Public Theatre--how Papp saw the Festival as the dramatic equivalent of the public library, providing access to everyone, for free. Eustis goes on to talk about the relationship of theatre in America to American ideals and founding ideas. He traces drama as a fundamentally democratic form back to the Greeks:
As soon as Thespis turned and spoke to someone else, as soon as he invented dialogue, everything changed. The storyteller—who has had this authorial, god-like, unified perspective—isn't right anymore. His point of view is not the authorial point of view. He is one of two points of view that are on stage. At that juncture we realize that truth resides not in the storyteller—truth resides somehow in the dialogue, in the space between two people. You're imagining that you're in my shoes: You empathize with me, and then empathize with whoever I'm talking to. That act—that empathic leap of imagination—is the democratic act. In order for a democracy to work you have to believe that nobody has a monopoly on truth. That there is no such thing as absolute truth—otherwise the whole idea of democracy is nonsensical. All it would be is a compromise. In order to really believe in democracy, you have to believe that truth resides in the dialogue between different points of view.
It is such a powerful idea and a true one: theatre is about entertainment, yes, but it is also about empathy. By creating characters that are basically real, and showing them interacting in dialogue, drama allows the audience a simultaneous objectivity (that's not me, I'm out here watching) and subjectivity (I feel that way, too; that person is like me) that allows both consciousness of self and empathy for others.
Drama tests preconceptions, the standard accepted view, and every ideology. Even great writers with strong ideological beliefs, like Tolstoy, could not ignore counter-examples and other points of view in his dramatic fiction. Eustis says it was that way from the beginning. He writes about the earliest Greek play we have: "Aeschylus's The Persians. It is one of the few Greek tragedies not based on mythological material." It is about the defining moment for ancient Greece--its triumph over the greatest power of its time, imperial Persia. Eustis writes:
It's a chance for the Greeks to relive the pleasure of having defeated the Persians. But you also can't read the text without knowing absolutely that Aeschylus was asking his audience to identify with the Persians—eight years after this war. He was asking them to imagine what it felt like to lose this war, what it felt like from the other person's point of view. And he was also doing something even a little bit more subversive than that, I think.
He was saying, "We've triumphed. We're the most powerful. We sit on top of the world. But look who, eight years ago, was sure that their empire would last forever. Look who was positive that God was on their side. Look who was sure that their armies could never be defeated. And think of what happened."
This is the power of drama. It is true on all scales and all levels. Read this essay--you'll be glad you did.
Two other comments: When I first started going to New York regularly in the late 70s and early 80s, I loved going to Papp's Public Theatre. I often stayed with a friend in the East Village, when it was still a kind of urban wasteland, and even though I didn't know any theatregoers (my friends were into music, my business was usually journalistic), I passed on CBGB's to walk over to the Public as often as I could. I saw the latest Sam Shepard plays there, and Kevin Kline's Hamlet. There were several plays going on at the same time, and there were usually rush tickets available to something, so the already relatively cheap tickets were even cheaper.
It was an exciting place. I always saw actors I recognized and other figures in the arts in the lobby and going in and out of the theatres. Once I was about to leave a men's room and had my hand on the door when it opened towards me from the other side. I found myself eye to eye with John Housman. The Public put on the newest work, and it was receptive to outsiders. I got one of the few real responses to a play I sent around back then--a positive, encouraging letter--from the Public.
The second comment is that I've thought about doing this blog for awhile, but I wasn't quite motivated enough to actually start it. I still don't know if it's a good idea, but when I read this essay, I was compelled to start it--because Eustis said so much that needs to be heard.
The January issue of American Theatre contains a remarkable essay by Oskar Eustis, the new artistic director of the Public Theatre in New York. It's actually excerpted from a speech he gave at a Theatre Communications Group forum--and I urge you to read it all here.
Eustis talks about Joseph Papp, founder of the New York Shakespeare Festival (the free festival in the park that revolutionized American theatre) and the nonprofit Public Theatre--how Papp saw the Festival as the dramatic equivalent of the public library, providing access to everyone, for free. Eustis goes on to talk about the relationship of theatre in America to American ideals and founding ideas. He traces drama as a fundamentally democratic form back to the Greeks:
As soon as Thespis turned and spoke to someone else, as soon as he invented dialogue, everything changed. The storyteller—who has had this authorial, god-like, unified perspective—isn't right anymore. His point of view is not the authorial point of view. He is one of two points of view that are on stage. At that juncture we realize that truth resides not in the storyteller—truth resides somehow in the dialogue, in the space between two people. You're imagining that you're in my shoes: You empathize with me, and then empathize with whoever I'm talking to. That act—that empathic leap of imagination—is the democratic act. In order for a democracy to work you have to believe that nobody has a monopoly on truth. That there is no such thing as absolute truth—otherwise the whole idea of democracy is nonsensical. All it would be is a compromise. In order to really believe in democracy, you have to believe that truth resides in the dialogue between different points of view.
It is such a powerful idea and a true one: theatre is about entertainment, yes, but it is also about empathy. By creating characters that are basically real, and showing them interacting in dialogue, drama allows the audience a simultaneous objectivity (that's not me, I'm out here watching) and subjectivity (I feel that way, too; that person is like me) that allows both consciousness of self and empathy for others.
Drama tests preconceptions, the standard accepted view, and every ideology. Even great writers with strong ideological beliefs, like Tolstoy, could not ignore counter-examples and other points of view in his dramatic fiction. Eustis says it was that way from the beginning. He writes about the earliest Greek play we have: "Aeschylus's The Persians. It is one of the few Greek tragedies not based on mythological material." It is about the defining moment for ancient Greece--its triumph over the greatest power of its time, imperial Persia. Eustis writes:
It's a chance for the Greeks to relive the pleasure of having defeated the Persians. But you also can't read the text without knowing absolutely that Aeschylus was asking his audience to identify with the Persians—eight years after this war. He was asking them to imagine what it felt like to lose this war, what it felt like from the other person's point of view. And he was also doing something even a little bit more subversive than that, I think.
He was saying, "We've triumphed. We're the most powerful. We sit on top of the world. But look who, eight years ago, was sure that their empire would last forever. Look who was positive that God was on their side. Look who was sure that their armies could never be defeated. And think of what happened."
This is the power of drama. It is true on all scales and all levels. Read this essay--you'll be glad you did.
Two other comments: When I first started going to New York regularly in the late 70s and early 80s, I loved going to Papp's Public Theatre. I often stayed with a friend in the East Village, when it was still a kind of urban wasteland, and even though I didn't know any theatregoers (my friends were into music, my business was usually journalistic), I passed on CBGB's to walk over to the Public as often as I could. I saw the latest Sam Shepard plays there, and Kevin Kline's Hamlet. There were several plays going on at the same time, and there were usually rush tickets available to something, so the already relatively cheap tickets were even cheaper.
It was an exciting place. I always saw actors I recognized and other figures in the arts in the lobby and going in and out of the theatres. Once I was about to leave a men's room and had my hand on the door when it opened towards me from the other side. I found myself eye to eye with John Housman. The Public put on the newest work, and it was receptive to outsiders. I got one of the few real responses to a play I sent around back then--a positive, encouraging letter--from the Public.
The second comment is that I've thought about doing this blog for awhile, but I wasn't quite motivated enough to actually start it. I still don't know if it's a good idea, but when I read this essay, I was compelled to start it--because Eustis said so much that needs to be heard.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Mikado and Cinderella for Holidays 2006
W.S. Gilbert wrote the ingenious, anarchic lyrics, and Arthur Sullivan the bracing music for 14 comic operas first performed in London in the late 19th century (the last of which premiered when Cole Porter was in kneepants). The greatest and most famous were H.M.S Pinafore,The Pirates of Penzance and the most performed (though probably not the best) The Mikado.
In his libretto, Gilbert seemed to have learned Jonathan Swift's basic trick of lampooning his time and place by locating it safely at some fictional distance -- in Japan, for instance, then known only through the usual bag of clichés and falsehoods common to Imperial ignorance. The Mikado is obviously more about England than Japan, and the current North Coast Rep production extends the gentle satire to here and now, as in the addition of telemarketers to people who would be "never missed."
The Mikado is sometimes mounted as a silky spectacle (probably one reason it's done so often), but while Suzanne Ross' scene design is efficient and Marcia Hutson's costumes (including kimonos painted by Jennifer Mackey) are handsome and occasionally splashy, they don't overwhelm the real fun of the story -- the songs and the performances.
Dianne Zuleger's direction keeps everything on track, which liberates this as a performers' show, and at NCRT pretty much everyone shines. Bob Service as a fussily corrupt, self-pitying Pooh-Bah; Jordan Matteoli as a silent-movie romantic hero Nanki-Poo; Anders Carlson as a forlorn Lord High Executioner who manages in the end to reconcile his British fair play with his craven ambition, and Lonnie Blankenchip Jr. in his flawless turn as the deranged Mikado -- all judiciously employ their physical comedy skills with hilarious effect.
Darcy Daughtry and Serena Zelezny have their shining moments in supporting parts: The "schoolgirls" who sing one of the play's best-known songs, "Three Little Maids From School Are We," give a jolt of energy to the first act, and the show never looks back from there.
In last season's Once Upon A Mattress (NCRT) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Ferndale Rep), Minderella Willins excelled at playing innocent ingénues, but in this show she is the antagonist, with long red evil Queen nails out of Snow White, and she is just as convincing and mesmerizing. Her singing continues to be a wonder.
Laura Hathaway is appealing as the love interest, Yum Yum, and it is her thrilling voice that is the most emotionally powerful of this show's many pleasing elements. It's a winner.
When Carol Martinez saw her first play in a theatre at the age of two, she was so small that her mother had to hold her seat down for the entire performance so it wouldn't flip up and fold her away. The show was Alice in Wonderland, and she claims to remember parts of it to this day: "the cards falling from the sky at the end -- the magic of it."
Currently working as a lawyer in Eureka as her day job, she grew up listening to the soundtracks her mother bought of traveling Broadway shows that came through Orange County, "So when I was about 10 years old, I knew all the lyrics to Oklahoma, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, all of those. I've been a musical theatre nerd for a long time."
This weekend sees the opening of Rodger and Hammerstein's Cinderella,the second show she's directed at Ferndale Rep (it's also her second musical; last season's Some Enchanted Evening was her first). Written originally for the fledgling medium of television in 1957, Cinderella became a stage musical soon after.
The Ferndale version will feature Nanette Voss and Essie Bertain alternating as Cinderella, Tyler Rich as Prince Charming and Liz Power as the Fairy Godmother. There are 10 children in the cast, and Martinez has especially enjoyed working with the young teens she's seen growing up in the rehearsal process, "becoming really responsible, really encouraging and supporting each other."
As for the experience of directing the show, she saw Cinderella's tragedy differently than most. "It was tragic that no one loved her, that her stepmother and stepsisters treated her so badly. But the real tragedy was that she had no one to love, no way to express her love, until the Prince, which is interesting in light of the Christmas season when we say it is better to give than to receive. For Cinderella, that was really true."
Cinderella begins its run at Ferndale Rep this Friday, Nov. 24, and with it the holiday madness really starts.
The Dell'Arte Company opens its 26th annual holiday show, Entrances and Exits, that same Friday at the Carlo Theatre. Following a Saturday show the troupe embarks on its traditional tour of free performances beginning at HSU's Van Duzer Theatre on Sunday, Nov. 26. The show heads out of the county the following week, then returns for a series of local hops from Dec. 4-10, landing back at the Carlo for the Dec. 14-17 weekend. You should find the schedule at dellarte.com, or call 668-5663, ext. 20.
Next Thursday, Nov. 30, HSU opens its final show of 2006, Sheridan's comedy of gossip, The School for Scandal, directed by Redwood Curtain's Clint Rebik. It runs the customary two weekends; more information at scandalhsu.blogspot.com.
Sunday, September 24, 2006
The Ladies Who Act: The Ladies of the Camellias
This play by the contemporary Los Angeles director Lillian Groag is billed as a farce, among the most satisfying theatrical forms when it works. However, it is also one of the most difficult to write and direct. The pleasures for participants as well as audience of creating waves of riotous laughter, each new one “topping” the last, has been too tempting for many playwrights to resist. (If not for his untimely illness and death, August Wilson’s next play sounded like it was going to be a farce.)
Some contemporary playwrights have successfully created classic farce (Joe Orton comes to mind) but many have failed. Others have upped the ante by using farcical elements in more politically and socially ambitious plays—Tom Stoppard, for instance. Then there are the influences on writers as well as audiences of the movie hybrids—the Marx Brothers films, slapstick and screwball comedies.
We have one contemporary play about the theatre that is as close to classic farce as modern ironic drama gets—Michael Frayn’s Noises Off (the movie version, with such luminaries as Carol Burnett, Michael Caine and Christopher Reeve, also demonstrates the difficulty of translating stage farce to screen.)
The play at NCRT is stylistically more complex, and its content is more ambitious. The Ladies of the Camellias is set in late 19th century Paris, when new approaches from Germany, Russia and England were about to create the modern theatre that is the operational basis for the dramatic arts of our time.
Two formidable actresses towards the end of the age of star-driven drama, Italian diva Eleanora Duse and the French legend, Sarah Bernhardt, were each to appear in the same romance, The Lady of the Camellias by Alexander Dumas (which is also the basis of the famous Greta Garbo film, Camille.)
Meanwhile, a production of Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac is opening down the street. This was also an era of social and political turmoil that would eventually lead to World War I and the Communist revolution in Russia. All of these elements bear on the action onstage.
This history is the substance of this play, surrounded by a variety of verbal as well as physical comedy, from droll Wildean witticisms (“A cynic is a romantic sulking”) to acerbic Noel Cowardly observations (about audiences entertained by a socially-conscious play, who then “go off and vote for the wrong people.”)
Much of the humor is about theatre, and much of that is based on affectionate cliches about the excesses and vanities of actors, though there are some theatrical in-jokes of the kind that added bonus zest to Shakespeare in Love. Is theatre a playground for the rich, or are actors as socially outcast as anarchists? The roles of art and politics, of thought and feeling, form one of this play’s themes with contemporary resonance.
Both Michele Shoshani (a veteran Bay Area performer new to the North Coast) as Sarah Bernhardt, and Gloria Montgomery (fresh from her triumph in NCRT’s Broadway Bound) as Duse effectively play these actresses as practical and intelligent, in charge of their legends and aware of the utility of their frivolities. Thanks in part to excellent costuming, Shoshani even looks French, and Montgomery has that Italian glow.
The male partners (onstage and sometimes off) of these grand actresses were necessary but definitely inferior appurtenances, and Hans Crynock and David Hamilton milk those roles for all their obvious and subtle comedy, and even more subtle pathos. Crynock excels at small hilarious gestures and body language, while Hamilton brings an air of eager earnestness with a touch of sadness that gives his physical comedy another dimension.
As a play, The Ladies of the Camellias has problems. A good farce is like a wind-up toy: the first act winds it up, and it runs amuck in the second. But this play is so long and tries to do so much (perhaps too much) that it forces a single hysterical speed from the beginning.
Fortunately, Lonnie Blankenchip as Alexander Dumas arrives in time to admirably slow it down and anchor it for the audience. After a frenetic and excessive start (at least I find the miming of the lines more annoying than funny), both the gifted Theresa Ireland and the skillful Bob Wells have their moments. Nobody could make the two syllables of “password” funnier than Wells does.
Without Nathan Pierce’s solid performance as the anarchist “Ivan,” this play with a large cast of differentiated characters and more than the usual amount of information to absorb, would have been unintelligible. Edward Olson provides a bracing turn—I won’t give away his surprise, but it enacts (and mocks) the classic farce mechanism of the Deus ex machina, the sudden solution dropping from the sky.
A handsome set (framed by evocative, Beardsley-style posters) and the other elements of presentation support an audience-pleasing production. There were opening weekend problems of lines and timing that the actors should overcome as the run goes on.
Director Carol Escobar had to deal with a play that sprawls in time and stage space, but is too interconnected to cut (and the playwright might react as the Blankenchip’s Dumas does to the idea of cutting text: as if it were a knife wound.) But a tighter play would have encouraged more differentiated and effective pacing and focus. Still, the opening Saturday night audience followed the action and had a good time, and subsequent audiences should, too.
Sunday, April 9, 2006
Anatomy of the Spider Woman
Two men share a prison cell in Argentina. Molina is a gay window dresser imprisoned for indecency who escapes into the romantic movies he recalls out loud. Valentin is a heterosexual Marxist activist, imprisoned for political activity, who listens and responds, initially as a way to pass the time. Their lives and deepest beliefs are revealed as their relationship evolves and changes them both, within a story that has elements of intrigue and tragedy.
This is the premise of Manuel Puig's 1978 novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman. It's been the basis of a movie (directed by Hector Babenco in 1985, starring William Hurt and Raul Julia), a musical and a play. The play, which Puig wrote, can be seen until April 22 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka.
The movie version and the play are very different -- they even revolve around different movie plots told by Molina. The play is much closer to the novel, reproducing large chunks of its dialogue. While the play loses some of the novel's complexity and texture, it has its own dramatic virtues: mostly seeing and hearing the characters, as interpreted by the actors.
The prison cell in the North Coast Rep production has some of the same look as in the movie, but the resemblance stops there. Michael Thomas (as Molina) and Paul Charles Spencer (as Valentin) make no attempt to imitate the inimitable performances of Hurt and Julia. They create their own versions of the characters, and because they do so with economy and skill, they demonstrate how live theatre can produce a unique, valuable and entertaining experience apart from any movie, novel or indeed any previous production of the play.
Co-directed by the two actors, the production moves at a brisk pace, yet their acting dexterity makes every moment expand with possibility. Neither wastes a movement or a gesture. It's a pleasure to watch two experienced, disciplined and thoughtful actors at work.
Michael Thomas employs a restrained theatricality to create a Molina who is warm, funny and feminine, but also self-doubting. Paul Charles Spencer plays Valentin as quietly masculine, well-mannered, serious and compassionate, with his own demons of doubt.
In terms of the play, their characterizations convey Valentin's middle-class and Molina's lower-class origins, an underlying element of the political and social themes. In terms of performance, they both win over the audience immediately. The other elements of the production -- lighting, costume, scene and sound -- ably support the actors' interpretations and the story they tell.
The play sacrifices some of the novel's early intrigue and foreshadowing to provide a provocative end to the first act, and the important action that happens offstage drains some of the drama, but overall this is a fulfilling night of theatre.
The novel deals more extensively with the authoritarian and repressive political context of Argentina in the '70s, and with Valentin's political adventures within it. But lacking much of that context, the political atmosphere for this play becomes our own (which may be why the most audible positive response on the night I saw it -- the second Friday of the run -- came on a line to the effect that if women were in charge, there would be no torture).
Given our recent imbroglios over gay marriage and so on, along with seeing this relationship portrayed in front of us, the emphasis of the play is inevitably on that relationship, sexual and otherwise.
Now playing at Ferndale Rep until April 28 is Anatomy of a Murder by Elihu Winer, based on a nonfiction account of a murder trial in Michigan written by the trial's judge (under the name Robert Travers). It became an Otto Preminger movie starring Jimmy Stewart, and only after that became this play. I haven't seen it yet but I did talk with the director, Renee Grinnell, a couple of days before it opened.
She's chosen a film noir approach to this courtroom drama, expressed in the emphasis on lighting, to reflect the noirthemes: "The hero who is pushed to the edge by the femme fatale, and the fact that nothing is black and white."
A soldier is on trial for murder. His wife was raped, and he is charged with killing the bartender he believed to be the rapist. But as the trial proceeds and more facts and motives are revealed, nothing turns out to be certain. The trial is also an early instance of a psychological defense.
"It's intense," Grinnell said. "You really have to pay attention, but people like that. CSI, Law and Order -- people like courtroom dramas."
This production stars veterans Gavin Lyall and Jerry Nusbaum, Theresa Ireland and Albert Martinez (who acted together in Ferndale's recent Bus Stop), Steve Sterback, Dmitry Tokarsky and Tim Simpson. Newcomers include Sam McComber, Christie Myers (who returns to the stage after a nursing career) and Karyl Simpson, a psychology major who is furthering her education by portraying a psychologist.
Grinnell also chose to set the play in the year the movie came out: 1959. "It's right on the cusp as the 1950s become the 1960s, when things were really changing." One of the changes is the language, which was considered so graphic in its day that, according to Grinnell, Jimmy Stewart's own father took out an ad in his local newspaper to denounce the film his son starred in because it was offensive.
But words like "intercourse" and "panties" are not likely to offend a 2006 North Coat audience, though Grinnell does issue one contemporary caution: There is smoking on stage. "But it's not tobacco," she added hastily. "It's herbal."
This is the premise of Manuel Puig's 1978 novel, Kiss of the Spider Woman. It's been the basis of a movie (directed by Hector Babenco in 1985, starring William Hurt and Raul Julia), a musical and a play. The play, which Puig wrote, can be seen until April 22 at North Coast Repertory Theatre in Eureka.
The movie version and the play are very different -- they even revolve around different movie plots told by Molina. The play is much closer to the novel, reproducing large chunks of its dialogue. While the play loses some of the novel's complexity and texture, it has its own dramatic virtues: mostly seeing and hearing the characters, as interpreted by the actors.
The prison cell in the North Coast Rep production has some of the same look as in the movie, but the resemblance stops there. Michael Thomas (as Molina) and Paul Charles Spencer (as Valentin) make no attempt to imitate the inimitable performances of Hurt and Julia. They create their own versions of the characters, and because they do so with economy and skill, they demonstrate how live theatre can produce a unique, valuable and entertaining experience apart from any movie, novel or indeed any previous production of the play.
Co-directed by the two actors, the production moves at a brisk pace, yet their acting dexterity makes every moment expand with possibility. Neither wastes a movement or a gesture. It's a pleasure to watch two experienced, disciplined and thoughtful actors at work.
Michael Thomas employs a restrained theatricality to create a Molina who is warm, funny and feminine, but also self-doubting. Paul Charles Spencer plays Valentin as quietly masculine, well-mannered, serious and compassionate, with his own demons of doubt.
In terms of the play, their characterizations convey Valentin's middle-class and Molina's lower-class origins, an underlying element of the political and social themes. In terms of performance, they both win over the audience immediately. The other elements of the production -- lighting, costume, scene and sound -- ably support the actors' interpretations and the story they tell.
The play sacrifices some of the novel's early intrigue and foreshadowing to provide a provocative end to the first act, and the important action that happens offstage drains some of the drama, but overall this is a fulfilling night of theatre.
The novel deals more extensively with the authoritarian and repressive political context of Argentina in the '70s, and with Valentin's political adventures within it. But lacking much of that context, the political atmosphere for this play becomes our own (which may be why the most audible positive response on the night I saw it -- the second Friday of the run -- came on a line to the effect that if women were in charge, there would be no torture).
Given our recent imbroglios over gay marriage and so on, along with seeing this relationship portrayed in front of us, the emphasis of the play is inevitably on that relationship, sexual and otherwise.
Now playing at Ferndale Rep until April 28 is Anatomy of a Murder by Elihu Winer, based on a nonfiction account of a murder trial in Michigan written by the trial's judge (under the name Robert Travers). It became an Otto Preminger movie starring Jimmy Stewart, and only after that became this play. I haven't seen it yet but I did talk with the director, Renee Grinnell, a couple of days before it opened.
She's chosen a film noir approach to this courtroom drama, expressed in the emphasis on lighting, to reflect the noirthemes: "The hero who is pushed to the edge by the femme fatale, and the fact that nothing is black and white."
A soldier is on trial for murder. His wife was raped, and he is charged with killing the bartender he believed to be the rapist. But as the trial proceeds and more facts and motives are revealed, nothing turns out to be certain. The trial is also an early instance of a psychological defense.
"It's intense," Grinnell said. "You really have to pay attention, but people like that. CSI, Law and Order -- people like courtroom dramas."
This production stars veterans Gavin Lyall and Jerry Nusbaum, Theresa Ireland and Albert Martinez (who acted together in Ferndale's recent Bus Stop), Steve Sterback, Dmitry Tokarsky and Tim Simpson. Newcomers include Sam McComber, Christie Myers (who returns to the stage after a nursing career) and Karyl Simpson, a psychology major who is furthering her education by portraying a psychologist.
Grinnell also chose to set the play in the year the movie came out: 1959. "It's right on the cusp as the 1950s become the 1960s, when things were really changing." One of the changes is the language, which was considered so graphic in its day that, according to Grinnell, Jimmy Stewart's own father took out an ad in his local newspaper to denounce the film his son starred in because it was offensive.
But words like "intercourse" and "panties" are not likely to offend a 2006 North Coat audience, though Grinnell does issue one contemporary caution: There is smoking on stage. "But it's not tobacco," she added hastily. "It's herbal."
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