The Hub Review's Hints for a Highbrow Hallowe'en

People have been asking for a reprise of a Hub Review tradition - our list of "scary movies for smart people."  It's almost too late to watch one of these on Hallowe'en, of course, but there still might be time for you to download a few of these from somewhere - so I've resurrected the litany, and even added a little fresh blood at the end.

So here are the Hub Review's Hints for a Highbrow Hallowe'en.

Now I know what you're thinking - "highbrow"???  That word and "Hallowe'en" are two words you rarely see in close proximity!

I'm not sure why, however, because  horror movies have often been about intellectual challenge and fearless experimentation. Indeed, the fresh tropes you find in the best of them often shape, and eventually become staples of, mainstream culture.

So don't worry, you won't find any multiplex cheese on this list - no Amityville Horror or The Blob - and of course you won't find any bad American remakes of foreign classics. (When in doubt with horror movies, always see the foreign original!)  What we have here is cherce, as Spencer Tracy might say - movies that run the gamut from a pleasant shudder to a full-bore freak-out, but which always have a compelling intellectual component.

So without further ado, and working chronologically:




Cat People (1942) - Produced by Val Lewton and directed by Jacques Tourneur, this influential thriller kick-started an entire series devoted entirely to indirection and poetic mood. Simone Simone is some sort of Serbian lesbian/were-woman who turns into a panther when aroused - and hubby is an all-American innocent who can't understand why she's afraid to do the nasty. I know, I know - killer pussy! It sounds ridiculous (and it is), but the panther attacks - particularly the one in which the beast slinks through the shimmering shadows around a swimming pool, above - are masterpieces of suggested menace. Also noteworthy in the ensuing string of Lewton classics: I Walked with a Zombie and Bedlam. (Warning: be sure to avoid the laughable 80's remake.)



Dead of Night (1945) - the scares found here feel prim today (and there's one weak attempt at "comic relief"), but the format - a kind of omnibus of tales of terror - was very influential, and its circular dream structure was both the first, and probably the best, of its kind. Two Twilight Zone episodes - as well as the Final Destination movies - were drawn from its (superior) vignettes, but it's the final episode, about a dummy that slowly drives its ventriloquist mad, that remains hauntingly effective. Full movie above.



The Night of the Hunter (1955) - Charles Laughton's only directorial effort, this very strange thriller-melodrama isn't so much scary as ominously hypnotic. Robert Mitchum makes a convincingly murderous "preacher" who's after some buried treasure - and his night-time pursuit of the children (above) who know its secret is probably the longest, and most dreamily beautiful, piece of surrealism in American cinema.



Les Diaboliques (1955) - Leave it to the French to work out the logic of the thriller to the nth degree; Henri-Georges Clouzot's gritty shocker introduced the "twist ending" (excerpted above) that would eventually become cinema's standard. But even before that final scene, the movie is weirdly compelling in its sordid way, with little digressions into melodrama and even (seemingly) the supernatural. Other notable films by Clouzot: the grimly cynical Le Corbeau and Le Salaire de la Peur.



Eyes Without a Face (1960) - did we mention surrealism?  Georges Franju's macabre, poetic classic all but defines it. The repellent story is about a mad doctor (Pierre Brasseur) who surgically removes the faces of captured girls to replace the ravaged one of his daughter (Edith Scob); the visuals outside the operating room, however, are all about haunting juxtaposition and dream logic (excerpts above). The image of Scob's glittering eyes moving behind their mask is alone unforgettable (as are the calmly-filmed surgical sequences, it's only fair to warn you).

Psycho (1960) - yes, I know you've seen it, but it's the source of an incredible number of pop tropes - the psychotic slasher, the out-of-the-blue murder, the twistedly "innocent" (and probably gay) hero/villain, the cheap-o production design and even such touches as Bernard Herrmann's "slashing" strings have all become embedded in the culture. But the movie also, believe it or not, has bizarrely tragic undercurrents, and formally, it fascinates for the way in which Hitchcock set up one of his standard templates, then ripped away its surface to reveal the frightening impulses raging beneath. Related examples of Hitchcockian erotic apocalypse: Vertigo, The Birds, the final coming-to-terms of the weirdly comic Frenzy, and Michael Powell's florid companion piece, Peeping Tom.



The Innocents (1961) - Jack Clayton's take on James' The Turn of the Screw is not just the most literate horror movie ever made, it's one of the most literate movies ever made, period. Deborah Kerr is perfection as the repressed governess who may (or may not) be seeing ghosts, and whose preternaturally mature charges may (or may not) be possessed. The movie lacks suspense, but makes up for it with the sheer beauty of its production, the subtle craft of its dialogue, the superb acting even from the children, and the fact that every appearance of the ghosts (above) is an imaginative tour de force.



Don't Look Now (1973) - Nicolas Roeg's fragmented film can feel very self-indulgent - especially during some of its fractured, improvised scenes. But stick with it: the final sequence makes up for everything with both a satisfying scare and a strangely persuasive suggestion regarding the interpolation of past and present (one piece of the puzzle, above). Plus the movie features Julie Christie naked (alas, it features Donald Sutherland naked, too).

The Shining (1980) - The Divine Stanley's one foray into pure horror (if you don't count Clockwork Orange) sags in the middle, and never really manages to beef up Stephen King's superificial original with any depth, but its banal, brightly-lit look, its atmosphere of floating dread, and especially its many chase sequences remain indelible. True, Jack Nicholson's over-the-top performance can seem either genuinely, or artistically, horrifying, depending on the day I see it. But once Kubrick drops his pretensions and gets down to business in the last act, he shows he's still got his mass-market chops.



The Vanishing (1988) - George Sluizer's deeply disturbing "thriller" follows both a young man obsessed with solving his girlfriend's disappearance and a local magistrate who has become similarly obsessed with the existential freedom to do evil. The film is a fiendishly intricate meditation on moral psychology, in which almost every shot "counts," and the acting is consistently subtle. But in the end, Sluizer's deepest theme is the inevitability of death, and our poignant denial of same - a theme which his climax drives relentlessly home.  Be warned, though - this film's finale is not easily shaken off.  Oh, another warning - do not see the American remake (even though it was helmed by Sluizer!).



Cube (1997) - Far from perfect, this chilling Canadian cheapie (opening gambit above) nevertheless operates as both a visually elegant shocker and a genuine brainteaser. Seven total strangers awaken to find themselves trapped in a maze of cubes, each filled with gruesomely deadly booby-traps, and slowly realize they're human guinea pigs in some enormous survival experiment. Which means there must be a means of escape. One of those satisfying movies in which plot secrets are revealed just as you, too, figure them out.




Funny Games (1997 and 2007) - Michael Haneke's doubly-filmed provocation (this time the "American remake" is a shot-by-shot reproduction; a key sequence in the superior original is above) is for sensitive audiences perhaps the most gruelingly horrific movie ever made, even though none of its violence ever appears on the screen. It's essentially the standard victims-in-a-lonely-place set-up, only this time the premises of genre are ruthlessly subverted and reversed to turn all the punishment on the audience itself. All thrills, indeed every form of catharsis is deliberately frustrated in one brilliant gambit after another - and weirdly, even when the movie goes all meta on us, it doesn't lose its overwhelming sense of dread; we remain in its grip - perhaps because we sense it has also captured something of the amoral millennial zeitgeist. Horror movies are sometimes the most intellectual movies around, and this is among the most challenging.




Cure (1997) - much has been made of "Japanese horror" over the past decade (Ring, The Grudge, and especially the skin-crawling Audition), but the early Cure, Kiyoshi Kurosawa's hauntingly oblique meditation on a kind of viral psychosis, remains the subtle avatar of the form (its disorienting opening, above). The final scene alone is a master stroke of offhand horrific suggestion. Related films: Pulse, Bright Future.

Irréversible (2002) - Gaspar Noe's X-rated reversed-time narrative feels like Memento gone to hell; at times it's as unwatchable as Saw, but it's never merely torture porn. Instead, it's got quite the stern intellectual spine. Not for the sexually faint-of-heart, however; this film pushes horror's conventional obsession with sexual disgust to its limit - it even opens with a brutal, seemingly endless murder in the depths of a sex club called "Rectum." Well, at least there won't be an American remake.

Also recommended, in case you've seen all these -

Ring - Japanese original only! Another case in which crude, cheap-o production design does wonders for the dumb, pulpy content.

The Exorcist - preferably not the Director's Cut (in general, the ruthless studio cut is always superior to the director's cut) - but if you must, you must; either way, this enormous hit remains memorable for Ellen Burstyn's performance, a generally intense atmosphere, and a literally soul-freezing climax.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre - still packs a wallop, even in the days of Saw and Hostel, because it seems to tap into something obsessive in its depiction of Leatherface and his cannibal family.  Plus it boasts one of the most horrific surprises in all cinema, when dear old grandpa "wakes up."




Night of the Living Dead - Nixon supporters rise from the grave in 1968 to munch on Democrats in George Romero's punchy, gruesome cheapie, which features solid white citizens chewing on entrails, and may count as the first attempt by the horror genre to nihilistically satirize American racism.  Indeed, just about every trope of the millennial zombie craze found its first form in this crude classic. (Full movie above.)

Bird with the Crystal Plumage - the movie that put Dario Argento and the "giallo" on the map, it too pulses with an undertow of genuine obsession, and makes explicit horror's ancient conflation of violence and sex in scenes that would themselves become fetishes for Argento's fans. The film also basically stamps the template of the rest of this director's long body of work - a script burdened by bad acting (and only barely comprehensible anyway) is occasionally transformed by stretches of pure stylistic (and sadistic) bravura.

The Masque of the Red Death - the best, and certainly most ambitious, of Roger Corman's Poe series from the 60's, it features literately fruity dialogue, a discombobulated (but amusing) theological debate, re-purposed sets from Becket, and, of course, thick slices of pure ham from Vincent Price, served to Paul McCartney's girlfriend, Jane Asher.

Scream - a horror movie that morphs into a teen comedy; still, it's witty and smartly acted, and the perfectly-shot opening sequence kicks serious horror ass.




Invasion of the Body Snatchers - Philip Kaufman's 70's remake is definitely worth seeing, but the 1956 original (above) is the real classic.

Rosemary's Baby - more a study in isolation - or even a black comedy - than a genuine horror film, this Roman Polanski masterpiece defines insinuated menace, and, as in much of the director's work, focuses on deep, masculine evil moving behind a screen of quirky social intrigue. Related: the more violent, hallucinatory Repulsion, which makes superb use of the lovely, but rather wooden, Catherine Deneuve.


The Fearless Vampire Killers - another Polanski oddity, this weird piece of whimsy has its longeurs, but it's also lavishly produced in a widescreen format, features the suavest bloodsucker ever (Ferdy Mayne), and concludes with a brilliant "dance of the vampires" (shot in almost a single take, above). And somehow the presence of the gorgeous Sharon Tate gives it all a poignant resonance.



The Abominable Dr. Phibes (above) - this minor classic from the early 70's has proved incredibly influential, from its tongue-in-cheek tone to its gorgeous production design. With its concept of serial killing as a performance art, Phibes would influence everything from Silence of the Lambs to Saw. And weirdly enough, the movie may also count as a musical of sorts (full film above). Related: the equally witty, if conceptually less-interesting, Bad-Shakespeare version, Theatre of Blood.

Alien - Ridley Scott's breakthrough, this subtly-acted creature feature is made compelling (like Phibes, and the forgotten Black Sunday) via its unforgettable production design. Watching it is like experiencing a drowsy piece of techno mumblecore suddenly torn open by gooey visions of sexual horror (the phallus dentatus at the core of the action was even lubed with K-Y). Related: John Carpenter's best picture, the equally grotesque and memorably paranoid The Thing.



Finally - I have, I admit, ignored the great tradition of horror in the silent cinema.  Classics from this era include the seminal The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (complete movie above), Vampyr, Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera, and The Man Who Laughs.   Their imagery alone is enough to send a chill down your spine in the dead of night . . .

Partenope is indeed baroque, and don't fix it!

Kristen Sollek, David Trudgen, Amanda Forsythe, Andrew Garland and Owen Willetts let rip.

I'm late with my thoughts on Partenope, from Boston Baroque - when I would generally have run for the keyboard before the show closed, as it was so wonderful.  But alas, the opera only ran for two nights - and to houses only two-thirds full, too!  (I tell you, this town is nuts.)

But if Boston Baroque keeps turning them out like Partenope (and last spring's Orfeo), surely the houses will begin to fill up.  This time perhaps patrons were scared away by the opera's obscurity.  But now you know - Partenope is a gorgeous opera - it's mid-flight Handel, but close to his coloratura peak (and reportedly penned for a virtuosic soprano named Anna Strada).  Still, it's not all dazzling ornament; indeed, ravishingly lyrical lines unfurl in various arias up until the final curtain (there's a theme for theorbo in the last act, for instance, that you could feel send a shudder of rapture through the house). Alas, it does feel a bit long (and I understand conductor Pearlman cut it slightly), largely because its Italian libretto, written some thirty years before Handel's music, is an amusing mix of stock elements (a warrior queen and her competing swains, triangles upon  triangles, and of course a betrayed heroine in male attire), but depends on a single comic complication, and so can't quite sustain its epic length.

Handel's music makes you forget all about that, however, as did the exquisite warbling of the talented cast at Boston Baroque.  Just as it once showcased Anna Strada, Partenope this time around proved the perfect frame for one of our most sparkling local stars, the great Amanda Forsythe (at left), who seemed in her best voice ever last Saturday night.  Ms. Forsythe's control and intonation were superb in even the most challenging coloratura passages, and she dared to ornament her arias with notes at the very top of the vocal stratosphere.  And I cannot help but note that this singer is simply one of the best comic actresses in the city; indeed, the lovely Ms. Forsythe balanced with droll grace a tricky blend of romance, wry intelligence and camp that many comediennes would have been hard-pressed to pull off.

What's more, she was surrounded by a superb supporting cast (who all faced their own vocal challenges, too).  We were last dazzled by countertenor Owen Willetts in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice last spring; here, as Partenope's main squeeze, he was perhaps even more impressive, as the part pushed him down into alto-ish territory where countertenors often fear to tread.  But incredibly, this is where Mr. Willetts seems at his strongest, projecting rich, lustrous color where many of his peers can project little at all.

But you know, this review is going to get boring, because it's all praise - the production also featured strong turns from contralto Kirsten Sollek, countertenor David Trudgen, tenor Aaron Sheehan, and particularly baritone Andrew Garland. All these folks likewise had a keen sense of humor, and put over director David Gately's witty - sometimes even naughty - staging with confident panache.

I must also add that the Boston Baroque orchestra, under the baton of Martin Pearlman (the true begetter of this triumph), has rarely sounded better. The strings were clean and vibrant; the flutes and even the horns were agile; Victor Coelho was a standout on theorbo; and Robinson Pyle demonstrated again why he's the best period trumpet player in town. The clever modern costumes were by Adrienne Carlile - although frankly, as fun as these were, if there were a God in heaven, we'd get to see Partenope again in fuller dress. Leaving the theatre, my partner and I could only wonder, how could this marvel have ever been forgotten?  Certainly we'll remember it, and this production, forever.

The recovery begins

Here in Boston we largely dodged the wrath of Hurricane Sandy; but our friends to the south, of course, were not so lucky.

At left, a photographer caught a rainbow "touching down" in Manhattan this morning - the traditional symbol, from the days of Noah, of the promise of recovery.

You can help make that recovery possible by contributing to the Red Cross now, either via their website, or by texting REDCROSS to 90999.

And good news for Republicans - Americans have officially become more racist . . .

A recent Associated Press poll has revealed that Americans have become more, rather than less, racist since President Obama's election.  In fact now a slight majority - 51% - of Americans express explicitly anti-black attitudes.  We hate Latinos a little more, though - 52% of those surveyed expressed negative attitudes toward Hispanics.

It is somewhat comforting to imagine that perhaps this backlash is a result of political gains (a cycle we've seen before); still, observers report that in other situations in which blacks have taken high political office (mayorships, etc.), the black executives' standing has improved with whites over time.  For reasons unknown, however, that has not occurred with Obama, despite his high performance in his role.  Indeed, a strange sort of denial of his successes has set in among Republicans - who will claim with confidence that he didn't save the American auto and banking industries, his stimulus plan didn't work, Republicans didn't kill all his job bills, he didn't really get Osama bin Laden, our government has grown rather than shrunk under him, and he even raised their taxes rather than lowering them!  And of course you have to add to this delusional litany the absurd, but persistent, claims over his birth certificate and religion.  It is hard to explain all this fantasy without recourse to racism as a probable cause.

But back to the survey, which tested implicit as well as explicit attitudes - and found, to no one's surprise, that Republicans were far more racist than Democrats - 79% of Republicans expressed explicitly racist sentiments.  Still, almost a third - 32% - of Democrats expressed some racist feeling, and their implicit attitude scores were much higher - 55% to 64% of Republicans.  (I'm not sure how the implicit score for Republicans could be lower than the explicit score, btw - this may suggest some issues with the survey's "implicit" methodology.)

So there you have it - that's what we're up against.  I admit I sense some deeply tragic, but utterly appropriate, historical irony in the fact that racism may in the end bring about the destruction of our country.  Let's try to make sure it doesn't turn out that way.

"My party is full of racists."

One Republican, at least, has spoken the truth.

The Fall 2012 Hubbie Awards

Alas, it has been quite some time since I've handed out Hubbies - so some of the winners in this round were seen in the summer months.  Somehow I don't think they'll mind the belated bouquet, though - oh and btw, that's Apolo Ohno modeling another possible Hubbie design up top, should we ever get to handing out physical awards!

Now you know how this works - I look back through the posts from the past few months and pick those performers, designers, and directors whose work I admired the most.  So without further ado:

Best Productions

Kyle Cherry and John Geoffrion in Gross Indecency

War Horse, National Theatre of Great Britain, via Broadway in Boston

Sequence 8, Les 7 Doits de la Main, via ArtsEmerson

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (at right), Bad Habit Productions

Round and Round the Garden, Gloucester Stage

Avenue Q, Lyric Stage

Private Lives, Huntington Theatre


Best Ensembles

Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde - John Geoffrion, Kyle Cherry, Gabriel Graetz, Matthew Murphy, Brooks Reeves, Tom Lawrence, Joey Heyworth, Luke Murtha, Morgan Bernhard, James Bocock, and Derek McCormack, directed by Liz Fenstermaker, dialect coach Susanna Harris Noon, Bad Habit Productions

"Master Harold" . . . and the boys - Johnny Lee Davenport, Peter Mark Kendall, Anthony Willis, Jr., directed by Benny Sato Ambush, Gloucester Stage

Polaroid Stories - Luke Murtha, Michael Underhill, Melissa De Jesus, Jesse Wood, Kiki Samko, Danielle Leeber Lucas, Elizabeth Battey, Mikey DiLoreto, Michael Caminiti, Amy Meyer, Robyn Linden, Denise Drago, Lauren Elias, Nicole Howard, Kate Shanahan, and Sarah Sixt, directed by Joey Pelletier and Elise Wulff, a joint production by Heart and Dagger Productions, Boston Actors Theater, Happy Medium Theatre

Round and Round the Garden - Steven Barkhimer, Barlow Adamson, Richard Snee, Lindsay Crouse, Adrianne Krstansky, Sarah Newhouse, directed by Eric C. Engel, Gloucester Stage

Private Lives - Bianca Amato, James Waterston, Autumn Hurlbert, Jeremy Webb, Paula Plum, directed by Maria Aitken, (at left) Huntington Theatre

Avenue Q - Erica Spyres, Phil Tayler, John Ambrosino, Jenna Lee Scott, Davron S. Monroe, Elise Arsenault, Harry McEnerny V, directed by Spiro Veloudos, Lyric Stage

Best Individual Performances

Patrick Shea, Race, New Rep

Luke Murtha, John Zdrojeski, The Kite Runner, New Rep

Joel Colodner, Zach Eisenstadt, The Chosen, Lyric Stage

Adriane Lenox, Now or Later, Huntington Theatre

Karen MacDonald, Nancy E. Carroll, and Johanna Day, Good People (at right), Huntington Theatre

Seumas Sargent, Beat Generation, Merrimack Rep

Hassan Il-Amin, Fred Sullivan, Jr., King Lear, Trinity Rep

Michael Benz, Hamlet, Shakespeare's Globe via ArtsEmerson

Maurice E. Parent, Melinda Lopez, The Motherfucker with the Hat, SpeakEasy Stage

Leslie Shires, Ross Cowan, Homestead Crossing, Merrimack Rep

Michael Underhill, William Schuller, Romeo and Juliet, Happy Medium Theatre

Anita Gillette, Bye Bye Birdie, Reagle Music Theatre

Gary Beach, Matt Loehr, Eric Mann, Hello, Dolly!, North Shore Music Theatre

Ryan Overberg, Shana Dirik and Kathy St. George (both at right), Xanadu, SpeakEasy Stage

Marianna Bassham, Philana Mia, Melis Aker, Bernie Baldassaro, Charlotte Anne Dore, Joey Heyworth, Sarah Jones, Gerard Slattery, Meredith Stypinski, Sheriden Thomas, I Capture the Castle, Stoneham Theatre

Stephen Thorne, Rebecca Gibel, Nance Williamson - Boeing, Boeing, Trinity Rep

Craig Mathers - Troilus and Cressida, Actors' Shakespeare Project

Susan Molloy - Little Shop of Horrors, New Rep

Best Operatic Performances

Amanda Forsythe, Partenope, Boston Baroque

Ricardo Lugo, David Kravitz, Don Pasquale, Boston Midsummer Opera

Owen Willetts - Orfeo ed Euridice, Boston Baroque

Best Design

Janie Howland, set, and Rafael Jean, costumes, The Mikado (above), Lyric Stage

Michael Clark Wonson, lighting, Polaroid Stories, Heart and Dagger/Happy Medium Theatre/Boston Actors Theater

Jenna McFarland Lord, set, Round and Round the Garden, Gloucester Stage

Richard Chambers, set, I Capture the Castle, Stoneham Theatre

Allen Moyer, set, and Candice Donnelly, costumes, Private Lives, Huntington Theatre

Chris Larson, sound, Trojan Women, Whistler in the Dark

Patrick Lynch, set, William Lane, costumes, and Peter Sasha Hurowitz, sound - Boeing, Boing, Trinity Rep

Crystal Tiala, set, Xanadu, SpeakEasy Stage

Dan Kotlowitz, lighting, The Ghost-Writer, Merrimack Rep

Best Choreography

Larry Sousa, Bye Bye Birdie (above), Reagle Music Theatre

Michael Lichtefeld, Hello, Dolly!, North Shore Music Theatre

Best Musical Direction

Susan Davenny Wyner, Don Pasquale, Boston Midsummer Opera

Best Direction

Joey Pelletier and Elise Wulff, Polaroid Stories, Heart and Dagger/Happy Medium Theatre/Boston Actors Theater

Liz Fenstermaker, Gross Indencency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Bad Habit Productions

Charles Repole, Hello, Dolly!, North Shore Music Theatre

Maria Aitken, Private Lives, Huntington Theatre

Spiro Veloudos - Avenue Q, Lyric Stage

Well, I think that's it for now - so hats off (in fact almost everything off) for the Fall 2012 Hubbie winners!

David Mamet, the art of the con, and the M.V. (Part 2)

Ken Cheeseman and Cliff Odle wonder if they're up to the eightieth page yet at the New Rep.

I can tell you precisely the moment I gave up on David Mamet's Race; it's the moment when one character describes a hot night in Bermuda as like being "inside a big black c--nt."

You could almost hear Mamet giggling over that one; he got to say the c-word!  (Jeez, Mom would kill him if she knew!)

But all I could think was, "Why not go for it, Dave?  Why not n--gg--r c--nt, too?  Hmmm?"

After a moment, however, I realized - no, Mr. Mamet had chosen precisely the slur he wanted; he wasn't really interested in a double whammy.  For Race, despite its moniker, isn't really about racism - not his own, not his audience's, not anybody's. It's about sexism.  Or rather - it is sexism, kind of "personified," if you will.  It is the thing itself.

Oh, I know, everyone huffs and puffs throughout the play about racial grievances; much of the script - like so many these days! - is basically a lecture delivered by the playwright through transparent mouthpieces: two law partners, one white and one black, who've seen it all and want to tell the walls (or at least the fourth wall) all about it.  But what do these two really have to say?  Not much; indeed, near the top of the script, Mamet admits "a white man has nothing to tell a black man about race" (a paraphrase).  And he seems to mean it.  Okay - so why are you still talking, white man?


Well, so he can grind his axe yet again about political correctness (as opposed to racism) to his putative audience onstage: a wealthy, older, white client who has been accused of raping a black woman.  Needless to say, he's willing to listen to Mamet's tired "liberalism is a con" rant, but he's also pretty creepy in general - still, he might be innocent.  By that I hardly mean the sex in question was "consensual" in the usual meaning of the term: money, or favors, or something was changing hands, in one way or another, we imagine - and as the assault occurred in a hotel room, with the victim clothed in a red-sequined dress - well, let's just say the lawyers have quite a bit to work with when it comes to defense strategy.

They protest otherwise, of course.  To them, racial sensitivities have made this case an open-and-shut loser.  And many would agree that political correctness has made battling this kind of accusation an uphill battle.  The tables have turned to some degree, in some arenas, on those in the ruling class.   The fix used to be in one way, now it's in another.

Still, this case hardly seems hopeless; and many a lawyer would be drawn to its challenges simply because they touch on so many political fault lines, and revolve around such a high-profile client.  Win or lose, this is the kind of case from which a skillful lawyer can emerge as a freshly-minted media player.  After all, Dominique Strauss-Kahn beat the charges against him - for it turned out he may have been set up (his horrifying behaviors quickly tripped him up again, of course).  And I didn't see any lawyers running from that case.  So the reluctance of Mamet's lawyers to take the job hardly seems realistic, much less up-to-the-minute.

But then Race isn't set in reality, it's set in Mametland, where the island of Bermuda is "in the Caribbean" (?), and postcards zip through the mails with the c-word printed on them (back in the 80's, no less!). What's more, this artificial construct (I won't  call it a play) is about as concerned with what is usually called "plot" as it is with reality: we never even meet the alleged victim, the scene of the crime is barely described, and there's nothing like an investigation of the facts of the case.  After all, that would mean Mamet would have to conjure more characters, develop a structure - so much work!  Who has that kind of time?

Luckily, once again the "Magic Vagina" (that's "M.V." from now on) comes to Mamet's rescue!   We've met the Mamet M.V. before - in Speed-the-Plow, Oleanna and elsewhere - and as I detailed in the previous post of this series, she not only serves as a projection of the playwright's paranoia, but also saves him most of the time and effort of actually writing a play.  She makes no sense at all as a "character" - with a consistent back-story, interior life, and arc - but as a plot device, she can't be beat.  If the play needs one more twist, the M.V. is happy to connive for no apparent reason; when it requires a climactic confrontation, she will return conveniently to the scene of the crime; when the dénouement demands a confession, she suddenly supplies it!  Whew!  The M.V. is basically the Ronco Pocket Plot-O-Matic for lazy playwrights!

The only problem with this sphinx-like crazy lady is that she's just not convincing as she drives the action with her covert actions (while the putative "plot" is hashed and re-hashed on stage).  Take the M.V. of Race, for instance, who is named Susan (not that it matters; she could be named "X") - a young black woman of few words from an Ivy League law school, who clearly has a chip on her shoulder about, you know, race and stuff, but clearly is suppressing it for the sake of her career.   From this we expect her to be smart, subtle, and always under control.

And yet, over the course of the play she basically commits professional suicide by undermining and destroying her client's case in a manner that begins with the improbable (she tricks her partners into taking his case) and quickly lifts off into the purest fantasy (she tampers with evidence, and divulges the firm's strategy to the D.A.).  Now trust me, I know the P.C. crowd - and I agree Mamet's right to call them out for ignoring facts and bulldozing the discourse - BUT - and this is key - they always do it to their own advantage.  They are careerists, not martyrs.

Ken Cheeseman tries to talk sense to Mamet's puppet (Miranda Craigwell).  Photos by Andrew Brilliant.

Susan, however, commits professional suicide without a second thought.  Yes, I know, Mamet floats a flimsy legal shield for her behavior - the firm investigated her background when she applied, which they didn't do to white applicants; so Susan could threaten a lawsuit if they retaliate for her actions.  But this is hardly enough to cover her you-know-what from all the professional fall-out of her betrayals.  Her partners may not fire or sue her, but lawyers do talk - and then there's the D.A.'s office . . . by the curtain, basically she's toast as a practicing attorney.

Of course Susan makes no sense internally anyhow, so it's pointless to wonder at her motives; but as a puppet, she has her function: she is designed as the Outsider, the Other, who attacks, and is then rejected by, Mamet's masculine community (so ironically enough, even as Mamet imagines he is skewering P.C. orthodoxy, he is actually unconsciously validating it, as he dramatizes women almost as a Nazi might dramatize a Jew).  Thus in Race, the testosterone brotherhood is able to resolve its differences and atone for its sins - partners Jack and Henry, after all, are now joined at the hip, and utterly loyal; and together, in a pivotal scene, they make Charles, their client, realize that he has, indeed, behaved in a patronizingly racist way to another man - to a brother.

But as for the sisters - well, Susan circles this heart-to-heart like a vulture, but cannot enter it; indeed, we realize later she has actually already engineered Charles's downfall - or at least his self-immolation.  For once the scales have fallen from his eyes, he trots right over to the D.A. and confesses, in a sudden spasm of expiation.

We never learn, though, whether he actually committed the crime he has "confessed" to - just as we never learn what could be driving Susan to ruin her own career.  Just as we never learn what made the other woman in question - the victim - accuse Charles in the first place.  We never really learn anything, in fact, except that David Mamet has now written eighty pages, and so the curtain must fall.

I will say, however, that even given the limits of this script (its appeal is confined to some pretty good race-based stand-up early on), the New Rep cast, under the direction of Robert Walsh, didn't get as far as they might have (with one big exception).  The Broadway cast was famously restricted by Mamet's stated intent to flatten their performances (I'm not kidding), but lead James Spader at least managed to sneak some intriguing subtexts into his big scenes.  The New Rep version, by comparison, is far more expressive and flamboyant, but arguably more superficial (although the sleek stage design, by Janie E. Howland, was quite a bit better than Santo Loquasto's boring set on Broadway).  As lead lawyer Jack, Ken Cheeseman nailed all his laughs like a pro - and that's nothing to sneeze at - but never suggested any real sexual (or racial) tensions with Susan; meanwhile, as best bud Henry, Cliff Odle was likewise funny, but didn't manage to suggest any sense of scarred history with his partner.  Meanwhile poor Miranda Craigwell did what she could with Susan, but in the end came off as a poised and intelligent actress saddled with a terrible part.

The surprise here was Patrick Shea as Charles, that client from hell.  Mr. Shea has been acting in Boston since forever in Shear Madness, which has generally kept him off our other stages.  And more's the pity; he brings a complexity - even a twisted sympathy - to Charles that isn't even in the script.  For evidence that a great actor can transform a mediocre role, you need look no further than this production.  With all due respect to Madness, let's hope this isn't the last time we see Mr. Shea outside of a hair salon!

An open letter to Ann Coulter from a Special Olympian

In case you missed it, Republican "pundit" Ann Coulter recently called our president "a retard," tweeting "I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard."

She received the following open letter from Special Olympian John Franklin Stephens.  It's a little off topic for the Hub Review, but it's so moving - and crystallizes the "difference in our spirits," as Shakespeare might say, so well - that I decided to post it anyway.

You can learn more about the Special Olympics here.

Dear Ann Coulter,

Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?

I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.

I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.

Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.

Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift. 

Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.

After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.

I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.

No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.

Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.

A friend you haven’t made yet,

John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger
Special Olympics Virginia

Halloween, Gangnam Style

Just in case you haven't seen the latest twist on Psy's hilarious video.

David Mamet, the art of the con, and the magic vagina, Part 1

So when do we speed-the-play?  The cast of Race at the New Rep.

It's hard to remember, as you watch Race (at the New Rep through November 4), that David Mamet was once a great playwright.  Admittedly, he was always a reactionary - a masculine reactionary, need I point out; even back in the 70's, the days of The Duck Variations and Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Mamet's men were flawed, but basically lovable, while his women were opaque and treacherous.  At the time, however, feminism had flummoxed many American boys - and when Mamet avoided female characters entirely, in plays like American Buffalo and Glengarry Glen Ross, his talent burned bright indeed - so the sexist streak at the heart of this tough guy seemed easy to forget (or forgive).

It's harder to forgive it now, though - particularly as the playwright peaked in achievement almost thirty years ago, and the man himself has apparently devolved into a conservative crank (you only have to flip through his screed The Secret Knowledge to realize he really should be wearing a tinfoil hat).  Indeed, what may be tragic about David Mamet (and he is much given to musing on tragedy) is that he has by now thoroughly undermined his own early achievement; it's as if he has been determined to deconstruct his own success, and reveal the shriveled sensibility lurking within it.

To be honest, this behavior suggests the classic pathology of the idée fixe, the mental preoccupation which over time slowly dominates a psyche.  In fact it's my conviction that the playwright suffers from a double (if not triple) dose of this mania.  For Mamet has also always been obsessed with the art of the con; all his major (and most of his minor) plays have revolved around deceptions of one stripe or other.  But as long as these swindles were perpetrated by men on other men - as in Buffalo and Glengarry - Mamet was able to generate true drama from his obsession, as sexism, his second idée fixe, didn't prevent him from developing complex portraits of his villains.

When his two obsessions converged, however - probably around the time of Speed-the-Plow and Oleanna - Mamet's standing as a serious artist was suddenly compromised.  For ever since, his plots have repeatedly been dumbed down to turn on crude, predictable treachery, and his women (with the exception of the betrayed mother in The Cryptogram, which could serve as a poignant demonstration of his inability to forge a true vision from his psychological history) have long since hardened into mechanical villains.  Like the famous "magical negroes" whose special powers hurry along sentimental white narratives, Mamet's women have become "magic vaginas," figures - I won't call them characters - who are denuded of actual personality, and who implausibly speed-the-play by attempting to crucify the leading man whenever the playwright wants to wrap things up in 90 minutes (or less).

Meanwhile Mamet's men have morphed into totems of victimology - tragic phalli who are buddies at heart, and who would all love each other if they could only forget their damned competitive instincts! Indeed, one of the very weirdest aspects of Mamet, particularly in his later stages, is his apparent yearning to be homosexual. (If only he knew!)

Thus the once-great playwright has become a kind of theatrical in-joke - which, to be fair, he seems to realize himself, at some level; why else would he now coat his work with a sheen of sitcom-level one-liners? But then he's a smart businessman, and no doubt knows that his flattering of conservative guilt, along with the tension between the form of sitcom-fodder and the "outrageous" content he's allowed to fill it with on stage, are what keep him in commercial clover.

David Mamet- busy writing his own tragedy.

But on to Race - which I've had the misfortune to see twice (I also caught the Broadway run a year or two ago). And what can I say - it's not the kind of play that rewards repeated viewings.  The funny lines fly thick and fast the first time, I admit; but the second time around, you realize that not just two, but three polluted rivers in Mamet's mentality have converged in this poisonous little potboiler.

For even as his dramaturgy congealed into formula, Mamet's politics slowly became infected with his paranoid monomania, too.  The "art of the con" became the prism through which he began to see society at large, and "liberalism" in particular - which I guess he views as the equivalent of the non-existent destination called "Glengarry Glen Ross" in the play of the same name (as I recall, "Oleanna" was a  mythical locale, too). Thus in an embarrassing series of op-eds, articles, and books, Mamet has recently crowed that he is no longer a "brain-dead liberal," and has relentlessly excoriated those on the left - particularly those comfortably ensconced in the academy, Hollywood and the chattering classes - for hypocrisy, duplicity, and a host of other sins; in the world according to Mamet, they're all swindlers and crooks.

Now I could never argue that many liberals aren't hypocrites - I've said precisely the same thing, so I'd be a huge hypocrite myself if I did!  But in these screeds Mamet usually rambles far beyond that highly defensible position to a bizarre vision of a white, Christian nation devoted to the occupation of the West Bank (??),  and of course sorry for its past sins, but beset and besieged by liberal "cons" like affirmative action, sexual harassment suits, and sympathy for the Palestinians.  Mamet never actually engages with the questions of historical justice behind liberal positions (for that would completely complicate their status as "cons"!).  He simply asserts, essentially, that any attempt to rectify the wrongs of history (except in the case of Israel, that's different!) only creates some new kind of swindle because - well, just because, okay?

Well, at least the Palestinians don't appear in Race (although I'm sure Mamet tried to work them in). But we do get just about all his other hobbyhorses, piled atop each other - the sublimated homosexual buddies, the magic vagina (ahem, "m.v." from now on), the twin evils of feminism and affirmative action - this isn't a political play, it's a psychological case study penned by the patient himself from within his rubber room.

Beyond these appalling psychological dimensions, however, lies the script's appalling lack of craft. But we'll consider that more fully in the second part of this series.

Trevor Nunn, David Suchet, and Sonnet 138

In a televised "master class" from 1979, these two great talents lead us through a guided tour of one of the late, great sonnets - #138 - in the process limning the braided density of meaning that is typical of the sonnets (and the plays) in general.  A hat tip to my friend Debbie for digging this up!

Sonnet 138

When my love swears that she is made of truth, 
I do believe her though I know she lies, 
That she might think me some untutored youth, 
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties. 
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young, 
Although she knows my days are past the best, 
Simply I credit her false-speaking tongue: 
On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed: 
But wherefore says she not she is unjust? 
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O! love's best habit is in seeming trust, 
And age in love, loves not to have years told: 
    Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, 
    And in our faults by lies we flattered be.

It's too late for Now or Later

Grant MacDermott looks for a way out.  Of this script.

Just last month, with David Lindsay-Abaire's Good People, the Huntington showed us how to do a political play. 

And now, with Christopher Shinn's Now or Later, they've shown us how not to do one.

Actually, I suppose Shinn himself did that - or at least he demonstrated how not to write a political play.

Or did he simply confuse "play" with "polemic"?  For Now or Later is a very cleverly devised polemic (and one I often agreed with). It's just never convincing as, you know, human drama, basically because no one but a debate club president (or maybe Andrew Sullivan) would ever behave like Shinn's hero, and no one but his shrink could ever buy his version of his own motives.

And without any believable emotional resonance, Now or Later boils down to a duel between educated narcissists, over equally-justifiable neoliberal stances. All the point-counter-point I admit is mildly diverting at times; and all the "no-that's-not-what-I-really-said" dialogue is sold well by most of the cast (and very well by one actress in particular).  Still, we keep waiting for the real show to start - thus even though it's short, Now or Later is also (like Shakespeare's Pyramus and Thisbe) tediously brief.

Here's the set-up: photos of the president-elect's gay son have surfaced in which, while dressed as the prophet Mohammed no less, he fellated a dildo at a "naked party" on campus (naked parties are, for those out of the loop, a pseudo-transgressive Ivy League tradition - even the "hot" Bush twin was caught at one). Now, believe it or not, Shinn's entire play turns on whether or not "John, Jr." (son of "John, Sr.") should issue a statement of apology for depicting the spiritual leader of a large portion of the planet as a - well, you know - that word they call guys who fellate other guys.  (I'm not interested in a fatwah either, thanks all the same Chris!)


Yes, that's really the play.  I admit the subject is "brave" in a strangely pointless way, in that it constructs elaborate thought experiments around actions no sane person would ever contemplate - which means, I'm afraid, that as a depiction of what counts as "conflict" for a normal human being, it's really just a deep pile of p.c. doo-doo.  And then there's the unfortunate fact that current events have overtaken Shinn's hypothetical script and demonstrated with such violence the folly of his hero's position.  So of course John Jr. will apologize.  Of course he won't instigate assaults on our embassies and possibly the murder of an ambassador (or even a terrorist attack back home), over some dumb ironic gay shock joke at a naked party at Yale.

Seriously.

Yet it seems to take a very long time to get to that "of course" - Shinn milks a whole play out of this slim premise! But there's only one way to make such a ride dramatically interesting: there has to be some sort of buried, intense grievance causing Junior to hold out so long on Senior.  In essence the dramatic (as opposed to political) premise of the play has to be: why does Sonny hate Daddy so much?

But after about eighty minutes of tease, the big father-son show-down fizzles, because Dad doesn't want anything unreasonable; he doesn't want John Jr. to hop into the closet, for instance - he just wants him to honor his campaign, and keep Americans safe.  And it turns out the playwright doesn't have any other back-story tricks up his sleeve; indeed, he coughs up nothing like a wound or trauma sufficient to explain John's Jr.'s disloyalty and delay. Johnny is, apparently, not only relentlessly politically correct, but also really, really sensitive - read: narcissistic.  Just like his father, yes I know, but - big deal.

There would be, I think, one way to make this premise work like a charm - as black comedy; I got the impression the cast at the Huntington could have had a field day with that, but it would have required Shinn to admit he's really writing about privilege rather than politics.  As things stand, given the weakness of the material as earnest drama, it's a wonder that Michael Wilson's production ever holds us at all - which it does, intermittently, and especially when the talented Adriane Lenox is around, as a seen-it-all aide who not only cracks pretty wise but is also pretty wise.  There are other moments here and there, but the basic problem is that local cutie Grant MacDermott, who seems talented, can't quite make us sympathize with John Jr.'s elaborate circumlocutions (but then who could; MacDermott does, at least, get us to follow them, in itself no small feat).  Michael Goldsmith manages a bit better as John, Jr.'s self-effacing best bud - but then he gets punchier lines. I also admit I was impressed to varying degrees by the rest of the cast: Ryan King, Alexandra Neil, and Tom Nelis (a believable ringer for MacDermott as John, Sr.) are all talented actors.  Now let's bring them back in a real play.

The rhapsodies of Lar Lubovitch

Lubovitch does Morris doing Brahms.

It's hard not to be dazzled by Lar Lubovitch and his dancers - who hold the stage for one more night (tonight!) at the Schubert, thanks to Celebrity Series.  This 69-year-old choreographer has been a mainstay of contemporary dance for decades, but we haven't seen his New York-based company much in Boston (they're more often sighted out at Jacob's Pillow), so this weekend counts as an unusual chance for the locals to see the best of Lubovitch's recent work, along with one of the early pieces that put him on the map.  (It also offers a showcase for some of the most stylish dancers in the world, just btw.)

Lubovitch, of course, represents a kind of "hinge" in the history of gay dance in America: born in the closeted era of Jerome Robbins, he survived the scourge of AIDS - which decimated the ranks of our dance-makers (Alvin Ailey, Arnie Zane and Ruldoph Nureyev were just a few of its victims) - to become one of the highest profile fundraisers in the battle against that dreaded disease. Finally, he lived to see the success of a new generation of "out" gay choreographers (Mark Morris, Bill T. Jones) for whom their sexual identity was simply a given.

That history only served as subtext, however, to the program on view at Celebrity Series - but when Lubovitch invoked his gay identity (in Little Rhapsodies, from 2007), his choreography seemed to hit a sublime peak.  Elsewhere you could sometimes feel the influence of other talents on his sensibility (North Star was clearly a product of the late 70's, while Mark Morris seemed to shadow The Legend of Ten from 2010 - excerpt above).  But then Lubovitch's sensibility I feel isn't really seminal - it's more of a sophisticated stance, a sleek, lyrical, hybrid response to the currents that are moving around him.


This has gained him a reputation in some quarters for being seductive but a bit superficial.  Well, I'll take the seduction, thanks very much - only his attempt to limn Brahms ( again, The Legend of Ten) struck me as a bit specious and overblown (not to mention over-amplified). Still even it was often lovely, and there was truly broken feeling in its duets between Elisa Clark and Clifton Brown; this painful emotional edge just never cut through the larger architecture - which was a bit odd, as tracing the moving line between the individual and the group is one of Lubovitch's special talents.

Elsewhere it was amusing to see the choreographer's trademarked sense of grace buoy even the plinking repetitions of Philip Glass (in the cute, but mercifully brief, North Star of 1978).  It was perhaps more fascinating, however, to see that elegant flow collapse entirely in Crisis Variations (from just last year); here, to a stuttering deconstruction of Liszt, the superb Lubovitch dancers came utterly unstrung. Twitching and struggling, and endlessly falling into each other's arms (special kudos to fearless leading lady Katarzyna Skarpetowska), the dancers' struggles became an extended meditation on disability - juxtaposed starkly against Lubovitch's own innate sense of balance - that seemed to oscillate between the tragic and the ironic.

The greatest of the evening's dances, however, was Little Rhapsodies, from 2007 - a suite of variations for three men set to Murray Perahia's great recording of Schumann's Symphonic Variations.  The piece was clearly a survivor's valentine to urbane gay experience - which is only rarely depicted anywhere sans victimology or political pretense.  Dressed in pastel business casual - one dancer more casual than the rest - Lubovitch's trio of studs (the amazing Attila Joey Csiki, Reed Luplau, and Brian McGinnis, who shone in every piece he performed) cantered through a set of gambols that were clearly "dances," in quotes, yet also touched (lightly, but honestly) on any number of masculine topics: challenge, competition, camaraderie - and romantic loneliness, too.  The restless grace of this roundelay, which proved subtly structured in its flow, cut eloquently against the grandeur of the Schumann (which of course is a vast elaboration of a theme which came to Schumann through one of his own sexual entanglements).  The effect was somehow Mozartean, in that strange way in which what at first seems superficial can gradually tap into some deep sense of rapture.  If you want to see for yourself, there is a video of excerpts from the dance up on Vimeo (alas, rights restrictions meant I couldn't post it here).  Or, you could always see for yourself tonight at the Schubert!

This is not Lear

Berenson and McEleny just before the madness.

More bad news on the Bard front, I'm afraid.

I've held off on my review of Trinity Rep's King Lear till the last minute because - well, actually I usually do hold off on bad reviews, if I can (I do front-load raves, and I suppose that's inconsistent - but with pans I'm often only writing for the intellectual record, such as it is!).  And at any rate this production wasn't quite bad, it was just . . . disappointing, particularly given who was in it and the scale of the effort involved.

This Lear was actually a joint production between Trinity and the Dallas Theater Center - and was directed by Kevin Moriarty (who used to direct down in Providence - got all that?).  Moriarty had something of a reputation in these parts back then, but much of what went wrong with this misfire can be traced to his odd ideas, so let's just say I don't think much of him now.  This wasn't quite the car crash that last season's Merchant of Venice was, but most of Moriarty's interpretative touches either flattened the play, or left you scratching your head.

And I was equally disappointed, I'm afraid,  by Brian McEleny's turn in the title role, particularly as I know this Trinity vet knows his Shakespeare (he gave us a memorable Twelfth Night about two years ago). Here, however, McEleny was hampered by the choice to emphasize Lear's decrepitude; meanwhile the ensemble (drawn both from Providence and Dallas) hadn't really become an ensemble yet (and frankly a few of the actors came off as Shakespearean neophytes). So the production was sometimes a thing of shreds and patches - although it was almost redeemed by one dynamite stage image (when Michael McGarty's elegant set collapsed along with Lear's mind), and a storm scene that came closer than most to the edge of madness.

Now that's no small achievement right there.  But it must be balanced against many other loopy interpretive decisions.  At the talkback I attended, one audience member opined that she had "never realized this was a play about Alzheimer's!"  Now I understood her feeling - it was an appropriate response to what we'd just seen; but of course Lear is NOT a play about Alzheimer's, and to pretend that it is distorts Shakespeare's intents and undermines his achievement.  This is simply another example of how the attempt to give the Bard a contemporary handle often ends up reducing him to puny postmodern dimensions. (And just btw, before you say it, my father died of that terrible disease, so I know from Alzheimer's.)


Perhaps this rather clinical mood is what made Moriarty turn the Fool (Stephen Berenson) into - well, just a court jester (admittedly, Berenson made a funny one), who limned little or nothing of Lear's love of Cordelia, or his guilt over his mistreatment of her.  Needless to say, much of the poignance of the building action of the play's first half - as Lear grapples with both his other daughters' treachery and his own awareness that he has brought their treachery on - was therefore lost, and the sisters' descent into evil was likewise truncated and opaque.  (Angela Brazil's Regan was particularly incoherent.)  And then strangely, Moriarty kept the Fool around after his disappearance from the play (who knows why; Berenson seemed to signal sometimes that he wasn't sure why he was onstage, either).  And then there was Phyllis Kay's blank Earl of Gloucester - aside from recalling Hillary at certain moments, she seemed unable to make anything individual of her thematically complicated non-traditional casting (as matricide is, I think, different from patricide in its import and impact).  Of the Trinity regulars, Joe Wilson, Jr. did hold his own as Albany, but only Fred Sullivan, Jr., made a really strong impression as a viciously fey Oswald.

The crowd from Dallas came through with somewhat stronger performances (perhaps because they were more familiar with Moriarty's methods?).  The stand-out was Hassan El-Amin's passionate Kent, but there were the beginnings of memorable interpretations from Lee Trull (Edmund) and Abbey Siegworth (Cordelia) - and Steven Michael Walters' Edgar got better as the play progressed (although he too seemed unable to grapple with the special impact of seeing his mother with her eyes torn out).  Perhaps as the show makes its way from Providence to Texas, these interpretations will achieve greater depth and clarity.

And I admit that even McEleny had his moments - he certainly gave the performance his all, even stripping down to his bare bodkin for the storm scene.  This was by far the production's finest hour - with the set in ruins, rain came pouring in through the roof, and as the shivering, naked McEleny picked his way delicately through the wreckage, chattering pathetically, a shattering image of moral and political chaos suddenly came into terrible focus.  I'll carry that with me as my memory of this Lear; I only wish I had more like it.

Casting white people in "black" roles isn't just happening in Boston . . .

The issues that Beverly Creasey and I have begun discussing in an ongoing series (and which we chewed over on Tuesday with the new task force on diversity that is forming at StageSource) seem to be surfacing globally. (So once again the Hub is on the cutting edge of a racist trend!) Playwright Bruce Norris has just pulled the rights to a production of his play Clybourne Park in Berlin because, he learned second-hand, in a pivotal African-American role, the German theatre (literally the Deutsches Theatre) had cast a white actress. In blackface. What's more, according to Norris, this practice is often accepted in Germany!  (He is instituting a petition and boycott to end the practice.)   You can read his letter on the subject to the Dramatists Guild here.

One of the great productions of our time

War Horse showreel from Toby Olie on Vimeo.
Footage from Toby Olie's rehearsals and performances in War Horse, starting as the hind puppeteer of Joey in the National Theatre's original production, alongside Craig Leo (head) and Tommy Luther (heart), and then as head puppeteer of Joey in the consequent West End transfer, alongside Robin Guiver (heart) and Ben Thompson (hind).

Every few years an unforgettable production comes along.  War Horse is one such show.  I've already written about the London version - but I also managed to catch the American leg of its international tour, which holds the stage at the Opera House through Sunday.

And I felt in the end it was an honorable reproduction of the original, even if it was somewhat cramped on the Opera House proscenium.  In London, a wider apron allowed the horses (Joey and and his doomed buddy Topthorn) to canter and trot at will - sometimes in wide circles - which was impossible here (the limitations of the stage also meant the tank which Joey confronts in the second act had to roll on, and then turn around and roll off).  There was also some slight gap in the verisimilitude of the horses' galloping - my guess is that this is calibrated precisely to the blocking, and so in each new house, it must be re-calibrated, and re-learnt.  Still, the miracle of the production's "living" puppetry (see video above) - which depends on the coordination by three separate puppeteers (who all quickly "disappear" to our theatrical perception) of every feature of their horses' anatomies - had in essence survived its Atlantic crossing.

There were other small changes.  In London, the eponymous horse's owner, Albert, was believably a teen-ager - here he was the hunky and capable Andrew Veenstra, who was obviously a full-grown man (and Joey therefore looked somewhat bulked up from his London version, too, to carry the added weight).  And the second act felt slightly streamlined - which was probably a good thing, actually, as the production begins to pound home its anti-war message a bit repetitively.

I have been amused to see that several of the lesser critics have sniffed at the show, however, and made points that are obvious, yet, I suppose count as sophisticated for them.  War Horse is, yes, based on a children's novel - and its innocent story is yoked, perhaps awkwardly, to an intensely rendered pacifist message (it follows the horrific sufferings of the horses who did service in World War I). I can't deny that there's an issue there, at that hinge - poor Joey and Topthorn's travails may be too much for the youngest theatregoers.  (Joey's screams once he is trapped in the barbed wire of No Man's Land are at lot for anyone to handle.)  Nor does Nick Stafford's adaptation of Michael Morpurgo's original novel quite make the ironies of Joey's adventures on (and across) the German lines "come alive" as they might.

But let's be honest - the text is for the most part quite sturdy - how can people who take Les Miz or Rent seriously sniff at this?  And the production's evocations of trench warfare are often stunningly imaginative - in fact I've never seen war conjured as powerfully on stage as it is here; and if we feel almost fatigued by the Great War's horrors by the finish - well, that comes with the territory, doesn't it (and surely the lines that reference the British disasters in Afghanistan sound an important echo today!).

All this is as nothing, however, before the magic of the production's horses, and the way in which the craft of Handspring Puppet Company has brought to the stage something that has never been seen there before - fully-developed animal "characters," rendered with a poignant force that is all but guaranteed to reconnect you to a beloved pet, or your childhood, or perhaps just the simple pleasures of being alive, and how vulnerable such joys are, and will forever be.  I know it sounds corny to say it - and of course the show isn't cheap (although I believe half-price tickets are available at ArtsBoston) - but if you see one show this season, it should be War Horse.  Trust me, you will never forget it.

We normally wouldn't post this kind of thing . . .

 . . . but as we have said, wherever craft is brought to bear on a cultural artifact, attention must be paid!  (And isn't a half-time show a show?)  So we thought we 'd post this amazing half-time performance by the Ohio State Marching Band, in the middle of the Buckeyes' battle against the Nebraska Cornhuskers, on October 6, 2012.  It's amazing throughout, but go to about the 6:35 mark for something you might have thought impossible.  This is not your father's marching band!

A mostly magnificent Magnificat from Handel & Haydn

Detail from Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat

I'd been looking forward to the Handel and Haydn season opener - a Bach orgy focused on the Magnificat - because artistic director Harry Christophers is a Bach fanatic, and the program had been cannily designed to draw in the crowds (with "Air on a G String," and "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring"), while showcasing some worthy rareties (particularly Cantata 71, Gott ist mein König).

So last Friday Symphony Hall was packed - with an audience, as a few other critics have begun to note, younger and more diverse than most.  And thank Gott, the performance did not disappoint.

But it didn't quite astound me, either.  Indeed, to be honest, it seemed to me that Christophers' vision of "the greatest composer who ever lived" (his own words) never quite came into focus - or rather it moved in and out of focus over the course of the evening.

Which puts me in that tricky position I'm famous for: I'm that critic who first makes a fuss over artistic greatness, and then later, when everybody else shows up to applaud, begins finding fault.  So let me say I'm thrilled that Handel and Haydn is finally getting the credit it has long deserved - even, at last, positive reviews in the Globe!  (Proof that everyone got the memo.)  But I was still slightly surprised by a few of the raves this concert received.  Christophers' special genius was often in evidence, and both the chorus and the orchestra at their best were beyond superb.  But as I've said before, they're simply the best chorus in the region (so by now I expect to be stunned); yet Friday's opener wasn't their best night; there were more than a few moments (particularly around entrances) that simply weren't as clean as they could/should have been (and that's important, particularly in Bach).

This was true in the strings as well, here and there (the winds were at their frisky best, however, throughout); more problematic was that Christophers drew all his soloists from the chorus itself - and alas, didn't really reveal any new stars there.  All of these fresh faces were blessed with intriguing vocal timbres and subtle control (that's why it's a great chorus) - but a few seemed a bit uncomfortable in the limelight, or lacked the power to fully command a space the size of Symphony.

Still I was grateful as always to hear H&H's secret weapons, soprano Teresa Wakim and alto Emily Marvosh.  Wakim, of course, is a known quantity, and she was at the top of her game Friday, hitting the lustrously pearly notes she's famous for with ease, first in Cantata 71 and later in the Magnificat.  Marvosh, in contrast, is still making her mark - although you could argue after last weekend that she has made her mark.   She was in fine voice from the start, but only grew suppler and more expressive as the evening went on, while her physical presence has never been more striking - a charming, almost mischievous gamine, she seemed to morph the Virgin into Diana, and radiated intelligent joy throughout her contributions to the Magnificat.  I have a hunch that, like Wakim, she's a great actress as well as a great singer.

Harry Christophers in action.

There were also some strong turns from reliable tenor Stefan Reed, and bass Jacob Cooper had his moments - but elsewhere the solos were variable.  As I've opined before, the central artistic problem at H&H these days is finding a team of soloists who can stand up to the chorus (perhaps even the chorus can't do that!).  Luckily, they've signed up for Messiah this year the stunning Karina Gauvin, who may be the greatest interpreter of Handel on the planet - if she can't match this chorale, no one can.

On the instrumental side, it seemed to me the horns scraped a bit more than usual (although this is inevitable with natural horns), particularly in the opening overture of the Orchestral Suite No. 3, where they're particularly exposed, and playing high in their ranges.  All this was forgotten, however, in Harry's ravishing rendition of what came next, that famous "Air on a G String," which here swelled with a slow, delicate suspense, and heartbreaking transparency.  In a word: rapture.

Later there were more high points, particularly from Wakim and Marvosh, in the relatively light  Gott ist mein König, which is not actually sacred music but was rather composed as a kind of fanfare for the town council of Mühlhausen - and which seemed to dovetail nicely with the previous buoyant dances that closed the Orchestral Suite.  Less convincing perhaps was the way Christophers pulled together  two Sinfonias and "Jesus bleibet meine Freude" into his own "suite" later in the program. But then to be honest, Bach suites are never very unified anyway, and the Sinfonia from Cantata 18 featured some truly exquisite interplay between the violas and the winds (Christophers always illuminates the structure of what he's doing, even as he makes it dance).  Certainly "Jesus" was as transporting as it should be, with the chorus seemingly buoyed on soft surges from the strings that glinted with colors from the brass.

The trumpets were in even better form during the Magnificat itself - a compact work with the range of a full symphony, the many moods of which unfolded with Christophers' characteristic mix of eloquence and passion.  Once more Wakim and Marvosh were the stand-out soloists, the winds were again delightful, and the chorus shouldered the closing verses with astonishing power and clarity.  I admit whenever these folks sing a line like "World without end, Amen," I always find myself indeed wishing the moment could go on forever.

That iPhone whiner sketch on SNL was one of their best . . .

Here it is again, in case you missed it.  (Sorry for the ad!  Hat tip to Mike Daisey, who else.)

Meet the Beats

Merrimack Rep takes the Kerouac legend off-road with Beat Generation.

Last weekend Merrimack Rep played host to a minor - maybe even a major - literary event: the world premiere of Lowell homeboy Jack Kerouac's only play, Beat Generation, in a staged reading directed by artistic director Charles Towers, and performed in concert with a Kerouac conference at UMass Lowell.

And it proved an intriguing evening - although to answer what I assume is your big question: is Beat Generation dramatically viable?  Alas, no; it's of biographic and academic interest only - clearly a first draft abandoned in a drawer as soon as the mood that spawned it had waned.  But its very tossed-off quality enhances its cinéma vérité atmosphere (you can spot just about every player in the Kerouac posse in its thinly disguised cast of characters), and it provides a touching corrective to the hip, outlaw image of Kerouac that has slowly replaced in our consciousness the alienated, tormented man himself.

In short, you won't recognize Kerouac in this play - well, you might if you were perceptive enough to appreciate the passivity of his authorial presence (as opposed to voice) in On the Road (I haven't read the other books).  In Beat Generation, tellingly enough it's Neal Cassady, the man whose charisma pulled Kerouac onto that eponymous highway, who appropriates the novel's voice, getting all the jazzy riffs, and rattling on in an endless, spontaneous cadence identical to that of the famous "scroll" from which Kerouac derived his magnum opus.  Kerouac, for his part, mostly just listens.  It's almost enough to make you wonder - just who is really narrating On the Road, anyway?

It must also be admitted, however, that Beat Generation hardly cracks the code of Cassady's personal aura (a nimbus that the team at Merrimack was unable to conjure either).  Cassady, of course, looms behind much hipster culture like a kind of ghost - or silent, bisexual god; he inspired not only Kerouac's masterpiece, but also figured in the oeuvre of Allen Ginsberg, and later mixed it up with Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary - in the meantime inspiring a range of golden American cowboys with homoerotic subtexts, ranging from the buddies of Route 66 to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

A drifter blessed with intense physical charisma (you can feel it in the photo below) who struggled intermittently to be a family man, Cassady related to Kerouac in some strange mode that oscillated between brotherly love, disinterest, and sexual obsession (at least on Kerouac's part; Cassady thought nothing of dumping Jack when he felt like it, which is in effect how On the Road sputters to a stop).  I think it's worth noting here that the poet Allen Ginsberg (the openly gay member of this particular posse) penned paeans to Cassady's penis, and even Kerouac was in awe of his buddy's "enormous dangle" - while Cassady's artsier girlfriends sometimes sketched portraits of it (I'm not kidding).  What can I say, it must have been something special - as you might expect, as it basically sired the entire Beat generation.

Timothy Leary and Neal Cassady, in a photo by Allen Ginsberg from the Electric Kool-Aid Acid days.

But like many a libertine, Cassady was intensely self-destructive, and he paid for his pleasures by dying at the early age of 41 - slipping into a coma while wandering along a Mexican railway (Kerouac died from alcohol only a year later, in 1969, at age 47).  They had long since drifted apart, anyhow - and Beat Generation could possibly mark the beginning of that rift, for it traces a kind of "Long Day's Journey into Beat," during which Kerouac (or "Buck," played by Tony Crane) trails after Cassady (or "Milo," played by Joey Collins), just as he did in On the Road, from a friend's apartment to the racetrack - and then finally back to Milo/Cassady's home, where among the wife and kids Cassady's hipster mask suddenly drops, and Kerouac is left out in the yard in his sleeping bag, abandoned again.

It could be a poignant story of an alcoholic little-boy-lost, but Kerouac clearly had few skills as a dramatist, and with minimal rehearsal time, Towers and company managed minimal theatrical shaping until the last act (more on that in a minute).  And as Kerouac/Buck, actor Tony Crane proved an intriguing presence, but seemed more interested in impersonating a sexy icon (Kerouac was a looker, too, as you can see below) than actually limning any of the tensions that surfaced in the script (when Cassady demands that Kerouac shine his shoe, for instance, Crane simply did so with a happy smile).  Meanwhile, as Cassady, actor Joey Collins seemed overwhelmed by the sheer torrents of verbiage he was required to deliver about karmic cats and moonbeams and such; with little happening as subtext to these harangues, it was hard to imagine him attracting any disciples.

Hey, Jack Kerouac - the man himself.

Still, things edged up hill over the first two acts - the second, at the race track, clearly has some potential.  And then suddenly the last scene was weirdly compelling - its centerpiece an interview with some kind of Transylvanian bishop that came off here as a sketch penned by Harold Pinter and directed by Roman Polanski.  Suddenly I was reminded of much that has been forgotten about Kerouac - he was no Buddhist hipster, but a devout Catholic, for instance.  And the scene is one of the few instances of dramatic writing I can think of that powerfully distills what it's like to be drugged, and perceiving social interactions in a warped way.

The whole thing played like a hallucination, to be honest, anchored by one of the most bizarre performances I have ever seen, from actor Seumas Sargent, as the innocently vampiric bishop.  And the whole cast suddenly seemed to pull itself into top form, perhaps because nobody had any long soliloquies to deliver - even as actor Ari Butler did a clever little comic cameo as an amusingly heterosexual Allen Ginsberg.  The mood was still far too straight in general, I suppose - but the scene seemed to get at something strange, and damaged, and deeply personal for Kerouac; his lines ached with a kind of yearning for any kind of meaning that might be available, anywhere, anyhow.   As the curtain fell on Kerouac once more alone, gazing up at the stars, I felt I had, at least for that scene, had the chance to meet the Beats.