The Martin Luther King Prize - how about it?

Monday is the day we honor one of the greatest leaders of our civil rights movement, so it seems only appropriate to pause for a moment to note in sadness (as it seems no one else has done) the apparent passing of Boston's African-American Theatre Festival, which ran from 2001-2009, the last year or two in the glittering Calderwood Pavilion at the BCA. Another loss to the local African-American theatre community was the recent death of Jim Spruill, Boston University professor and founder of the New African Company, who with his wife Lynda Patton (who also passed not so long ago) inspired a generation of theatre artists of color. (There will be a memorial for Spruill at the Black Box Theatre on February 12.)

Of course there are always new faces and voices of color to be seen and heard in Boston (I just became aware of such a new performance group, the New Urban Theatre Lab, or, appealingly enough, the "NUTLab").  But it's troubling that the African-American Theatre Festival, probably the highest-profile showcase for local performers - and especially local writers - of color, should have vanished so quickly, and without apparently any local protest or comment.  It seems that instead of committing to our own community, our "diversity" programming has turned more and more of late to pre-sold hits from New York, like Ruined, or Neighbors (which its producers, Company One, would very much like to prevent me from seeing; see tweet at right). And as I've written before, we hear a lot about the ravages of racism in places like South Africa, or the antebellum South, or the Congo - but never right here in Boston, even though we have quite the fraught racial history. Yet to us, it seems, racism always happens somewhere else.  Plus I'm increasingly disturbed by imported writers like Branden Jacobs-Jenkins and Young Jean Lee, who seem dedicated to caricatures of race as a focus of their work; the careers of these writers, you get the impression, depend more on sustaining racism as a cultural trope than actually fighting it on the ground.

At any rate, it's clear to me that one way for theatre artists of any color to make a difference is to connect with their own community - to tell its story. Yet I can't remember the last time I saw a play about our own racial issues on a major local stage. So I'd like to make a modest proposal to our colleges, theatres, and foundations - how about a prize, or a grant, or a commission to an artist of color for a play about Boston? With a production guaranteed? There are so many theatrical episodes in our past - from the slow creation of the "color lines" that still criss-cross the city to the shocking riots over busing in Charlestown - that there's almost a surfeit of material available. And we certainly do not suffer from a dearth of talented writers. So how about it? Maybe we could call it the Jim Spruill and Lynda Patton Prize. Or maybe the Martin Luther King Prize.

If you've ever wondered just how deeply a new script depends on its actors, you would do well to see Tryst, now at the Merrimack Rep, which offers a kind of object lesson in how far two skilled performers can drive a vehicle that, if not exactly ramshackle, is nevertheless hardly a Rolls.

This is actually a retooled model of Tryst - after attending its unsuccessful British premiere, director Joe Brancato collaborated with author Karoline Leach on a new, more focused version, which has enjoyed considerable regional success before its current run at Merrimack.  And indeed, there's no doubt the chassis of the show is in good shape - the play turns on several dimes, in fact; the question is, where precisely is this particular vehicle supposed to be going?  That's what we can never really figure out.

Leach (along with the Merrimack's marketing department) clearly had it in mind to conjure a grim little entry in the familiar genre of the goth-romantic thriller - and in her first scenes, she seems at home in the idiom, and appears to know the lay of the land.  "George Love" (Mark Shanahan) is a manipulative cad who makes his living off the romantic fantasies of vulnerable Plain Janes in Edwardian England. He spots his prey by keeping an eye out for "“the sort of face that belongs to a woman who teaches piano or serves tea or issues library books." Only he scans for something else, too: "You’re looking for the little inconsistency," he explains. "The little something too expensive, too new, too nice for that face. The something that tells you it’s got a nice little nest egg. A few quid stashed away.’’ (Note that "it;" yes, Mr. Love has objectified women that far.)

Enter Adelaide (Andrea Maulella), whose thin visage fits that profile to a T (she works in the back of a hat shop, where "everyone has something wrong with them") and to whom George is soon smoothly whispering, "I cannot tell you how much I ache to take you in my arms." Seemingly swept off her feet, Adelaide agrees to an elopement at a remote seaside resort, all while being told, "Be sure to bring your checkbook." George's plan, of course - which he has carried off numerous times, he assures us - is to abscond with the contents of same after a night of love as Mr. and Mrs. Love (he's quite proud that he "always fulfills his responsibilities" in that regard).

And so far, so good; Leach's set-up is almost elemental, but she carries us to this re-imagined wedding night between Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett in spare but clean style. Needless to say, during their shared nocturnal climax we discover there's more to the self-aware Adelaide than met George's confidently appraising eye. But while it would be unfair to reveal the various twists in Tryst, it's not unfair to complain, I think, that in the end they don't amount to much thematically - and so don't quite satisfy the appetites Ms. Leach has so competently aroused in her first act. The playwright seems to be aiming for a paired set of psychological portraits, in which revelations are made by two personalities all but devoted to never revealing anything. This juxtaposition is intriguing, and at conjuring her characters' respective pains Ms. Leach is fairly successful - it's the integration of this psychological material into a steadily-developing contest of wills that seems to elude her. We intuit that she hopes for a rising sense that Adelaide's schemes may be nudging George, inch by inch, toward Bluebeard territory. But Leach's own schemes turn a bit clumsy, and her climax is far too abrupt for us to respond with the enjoyable shudder we're in the mood for.

Still, Tryst always holds our attention, even if it doesn't quite grip us, thanks to the polished and committed performances of Shanahan and (particularly) Maulella. Both have played their roles before, and both have their characters in their bones by now. And director Brancato knows just how to keep things moving - and us guessing - without overplaying his hand. All in all, Tryst wouldn't be a bad evening out for the kind of folks who read gruesome thrillers on the subway. But I think it will take yet another revision to make it something more.

I finally caught The Blue Flower at the A.R.T. just before it closed, and I was very much struck by one thing about it:

It was clearly a labor of love.

You don't always feel this at the theatre, believe me - and you almost never feel it at the A.R.T. But it was obvious that this weirdly melancholic "musical" (it's really a song cycle with a video, but never mind) had all but been doted on by its creators, Jim and Ruth Bauer (of Beverly, Mass!).

Now I'm never one to snicker at real feeling. But this time I had to at least allow myself a small, sad smile. For while it's obvious the Bauers are deeply in love with their putative subject - the "degenerate" German art of the first half of the century - at the same time it's utterly clear they don't understand that art in the least. They're clueless as to the object of their worship; they're like characters out of one of those books by Oliver Sacks - you know, the men who mistake their wives for hats, or the people who lead full, emotional lives despite deep perceptual deficits.

This gives The Blue Flower more poignance than anything in its supposed "book" (even though said book covers two world wars and the rise of Hitler!). Composer Bauer is certainly not a lyricist, and really not that much of a melodist either; but he conjures sweetly mournful pop textures through a gentle blend of cabaret and country instrumentation. And visual artist Ruth has dreamt up plenty of striking imagery to play out on the movie screen she has placed center stage.  Director Will Pomerantz hasn't gotten all that far with the "theatrical" side of the production, however - it often looks, in fact, like a bunch of people wandering around at the movies.  And while the cast proved capable and appealing, they couldn't really make much headway against the schematic design of both the staging and the book.

Moreover,  I have to say that in intellectual terms, The Blue Flower is appalling - nearly as appalling as The Donkey Show, in fact. It's hopelessly dishonest and deeply silly; it's just not offensive because the Bauers themselves seem so sweet.

You've probably heard the musical revolves around characters 'inspired' by Max Beckmann, Franz Marc, Hannah Höch, Marie Curie. These cultural body-doubles engage in a decades-long ménage à trois (or quatre) that is torn apart, Doctor-Zhivago style, by war, then fascism, and then more war. To borrow another movie metaphor, like Jules and Jim and Catherine, these four all love each other so much, and they make so much great art (or science!) as they fight the madness that surrounds them.

Needless to say, though, Their Love Is Not to Be. Suicide, the Nazis, and finally a heart attack, pick them off, one by one. A tragedy, no? Yes, of course - and also pretty much total bull.

I know, I know, every play or musical from biographical material fudges its facts; and the Bauers admit their doomed quartet were only "inspired" by Beckmann, Marc, Curie and Höch.  Still, how far can "inspiration" be made to stretch?  Marie Curie never met Beckmann, Marc, or Höch - and actually, I'm not sure Beckmann and Höch ever met Marc, either, before his premature death (which was not a suicide, btw, as posited here).  As for the two characters who actually did meet in real life - Beckmann and Höch -  they hardly fell in love; in fact, they dissed each other (and Beckmann didn't think much of Marc and his fellow Expressionists, either).  And need I add that Höch did not resist the Nazis, as claimed here (instead she laid low, and thus survived)?  Or that Marie Curie did not die in a concentration camp?  (She passed away - in France - just before the Nazis came to power.)  Indeed, even the art in question is misrepresented (it was Höch, not Beckmann, for instance, who worked in collage).

Of course all these inaccuracies are uninteresting in and of themselves - they're only interesting insofar as they reveal a pattern, a pattern of relentlessly saccharine commercialization. Which renders the art that's supposedly at the center of the whole enterprise (at left) flat and uninteresting - we never sense the overwhelming disgust that powered Beckmann, or the passionate lyricism that burned within Marc, or even the alienated, quirky weirdness that animated Höch.  And of course the internecine battles between their various scenes - as well as within them (Höch could never make headway with the Dadaists because of their sexism, for instance) -  are all but ignored.

So we're left with some pretty musical textures, and yet another example of Diane Paulus's strange determination totally  screw the A.R.T.'s founding concept.  I admit I find the whole spectacle disturbing, yet fascinating - I can't turn away, in fact.  What's almost admirable about Ms. P., in a scary way, is that what she has done has been entirely an inside job.  (But then I suppose it had to be.)  In much the same way that Mikhail Gorbachev spent decades droning on in party congresses about praxis and the proletariat before bringing down the Berlin Wall, so Ms. Paulus spent years imitating her mentors' delusions (her early productions are indistinguishable from the standard boho/Soho template), only to turn their whole raison d'être inside out once she had the chance.  The A.R.T.'s founder, Bob Brustein, was bent on confronting the bourgeoisie - and his heir, with perverse logic, has turned this very idea into a form of bourgeois entertainment!

I suppose that irony is as nothing to the new political alignment at Harvard.  But isn't the disinformation peddled by The Blue Flower kind of problematic for an institution with the motto of "Truth"?  Because I'm afraid there's very little of that - either artistically, historically, or intellectually - in The Blue Flower.

Rebeck reboots Kafka - kind of

One morning Gregor Samsa awoke from restless dreams to find himself transformed into a successful playwright and screenwriter. He lay on his brittle back and, raising his head a little, gazed out at his Park Slope condo and thought to himself, "What has happened to me?? How unfair that I'm not more successful! This is, you know, an existential dilemma - just like I read about in college!!!"

No, this is not how the famous Franz Kafka story "The Metamorphosis" actually begins - but you get the impression, from her irritating play The Understudy (now at the Lyric Stage), that this is how Theresa Rebeck would handle the rewrite.

But wait, let's back up a bit.  As you may recall, Rebeck is one of the most successful whiners - oh, sorry, I meant writers - of the New York stage. She has been produced all over, been published many times, written several movies, and landed gigs on TV shows like Law and Order. She lives a comfortable - very comfortable - life for a playwright. Still, she's not happy. She should have done better!, she lets everyone know. Why hasn't she been on Broadway?  Why hasn't she won a Pulitzer? (Hell, why hasn't she won the Nobel?)

At first her widely-reported rationale was: "Because I'm a woman, that's why!" Only eventually she got to Broadway (her show closed quickly), and then was short-listed for the Pulitzer (but didn't win). Meanwhile other, more talented female writers (Lydia Diamond, Annie Baker) began to appear on the scene, and Rebeck sensed it was time to upgrade the foundation of her whining from sexism to something - well, bigger, more pervasive; something that could withstand a rebuke like "Oh, but we did give the Pulitzer to a woman - only it was Lynn Nottage!"

Hence, you get the impression, The Understudy, in which a sad-sack stage actor understudies a "talent-free" action star in - get this - a newly-discovered drama by Franz Kafka (that's the big guy himself on the poster at top, behind actor Christopher James Webb). Now it seems life on the fringes of Broadway isn't just embarrassing, status-wise, for a relentless social climber like Rebeck, it's actually - no, literally - Kafkaesque.  Rehearsing for a hit show, she seems to think, is somehow like being transformed into a giant cockroach, or being executed for an unknown crime.

Hmmm.  Somehow I find this whole premise just ridiculous.  We should all be so lucky as to be understudies on Broadway shows, it seems to me, but as for Gregor Samsa's gig - well . . .

BUT, that's what the lady wrote.  And do I have a development deal with Drew Barrymore?  No, I do not. And at least Rebeck half-develops an interesting idea at the top of her three-hander, in which she hints that our new, collective-libertarian consensus about the free market may be driving us to a very dark place indeed, culturally speaking.  (Seen from the stage, the free market looks a LOT like the bureaucracy in Prague.)  To which I say: Hear, hear!  The playwright soon drops this worthy theme, however, and begins taking up other, less-interesting ones (only to quickly drop them, too).  Slowly her script becomes a series of contrived comic dialogues, in which the author airs her familiar grievances (bad boyfriends, sexism) through various permutations of her trio of characters - that sweet, not-so-very-dumb hunk of an action star, his capable, but frazzled, stage manager, and the rather self-impressedly depressed understudy.  Just to hammer home the Kafkaesque-ness of the situation, Rebeck pencils in a few other, unseen characters, like the stoned technical director, just to screw with our onstage friends every now and then.  Because, you know, that's what happens in Kafka.

Only try as hard as Rebeck may, she can't really convince us that her set-up is Kafkaesque.  Because - dare I say it? - she doesn't understand Kafka.  Of course her audience doesn't understand Kafka either - they just know vaguely that he's weird and depressing - so she figures she's safe.

But here's the  important thing to understand about Franz Kafka, just so you'll know where Rebeck goes wrong - the master of Prague is considered "existential" because his characters participate in their own predicaments.  Their travails are not merely thrust upon them, like Stalinism (or libertarianism) - they are, instead, something they are responsible for, that perversely enough, they actually support.  Gregor Samsa's physical metamorphosis, for instance, only mirrors his moral condition - he "becomes" a cockroach because spiritually he long ago became a kind of pathetic vermin.  (Indeed, in a literal translation from the German, he's not specifically a roach at all, but instead "an unclean animal.")  And in The Trial, Herr K. is so persuaded of his own guilt that he comes to believe his execution is "inevitable;" it's only at the last minute, with his dying words, "Like a dog!," that he realizes what he has allowed himself to become.

But for Theresa Rebeck to make any of her characters truly existential would throw a wrench into her upper-middlebrow commercial appeal (she'd never write a career woman who realizes she's morally "like a dog," for instance).  So instead she writes a kind of long-form sitcom with pretentious, NPR-audience allusions and in-jokes - jokes designed for people who've heard something of Kafka, but have never actually read him.

Even this would be okay, I suppose, if The Understudy were simply more entertaining - or even just shorter.  Or if its inevitable romantic triangle weren't so ineptly rendered.  Indeed, the unhappy trio of The Understudy remind you more of the damned souls in No Exit than anything in Kafka - only the problem is that this time there's no exit for us, the audience.   The only real "development" is our slowly-dawning awareness, as the play grinds on, and as Rebeck runs through the various chips, and quips, on her shoulders, of how little she understands of her supposed inspiration.  One scene is actually devoted to the idea that Kafka would be more effective if he were sexier, for example.  And if more of his faceless bureaucrats happened to be hot babes.  (No, I'm not making this up.  This clever play really gets that stupid - which is when you realize Rebeck is actually a part of, rather than opposed to, the pop milieu she pretends to condemn.)

Luckily, the Lyric cast is quite strong, and they're wittily directed by Larry Coen, so they keep the laughs coming, and the script going (despite itself), for about two-thirds of its length.  Laura Latreille is the stand-out as the harried stage manager (although she enters with a tad too much bitterness, I think - the acid should rise in her performance when she realizes, in a standard Rebeck trope, that her understudy is also her ex).  And luckily Latreille is well-matched by hottie Kelby T. Akin as that action star - who, improbably enough, has not just the requisite killer abs, but also a real jones for Kafka (which only means he understands the author about as well as Rebeck does).

The slightly weak link in the trio is Christopher James Webb, who's actually fine in his snarky soliloquies and asides, but who can't conjure much chemistry (even fizzled chemistry) with Latreille, and who hasn't figured out how to put over his supposed awesome renditions of that weird new Kafka script.  Not that can I can blame him; Rebeck seems to want to play Herr K strictly for laughs, and yet at the same time make some sort of existential pit yawn before us.  She succeeds intermittently in the first aim (she's helped along by Arshan Gailus's witty sound design) but needless to say pretty much fails at the second.

And slowly the one-liners begin to land with more and more of a thud, and as they lose steam, so does the whole play (because let's face it, one-liners are what Theresa Rebeck does). By the finish, I can't tell you how often I had checked my watch, hoping each scene of The Understudy would prove its last.  Indeed, as the curtain finally fell, I was more than willing to admit one thing about Rebeck's script:

For the audience, it was almost Kafkaesque.

Is there life on Mars? Maybe!

And now for something completely different: NASA scientists are saying that over thirty years ago, the Viking lander did, indeed, find evidence of organic materials in soil samples on Mars. Above, sunset on Mars, stitched together from images taken last November by the NASA rover "Opportunity."

More reasons to be happy

Earlier I reported on a "new" New Year's Eve tradition - the Nutcracker at First Night; I was lucky enough the next day to join another local tradition - Boston Baroque's New Year's concert, which every year features an entertaining mix of vocal music, a few period obscurities, and one or two crowd-pleasers.

I'm obviously not the only person in Boston in on this particular secret (and last year's version was a particular hoot) - so it was no surprise that Sanders Theatre was sold out this January 1, which means that people were packed together literally cheek-by-jowl in that glorious gothic pile's rigid pews (I guess back in the day Harvard undergraduates were really undernourished).  To be honest, things were so tight that sometimes it was hard to concentrate on the music; I guess you can't expect a musical organization to sell fewer tickets than it has "seats," but maybe it's time for a third showing of this particular favorite, to accommodate the crowds.

The star of the show this time was the great bass Kevin Deas (at left), who had just lit up Boston Baroque's Messiah a few weeks ago.  Mr. Deas only sang three numbers - from three different periods, in three different styles - but each was wonderful in its own way.  First was the famous Polyphemus aria from Acis and Galatea ("O ruddier than the cherry"), then the rollicking spiritual "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?" (with the baroque orchestra clapping along), and then Kern and Hammerstein's mysteriously moving "Ol' Man River" from Showboat. Deas was in fine form throughout, his deeper-than-deep voice always gracefully evocative, although perhaps "Ol' Man River" proved the most powerful of the set - but then how could it not, as its timeless melody showcases one of Oscar Hammerstein's simplest, and yet greatest, lyrics; this is one of those pieces in which "art song" and "the American songbook" completely overlap.

The rest of the concert was always diverting, but somewhat more variable.  Conductor Martin Pearlman (below right) opened with Corelli's "Christmas Concerto," (Op. 6, No. 8), which he took, as is his wont these days, at a wide variety of tempi.  And as usual, the orchestra's sense of ensemble began to fray a bit at the slowest speeds, but everything came together wonderfully when Pearlman sped up  - first violinist Christina Day Martinson in particular had a field day fiddling in the glorious last movement.

Martinson was likewise on fire in Bach's Concerto for Oboe and Violin (BMV 1060) with period oboist Marc Schachman only a small step behind.  The string playing remained tightly focused in Germiniani's Variations on La follia (Concerto Grosso No. 12, derived from Corelli again) - and the winds, led by Schachman, if anything sounded even better.

Alas, somehow the ensemble seemed to grow a bit winded itself in the lengthy "Water Music" Suite in F Major, which concluded the concert - perhaps this Handel perennial (presented here with the famous "Alla hornpipe" seemingly borrowed from the D Major Suite), was, in its full glory, just too much of a good thing.  And the brass section, which had sparkled on natural trumpet in Messiah, here sounded garbled and out-of-control on the even-more-challenging natural horn. Not that it's ever a chore listening to the "Water Music;" and all in all, the concert glittered with enough high points to convince me I'll have to lose some serious weight if I hope to squeeze into whatever space is left at this party next year!

Wednesday Evening 10 PM

This is a foolish post to write, but I'm going to write it anyway. I saw the commercial above, for the latest model Honda, on TV the other night, and was stunned to recognize as its soundtrack the bridge from "The Only Living Boy in New York," one of Paul Simon's haunting farewells to Art Garfunkel on their final album together, Bridge Over Troubled Water. At first I was startled and pleased just to hear those lovely chord changes one more time (that seeming chorus is actually just Paul and Art, re- and re- and re-recorded).  But minutes after the commercial was over I began to feel my heart sinking for reasons I couldn't quite describe.

I left the TV, went to the computer, and called up "The Only Living Boy in New York."  Listening to the silvery harmonies of the full song, I felt a little better, but somehow that nagging sense of despair just wouldn't go away.  I began downloading other Simon and Garfunkel hits from the same album - "So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright," "Cecilia," "The Boxer," "Keep the Customer Satisfied" (the album is basically one long hit) -and then more songs began to come back to me in droves, as I thought about the LPs in their battered sleeves that I slowly wore down in the late 60's as I played them again and again, night after night, on our family stereo.  "Homeward Bound" and "Kathy's Song" and "Old Friends" and "To Emily, Whenever I May Find Her" and "America" and "Scarborough Fair" and "I Am a Rock" - and then I began thinking about other albums I wore down, playing them night after night on the family stereo too, albums like Blue and Court and Spark and "The White Album" and Pet Sounds.

I know, the music is still out there.  In a way, it's more accessible than ever.  But there just doesn't seem to be any more of it, now does there.  And I know that while Simon and Garfunkel once sang about being "Old Friends" sharing a park bench, they were eventually at each others' throats.  (And eventually they let their music be turned into a jingle.) But somehow that only means that, like their whole generation, they couldn't live up to what was best about themselves.  And it certainly doesn't dispel the feeling that the beauty and tenderness and intelligence that groups like Simon and Garfunkel brought to pop music is gone from the public sphere for good.