Fall into Winter Performances

 Brooklyn Academy of Music

The last week of November, my friends and I traveled underground to BAM Opera House (rain, rain, rain, but that evening the MTA did its job) for a program by Philip Glass: The Etudes.  There are twenty of them, and they were played in chronological order starting with Mr. Glass himself followed by nine virtuoso pianists.  The first act was spectacular, downright awe-inspiring.  Mr. Glass’ music requires advanced technique (apparently he wrote them to force himself to play better) but they’re not just exercises.  There is depth, intricacy, and passion. By the 14^th etude they start sounding rather alike, but just watching the very different styles of the pianists was fun.  I am a new fan of Timo Andres, Jenny Lin, Bruce Levingston, and Tania Leon.

Philip Glass surrounded by great pianists. Photo credit Stephanie Berger, courtesy BAM

The Vineyard Theatre

For my friend’s autumn visit to the city, we went to the Village to see “Billy & Ray” at the Vineyard Theatre.  It’s about the writing of a screenplay for the great Double Indemnity by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler (based on book by James M. Cain which everyone disparaged as trash).  The play was written by Mike Bencivenga and directed by Gary Marshall, who of course knows how to direct in any medium, so it was put together well.  The play was a lot of fun for me since I got the in-jokes about the movie, the actors, the ways of the studio.  My companion’s brother would have enjoyed it.  While my friend enjoyed the play somewhat, she definitely looked at me questioningly each time I laughed at something she didn’t get.  It was only at intermission that I discovered she’d never seen Double Indemnity; and that she didn’t know Fred MacMurray had played a sweater-wearing dad named Steve Douglas in My Three Sons (one of the laugh lines for old folk like me).  I tried to explain what Double Indemnity meant to me, since I knew MacMurray as that dad and seeing him in Double Indemnity was mind blowing, realizing that the middle-aged actor was once sexy and seriously noirish in the film that started noir. I compared the experience to seeing Robert Young, seen in the same decade as My Three Sons playing the kindly Dr. Marcus Welby — a family doctor who still made house calls — and the shock of seeing him as a Nazi in a Hitchcock film. My friend had never seen Marcus Welby either.  Clearly I watched way too much television in my youth.

The play’s fun for those of us in the know and reasonably well structured until the end, when it runs into the problem any “fact” based story has in winding up — telling the audience what happened to Chandler afterward and Wilder and the movie, etc., and film noir itself.  Larry Pine was more than competent but not quite on as Chandler and Vincent Kartheiser, while better than I expected as Billy Wilder, was still not the Billy in my head (even though Billy must have been young once).  Still I wouldn’t go so far as to say he was good. The scenic designer used the space well, and the period music was spot on.  So it was a pleasant if not scintillating evening, and I was delighted to know that Chandler was well aware that doors open into rooms, not out into hallways, so that great, nail-bitingly tense scene in which Barbara Stanwyck hides from Edward G. Robinson behind the open hallway door was “grammatically” incorrect.  Billy Wilder didn’t care for reality, but rather for the dramatic moment.

Do see Double Indemnity, the film, if you haven’t — or even if you have.  The play’s fun, but does not hold a candle to the film it holds up for examination.

 

Kartheiser as Wilder and Pine as Chandler. Photo credit (c) 2014 Carol Rosegg

A Delicate Balancing Act at the Golden Theatre

Edward Albee’s A Delicate Balance is back on Broadway, but this one does not compare to the 1996 production, despite Pam McKinnon directing.  While I loved her production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, this evening is well staged, but not well directed mostly because it’s not well cast.  I hesitated to see this production because I did not want to sully the memory of the perfect production of the play we saw on Broadway in the 1990s — with the brilliant George Grizzard and Elaine Stritch and Rosemary Harris.  Sometimes — well, often — one should follow the gut.

The Leading Lady, Agnes, is a tough creature to play: she is the delicate balance.  Glenn Close doesn’t get it, coming off as merely officious.  John Lithgow is also rather shallow and dull as her husband. As their daughter, Martha Plimpton is also loud and shallow and dull.  

Lindsay Duncan is downright brilliant in addition to being courageous for taking on a role we all remember Elaine Stritch doing.  Ms. Duncan does a great deal more than hold her own. Bob Balaban (pitch perfect, tonally and physically) and Claire Higgins (mad and rather hateful, meaning perfect) as the frightened neighbors Harry & Edna are fabulous.  It made me happy just to see them enter the stage.  They nailed it.

One of my favorite aspects in the scenic/lighting design were the shadows of people about to enter – down the stairs, from the kitchen area, toward the front door, all the visual “foreshadowing” was marvelous.  The staging and design elements were cleverly “off balance.”

I know A Delicate Balance, and it’s not a dull play.  I should never have time to sit and think, “I am so bored with these rich people, they should go out and work, why is the drunk the only interesting thing onstage, what is the issue with the bedrooms with these people, they have servants and no guest room??”  But that’s how I felt the evening I saw this production.  The last 3-hour play I saw was Stoppard’s Indian Ink at the Roundabout, and I wasn’t bored for a moment.  Big difference. 

Six actors, of which three do fine work — really, Lindsay Duncan is the epitome of alive onstage, living as a whole person (however broken as an alcoholic, or, as Claire insists, a drunk) with relationships, history, power, humor, and guts.  To see her work, and that of Clare Higgins and Bob Balaban, is a delight.  But there must be a better way.

Save your money on this one.

 

Lithgow and Close.  Photo Credit (c) 2014 Brigitte Lacombe.

The Last Ship at the Neil Simon Theatre

Sting’s new musical (music & lyrics by Sting, a.k.a. Gordon Sumner) has a terrific book by John Logan and Brian Yorkey, is directed by Joe Mantello, and rather thrillingly choreographed by Steven Hoggett.  When we saw it, we predicted: The Last Ship will be touted as and win awards as the best new musical of the year.  Unfortunately, the wrong people wrote reviews on it.  If you like Sting’s musical progression over the years, you’ll like the score. This is not what he did with The Police, this is later Sting, which leans more toward older music, music of the working people, which is pretty much the play.

The critics are wrong about The Last Ship.  It’s musically exciting, emotionally engaging, and different from the usual Broadway.  The choreography is suited to the characters doing the dancing, and the scenic and lighting design (David Zinn and Christopher Akerlind, respectively) are fabulous.  Michael Esper as Gabriel returned to his hometown and Rachel Tucker as the girl he left behind lead an excellent cast. We had a wonderful evening.  The play does not need Sting to appear onstage, he’s already there in its heart and sound, although he will join the cast as a means to bring more people into the theatre.  Unfortunately, this means those who see Sting will miss the hearty and heartfelt performance of Jimmy Nail. 

A fine Christmas gift it would be if this musical play’s box office turns around and it runs on, despite foolish critics.

A scene from The Last Ship.  (C)2014  Sara Krulwich/NYT

~ Molly Matera, hoping everyone is enjoying their preparations for holidays, which should include seeing some live theatre.

Movies that may -- or may not -- be about or for or from Children

Moonrise Kingdom is a child's view of a memory of the 1960s. Not a 21st century child, mind you. A child of the mid-20th century. It is a totally false memory, of course, so I prefer to think Wes Anderson and Roman Coppola wrote Moonrise Kingdom as a fantasy, without the unicorns.

Moonrise Kingdom is a story of young love, broken hearts and lost dreams, which Mr. Anderson directed and produced.  In some ways, it’s very simple.  The girl — 12, knee socks and a short dress, eyeliner, she speaks little and has a pair of left-handed scissors.  The boy —  12,over-sized glasses, coonskin cap, corncob pipe:  Welcome to 1965.  Although adults may not believe it, these two fell in love, and that’s the most important thing in this movie.

 Moonrise Kingdom is sweetly nostalgic for a time that never was.  This story could not be told in the present tense, not in today’s uptight and frightened society.  So Mr. Anderson has brought himself and his characters back in time, and we enjoy them for an hour and a half.  Much more and we might not allow ourselves to suspend disbelief despite the engaging music, the cinematography with soft, natural tones by Robert D. Yeoman, and the interesting performances.  Besides, everyone smokes.

The set-up includes a house that looks like a lake house where a couple families might live in summers.  Apparently not – the Bishop family lives here all year round.  Their house is on one end of a small island off the New England coast, where people write and receive letters, listen to music and read to pass their summer days.  A scout camp is at the opposite end.  Across the cove there’s a bigger bit of civilization with a bigger scout camp, and a prosperous town, including a church where Benjamin Britten’s Noyes Fludde is playing, or has played, and may play again.  Mr. Britten’s music accompanies much of this film, starting with his “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” played on a small portable record player.   Then there’s some Hank Williams, then more Britten.  Music and orchestrations during the film are by Conrad Pope and they’re marvelous. In addition, original music by Alexandre Desplat is clever and fitting.

Suzy and Sam meet in the meadow.

From one end of the island comes orphan and foster child Sam (Jared Gilman), 12 years old and looking for love.  From the Bishop house there’s Suzy (Kara Hayward), misunderstood, fleeing (for “ten days or less” as she tells her little brother when she borrows his portable record player) an unhappy household where the mom calls the kids to meals with a bullhorn, when she’s not fooling around with the Island’s police officer.  These two star-crossed lovers will meet in the meadow, and the adventure begins, building up to an emotional crescendo in time for an infamous hurricane that floods coves and dams and knocks steeples off churches.

Bruce Willis is just marvelous as the sad-sack, good-hearted Captain Sharp who loves Mrs. Bishop, warmly played by Frances McDormand.  She and her husband Walt, oddly (and that’s not a bad word in this movie) played by Bill Murray, are both lawyers, and their idea of pillow talk is following up on each other’s court motions. On the other end of the island, Scout Master Ward is an 8^th grade math teacher during school season, but considers the scouts his more important job.  Edward Norton plays the scout master with a sad fragility, gaining strength when needed — in some ways, that hurricane did people a lot of good.

Murray, Swinton, Willis, Norton, McDormand

Tilda Swinton makes a particularly odd appearance as a blue-clad “Social Services” unit.  There she was in her little cap, skirt suit, in an electric blue.  What was that about?  I didn’t particularly care, but the blue pulled focus. She served a purpose in the plot, but unlike everyone else in the film, she was merely odd, not interesting.

Wandering through the smoke, rain, and wind is Bob Balaban, master of ceremonies, narrator, historian.  I have no idea what’s fiction and what’s non-, since I tend to believe everything Balaban says.

Overall:  Moonrise Kingdom has great music, it’s a leisurely, odd, quirky little film.  It has a calming effect, and even the closing credits are sweet and cleverly done.  It’s a nice Saturday afternoon at the movies.  If your movie budget this summer is limited, Moonrise Kingdom will be just as undemandingly enjoyable and effective on the small screen.

Speaking of a child’s view, I saw the new Pixar film Brave last weekend.  It’s an absolute joy, funny, sweet, and, well, it’s Pixar…. from the music to the lyrical voices, to the gorgeous artwork, Brave just glows.  The loch looked like moving water, the horse’s fear made my heart pound, and the bears had full-blown personalities.  The people had as well!  Emma Thompson was Queen Elinor (well, her voice, but the facial expressions almost looked like her as well), Billy Connolly was a sweetheart of a dad as King Fergus, Julie Walters was very funny as the wood carving witch, and the delightful Kelly MacDonald wins everyone’s heart as the coming-of-age-child, Merida.  Animated or not, the acting was swell, the story was tight, and everyone should see this.  Well, maybe not kids under 5….it has some scary moments.

There was also an opening short called, appropriately, La Luna, which was short and sweet and clever and heart-warming.  Loved it – and look forward to more work from writer/director Enrico Casarosa.

~ Molly Matera, signing off to read a children’s book from the Sixties.