From Gershwin to Glass

Friday to Friday, I saw two musical performances, one 2 ½ hours, one 4 ¼ hours.  Those who know me know I believe most stories can be told within 90 minutes.  OK, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby took longer, but that was special.  OK, Shakespeare usually does, but… well, I just think 90 minutes is perfect.

Nice Work If You Can Get It is a bubble bath, a frothy fuzzy drink, a guilty pleasure.  

Matthew Broderick (center) as Jimmy Winter with the cast of "Nice Work."

In the last several months the production at the Imperial has tightened up so that not a moment goes astray, while all the players are still having a blast, and so is the audience.  Really, who couldn’t enjoy 2 ½ hours of George and Ira Gershwin’s magical music and lyrics, Kathleen Marshall choreography, and the comedy and wonderful voices of Matthew Broderick, Kelli O’Hara, Michael McGrath, Jennifer Laura Thompson, Judy Kaye, Chris Sullivan, and Robyn Hurder.  All the marvelous dancers are so elegant and jazzy and flashy, plus they’re beautifully dressed by Martin Pakledinaz.  If you need to just get away from it all without leaving town, this is the show for you.  It’ll leave you dancing in the street and singing in the rain.

#

Once a year, I try to see/hear an opera.  Not because I like opera — because I don’t.  I yearn to understand what keeps this archaic form going year after year, century after century.  Kind of like church.  Sure, lots of the music is gorgeous, powerful, sweet, etc.  But those voices.  I don’t like the singing style, with a few exceptions.  But my biggest exception to opera is the never-ending repetition.  Some people use it well.  Most people don’t.  But even Mozart takes over three hours to tell a story that Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers could — and did — tell with song and dance and laughter in 80 minutes.

So I guess opera isn’t about storytelling.

And in that way, it’s fair to call Einstein on the Beach an opera.  It is billed as an opera, but I beg to differ.  I don’t know what it is, but opera it ain’t.  Yes, there’s lots of choral singing.  There’s lots of music.  And yes it’s very long!  What shall we call it?  A cultural event?  A theatrical program of music and dance, words and numbers — that is, as in numerals.  People speaking or singing numbers.  Gesticulating numbers.  "3."  "1."  "8."  Numbers. "Do re mi fa sol la ti…" yes, that too.  There is no plot — and no one ever pretended there was, so it’s not misleading.  This is about precision, articulation, counterpoint, and an incredible feat of memorization for every member of the company.  At one point in the second courtroom scene, the defendant (the role originated by Lucinda Childs in the Seventies, played sinuously last night by Kate Moran) lies on a “bed” and repeats a sentence 30-40 times.  An odd sentence that becomes mesmerizing.  

There are very talented musicians, dancers, actors, singers at the height of their powers on the stage of the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Opera House, but I must mention one who was as mesmerizing as the odd sentence — Antoine Silverman, made up to resemble Albert Einstein, playing a very fine violin.  Exhilarating.

Robert Wilson’s direction and design of this strange piece make it almost seem comprehensible.  It is impossible to walk away from his production without questions buzzing around you, in your head, in the streets, questions. Questions, not just about art, but about the society that generated Wilson, Glass, and Childs as well as Einstein on the Beach.  And questions are good. Lucinda Childs' choreography is stimulating, riveting, and repetitious in the good way.  Her dance company does her proud. 

I do not generally care for the music of Philip Glass, but it all works here.  Not every moment of the 4 ¼ hours (no intermission, but wander off for a while if you must).  But the company of players, the music, the odd words kept me in my seat for most of this performance, and kept my attention for the better part of 3 ½ hours.  Sometimes annoyed.  Sometimes amused.  And I admit to nodding off a few times in the first courtroom scene.  But mostly I was fascinated.  At the 3 ½ hour mark, a particularly silly scene pushed me right out of the performance.  There were no humans involved, you see.  Humans — speaking and moving rhythmically, if nonsensically — are interesting.  They were missing.  The scene that drove me away had a broad bar of light (called the “Bed”) lying horizontal on the dark stage.  Accompanied by harpsichord, the bar went from horizontal to vertical very slowly.  Fifteen minutes of that.  During which I decided, “Now you’re messing with me.”  So I got up and went to the Ladies Room. 

The Cast of Einstein on the Beach.  (c) 2012.  Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

But that’s OK.  I do think Einstein on the Beach was a seminal work, artistically revolutionary, and we can see how much it has influenced artists in all media in the 30-odd years since Robert Wilson, Philip Glass, and Lucinda Childs collaborated to create something life-changing.  And I must thank them for it. 

This is an immense production touring the globe, at BAM for just two more performances.  http://www.bam.org/opera/2012/einstein-on-the-beach.  Meanwhile, I suspect I'll spend some time revisiting some of those four acts on YouTube.

~ Molly Matera, signing off, chastened, tired, confused, but happy.  And Happy Autumn Equinox to us all.

Thoughts on Two Nights in the Theatre

Last week I saw an invited dress rehearsal for Nice Work If You Can Get It, a “new” musical now in previews at the Imperial Theatre.  I wasn’t going to write anything about it, because what I saw was a dress rehearsal.  Then I discovered that people who hadn’t seen even the rehearsal were bad-mouthing the play.  Apparently some fool had posted a little video of a number in rehearsal and the grumpy people hadn’t liked what they’d seen.  Whoever decided to post a rehearsal video before the show opened should be fired for stupidity.

Happily, since the first previews, more accurate descriptions of the play have appeared online.  What I have to say about the dress rehearsal was that Nice Work If You Can Get It is…well... s’wonderful, s’marvelous, hilarious, ridiculous. If you stop laughing long enough to think, you can say, “This is a black-&-white1930s movie musical and just as absurd, except it’s live and in color.” Even thinking that much is more than you’d have time for.  There was one point I was laughing so hard that my friend thought I was going to have a fit.  Speaking of fits, the theatre seats are as tightly crammed together as passengers on a Tokyo subway.  We were all so cramped that I couldn’t reach the floor to roll on it laughing. 

The dancers are brilliant doing terrific, exhilarating numbers, the choreography is gorgeous. Settings are funny, practical, imaginative.  The costuming is sublime. Orchestrations and orchestra are perfect.  And it’s all Gershwin, for goodness’ sake.  

The bad news:  It ran a bit long (close to three hours with a 15 minute intermission), but it’ll tighten up as the preview weeks teach the marvelous director/choreographer Kathleen Marshall what’s slowing it down.  I, of course, have my opinions on what must be cut, but I’ll wait to see what the professional does.  What I saw, after all, was still a rehearsal, the company’s first in front of an audience. 

I look forward to seeing the play again in 3-4 weeks, and see what changes have been wrought.  What I’ll never understand about the naysayers is how anyone could be anything other than deliriously happy during three hours of Gershwin.  S’madness.

#

Last night Horvendile and I saw Simon Callow in a new piece by Jonathan Bates called Being Shakespeare.  It was a very enjoyable evening in which Simon Callow told tales of Shakespeare’s life structured on Shakespeare’s own Seven Ages of Man. The scene appeared spare and yet it was very well thought out and decorated.  All elements of the design were marvelous, from the lighting by Bruno Poet, the scenic design and use of the space (design and direction by Tom Cairns), music and sound by Ben & Max Ringham were terrific, and then there were the trees.  It was a credit I’d noticed in the program before the play began, “Trees by Green Mile Trees,” which confused me.  But those trees deserve the notice:  some frightening and foreboding, some simple and comforting. 

I enjoyed Callow (although he sometimes swallowed the end of his words, and at others spoke so quickly in obscure accents that I’d no idea what he said, unless I already knew the particular bit of Shakespeare), the pacing was quite good, and there was enough actual Shakespeare to please.  Thing is, I don’t believe I could call Being Shakespeare a play.  Don’t get me wrong, it was a highly theatrical and invigorating hour and three quarters, it has a beginning: birth; and an end:  death.  Yet it was more like a very entertaining lecture than a play.  Jonathan Bates is an erudite fellow, a Shakespeare scholar, and quite interesting – I look forward to reading his prose.  But I’m afraid he’s not a playwright.  Nonetheless, if you’re in the mood for some history mixed with your Shakespeare, Being Shakespeare is playing at the BAM Harvey this and next weekend.