Enjoyed the chance to catch up on some Broadway shows I'd been wanting to see--two plays, two musicals. No, I didn't make it to The Book of Mormon, perhaps because my friend who has enough connections to get tickets, mentioned he had been offered two for $360 each. But two good plays--Other Desert Cities and Seminar--made the trip worthwhile. While I remain a believer in the concept of musicals--having seen as my first the original production of West Side Story--the two I saw were both worth seeing but not top drawer--Follies and Bonnie and Clyde.
Other Desert Cities opened last season in a limited run at the Beaumont, Lincoln Center, to raves that precipitated its transfer to Broadway--Booth Theater, this fall. It's by Jon Robin Baitz, who's written a number of plays produced in New York and whose work I've been wanting to see. Bang-up star cast features Stockard Channing, Stacy Keach, Judith Light, and Rachel Griffiths. They are all superb. Channing has chosen to focus on the stage as opposed to making many movies, and her experience now shows--she holds the stage when on. No one has ever faulted Keach's work--it's a bit of a shock to see his white hair but here's one of America's classical actors, in that he's done Shakespeare on stage and many movies as well, working as well as ever. Griffiths is Australian and has done lots of tv, such as Six Feet Under, and is up to the demands of her part, which ignites the play.
Baitz's play is a mix of great laugh lines and moving drama. It's a generational conflict, of course, but more than that, as the characters don't stay put into any stock slots. It also presents some political issues but not at the expense of either the play's own integrity or the quality of the drama. This is not at all a political play of the Waiting for Lefty variety--where the cast leads the audience out of the house shouting "Strike!" Not even close--which I'll limit myself to praising if only for the sake of the play's merits.
Seminar is in part a vehicle for the talented Alan Rickman, who is perhaps best known for portraying the most interesting character in the Harry Potter series--Snape, as to whose side he's on we are not sure until the climax. Here he's playing a bit of a set part--the veteran writer and critic teaching four neophytes how to write successfully. Of course he's brutal in reviewing their work--sort of a combo of the late H.R. Trevor-Roper and Simon Cowell. But the students play tricks on him too and he's fair enough to recognize really good work when he sees it. Rickman's character also has a past which returns to bite him, but he shows more than one side of his character, a tribute to him and the playwright, Theresa Rebeck.
Last weekend's Times had a piece about the play and the character played by Lily Rabe who has some feminist leanings in the play. The play is better for the lack of stridency in her character who again is multi-faceted. The article made a big deal about what I found to be only slightly more than a throwaway line. The play on the whole is good and raises good issues as to both character and writing.
I've never been much of a Sondheim fan. Yes, I saw Sweeney Todd years ago but missed most of the others. I wanted to see Follies because it seemed to be about a group of women and the men who are with them who all have to face dealing with the world post-life as a chorus girl on the greatest of Broadway stages. I left with mixed feelings--as always with Sondheim, you don't walk out humming any tunes. The characters do assume three-dimensional shapes, however, and the whole show leaves you with more than just wistfulness. There's even some fun in the sort of vaudeville final section.
Bonnie and Clyde was slammed by the Times's critic (after I had gambled on buying tix early) and will be closing this weekend. Frank Wildhorn, the composer, apparently has had bad luck with the critics--I'd love to know how he continues to get financing--but the show is nicely done. It's just lacking some oomph--probably it is more accurate to the real life story than Arthur Penn's truly classic movie but Penn understood that the story of the two bank robbers' romance wasn't enough as stated to carry the plot. And my only complaint with the male lead was that he seemed very short--images of Warren Beatty in the movie of course kept flashing before me.
Friday, December 30, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
Always Some Sad Story in Philly
Even if you're appalled by the Penn State and Syracuse spectacles, the one that took me by surprise was this morning's disclosure in the New York Times that ancient scribe Bill Conlin, 77-year-old sports columnist for the Daily News, Philadelphia version, was being accused of molesting kids and women decades ago, and had quickly retired. It does figure that it happened in Jersey, right--somewhere across the Delaware River, where there were no great sports venues except for the late Garden State racetrack and where, of course, the Statute of Limitations has run for the ink-stained wretch--one of the women is 47 and lives in Atlantic City. All you can say is that it figures.
This probably happened because of the way these cases have of emerging after a few big ones break the ice--and these were big enough to just about sink Penn State and St. Joe Pa himself. The Syracuse incident should have readied us as the trail proceeded from the previously pure precincts of State College to the always delightfully sleazy 'Cuse and from there on to Philly--about as quickly as the old Syracuse Nats of the NBA became the Philadelphia 76ers al lthose decades ago.
Philly was the sports town with no illusions and hardly any heroes. Guys like Bill Conlin made their name by being bottom-feeders--no one could be more cynical than writers in the eternal city of losers. He may even have been the one to suggest--when they were looking for a name for a new stadium that they settle for Losers' Field. I remember the News's series of "our tainted superstars" that detailed the disappointment visited upon the always-ready-for-the-worst Philly fan by the likes of Dick Allen, Wilt, Timmy Brown, and endless others.
The annual triumph of futility over the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers was only vitiated now and then by the rise of the Broad Street Bullies--the Flyers, and occasional bursts into sunlight by the likes of Villanova, or if you really are from Philly, Philly Textile. No one gave these Philly sports writers much thought because they were always locally-oriented--no one within living memory there had ever been syndicated--and all they wrote about were endlessly varying accounts of losing.
Penn may have dominated the Ivy League often in the two major sports--sorry Cornell hockey fans but in the U.S., it's still football and basketball. But the Philly sports press stopped following Penn when the great Big Five basketball rivalry hosted by the Quakers at the fabulous Palestra faded after the schools started playing their home games at home. It probably would take the second coming of Chuck Bednarik to gain the attention of the local writers.
I always thought Conlin was a stitch--a guy covering losing teams with a million laugh lines. Maybe the end came when the world turned upside down and the Red Quakers (Phillies) escaped their association by name with a cheap cigar and became a perennial major league baseball contender and Conlin even made it into the writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The oft-disappointing Iggles also began behaving like a winning franchise, occasionally threatening to get into recent Super Bowls.
Basketball, though, was the great Philly sport--back when I would take the train to spend afternoon and evening at Palestra double-headers during the Quaker City Tournament, now defunct, deader than even the truncated Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden. The announcing style perfected by salami purveyer Dave Zincoff, the P.A. announcer for the Sixers in the days of Hal Greer ("Gree-ee-ee-ee-er") or Wilt ("It's a Dipper Dunk") was imitated by the Palestra mike-wielders to stir the crowd as the St Joe's human hawk flapped his wings doing figure-eights around the court during timeouts.
Through it all, one could always read endless words in print by Conlin and his fellow hacks whose attitude captured the city's sports mood--we can't really be winning. So I shouldn't be too shocked by these latest revelations. Besides, while Penn State could never be ignored because (1) the Nittany Lions tended to win and (2) they had loyal alumni in Philly as they do everywhere else in the Commonwealth, this all happened in Jersey, years ago. So we probably have Joe Paterno to thank for this story. Had the scandal not broken in his domain, we probably never would have heard about this story. And you don't need to read Conlin to find that out.
This probably happened because of the way these cases have of emerging after a few big ones break the ice--and these were big enough to just about sink Penn State and St. Joe Pa himself. The Syracuse incident should have readied us as the trail proceeded from the previously pure precincts of State College to the always delightfully sleazy 'Cuse and from there on to Philly--about as quickly as the old Syracuse Nats of the NBA became the Philadelphia 76ers al lthose decades ago.
Philly was the sports town with no illusions and hardly any heroes. Guys like Bill Conlin made their name by being bottom-feeders--no one could be more cynical than writers in the eternal city of losers. He may even have been the one to suggest--when they were looking for a name for a new stadium that they settle for Losers' Field. I remember the News's series of "our tainted superstars" that detailed the disappointment visited upon the always-ready-for-the-worst Philly fan by the likes of Dick Allen, Wilt, Timmy Brown, and endless others.
The annual triumph of futility over the Phillies, Eagles, and Sixers was only vitiated now and then by the rise of the Broad Street Bullies--the Flyers, and occasional bursts into sunlight by the likes of Villanova, or if you really are from Philly, Philly Textile. No one gave these Philly sports writers much thought because they were always locally-oriented--no one within living memory there had ever been syndicated--and all they wrote about were endlessly varying accounts of losing.
Penn may have dominated the Ivy League often in the two major sports--sorry Cornell hockey fans but in the U.S., it's still football and basketball. But the Philly sports press stopped following Penn when the great Big Five basketball rivalry hosted by the Quakers at the fabulous Palestra faded after the schools started playing their home games at home. It probably would take the second coming of Chuck Bednarik to gain the attention of the local writers.
I always thought Conlin was a stitch--a guy covering losing teams with a million laugh lines. Maybe the end came when the world turned upside down and the Red Quakers (Phillies) escaped their association by name with a cheap cigar and became a perennial major league baseball contender and Conlin even made it into the writers wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. The oft-disappointing Iggles also began behaving like a winning franchise, occasionally threatening to get into recent Super Bowls.
Basketball, though, was the great Philly sport--back when I would take the train to spend afternoon and evening at Palestra double-headers during the Quaker City Tournament, now defunct, deader than even the truncated Holiday Festival in Madison Square Garden. The announcing style perfected by salami purveyer Dave Zincoff, the P.A. announcer for the Sixers in the days of Hal Greer ("Gree-ee-ee-ee-er") or Wilt ("It's a Dipper Dunk") was imitated by the Palestra mike-wielders to stir the crowd as the St Joe's human hawk flapped his wings doing figure-eights around the court during timeouts.
Through it all, one could always read endless words in print by Conlin and his fellow hacks whose attitude captured the city's sports mood--we can't really be winning. So I shouldn't be too shocked by these latest revelations. Besides, while Penn State could never be ignored because (1) the Nittany Lions tended to win and (2) they had loyal alumni in Philly as they do everywhere else in the Commonwealth, this all happened in Jersey, years ago. So we probably have Joe Paterno to thank for this story. Had the scandal not broken in his domain, we probably never would have heard about this story. And you don't need to read Conlin to find that out.
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Wine, Women & Song
My experience with opera transmitted live on a movie screen has been excellent if until now, a bit limited. For reasons not worth going into, I've seen the Met's HD transmissions on Saturday afternoons three times--for the first three operas of Wagner's Ring. Since they show upcoming performances--their version of Coming Attractions trailers--I feel like I've seen a whole lot of operas this way but actually it's only been the first three Ring operas. In case you wondered, we'll get Goetterdaemerung this spring.
But yesterday I saw and heard nothing less than opening night at La Scala at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring. It was Don Giovanni and it was easily the best production, at least the most enjoyable one, of that opera I've experienced. First of all, the cast was glorious: Peter Mattei was the Don, Anna Netrebko Donna Anna, Barbara Frittoli Donna Elvira, and Bryn Terfel as Leporello. Everyone else was just as good and Daniel Barenboim was the stellar conductor.
Half the fun, of course, was watching all the high-fashion Milanese crowd in black ties and long gowns--even a white tie or two. The new President of Italy was standing in what looked like the royal box. Any European operatic production worth its salt will push the envelope in terms of new and different staging: this one was no exception. Characters come out into the front of the orchestra and run back past the first row up onto the stage. The style was sort of modern dress, with the inevitable capes and cloaks and finery that could put you right back into the original production of the opera in the 1790s.
The performances were so good that you actually could focus on points like Donna Elvira's seeming endless loyalty to the Don, no matter how badly he treated her; whether the ending as played made sense--the Commendatore appearing more in person than as statue and reciprocating the Don's stab of the opening scene; Anna Netrebko's amazing resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, especially when Donna Anna affects large movie-star-style sunglasses; and all the stage tricks that director Robert Carson conjured up for us.
As with their Figaro, Mozart and da Ponte did not shrink from controversial subjects. The Don has to get his just deserts in 1930s Production Code Hollywood style, and I assume this was as de rigeur back when they opened this opera "out of town" (Vienna being both the imperial and musical capital) in Prague. Whether there was more meaning in having the Don materialize in the final scene--the one following his direct descent into Hell--when the characters all proclaim their noble intentions: Elvira will go to a convent, Leporello promises to find a better master--is hard to say.
But this production was continually both fascinating and challenging, and musically superb. It's part of the Opera in Cinema series--a series of opera and ballet productions from Europe that hasn't gotten anything like the publicity the Met's Saturday series has had. It deserves more--even if most of us would have trouble getting to a noon performance (apparently the opening night at Scala starts at what seems like an early hour of 6 P.M. for Europeans) on a Wednesday.
But yesterday I saw and heard nothing less than opening night at La Scala at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring. It was Don Giovanni and it was easily the best production, at least the most enjoyable one, of that opera I've experienced. First of all, the cast was glorious: Peter Mattei was the Don, Anna Netrebko Donna Anna, Barbara Frittoli Donna Elvira, and Bryn Terfel as Leporello. Everyone else was just as good and Daniel Barenboim was the stellar conductor.
Half the fun, of course, was watching all the high-fashion Milanese crowd in black ties and long gowns--even a white tie or two. The new President of Italy was standing in what looked like the royal box. Any European operatic production worth its salt will push the envelope in terms of new and different staging: this one was no exception. Characters come out into the front of the orchestra and run back past the first row up onto the stage. The style was sort of modern dress, with the inevitable capes and cloaks and finery that could put you right back into the original production of the opera in the 1790s.
The performances were so good that you actually could focus on points like Donna Elvira's seeming endless loyalty to the Don, no matter how badly he treated her; whether the ending as played made sense--the Commendatore appearing more in person than as statue and reciprocating the Don's stab of the opening scene; Anna Netrebko's amazing resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, especially when Donna Anna affects large movie-star-style sunglasses; and all the stage tricks that director Robert Carson conjured up for us.
As with their Figaro, Mozart and da Ponte did not shrink from controversial subjects. The Don has to get his just deserts in 1930s Production Code Hollywood style, and I assume this was as de rigeur back when they opened this opera "out of town" (Vienna being both the imperial and musical capital) in Prague. Whether there was more meaning in having the Don materialize in the final scene--the one following his direct descent into Hell--when the characters all proclaim their noble intentions: Elvira will go to a convent, Leporello promises to find a better master--is hard to say.
But this production was continually both fascinating and challenging, and musically superb. It's part of the Opera in Cinema series--a series of opera and ballet productions from Europe that hasn't gotten anything like the publicity the Met's Saturday series has had. It deserves more--even if most of us would have trouble getting to a noon performance (apparently the opening night at Scala starts at what seems like an early hour of 6 P.M. for Europeans) on a Wednesday.
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