'Andy Warhol in Iran'

To the Atlas Theater last Saturday night to catch Mosaic Theater Company's 90-minute, no-intermission play, Andy Warhol in Iran. Not having known anything about any trip by Warhol to Iran--not that I'm that acquainted with most of the details of his life--I figured this would be something new and different. It turned out to present a conflict between morality and mammon. 

Warhol is ensconced in his hotel room, which is neither lavish nor spartan. He's come to Teheran to take photos so he can paint a picture of the Shah's queen. There's also some suggestion that he would be hired to depict the Shah's family in paint as well. He makes no bones about the obviously large remuneration he is receiving for this effort.

So, when he is surprised and made a prisoner in his hotel room by a young man with a gun who could be described as a terrorist since he says he's  part of a group rebelling against the Shah's brutal rule and his vicious secret police (SAVAK) who, with CIA training, maintain his authority and are known to engage in torture and murder to keep him in pwer.

Warhol attempts to talk his way out of being brutalized or killed by this gunman and his cohort. He's just there to take some pictures. The young man recounts how his father was murdered by the Shah's minions and recounts with the assistance of videos flashed on screens the history of U.S. involvement going back to the American and British deposing in the early 1950s of Mohammed Mossadegh, the Iranian prime minister who showed signs of rebelling himself against the Western support of the Shah's authoritarian rule. This murder was carried out, it now is clear, by the CIA.

Warhol's futile attempts to escape are easily frustrated by his captor. There's some development of empathy between the two when their brushes with death are compared--Warhol's major surgery that saved his life after Valerie Solanis shot him, and the gunman's severe injury that also required significant surgery to save him.

While he repeatedly tells Warhol that the details of his life are not germane to the instant situation, he gradually reveals more about his life experience, including time spent in the U.S. The two actors play their characters effectively; Alex Mills as Warhol dons a white-haired wig to re-create Warhol's well-known appearance. He even presents his captor with a similar wig to disguise himself to escape being taken by the police.

There's a surprise that provides a denouement for the play. It is effective in keeping the story believable and suddenly changes the relationship between the two men. All in all, the play was a satisfying dramatic experience that nicely showed how Warhol's status as an artistic rebel was balanced by his commercial focus on maintaining his large art plant, "the Factory", and its employees.

We now know what ultimately happened in Iran, precipitated by the U.S.'s welcoming of the Shah when he abandoned Iran in the face of imminent revolution that generated the Islamic Republic and the taking of the U.S. Embassy and lengthy holding of its personnel as hostages. Iran remains an antagonist to U.S. policy in the Middle East to this day.

The play manages to convey all of this in a well-constructed drama that does not succumb to tedium given we only see two characters for the whole time. Mosaic Theater has a well-deserved reputation in D.C. for creative, edgy theatre; as with the last production we saw there, a bravura tour de force about Louis (Satchmo) Armstrong in which Craig Wallace portrayed Satchmo, his agent, and his wife. 

 

 

 

Revival of 'Gypsy' on Broadway

I've been very fond of the musical Gypsy but somehow never saw the original production. Jule Styne wrote seven songs for the marvelous and unique Broadway singer, Ethel Merman. I did see the movie with Rosalind Russell, who did perform well despite her obviously far less impressive vocal authority. It was fun seeing a tee shirt on sale in the lobby, which listed the actresses who had played Rose, the lead and Gypsy's mother--the most extreme of any stage mother--on Broadway. They were Merman, the original Rose; Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters, and Patti Lupone. 

Gypsy was the second of only two shows for which Stephen Sondheim wrote the lyrics but not the music. West Side Story was his first. Styne's songs and music overall was marvelous and Sondheim's lyrics superb and clever. Arthur Laurents's book was all right but not in the rarefied realm of the music and lyrics.

Audra Macdonald was Rose in this revival with a totally racially-integrated cast. Macdonald has a fine voice; I heard her as one of the students in Master Class, which portrayed Maria Callas, played by Zoe Caldwell, teaching such a class. Macdonald was good and I would concede that while no one is ever likely to rise to Merman's incredible vocal heights, Macdonald's singing was in a different style but  excellent in its own way. 

The rest of the cast, including Joy Woods as Louise, who of course becomes Gypsy Rose Lee, "the stripper with class" and Danny Burstein as the put-upon Herbie, who is in love with Rose but like everyone else who is close to her --her two daughters--ends up walking out on her. Her daughters--Gypsy and June, who became a successful actress as June Havoc--managed to make it in show business despite their Mom's controlling their early lives up through their teens.

The first act ends with that fabulous act-closing number, "Everything's Coming Up Roses" and the whole show winds up with the always amazing "Rose's Turn" during which she seems to be on the verge of a total breakdown but you know she will persevere. I've always thought that the wretched song that Rose included in every awful act she put together when she was trying to make June a star from her earliest moments in kiddie shows to vaudeville--"Let Me Entertain You"--was perfectly brought back late in the second act to be rendered in a wildly different tempo and style to serve as Gypsy's stripping number.

It should be recalled that although burlesque was on its way to theatrical burial following the demise of the "classier" vaudeville, Gypsy Rose Lee lasted on its stage as long as she did because she really was a different kind of burlesque queen. As Wikipedia notes, she "earned her legendary status as an elegant and witty striptease artist. Initially, her act was propelled forward when a shoulder strap on one of her gowns gave way, causing her dress to fall to her feet despite her efforts to cover herself; encouraged by the audience's response, she went on to make the trick the focus of her performance.

"Her innovations were an almost casual stripping style compared to bump & grind styles of most burlesque strippers (she emphasized the "tease" in "striptease"), and she brought a sharp sense of humor into her act as well. She became as famous for her onstage wit as for her stripping style, and—changing her stage name to Gypsy Rose Lee—she became one of the biggest stars of Minsky's Burlesque, where she performed for four years." In her later life, Gypsy had a long career in live theater, movies, and TV. She developed enough learning despite never attending school when her mother was taking the sisters on the road aiming for vaudeville fame to conduct a talk show successfully and succeed in several fields of entertainment. She also wrote several mystery novels and her own memoirs, on which Styne, Sondheim, and Laurents based their musical. 

This musical was Ethel Merman's final success, lending her powerful pipes to the seven songs written with her as the intended singer. The revival confirmed that the show still attracts and pleases audiences, even with the singing, especially Macdonald's as Rose, much more stylized and satisfying in its own way than Merman's marvelous belting. If you've never seen it, it's worth heading for the Majestic on 44th St. west of Broadway.

 

 

 

 

 

New Year's, Maui, and 'Wicked'

We've traveled a good deal of the time this past month or so: first, the Taiwan trip at the beginning of November, then to California--Cupertino, to see my daughter and her family--and after they joined us at San Francisco airport, literally at the departure gate, we all spent Christmas week in Maui. My son-in-law Dave had been offered a house for the week by a friend from one of his professional associations. Eileen and I had been to Maui before but that merely reinforced our overall enjoyment of a wonderful place: great weather, so much natural beauty to enjoy, the chance to enjoy six different beaches--five had great swimming and sand, while the sixth, on the other side of the island, boasted huge waves and a few surfers on them on an overcast day there.

We found the places that also are frequented by the locals to be most enjoyable: for traditional Hawaiian, the outdoor seating with a great view at Aloha Mixed Plate was superb, and was even do-able with two young children--my grandsons; Joey's Kitchen Napili had a down-to-earth air and terrific Asian fusion menu; Leota's Kitchen and Pie Shop in Olowahu had amazing sandwiches and yes, pies and bread pudding; Seascape at Maalaea was delightful outdoors for lunch at the Maui Ocean Center, a fascinating aquarium with so many specimens that are unique to Hawai'i; and getting coffee most mornings at the Coffee Store in the Napili Center, near where we stayed, which had not only great coffee, Kona as one choice, but marvelous croissants, which were delicious without seeming at all French.

We did find that much progress had been made in rebuilding Lahaina after the awful 2023 fire. We'd stayed in Lahaina on our previous trip and while some of it is back in action, there's still much left to be done. 

The New Year's house party to which we've traveled in Richmond and Manassas was hosted by another of our four couples as our hosts for all these years truly had too much on their plate this time and we'll just hope they'll be with us to celebrate next year. Since we were driving home that night, it was slated for an early pre-New Year's wrap, but sure enough, we all were having such a great time courtesy of Maureen and Vic Stone that we weren't home till after the ball fell.

Eileen and I did take in the movie "Wicked" which was definitely good entertainment, had great production values, and decent performances too. It didn't need to be almost three hours long, so it did drag, and especially since theres to be a Part Two at the end of 2025. I remember being surprised at how I enjoyed the musical seen in New York a few years ago, as this much more recently written prequel to The Wizard of Oz worked on Broadway. Yet, in the atmosphere is always the 1939 film, close to perfection. I almost thought that in addition to the novel from which the show and movie were drawn, perhaps some of the film's story drew on the many sequels that L. Frank Baum produced. When I saw the show, it had enough heft that I didn't miss Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Margaret Hamilton, and Frank Morgan; this time I did, a bit.

 

The Hills of California

 If I hadn't just returned from California, and experienced crossing some hills there, I might have reacted differently to the Jez Butterworth play, The Hills of California, we saw in New York on December 8. The title is drawn, as it happens, from a Johnny Mercer song, so the play's dealing with California is its central theme, about the return of the oldest of four sisters who had formed a singing quartet after she had not been in communication with her family since leaving for California about two decades before.

The play received excellent reviews in New York, from both the Times and the New Yorker. The London critics were not a kind: they pointed out that the play is long and meandering, and indulges in lots of unrelated stuff; the return of Joan, the oldest and most talented sister brings out, of course, that she has not succeeded any more than her younger siblings, who haven't either. Nor has their dominating mother, who only realizes and never really accepts that she has trained them to sing harmoniously in a girl group on the model of the Andrews Sisters.

A talent scout for US TV points out to her that the Andrews Sisters were already in decline as a successful act and were virtually invisible to producers looking for new styles of singing. One is led to wonder what attention Veronica, the mother, had been paying for all those years she had been rigorously training her four daughters to where music was heading.

Laura Donnelly, who originated the double role of Veronica and Joan, and is Jez Butterworth's partner, gives a bravura performance. We see her twenty years earlier when the girls are teens, and then when they are grown up and dissatisfied with their lives. They have to adjust quickly to the newly found fact that Joan was no more successful than they have been. Donnelly is excellent in both roles.

I was drawn to see this play on Broadway by my having seen two of Butterworth's previous plays, Jerusalem in London and The Ferryman in New York. He seems to have an ability to stir the New York critics into a positive frame of mind where they shout out hosannas for his product. To me, Jerusalem was exceedingly English and I was amazed it had been brought to New York at all; the secret quality it contained, however, was the leading role performed by Mark Rylance, whom I would classify as the finest currently active actor I've seen.

The large cast is excellent, as an equally vast ensemble was in The Ferryman, which has a plot set in The Troubles in Northern Ireland which is more clearly drawn than this story. Jerusalem's title, by the way, refers to Blake's famous poem comparing England to the legendary ideal of ancient Jerusalem. It is about a bunch of drifters who are mesmerized by a societal dropout (played by Rylance) who is unable to and does not even want at heart to be their leader.

Even the basic background of The Hills was obscured, especially in the first act, by the difficult-to-follow accents of the leading players, most of whom were in the original London production. They also often addressed the rear or the side of the stage, at low volume, which made it even harder, but by the second and third acts, most of these problems, admittedly relying on the audience, had been resolved.

What hadn't been, though, was the matter that the play's issues remain essentially unaddressed, as Joan gives only a brief account of how she fared in California: she may ave had a few acting or singing gigs but in the end, was far from a success. None of the others, despite their fine singing attributes, honed by the relentless workouts their mother gave them, made it in any significant way, either. It all comes back to the critical visit of the talent scout, who also precipitates a family crisis by his actions.

The show will be on the boards for another month and in many ways, it's a theatrical attraction that hols your interest. Despite its almost three-hour duration, it doesn't drag. But I don't expect that many who have seen or will see it got a whole lot more out of it than I did. As it happens, Butterworth and his brother have written the screenplay for what looks to be a top-notch streaming series, The Agency, a CIA story set in London, and based on a French series, The Bureau.

Those Damn Dodgers

In Douglas Wallop's 1954 novel [the date is important], The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, a Washington Senators fan aims to sell his soul to the Devil in a Faustian manner so that the Senators can beat the Yankees for the American League pennant. The Senators do win the pennant because an umpire makes a controversial call that the fan-turned-star is safe at the plate despite the protests of the disguised Devil character, played by Ray Walston. So even the Devil couldn't make an umpire change his call.

The Devil then tries to convince the fan not to be turned back into a fan so that the Senators can beat the Dodgers, whom they will play in the World Series. After all, the Devil argues, "As much as I love the Yankees"--naturally the Devil is a Yankee fan--"I hate the Dodgers. Those Dodgers [as of 1954] have never won a World Series." So, amazingly, the next year, 1955, saw the Dodgers do just that: win the Series for the first time.

Not wanting the Dodgers to win, ever, is a sentiment that comes even more strongly to a Giant fan. The ancient rivalry--Giants v. Dodgers--continues on the West Coast to this day even if it's no longer played out at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan and Ebbets Field in Brooklyn.

I never was much of a Yankee hater. True, the Yanks had beaten the Giants in the two Series when they met while I was growing up, in 1951 and 1962. But other than then, in those pre-interleague play, the Giants never played the Yankees.

Thus, I found myself in the uncharacteristic posture of rooting for the Yankees in this year's Series, which the Dodgers won today by winning the 5th game and thus taking the contest, four games to one. The Yanks didn't make it easy. They took a big early lead with Aaron Judge's home run but then committed an unpardonable run of errors in the 5th inning; the final score, however, was a tight 7-6.

The Dodgers have spent the most money in baseball on players. They have power hitters. The old Dodgers exemplified "small ball": scoring by hitting singles, advancing with strategic bunts and stolen bases, and finding their way to home plate through mastery of "fundamentals." Great players end up switching teams when they accept the highest bid. In addition to acquiring a Japanese ballplayer named Ohtani who is the first player since Babe Ruth to qualify as a great hitter AND pitcher, the Dodgers picked up a superb hitter from the Atlanta Braves, Freddie Freeman, who went on in this Series to hit a home run in almost every game.

Although the Yankees managed to dispose of Cleveland in the American League final playoff series, and earlier defeated another surprise entrant, the Kansas City Royals, they lacked the assured aura of confidence that usually accompanied them post-season. They suffered from terrible managing decisions by their skipper, Aaron Boone. Their unparalleled record of winning the Series 27 times was for naught.

Alas, after the Giants' run of the teen years of this century--they won the Series in '12, '14, and '16, we thought they'd keep winning in even-numbered years, but it was not to be. Their team got old, or was traded away, or both. Manager Bruce Bochy retired and then un-retired to manage the Texas Rangers last year to their first Series triumph. Their finest player, catcher Buster Posey, signaled the ultimate end of that era when he retired a year or two ago.

So we have to suffer with a Dodgers win. They won four years ago and have accumulated eight wins since 1955, when the headline in the now-defunct Brooklyn Eagle screamed: "THIS IS NEXT YEAR!" because the perennially-losing Dodgers' mantra was "Wait 'til next year!".

Santa Barbara

We travelled to Santa Barbara, not for a destination wedding, but the nuptials of the son of a good friend of ours to a lady who hails from...Santa Barbara. I'd been there briefly twice before but this was the time we had a chance to see something of this incredibly charming town. The locals have a word for it: perfection, which may be a mild exaggeration but only a mild one. It's a delightful spot.

The wedding itself was outside, which is not a major risk in the summer here. The bride's older sister was duly qualified as an officiant and earned the fond regard of all by conducting a meaningful, short ceremony, with an emphasis on the short part. The speeches were enjoyable, especially when the bride's father started his by observing that we all must be wondering why in laid-back California, this occasion was black tie. I'm not sure he provided an answer to that but he also was responsible for his bagpipe group piping in the wedding party and then performing after dinner. We also enjoyed both the welcoming pro secco and the platters of salmon, steak, broccolini, and green salad that were passed along the long tables.

There were many of of us who travelled from many different spots. Everyone was friendly and many took off after the dancing was concluded to a karaoke bar in the midst of Santa Barbara's Festival week--the 100th annual celebration of its Spanish roots.  We had a nice lunch on East Beach less than 100 feet from the ocean at Reunion with a college friend of Eileen's who lives on the major hill on one side of the town with a view over the whole place right over the ocean, too.

Now we're in Long Beach visiting the Museum of the Academy Awards of the Motion Picture Academy next to the L.A. County Museum of Art on Wilshire. There's lots of fun stuff to see there, with videos of past Oscar presentations, a special section devoted to Casablanca, with both of the pianos Dooley Wilson pretended to play and other clips and memorabilia. There was a controversy about not mentioning the founders of the industry when the museum opened, but now there's an exhibit on the Jewish studio chiefs and the creation of what we know as Hollywood and how it defied Edison's trust that controlled the business until it located in Hollywood at a time when being 3000 miles away made enforcement of his patents less practicable. The Supreme Court ended the reign of the trust in 1925.

Weather in Southern California is predictably consistent at this time of the year and definitely less humid and more temperate than it will be when we return to DC later this week. The Pacific is warm enough for swimming and even walking now is refreshing. Alaska upgraded us on the trip out, so we're already ahead of the game.

 

Retrying the Hauptmann Kidnap-Murder Case

 

By all accounts, the 1935 trial in Flemington, N.J., of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the murder of celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son merits its frequent citation by many as “the trial of the century”. Although Hauptmann was executed in 1936, controversy has surrounded the trial and conviction ever since. 

My friend and law school classmate, Noah Griffin, organized a re-enactment held on May 20 at the Marin County Superior Court in San Rafael, California, along with retired California Judge Lise Pearlman, who published a 554-page book on the case, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1, The Man Who Got Away. and the Criminal Law and Justice Center of University of California Berkeley School of Law.

  

While I played a small role in the trial's re-enactment, Noah, who is an historian, popular singer, and impresario, and and who was press secretary to former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, made the event happen, and another friend and classmate, Peter Buchsbaum,  a retired judge of the New Jersey Superior Court, filled the role of prosecutor. 

 

Peter, who sat as a judge in the same court before which Hauptmann was tried, once litigated a civil case in the historic courtroom where the trial occurred. That courtroom, he recalls, had a chair labelled, “This chair was sat in by Bruno Richard Hauptmann.” 

 

“It was spooky sitting right in front of that seat,” Peter remembers, “and now here I am all these years later doing this mock trial. I didn’t come away from today convinced that Hauptmann was innocent, but I do think it is worth looking into.” 

Those present—observers, law students, and participants, who included many public defenders, prosecutors, and court staff, including bailiffs provided by the local Sheriff’s Office—voted, 38-5, in favor of a new trial for Hauptmann. A similar vote followed a re-enactment of the Hauptmann case in 1986 in San Francisco that Noah put together after meeting Hauptmann’s widow, Anna Hauptmann. She testified in that retrial, as she did at her husband’s original trial. 

Peter played the role of N.J. Attorney General David T. Wilentz, who founded a leading New Jersey firm but proudly asserted in his closing argument, “I have never prosecuted a murder case in my life.” I appeared as a “wood expert” witness from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. He had testified as to the strength of the wooden ladder which Hauptmann allegedly used to carry out the kidnapping of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., from the second-floor nursery in the family home in Hopewell, N.J. 

It’s strange to deliver testimony that has now been deemed totally unreliable in our age of DNA evidence, and also that just about all of this witness’s testimony regarding the ladder was shown to be based on sloppy investigation and failure to establish chain of custody. 

In her  book, Judge Pearlman argues that Hauptmann was innocent.  Charles Lindbergh, like many prominent Americans in the 1920’s and 1930’s, was a passionate advocate of eugenics. There had been rumors that the baby had serious medical problems. Judge Pearlman suggests it may well have been that the infant was physically imperfect with an abnormally big head and other defects and that Lindbergh’s fervent eugenicism could have led to his seeking dangerous medical experiments on his son. She concludes that the kidnapping could have been a failed effort to cover up all of this. 

Retired Marin County Superior Court Judge Lynn O’Malley Taylor filled the role of the trial judge, and others played parts including prosecutors, witnesses, defenders, Lindbergh, and Hauptmann: all were reading actual testimony. Major additions to the written trial transcript were provided in the analysis given by Marin Deputy Public Defender Patricia Castilla. Appearing as a current-day lawyer, she pointed out what now appear to be hordes of clear errors that undermine the state’s case against Hauptmann. 

She stressed in her interpolated comments during the trial reading how a witness who had been declared legally blind said he saw Hauptmann’s car driven away from the Lindbergh house with the suspect at the wheel. Further, pictures shot in 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s nursery right after he was taken captive did not show muddy footprints on a suitcase under the window Hauptmann allegedly  used to escape, yet those footprints somehow materialized on the suitcase at the trial. 

More ignored evidence concerned the ladder as to which Arthur Koehler, the Forest Service expert whom I played, testified. Police said Hauptmann reached the second-story window going up the ladder and then used it to escape with the baby; when it was tested, it was shown as unable to hold the weight of the 175-pound suspect and 30-pound baby. 

Other witnesses confirmed that Hauptmann was picking up his wife at the bakery where she worked in the Bronx, New York City, when the crime ostensibly occurred far away in central New Jersey. A medical examination of the body, found more than two months after the kidnapping, revealed that the baby didn’t die, as the police and prosecutor contended, the night he disappeared: it even suggested that the corpse might have been mutilated in a medical experiment. 

Two New Jersey governors first accepted the validity of the verdict. N.J. Governor Harold G. Hoffman (no relation), who refused to call off the execution, later wrote a series of articles in favor of reopening the case. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman also would not reopen the case but fifteen years after she left office, she also said that the obvious errors made it important to review the case far more deeply than had occurred originally.