It was the closest you get to anticipating a sure thing--Mark Rylance and his Shakespeare's Globe company from London doing Richard III--their alternating Twelfth Night was even more joyfully received in New York by the critics. When last in London a couple of years ago, I managed to see Rylance in an English play called Jerusalem: it was only a fair vehicle, and I was very surprised when it was brought to New York, where it was welcomed by critics and only mildly by audiences. But Rylance stood out. He's a fantastic actor, capable of assuming all kinds of roles.
His company adheres to Elizabethan practice--with men in the women's roles, actually in every role. Rylance moves from playing Richard III to Olivia in Twelfth Night. His Richard starts out subdued in the famous opening soliloquy and he continues the low-keyed approach with an occasional whimsical wink to the audience as he proceeds to eliminate everyone standing between him and the throne. You can readily see from Rylance's brilliant performance and concept of the title role how all the other players in the great game to determine who would rule England in the 1480s would not give much thought to Richard--or the danger in being perceived to be an opponent of his ambition--until it was too late. Too late for them to keep their heads--literally.
After that, everything else could have seemed anticlimactic, but Billy Crystal's 700 Sundays, a memoir with a good deal of comedy and some sadness, comes out as a winner and Bruce Norris's Domesticated, a drama about a couple breaking up, was worth seeing to catch two fine performers, Jeff Goldblum and Laurie Metcalf, in the leading roles. Norris won a Pulitzer and Tony for a play about race I haven't seen, Clybourne Park, but this one apparently hasn't hit that level.
Living in a second-tier movie distribution town, it was also worthwhile to catch a few films on or near their opening dates. The most fun was one playing near me here in D.C., American Hustle. I do confess a weakness for this kind of picture, as one of my all-time favorites was The Grifters, with Annette Bening, Anjelica Huston, and Peter Cusack, drawn from a Jim Thompson novel. Hustle is a bigger-deal production, and the outstanding performers were Christian Bale, hitherto not well known to me, Amy Adams, and Jennifer Lawrence. There were plenty of other cinematic vets who helped make the picture the winner it is. I particularly liked Adams's performance--based on some good work I'd seen her do before, I figured she'd be good but she rose to a higher degree of acting here.
Another bravura production was The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese's latest, which does a nice job tackling a promoter of penny stocks as a device to relieve working-class folks of their bank accounts. De Caprio is on screen the whole time and contributes a powerful depiction of a superb salesman. The always reliable sidekick expert, Jonah Hill, is enjoyable in that role, too. But as much fun as the pic can be--especially DeCaprio's sales pitches to the trading floor crowd and the subsequent bacchanals at the same venue--the fine editor who cut this from four to three hours could have cut another hour. She might have started with a few of the repetitive sales and party scenes.
A major play, August: Osage County, that won prizes aplenty on Broadway a few years ago, comes now to the screen with major stars--Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts, supported by real pros like Chris Cooper and rising ingenues a la Abigail Breslin. The play of course has been opened up, in classic cinematic fashion, and still works nicely as a drama. I found Roberts the strongest of a fine cast and on the whole, thought the picture a success. Streep has probably been more impressive, which allows Roberts to shine this time.
Monday, December 30, 2013
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Exhibit Worth Seeing
Until I visited the Frick Collection in New York today, drawn by the current exhibition of great paintings from the newly-renovated Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, I had forgotten what a superb group of paintings the Frick holds in its permanent collection. The visiting exhibit is entitled Vermeer, Rembrandt, and Hals, and is impressive. True, there's only one Vermeer but it's the most famous one and one of the world's most renowned paintings, Girl With a Pearl Earring. The Rembrandts are excellent and the two Hals portraits have another quality in common with those in the permanent Frick group: Hals clearly was not always painting people with smiles or laughing as in the familiar Laughing Cavalier.
But the Frick is worth visiting because its regular set of paintings adhere to an incredibly high standard. First, there are three fine Vermeers, quite an accomplishment since there are only 36 known ones world-wide. Five others are up Fifth Ave. at the Metropolitan. One of the Frick's, Officer and Laughing Girl, is in my view equal to its pearl-earring relative.
There are also an amazing group of El Grecos, Turners, Rembrandts, Titians, and a roomful of the great British cadre of Gainsborough, Reynolds, Raeburn, and Romney. Romney's Lady Hamilton shows us how her amazing beauty captivated so many leading Englishmen of the day. The Mauritshuis show also has a wonderful Van Ruisdel landscape, View of Haarlem, and the picture recently made famous by the novel, The Goldfinch, viz., the eponymous Fabritius picture. It is just a total delight wandering the relatively tight confines of this mansion turned into a museum.
It almost makes you forget that even by the standards of his fellow robber barons, Henry Clay Frick, was a true villain. He took the lead in bringing in Pinkertons to break the Homestead steel strike, for which admittedly Carnegie likely deserved to be blamed as much as Frick was, but Frick has gone down in history as the principal responsible corporate terrorist of the day. Even the house video telling the history of the museum concedes that he moved to New York because he was hated in Pittsburgh for his role in violently breaking the strike.
Thus one does feel a sensation comparable to that experienced by those with labor values when contemplating crossing a picket line, any picket line, no matter how unprepossessing the union is which has put the line up. You face what rarely occurs in or society--you are required to declare which side you are on. Unions, of course, are far from being the factor in our society they once were, and this is a major cause of the lamentable inequality wenow confront in the U.S. The paintings are fantastic and many were acquired personally by Frick himself, but it's still hard to get rid of the sour taste in the mouth that visiting this redoubt of the worst kind of figure in our history produces.
But the Frick is worth visiting because its regular set of paintings adhere to an incredibly high standard. First, there are three fine Vermeers, quite an accomplishment since there are only 36 known ones world-wide. Five others are up Fifth Ave. at the Metropolitan. One of the Frick's, Officer and Laughing Girl, is in my view equal to its pearl-earring relative.
There are also an amazing group of El Grecos, Turners, Rembrandts, Titians, and a roomful of the great British cadre of Gainsborough, Reynolds, Raeburn, and Romney. Romney's Lady Hamilton shows us how her amazing beauty captivated so many leading Englishmen of the day. The Mauritshuis show also has a wonderful Van Ruisdel landscape, View of Haarlem, and the picture recently made famous by the novel, The Goldfinch, viz., the eponymous Fabritius picture. It is just a total delight wandering the relatively tight confines of this mansion turned into a museum.
It almost makes you forget that even by the standards of his fellow robber barons, Henry Clay Frick, was a true villain. He took the lead in bringing in Pinkertons to break the Homestead steel strike, for which admittedly Carnegie likely deserved to be blamed as much as Frick was, but Frick has gone down in history as the principal responsible corporate terrorist of the day. Even the house video telling the history of the museum concedes that he moved to New York because he was hated in Pittsburgh for his role in violently breaking the strike.
Thus one does feel a sensation comparable to that experienced by those with labor values when contemplating crossing a picket line, any picket line, no matter how unprepossessing the union is which has put the line up. You face what rarely occurs in or society--you are required to declare which side you are on. Unions, of course, are far from being the factor in our society they once were, and this is a major cause of the lamentable inequality wenow confront in the U.S. The paintings are fantastic and many were acquired personally by Frick himself, but it's still hard to get rid of the sour taste in the mouth that visiting this redoubt of the worst kind of figure in our history produces.
Saturday, November 23, 2013
The Real Orwell
Today's news made me think about George Orwell, something that happens quite frequently because he was so prescient in his clear-eyed analyses of how the world works. Although many--especially Cold Warriors- have sought to co-opt Orwell for themselves, one of his great attributes is his endless ability to make those who would seek to adopt him for their ism look narrow-minded and foolish.
I thought of Orwell when I read about how a number of European apparel manufacturers have stepped up and provided large funding for efforts to help the Bangladeshi workers left bereft by the fire at the factory where they worked under obviously substandard conditions. At the same time, our U.S. buyers of the goods made there--Walmart, Sears, and others--have seized on legal fictions to avoid assuming any responsibility, probably advised by the ever-vigilant members of my own legal profession not to give anything lest that be regarded as confessing culpability.
What does Orwell have to do with this? The next time someone preaches to you about how capitalism is the engine that makes our society work, think about this example of how capitalism takes from the poor to make the rich richer. Orwell was wise to this truth, something he learned from intensive investigation he conducted by going to live with workers in the English town of Wigan. His stay there produced his classic account, The Road to Wigan Pier.
Orwell of course has some credibility because he also demolished the pretensions of those who defend communism and even many brands of socialism in Animal Farm. And he portrayed a dim view of our future under an authoritarian state--it's never quite clear whether it's capitalist or communist, or some approximation--in the classic Nineteen Eighty-Four.
We've all been pleased at the fall of communism almost everywhere, but this earth change blinded us to the evils of capitalism. So the U.S. is paying now--or at least everyone but the 1% is--for our allowing the capitalists to weaken, if not almost eliminate, labor unions as a counter-pressure. The capitalists support the right-wing economists who emphasize deficits rather than unemployment as the principal economic problem of our time. Only now are we beginning to see how correct Paul Krugman has been in pointing out that austerity was a disaster, again except for the top 1% who profited from it.
But we could have learned all this from Orwell, who's often seen as the preeminent political philosopher of our age. Capitalism must be regulated in the interests of the greater population who otherwise will be left with nothing. See how we have permitted corporate America to wreck our pension system and anything resembling a true safety net.
And take note who the villains are in Bangladesh. The small-time operators who created the conditions for the equivalent of the Triangle fire were in business because the American apparel makers--likely insulated by several corporate shells or layers--wanted to do business with them at the lowest possible cost. Lay the blame where it belongs--with the Walmarts and Tommy Hilfigers and all the famous labels and discount marts that are so beloved by American consumerism.
I thought of Orwell when I read about how a number of European apparel manufacturers have stepped up and provided large funding for efforts to help the Bangladeshi workers left bereft by the fire at the factory where they worked under obviously substandard conditions. At the same time, our U.S. buyers of the goods made there--Walmart, Sears, and others--have seized on legal fictions to avoid assuming any responsibility, probably advised by the ever-vigilant members of my own legal profession not to give anything lest that be regarded as confessing culpability.
What does Orwell have to do with this? The next time someone preaches to you about how capitalism is the engine that makes our society work, think about this example of how capitalism takes from the poor to make the rich richer. Orwell was wise to this truth, something he learned from intensive investigation he conducted by going to live with workers in the English town of Wigan. His stay there produced his classic account, The Road to Wigan Pier.
Orwell of course has some credibility because he also demolished the pretensions of those who defend communism and even many brands of socialism in Animal Farm. And he portrayed a dim view of our future under an authoritarian state--it's never quite clear whether it's capitalist or communist, or some approximation--in the classic Nineteen Eighty-Four.
We've all been pleased at the fall of communism almost everywhere, but this earth change blinded us to the evils of capitalism. So the U.S. is paying now--or at least everyone but the 1% is--for our allowing the capitalists to weaken, if not almost eliminate, labor unions as a counter-pressure. The capitalists support the right-wing economists who emphasize deficits rather than unemployment as the principal economic problem of our time. Only now are we beginning to see how correct Paul Krugman has been in pointing out that austerity was a disaster, again except for the top 1% who profited from it.
But we could have learned all this from Orwell, who's often seen as the preeminent political philosopher of our age. Capitalism must be regulated in the interests of the greater population who otherwise will be left with nothing. See how we have permitted corporate America to wreck our pension system and anything resembling a true safety net.
And take note who the villains are in Bangladesh. The small-time operators who created the conditions for the equivalent of the Triangle fire were in business because the American apparel makers--likely insulated by several corporate shells or layers--wanted to do business with them at the lowest possible cost. Lay the blame where it belongs--with the Walmarts and Tommy Hilfigers and all the famous labels and discount marts that are so beloved by American consumerism.
Monday, November 11, 2013
The Kennedy Mystique
So now, with the 50th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination nearly upon us, we are being subjected to a fusillade of re-evaluations and reassessments, even some sober second thoughts. There's always been a world of Kennedy skeptics (not to mention haters) out there, looking to torch any Camelot-like remembrances. And the impact of Kennedy's presidency is being diminished by emphasis on the slim amount of legislation passed during his time in office--actually, it probably looks better in this age of total deadlock on the Hill.
As usual, the pundits and the professors are missing the point. Kennedy's impact could not be measured after his death in terms of enacted legislation or other such metrics. It still can't. Memory of JFK is not some gauzy phantasma. Today it seems tempting to take him down a peg for his amazing charm but he understood most of all that it was part of his stock in trade.
To me, two important points need to be stressed in any discussion of Kennedy's impact on the U.S. and the world. First, recent analyses of the Cuban missile crisis credit Kennedy with being the only power able to restrain what were then our even more bloodthirsty generals and admirals who were hell bent on bombing Cuba and possibly bringing on a nuclear world war. Those guys--yes, they were all guys, of course--still believed a nuclear war could be fought and won. Or that if we had one person or city standing more than the Soviets did, we would have been the winners.
Today's reassessment in the New York Times referred to a remark by Dean Acheson that Kennedy was "damned lucky" that the crisis ended well. And others blamed Kennedy for showing weakness,ultimately bringing down Khrushchev because the latter blinked first, and then even for the resulting Soviet military buildup. In reality, Kennedy and one Soviet submariner who held his comrades back from attacking were the only ones--joined ultimately by Khrushchev--who tried to defuse the situation along with eliminating the missile threat in Cuba. Acheson--despite his earlier successes as Secretary of State under Truman--had become one of the hawks; he had no business criticizing Kennedy for accomplishing what he didn't even conceive of trying.
Second, it is misguided at best and craven at worst to put down Kennedy's positive impact on the outlook of America's citizenry, especially what was then the younger generation. Kennedy did inspire a generation toward public service. He did make people feel that things could get better. He had a magical quality of bringing out the best in people. Many of us only appreciated how rare this was when we saw that no president since then has had that quality and that orientation.
The only one who came close might be classed as his evil twin, Ronald Reagan, who succeeded in convincing all too many misguided souls that government was the enemy. Lyndon Johnson could have been much greater had he resisted the call of Vietnam. Both he and Nixon were skilled at getting programs enacted into law. Yet both are recalled poorly because of the huge disasters their warped personalities brought on.
Things got even worse. Bush Junior was the rock bottom of the trend toward inequality and caring only for the rich and powerful. Carter and Clinton played ball much too closely with the Wall Streeters who affected Democratic (and democratic) guises. You know how bad things have become when Nixon's administration starts to look good, which with regard to much domestic policy, it does. Yet Nixon began the process of conservatizing the Supreme Court. That, by the way, was one of Kennedy's weak points--he was too enamoured of Byron White, the jock, and made the mistake of putting him on the court instead of a real progressive.
But Kennedy inspired a generation. None of the pygmies who claw at his memory can take that away. No one may agree with all that he did--even if the evidence that he wanted to stay out or get out of Vietnam grows stronger. He was a rare good result of our electoral process. Would that we had his like to elect today.
As usual, the pundits and the professors are missing the point. Kennedy's impact could not be measured after his death in terms of enacted legislation or other such metrics. It still can't. Memory of JFK is not some gauzy phantasma. Today it seems tempting to take him down a peg for his amazing charm but he understood most of all that it was part of his stock in trade.
To me, two important points need to be stressed in any discussion of Kennedy's impact on the U.S. and the world. First, recent analyses of the Cuban missile crisis credit Kennedy with being the only power able to restrain what were then our even more bloodthirsty generals and admirals who were hell bent on bombing Cuba and possibly bringing on a nuclear world war. Those guys--yes, they were all guys, of course--still believed a nuclear war could be fought and won. Or that if we had one person or city standing more than the Soviets did, we would have been the winners.
Today's reassessment in the New York Times referred to a remark by Dean Acheson that Kennedy was "damned lucky" that the crisis ended well. And others blamed Kennedy for showing weakness,ultimately bringing down Khrushchev because the latter blinked first, and then even for the resulting Soviet military buildup. In reality, Kennedy and one Soviet submariner who held his comrades back from attacking were the only ones--joined ultimately by Khrushchev--who tried to defuse the situation along with eliminating the missile threat in Cuba. Acheson--despite his earlier successes as Secretary of State under Truman--had become one of the hawks; he had no business criticizing Kennedy for accomplishing what he didn't even conceive of trying.
Second, it is misguided at best and craven at worst to put down Kennedy's positive impact on the outlook of America's citizenry, especially what was then the younger generation. Kennedy did inspire a generation toward public service. He did make people feel that things could get better. He had a magical quality of bringing out the best in people. Many of us only appreciated how rare this was when we saw that no president since then has had that quality and that orientation.
The only one who came close might be classed as his evil twin, Ronald Reagan, who succeeded in convincing all too many misguided souls that government was the enemy. Lyndon Johnson could have been much greater had he resisted the call of Vietnam. Both he and Nixon were skilled at getting programs enacted into law. Yet both are recalled poorly because of the huge disasters their warped personalities brought on.
Things got even worse. Bush Junior was the rock bottom of the trend toward inequality and caring only for the rich and powerful. Carter and Clinton played ball much too closely with the Wall Streeters who affected Democratic (and democratic) guises. You know how bad things have become when Nixon's administration starts to look good, which with regard to much domestic policy, it does. Yet Nixon began the process of conservatizing the Supreme Court. That, by the way, was one of Kennedy's weak points--he was too enamoured of Byron White, the jock, and made the mistake of putting him on the court instead of a real progressive.
But Kennedy inspired a generation. None of the pygmies who claw at his memory can take that away. No one may agree with all that he did--even if the evidence that he wanted to stay out or get out of Vietnam grows stronger. He was a rare good result of our electoral process. Would that we had his like to elect today.
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
20 Places You Once Knew as a Real New Yorker
A friend recently posted a compilation of 20 Places You Remember in NY if You're Over 40. This prompted yours truly to come up with 20 others that take anyone still alive way way back. So here goes:
Twenty things that mean you were a New Yorker from
way back:
1.
Stopped off to have coffee after a movie
at the Tip Toe Inn on W. 86th St
2.
Took the Third Avenue El from Chatham
Square all the way up to the Bronx (Gun Hill Rd. was the last stop)
3.
Celebrated your birthday with a sundae
at Jahn’s (pronounced Jan’s) at one of several locations—I remember the ones on
Kingsbridge Rd., Bronx, and Springfield Blvd., Bayside, Queens
4.
Saw an opera from one of many side-view
seats (at any level) of the old Metropolitan Opera House at 39th St.
& Bway which meant you only saw half the stage
5.
Recall using the coin-operated
dispensing windows at one of the many Horn & Hardart Automats to get a sandwich,
a piece of pie, macaroni and cheese, or baked beans
6.
Saw the Dodgers and Giants play (preferably
each other) at either the Polo Grounds (Manhattan) or Ebbets Field (Bklyn)
7.
Took one of the last trolley cars that
operated within city limits, either the Yonkers #1, 2, or 3, which ran from
Getty Sq., Yonkers, to the subway terminal at 242nd St., Van
Cortlandt Park, or the A or B trolley from Mt. Vernon to 241st St,
White Plains Rd., Bronx
8.
Saw someone off at a bon voyage party on
the United States, the Queen Mary, or the France from a North River pier
9.
Managed to catch the Lunts (Alfred Lunt
and Lynn Fontanne) the last time they appeared on a Broadway stage, in
Duerrenmatt’s The Visit
10.
Watched CCNY win both the NCAA and NIT
in 1950 (only team ever to take both the same year—now impossible to match)
11.
Rode on the Lehigh Valley’s Black
Diamond to upstate N.Y., perhaps Ithaca,. leaving from grand old Penn Station
12.
Enjoyed Manhattan clam chowder at Lundy’s,
Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, one of two spots with the finest – the other remains
the Grand Central Oyster Bar
13.
Took the elevator to the top of the
(still standing but hopelessly defunct) N.Y. State Pavilion at Flushing Meadow,
site of the 1964-65 World’s Fair (also the 1939-40 one, but not that pavilion)
14.
Dined at one of the three famed (not
always worthy of any stars) eateries of the old Jewish Lower East Side—Ratner’s,
Rappaport’s, or Moscowitz & Lupowitz
15.
Got loaded at McSorley’s on E. 7th
St when it was N.Y.’s last men-only (but not gay) bar
16.
Took the B&O Railroad’s crack train,
the Royal Blue, from the Jersey Central’s Jersey City terminal—the B&O ran
buses from Grand Central and Herald Sq that pulled right up onto the departure
platform in Jersey City
17.
Danced the night away at the glorious
Rainbow Room atop NBC’s 30 Rockefeller Plaza—where the best view from the 65th
floor was from the men’s room
18.
Took your date to see one of Julius Monk’s
clever revues at Upstairs at the Downstairs, usually starring the great Ronnie
Graham
19.
Made it to a movie at the most fabulous
rococo palace, the Roxy
20.
Saw the Knicks play for peanuts at the
old 69th Regiment Armory—with Harry Gallatin, Sweets Clifton, Dick
McGuire, and Carl Braun
Monday, October 21, 2013
One of My Real Favorites
If you decide to see even one opera this year, especially at the Washington National Opera, make it the current presentation, Verdi's La Forza del Destino, translated in the notices as The Force of Destiny. This is not the best-known Verdi opera by any means but I'm absolutely delighted that WNO decided to put it on this year in recognition of the 200th Verdi anniversary.
Unlike any of the more famous Verdi operas, and I include Aida, Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Il Trovatore in that group, La Forza has a musical theme that runs throughout the opera. It holds together what is the usual semi-ridiculous opera plot and manifests itself in some of the best singing pieces--duets mainly--that the opera offers.
The WNO production placed the opera in a contemporary setting, including, as one of my companions observed, an inn scene that was transposed to something approximating the old raunchy Times Square of New York. Pole dancers are performing as the heroine, Leonora, aims to escape her pursuing, avenging brother, Carlo. The monastery to which she retreats is more of an industrial complex replete with containers, into one of which is tucked her hermit's hideaway.
Musically the opera is so strong that it can readily work just as well with these updates. The Leonora, soprano Adina Aaron, had a strong, warm voice that impressed me from the opening scene, now presented as a prologue prior to the renowned overture. She also shone in the great concluding pace, pace aria, although for some reason, that did not overwhelm me the way it normally does.
Of the rest of the cast, bass Enrico Iori as Padre Guardiano was superb. The rest were fine, although the tenor left me wanting more--as the critical notice in the Washington Post contended, he did tend to shout and as a result, some of his lines came across as distinctly unmelodic. The opera was presented in two acts, which also made sense. As a whole, it held together more than it has in most productions I've seen, at both WNO and the Met.
As the reviews had indicated, there were some cuts, none as severe as used to be the custom at the Met in former days, when the entire inn scene was deleted. Some scenes were shortened here--especially the camp-followers "Rataplan" scene in what is the second act. Not only was some singing by lesser characters left out but it seemed that some of the great tenor-baritone duets may have been abbreviated. As a whole, however, the opera flowed much better than it usually does--and for that, we all should be most appreciative of the successful conceptualization by WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello, who directed this excellent production.
Unlike any of the more famous Verdi operas, and I include Aida, Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Il Trovatore in that group, La Forza has a musical theme that runs throughout the opera. It holds together what is the usual semi-ridiculous opera plot and manifests itself in some of the best singing pieces--duets mainly--that the opera offers.
The WNO production placed the opera in a contemporary setting, including, as one of my companions observed, an inn scene that was transposed to something approximating the old raunchy Times Square of New York. Pole dancers are performing as the heroine, Leonora, aims to escape her pursuing, avenging brother, Carlo. The monastery to which she retreats is more of an industrial complex replete with containers, into one of which is tucked her hermit's hideaway.
Musically the opera is so strong that it can readily work just as well with these updates. The Leonora, soprano Adina Aaron, had a strong, warm voice that impressed me from the opening scene, now presented as a prologue prior to the renowned overture. She also shone in the great concluding pace, pace aria, although for some reason, that did not overwhelm me the way it normally does.
Of the rest of the cast, bass Enrico Iori as Padre Guardiano was superb. The rest were fine, although the tenor left me wanting more--as the critical notice in the Washington Post contended, he did tend to shout and as a result, some of his lines came across as distinctly unmelodic. The opera was presented in two acts, which also made sense. As a whole, it held together more than it has in most productions I've seen, at both WNO and the Met.
As the reviews had indicated, there were some cuts, none as severe as used to be the custom at the Met in former days, when the entire inn scene was deleted. Some scenes were shortened here--especially the camp-followers "Rataplan" scene in what is the second act. Not only was some singing by lesser characters left out but it seemed that some of the great tenor-baritone duets may have been abbreviated. As a whole, however, the opera flowed much better than it usually does--and for that, we all should be most appreciative of the successful conceptualization by WNO artistic director Francesca Zambello, who directed this excellent production.
Sunday, October 13, 2013
Sunshine Boys
Took in a local production of The Sunshine Boys this afternoon and Neil Simon's lines hold up. Yes, I recall the movie with Walter Matthau and George Burns well and thought they both were superb. But this play has more meaning for me.
It's a reunion after a decade of two great ex-vaudevillian comics who apparently never liked each other during 43 successful years on the circuits, including the two ultimate achievements of vaude: playing the Palace and appearing in the '50s on the Ed Sullivan Show. Btw, the stars in the Broadway original were Sam Levene and Jack Albertson. Levene was the original Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, while I saw Albertson in the great play on Broadway, The Subject Was Roses.
What makes this play special for me is that I once had the chance to meet the duo who were the real originals for the comedy act in the play--Lewis and Clark. They were Smith and Dale--Joe Smith and Charlie Dale, and the likelihood that those were their real names is non-existent for either pair. Unlike the two in the play, however, who are depicted as always at odds with each other, Smith and Dale when I met them shared a wonderful old West Side apartment filled with wonderful vaude memorabilia.
I'd first heard of them when I was at summer camp and one of my bunkmates who also had some ties to show business got hold of a script of their famous Dr. Kronkheit routine. It was yet another part of theatrical history that I was exposed to at an early age, for at camp, I also made my first acquaintance with Gilbert & Sullivan and our color-war team song was set to the tune of the Triumphal March from Aida.
The actors in Washington's Keegan Theater Co. who put this on at their Church St. Playhouse near Du Pont Circle did a nice job--Kevin Adams reminded me a bit of Walter Matthau in playing the leading role, and Tim Lynch did a neat job in the George Burns part. The company played old radio recordings before each act and during intermission, along with some other old-time stuff, ranging from Groucho singing "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It" (from the Marx Bros. film, Horsefeathers) and a snip from a Burns & Allen routine, along with a Scott Joplin rag, which just made the time line, I think, since Smith & Dale got their start early in the 20th century as half of a comedy unit called The Avon Comedy Four.
It's a reunion after a decade of two great ex-vaudevillian comics who apparently never liked each other during 43 successful years on the circuits, including the two ultimate achievements of vaude: playing the Palace and appearing in the '50s on the Ed Sullivan Show. Btw, the stars in the Broadway original were Sam Levene and Jack Albertson. Levene was the original Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls, while I saw Albertson in the great play on Broadway, The Subject Was Roses.
What makes this play special for me is that I once had the chance to meet the duo who were the real originals for the comedy act in the play--Lewis and Clark. They were Smith and Dale--Joe Smith and Charlie Dale, and the likelihood that those were their real names is non-existent for either pair. Unlike the two in the play, however, who are depicted as always at odds with each other, Smith and Dale when I met them shared a wonderful old West Side apartment filled with wonderful vaude memorabilia.
I'd first heard of them when I was at summer camp and one of my bunkmates who also had some ties to show business got hold of a script of their famous Dr. Kronkheit routine. It was yet another part of theatrical history that I was exposed to at an early age, for at camp, I also made my first acquaintance with Gilbert & Sullivan and our color-war team song was set to the tune of the Triumphal March from Aida.
The actors in Washington's Keegan Theater Co. who put this on at their Church St. Playhouse near Du Pont Circle did a nice job--Kevin Adams reminded me a bit of Walter Matthau in playing the leading role, and Tim Lynch did a neat job in the George Burns part. The company played old radio recordings before each act and during intermission, along with some other old-time stuff, ranging from Groucho singing "Whatever It Is, I'm Against It" (from the Marx Bros. film, Horsefeathers) and a snip from a Burns & Allen routine, along with a Scott Joplin rag, which just made the time line, I think, since Smith & Dale got their start early in the 20th century as half of a comedy unit called The Avon Comedy Four.
Saturday, October 12, 2013
Two Major Movies
On the past two weekends, I've seen two significant films: Gravity and Captain Phillips. They're worth some discussion. In reverse order--and not just because I saw it yesterday--Captain Phillips is a screen triumph. It is an action-adventure flick, starring the seemingly endlessly reinvented Tom Hanks. The group of hitherto (at least in the U.S.) unknown actors who play the Somali pirates his merchant ship encounters are superb, as are the U.S. Navy personnel--from a ship captain to a SEALS commander to a medical corpswoman.
Paul Greenglass's direction never loses the tension and intensity of the situation as it develops. Some reviews I've read suggest that he leans in the direction of even-handedness in his depiction of the deprived circumstances in Somalia that push the pirates toward their trade, along with the irony that the merchantman is carrying, among other cargo, some food to be delivered to Africa as foreign aid. One critic even proposed that the movie raises the question of the ethics of foreign aid itself.
To me, all of that is bunk. I do find it enlightening when abroad to be exposed to foreign media that may be much more critical of the U.S. than seems to be the norm domestically these days. But even if this director is British--one of the fun conceits has the ship trying to contact the U.S. maritime command to report a possibly imminent pirate attack and not getting an answer, only to then dial the UK number and getting an immediate response--I found all my sympathies going to the stoical Vermonter whom Hanks plays as ship captain.
He's less taciturn than Vermonters have the reputation for being--recall all the Coolidge jokes--but then he's trying to engage an obdurate enemy through conversation. Even though this is an action-adventure movie, I also found it remarkably believable. Now that may have something to do with it being based on the true story, as related in his own memoir by said Captain Phillips. Incidentally, one review pointed out that the real captain, as it so often turns out in real life, penned a somewhat boring tome.
Final verdict--thumbs or my whole hand up. This is a 130-minute-long feature that holds your attention the whole way. The acting by everyone is excellent and the direction never misses a beat.
Gravity is another story. Yes, it's enjoyable, and Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are charming and thus hold your interest and attention during a space voyage gone bad. This picture is only 90 minutes in length, however, but seems a good deal longer. The presentation of the space travel and walking is good, although a more technically-knowledgeable friend advised me that it was not especially realistic.
I found it tedious. Charm only carries you so far. I didn't lose interest but I did look at my watch. It was fun hearing the earth-based flight director's voice--which is all you get of him--played by Ed Harris, remembering how fine a job he did in the wonderful Apollo 13. Both these films were awarded four stars or the equivalent by critics en masse. Captain Phillips deserves them.
Paul Greenglass's direction never loses the tension and intensity of the situation as it develops. Some reviews I've read suggest that he leans in the direction of even-handedness in his depiction of the deprived circumstances in Somalia that push the pirates toward their trade, along with the irony that the merchantman is carrying, among other cargo, some food to be delivered to Africa as foreign aid. One critic even proposed that the movie raises the question of the ethics of foreign aid itself.
To me, all of that is bunk. I do find it enlightening when abroad to be exposed to foreign media that may be much more critical of the U.S. than seems to be the norm domestically these days. But even if this director is British--one of the fun conceits has the ship trying to contact the U.S. maritime command to report a possibly imminent pirate attack and not getting an answer, only to then dial the UK number and getting an immediate response--I found all my sympathies going to the stoical Vermonter whom Hanks plays as ship captain.
He's less taciturn than Vermonters have the reputation for being--recall all the Coolidge jokes--but then he's trying to engage an obdurate enemy through conversation. Even though this is an action-adventure movie, I also found it remarkably believable. Now that may have something to do with it being based on the true story, as related in his own memoir by said Captain Phillips. Incidentally, one review pointed out that the real captain, as it so often turns out in real life, penned a somewhat boring tome.
Final verdict--thumbs or my whole hand up. This is a 130-minute-long feature that holds your attention the whole way. The acting by everyone is excellent and the direction never misses a beat.
Gravity is another story. Yes, it's enjoyable, and Sandra Bullock and George Clooney are charming and thus hold your interest and attention during a space voyage gone bad. This picture is only 90 minutes in length, however, but seems a good deal longer. The presentation of the space travel and walking is good, although a more technically-knowledgeable friend advised me that it was not especially realistic.
I found it tedious. Charm only carries you so far. I didn't lose interest but I did look at my watch. It was fun hearing the earth-based flight director's voice--which is all you get of him--played by Ed Harris, remembering how fine a job he did in the wonderful Apollo 13. Both these films were awarded four stars or the equivalent by critics en masse. Captain Phillips deserves them.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
Not So Grand
My late old friend, Professor Howard Reiter, felt about the Republican party the way the great sports columnist Jimmy Cannon did about boxing: he knew it was bad for everyone concerned but couldn't help enjoying an institution he had spent his lifetime analyzing and--much earlier--supporting. Howard, to be sure, who started out--when we met in college--even farther to the right than Long Island's Nassau County machine, eventually passed me as he moved left on the political spectrum.
It's trite to suggest that moderate Republicans, were any still extant, would have behaved better than the GOP's current office-holders. Compared to these folks, of course, even Nixon looks like a moderate. (We'll not employ the label Ike tried to put on his part of the party--"modern Republicans"--a term originated by the "Boy Wonder," Harold Stassen, the Governor of Minnesota --later president of the University of Pennsylvania, who had been too young to run for President in 1940 but who became a joke by the time he passed away many, many years later.)
But people in Washington are prone to remember the Nixon administration for more than Watergate. It was the last time that there were Republicans in government who knew how to manage. And many good innovations emerged from those years, including the EPA and Amtrak, although many have suspected that if Nixon had been fully aware of any of them, he probably would have been against them.
Even Mr.Republican, Robert Alphonso Taft, couldn't accomplish, however, what Reagan did: turn the party seemingly irrevocably to the far right. It's silly to hold Reagan out as an example of a president who got along with his Democratic opponents in Congress, such as Tip O'Neill, because Democrats like to collaborate to produce a stronger government. Republicans now are totally against government in their opposition.
Reagan is the one who brought us to the current impasse because he emboldened the conspiracy theorists and, in John McCain's words, the wacko birds who shape the party's behavior now. He also preached the anti-government rhetoric he picked up from his corporate pals, who, of course, never objected to getting some plush corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks and other handouts. That's one main reason why Wall St. is on Elizabeth Warren's side on this one--not all government is seen as bad by the deal guys.
We will suffer mightily for these yo-yos, who really are upset by the closing of National Parks or the World War II Memorial, but not the dangers we face to our nation's credit, the added costs we already have incurred in the rising rate on T-bills, the potential for dangerous food to be sold in the absence of even the limited meat and poultry inspection not being conducted, and normal business that will be stifled because there is no one to see at government offices although law requires that they be visited.
One can only hope that the current President's backbone remains strong in the face of those too obdurate or foolish or perverse to understand when they urge him to compromise that there is no compromise with these people.
It's trite to suggest that moderate Republicans, were any still extant, would have behaved better than the GOP's current office-holders. Compared to these folks, of course, even Nixon looks like a moderate. (We'll not employ the label Ike tried to put on his part of the party--"modern Republicans"--a term originated by the "Boy Wonder," Harold Stassen, the Governor of Minnesota --later president of the University of Pennsylvania, who had been too young to run for President in 1940 but who became a joke by the time he passed away many, many years later.)
But people in Washington are prone to remember the Nixon administration for more than Watergate. It was the last time that there were Republicans in government who knew how to manage. And many good innovations emerged from those years, including the EPA and Amtrak, although many have suspected that if Nixon had been fully aware of any of them, he probably would have been against them.
Even Mr.Republican, Robert Alphonso Taft, couldn't accomplish, however, what Reagan did: turn the party seemingly irrevocably to the far right. It's silly to hold Reagan out as an example of a president who got along with his Democratic opponents in Congress, such as Tip O'Neill, because Democrats like to collaborate to produce a stronger government. Republicans now are totally against government in their opposition.
Reagan is the one who brought us to the current impasse because he emboldened the conspiracy theorists and, in John McCain's words, the wacko birds who shape the party's behavior now. He also preached the anti-government rhetoric he picked up from his corporate pals, who, of course, never objected to getting some plush corporate welfare in the form of tax breaks and other handouts. That's one main reason why Wall St. is on Elizabeth Warren's side on this one--not all government is seen as bad by the deal guys.
We will suffer mightily for these yo-yos, who really are upset by the closing of National Parks or the World War II Memorial, but not the dangers we face to our nation's credit, the added costs we already have incurred in the rising rate on T-bills, the potential for dangerous food to be sold in the absence of even the limited meat and poultry inspection not being conducted, and normal business that will be stifled because there is no one to see at government offices although law requires that they be visited.
One can only hope that the current President's backbone remains strong in the face of those too obdurate or foolish or perverse to understand when they urge him to compromise that there is no compromise with these people.
Monday, October 7, 2013
What's Going On
It's hard to get yourself to look beyond the parlous day-to-day situation here in Washington. After all, the media treat everything as a horse race. And mindlessness still finds many adherents: those who blame both sides equally being the current strain of the ailment. It's like those who avoid fixing responsibility for our recent needless wars by focusing only on "supporting the troops."
Our current crisis--and it surely is one, not the usual media-created moment--arises from the developing tendency of those who agree with each other to expose themselves only to those with whom they agree. If you listen only to Fox news, for example, you will likely accept their warped view of reality.
Most recently, I've seen how this closed circle of reinforced attitudes operates, not by watching politicians clowning it up on TV but through exposure to ignorance expressed in social media. And it's not new in the U.S.--it's just easier for this bilge to gain currency. By reading posts on Facebook, I gain entry to worlds in which people repeat falsehoods over and over until they believe them. And if that isn't enough, you can read some online comments on websites, where the vitriol runs ever more vile.
As with the responsibility for the present predicament, the nastiness tends to run in one direction. The absolute hatred expressed for the President is surprising only if you truly felt that racism in this country was on the wane. These people are frightened because they see their group diminishing in percentage -- so they will do anything to keep a claw-hold on the levers of power.
Thus they convince themselves that elections they lose are stolen, so restriction of voting is pushed. They have no idea what our health care system is like in comparison to the rest of the world, and they certainly don't know that the current Obamacare initiative originated in the Nixon administration. It wasn't enacted then because Ted Kennedy felt we could do better.
Thus when it finally was pushed through, huge compromises were made by the President and the Democrats merely to get it passed. More damage was done by Democrats--insidious sabotage by the Senator from the insurance companies, Joe Lieberman, for example.
Finally, the President has recognized that one cannot negotiate with this crew. He has spent more than half his tenure trying to reach agreement with people who will refuse to agree. The blatant lying of the current GOP call for negotiations belies their refusal to confer with Democrats on the budget for the first three quarters of 2013.
It's a disaffected element that doesn't realize that the forces that have taken them to the cleaners are neither Barack Obama nor the Democrats--they are falling out of the middle class because the rich decided to go it alone behind their gated world and created a globalized economy where hedge-fund guys, for example, make the money and pay lower taxes than those who work for a living. Jobs are created for sure--in Bangladesh, where a factory fire every so often still finds U.S. manufacturers resisting the most basic working and safety conditions.
So when we let the undeserving rich avoid taxes, we don't have enough resources to support good schools or any other public services people need, including health care. Budgets are tight because you can't fight needless wars and lower taxes and still have anything left. Privatization means con artists can claim to provide services cheaper by stiffing their workers and those they are ostensibly serving -- like school students.
Walt Kelly definitely had it right--"We have met the enemy and it is us." It is we who have not resisted this push to destroy our middle class, ruin our public services, and impoverish those who work for a living. Whatever your views on things like guns, abortion, and gay marriage, they are all diversionary matters from the fundamental war some characters once regarded as loonies have been waging on our society. And remember, one of the main enthusiasts who led this war against us, the late Thatcher, was the one who said there's no such thing as society.
Our current crisis--and it surely is one, not the usual media-created moment--arises from the developing tendency of those who agree with each other to expose themselves only to those with whom they agree. If you listen only to Fox news, for example, you will likely accept their warped view of reality.
Most recently, I've seen how this closed circle of reinforced attitudes operates, not by watching politicians clowning it up on TV but through exposure to ignorance expressed in social media. And it's not new in the U.S.--it's just easier for this bilge to gain currency. By reading posts on Facebook, I gain entry to worlds in which people repeat falsehoods over and over until they believe them. And if that isn't enough, you can read some online comments on websites, where the vitriol runs ever more vile.
As with the responsibility for the present predicament, the nastiness tends to run in one direction. The absolute hatred expressed for the President is surprising only if you truly felt that racism in this country was on the wane. These people are frightened because they see their group diminishing in percentage -- so they will do anything to keep a claw-hold on the levers of power.
Thus they convince themselves that elections they lose are stolen, so restriction of voting is pushed. They have no idea what our health care system is like in comparison to the rest of the world, and they certainly don't know that the current Obamacare initiative originated in the Nixon administration. It wasn't enacted then because Ted Kennedy felt we could do better.
Thus when it finally was pushed through, huge compromises were made by the President and the Democrats merely to get it passed. More damage was done by Democrats--insidious sabotage by the Senator from the insurance companies, Joe Lieberman, for example.
Finally, the President has recognized that one cannot negotiate with this crew. He has spent more than half his tenure trying to reach agreement with people who will refuse to agree. The blatant lying of the current GOP call for negotiations belies their refusal to confer with Democrats on the budget for the first three quarters of 2013.
It's a disaffected element that doesn't realize that the forces that have taken them to the cleaners are neither Barack Obama nor the Democrats--they are falling out of the middle class because the rich decided to go it alone behind their gated world and created a globalized economy where hedge-fund guys, for example, make the money and pay lower taxes than those who work for a living. Jobs are created for sure--in Bangladesh, where a factory fire every so often still finds U.S. manufacturers resisting the most basic working and safety conditions.
So when we let the undeserving rich avoid taxes, we don't have enough resources to support good schools or any other public services people need, including health care. Budgets are tight because you can't fight needless wars and lower taxes and still have anything left. Privatization means con artists can claim to provide services cheaper by stiffing their workers and those they are ostensibly serving -- like school students.
Walt Kelly definitely had it right--"We have met the enemy and it is us." It is we who have not resisted this push to destroy our middle class, ruin our public services, and impoverish those who work for a living. Whatever your views on things like guns, abortion, and gay marriage, they are all diversionary matters from the fundamental war some characters once regarded as loonies have been waging on our society. And remember, one of the main enthusiasts who led this war against us, the late Thatcher, was the one who said there's no such thing as society.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Fabulous Fifty(ies)
For many people of my vintage a major reflective moment occurs on the occasion of a 50th high school reunion. As with just about everyone else who bothers to return for their reunion, I felt good about myself. If you don't, the whole shebang may prove too much to endure. But while we all had our moments of excruciating embarrassment in high school--and I certainly had my share--I've long remembered my high school days as when I had a whole lot of fun.
Not fun as in funny moments: that was my Army experience. In the service, you remember funny moments because the other moments ranged in their degree of awfulness. But to me, high school was fun. And it was good to find out in the many, many conversations--some of which went beyond the standard superficialities--that many of my classmates also enjoyed high school.
The basis for the enjoyment was two-fold. First of all, in those days we had a great school system where many of the teachers were excellent, so you learned a lot. They challenged us. Now had I been somewhat more prescient, I would have seen then that the days of the great Mt. Vernon (NY) school system were drawing to a close. The demographics were changing as were the influences on the school system as well as the funding.
But second was the shift when I arrived in high school. Grade school and junior high were in many ways oppressive. Yes, there also were some good teachers and classes, but there was a lot of restriction and regulation. High school in those days was relatively relaxed so far as rules were concerned. And I got my day-time driving license and was off in a car for the first time, too.
Additionally, I met other bright people in high school who weren't afraid to act intelligently. I realized how different it probably is at my high school today. The current principal attended our 50th reunion and a few of us spoke with him. Aside from feeling that he looked all of 12 years old, he appeared to be a competent person who wanted to succeed. But I could see that he was amazed when we told him that we had enjoyed ourselves in high school. The days when he can enjoy his job, given the pressures he faces of scant funding and poorly prepared students, are likely few.
The true fun of a public high school reunion for me also was in the range of people I knew then who showed up now. I saw several classmates whom I had first known in grade school and hadn't seen in more than 50 years. Unlike a whole group of my high school classmates who had gathered for a lunch at their old grade school--in the high-rent part of town, I went to a good elementary school but one that had more of a cross-section of socio-economic groups represented in its student body.
That means that there were some pretty tough guys whom I knew in grade school. Some of those who came back had done all right for themselves. Several had gone into the computer and IT world. One had retired as a fire department lieutenant. Another pleasant fellow who had lived near me in junior high days had become a hedge-fund guy, and was retired and living quite well, thank you. And as it usually works out in life, the richest kid in high school was still the richest person in the room.
Many of the women with whom I had been friendly then looked good. There were bright, ambitious women in my class and they did well for themselves in their careers and their lives. I enjoyed the chance to catch up with my high school girlfriend who now lives across the country and several other bright women in my class who have flourished.
As for those in the class who had been the stand-outs in the looks department, I don't think now that any of them have much reason to be excessively full of themselves. However, most of us seem to have aged gracefully. Some of us had less distance to fall, myself included.
Much of the class is retired now, of course. A few I met shared my view that we have plenty of interests to pursue in our so-called leisure time, after finishing with all the tasks and errands of daily life. Granted, as it happens, as of today, I am likely to take on a full-time job doing something new that challenges me. The timing was purely coincidental, but perhaps the reunion did have something to do with it: maybe it just made me that much more confident that there's still an opportunity to do something useful.
Not fun as in funny moments: that was my Army experience. In the service, you remember funny moments because the other moments ranged in their degree of awfulness. But to me, high school was fun. And it was good to find out in the many, many conversations--some of which went beyond the standard superficialities--that many of my classmates also enjoyed high school.
The basis for the enjoyment was two-fold. First of all, in those days we had a great school system where many of the teachers were excellent, so you learned a lot. They challenged us. Now had I been somewhat more prescient, I would have seen then that the days of the great Mt. Vernon (NY) school system were drawing to a close. The demographics were changing as were the influences on the school system as well as the funding.
But second was the shift when I arrived in high school. Grade school and junior high were in many ways oppressive. Yes, there also were some good teachers and classes, but there was a lot of restriction and regulation. High school in those days was relatively relaxed so far as rules were concerned. And I got my day-time driving license and was off in a car for the first time, too.
Additionally, I met other bright people in high school who weren't afraid to act intelligently. I realized how different it probably is at my high school today. The current principal attended our 50th reunion and a few of us spoke with him. Aside from feeling that he looked all of 12 years old, he appeared to be a competent person who wanted to succeed. But I could see that he was amazed when we told him that we had enjoyed ourselves in high school. The days when he can enjoy his job, given the pressures he faces of scant funding and poorly prepared students, are likely few.
The true fun of a public high school reunion for me also was in the range of people I knew then who showed up now. I saw several classmates whom I had first known in grade school and hadn't seen in more than 50 years. Unlike a whole group of my high school classmates who had gathered for a lunch at their old grade school--in the high-rent part of town, I went to a good elementary school but one that had more of a cross-section of socio-economic groups represented in its student body.
That means that there were some pretty tough guys whom I knew in grade school. Some of those who came back had done all right for themselves. Several had gone into the computer and IT world. One had retired as a fire department lieutenant. Another pleasant fellow who had lived near me in junior high days had become a hedge-fund guy, and was retired and living quite well, thank you. And as it usually works out in life, the richest kid in high school was still the richest person in the room.
Many of the women with whom I had been friendly then looked good. There were bright, ambitious women in my class and they did well for themselves in their careers and their lives. I enjoyed the chance to catch up with my high school girlfriend who now lives across the country and several other bright women in my class who have flourished.
As for those in the class who had been the stand-outs in the looks department, I don't think now that any of them have much reason to be excessively full of themselves. However, most of us seem to have aged gracefully. Some of us had less distance to fall, myself included.
Much of the class is retired now, of course. A few I met shared my view that we have plenty of interests to pursue in our so-called leisure time, after finishing with all the tasks and errands of daily life. Granted, as it happens, as of today, I am likely to take on a full-time job doing something new that challenges me. The timing was purely coincidental, but perhaps the reunion did have something to do with it: maybe it just made me that much more confident that there's still an opportunity to do something useful.
Thursday, September 26, 2013
When Boys Will Be Boys
It's always enlightening to read pop psychology which, of course, emerges from what is new research but has then been massaged and shaped, too often to fit existing inclinations, and yes, prejudices. Lately, some of the discussion that has been percolating for years about our educational system's denigrating the needs of boys has focused on two sometimes opposing themes.
The first argues that our traditional culture discourages any showing of empathy on the part of boys. In this view, boys are forced only to block and tackle, emphasize physical skills, and steer clear of anything that might be termed cultural, such as the arts, literature, or, for that matter, psychology itself. This theme holds that we are depriving boys of the benefits of civilization when all these pursuits are derided as "girly" or gay.
The second theme has it that boys are being constrained from being boys as a result of the gradual triumph of feminine values in our society, if not our politics. Indeed, some see the battle by the gun culture led by the NRA as a last stand by those in the U.S. desperate to preserve the vestiges of the frontier culture that valued physical strength and prowess with weapons, especially firearms, as the hallmark of our society.
Too often, this particular engagement in the overall "culture wars" fails to take note of what has happened to shift the focus of this topic: our working world today no longer offers as many jobs that depend on brute strength. Our society is becoming a "knowledge and information" one. What's too bad is that many boys take to computers and information technology, and are even encouraged in the classroom and outside it to pursue their early interest, but never progress past addiction to video games. It isn't because teachers prefer girls, who generally but not always are better behaved. It's that boys especially finish school--often not graduating or finishing college--without the skills young people need today.
Popularizers in the media--beginning with the late Peter Drucker and moving on to current opinion molders such as Thomas Friedman--have been declaring for a long time that the old world of employment has changed, but only now, with the decline of manufacturing in the U.S., are we seeing the impact.
While my generation may recall how our elders in the 1950s and 1960s bemoaned the onset of rock'n'roll as certain to ruin our society, the surge in media dominance today means that many young people now are exposed to little more than rap music and music videos by way of "culture". I once had a young relative tell me that there was no longer a reason to read books because one could find any information needed online or through visual media, such as film. He wasn't referring to Kindles or Nooks, either, since whether or not we like e-books, they do serve as a means of making reading easier for many who have made this particular leap into the new world.
The first argues that our traditional culture discourages any showing of empathy on the part of boys. In this view, boys are forced only to block and tackle, emphasize physical skills, and steer clear of anything that might be termed cultural, such as the arts, literature, or, for that matter, psychology itself. This theme holds that we are depriving boys of the benefits of civilization when all these pursuits are derided as "girly" or gay.
The second theme has it that boys are being constrained from being boys as a result of the gradual triumph of feminine values in our society, if not our politics. Indeed, some see the battle by the gun culture led by the NRA as a last stand by those in the U.S. desperate to preserve the vestiges of the frontier culture that valued physical strength and prowess with weapons, especially firearms, as the hallmark of our society.
Too often, this particular engagement in the overall "culture wars" fails to take note of what has happened to shift the focus of this topic: our working world today no longer offers as many jobs that depend on brute strength. Our society is becoming a "knowledge and information" one. What's too bad is that many boys take to computers and information technology, and are even encouraged in the classroom and outside it to pursue their early interest, but never progress past addiction to video games. It isn't because teachers prefer girls, who generally but not always are better behaved. It's that boys especially finish school--often not graduating or finishing college--without the skills young people need today.
Popularizers in the media--beginning with the late Peter Drucker and moving on to current opinion molders such as Thomas Friedman--have been declaring for a long time that the old world of employment has changed, but only now, with the decline of manufacturing in the U.S., are we seeing the impact.
While my generation may recall how our elders in the 1950s and 1960s bemoaned the onset of rock'n'roll as certain to ruin our society, the surge in media dominance today means that many young people now are exposed to little more than rap music and music videos by way of "culture". I once had a young relative tell me that there was no longer a reason to read books because one could find any information needed online or through visual media, such as film. He wasn't referring to Kindles or Nooks, either, since whether or not we like e-books, they do serve as a means of making reading easier for many who have made this particular leap into the new world.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Mostly Mozart
While some sophisticated music lovers I've known have expressed great admiration for Mozart's The Abduction From the Seraglio, I've never found its plot at all convincing or even interesting. That does not, of course, diminish the delight in Mozart's music: it merely confirms for me that he really did need a comparable genius, Lorenzo da Ponte, to provide libretti for his three most sublime operas.
This afternoon, however, I enjoyed a wonderful production of Abduction (known also in its original German version as Die Entfuhring aus dem Serail) put on at Washington's Source Theater by The IN Series, which has specialized in delightful updatings of Mozart's operas, focusing up to now on the Da Ponte masterpieces. As with all great works, all of these can not only withstand this kind of production, but actually come away with even more lustre.
Today's production transposed the action to Judge Roy Bean's saloon, The Jersey Lily, named by him, as was the town where it and he were located, in 1882, after the renowned singer of those times, Lillie Langtry. Judge Bean, you may recall, was known as The Law West of the Pecos. In real life, alas, Judge Bean's idol, Miss Langtry, never made it to visit her fervent admirer until after his death. But here, it is he and his minions--especially one Osmond--who kidnap her and her maid. The still-tired plot then features the efforts of her lover, Belmont, and his friend to release her and escape from Texas.
This, of course, is no sillier than the singspiel plot provided to Mozart by his original librettists in Vienna. Belmonte struggles to free his beloved, Constanze (coincidentally, of course, the name of Mozart's long-suffering spouse) from the harem of the Pasha of some Middle Eastern state, and his encounter with the Pasha's chief guard, Osmin.
A fine troupe of strong young singers led the production with the most outstanding being bass Jeffrey Tarr as Osmond and soprano Heather Bingham as Lillie. The true heroine of the day, however, was Bari Bern, who wrote the English translation that shifted the scene of the opera from the Middle East to Texas and inserted Judge Roy Bean in place of the Pasha.
The libretto was clever and lent the whole production a positive attitude. It also permitted us to enjoy Mozart's fabulous composition of a succession of arias, duets, and a quartet. This fine production confirmed my view that great operatic works can benefit from new settings and changes in concept. It's a commonplace to chuckle at the outlandish opera productions often presented in European houses but all too often, our greatest companies remain excessively tied to tradition in the way they approach the operatic masterworks. The sprightly IN Series here in DC, helmed by Carla Hubner, continues to show the way to instilling renewed vigor into these grand vehicles.
This afternoon, however, I enjoyed a wonderful production of Abduction (known also in its original German version as Die Entfuhring aus dem Serail) put on at Washington's Source Theater by The IN Series, which has specialized in delightful updatings of Mozart's operas, focusing up to now on the Da Ponte masterpieces. As with all great works, all of these can not only withstand this kind of production, but actually come away with even more lustre.
Today's production transposed the action to Judge Roy Bean's saloon, The Jersey Lily, named by him, as was the town where it and he were located, in 1882, after the renowned singer of those times, Lillie Langtry. Judge Bean, you may recall, was known as The Law West of the Pecos. In real life, alas, Judge Bean's idol, Miss Langtry, never made it to visit her fervent admirer until after his death. But here, it is he and his minions--especially one Osmond--who kidnap her and her maid. The still-tired plot then features the efforts of her lover, Belmont, and his friend to release her and escape from Texas.
This, of course, is no sillier than the singspiel plot provided to Mozart by his original librettists in Vienna. Belmonte struggles to free his beloved, Constanze (coincidentally, of course, the name of Mozart's long-suffering spouse) from the harem of the Pasha of some Middle Eastern state, and his encounter with the Pasha's chief guard, Osmin.
A fine troupe of strong young singers led the production with the most outstanding being bass Jeffrey Tarr as Osmond and soprano Heather Bingham as Lillie. The true heroine of the day, however, was Bari Bern, who wrote the English translation that shifted the scene of the opera from the Middle East to Texas and inserted Judge Roy Bean in place of the Pasha.
The libretto was clever and lent the whole production a positive attitude. It also permitted us to enjoy Mozart's fabulous composition of a succession of arias, duets, and a quartet. This fine production confirmed my view that great operatic works can benefit from new settings and changes in concept. It's a commonplace to chuckle at the outlandish opera productions often presented in European houses but all too often, our greatest companies remain excessively tied to tradition in the way they approach the operatic masterworks. The sprightly IN Series here in DC, helmed by Carla Hubner, continues to show the way to instilling renewed vigor into these grand vehicles.
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
War
Last month I was reading two of Graham Greene's fantastically prescient novels, The Quiet American and Our Man in Havana. His perception of where events were headed in Saigon (early 1950s) and Havana (later 1950s) led me to imagining how much better off the U.S. might have been if Greene had been paid more attention by our policymakers. (It probably didn't make him any more attractive to them that he was defiantly anti-American, mostly, one feels, after reading these novels, because he felt we were doing a bad job replacing the Brits as the world's movers and shakers--or even now, as the surviving superpower.)
If you read these two novels, you will see how he anticipates the gradual replacement of the French by the U.S. as the equivalent of the colonial power in Viet Nam, and the likelihood that the corrupt Batista regime in Cuba would be overthrown by revolutionaries of some sort, who were predictably less than thrilled with the U.S.'s then-common support of dictators in Latin America like Batista.
So after three presidents--Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson--got deeper into Viet Nam--yes, the first two didn't go that far but they definitely set the stage and then some, it took many years to defuse the domino theory as the key element in American foreign policy in Asia. Then we had the totally irresponsible invasion of Iraq premised on a patchwork of lies and a needless invasion of Afghanistan--one had thought that the result of the 9/11 act of terror should have been a focused search for Bin Laden, not a wholesale invasion of two countries.
President Obama seemed incapable of appreciating that yes, we had invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban, only to let them return as we shifted to an even less relevant theatre: Iraq, but that we still didn't need to be in Afghanistan since no one from the outside has ever been able to end up victorious in that unwholesome atmosphere.
He has shown some success--not that he gets much credit from an ignorant media. Under his leadership, the objective of getting Bin Laden was accomplished and Obama managed to accomplish some limited goals in Libya without committing troops on the ground and by rallying allies. Perfect--no, and his staff let him down by ignoring the shaky situation in Libya so as to allow terrorists to storm the Benghazi consulate and then to put out some b.s. about the event rather than play it straight. Had it not been for that mishap, Libya might stand as a success--sure, a qualified one, but a success all the same for intervening without getting into a prolonged conflict.
So now Obama is rightfully reluctant to commit to major involvement in Syria. Yes, he should have exercised the limited use-of-force option some time ago but it still can be a good approach. And he should be given credit for involving Congress--both for satisfying those (some friends of mine among them) who believe that Congressional action is mandatory, and for assuring that the people's representatives charged with making the decision to go to war are on board.
If you read these two novels, you will see how he anticipates the gradual replacement of the French by the U.S. as the equivalent of the colonial power in Viet Nam, and the likelihood that the corrupt Batista regime in Cuba would be overthrown by revolutionaries of some sort, who were predictably less than thrilled with the U.S.'s then-common support of dictators in Latin America like Batista.
So after three presidents--Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson--got deeper into Viet Nam--yes, the first two didn't go that far but they definitely set the stage and then some, it took many years to defuse the domino theory as the key element in American foreign policy in Asia. Then we had the totally irresponsible invasion of Iraq premised on a patchwork of lies and a needless invasion of Afghanistan--one had thought that the result of the 9/11 act of terror should have been a focused search for Bin Laden, not a wholesale invasion of two countries.
President Obama seemed incapable of appreciating that yes, we had invaded Afghanistan and deposed the Taliban, only to let them return as we shifted to an even less relevant theatre: Iraq, but that we still didn't need to be in Afghanistan since no one from the outside has ever been able to end up victorious in that unwholesome atmosphere.
He has shown some success--not that he gets much credit from an ignorant media. Under his leadership, the objective of getting Bin Laden was accomplished and Obama managed to accomplish some limited goals in Libya without committing troops on the ground and by rallying allies. Perfect--no, and his staff let him down by ignoring the shaky situation in Libya so as to allow terrorists to storm the Benghazi consulate and then to put out some b.s. about the event rather than play it straight. Had it not been for that mishap, Libya might stand as a success--sure, a qualified one, but a success all the same for intervening without getting into a prolonged conflict.
So now Obama is rightfully reluctant to commit to major involvement in Syria. Yes, he should have exercised the limited use-of-force option some time ago but it still can be a good approach. And he should be given credit for involving Congress--both for satisfying those (some friends of mine among them) who believe that Congressional action is mandatory, and for assuring that the people's representatives charged with making the decision to go to war are on board.
Thursday, August 22, 2013
King Arthur Revisited
Last weekend I saw Glimmerglass Opera's production of Lerner & Loewe's Camelot, a musical I'd not had a chance to revisit since viewing its original Broadway production in 1961. It's a wonderful musical with an unusual twisted history. First, it followed their smash hit, My Fair Lady, which was still running when Camelot opened. While the show had a good run, largely because of the huge advance sale stimulated by My Fair Lady's success, reviews were only mildly favorable.
It has since been concluded that this situation was the result of the illness and consequent withdrawal of Moss Hart as director. He'd staged My Fair Lady and was already an acknowledged Broadway genius, added on to his status as a playwright in tandem with George S. Kaufman. When he returned some months after the show opened, he re-staged it to great effect, so that those who saw it then said that had he been able to prepare the show for opening night, it would have been a critical smash.
Glimmerglass put on a fine performance. Strongest was David Pittsinger as Arthur, and this year's artist-in-residence, Nathan Gunn, was Lancelot. Andriana Churchman put on a nice showing which in some ways even conjured up recollection of the now-legendary Julie Andrews as Guenevere. I found that Pittsinger was a strong singer, probably with a better voice than the wonderful Richard Burton, although no one is likely to act better than Burton. Gunn, alas, did not to my hearing come close to matching the roaring performance of Robert Goulet, in his Broadway debut, as Lancelot, especially in the blockbuster ballad, If Ever I Would Leave You--he was better in the lighter C'est Moi.
Camelot was drawn from the delightful re-telling of the Arthurian legends by T.H. White, The Once and Future King. That novel was once described by a critic as "the Middle Ages--not as they were but as they should have been." Seeing the show prompted me to pull out Volume Two of the classic Bulfinch's Mythology--The Age of Chivalry, to refresh myself on the stories. It was a fine excursion.
It has since been concluded that this situation was the result of the illness and consequent withdrawal of Moss Hart as director. He'd staged My Fair Lady and was already an acknowledged Broadway genius, added on to his status as a playwright in tandem with George S. Kaufman. When he returned some months after the show opened, he re-staged it to great effect, so that those who saw it then said that had he been able to prepare the show for opening night, it would have been a critical smash.
Glimmerglass put on a fine performance. Strongest was David Pittsinger as Arthur, and this year's artist-in-residence, Nathan Gunn, was Lancelot. Andriana Churchman put on a nice showing which in some ways even conjured up recollection of the now-legendary Julie Andrews as Guenevere. I found that Pittsinger was a strong singer, probably with a better voice than the wonderful Richard Burton, although no one is likely to act better than Burton. Gunn, alas, did not to my hearing come close to matching the roaring performance of Robert Goulet, in his Broadway debut, as Lancelot, especially in the blockbuster ballad, If Ever I Would Leave You--he was better in the lighter C'est Moi.
Camelot was drawn from the delightful re-telling of the Arthurian legends by T.H. White, The Once and Future King. That novel was once described by a critic as "the Middle Ages--not as they were but as they should have been." Seeing the show prompted me to pull out Volume Two of the classic Bulfinch's Mythology--The Age of Chivalry, to refresh myself on the stories. It was a fine excursion.
Friday, August 16, 2013
Exciting Dutchman
Tonight was a chance to see and hear a total delight--without a doubt, the Glimmerglass Festival performance of Wagner's The Flying Dutchman (Der Fliegende Hollaender) was the best of several I've seen over the years. Mostly, it was director Francesca Zambello's imaginative production that made the evening so memorable. John Keenan led the company orchestra in a spirited rendition of the wonderful score.
The stage featured much in the way of nautical motifs--lots of ropes and fanciful representations of sails and decks and gunwhales. The screen at the rear of the stage benefitted from use of gradual blackout and the ensemble did a nice job of dancing what appeared to be traditional sailors' steps. I found the cast generally excellent with Melody Moore as Senta, the heroine who strives to save the haunted and cursed title character, and Peter Volpe as Daland, her mercenary sea-captain father, a fine bass, the standouts. Jay Hunter Morris, who hit the Wagnerian big time as Siegfried in the Met's massive Ring series, was a strong Erik in a supporting role.
The performance worked the way festival opera presentations should: a production broke new ground in its conception and combined with excellent orchestral backing to give the audience a wonderful exposure to Wagner's finest early work. The pre-performance lecture emphasized how in Dutchman he was still utilizing many of the approaches of Italian opera, especially the bel canto era of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini which had just preceded Wagner's (and Verdi's) birth(s) 200 years ago. So this Wagner opera has duets and trios as well as recognizable arias, which were mechanisms he moved past by the time of the later masterpieces such as the Ring operas.
Glimmerglass is now on the top level of American summer opera festivals, joining Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, which I've been lucky enough to visit, and the Santa Fe Opera, which I still hope to see one of these days. Ms. Zambello, the director tonight who also head the festival is also in charge of the Washington National Opera, where I'm looking forward to seeing in the next two months productions of Tristan und Isolde, and with even more expectation to Verdi's La Forza del Destino, one of my personal favorites.
The stage featured much in the way of nautical motifs--lots of ropes and fanciful representations of sails and decks and gunwhales. The screen at the rear of the stage benefitted from use of gradual blackout and the ensemble did a nice job of dancing what appeared to be traditional sailors' steps. I found the cast generally excellent with Melody Moore as Senta, the heroine who strives to save the haunted and cursed title character, and Peter Volpe as Daland, her mercenary sea-captain father, a fine bass, the standouts. Jay Hunter Morris, who hit the Wagnerian big time as Siegfried in the Met's massive Ring series, was a strong Erik in a supporting role.
The performance worked the way festival opera presentations should: a production broke new ground in its conception and combined with excellent orchestral backing to give the audience a wonderful exposure to Wagner's finest early work. The pre-performance lecture emphasized how in Dutchman he was still utilizing many of the approaches of Italian opera, especially the bel canto era of Donizetti, Bellini, and Rossini which had just preceded Wagner's (and Verdi's) birth(s) 200 years ago. So this Wagner opera has duets and trios as well as recognizable arias, which were mechanisms he moved past by the time of the later masterpieces such as the Ring operas.
Glimmerglass is now on the top level of American summer opera festivals, joining Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, which I've been lucky enough to visit, and the Santa Fe Opera, which I still hope to see one of these days. Ms. Zambello, the director tonight who also head the festival is also in charge of the Washington National Opera, where I'm looking forward to seeing in the next two months productions of Tristan und Isolde, and with even more expectation to Verdi's La Forza del Destino, one of my personal favorites.
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Gershwin and The Heat
Last Thursday we enjoyed a wonderful evening of Gershwin at the Baltimore Symphony playing at Strathmore in North Bethesda. First of all, the hall and its acoustics are superb. Second, the orchestra and soloist did a magnificent rendition of Rhapsody in Blue. This was the high point of the evening--all of the themes were presented with precision and brio by all of the orchestra's sections. The opening number was a suite of Leonard Bernstein's music from On the Town, which provided a nice start.
The rest of the Gershwin program, though never less than pleasing, was somewhat anticlimactic, partly because the orchestra did such a fine job on Rhapsody in Blue and also because the rest of the pieces were either not up to it musically or the selection could have been better. This was especially the story with the suite from Porgy and Bess. Yes, it had a few of the great songs, including Summertime, I'm On My Way, Bess, You Is My Woman Now, and I Got Plenty o'Nuttin. But where were Sportin' Life's two terrific numbers--It Ain't Necessarily So and There's a Boat Leavin' Soon for New York? And alas, after the rhapsody, An American in Paris is a slighter composition. I almost missed not only Gene Kelly's dancing his way through the movie but George Guetary's cornball "I'm on a Stairway to Paradise."
Then a few nights later, we took in a summer movie, The Heat. If you haven't seen it, it's a girl-buddy vehicle for Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, one a sleek, uptight FBI agent and the other an out-of-shape, totally street-smart Boston cop. Lots of character and lots of conflict follow. The idea was good, some of the lines and scenes are funny, but on the whole, it is written and played far too broadly (no pun intended) and descends into all-too-typical Hollywood silliness.
The rest of the Gershwin program, though never less than pleasing, was somewhat anticlimactic, partly because the orchestra did such a fine job on Rhapsody in Blue and also because the rest of the pieces were either not up to it musically or the selection could have been better. This was especially the story with the suite from Porgy and Bess. Yes, it had a few of the great songs, including Summertime, I'm On My Way, Bess, You Is My Woman Now, and I Got Plenty o'Nuttin. But where were Sportin' Life's two terrific numbers--It Ain't Necessarily So and There's a Boat Leavin' Soon for New York? And alas, after the rhapsody, An American in Paris is a slighter composition. I almost missed not only Gene Kelly's dancing his way through the movie but George Guetary's cornball "I'm on a Stairway to Paradise."
Then a few nights later, we took in a summer movie, The Heat. If you haven't seen it, it's a girl-buddy vehicle for Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, one a sleek, uptight FBI agent and the other an out-of-shape, totally street-smart Boston cop. Lots of character and lots of conflict follow. The idea was good, some of the lines and scenes are funny, but on the whole, it is written and played far too broadly (no pun intended) and descends into all-too-typical Hollywood silliness.
Sunday, July 28, 2013
Why FDR Deserves Praise
Two reviews in today's NY Times book review discuss recent studies of FDR's battle against the isolationists and other "anti-interventionists" in 1939 and 1940 before Pearl Harbor brought us into World War II. FDR, the reviewer noted, learned from the disastrous court-packing fight of 1937 and the failure to defeat the Southern Democrat-Republican reactionaries in the 1938 midterm. He drew from those setbacks the principle of not getting ahead of the American public; instead, he did what he could to move that public toward more progressive positions and in the interim, designed and passed Lend-Lease to keep the British in the fight until we could join them.
So when I read all the recent denouncing of FDR for not advancing the battle to save or rescue the Jews of Europe that a variety of so-called historians are propagating, I recognize that we risk making major errors when we charge historical figures with espousing and acting on all of our current values. Of course, it would have been better if we had bombed the rail lines to Auschwitz and if FDR had cracked down on the anti-Semites in the State Department who kept Jewish refugees out of the U.S. But FDR understood--as it is mighty hard for us to appreciate today--that there were strong forces in the U.S. then who both favored isolationism and were defiantly anti-Semitic.
1940 was not the same as 2013. Lindbergh--portrayed as a potential candidate who might well have defeated FDR in the 1940 election in Philip Roth's masterful novel, The Plot Against America--came out and accused FDR of "warmongering" because of Jewish influence. Roosevelt understood that if the effort to prepare the nation for war was perceived as based on any interest in helping the Jews, the whole campaign would be doomed from the start.
We don't encounter this kind of situation today. Of course, some might say that world antagonism to the right-wing Israeli government's policies is Anti-Semitism, but this is nothing close to the real Anti-Semitism and appeasement of the Nazis that was a powerful force in the pre-World War II U.S. Today's right-wing Jewish supporters of Bibi have made it hard for Jews to oppose Israeli government policy but many of us who love Israel despair for its future if these misguided policies continue. But back in 1940, there were real, rootin-tootin Anti-Semites whom FDR had to take on.
We know from Ira Katznelson's wonderful recent history, Fear Itself, about the deal FDR had to make with the Southern Democrats to get the New Deal enacted into law: he abandoned any effort to desegregate the South or give blacks civil rights. Bad deal? Absolutely. Did he have a real choice? Probably not. So when you read this tripe about how FDR let the Jews down, take a look at the histories reviewed today--one is entitled Rendezvous With Destiny, a title previously used for the wonderful history of the New Deal by Eric Goldman--and try to imagine an America in the pre-WW II period when even shrewd and progressive politicians like Franklin D. Roosevelt saw how they needed to bring the U.S. public along for the crucial fight--the war against the Nazis and Japan, and that that was no easy challenge.
So when I read all the recent denouncing of FDR for not advancing the battle to save or rescue the Jews of Europe that a variety of so-called historians are propagating, I recognize that we risk making major errors when we charge historical figures with espousing and acting on all of our current values. Of course, it would have been better if we had bombed the rail lines to Auschwitz and if FDR had cracked down on the anti-Semites in the State Department who kept Jewish refugees out of the U.S. But FDR understood--as it is mighty hard for us to appreciate today--that there were strong forces in the U.S. then who both favored isolationism and were defiantly anti-Semitic.
1940 was not the same as 2013. Lindbergh--portrayed as a potential candidate who might well have defeated FDR in the 1940 election in Philip Roth's masterful novel, The Plot Against America--came out and accused FDR of "warmongering" because of Jewish influence. Roosevelt understood that if the effort to prepare the nation for war was perceived as based on any interest in helping the Jews, the whole campaign would be doomed from the start.
We don't encounter this kind of situation today. Of course, some might say that world antagonism to the right-wing Israeli government's policies is Anti-Semitism, but this is nothing close to the real Anti-Semitism and appeasement of the Nazis that was a powerful force in the pre-World War II U.S. Today's right-wing Jewish supporters of Bibi have made it hard for Jews to oppose Israeli government policy but many of us who love Israel despair for its future if these misguided policies continue. But back in 1940, there were real, rootin-tootin Anti-Semites whom FDR had to take on.
We know from Ira Katznelson's wonderful recent history, Fear Itself, about the deal FDR had to make with the Southern Democrats to get the New Deal enacted into law: he abandoned any effort to desegregate the South or give blacks civil rights. Bad deal? Absolutely. Did he have a real choice? Probably not. So when you read this tripe about how FDR let the Jews down, take a look at the histories reviewed today--one is entitled Rendezvous With Destiny, a title previously used for the wonderful history of the New Deal by Eric Goldman--and try to imagine an America in the pre-WW II period when even shrewd and progressive politicians like Franklin D. Roosevelt saw how they needed to bring the U.S. public along for the crucial fight--the war against the Nazis and Japan, and that that was no easy challenge.
Friday, July 5, 2013
When Art, Music, and Design Joined Dance
There's a marvelous exhibit at the National Gallery in Washington--and it will be there until early September. It's dedicated to a dance troupe which managed to draw on the greatest artists, composers, and costume designers of the early years of the 20th century to create masterpieces of the dance repertory that remain ornaments of the culture today.
The company was the Ballets Russes and its creator and impresario was Serge Diaghilev. The show at the National ranges from the elaborate and imaginative costumes, to the creative posters and playbills, and even some of the massive backdrops for the sets of the great dance programs the company presented. Most fascinating, though, are the videos, most from presentations of these ballets by companies like New York's Joffrey Ballet in the 1980s, of the greatest conceptions.
Diaghilev was an admitted failure as singer, composer, or artist, but he ranks as the foremost impresario of our times. Not only did he obtain the contributions to the dance programs of artists such as Picasso, Rouault, Modigliani, Goncherova, and Matisse; along with music composed for the company by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Satie; costumes by Bakst, Roerich, and Coco Chanel; his choreographers, beginning with the fabulous Fokine (who gave us Petrouchka), and then Massine, and ending with Balanchine, who then went on to build the renowned New York City Ballet; but he managed to find a dancer often regarded as the greatest ballet has ever known--Vaslav Nijinsky, who also choreographed (and starred in) Afternoon of a Faun (to Debussy's music) and The Rite of Spring, the Stravinsky composition that revolutionized dance in 1913 just as the Armory Show did for art that year.
The impresario's most redoubtable accomplishment, though, was not merely in convincing these premiere artists to work on his projects: he managed to inspire them to produce some of their best work. The several videos shown in the exhibit, along with a half-hour video that covers the twenty-year span of the company's existence (1909-1929), attest to the brilliance of his performances.
It's so rare that we can point to a specific company and declare without reservation that it set the standard for its art. Not only did Ballets Russes attain this acclaim but the company succeeded--as hardly any other arts endeavors can claim to have even tried--in bringing together the best of what was then the avant-garde but now are seen as the pre-eminent standouts in art, music, costume design, and, yes, dance.
The company was the Ballets Russes and its creator and impresario was Serge Diaghilev. The show at the National ranges from the elaborate and imaginative costumes, to the creative posters and playbills, and even some of the massive backdrops for the sets of the great dance programs the company presented. Most fascinating, though, are the videos, most from presentations of these ballets by companies like New York's Joffrey Ballet in the 1980s, of the greatest conceptions.
Diaghilev was an admitted failure as singer, composer, or artist, but he ranks as the foremost impresario of our times. Not only did he obtain the contributions to the dance programs of artists such as Picasso, Rouault, Modigliani, Goncherova, and Matisse; along with music composed for the company by Stravinsky, Prokofiev, and Satie; costumes by Bakst, Roerich, and Coco Chanel; his choreographers, beginning with the fabulous Fokine (who gave us Petrouchka), and then Massine, and ending with Balanchine, who then went on to build the renowned New York City Ballet; but he managed to find a dancer often regarded as the greatest ballet has ever known--Vaslav Nijinsky, who also choreographed (and starred in) Afternoon of a Faun (to Debussy's music) and The Rite of Spring, the Stravinsky composition that revolutionized dance in 1913 just as the Armory Show did for art that year.
The impresario's most redoubtable accomplishment, though, was not merely in convincing these premiere artists to work on his projects: he managed to inspire them to produce some of their best work. The several videos shown in the exhibit, along with a half-hour video that covers the twenty-year span of the company's existence (1909-1929), attest to the brilliance of his performances.
It's so rare that we can point to a specific company and declare without reservation that it set the standard for its art. Not only did Ballets Russes attain this acclaim but the company succeeded--as hardly any other arts endeavors can claim to have even tried--in bringing together the best of what was then the avant-garde but now are seen as the pre-eminent standouts in art, music, costume design, and, yes, dance.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
Showbiz Stuff
Recently, two compelling obits appeared in the Times. The two men chronicled both died at 93, lived in Studio City, California, but otherwise had nothing to do with each other except for their involvement in Broadway theater. Donald Bevan was the caricaturist for Sardi's, the Broadway restaurant for theatrical people, for many years. His fame followed his being noticed drawing pictures on war planes by a United Press correspondent named Walter Cronkite. Apparently, his drawings. while satirical, were kindly, except where critics were concerned.
This was because Mr. Bevan was also a playwright, one who co-wrote only one successful play. It's not clear whether he ever wrote another--the obit says he tried to write a musical but it doesn't say whether it was ever completed. But the play he did write was a masterpiece, Stalag 17. Most of you may know of it as a famous, dramatic movie about American prisoners of war in a German World War II POW camp--William Holden won the Best Actor Oscar. But it previously ran for a year on Broadway in a production directed by Jose Ferrer, who won a Tony for it.
There were wonderful supporting players in it: the camp commandant, played by Otto Preminger; two comic-relief dogfaces, Harvey Lembeck and Robert Strauss; and the principal guard was played by the Marx Brothers' foil in A Night at the Opera, Sig Ruman. One part of the story not mentioned in the Times which my dad told me was that Stalag 17 premiered not at a Broadway theater but at the wonderful theatre on the third floor of The Lambs, now a restaurant but then a theatrical club.
The other 93-year-old who died at an assisted-living home in Studio City was Elliot Reid, who played opposite Jane Russell in the film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Mr. Reid had a distinguished if unheralded career in films and television--he had started out (as Ted Reid) playing Cinna (according to the Broadway database IdBd) in Orson Welles's renowned 1937 production of Julius Caesar. The Times said that he played Cinna, the Poet--a role that is more famous if smaller than merely Cinna.
Mr. Reid turned up on many, many TV shows--from Alfred Hitchcock Presents to All in the Family. You might find him anywhere, from Fred MacMurray's rival in The Absent-Minded Professor to the small-town prosecutor in Inherit the Wind, or as an Edward R. Murrow look-alike on I Love Lucy. Once again, however, I remember him best from co-starring on Broadway in 1960 in a revue that only played for a month, From A to Z.
To my teenaged sensibility, it was the epitome of sophisticated stage comedy. And while it did not play for long, the lead writer was a then-unknown named Woody Allen. Reid's co-star was Hermione Gingold. Imagine her playing the famed Mary Martin/Julie Andrews role of Maria in The Sound of Music, only re-dubbed The Sound of Schmaltz: "oodles of noodles, and pockets of posies, and cute little boys with runny noses/these are a few of my favorite things" and right there on stage with her was the ubiquitous Elliot Reid--as Baron von Klaptrap, of course.
This was because Mr. Bevan was also a playwright, one who co-wrote only one successful play. It's not clear whether he ever wrote another--the obit says he tried to write a musical but it doesn't say whether it was ever completed. But the play he did write was a masterpiece, Stalag 17. Most of you may know of it as a famous, dramatic movie about American prisoners of war in a German World War II POW camp--William Holden won the Best Actor Oscar. But it previously ran for a year on Broadway in a production directed by Jose Ferrer, who won a Tony for it.
There were wonderful supporting players in it: the camp commandant, played by Otto Preminger; two comic-relief dogfaces, Harvey Lembeck and Robert Strauss; and the principal guard was played by the Marx Brothers' foil in A Night at the Opera, Sig Ruman. One part of the story not mentioned in the Times which my dad told me was that Stalag 17 premiered not at a Broadway theater but at the wonderful theatre on the third floor of The Lambs, now a restaurant but then a theatrical club.
The other 93-year-old who died at an assisted-living home in Studio City was Elliot Reid, who played opposite Jane Russell in the film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Mr. Reid had a distinguished if unheralded career in films and television--he had started out (as Ted Reid) playing Cinna (according to the Broadway database IdBd) in Orson Welles's renowned 1937 production of Julius Caesar. The Times said that he played Cinna, the Poet--a role that is more famous if smaller than merely Cinna.
Mr. Reid turned up on many, many TV shows--from Alfred Hitchcock Presents to All in the Family. You might find him anywhere, from Fred MacMurray's rival in The Absent-Minded Professor to the small-town prosecutor in Inherit the Wind, or as an Edward R. Murrow look-alike on I Love Lucy. Once again, however, I remember him best from co-starring on Broadway in 1960 in a revue that only played for a month, From A to Z.
To my teenaged sensibility, it was the epitome of sophisticated stage comedy. And while it did not play for long, the lead writer was a then-unknown named Woody Allen. Reid's co-star was Hermione Gingold. Imagine her playing the famed Mary Martin/Julie Andrews role of Maria in The Sound of Music, only re-dubbed The Sound of Schmaltz: "oodles of noodles, and pockets of posies, and cute little boys with runny noses/these are a few of my favorite things" and right there on stage with her was the ubiquitous Elliot Reid--as Baron von Klaptrap, of course.
Friday, June 28, 2013
Reasons to Be Happy
That's the play I saw tonight Off-Broadway in New York by Neil LaBute, which is winding up a limited run--the small house (Lucille Lortel, formerly the Theatre de Lys on Christopher St.) was packed. Good reviews must have brought audiences in because the play was not advertised nor even in the Times directory of shows.
It's a sequel to his "reasons to be pretty" which was on Broadway four years ago and nominated for the Best Play Tony. Both plays are taut--LaBute writes the best, snappiest, down-and-dirty dialogue since the great David Mamet plays like Glengarry Glen Ross.
His four characters are defiantly provincial to the core--working in small plants in nondescript suburbs at deadend jobs. Each is a type but are still very believable. Steph has a vicious temper; Greg is a wishy-washy, would-be intellectual; Kent is proud to be a dumb jock but gets lots of good trenchant lines; and Carly is too genuinely nice to be a security guard.
There are lots of back-and-forth relationships breaking and regrouping: one couple broke up, the other divorced, now the divorced woman is dating the man whose four-year live-in relationship broke up. But the woman are still close friends, and the men are as tight as LaBute ever allows men to show warm instincts, which is rarely.
One character is looking beyond the diminished horizon of the break room in the plant to become an English teacher; the others mostly scorn his growing interest in books rather than gossip, malls, and high school football. But Greg--for he is the would-be litterateur, strings each of the women along and impels them to commit major sacrifices in their pursuit of him, while trying to remain out of reach yet asking them to sympathize with his inability to commit.
By the end, he looms as more despicable in his avoidance than even Steph with her repeated explosive temper. Moreover, Kent, whose character shows LaBute pressing hardest on almost a satire of a homophobic primitive, grows more sympathetic in his loneliness and ignorance than Greg in his refusal to be pinned down and be straight with either of the women.
All in all, it's a fast-paced two hours and a bit more. I, for one, hope LaBute produces--he directed this production, too--yet another installment in his saga of stimulating common people, these characters you might be standing next to in the super market or the mall on any given day. They may not be likeable at any part or all of the time but their personas ring true and, as others have noted, show LaBute, for him at least, with a warmer view of the human condition than his earlier misanthropic work disclosed.
It's a sequel to his "reasons to be pretty" which was on Broadway four years ago and nominated for the Best Play Tony. Both plays are taut--LaBute writes the best, snappiest, down-and-dirty dialogue since the great David Mamet plays like Glengarry Glen Ross.
His four characters are defiantly provincial to the core--working in small plants in nondescript suburbs at deadend jobs. Each is a type but are still very believable. Steph has a vicious temper; Greg is a wishy-washy, would-be intellectual; Kent is proud to be a dumb jock but gets lots of good trenchant lines; and Carly is too genuinely nice to be a security guard.
There are lots of back-and-forth relationships breaking and regrouping: one couple broke up, the other divorced, now the divorced woman is dating the man whose four-year live-in relationship broke up. But the woman are still close friends, and the men are as tight as LaBute ever allows men to show warm instincts, which is rarely.
One character is looking beyond the diminished horizon of the break room in the plant to become an English teacher; the others mostly scorn his growing interest in books rather than gossip, malls, and high school football. But Greg--for he is the would-be litterateur, strings each of the women along and impels them to commit major sacrifices in their pursuit of him, while trying to remain out of reach yet asking them to sympathize with his inability to commit.
By the end, he looms as more despicable in his avoidance than even Steph with her repeated explosive temper. Moreover, Kent, whose character shows LaBute pressing hardest on almost a satire of a homophobic primitive, grows more sympathetic in his loneliness and ignorance than Greg in his refusal to be pinned down and be straight with either of the women.
All in all, it's a fast-paced two hours and a bit more. I, for one, hope LaBute produces--he directed this production, too--yet another installment in his saga of stimulating common people, these characters you might be standing next to in the super market or the mall on any given day. They may not be likeable at any part or all of the time but their personas ring true and, as others have noted, show LaBute, for him at least, with a warmer view of the human condition than his earlier misanthropic work disclosed.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Philly and Florence
If an opera--or a play or movie, for that matter--is good enough, it can likely be transported to a different time and place and still shine. This became clear to me yesterday at a performance of Puccini's one-act comedy, Gianni Schicchi, by the IN Series at the Gala Hispanic theater on the "new" 14th Street in DC.
It's a delightful comic opera--Puccini's only one--about a greedy family hoping to re-write the will by which their despised rich uncle-cousin disinherited them. And it even has one of the composer's finest arias--O mio babbino caro--made famous when sung as background by Kiri TeKanawa to the main titles of the film, A Room With a View. When performed as the third in Il Trittico, Puccini's three one-acters, it lifts the spirit after the preceding two tragedies. It's the kind of comic relief Chaucer understood was needed when he followed the dour Monk's Tale of seemingless endless tragedies with the Nun's Priest's Tale almost as rollicking (if not as X-rated) as the renowned Miller's.
The setting was moved from somewhat timeless Florence to equally undated (and just as Italian) South Philadelphia. Instead of his lumber business, the old miser Buoso, now Bruno, owns a chain of cheesesteak joints. So yes, everything worked, the comedy survived translation into English, the two singers with real arias showed themselves equal to their roles, and maestro Frank Conlin at the piano (a wonderful man and superb musician who used to be the accompanist for Vanessa's violin-class recitals) made Puccini's late-period score come to life. This is a Puccini who by 1918 had moved beyond the wonderful yet classically sentimental Boheme and Butterfly musically.
It's a delightful comic opera--Puccini's only one--about a greedy family hoping to re-write the will by which their despised rich uncle-cousin disinherited them. And it even has one of the composer's finest arias--O mio babbino caro--made famous when sung as background by Kiri TeKanawa to the main titles of the film, A Room With a View. When performed as the third in Il Trittico, Puccini's three one-acters, it lifts the spirit after the preceding two tragedies. It's the kind of comic relief Chaucer understood was needed when he followed the dour Monk's Tale of seemingless endless tragedies with the Nun's Priest's Tale almost as rollicking (if not as X-rated) as the renowned Miller's.
The setting was moved from somewhat timeless Florence to equally undated (and just as Italian) South Philadelphia. Instead of his lumber business, the old miser Buoso, now Bruno, owns a chain of cheesesteak joints. So yes, everything worked, the comedy survived translation into English, the two singers with real arias showed themselves equal to their roles, and maestro Frank Conlin at the piano (a wonderful man and superb musician who used to be the accompanist for Vanessa's violin-class recitals) made Puccini's late-period score come to life. This is a Puccini who by 1918 had moved beyond the wonderful yet classically sentimental Boheme and Butterfly musically.
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