Two Irish Plays Worth Seeing

 Last weekend we enjoyed Brian Friel's terrific play, Translations, at the Irish Repertory Theatre in New York. For me, it was a special treat, in that I had just completed a four-play course led by Chris Griffin, who taught Irish lit at George Washington Univ., and presented by our independent bookstore, Politics & Prose, in which this Friel play was the final one we read and discussed. Somehow I'd never seen one of his plays and now I know what I've missed. The Irish Repertory Theatre will be doing two more, including his first big success on Broadway, Philadelphia, Here I Come!, this spring as part of their Friel Project.

The play is set in 1833 in Donegal, which is in some parts further north in Ireland than Northern Ireland. The Brits--their army--are documenting and Anglicizing place-names; most of the locals have nothing to do with another exercise of the colonial power but one man who's made a success in Dublin comes back to serve as their translator and interpreter. As he becomes friendlier with the young British officer who is the cartographer, he fails to see that this will not end well.

It's a well-crafted play that allows the audience (and readers) to consider the implications of what each of the characters is conveying. The performances are excellent and their accents impeccable. Friel grew up in Derry, Northern Ireland, and was present on Bloody Sunday there during "the Troubles".

Today we saw Conor McPherson's The Seafarer at Round House in Bethesda. This drama features five men--no women--all of whom are hanging on in a house where the only consistent activity is drinking. The first act was tedious and at least one friend had told us that she departed at the intermission. I'm glad we resisted doing that because the second act turned everything around and presented a clever dramatic conflict, with all five roles playing important parts.

It was amazing to see how the play came to life. You immediately begin to appreciate how each man fits into the drama. They all perform well and unlike the first act, you don't find yourself wondering when the act will end. McPherson also throws in some nice curveballs to heighten the impact. It was definitely worth coming back after the interval.

The Promised End at Source Theater

No, I'm not reporting the demise of the Source Theater on 14th Street. This was an IN Series production presented there which we took in last Saturday night. You might say that it was an interesting idea to combine Shakespeare's King Lear with Verdi's Requiem. As it turned out, the Requiem fared better, in my view, than Lear. 

The stage was a group of chairs and benches, with vertical rods running down the middle across the stage. There were eight singers--four men and four women--all with excellent voices covering the full range. There's also a narrator who also plays the parts of both Verdi and Lear at various times, mostly from a simple reading stand more than a lectern.

The singing is superb. The lower men's voices, bass and baritone in particular, added beauty to the performance of the Requiem that the eight singers carry on throughout the performance. The women singers were equally excellent. The narrator, played by Nanna Ingvarsson, projected a commanding figure but had the most difficult role because her task included telling something about the lives of both Verdi and Shakespeare, as well as tying the music to the words of the play, King Lear.

Ingvarsson was often overwhelmed by the sound of eight opera singers going all out. She was able to portray in some fashion the great dramatic points in Lear, which is often described as the peak of Shakespeare's output. Much of her presentation, however, was lost amid the huge sound of the Requiem singers and accompaniment. The performance early on emphasized Verdi's life and career, including singing from offstage of his famous chorus of the Hebrew slaves in Babylon, Va Pensiero, from Nabucco, which became the Italian national anthem.

To me, this was an example of "seemed like a good idea at the time" although I found the fine singing of the Requiem was enthralling. I've seen Lear performed as its own play and will attest to its greatness, but it is not in any way nor should it be a light three hours at the theater. This production ran for about 80 minutes and there was effusive applause at the end, for the singers, who were wonderful, and for the narrator, perhaps because of the superhuman task she was set and attempted bravely to accomplish.

Ink: Rupert at the Round House

James Graham's play, Ink, traces the first year of Rupert Murdoch's campaign to conquer the British media world. It begins with his hiring Larry Lamb, an overlooked editor whose Yorkshire background apparently prevented him from scaling the climb to the highest media editorial aeries in London. The play shows the callow Australian seeking to transplant his method for building an editorial behemoth Down Under. 

Murdoch mouths lines about giving people what they want, making newspapers fun, and being a disrupter--in this case of the Establishment which dominated the British media. Lamb proceeds to hire the most able people he knows to grow The Sun from a minor broadsheet to the highest-circulation paper in the world, now as a tabloid. It's sex, scandal, and giveaways all round.

We get an inkling of how dangerous Murdoch will be (and now has been, at 90) to our society and democracy. He gradually insinuates his antilabor, pro-Tory beliefs into the paper. He urges Lamb to break out of all traditional journalistic guidelines and then disclaims responsibility when things blow up. But like him or not, we see how he proceeded to take over The Times [London], The New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal, while creating the Fox network and other TV channels worldwide.

The acting by all the players is excellent; it's hard to single any one or two out because the ensemble works beautifully. However, Craig Wallace as the reigning media monarch dethroned by Murdoch is superb; his versatility was demonstrated when I saw him as Louis Armstrong a few years ago at the Mosaic Theater Company at the Atlas Performing Arts Center.

This show runs longer than the specified two-and-one-half hours (with intermission). It's a co-production of Round House and the Olney Theater Company. Before the performance on Sept. 2, a panel moderated by the Post's Peter Marks considered the implications of Murdoch on both the media and democracy. The outstanding contributions were made by Michael Steele, now a commentator on MSNBC but former Republican National Chair and Lieutenant Governor of Maryland. 

My major difference with the panelists, particularly Jummy Olabangi of NBC4, was their acceptance of the idea that those who manage local TV news perform a largely objective service of presenting fact-based news. Their coverage, in my view, focuses principally on crime and creates an environment where one might conclude that crime is more rampant than ever, with consequent political demands for more stringent administration of justice. Murders have gone up in D.C., but as with other metro areas, crime as a whole has declined. 

The play moves nicely with good backdrops of headlines and sets focusing on adjoining multi-desk newsrooms and conversations  of two at fancy dinner tables. The first act focuses on the process by which The Sun builds up its circulation and the second act examines the results. All in all, it was a rewarding theatrical evening.

An Enigmatic Brilliant Classmate

In the summer 2023 issue I received online today, the alumni bulletin of the law school from which I graduated, Harvard, reported the death last autumn (2022) of a classmate, Covert E. Parnell III, whom I cannot say I knew well but whose company I had now and then enjoyed while there.  Pete was an unusual guy, even if his resume was classic top-of-the-line HLS.

He was born and grew up in Alabama, attended Birmingham Southern College, and graduated magna from Harvard Law. Then he clerked for a respected judge on the Third Circuit in Philadelphia, Francis Van Dusen, followed by service as one of the last clerks for Justice Hugo Black. When Black died while Pete was his clerk, the incoming justice, another Southerner, Lewis Powell, kept him on.

Pete always said that Black had hired him because he was a decent tennis player, always rumored to be a requirement to be a law clerk for the justice, who played frequently into his old age. Pete's being an Alabaman can't have hurt him either, as Black was partial to brilliant law grads from his home state. This was despite the prevalence of dislike, to put it mildly, for Black in Alabama because of his individual but generally progressive views (even though he'd been a Klan member in his youth): "Hugo Black used to run around in white robes scaring black people; now he wears black robes and scares white people" was the derogatory line about Black in the South.

He had been a Senator from Alabama during the New Deal and was FDR's first nominee to the Court, in 1937; Roosevelt had not had the opportunity to appoint a justice to the Court which had been striking down his legislation for his whole first term. Black was named after the collapse of Roosevelt's attempt to expand the Court so as to outvote the conservatives dominating the Court. It was felt that the safest political path was to nominate a sitting Senator.

It shouldn't be surprising that law came easily to Pete. Powell undoubtedly kept him on because everyone who knew Pete was impressed by both his brilliance and his charm. When I ran into him sometime later, I asked him about a clerk who served at the time he did and was well-known. In Pete's view, he was a "cottonhead". Pete became a partner in a major Los Angeles firm only five years out. This was quite uncommon, then and now, and I suspect he was the first member of our class to become a partner in a major law firm.

I lost track of him and so, apparently, did most of my classmates. I checked out the firm listing once when I was going to be in LA and he was gone. Several years later, I was at some legal gathering and found myself introduced to a young woman who was at Pete's old firm. Without getting very specific, something lawyers are very good at, she indicated to me that he had gone through some kind of crack-up and that as far as she knew, he was living in some nondescript part, of which there are many, of the LA metro area. She had no idea what he was doing. "He was the brightest, nicest lawyer I've ever known," she observed.

His obits all said he had been the lawyer for Home Savings and then on the executive team at H.F.Ahmanson & Co., which owned Home Savings. He then was a name partner in what was apparently a small firm and also served as executive director or chair of the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. He retired and lived in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for the last 21 years of his life.

There's more of a story there. I say that because the obit referred to both his partner of many years, who is male, and also to a son. He appears to have been active in the Church of St. Paul in the Desert, which is in Palm Springs.  He became an inactive member of the California bar in 1997, only four years before he retired completely.

It's possible to suggest all sorts of suppositions about his life based on the scant evidence I've had access to. Yet, his story reminds me of the title character in Calvin Trillin's memoir, Remembering Denny. Trillin set out to learn what had become of a Yale classmate whom he admired for his easy disarming way and charm that appeared to guarantee a successful life. While Denny had achieved outward success as an academic and in government, following his time as a Rhodes Scholar, it turned out that he had demons of his own. He had a series of false starts in his career, and despite his accomplishments as a professor, had  committed suicide at 55.

In a review of Trillin's book, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt concluded: "At the end of Remembering Denny, the author recalls how one of Denny's more recent acquaintances 'seemed offended when I referred to Denny as an old friend.' He said, 'Roger would have said that you didn't know him at all.' Mr. Trillin replied, 'I couldn't agree with you more.'"

'Prima Facie" and "Days of Wine and Roses'

Two shows in New York that I saw over Fourth of July weekend: (1) Prima Facie was a one-woman show about a barrister who knows how to defend sexual assault cases and then is assaulted herself and learns how the system treats victims. Jodie Comer starred. She won the Tony this year for Best Actress in a play and became well-known here for playing the assassin in the streaming series Killing Eve, and (2) Days of Wine and Roses is a musical based on the Playhouse 90 TV production of the 50s or 60s and the movie with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick. Broadway musical star Kelli O'Hara leads the cast, with Brian D'Arcy James playing the male lead.

Prima Facie runs 100 minutes without intermission. It gets draggy in the last half, possibly because of the absence of a break. Comer is absolutely marvelous, doing everything on stage including moving the set pieces. She brings the barrister to life and you laugh and then feel sorry with her. Although the drama is especially appealing to lawyers, it went over well with the general audience. By showing how the system works from two sides, the play achieves more than a one-sided MeToo presentation. It's too bad that it closed over the same weekend; either Comer had been signed for a truly limited run or even winning the Tony didn't pick up box office.

Days of Wine and Roses has always been a downer because it shows a couple sinking into alcoholism. The two leads are superb--the music is all right but unmemorable. O'Hara does everything she can to put the songs across but if she can't leave you humming them, it's not her fault. James is a perfect match for her. They play very well together as they confront their demons separately for the most part and go off in different directions. The show was put on at the Atlantic Theater Company's Linda Gross Theater on West 20th St. in Chelsea. 

To me, the show still has great power in its depiction of how mid-20th Century culture encouraged alcohol addiction. All the social cues that pushed people toward booze both at work and at home come through. This show, also without an intermission, runs about 105 minutes. It also would benefit from a break. It wasn't clear whether it is bound for Broadway--the cast and production are first-class. It may well need some more work to tighten up spots and maybe even charge up the music.

Horatio Alger--My Outfit

I've already received one e-mail today pointing out that "your waining Society is back in the news some 100+ years later." The reference is to the Horatio Alger Society, of which I was president a few years ago and which I agreed to serve this year as vice president. HAS (our acronym) is a group of book collectors, people interested in American juvenile literature of the second half of the 19th century, and the continued interest which pops up now and then in media of our eponymous author who did have a problem coming up with more than one plot. In case it's not immediately apparent, HAS is a low-budget operation.

The Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans is an organization that honors people whose lives it feels exemplify the Horatio Alger ideal of poor boy makes good. (There were a couple of his novels that featured girls, quite a step forward in those days!) The Association tends to recognize captains of industry and such; this has made it a very high-budget operation. It apparently chose to include Clarence Thomas some years ago as one of its annual inductees.

Today, the New York Times chose to feature his membership in a lengthy front-page story, which only seems significant enough for the front page--right lede no less--because of the scandal arising from his acceptance of gifts, trips, lodging, meals, etc., from rich people. Some of them have had some relationship with cases pending before the Court. Some of those people may have met him through the Association.

These people meet in places that you need not worry about the price because if you do, you can't afford it. Our Society's annual convention, which now attracts a bit more than a handful of members and their partners or friends, have been held in hostelries outside the beltways of small cities and only grudgingly do we agree to assemble at any place that charges much more than $100 a night. We've met at a Holiday Inn in Fredericksburg for three years because during the pandemic, it has been an easy place to hold our meetings.

In the past we've met all over the country, and I've been to our conventions in Catskill, N.Y.; Willow Grove, Pa.; Sacramento, Calif.; Shelbyville, Ind.; Bowie, Md.; and North Conway, N.H. No five-star resorts there.

We did succeed in getting a Horatio Alger Stamp issued some years ago. That was one of the very few occasions where we were involved in working with the Association on a common cause. It worked. Some f our members, who know everything there is to know about Alger, wrote the Alger bio the Association uses in its literature--for a fee.

Someone gave me an Alger novel when I was in junior high. Then I found a rack of them when I was still in my teens at Leary's Book Store in Philadelphia, one of the legendary old book stores that are hardly to be found anymore. My allowance enabled me to buy a couple. I got a kick out of reading Alger. The poor boy at the end of each book acquired fame, girl, and cash, not necessarily in that order. Triumph occurred by coincidence or happenstance.

I've collected a lot of them over the years. It was fun looking for them in the bookstores I ran across in traveling. I have a few first editions. Few of them or any of the books are worth much, definitely not what I paid for them. I'm not waiting for an invite from the Association.

I have gone to receptions at the Supreme Court. One was when I became a Fellow of the Institute for Court Management. Going to oral arguments, at least in past years, was more interesting. In retrospect, I think I've had more enjoyment from HAS than I would've found on a trip to the Alaskan back country with some rich people.

 

Father's Day Memories

Even on Father's Day--last Sunday--I don't find myself thinking that much about my dad. He did love being the center of attention, which he usually was. It wasn't just that he had jobs--with the performers' unions--that in those days were regarded as "glamor jobs". He had an outgoing personality, enjoyed life and his friends, even his family. He stayed in touch with many of his relatives--and like me, he had many--and he managed to see them because he traveled so much.

I thought of him today because someone was writing in Facebook about Liz Taylor's third husband--the one she didn't divorce: she couldn't because he died in a plane crash. Harold was one of about 15,000 invited to Mike Todd's incredible party at the old Madison Square Garden. This was an evening to celebrate Mike Todd, produced by the great producer and honoree himself. The last event on the evening's program was "Liz Cuts the Cake". 

It was the kind of spectacle that doesn't seem to happen these days, not that there's any reason it should. It was pure ego trip, but in a way, it now stands out as a never-to-be-repeated occasion and sort of charming in retrospect. They gave away all kinds of gifts to attendees but my dad reported that a few "guests" or non-guests helped themselves away from the spotlights. Down near the darker 9th Ave. end of the arena, he said, guys with moving men's straps were hoisting washing machines that were there, I assume, as prizes, and hauling them off with no one taking the trouble to check their credentials as likely would happen today.

I was along for another such night at the old Garden. It was the opening night of the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey circus, also now defunct. The evening was filled with special features not included on the three-times-a-day regular performances. Marilyn Monroe emerged riding an elephant dusted with some kind of pink substance now probably banned. Marlene Dietrich satisfied the dreams of many present when she appeared in red jacket and black leather pants and boots, carrying a large whip as the "ringmistress".

I was introduced to her daughter, Maria Riva, whose  bio of her mom I read when she published it years later. In those days the circus began with the animal acts--usually three huge caged rings featuring lions and tigers and bears--guess they got that idea from The Wizard of Oz. In those days, before the circus performance began, you could wander through the menagerie and side shows down in the Garden basement. If you went down the wrong staircase trying to exit the Garden, you might end up down there and could find yourself facing lions, tigers, and bears--all of whom looked hungry.

We went to benefits together--some in the Garden--where all kinds of performers worked gratis for the charity of the evening. I recall seeing the likes of Nina Simone and Joel Grey (well pre-Cabaret). Harold's work when he ran part of the performers' unions that handled benefits was to make sure that while the stars worked free of charge, non-headline performers were paid regular scale. While his tickets were always Annie Oakleys, his main purpose in attending was to make sure the charity heads or promoters knew that someone was keeping an eye on their management.

Exclusion--A New Play

Exclusion, by Kenneth Lin, has been playing here in D.C. at the Arena, where we saw it Friday night. The promos said it was about the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, by which all Chinese in the U.S. were told to depart and there was no immigration quota for Chinese people until 1943. That, by itself, didn't necessarily portend a great theatrical experience, if the theme was merely that the U.S. for many years was definitely employing a racist immigration policy against Asians.

However, although the theme as it turned out did fit a pattern of previous dramas--David Mamet's Speed the Plow is one example, it made for a good evening of dramatic theater. An actress who goes by the one-name identity of Karoline plays a writer, Katie, who has published a book about and against the Chinese Exclusion Act. It has been optioned by Hollywood.

The opening scene finds her in the office of a Hollywood deal man--a producer--who is seeking to get it produced as a streaming series. He has the slippery feel of so many of his kind who have been portrayed on screen, stage, tv, and streaming. Gradually, Katie senses that her screenplay she adapted from her book is going to be massively rewritten and reshaped in the highly anticipated manner that so often is the way this process pans out.

The way this impacts on Katie and her partner, Malcolm, however, proves to be the most interesting part of the play, because it's less predictable. In fact, although the deal man, Harry, is well played by Josh Stamberg, but after a while, one only expects him to move further in the direction described by one critic: "But when a Hollywood bigwig named Harry (Josh Stamberg) and his associates strip the series of historical accuracy and fill it with racist stereotypes, Katie reassesses her Faustian bargain." 

The play is a problem play in the best Shavian tradition, although Arena has labelled it as one of the Power Plays it is presenting, which appears to mean that it explores how power affects the lives and careers of marginalized groups as it "delves into how Hollywood misrepresents, suppresses and distorts Asian American history."

I thought the play was generally successful in what it set out to do and provided a good dramatic experience. It would be excellent if it received more productions so its presentation of history and how it is received today can be transmitted to a wider public.

'Reviewing the Situation'

Most of us prefer to put off fretting about funerals.  This often unhappy topic arises now because I attended two such events this week--one a Catholic funeral mass for a man who was a memorable character and the other a memorial service conducted under secular auspices for a wonderful woman, stepdaughter of a close friend, who passed away far too early at 45.

I realized how the person leading the proceedings--religious or otherwise--makes all the difference in how you feel after the occasion. There was nothing exceptional about the content of the religious ceremony itself for my friend in his 60's, who died overseas on a bike trip of a sudden heart attack, except for the unusually perceptive eulogy delivered by one of his daughters, who happens to be a veterinarian, and who noted that he father had encouraged her interest and love of animals.

The deceased had a powerful personality, often expressed by slapping me (and others) on the back when he entered a room where I was present. I thought of the character played by Jackie Gleason on his television show: Charlie Bratton, "the Loudmouth." He would loudly enter a lunch counter eatery and seeing Art Carney eating lunch at the counter, playing a completely meek colleague, would slap him on the back and ask at high volume: "What's that slop you're eating?" 

Nevertheless, my friend was a good-hearted guy, who worked for many years in addiction counseling and management. Only a few years before his sudden death, he had set out to earn his Ph.D. and managed to do just that quite speedily. He was someone who was more than helpful in threshing out a problem I or others might have.

Most significantly, this service benefited from the all-around encouraging and pleasant attitude and bearing displayed by the priest presiding over the mass. He is a Monsignor and he made everyone--including those like myself who are not Catholic--welcome and included. It happened to be a day where in the Baltimore-Washington metro area, the air quality reached Code Maroon, the highest level of bad air quality which had not been reached within living memory. The Monsignor twice referred to the air situation outside when he observed that this was not a day for an outdoor service and that in view of the air, he would forego ending the mass with the traditional incense. He then announced he would substitute a "Jewish Kaddish prayer".

That did take me by surprise as I mused to myself whether he was about to burst into the Hebrew text that is recited near the end of most Jewish services by mourners. In lieu of the now-vanished Latin in the church, Hebrew? As it happened, it was a prayer in English that speaks in the voice of the departed and asks those present to remember the departed one in all seasons. 

The service for my friend's stepdaughter was held at the private school which she attended and was where she made many life-long friends. (My daughter attended the same school seven years later.) The school clearly meant a great deal to her because of all those strong and lasting friendships. Two of her closest college friends spoke about how much they enjoyed living and playing on teams with her, and a high school friend told of how much she had gained from the relationship. The women did keep noting that there were limits on their public recollections because of "appropriateness." Husband and brother spoke, and her brother by adoption spoke with quiet eloquence but briefly about how she had welcomed to him to the family. 

She had spent her career in special needs education, dealing with autism, in particular. Seeing how she had brought so much pleasure, humor, and good feeling to everyone she had known, I found the testimony of her colleagues at the school where she taught and helped administer very believable and moving. 

It brought to mind another post-funeral colloquy. This occurred outside St. Patrick's in New York between two teammates of the late Babe Ruth, whose funeral it was. One player said it was so hot outside the cathedral on this Manhattan summer day that he would really like a cold beer right then.

"So would the Babe," responded his teammate.

 

'You Hurt My Feelings'

You Hurt My Feelings is one of those pictures that is worth seeing despite its having enough shortcomings to keep it from being excellent. Julia Louis-Dreyfus rarely disappoints me. She was the one of the Seinfeld crew who made you feel good. I haven't seen everything else she's done but she carries this pic. In my view, the theme of the movie was not the title but instead might have been better expressed as "everyone's lying to everyone else." 

There's also a heavy dose of reality in the theme, which alternatively could be "none of you are as good at what you're doing as you think you are." Tobias Menzies, as Don, Louis-Dreyfus's husband to her Beth, keeps telling her that her new book is superb. Her sister Sarah tell her actor husband Mark that he's coming across wonderfully in his rehearshals for the new play he's in. Beth tells her son that he's great at everything he does in school and out. 

Don, a therapist, tells his subjects that they have to fix their own problems. It's not entirely clear what his role is. Soon enough, they all find their false images crashing down in disaster. Only Sarah seems to have a level head of sorts and she is surprised when something turns out right for her. Jeannie Berlin plays the mother of the two sisters and has a fun time in a clichéd role in which she offhandedly aims to undermine their aspirations. (I recall her as Charles Grodin's new bride in The Heartbreak Kid,where she was memorable, particularly in making a mess of consuming an egg salad sandwich. I believe she's Elaine May's daughter.)

Things turn around a bit too patly, à la Hollywood. Nicole Holofcener, the director, writer, and producer, does almost make this seem like one of those introspective French films, but this isn't quite an Eric Rohmer episode. Maybe something like a Wes Anderson pic. There's some dragging moments, but in 93 minutes, not that many.

Doing Detroit

I've been to Detroit before. I visited some friends from collestadiage who now were pursuing graduate degrees at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and recall my one and only trip with them to Tiger Stadium, which I remember as a classic old ballpark. It had its own peculiar design features and had the nice flavor of an old stadium--it had previously been known as Briggs Stadium and Navin Field. On a later trip when we were showing my daughter campuses all over, we also took in the new ballpark. Comerica Park, which I remember as one of the better-designed new stadia. 

This time, the Tigers left on a road trip the day before we arrived, so no ball today. But I did see for the first time the Detroit Institute of Art, which is one of the fine museums in the U.S. The collection is solid, and I only took in the large American art section and the significant early European (Renaissance and Medieval) as well as the Dutch Golden Age. There also are good modern and contemporary galleries. The museum also has strong Egyptian and Greek and Roman divisions. 

As with other older Midwestern cities who boasted well-heeled captains of industry in their day but now have often fallen on more challenging times--St. Louis is another--the late 19th and earlier 20th century movers and shakers, used their wealth to endow the arts. So Detroit's art museum holds both superb examples of various great artistic periods and enough of an endowment to acquire newer masterpieces--or paintings they hope will become such.

The DIA can also claim to have the finest set of Diego Rivera murals installed on the four walls of a huge hall. Unlike New York, where some of Rivera's finest murals, in the newly-built Rockefeller Center, were destroyed by the supposed art aficionado Nelson Rockefeller because he wouldn't tolerate Rivera's clearly left-wing political flavor imparted to his murals, the Detroit aristocracy recognized or decided to live with Rivera's magnificent modern-day frescoes.

There's also a room of Rembrandts, usefully sharing the gallery with works attributed to his workshop or his school. The real Rembrandts are wonderful,  but in this display, it was fascinating to see how he influenced his closest followers. The representation of other Dutch artists like Frans Hals and the great landscape painters, such as Van Ruisdel and several others, is also strong. Later great painters such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, and especially Cezanne, are present with truly superb examples of their work. The curators assembled a very comprehensive gallery of Picassos, from the Rose and Blue periods,all the way through the next several decades. 

We also went through the Motown Museum, chronicling the origins and triumphs of that marvelous musical enterprise, from Smokey Robinson and Martha Reeves and the Vandellas through the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, the Four Tops, and so many others. Music fills the air as you see where Berry Gordy started the operation and brought it to its peak. I found it wonderful that not only did the late Michael Jackson donate his famous black fedora and jeweled glove, but accompanies them with a $125,000 contribution to the museum. It also was illuminating to learn about all the supremely talented behind-the-scenes talent that made the continuing Motown production of a seeemingly endless procession of hit songs and stage shows as well as films happen.

We dined at a magnificent old mansion restaurant, the Whitney, which offered a nice seafood boil served out in its garden. I did consume a "Coney Island"--Detroit's version of a hot dog, loaded with kethup, onions, mustard, and chili. Overdone in the view of this original Coney Island chauvinist: having a dog with strong deli mustard and hot sauerkraut at the first Nathan's on Surf Avenue remains for me the sine qua non of hot doggery.

FDR--Another Depiction

A good friend recommended that I watch the docudrama on FDR on the History Channel. I’d seen the one they’d done a while back on Grant, which was good. The one on FDR, however, left me feeling that while it likely illuminated FDR’s amazing career for many who had not really known much about him, it added little new to what we generally are aware about his life. 

That he was one of the very best presidents—I’d rank him with Lincoln and Washington—is clear. Those who didn’t like him were political and economic opponents he rightly labeled “economic royalists” (in a marvelous speech where he “welcomed their hate.” He saved the nation economically and probably politically as well. He also did more than anyone for the now truly benighted middle class. 

And he was aware of what was happening worldwide during the 1930’s and also that eventually the isolationist-focused USA would have to take the lead in demolishing the Axis powers. He knew, too, that the US was not yet ready to follow him in supporting the last holdout in Europe—Britain. During World War II, he also knew that he didn’t have the political backing to open the immigration gates to refugees who met their deaths when they were unable to get to the US. 

The History Channel program suffered from mixing historic photos with acting by performers who did not at all resemble, for example, either Franklin or Eleanor Roosevelt. It lent an air of strangeness to the docudrama because one of FDR’s strongest attributes was his distinctive voice and how he used it. This was also true of Eleanor: often today, her voice sounds wildly high-pitched and more aristocratic than even FDR’s, but that added to her amazing ability to win over audiences and represent the often-unrepresented. 

The program, however, did discuss FDR’s ability to work around obstacles even by subterfuge. I’ve just spent a few days in Detroit and happened to find a reference in the list of tourist sites to the National Shrine of the Little Flower Basilica in Royal Oak, Michigan. Some may recall that this was the pulpit of the more than notorious priest, Charles Coughlin, who is remembered today as one of the major demagogues of the 1930’s. 

Coughlin changed his political views a number of times, moving from being pro-FDR to being an America Firster. He was opposed to communism, socialism, and, yes, capitalism, because he claimed to speak to and for the working class. He never changed his rampantly antisemitic views and acquired a radio audience that amounted to many millions. 

 

When his demagoguery became both more extreme and seemingly popular, FDR took steps against him. He sent Joseph P. Kennedy to see what could be done to get the Catholic Church hierarchy to deal with Coughlin. The Bishop of Detroit had been a Coughlin supporter but when a new bishop (later Cardinal) Mooney was installed, he was inclined to limit Coughlin’s activities other than his serving as a parish priest. 

But FDR didn’t rely solely on Kennedy. He also drew in Bishop (later Cardinal) Spellman of New York and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli, soon to be Pope Pius XII. These were all, including Kennedy, extremely conservative men, but they responded to FDR’s efforts, and Coughlin was off the air by the late 30’s. All of this was done quietly but apparently most effectively. 

Many of his maneuvers were mentioned on the program—such as FDR’s inviting King George VI and Queen Elizabeth to an American-style picnic at Hyde Park when they visited in 1939. It noted that the King was not a fan of hot dogs but went along with saying how much he liked them. And most significantly, it propounded FDR’s genius for using language and images that the public could grasp and accept. A great example was his likening Lend-Lease supplying Britain with desperately needed planes and tanks to one’s coming a neighbor’s aid when his house was on fire by providing a garden hose. 

We will never have a president like FDR again, because today, the media would depict him as too physically-challenged for the job. He was the man who rose to the occasions—both the Depression and World War ii. It is tragic that we have not seen his like since his passing in 1945.

 

Baseball and Blume

It was a doozer, as the late Johnny Most might've put it, had it been played on the hardwood at the Boston Garden, but this happened at Nats Park. Local nine surprised the sprinkled assemblage of onlookers--the only even mainly populated sections were the high-priced seats.Yes, trailing 5-1 at the 7th inning stretch, they put together five runs to take a perilous 6-5 lead. 

And it almost worked--until the visiting Padres were down to their last out, top of the 9th, and then, disaster, out of the park, 8-6, and a deflated Natpack--actually the  cheerleaders bearing those-named shirts were a paltry two at the stretch break--folded. I started to recall the palmy days at the Polo Grounds in '62 when the question was how many ways the Mets could find to lose.

These guys--none of whom were in the lineup last season--now make it more interesting yet frustrating: they have shown they can put together 5-run rallies but still figure out a way to blow it. By the ninth, the starter, Irwin, had been long gone. He seemed most notable for his lack of control, or else someone forgot to turn on the "Don't Walk" flashing light. The bullpen had performed well recently but someone put in a guy labeled the closer--this worthy was neither Lee Smith nor Mariano Rivera.

A perfect day for ball--4:05 start and sun but still a whiff of wind just often enough to feel comfortable. Even stopped grumbling about the increasing infelicities of attending a game at Nats Park (probably the same all over the majors with the rising focus on making everything work easier for management and more and more annoying and time-wasting for fans).

Make the mistake, if you're carrying a handbag, of bringing it. You end up outside a row of tiny lockers way around the side of the outside of the park, struggling to focus on a QR code to download a program and enter your credit card digit by digit while your hear the lineups being announced and the anthem resounding inside. Last year I figured out how to download my tickets--God forbid you want to print them out--no can do.

Remember when a vendor would come by with a tank full of hot water out of which he tonged a hot dog which may not have been gourmet but which was hot, with mustard swabbed on it? Now, you fight your way to the concourse to pick up a dog or a sausage--either guaranteed to be cold by the time you get it to your seat. Oh: it costs close to a ten-spot (or a Hamilton, as an ancient vaudeville comic had it).

Probably should have gone for a half-smoke at the Ben's Chili Bowl outlet; suspect even that wouldn't haven't hit the spot, but maybe it wouldn't have been sitting on the rack as all the offerings at the other stands were. You can rarely get a soda in the seats but there's a guy who will flip a miniature vodka or bourbon into a cup of lemonade. End of screed.

Celebrated 53 years wed with a visit to the Avalon where the main screen featured Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret, a cinematic rendering of Judy Blume's classic preteen story, which, no, I didn't read when growing up, not because I was a guy, but because by 1970 or later, when it appeared, I had already graduated law school.

The picture was nicely done. The women for obvious reasons are the principal characters; well-played by Rachel McAdams (Mom), Abby Ryder Fortson (title character), and Kathy Bates (Grandma 1). Everyone else fit into their places. Found it sobering to see Mia Dillon as the second grandma. Saw her only 42 years ago on Broadway in 1981 in Beth Henley's play, Crimes of the Heart. She played the youngest of the three sisters who were the leads with Lizbeth MacKay and Mary Beth Hurt. J. Smith-Cameron later made her debut in Mia Dillon's role, and Holly Hunter made hers replacing Mary Beth Hurt. 

Usually coming-of-age pictures, involving preteen girls or boys, make me cringe. This adaptation of Blume's novel was excellent, however; very few cringe-worthy moments and some good laughs, too. As it happened, the only cringe moments for me were the depiction of Jewish synagogue ("temple") scenes. Probably it's because I find these embarrassing, unlike the Black church scene and the Catholic confession scene. I did start thinking that a couple who entered a mixed  (religion) marriage in the late '60s-early '70s would not have seemed as naive about religion, especially when the mother's parents cut her off entirely.

I did get a chuckle, however, when the parents kept reiterating that they were not raising their daughter with a religion, preferring that she choose one or none when she became an adult, that Margaret kept offering personal entreaties to the God of her persuasion. 

The one aspect of the pic that struck me to raise a question was whether this "nice" New Jersey suburb in the '70s was quite as racially integrated as Hollywood would have you believe. Coulda been, shoulda been -- but probably not.

 

 

Road Company Plays An Old Favorite

You might be surprised that I spent this Saturday afternoon at a matinee at the National Theatre, D.C., of My Fair Lady. The show was playing here for a few days on a national road tour of the Bartlett Sher production that played originally at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, in Lincoln Center, New York City.

Sher has directed quite a few successful shows. Among those I've seen in New York were his revival, the first, of South Pacific, and the Aaron Sorkin adaptation of To Kill A Mockingbird. Also directed by Sher were revivals of The King an I and Fiddler on the Roof, as well as the Broadway production of the drama Oslo. He's also directed some opera--Tales of Hoffmann and Le Comte Ory--at the Met in New York, as well as film of Rigoletto.

My experience with My Fair Lady includes seeing the movie, excellent except for the well-known Hollywood misstep of using Audrey Hepburn, whose singing had to be dubbed by someone who could sing, instead of Julie Andrews, whose career took off when she first sang Wouldn't It Be Loverly in the original My Fair Lady Broadway production in 1955. I hadn't seen the show on stage for ages, however, and what makes it different from other shows for me is that I remember each and every lyric from my listening to the LP about a zillion times.

There's a well-known story about Rex Harrison trying to turn down the offer to play Henry Higgins by telling Moss Hart, the director, that he didn't sing. Hart, who had worked with Kurt Weill (Lady in the Dark) and knew all about the sprechsang (speak sung) in Weill's The Threepenny Opera and other works, had Lerner & Loewe pen a bunch of great songs that Harrison could supposedly just speak--heck, he and everyone else who's played the role did sing a little.

For me, Loewe's Viennese lilt carries the show from wonder to wonder in a terrific score. Loewe was an unassuming man whom I was luck enough to meet at the Lambs, where my dad belonged, and where Loewe met Lerner in 1942. The meeting resulted in Paint Your Wagon, Brigadoon, and after My Fair Lady, there were Camelot and Gigi (the latter a movie). Loewe retired after that, happy with a wonderful career on Broadway, and lived to be 88; Lerner married many times, went on to write more shows, including On A Clear Day You Can See Forever with Burton Lane, composer of Finian's Rainbow.

This time, I truly enjoyed listening carefully to Lerner's lyrics, which I knew before they were sung. They are clever and enjoyable, and often are in a class with the greats: Larry Hart, Cole Porter, and Ira Gershwin. Other things I thought about for the first time: the character of Alfred P. Doolittle, who gets the two great songs--With a Little Bit of Luck and Get Me to the Church on Time--is pure Shaw, especially his lines criticizing middle-class morality. 

Shaw, by the way, was in no hurry to let anyone put music to his Pygmalion. He did select Lerner & Loewe, however, over Rodgers & Hammerstein and others who had been trying to win his favor. Stanley Holloway, the original in the part, was inimitable, but Michael Hegarty, our Alfie, was excellent, especially in the lengthy Get Me to the Church production number. By the way, a fine performer, Norbert Leo Butz, played the part in Sher's original Lincoln Center revival, now on tour of which this run in D.C. is a stop. I saw Butz here some years ago at the Warner Theatre as the M.C. in Cabaret, in which he also excelled.

I was worried about Madeleine Powell, the Eliza, because Wouldn't It Be Loverly didn't take off for me a la Julie Andrews. But Ms. Powell showed that she had real pipes when she pulled off high notes in several songs, finishing with a great soprano flash in Without You right near the finale. Jonathan Grunert was a very good Henry Higgins, essaying a role Harrison made his own on Broadway and in the movie. John Adkison was a fine Col. Pickering, a part perfectly played in the original by Robert Coote and then equally well presented by Wilfred Hyde-White in the movie.

My Fair Lady is a long show--3 1/2 hours by my measure. Back in 1955, it followed the traditional route to Philadelphia and, I believe, New Haven, respectively the month-long and week-long fine tuning stops. It was probably the great Moss Hart's finest production and the one for which I suspect he got the least credit because the show seemed to play all by itself--never the truth however much it sounds right.

I looked up the Lincoln Center cast and was delighted to see that it featured the fabulous Diana Rigg, Mrs. Peel of the original Avengers, in the marvelous small role of Mrs. Higgins. Daniel James Canady was our Zoltan Karpathy, and for me, he couldn't have the impact that the virtuoso Theodore Bikel had in the movie. 

All in all, I just had a wonderful time immersed in My Fair Lady for the afternoon. I rank it with South Pacific, which I saw at the Lincoln Center revival, directed  as mentioned by Sher, for having a perfect score, no clinkers. (Phil Silvers once did a fantastic bit about an actor who wanted the sing "Captain Andy" (playing Captain Andy) which probably was the only dud song in Showboat and is now usually cut from the already long show.)

So what was my favorite song? It was, is, and always will be Show Me. When The Lambs held a gala evening celebrating Lerner and Loewe, Show Me was the song all the theatrical pros in the ballroom demanded Julie Andrews sing. It just has everything a song in a musical should have.

l

Everything About the Oscars

 It's always a trip when Hollywood goes off on one of its periodic jags. That's what happened, I suggest, at this year's Oscars. Last night, we went to see Everything Everywhere All at Once, which won seven Oscars, including Best Picture, Actress, Director(s), Supporting Actor, and Supporting Actress. To me, it was mildly entertaining in terms of mixing reality and imagined reality, plenty of martial arts action, and some introspection into the lead character, Evelyn Wang, played by Michelle Yeoh.

But in my jaundiced view, this was not Best Picture material. I didn't see all or possibly even a majority of the nominees, given that there are now ten every year, but I did see All Quiet on the Western Front and Tár. I would've picked either of them before Everything etc.  

All Quiet is the second remake of an original c. 1930 pic based on Erich Maria Remarque's famed World War I novel. The 1930, produced less than two years after Remarque's novel was published in 1928, featured a well-regarded performance by Lew Ayres. Most opposition to the 1930 picture was in Germany by the Nazis who aimed to sabotage its release with disrupting its showings; they unfortunately succeeded. The 1979 remake, with Richard Thomas, Ernest Borgnine, Donald Pleasance, and Patricia Neal, was a TV film that had a limited theatrical release and was generally well-received.

The current German production version has been well received in the U.S. and, in fact, everywhere, except Germany. German critics felt it took excessive liberties with the plot of the classic novel and in general, were not impressed. I thought it was somewhat long, just as Everything etc. was. However, All Quiet held my attention and seemed very well made for a war film that focuses mostly on action scenes.

 Tár was very compelling because mostly of Cate Blanchett's bravura performance in the title role. She is a female conductor who has made it to the highest level of the musical world--I believe she is supposed to be conducting the Berlin Philharmonic as the picture opens. She plays a complex character who may or may not have sexually harassed a younger woman and who proceeds to get into conflicts with her wife and some other colleagues. She effectively is canceled and at the end, is starting to rebuild her career. Blanchett is fantastic and really deserved the Oscar this year, not that Yeoh wasn't excellent.

Hollywood has a tendency to embrace trendy productions that come off as wild and woolly. I admit that some of the camera work and the quasi-imagined scenes are compelling, yet, to me, Everything as a whole did not deliver on its apparent objectives. Rarely does any picture that wins a slew of Oscars deserve all of them. Some years see Hollywood expressing some discernment in recognizing one performer for acting and a different film for directing, for example. 

The "industry" received deserved criticism for its failure to cast black and Asian performers over the years, and for racist depictions as well. This year, the Academy membership, rightly expanded in terms of ethnic presence, seemed  determined to show that Hollywood had reformed. Movies made by Asians, especially Japan, and Europeans have often proved to be far more accomplished than traditional Hollywood fare. 

I've previously written here that Steven Spielberg's The Fabelmans was good but not great. Judd Hirsch, a fine actor, did deserve a supporting actor award for his cameo as the lead's (young Spielberg) real uncle, for which he was nominated.

In my view, the best movie, which wasn't nominated for Best Picture, was the British production, Living, with Bill Nighy, a fantastic actor who was nominated for Best Actor and never mentioned by anyone during the Oscarcast, except to show him as a nominee who was present in the theater. He gave a fabulous performance as an English civil servant in the postwar early 1950's who realizes that he has never allowed himself to enjoy life after he gets a diagnosis from his physician that could not be worse. This was far from the only great picture or play that he has starred in. 

The Academy surprised many by nominating Andrea Riseborough for Best Actress for starring in To Leslie, a film which got zero attention but somehow, her performance was seized upon by some big-name performers, including Blanchett, who promoted it in the closing weeks before nominations were decided. I haven't seen her picture but although I suspect she was excellent, I've now seen Nighy enough times to regard him as the finest unawarded actor of our time.