FELA! The Musical

Performance Date: 01.13.10
Eugene O'Neill Theatre

In the lobby, I hear music coming from the theater and I think maybe I’m in the wrong place.  Did I perhaps wander into a concert venue?  I check the sign next to Will Call – FELA! – nope this is the right place.  Did I get here late?  Has it started?  1:45pm.  Fifteen minutes early for the Wednesday matinee.  Hmm, okay.

I walk into the theater and now I understand.  It’s a party as soon as you enter.  Live music is coming from a band on stage – African drums, jazz horns, and something electric rolling together in a forward-moving syncopation.  Women in short, ornamented skirts stand near the wings, rolling their hips and popping their behinds to the beat.  Men in leisure suits and fedoras saunter about, take a stroll down the catwalk that extends from the stage along one wall of the theater.  The house itself is decked out too.  Projections of newspaper headlines mix with murals and masks on every wall.  Strings of lights are hung from the ceiling all the way into the balcony.

I have entered The Shrine, the program tells me.  Fela Kuti’s Nigerian hot spot of the late 1970’s.  The bar is open, I’m further informed, and I am welcome to drink in my seat.  Okay, I see.  We’re trying to create something a little different here on the B-way today.  Alright, I’m feeling it.

The show begins and the actor playing Fela addresses us exuberantly as patrons of his nightclub.  I enjoy his tight-voweled West-African speech.  It’s as staccato and musical as Fela’s songs.  And I’m enjoying him, our Fela.  I’m way up in the balcony but his charisma is reaching me.  I’m guessing this is how the real Fela became such a legend and political icon.  He had things to say, and talent, but he must also have had charm.

The lights are still on in the house and I suppose I should have taken this as a clue.  Because before I know it we have arrived at audience participation time.  Everybody on their feet.  Everyone get up.  We’re going to learn how to move our hips.  Yep, that’s right.  This Wednesday matinee audience of blue hairs and tourists is about to learn how to pop a booty. 

The reluctance is palpable.  Especially up in the thin air of the balcony.  We’re a little more exposed up here.  Not as many people.  The dancers and musicians aren’t so close.  It’s a little harder to argue that we’ve been taken over by the rhythm or the moment.   I’m torn.  I really want to get down with this.  If I were down in the orchestra among the masses I’m pretty sure I’d be full-on rump-shaking, even though I’m here alone.  I mean, I could use a good rump-shaking.  Up here in the balcony, though, I’m in the first row.  Everyone behind can see me.  I’m not sure I want to give them all a show.  Which is strange because I rock out on the cardio machines on the gym all the time.  Full on dork disco moves on the arc trainer and everything.  Don’t seem to care there.  For some reason I’m caring here.

Thankfully, two lovely women behind me are extremely ready to make this happen.  They are on their feet and whooping, hips rocking around the faces of their clocks, I’m sure, though I don’t turn around to look.  I use their enthusiasm as cover and try to get a little groove on.  All I can help thinking though is how I wish I’d come here on a Saturday night.  When the audience might be a little more tipsy and, well, younger.  Maybe a little less white.  No offense to my father’s people, but I’m pretty sure I’m looking at a couple busloads of shocked Oregonians down there.  No, wait, look.  There are a couple of them doing it up.  Okay cool, it actually looks like people are trying to give it a little something here.  Doing their best.

Which is good because the performers in the show are definitely giving it up.  I’m really enjoying it.  The guy playing Fela is hypnotic.  So are all those ornamentally-skirted backsides up there.  And I think I'm getting a sense, maybe, of what it might have been like in 1970’s in Nigeria.  What the import of these songs are.  I’m getting a sense.   I'm feeling I can guess at how the defiance, pride, and subversion of the lyrics might have fed people.  How Fela’s lyrics – coupled with this driving mix of funk and jazz and African chants, coupled with Fela himself – might have provoked a release in people.  Caused in them a need to act.  An explosive need.  Yeah I’m getting a bit of a sense of that.  I’m feeling I can guess at that right now.  Yeah, I’m feeling it.

The Duke of MIlan

Performance Date: 01.11.10
Red Bull Theater

I went to see a staged reading of The Duke of Milan at Red Bull Theater on Monday night.  Even with the talented cast, a staged reading (which, per union rules, has limited rehearsal and requires actors to hold scripts in hand) of this lesser known Jacobean play didn’t really provide me with enough art/craft/process meat to chew on as I usually do in this blog.  Fortunately, there’s still plenty to write about.  Because how many of you did I lose with the word Jacobean?  

Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Unless you are a specific type of theater, literature, or history nerd, the word Jacobean probably induces a near total shut down of sensory perception.  I say “lesser known Jacobean play,” you fall asleep with your eyes open.  I, however, like to pose as this type of theatrical and literary nerd.  I’m weird like that.  But the truth is that aside from the later Shakespeare plays, I don’t know very much this period in English theater.

Let’s play a game.  I’m going to write down everything I think I know about Jacobean tragedy and then I’m going to Google it and see if I was right.  I promise not to cheat.  Jacobean tragedy is dark, bloody, and gory, with lots of killing.  There is a great deal of betrayal, revenge, madness, and even incest.  Other words that come to mind are ornate and twisty, and it makes me think of the colors black, gold, and red.  I see lots of tall sharp collars behind women’s heads, and men who could probably be teleported to the low, gritty, crime-infested underbelly of Guy Ritchie’s modern day London and no one would notice.  People would just think they were violent blokes who liked to wear tights.

Now to Google.

Okay, not bad.  Although I can’t find any scholars who describe Jacobean drama as “ornate and twisty with lots of black and gold,” my impressions don’t seem to be far off.  So my next question is – why aren’t we all getting down with our Jacobean selves?   Doesn’t bloody revenge, madness, and betrayal seem like a rollicking good way to pass the time?  We like it in our cinema, so why don’t we see more of it on the stage?

But maybe this line of questioning is off base.  After all, Red Bull Theater has shot to prominence in NYC over the past five years as a theater company specifically focused on presenting Jacobean plays.  Their productions of The Revenger’s Tragedy and Edward the Second both enjoyed successful extended runs in Off-Broadway houses.  Clearly they must be doing something right.  They must be serving an unmet, bloodthirsty need in the theater-going public.

Still, there’s something fusty in me that suspects – and then resents – a general lack of appreciation for Jacobean drama.  I think it’s because of my love for Shakespeare.  I don’t really associate Shakespeare with all that dark, gory, thugliness, but he did write in that era and my resentful suspicions must really be in defense of him.  I love Shakespeare’s plays because when I speak the words of his characters, they trigger in me feelings that are very human and have clear emotional logic.  His characters make sense to me on an empathic, human level, which I believe is entirely due to the words and rhythms Shakespeare gives them.   I’m going out on a limb here, but I don’t think depicting empathetic humanness through language was the concern of many other Jacobean playwrights.  They seem to be focused elsewhere.  Perhaps on depicting a type of despair in the human condition, on depicting the bloody unfairness of it all.

Maybe that’s the disconnect – if there is one.  Maybe it’s easier for folks to connect with four hundred year old plays – with the “old timey” language and costumes and customs – when that human empathy is front and center.  Maybe it’s harder to stomach the old timey-ness when it’s all serpentine plot and bloody dark revenge.  Perhaps audiences prefer their revenge straightforward -- not so ornate and twisty (ha-HA!).  But as I say, I’m talking out of turn here.   I don’t have a lot of Jacobean play-going experience to draw on.  Looks like I’ll have to check out Red Bull’s Duchess of Malfi in February to see what I can learn.

The Last Cargo Cult

Performance Date: 12.13.09
The Public Theater

Oftentimes you hear a director or filmmaker say, “Well, what I really am is a storyteller.”  And to that I say, “No you’re not.”  I get what they mean, and they’re not wrong per se.  But to me, a storyteller is a person sitting in a chair telling you a story.  And that’s it.  No other actors, no jump cuts or soundtracks.  Just the person, the chair, and what they say.

By this definition, Mike Daisey is a storyteller par excellence.  His recent work, The Last Cargo Cult, features Daisey seated behind a desk, on which are a few sheets of yellow paper and a bottle of water, and that’s it.  For the whole show.  All two and a half hours.  And from this comfortable perch, Daisey tells us a rather uncomfortable story about our culture’s relationship to money.  It’s thoroughly engaging, funny, and significant, and I encourage everyone to go see it.  He’s going on tour.  Check your local listings.

It takes a certain talent to reel an audience in with just your words.  My boyfriend and I took note of this after attending a Moth-inspired birthday party a few months back.  All the guests were asked to bring a story to share, and the best one belonged to a friend named Brian.  His was a long and outrageous tale about exploring Disneyland in an altered state of consciousness while on a high school field trip.  It would have been a good story coming out of anyone’s lips, but Brian made it a work of art.  Rather than go the obvious route and deliver his nefarious account with bombastic showmanship, Brian spoke quietly at first.  He sat there with a soft look in his eye, as he conjured the images from his memory and set about describing them to us.  He took his time, but not unduly.  He offered detail upon detail, and in so doing captured nuance and tone.  But most of all, he allowed the memory of the event to affect him in the retelling of it.  So that as the story progressed, we too felt the exhilaration, the wildness, and the fractured absurdity of his journey, as if it were in fact happening to us.

That’s not easy.  It takes confidence.  How many times have you tried to convey a story that you know is hilarious or otherwise incredible, and yet you find yourself skipping over things, rushing it along?  You get skittish when your audience doesn’t immediately respond the way you want them to, and you give the story short shrift.  Your fear gets the better of you and disappointment wins the day.  Not so with Brian.  He took the risk to soften up and take his time, confident it would pay off.  Of course, he had told his tale before and knew what parts to enhance or leave out, an advantage over us skittish story-rushers.  But that is part of the art as well.  Trying again after you flop the first time.  Honing the story over time.

Mike Daisey, of course, enjoys all the same advantages as Brian in The Last Cargo Cult, and more so.  He’s a storyteller by profession and crafts his monologues for performance over long periods of time.   While maybe a little less thrilling than the high-wire act of informal storytelling, the overall effect of Daisey’s expertise is one of relaxation.  He sits in his chair behind the desk, flips over a yellow sheet of paper (serving more as theatrical convention than crib notes), opens his mouth, and you immediately know you’re in good hands.  Which is helpful when you’re simultaneously getting the rug pulled out from under you regarding our collective faith in the abstraction we call money.

I guess what really fascinates me most about storytelling, though, is that it’s an act of mutual creation.  I’ve written about this idea before, in my posts for Our Town and Los Elementos, so it’s clearly an important concept for me.  In storytelling, there are two imaginations at play, the teller’s and our own.  And there’s this double-translation that happens – sounds a little far out, but follow me.  An event happens to the storyteller, which logs in her mind as images.  She then translates these images – her imagination – into words.  We hear the words, and our brains translate them back into images – our own images this time, our own imagination at work.  And it is actually the experience of our own imagination that is so exhilarating when we hear a story.  But it’s an experience we could not have had without the storyteller.

This is exactly what happens when we read a book.  Or see a painting.  Or engage with any art.  The artists help us experience our own imaginations in ways we would not be able to without them.   And yes, this includes directors and filmmakers.  So I guess they are storytellers after all.  Go figure.

How to Be a Good Italian Daughter (In Spite of Myself)

Performance Date: 12.11.09


Cherry Lane Theater

I wish I could do any impression as well as Antoinette LaVecchia can do her mother.  It makes me angry.  These people with parents from other countries are so lucky.  Not only do they possess a natural ear for homeland dialects, but their family stories are so much funnier because they get to use accents.

And accents are funny.  Is that simplistic?  Do I offend?  Well too bad, because it’s true.  Here’s the thing that saves it though – the funny isn’t because of some moronic delight at hearing words pronounced strangely.  The funny is because a spot-on accent is like a fast track to a specific and believable character – and that’s what real funny relies on.  Being specific and believable.

I say this like I’m a comedy expert.  Well I am.  We all are.  We all know what makes us laugh and what doesn’t.  And when someone tries to make us laugh and fails, we all pretty much know why.  We say, it was too much of a shtick, or he’s trying too hard, which basically translates to it wasn’t specific or it wasn’t believable.

Now performing comedy?  That’s a different story.  When it comes to performing comedy, I am squarely at the student level.  Sometimes I succeed at making people laugh, sometimes I don’t.  Yet when I fail – which feels awesome! – I can pretty much always track it down to that same thing.  I wasn’t specific and believable.  Whatever idea was in my head, whatever impulse I had – I didn’t commit one-hundred percent to the truth of it.

Unlike Antoinette LaVecchica, who does commit one-hundred percent to the truth in her one-woman show How to Be a Good Italian Daughter (In Spite of Myself).  Her portrayal of her Italian mother in this show is hysterical.  So complete and whole, so detailed and real, that you immediately get the sense that this must be exactly how her mother really is.  And perhaps I’m off base here, but I do suspect that the character’s accent – which was wonderful to listen to and perfect in the way only family can pull off – really might have been integral to all that wonderful specificity.  I imagine that for Antoinette, replicating the cadence, tone, and vowel sounds of her mother’s dialect must automatically come with corresponding changes to her body, face, and hands.  Or maybe I’m wrong.  But whatever the case may be, it worked.  Her portrayal was specific and believable, and the natural humor of having an overbearing, unrelenting, she loves you so much she wants to kill you for making her worry, old-country Italian mother simply rose to the surface, ready to be skimmed like so much delicious cream. 

Some favorite Mother moments:

• Her divorced actress daughter doesn’t want curtains for her new apartment.  The mother’s response?  An exasperated clapping together and clasping of her hands up to God, accompanied by her head turned away, eyes closed, and brows furrowed with vexation.
  
  
• After a protracted and infuriating battle of wills, her daughter finally consents to curtains – as long as they are white.  The mother’s response?  A humoring smile and scrunch of her nose, her head tilted and softly shaking, as she says, “No, En-do-nay, you no want white curtains.”  

  
  
• Her daughter lets the machine pick up on the umpteenth phone call that afternoon.  The mother’s response?  To cap her message with the following helpful information, delivered slowly and oh-so-dearly: “My name is Maria.  I am your mother.”
  

You may have noticed – particularly if the above examples incited shudders of recognition – that specific does not have to mean unique, and believable does not have to mean subtle.  Dear, sweet, horrible Maria is a universal character, as well as larger-than-life, and the frequent knowing laughter from the audience that night testifies that the comedy worked like a charm.

In the Next Room (or the vibrator play)

Performance Date: 12.09.09


Lyceum Theatre

If intermission at the matinee of In the Next Room (or the vibrator play) is any guide, it seems we all have a need for better conversations about sex. 

The play was not a sex farce.  It’s not even overtly about sex.  In fact, it’s a smart, well-written play (by the on-fire playwright Sarah Ruhl) about connecting authentically with oneself and one’s loved ones.  But it does feature a vibrator, and an old-timey one at that. 

Set in upstate New York in the 1880’s, at the dawn of electricity, an upstanding doctor treats women suffering from “hysteria” in the manner of the day –  by the application of “electrical massage” upon their nether regions.  I’m not making this up.  Within minutes of the application, the treatment would induce “paroxysms” and dispel “excess fluid from the womb,” which was thought to be the cause of the illness, thereby restoring the women to a more contented and relaxed state.  Again, I am not making this up.  The treatment was not understood to be sexual at all, but merely medical, and the new appliances invented for this purpose were an improvement upon the “manual treatment” that had previously been prescribed since the days of Socrates.  Hand to god.  (So to speak.)

Ah, yes.  You can imagine the natural comedy this type of setting might inspire.  And indeed it did.  But it was the laughter at intermission that really caught my attention.  As soon as the curtain fell, pockets of laughter erupted throughout the theater, and continued periodically until the lights dimmed for the second act.  These were not quiet, titillated giggles.  They weren’t even subversive, behind-the-hand snickers.  These were loud, cackling, jubilant guffaws.  From women, mostly.  Who sounded as though they must be turning to their girlfriends and gleefully releasing a roiling, pent-up joy. 

I mean, it sounded like delirious relief in there.  It sounded like women who were utterly, deliriously, happily relieved.  It was a warm atmosphere.  A casual atmosphere.  As if the formality of “going to the theatre” had been dropped, and now we were all amongst great friends.  It felt like family. 

Why this reaction?  I return to my opening statement.  I think, on some level, we all desire to have better conversations about sex.  And there’s simply no place in our culture to have them.  Not without first having to sweep aside feelings (genuine or feigned for someone else’s benefit) of embarrassment, fear, and shame.  So I think when there is a play like this, that speaks of sex humanly, there is relief.  When we see women who, due to the limits of their era’s understanding of sexual pleasure, are enjoying the rapture of their bodies innocently, there is relief.  When we are reminded that we too can enjoy the pleasures of our bodies innocently, there is relief.  And with this relief, with this collective release of pretense by an audience at a Wednesday matinee, there can come a feeling of genuine connection.  A feeling of family. 

We need theater for this reason.  We need theater because theater is a culture having a conversation with itself.  And sometimes there are conversations we just don’t get anywhere else.

The Misunderstanding

Performance Date: 11.19.09

Horizon Theatre Rep, at The Flea Theater

Have you read any Albert Camus?  I haven’t.  Did you know he wrote plays?  Me neither.  But that’s one reason I’m doing this Year of Plays.  To get me some edumacation.

But I’m gonna leave the playwright of The Misunderstanding aside.  And the director and designers (friends and relations, some of them), and most of the cast (including the lovely Ellen Crawford), to focus on the actress playing Martha.  Because she had me riveted.  Something about what she was doing, perhaps something about her, was so different.  I liked it and I wanted to puzzle out what it was.

I don’t like to bother with too much exposition about a play – I get distracted and end up in Review-land – so suffice it to say that The Misunderstanding is not unlike a Greek tragedy, with Martha as the central character.  She begins as a quiet and unassuming daughter but ends up as something of an unleashed monster.  In between, she journeys through fear, desperation, anger, rage, incredulity, and finally pretty much just goes batshit crazy.

With these circumstances, it seems any talented actress would be well set-up to give a “powerhouse” performance.  And this woman did, in my opinion, with the emphasis truly on “power.”  Power of presence, power of intention, power of voice.  She had all of it going on quietly at the start of the play.  But by the end of the play, the power was turned up a notch.  She was like a wrathful, Tolkien-esque, spirit queen who rises from the earth, opens her mouth to a gaping size, and spews out a tidal wave of biblical proportions – complete with tridents and kraken and spirit boats filled with doomed sailors – to knock her enemies down. 

I have two theories for why she was so powerful.  One, it’s the woman.  She is actually part spirit queen and the kraken is just part of her particular casting package.  Two, and I really want this to be the real reason, it’s The Alexander Technique.  I didn’t pull this out of thin air.  The woman’s bio proudly states that she teaches Alexander, and I’ve latched onto that fact as the secret behind this woman’s performance.

What is Alexander and why do I so want it to be the cause of such ferocity?  Alexander Technique is a way of working with your brain and body to improve ease and freedom of movement, balance, support, and coordination.  When you learn Alexander Technique, you essentially learn how to rewire your nervous system for better physical use.  It’s used by actors, dancers, singers, musicians, athletes, and many others, and was introduced to me by the great Frank Ottiwell and Glenn Canin at ACT.

Believing in Alexander Technique is like believing particle physics.  The evidence is there, but somehow it just feels impossible.  In Alexander, what you actually DO is so small compared to what you are trying to GET.  In Alexander, what you actually DO is merely think, merely direct your brain to give your body specific instructions, and what you eventually GET is a golf swing that breaks 300 yards, a pirouette that holds it’s center, a voice that reaches the back of the house, a presence that commands attention with no movement at all.

It’s so hard to believe that just thinking makes it so.  And in truth it takes a long time of practicing this method before the effects of Alexander truly manifest.  Which is why it feels impossible.  And while you’re working with it, all you want is a short cut.  All you want it to muscle your way to the end result.  To end-gain, in Alexander parlance.  But when you do that, you just end up with your same crappy golf swing and straining voice. 

I do believe in Alexander Technique.  I’ve seen the results, in myself and in my friends.  And yet whenever I begin to apply the lessons from Alexander to new challenges, all I want to do is skip to the end.  To end-gain.  That’s why I want this woman to have gotten what she has through Alexander.  If it is true, then she can be a beacon for me.  A shining light to help me keep the faith. 

A particle and a wave.

Ragtime

Performance Date: 11.11.09

Neil Simon Theatre

I went to see Ragtime and I liked it.  It didn’t have me at hello – like the first time I saw Les Miz or the first through fourteenth times I saw Rent (don’t judge) – but I liked it. 

I’d come in with high expectations.  After all, this is the show that got transferred to the Great White Way after a three week run in DC, giving the musical it’s first Broadway revival a scant 10 years after the original production closed.  Talk about buzz.  Plus, my friend Jay said Ragtime was one of his favorite musical scores of all time.

I’d never seen the show before, or even heard the music, so some of my enjoyment was from watching the story unfold for the first time.  But it was not only that.  I liked the performances – a dry humor from the nurturing leading lady, an unnerving intensity from her explosives expert younger brother, the easy charm of the ragtime piano-playing leading man.  The voices and the music were enjoyable.  The story had enough to it to keep me engaged.   I dug the minimal set.  All in all, I left feeling rather satisfied.

But then something funny happened.  I started comparing notes with other folks who’d seen it, and began to doubt whether I really enjoyed it after all. 

First up I polled some musical theater acquaintances.  They weren’t that impressed.  I asked what they thought of this one actor and they said his voice was “weird.”  Intrigued, I asked what they meant by that.  His voice had “no breath” and was “muscled” they reported in a way that made me sure this was a bad thing.  Now, I remember this guy’s voice being particularly strong and shiny sounding, like a trumpet hitting a high note.  In fact, as soon as he opened his mouth, I had the feeling he would be a star.  But maybe I was wrong.  Maybe shiny trumpet voices are bad and muscley.   After all, this was niche expertise, from people who know more about singing than I do. 

Next I remembered hearing about someone who saw the DC run of the production and had announced that it was “exactly like the original production” and therefore no great shakes.  Interesting.  More niche expertise, from someone who had actually seen the original production, whereas I had not.  Had I been duped by a knock-off?

Finally, I had dinner with a wonderful actress, singer, and musician friend who confided that she didn’t really like the music in Ragtime.  That she didn’t feel any of the songs really grabbed her.  Aha.  Highly valued niche expertise from a trusted friend.  Suddenly I wondered if I hadn’t gotten it all wrong.

Well dear reader, you’ll be happy to know I have shaken off this self doubt, and chosen not to believe as others do just because they might know better.  Yes, it’s an After-School Special moment, everyone.  But of course that’s not the point.  The point is that there’s something to this belief in niche expertise.  The belief that if someone is more experienced in a subject than yourself, his or her opinions are more valid than your own.  As someone who has watched After-School Specials and Flashdance, I know the experts aren’t always right.  But that doesn’t stop me from seeking out more informed thoughts than my own.  Not a bad thing necessarily, but supplanting my own judgment with someone else’s?  That’s like Junior High 101.  We’re not supposed to do that.  

Still, it’s tempting.  Maybe because we all possess niche expertise in some area or another, and when it comes to our own expert knowledge, we believe others should submit.  For example, due to my particular training as an actor, I believe tortured, emotional, Method-inspired, acting performances have absolutely no place on stage.  (Film’s another story.)  I find them horrible, indulgent, nearly offensive, and I think anyone who is impressed by them is a sucker.  You, no doubt, hold some similarly dogmatic view regarding your area of expertise, be it language poetry, Fantasy Football, neural pathways, or Season 4 of So You Think You Can Dance.  We know how deeply in contempt we hold the fools who don’t know what they’re talking about on our own turf, so perhaps we can be forgiven for not wanting to be a sucker on someone else’s.

And just for the record, I did like the show.  And yeah none of the songs grabbed me, but I liked them when I heard them.  And I still think that one actor has a knockout voice.  Muscley trumpets are where it’s at.  Mark my words.