Chris Botti, Billy Kilson-drums, Richie Goods-bassist, Leonardo Amuedo-guitarist, Billy Childs-pianist (to the left not pictures)

Chris Botti with Billy Kilson on drums. First part of the show on January 6th

Whenever I see Chris Botti and his band at the Blue Note Jazz Club (NY) or at the Tiles Center in Westbury, Long Island, at Tanglewood, at Carnegie Hall or at the Saratoga Jazz Festival, venues where I’ve seen him perform live over the years,  I’ve enjoyed watching the surrounding audience members. They are a pretty inclusive demographic bunch and their enthusiastic response always reminds me that timeless music resonates with most individuals, regardless of age, race, sex, even musical preference. Sure, we all have our favorite music styles. But some musicians are so exceptional in their craft and talent, that their technique bridges the great or lessert divides between jazz and pop, rock and classical, funk, hip-hop and blues.

Chris Botti, honing in on fabulous Billy Childs, December 27th show.

Billy Childs, pianist, composer, arranger, musical genius and Guggenheim fellow.

Caroline Campbell opening the number before Botti joins her in their duet playing Emmanuel.

Lisa Fischer, Richie Goods, Billy Kilson and Chris Botti (December 27th)

Billy Kilson, Chris Botti, Leonardo Amuedo (December 27th)

Trumpeter extraordinaire, Chris Botti, at the top of his game is such a musician. What is interesting to me about Botti’s evolution during the time I’ve become familiar with his music (last 6 years) is that it is as if he has been seamlessly breezing from opportunity to opportunity, never looking back, never taking a pause to reevaluate where he is and where he intends to go. He is just on his way and there’s no stopping him.

Digging the music as he attaches his mute. (December 27th) He asked his tour manager to bring his mute on Jan. 6th…he had left it upstairs in the Blue Note’s musicians’ lounge.

This dedication to craft is what appears to fuel Botti’s development. Certainly that and his work ethic have enabled him to move away from the stylistic niche where he began, perhaps to the chagrin of other musicians whose choices directed them along  very different paths.  However eclectic his music has become, touching upon everything from classical to pop to blues to jazz, in a melding fusion, it is his brand, his identity of being true to himself, that makes Botti a celebrated trumpeter with a global  following. I would imagine in the next five years, he will be pushing the envelope and finding himself in places where even he will be amazed he has reached.

Chris Botti, Richie Goods, bassist, Billy Kilsonm drums

Chris Botti has been growing this world wide renown since having signed on to Columbia records in 2001. His work with Paul Simon, Sting and other artists like Michael Buble, Andrea Bocelli, Josh Groban, Yo Yo Ma, Steven Tyler, et. al., and recently Barbra Streisand, has increased his star power exponentially and garnered millions in record sales. He has won various awards and three of his albums made it to #1 on Billboard‘s jazz album chart. He has been nominated four times for Grammys, twice for albums Italia and In Boston. His latest work, Impressions, which has been nominated for a Grammy in the category of Best Pop Instrumental Album is an eclectic mix of jazz, pop and other genres including music by Chopin, Gershwin, Harold Arlen, R. Kelly, Randy Newman, others and a pair of songs co-written by Botti with Herbie Hancock and David Foster.

An integral part of Botti’s shaping his music is his incredible band with whom none of his evolution would have been possible or sure. For example in his 8th year performing at the renown jazz club The Blue Note (also in Milan, Tokoyo and Nagoya, Japan) the incomparable Billy Childs and Billy Kilson are Botti’s bedrock foundation.  They have been with the Botti for years and have their own fan following and careers. Likewise, other band members have whirled in and out of Botti’s sphere, spinning their careers toward other venues for a season, like violinist Lucia Micarelli who, after an injury on tour with Botti, took time off to heal and ever since has been acting in HBO’s production about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Treme.

Billy Childs listening as Botti discusses their welcome residency at the Blue Note.

Current band members who performed with Botti at the Blue Note for three weeks, 42 performances (two shows a day) also have toured with Botti up to 300 days of the year, unless other commitments took them away for a time. Lisa Fischer joined her old buddy Mick Jagger when he took The Stones on tour for six weeks and Botti had to make do in her absence.

Yet for those who tour with Botti, the Blue Note residency is a welcome respite. First and foremost in the band is Guggenheim fellow and three time Grammy winner, pianist/composer/arranger the phenomenal Billy Childs. Next is Mr. Awesomess, kick-ass drummer Billy Kilson.  Amazing vocalist, Grammy winner and Rolling Stones singer for 18 years,  Lisa Fischer has an operatic voice range, musicality and technique bar none. The virtuoso concert violinist Caroline Campbell, the youngest person to be inducted into the Pittsburgh Jazz Hall of fame, bassist, Richie Goods and versatile world renown guitarist Leonardo Amuedo have contributed their own unique talents and have enabled the group to soar on new wings.

Botti making an ironic joke in response to an audience member’s comment about Caroline Campbell’s beauty.

Chris Botti and the brilliant Lisa Fisher

Fischer’s range melds beautifully with Botti’s sound.

Check out Botti’s website and the websites of band members Billy Childs, Billy Kilson, Lisa Fischer, Richie Goods, Leonardo Amuedo and Caroline Campbell for updates on performances and music albums. And be sure to watch the Grammys in February. After being nominated a number of times, this may be the year Botti takes home the gold.

NY Times Talks
David Carr, Gina Gershon, Matthew McConaughey, William Friedkin

Tom Stoppard, Alan Rickman, Tilda Swinton, Colin Firth, Liam Neeson, Carrie Mulligan, Gary Oldman, Helen Mirren. I had seen these talented Brits live on the stage (Broadway or Off Broadway) and in film. I appreciated their brilliance, their humor, their uniqueness, their prodigious efforts! The New York Times Talks were a venue where I witnessed these actors with their vibrant spontaneity in live interviews. Prior to attendance, I anticipated each of these Times Talks with enthusiasm. I always walked away satisfied.

Today was different. I was going to see mildly talented American actors and a director who hadn’t hit it big  since the dark ages before Twitter and Facebook. And on a blazing, torpid evening no less? Already, I was bored and annoyed with the prospects, especially since I wouldn’t be sneaking any digitals with my unobtrusive, insect-sized camera that could be whipped out and secreted away before anyone, least of all the officious, martinet ushers could bully me about it. Well, almost. At my last Times Talks go round, I was clipped by some weak mouthed serf to “not take photos.”  At his muling whine I contemplated that the next time, if there was a next time, I’d get a press pass. Unfortunately, for this round of David Carr interviews with Gina Gershon, William Friedkin and Matthew McConaughey, I couldn’t get it together in time to call the publicity department.

So here I was a coolie nonentity and in this role, I did not enact the usual routine: go early, move down front, get ready for some fun. I was hot, tired and disgruntled, a sloppy frazzle after minding the gaps and evil perspirings of  oversized Long Islanders sweltering and swining through Penn Station. Taking the train in from Kew Gardens was one more moted stupidity in addition to wearing a white Michael Kors outfit in a city where dirt grows on “the absence of colored” clothing like feathers on a chicken. What a crass ho-hum venture this promised to be: no Brits, no photos, probably no celebrity interludes (Often famous friends people the audience to shore up their buddies being interviewed and I would briefly speak to them). Rats for a crank of wasted time.

After I returned from the ladies room, noting flecks of black on my lower left pants leg, I gnashed teeth in my seat and waited for the non event. I didn’t know too much about the film Killer Joe. Nor was I hopped up about McConaughey’s latest career tweaks in embracing the “go forth and be sexy-naked” role in Magic Mike or his ominous shift to the wickedly nonchalant, indifferent, bad-ass law man Joe Cooper. I certainly hadn’t seen any of Friedkin’s opera direction, much of it far from New York’s Metropolitan Opera House and other city opera companies. His most recent endeavors were in Europe, and unless he was directing Verdi, a favorite of mine, I probably wouldn’t make it a point to go, reeling from all the other activities I’d engage in in Rome or other cities where his work might appear. Actually, I hadn’t watched a memorable Friedkin film in the last decade. But he was forgiven this because  of his incredible direction of two of the most marvelous films to come out of the 1970s, the groundbreaking, spellbinding The Exorcist and The French Connection (for which he barely used a script and which won 5 academy awards including Best Picture and Best Director).

Reflecting back to the hover over the month’s New York Times Talks’ offerings, at the time I was making arrangements, I gamed seeing whether McConaughey was as ravishing as the media and friends seemed to think. I loved him in Amistad; the film was brilliant as a historical record of the event which, like an explosion, breached institutional slavery’s pitted walls in America.  McConaughey played his lawyerly part beautifully, complementing Spielberg’s sterling actors’ ensemble, though the standout performances were Anthony Hopkins as John Quincy Adams and Spielberg find, Djimon Hounsou as Cinque.

No matter. Coming here was a mistake and now I must deal with it. Deal I did. I raged, annoyed at my unpreparedness. I vowed, if David Carr wasn’t striking fire and it was a total blackout of wits, I’d leave. Better yet, I’d catch up on my sleep, snoring my disdain to surrounding audience members. Turns out, I did take a blip when the talking heads disembodied themselves and Carr was as somnambulant as I. But overall, I’m glad I awakened for most of the discussion, if not to eventually see the NC-17 rated film, but because the director’s intellect and vision enlightened me and  I enjoyed  catching snippets of Gershon’s and McConaughey’s sage, scary talent in bringing the frighteningly human characters to life.

Killer Joe is based on a true story according to Friedkin.  A hit man is engaged to kill a family member for their stash to pay off debts or the hiree will be killed. Tracey Letts, Pultizer Prize winning playwright of August, Osage County, (film slated to open in 2013) adapted the screenplay from his play Killer Joe (1993) which has been performed in NYC and in 15 countries around the world. Friedkin, Gershon and McConaughey couldn’t sail enough accolades toward Letts for his script’s edgy,  sardonic humor and complex familial renderings. Each of the characters, in their attempts to strive beyond their  trailer trash lives and aspirations entangle themselves deeper in their own webs. The more they struggle to break the gossamer/steel chains that stick them, the more they cocoon themselves in their own demise.

In typical Friedkinesque, the story telling is macabre and surprising as it bends the envelope toward laughter and bizarreness. The characters’ human weakness wacks us silly and when we watch reality unfold, glad “that it’s not us up there”, the circumstances wrap us in the Jerry Springer moment of upending comedy. We laugh though we shouldn’t, but we can’t help ourselves because these folks are just plain dumb-ass, ego-baited, desperation-cracked ninnies. It’s the kind of humor found in Pinter’s The Caretaker. Pinter is a playwright that Letts and Friedkin admire. It is no coincidence that the relationship dynamics of the Smith family and Sheriff Joe Cooper, coupled with their foolhardiness, which plunges them in their own fetid swamp are reminiscent  of the characters and situations in Pinter’s plays.

Interesting that McConaughey and Gershon didn’t get the point of Killer Joe on a first read. They were ready to garbage the script, even though Friedkin was attached to the project.  McConaughey changed his mind after a female friend  pointed out the black (as in dark) comedy and suggested it was an amazing piece he should do. Like Gershon, he reconsidered the novel role as a boon because it was unlike any project he had accomplished before. Gershon realized she could empathize with Sharla Smith’s hungers, manipulations and mammoth insinuations as the character endeavors to reach her goals, regardless of the cost to others. Her character’s rawness and her miserable flame out were the icing on Gershon’s cake.

Friedkin praised his dream cast, including the vulnerable Emile Hirsch, the dead-pan funny Thomas Haden Church and vibrant Juno Temple for their gifted performances and right on appropriateness (mentioning he had not been as astute with his casting choices in other films). He credited McConaughey’s risk taking in accepting the  role of  Joe Cooper, which for him was contrarian and counterintuitive. Sheriff Cooper is emotionally cold, an unappealing killer on the surface. It was up to McConaughey to see his likeability and that wasn’t easy. Much easier to accept the roles he’s been doing since the 1990s. Friedkin bore out that McConaughey’s looks peg him for chick flicks. The next two generations of female audiences would appreciate his face and physique in tragic or happy love stories. Heck, he could easily age into sixty-seventy something romantic leads (He’s 42.)  and directors would be thrilled to nail him on the cross of such senior lover man roles twenty years hence. McConaughey knows that and is swimming upstream against the current of big money. He reaffirmed the shift in role choices and voiced the need to vibrate his career with twists and turns constantly moving in other directions.

At this juncture in the Talks, I had zzzed off. McConaughey is absolutely stunning in person, much better looking than in film and Gershon is interesting, but the discussion was without steam, pepper or spice. My head was thrown back in the seat, my eyelids had drifted shut, my mouth was sliding open to distill rasping throat sounds. Then I  chortled to wakefulness, startled by an audience stir and a demure announcement by a jaunty blonde in a black semi-bowler hat.  She was standing  to my left not four feet away and was interrupting David Carr’s monotone. Yeah! An intrusion upon the droning bees onstage.  Could it be? Was she an ally in my indignation against fatuous ushers and pretentious  Times’ policies?  Yes! I mentally polished my middle finger, “Take that, New York Times Talks, ha, ha!”

The frenetic and pissy blonde in the black bowler was leveling up a forbidden digital camera, pointing it straight at Gershon and McConaughey. She ambled forward proclaiming, “I am a paparazzo and I am recording you here…muffle, argh, garble.” Audience eyes turned to look in the direction of the soft, feline voice and were struck deaf by the silence of the vision. The pretty, flouncy blonde, was jiggling her naked boobs. Her perky cream white breasts flapped prodigiously, her fur flew, as she stood proudly naked claiming her glory to Carr, Gershon, McConaughey and Friedkin. The ushers and audience, were stunned in a reverent suspension of disbelief. None of us got it, except maybe for the Gershon, McConaughey and Friedkin who remained wryly nonplussed, probably used to crazy public antics that appeared like stupid pet tricks when their stars crossed the heavens. Recovering from their cloudy haze, the ushers sprang into action. Three of them scrambled to block views of her blanched T & A, which were a stark contrast with that zany, obsidian hat and redness of her lipstick. I wiped the sleep from my fogged consciousness, grabbed my insect digital and snapped as many shots of the stage as I could. By that point the ushers were distracted, shuffling her away while peeking at her savory flesh full throttle. Amazing. No one laughed, though the incident was as wacky as the dark intent of Killer Joe. Either Friedkin or Carr quipped about how her appearance enlivened the dullness of the static camera interview, which “usually reaches a lull right about now.”  Did someone hear me gently snoring in the background or see my head bobbing back in dreamland, I chuckled quietly to myself.

Onward soldiers. The rest of the “Talk” fled past with a rapidity I couldn’t gauge, beginning with Gershon wondering aloud why the woman characterized herself as a “paparazzo” as Friedkin, with erudition, supplied the derivation of the word. Then there were more particularly ominous film clips and it was time for audience questions. I thought the following information worthwhile. Friedkin did only one take for most of the scenes, throwing out the window all notions of arriving at perfection after  15-20 takes. The actors felt his immediacy created alertness and surprise; you were ready out the gate, like racehorses to the finish line, without the burden of  stale repetition. Friedkin remarked that the first movie that inspired him to pursue film craft was Citizen Kane. And if he could even begin to make a film like that, well…  Carr flattered him by saying he had. For me Citizen Kane and The French Connection are indeed art, but cannot be spoken in comparative terms.

Two questioners were notable in the responses they elicited. A lawyer commented that he thought Bernie, a McConaughey film, underrated and ignored by critics and fans was astounding. The actor was flattered into revealing that a potential career path he had chosen was the law. He had been accepted to law school then at the last, changed his mind and went to film school instead. Considering all the lawyer roles and law enforcement officers he has portrayed, the law remains with him.

A young and clothed female actor was brave to question what was needed to be an actor. McConaughey’s rapid retort, “Keep this in mind. There are no help wanted signs out there.” All three affirmed security is hired to “keep you out” of a tough business. Gershon did mention one needed to check one’s motives as to exactly why one would be an actor. Friedkin spoke like a director from the old studio system about the importance of “looks.” Indeed, one’s face does the casting or type casting. Actors have made money from appearing like Italian mobsters or heroes or beauties. Sadly, looks and appearance have held too much sway over the years. Oftentimes, those who have tremendous talents and gifts fade away, having fallen pray to resignation while others which much less talent but other elements make it. Friedkin waxed into a beacon of hope with this counsel. “One needs these three things to make it:  1)ambition, 2)luck 3)the Grace of God.” The last smacked me in the head. It was the first time I had ever heard a director mention the Grace of God in the context of “making it.”

Another questioner having to wait for one of Friedkin’s particularly long responses to be finished, jerked with anxiety and impatience until Carr finally called upon him. With tongue in cheek reference to bowler-hat blonde, Carr adjured the young, frail looking fellow not to disrobe. Well, that was enough for McConaughey and Gershon who encouraged him and the audience, giving the “go ahead” for more of the same, kind of to keep the naked flow going. If most of the women in the audience looked as good as the paparazzo, they might have bared breasts and butts and paraded for the cameras, talk about getting a shot at a few moments of fame. But it was not to be so for this shy crowd where I had the distinct impression that it would have been a public  humiliation if anyone else were to follow the blonde’s lead.

So the audience feeling its limitations responded with a good natured-laugh, and when they quieted down, the young man in a squeaky high voice and jittery motions which were creepy, like the Golum in The Hobbit said, “Ms Gershon, you look radiant.” then bowed. He complimented McConaughey, bowed again, and to Friedkin he said something about still “shivering” from The Exorcist.  When he bowed a third time,  I thought the moon must have been ripe for peculiar human reactions this evening.  Either a savant or an Asperger’s, he was certainly weird. But Friedkin with great grace showed kindness. He thanked the young man, saving the moment with aplomb and skill. In my book Friedkin scored big for that. He made my severe scrutiny something akin to Scout’s when she sanctioned Cunningham for pouring molasses all over his  plate of food in To Kill a Mockingbird and Calpurnia upbraded her about treating guests hospitably. Friedkins’ sweetness chided me like a Calpurnia scolding

After a rough beginning, the evening waxed clear and the stars twinkled in a blue black sky. Thanks to the blonde, the breathtaking McConaughey whose intellect is consonant with his beauty, Gershon’s frankness and Friedkin’s sensitivity and brilliance, my exasperation had melted like mist in sunshine. But next time  I will get a press pass.

Click here for video gallery.

Jonathan Pryce as Davies and Alex Cox as Aston

BAM, is Brooklyn Academy of Music. It is Brooklyn’s premier showcase for productions which do not mirror the crass commercialism  and faux quality of Broadway’s double digit IQ spectacles, excepting (A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, Seminar, The Best Man, Other Desert Cities, Leap of Faith superb, standout shows that I have seen this year) In addition to superlative global productions mounted by the Bridge Project (Kevin Spacey and Same Mendes’ American/British collaboration of touring works by Shakespeare-this year’s Richard III starring Spacey) and other global offerings from Russia, Australia and the United Kingdom: The Three Sisters, John Gabriel Borkman (with Alan Rickman and Fiona Shaw) and Gogol’s Diary of a Madman (with Geoffrey Rush) the season presents interviews and talks with cast members after performances.

This year I was blessed to see live sessions with Declan Donnelan, John Hurt and the cast of The Caretaker (see review) Jonathan Pryce, Alan Cox and Alex Hassell. These are precious gifts. I try to take advantage of the live sessions because the actors, after having expended their souls onstage, graciously share the remainder of their energies even though they must be drained of all emotional heft.  It is their act of love and the celebration of an art form that will never die because it IS the reality show and anything that can happen will happen during a live performance and dealing with it is electric. I am there to celebrate with them.

Amazingly, each time (John Hurt, Alan Rickman, Fiona Shaw, et. al, Geoffrey Rush) after their performances, the actors have appeared as fresh as moments ago picked corn, carrying their great good will and humor with them despite the grind. I find that my love for live theater and appreciation of BAM has been strengthened each time I’ve stayed for discussion, so  upon leaving, I secretly nod a special thank you to Dionysus, the patron of all great theater.  Whenever I lust for an apartment in Manhattan, I think of BAM, the Hamptons and the US Tennis Open, locations which are  très inconvenient for Manhattanites. I am  thankful that I live in the second most fashionable section of Queens, artsy Kew Gardens and am to be envied: I have a car…HA, HA, HA, a wonderful perk that makes up for being estranged from Manhattan’s living spaces.

Alex Hassell (Mick) Jonathan Pryce (Davies) Alan Cox (Aston). Pryce just cracked up the audience.

On Thursday, May 24th, Pryce, Cox and Hassell managed to recoup from an incredible performance to face their worshipers (they received a lengthy standing ovation). How did they do it? I guess it was “The show must go on,” because many actors, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Angela Lansberry and James Earl Jones eschew this kind of thing. But the Brits are level headed about their theater, unlike some American celebrities who might be too incredibly shy, Method, wiped, or self-adulating to scrape the will to expose themselves for who they are in their own skins. With their long tradition of theater and Shakespeare who lived “in the midst of the common folk,” Brits and Aussies are notoriously self-effacing and unselfconscious when it comes to meeting fans. I wish that more American “celebrities” and/or actors were that way. That’s insecurity for ya.

As obtuse as the play can be if not acted superlatively (it was) this talk back was revelatory and insightful. Each of the actors reaffirmed the importance of living onstage and adhering to what was in the script which told all in telling little. Pryce had been with the production longer than Hassell and Cox and had even played the character of Mick in a 1980 production in England; he twitted Hassell that he was very good as Mick, garnering a laugh from the audience and a smile from his fellow actor. Pryce’s humorous touches were a pleasant surprise, but then his range and versatility as an actor spans The Comedians (1977, Broadway, a Tony) The Engineer in Miss Saigon for which his brilliant and controversial performance won him a second Tony (1992), to Lytton Strachey in Carrington, (1995) for which he won the Best Actor award at Cannes. Most recently he has played the governor in the three Pirates of the Caribbean films and began his scary, evil renown with the devil character in Somthing Wicked This Way Comes (1983). He was so convincing as Juan Peron in the film Evita with Madonna, I forget it was Pryce.

Pryce discussed the romanticism of the Davies character when Pinter first conceived of the play in the 50s. He is the tramp who lives like a gypsy wandering the roads and sleeping under the stars: perhaps representing every settled man’s hunger for freedom. But in the current times of harsh economies, foreclosures and rampant homelessness in cities across the globe, the actors upgraded the pressure each of the characters faces. Pryce said that the Davies character’s dark and desperate circumstances (the antithesis of the romantic, carefree tramp) framed Pryce’s internal emotional choices. And all of the characters at one point or another echoed that the play has taken on a darker meaning in our age of creeping poverty, political vapidness and lack of will to correct the gross inequities of wealth and power between and amongst economic classes.

Columbia University Pinter Scholar Professor Quigley moderated with wonderful questions.

At a  prompting from moderator, Professor Quigley, Pinter scholar at Columbia University, Pryce shared his experience and remembrance as a child visiting his father in an institution like the one where Aston was committed. Pryce recalled his fears walking down long, silent corridors locked at each end, hearing the keys jangle in the door as the aides unlocked each door and relocked it. And when he saw his father in a bed with rows of beds around him filled with other men, he was afraid; it was a terrible emotional experience. He said he used those feelings to frame Davies’ character in part, because Davies is perhaps as mentally unwell as Aston is. “He says the craziest things,” said Pryce smiling and perhaps he could indeed end up in such a place (though nowadays, the shelters have become the even more dangerous institutions of the insane. It’s afer on the streets.) Pryce reaffirmed that in the laughter (Character interactions both times I saw the play drew audience laughs.) or the light, there is the darkness. In other words, as we laugh at the ridiculousness of the characters and situation, there is the fear, poignancy and knowledge that we are seeing the truth of ourselves.

In the question and answer sessions, Pryce was equally generous. Davies’ cries and angst-driven dreams that awaken Aston, Pryce said were triggered by memories of Pryce’s daughter who talked in her sleep when she was under stress and of course, was upsetting to him. And when one audience member in the question and answer session suggested that he was pushing for laughs, Pryce handled the insult beautifully, first pretending to ignore the man and then quipping they needed “get rid of him.” He then dealt with the idea of “pushing” as an actor not being something that serves the actor and his colleagues. However, having seen the play twice, I affirm that the play’s sentiment and revelation would have been completely lost if any of the actors, especially Pryce were untrue or “going for laughs.” Pryce found the emotional resonance to convey Davies’ desperation, his wants, his wounds, all unconscious to Davies, but visible to us through Pryce’s massive acting instrument.

Alan Cox as Aston in the question and answer session discussed the importance of following the action of the play which specifically states what each of the characters is doing. To keep the interactions fresh each night, Hassell, especially did not want to know how the others were interpreting something, because the characters don’t know this. Uncertainty reigns; unexpected reactions rule. It doesn’t inform the actor to be gummed up with extraneous interpretations upon interpretations. Cox did respond that inviting Davies in, Aston is generating a random act of human kindness, nothing more. What evolves is human dynamic, power struggle, spontaneity, craziness, because that’s who these people, especially Davies are. We catch glimpses, as we catch glimpses in life, never knowing for certain, never stating something is forever. It is constantly a state of flux. When Quigley quoted that Pinter said you shouldn’t necessarily believe everything that Aston says in his long monologue about being committed, Cox’s reply was wonderful, THE QUINTESSENTIAL superb actor’s reply. Well, I believe what is in the script. I believe that what Aston says he experienced, he experienced. And Hassell echoed those sentiments. To pin down an interpretation of Mick’s intentions is pointless. The more one attempts to convey and pin down one specific interpretation, the less real, the less dynamic the less comprehensible the character.

Hassell, Pryce, Cox discussing the darker aspects of the play trending now.

After their sharing with us, I understood why this production is so outstanding, so brilliant, clearly the best of Pinter I have ever seen done, and I have seen deadly, boring Pinter. And I have heard that when Pinter attempted to direct, there was too much of a “going for a result,” a stepping out to convey a particular theme. In this production, there was none of that. Because in life, we are not interpreting our roles and actions as we go along. WE LIVE THEM. WE ARE THEM. WE ARE FEAR, DESPERATION, HOPE, LONGING, WANT, NEED. We don’t editorialize about how this action can be interpreted this way, except in hindsight twenty years later when we realize what we were doing. If that indeed is what we were doing because hindsight has its own reality.

The shifting light and dark, truly, as Pryce said, creates our understanding, my understanding, for we are all different, and I walked away with different values and perceptions because of my background as did every individual in the audience. The actors respected the work and their talents to bring life to the stage. And they are so incredible, I imagine they are able to do this for the rest of the performance schedule until June 16th when the final curtain of The Caretaker falls. Well, I for one am gobsmacked I’ve seen such magnificence. What a joy.

There it is. The Manhattan skyline.  I’ve lived here for 30 years and have never rued the day I moved to the city. The arts brought me here to Queens, one train stop away from downtown Manhattan. And the arts and culture keep me here.  There is no location like this in the world, despite New York’s crazy occurrences like bed bug rampages and squirrel attacks on car engines and rabid racoons, and alligators and rats in the sewers… big ones. It is a city of dreams. And I belong here, for I am a dreamer.

A teacher I adored in high school told me, I’ll never forget his words, they are in my yearbook, “Dream big. Give it your all, and don’t let you stand in the way of making it.” Of course, he was talking about himself, but I understood what he meant because we were similar in many ways. First, we were immigrants, well, he was. Actually, I was first generation born of immigrants. Secondly, we had that thick ribbon of stubborn rebelliousness and independence. But his was sturdier than mine. I turned out to be rather a bit of a weak-willed wuss, caught by my gender to behave appropriately and give way it was a man’s world. But he was his own person, and traditional institutions rather dislike those who are independent spirited, regardless of  how talented and inspiring to students they can be. He never received tenure, though he was perhaps the best teacher most in my class had ever had.

Well, I moved on. And years later, after living upstate, I returned to my land of dreams and eventually moved to New York City. Perhaps one of these days, like the song Summertime says, I’ll” rise up singing.” Spread my wings and cross over the threshold into Manhattan to live and have my being. And if that happens, then I will feel that I truly belong. And when I’m settled in, boxes unpacked, Persian carpets laid out, furniture moved in and my cat taking a nap,  I’m going to leap up and anchored like a rock give a shout out,  “Girl, it certainly feels good to be home!”*

*Home is the place where you feel the most comfortable in your own skin.