‘The Tribute Artist’ at 59E59 Theaters
L to R: Cynthia Harris and Charles Busch in The Tribute Artist by Charles Bush, Directed by Carl Andress, presented by Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters. Photo by James Leynse.
Buying and selling Manhattan real estate! It’s all about being in the right place at the right time with the right clients. If the opportunity to sign a deal on a most fabulous place in Greenwich Village just dropped in your lap, you’d probably leap at it. What if it involved a smidgeon of shadiness and a soupcon of fraud?
The Tribute Artist by Charles Busch presents a hilarious scenario of three rather desperate, down on their luck characters, one attractive and potentially nefarious thief, and a $12 million dollar townhouse whose owner has recently died. From soup to nuts, this two act play is a cleverly written comedy that is beautifully acted by the ensemble cast and tightly directed by Carl Andress. Charles Busch, a Drama Desk Award winner for “Career Achievement as Playwright and Performer,” once again delights with his impeccable timing and comic genius in a play that skirts the edges of farce. The Tribute Artist’s trending humor, themes, and ironies are incisive and just shy of brilliant.
The play opens to the sumptuous living room of a Greenwich Village townhouse where we meet grand dame Adriana (the lively and funny Cynthia Harris), the homeowner. We appreciate Adriana’s sulfuric wit which she states, “is not nastiness, but my European sense of irony.” This “upper crust” lady is a former clothing designer and she is entertaining her down-to-earth and frenetic real estate broker, Rita (the excellent Julie Halston), who may or may not broker the townhouse sale. Jimmy (Charles Busch), a recently fired Las Vegas drag queen, who prefers to be called a “celebrity tribute artist,” is staying with Adriana for a while. When we are introduced to Rita and Jimmy, both are modeling Adriana’s designer clothing, and Jimmy is modeling one of her wigs. Rita and Jimmy have been long time friends. They enjoy Adriana’s hospitality as she fills in details from her past which, unbeknownst to them, are portentous to their future. When they all fall asleep from rather too much drink, the scene shifts to morning and the comedy and plot complications jolt into the most interesting of wonderful possibilities.
L to R: Keira Keeley, Charles Busch, Julie Halston, Mary Bacon, Jonathan Walker in The Tribute Artist, directed by Carl Andress for Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters. Photo by James Leynse.
During the night, Adriana has passed; she did say she was dying, but Jimmy and Rita didn’t believe her. No one will inherit this lovely house and it will end up in the hands of the government since there are no inheritors and no will. The path appears to be clear that Adriana wants the house sold and is exerting her will that this should be exacted by those who are present. They are a perfect combination: a real estate broker and a female impersonator who just happens to have in his repertoire all the greats from Marilyn Monroe to Betty Davis. Impersonating “Adriana” will be easy. Jimmy and Rita talk themselves into the devilish plan (a hilarious segue), plotting that Jimmy will become Adriana for the time it takes Rita to sell the house. In the clear, they will split their “winnings” fifty/fifty. They even have the perfect resolution for how to deal with Adriana’s remains. Through their euphoria, they both agree that they may have forgotten something, only they aren’t sure what.
What they’ve forgotten shows up in the next scenes, creates havoc, and additional conundrums. The plot complications humorously involve the real heirs who will take the townhouse away from Rita and Jimmy. The inheritors are Adriana’s late husband’s loathsome relatives, niece Christina (a perfectly overwrought Mary Bacon) and grandniece Rachel Oliver (a fine Keira Keeley). An additional complication involves one of Adriana’s former lovers, the sexy Rodney (Jonathan Walker in a hysterical performance). Somehow Rita and Jimmy deal with these “interlopers” and Jimmy’s impersonation of Adriana goes swimmingly for a time until Rodney throws the switch that could overturn their peaceful coexistence. Once again the elements of farce are stepped up with the added suspense that Rodney may be up to something worse than the “silly little fraud” that Rita and Jimmy had hoped to commit.
Charles Busch in The Tribute Artist by Charles Busch, directed by Carl Andress for Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters. Photo by James Leynse.
While spinning these humorous events, the playwright carefully weaves in issues of class, gender, identity, and social injustice. He does this with wit and subtle undercurrents of poignancy in keeping with the comedic pacing. Added to the glee, Jimmy unleashes his repertoire of old-time celebrity actresses with snippets of dialogue from their most famous scenes. Rosalyn Russel, Katherine Hepburn, Betty Davis, and others show up and aptly spout “wisdom” to heighten the madness. In his impersonations Busch is at the apex of his powers. His “Running Wild” is superb. If you don’t know which actress performed the song from which iconic film, then you’ll have to get yourself to 59E59 Theaters where the production is being performed. Rita will clue you in to the impersonations just in case you were born after 1990.
The playwright ties up all the complications and reveals the inner workings of each character reinforcing one of the main themes: one never knows how things will turn out in the end. In Busch’s iteration the phrasing is more poetic. The production will be running until March 16th. It is being presented by Primary Stages at 59E59 Theaters.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
Live in NYC: ‘Riding the Midnight Express With Billy Hayes’
Billy Hayes (1970s) in his 20s. Billy Hayes is currently at the St. Luke’s Theatre in ‘Riding the Midnight Express With Billy Hayes’, written and performed by Billy Hayes, directed by John Gould Rubin.
Riding the Midnight Express With Billy Hayes, written and performed by Billy Hayes and currently at St. Luke’s Theatre, is a profound and illuminating theatrical experience that will leave you uplifted and inspired.
Directed by John Gould Rubin, the production is a reexamination of Hayes’s experiences in Turkey in the 1970s, when he was smuggling hashish, caught, and given a life sentence in a Turkish prison. Some of the gruesome aspects of the story were chronicled in the film Midnight Express.
Many were not. This Off Broadway production sheds a bright light on events the film left out, some harrowing and some magnificent. Though the film was based loosely on Hayes’s book Midnight Express, whole swaths of experience were eliminated and fabrications added. This show is Hayes’ revelation about the full truth of his past and how it influenced his journey into the present.
Since Hayes’s solo performance relates to the film, it is necessary to review why the impact of this one-man show is so vital by comparison. When it was released in 1978, Midnight Express received worldwide acclaim and garnered 16 awards including two for Best Writing (screenplay based on material from another medium) and Best Music (original score). It even received a Golden Globe for Best Picture in the category of Drama. If they didn’t read the book, people believed Oliver Stone’s screenplay. It portrayed Hayes’s rollicking jaunt to Turkey, his arrest, his unjust trial, and his ghoulish nightmare after being sentenced to a life in the abomination of desolation: the Turkish prison. The audience was kept in suspense and horror watching the character’s devolution in prison and his nullifying flirtation with insanity. When Hayes unbelievably escapes, easily walking out into freedom without being seen by anyone, the audience feels tremendous relief that the hell is over and Hayes is free.
Billy Hayes in NYC after he escaped from Turkey.
In Hayes’s live performance we discover that this “walk-out” did not happen, and what did was far more frightening. Indeed, his real escape to freedom took much longer and was a desperate, gripping survival story. As Hayes relates it, we cannot help but be astounded by each miraculous event that, domino-style, brought him closer to freedom. The “walk-out” as presented by the filmmakers was sheer Hollywood gloss and actually a diminution of Hayes’s character, resourcefulness and inner strength.
What particularly makes his one-man show so engrossing and compelling is Hayes‘s natural spontaneity. With his fine acting talents (he is a writer, actor and director), he aptly conveys the full import of and real events relating to his capture, arrest, trial, prison time and incredible escape. What is equally edifying is the discussion of his life afterward and his personal growth as an individual, a social advocate and a culturally dynamic American.
Billy Hayes being interviewed about his current activities as they evolved from his past.
As we watch Hayes deliver his unexpurgated account, we are able to receive it in the entirety of its depth and detail. Unencumbered by any restraints, Hayes finally has free reign. Through his vibrant descriptions and vivid language we understand his thoughts, his unique perspectives; we come to know the mind of Billy Hayes. His performance is one of unbounded clarity. Hayes expresses the soul of an age that is current and ongoing. To say the message is life-giving is an understatement.
As we receive the truth of his presence, the deep issues and themes of freedom, love, enlightenment and growth become more real and heartfelt than what the film ever could convey. Indeed, Hayes understands the essence of his life’s journey. We recognize its vitality and note that it has far-reaching implications for our culture and society today. With great courage Hayes bares his soul and our souls follow, opened to his immeasurable riches of spirit. The film was a mere shadow of what he effects and gives us in this performance over 35 years later.
Billy Hayes and his wife Wendy after the performance, speaking with audience members and signing autographs.
Whether it was intentioned or not, the film was a cautionary tale that delivered lessons about the Muslim world and more specifically, Turkey. First, that Turkey was a brutal country and its prisons cesspits; one should not travel there as a lark to flout the laws. Second, that Turkish justice was no justice.
Considering U.S. politics in the 1970s, the film was a boon for American culture, and Billy Hayes was a hero. The film encouraged a feeling of patriotism (at a time when the culture needed this). Against Turkey and other Muslim countries, it spawned a host of travel warnings for Americans abroad. In its associative portrayal of hashish and marijuana, it was a negative advertisement. Though marijuana and hashish, its concentrated form, were plant-based drugs, un-patentable and used medicinally and recreationally across many cultures for millennia, Nixon’s “war on drugs” (related to Hayes’ prison sentence) sealed their doom. In the Q&A after his performance, Hayes’s commentary about the film’s impact (related to marijuana’s illegality, and many other issues) was fascinating.
Why filmmakers re-characterized Hayes’s experiences in prison, the Turkish court, and especially his escape is up for conjecture. In any case, the reality of what actually occurred as Hayes relates in his solo performance inspires hope, courage and peace. If that message was not politically or culturally efficacious for the time, so be it. But now a new generation of individuals will be exposed to the story. Its truth and its reckoning have finally come. This is a performance not to be missed.
Riding the Midnight Express With Billy Hayes is being presented by Barbara Ligeti with Jeffrey Altshuler and Edmund Gaynes. Co-producers are Jonathan Chang, Jann Cobler, Exodus Broadway and Joseph Trent Siff. The production is running through March 23 at St. Luke’s Theatre on 308 West 46th Street.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
4th Annual Athena Film Festival. A Celebration of Women and Leadership
The 2014 Athena Film Festival at Barnard College, February 6-9th.
The fourth year of the Athena Film Festival, held at Barnard College February 6-9th, was an incredible experience for women and men. Foremost, the festival organizers and participants collaborated in their appreciation and recognition of those who have taken an active part in raising the banner of global film movements. Panel presenters, filmmakers, audience members, and sponsors gathered with the hope that as they express their dynamism in whatever talents and walks of life they embrace through film, they will continue to motivate women toward leadership, autonomy, creativity, and inspiration. Ultimately, doing so will only benefit culture and society as a whole.
L to R: Melissa Silverstein (Women and Hollywood) and Kathryn Kolbert (Athena Center for Leadership Studies Barnard College). At the screening of Belle, opening night..
Co-Founders Kathryn Kolbert (Athena Center for Leadership Studies at Barnard College) and Melissa Silverstein (Women and Hollywood) introduced many of the screenings and master classes. The films included a wide range of features, documentaries, shorts, and “works-in-progress” for critical review.. There were master classes for filmmakers, panels and special events: opening film after-party, luncheons and receptions and the Athena Film Festival Award Ceremony..
Festival highlights included the awards bestowed. On hand for the ceremony was Debora Spar, President of Barnard College, Regina K. Scully, CEO and Founder of Artemis Rising Foundation-the Athena Film Festival’s founding sponsor, Festival Co-Chairs, Co-Founders, illustrious recipients and others.
L to R: Melissa Silverstein (Co-Founder), Callie Khouri, Kasi Lemmons, Debra Martin Chase (Festival Co-Chair), 2014 Athena Film Festival.
This year Sherry Lansing was the recipient of the Laura Ziskin Lifetime Achievement Award given to a women in the film industry whose leadership demonstrated vision and courage and set a standard for other women to follow. 2014 Awards went to Callie Khouri, Oscar-Winning writer and film and TV creator and director, Kasi Lemmons, gifted actress, director and writer and Keri Putnam, Executive Director of the Sundance Institute. Each of these women is responsible for their groundbreaking achievements assisting women in gaining voice and power to maintain leadership positions. They continue to make a tremendous impact for women in the media industry with current projects.
These women have helped other women begin to move among their male counterparts. However, the statistics the festival reported are not as encouraging as one would hope. Among the films shown at Sundance in 2013, 29% of filmmakers were women and 71% were men.
Photo taken from the festival introduction short film.
There is a lot that must be accomplished and with the gap in economies of scale and increasing difficulty in achieving funding, women will be challenged more than ever to be innovative, forward thinking, and ahead of the curve, finding partnerships with others who recognize the acute sensibilities and resonances women can contribute to touching a cultural wellspring of film audiences that are increasingly dominated by women.
This 4th Annual Athena Film Festival article first appeared on Blogcritics.
4th Annual Athena Film Festival Documentary Film, ‘Rebel’
Rebel, directed by Maria Agui Carter. Photo from the trailer of the documentary.
The Athena Film Festival 2014, which ran from February 6th to February 9th, offered an amazing array of documentary films. Women are known to direct and helm more documentaries than narrative features. It is clear that their patience, meticulous research skills, and creative brilliance shine in this complex niche, which lends itself to revelation. Documentaries best dive into the underbelly of historical events and enlighten us about men and women whose life stories have hithertofore been obscured, “wiped out,” or discredited because their content was deemed dangerous or a fiction.
Rebel, directed by Maria Agui Carter, exemplifies such a documentary; the story of real-life heroine Loreta Velazquez was discounted and nearly eradicated from our history. Was the primary reason because Velazquez was a remarkable woman who transcended the limitations and mores placed upon her sex during the Civil War and afterward? Carter is to be lauded for painstakingly portraying Velazquez’ life on film despite the obstacles she faced to mount the project. Overcoming these issues took time, but Carter engaged her skills, and with her phenomenal effort crafted a jewel. The intensity of the result was well worth it, as evidenced by the audience’s enthusiastic response and their rapt, probing questions during the Q & A. With Rebel, Carter achieves her goal to beautifully relate the story of this courageous and clever woman who is an inspiration for us today..
Rebel directed by Maria Agui Carter. Photo from the trailer of the documentary Rebel.
Velazquez’s story begins in Cuba where she was educated and raised to be the woman of the house in time when paternalism and patriarchy ruled the lifestyles and actions of the promulgators of culture. Testing the limits of her father’s love and seeing the gross inequities in the treatment of women, Velazquez attempts to equalize her status with males, eschewing the easy “role” of a demure woman. Finding this behavior worrisome, her father sends her to relatives in New Orleans where she eventually continues to throw off her father’s choices of husbands and “women’s duties.” Clandestinely, she marries an American soldier who is sent to the frontier, comes back, and then returns to prepare to fight for the Confederacy.
By this point husband and wife have buried three children and Loreta considers her place to be by his side. He leaves and word comes that he’s been killed. She decides she has nothing to lose and will follow him to fight where he would have fought and kill who he would have killed. She cuts her hair and puts on a confederate uniform. She is alone, but finds comfort having taken his place. And in his place, she learns war, soldiering, and living in hardship with the rough men as well as having her eyes opened to many other things.
The film elucidates more including the risks that Velazquez takes in passing as a Confederate soldier. Carter follows Velazquez with details about her learning curves and discoveries about the rotten elements of war profiteers and currency calculators. From the soldier’s vantage point like never before, Velazquez is able to understand what they are fighting for and the nature of slavery. All of these events, Carter encapsulates with compelling detail and interest. However, this is only the beginning of Velazquez’s adventures. How she ends up fighting for the North and how she ends up as a spy is a fascinating experience. Carter shows that hers is an outer and inner journey. Certainly the nature of the war in the South and all of its ramifications helped to win Velazquez to the other side.
Maria Agui Carter, director of Rebel, the documentary film.
Carter’s film is compelling and engaging. This credible storytelling is at its best in relating Velazquez’s experiences by also highlighting extremely important historical details that shine a probing light on women’s involvement in soldiering during the Civil War. This is an aspect that is not well known. Nevertheless, Velazquez was not alone in picking up the cause and hiding her sex in trousers. The men simply would never have thought it possible; the folkways of feminine identity and behavior simply beggared their imagination to even think it. The women easily were able to dupe the men.
The truth Carter brings to bear in Velazquez’s story enhances our understanding of a time that perhaps is still too uncomfortably close for some to view with perspicacity, wisdom, and integrity. These elements and traits Carter admirably demonstrates in showing us another type of soldier who fought during the bloodletting time to preserve an economic lifestyle perpetuated by the extremist cruelty and degradation. Because her story is so amazing, one hopes that Carter will be able to shepherd the adventures of this courageous, enlightened, and forward thinking woman into a narrative feature film.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
4th Annual Athena Film Festival Documentary Film, ‘American Revolutionary’
L to R: Writer and activist Grace Lee Boggs and director Grace Lee. American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs. The documentary screened at the Athena Film Festival at Barnard College.
The documentary on Grace Lee Boggs which screened at the 2014 Athena Film Festival was sold out and there appeared to be individuals floating on the rafters aching to see the film. They were even more enthusiastic to see Grace Lee Boggs in the live Q & A session and meet her afterward. The audience was filled with young and old, and most likely, the oldest one there was Grace Lee Boggs herself. She is an active 98 year old, who is raging against the “dying of the light” of inequality and injustice, despite the visissiitudes of old age which aren’t for” cowards or sissies.”
This Chinese-American writer, activist, feminist and philosopher dedicated to improving herself, the country and the plight of average citizens has worked tirelessly for 70 years in the Civil Rights Movement. The documentary American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs directed by Grace Lee (no relation), created from filmed interviews and discussions with Boggs, friends and celebrity fans, follows an ethnographic style over a ten-year period. During this time the director engaged her intention to understand Boggs’ evolution as a representative icon of change who was swept up in a flow of revolutionary crosscurrents from the 1940s until this day. This river of social progress is moving toward a paradigm shift and a new spiral of events which Boggs discussed after the screening. The events include her latest venture Detroit Summer also highlighted in the film.
Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs an activist, writer team. American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs directed by Grace Lee screened at the 2014 Athena Film Festival.
The documentarian catalogues Boggs’ earlier life through narration, pictures, archival film and Boggs’ commentary and continues with film footage of Boggs over the last 10 years. We learn that Boggs was one of four women of color in 1935 to graduate from Barnard College in New York City. Because there were few opportunities for women of color in academia, Boggs took a low paying job in the University of Chicago Philosophy Library. At that time she also took her first foray into activism becoming involved with tenancy rights. This cultural engagement suited her and she joined the Worker’s Party, one of a number of parties she advocated for during her lifetime. After a speaking engagement, Boggs met with C.L.R. James and was hooked into his movement. She traveled to New York. With new vitality in her learning curve and the hope to enhance social freedom of opportunity for people of color, she worked with C.L.R. James and encountered important activists and cultural figures, i.e. Richard Wright and Katharine Dunham.
Her continued involvement with civil rights always inspired colloquies and discussions which fueled her writings about how to equalize the living and work opportunities for people of color. The film reveals Boggs’ progress after the shifts and splits from various groups in the 1940s, through her meetings with Martin Luther King Jr. and others during the 1950s and 1960s (Malcolm X) when civil rights actions and developments were fast and furious.With husband James Boggs the couple moved onward evolving their beliefs and continuing to work, write and publish about the needed social revolution in America.
Grace Lee Boggs in her youth from the documentary American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, directed by Grace Lee which screened at the 2014 Athena Film Festival.
Declassified, Grace Lee Boggs’ FBI file kept by Herbert Hoover is perhaps thicker than Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s. It is a great point of humor when the filmmaker spotlights that this physically unimposing Chinese American woman with grand intellectual acumen and erudition was considered a potentially violent threat to this country because of the words she spoke and her writings. FBI officials even believed her to be African American because, who indeed who was not black would marry an African American man, live in the black community and actively support the civil rights of people of color?
Boggs’ activism in the Civil Rights Movement began when it was risky and courageous to participate. Only much later did it become “cool” and radical chic to “drop out and get down.” By then, Grace Lee Boggs and James Boggs had moved on to other polemics. She was constantly evolving in her understanding, with the hope of carving a meaningful place in her world of friends, including those acquaintances who dropped by her door to engage in discussions and conversations about social revolution.
Grace Lee Boggs in the Q & A after the screening of American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs directed by Grace Lee. (Athena Film Festival).
American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs completes a monumental feat examining this icon of American social movements during the last seven decades. It reveals our history in a way that no other documentary has dared to accomplish fusing present, recent past and past past with narrative from the perspective of the one who lived it and is brilliantly competent to provide an ongoing retrospective. It is she who discusses what she learned as a result of her actions, not some historian or commentator. In this the documentary breaks new ground, offering the incredible philosophies and viewpoints of the woman who lived through these events with inspiration, circumspection and wisdom. Above all this very human film pinpoints the unique, vital and unlikely story of how this Chinese American woman saw injustice and inequality in the human heart. And as she saw it flowing out into the culture creating a prevalence of misery and torment, she determined it must stop and she must devote her life to stopping it. Her life proves that in order to get people to say yes to change, one has to first say no to putting up with their abuse, no matter the cost.
Grace Lee Boggs after the screening of the documentary by director Grace Lee. For Grace Lee Boggs, this is a very critical time for the nation.
Director Grace Lee’s renderings which cobble together film clips and flow her narrative from present to recent past to archival past is nothing short of wonderful. But then her subject matter is wonderful. What Boggs models for women, Asian Americans, millennials and all citizens engaged in the social reform of our political and corporate institutions is without measure. In Boggs’ world discussion and interchange especially with those whose beliefs run counter to ours is paramount for all of our growth. Dialogue and conversation must be ongoing to inspire cultural renaissance. Her world view is best demonstrated in the following quote:
“When you read Marx (or Jesus) this way, you come to see that real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.”
― Grace Lee Boggs, The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century
The film demonstrates that Grace Lee Boggs has lived her life coming to the fullness of this understanding. Would that we could all do the same following our own pathway of evolution.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
‘My Mother Has Four Noses’ by the Amazing Singer/Songwriter Jonatha Brooke
Jonatha Brooke in My Mother Has Four Noses written and performed by Jonatha Brooke, currently at The Duke on 42nd Street. Photo by Pierre Baudet.
Acclaimed singer/songwriter Jonatha Brooke emotionally climbed the mountains of the moon and plummeted to the depths of the abyss after she brought her mother to an apartment in NYC so she could care for her the last two years of her mom’s life. Her mom, published poet Darren Stone, had Alzheimer’s.
As Stone’s identity withered toward invisibility, a multiplicity of beings, characteristic of Alzheimer’s patients, emerged as she physically and mentally recreated herself with each new day. The disease took eminent domain of her mind and body parcel by parcel.
Jonatha and her mom accepted the challenge. They enacted their “greatest show on earth.” It was an all-encompassing adventure filled with drama and comedy, the mundane villains of aging (painful arthritis) and their comedic sidekicks (constipation from pain killers). Their surreal vision and dramatic courage helped pass the time as they worked through obstacles. And somehow together, they “got it all down.” Theirs was performance art which provided the raw material for a show which Jonatha Brooke would perform a year after her mom died.
By the time Stone left this plane, Brooke was ready. Mother and daughter had experienced the sublime end game in all of its beauty and beastliness. Brooke would learn to extirpate the horror of their most intimate and personal moments and keep the humor, longing, love and ethereality. By linking snippets of remembered conversation, exact quotes, and bits of her mom’s poems in a heady mix of narration and song, Brooke symbolizes the finest rhythms of those last two years. These snatches of life, brought to the stage in the one-woman musical My Mother Has Four Noses, are a precious human revelation.
One cannot witness this production, directed by Jeremy B. Cohen, and remain untouched. Brooke’s work helps us recognize and appreciate the poetic rhythms in our own lives and the lives of those dearest to us. She has dug deep into her own empathy to distill the highlights of their mother-daughter love relationship. The potion she creates is readily drinkable and the unique, bittersweet taste lingers. We are better for her gently shaking our consciousness, reminding us that our bodies are mortal. We, too, will one day have to answer the hard questions about who we are and whether we are happy about what we have made ourselves into. We, too, will enact our finality alone or in a drama with others. In her remarkable endeavor, Brooke’s artistry is heartfelt and powerful and there is much you will take away to contemplate.
Darren Stone had four prosthetic noses, one for each season. My Mother Has Four Noses by Jonatha Brooke at The Duke on 42nd Street.
In Brooke’s seminal song “Are You Getting This Down,” the opening number, she reflects how she and her mom came to deal with fleshly mortality through spiritual and electric currents of love, joy and endurance. Brooke settles on shaping the bulk of the production around a motif that streams through both of their lives: her mother’s religious beliefs as a Christian Scientist. In the earlier years it was the bane of their relationship, a major point of disagreement. Jonatha never believed, while her mother remained a staunch follower of the religion which eschews medical interventions.
That refusal is the boulder which shatters Darren Stone again and again and sends her careening to Brooke for help in the crisis created by failing to seek out doctors. Brooke uses the crisis and Christian Science as an overarching metaphor in the production: the salvation which brings no salvation. For example, her mother resorted to the science of prayer in the community of Christian Scientists as she struggled against cancer. When the cancer ate away most of her face, she decided she wanted to survive and elicited Jonatha’s help. The intensive surgeries resulted in multiple reconstructions and prosthetics. Her mom’s life was saved, but her nose was sacrificed during the battle. Hence the title of the production. Indeed, Darren Stone had four noses, as both she and her daughter joked, one for each season.
Acclaimed singer/songwriter Jonatha Brooke in the musical My Mother Has Four Noes at The Duke on 42nd Street. Photo by Pierre Baudet.
During the course of the musical we learn of Darren Stone’s artistic bent as a writer, poet and clown: she used the clown makeup to hide the unsightly cancer. In the mother’s incredible portrait, we see the vibrant picture of the daughter. By the end of the production Darren Stone and Jonatha Brooke merge into one. It is not a coincidence that Jonatha takes a poem her mother wrote in 1950 and adds stanzas that she fashions into “Mom’s Song,” the last song of the performance. The song’s completion is a symbol of resolution. Theirs is a love that requires no atonement for unresolved regrets, but finishes with a “tear and a smile” flourish. It is how Jonatha Brooke is able to nightly perform herself and her mother with joy and poignance and humor.
How does one deal before, during and after taking care of someone who as they daily die before you is a confluence of contradiction: loving and recalcitrant, lucid and foggy, cooperative and fearfully resistant, funny and tragic, a “character,” who enters a daily new normal, someone who wants to die to avoid the pain, yet hold on and live with every ounce of fading strength? How indeed? If we receive the artistry of what Jonatha Brooke offers with her instrumental and vocal expertise and power of storytelling, we have the answer in a near-divine and indomitable love that flows between the lovers out into the audiences’ hearts.
My Mother Has Four Noses is produced by Patrick Rains. Musical Director, Guitar: Ben Butler. Cello: Anja Wood. Orchestrations by Jonatha Brooke and Ben Butler. The production will run at The Duke on 42nd Street until May 4.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
‘Sotto Voce,’ Nilo Cruz’s Transformative Spin on the Tragedy of the MS St. Louis
Franca Sofia Barchiesi in the world premiere of Sotto Voce by Nilo Cruz at Theater for the New City until March 9th. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.
When one speaks “sotto voce,” one speaks in a softer, lower tone for emphasis or perhaps to give the impression of an involuntary utterance of truth which may shock or antagonize. Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Nilo Cruz (Anna in the Tropics, 2003), is revealing great truths through undercurrents and whisperings of poignant and impossible love in the world premiere of Sotto Voce. The play, which he also directed, is being performed at Theater for the New City until March 9.
As the play opens, we hear a foghorn and see two separate scenes that are going on simultaneously, one from the past and one in the present. The scene from the past involves memory and imagination. The scene in the present is of uncompromising reality. In the present we see Bemadette, a the renowned German-born writer, composing her work center stage at her desk in her apartment in New York City. A voiceover narration of Bemadette’s rich and beautiful prose describing the scene she has written makes the prose alive. We see a sister and her brother, the Strausses, walking happily on their way toward the ship they will soon board on their way out of Germany to Cuba. Along with 937 other Jewish refugees they are seeking asylum from Hitler’s Germany. The year is 1939, The ship is the ill-fated SS St. Louis.
L to R: Franca Sofia Barchiesi and Arielle Jacobs in Sotto Voce by Nilo Cruz. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.
The tragedy of the St. Louis is one of the more egregious examples of politics, human profiteering and discrimination involving democratic countries to come out of the pre-WWII years. After the ship made it to the alleged place of asylum, the refugees never were allowed into Cuba. They sought help from Canada and the U.S. but were denied immigration status and turned away. After voyages to the Florida coast and back to Cuba, they were running out of supplies. The ship was forced to return to Europe. Belgium, France, England and Holland agreed to take in the refugees. Of them, 254 died when the European countries were occupied by the Nazis (England excepted). Of these 254, many were sent to the camps. The St. Louis incident is integral to Sotto Voce. How Cruz uses it to evoke wonderful themes about memory, lost love, regret, reconciliation and rebirth is poetic and illuminating.
Andhy Mendez in Sotto Voce by Nilo Cruz, directed by Nilo Cruz. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.
As Cruz develops the play, he intertwines memory, imagination and current reality to tell the story of Bemadette. Her lover was Strauss, who with his sister, were refugees on the St. Louis. Bemadette cannot deal with past regrets about her lover who died in the camps. Her stability and her enjoyment of the present have been warped by pain. When we meet Bemadette (an astounding and emotionally taut performance by Franca Sofia Barchiesi), we recognize she is a dried husk. Guilt has sucked out the choicest portions of her lifeblood. In her attempt to reconcile the past, she writes, but it is poor recompense and she is haunted by nightmares and ghosts.
Then a life-changing event occurs. It helps her expiate the sadness and desolation that has kept her pinned to the past in repeated agonizing remembrances. The catalyst comes in a beautiful form, a Cuban college student, Saquiel (an intense and provocative Andhy Mendez) who has read her writings and who shares a bond with her. His grandfather’s sister was on the St. Louis and was killed in the Holocaust. In seeking out Bemadette, he is looking for his past and wanting to understand the sources of the beauty of her writings and her own history that she would prefer to nullify but cannot.
L to R: Andhy Mendez and Franca Sofia Barchiesi in Sotto Voce by Nilo Cruz at Theater for the New City. Photo by Jonathan Slaff.
An ethereal and platonic relationship via phone and email develops between Bemadette and Saquiel, fueled by an intermediary, Bemadette’s maid Lucila (an excellent Arielle Jacobs). The student and the writer help one another, even though they do not physically see each other but instead imagine they are together. It is through their loving, healthful relationship and their probing discussions that we discover the mysteries of Bemadette’s horrific regrets and misery about her Jewish lover. It is through Saquiel’s perseverance, love and appreciation of Bemadette’s artistry and history that she is able to reconcile her memories with the present realities. By the play’s conclusion Saquiel and Bemadette are transported to a new understanding of themselves and what they are willing to sacrifice to gain peace and hope.
In Sotto Voce Nilo Cruz has created a sumptuous work of art, integrating poetic forms within the structure of the plot to fuel the dialogue and characterizations. He does this with beauty and grace that convey a wistfulness and longing for health and wholeness which both characters are on their way to achieving by the play’s end. Most importantly, Cruz reminds us of the power of human relationships to heal. It is a power that transcends the limitations of time and space and age differences. If it is allowed to develop and grow, one may receive the energy to create new dreams to replace those lost to time and regret.
Sotto Voce was performed in a limited run at Theater for the New City.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
‘Ernest and Celestine’ at The New York International Children’s Film Festival
Ernest & Celestine with Forest Whitaker, Mckenzie Foy, William H. Macy, Lauren Bacall, Jeffrey Wright, and Paul Giamatti
The New York International Children’s Film Festival is offering screenings of top films for kids and adults. Many are popular and the tickets to official screenings and after party events have been sold out. However, tickets are being offered at venues throughout the city, so it is not too late to see beautiful, groundbreaking, thought-provoking films from around the world for ages 3-18. In the case of Ernest and Celestine directed by Stephane Aubier, Benjamin Renner and Vincent Patar which still has tickets available, even adults will enjoy the deeper issues and technical expertise which made this an award winning animated feature from France.
Daniel Pennac based his screenplay for this ethereally artistic and dreamy animation on the characters of Ernest and Celestine by Belgian author and illustrator Gabrielle Vincent. Vincent (1928 -2000) added to her initial concept of Ernest and Celestine by creating an entire Ernest & Celestine collection. She wrote and illustrated a total of thirty-eight books which encompass the pairs’ various adventures. Each has subtle lessons for children to assimilate as they enjoy the mouse-bear struggles and find solutions in the bonds of friendship. Adapting to themes of their unlikely companionship, Pennac has written a tale of how these two delicious and beautifully rendered characters met, bonded, and began their very first adventure together. In effect the feature serves as a prerequisite to the classic series of Ernest and Celestine books that readers around the world delight in.
The Ernest & Celestine animated feature has all of the elements of an adorable yet meaningful romp through a fantasy land of two disparate animal social cultures. The mice live below ground and control their terrain and society using a hierarchical pecking order fueled by mythologies and mores which promulgate an intense fear of alternate animal societies. Every child is indoctrinated with a horror of the ursine society which lives above ground. Profit motives and survival motives exploit this fear which trends throughout the mice generations. One reason for the antipathy between the two cultures is suggested. The mice/rats depend upon bear teeth when theirs fall out or they will become unproductive and perish. The bears don’t willingly give up old teeth; the mice must surreptitiously steal them. Thus, the mice employ corrupt means to exploit the “alien” culture.
Ernest & Celestine at the New York International Children’s Film Festival
For their part the bears abhor the creatures below ground. Theirs is a community of quaint, charming storybook houses out of Bruges, Belgium, minus the canals. The seemingly sweet dwellings are paintbrush animated in light, watercolors, simplistically drawn. The pastels tend toward pinkish, cream, fade-washed shades. However, all is not fairy tale “nice” in the ursine society. The profit motive also drives the bear population, and we see one example with the candy store entrepreneur. He sells delicious sweets of all stripes and colors to lure the bear children and adults into overindulgence. To gain his profits on the back end, his wife sells bear teeth for the children and adults who will lose theirs eating his sweets. He is without compunction or morals supported by an oblivious social structure equally as corrupt as the mice society.
Both cultures above and below ground are Philistine in nature and represent some of the worst human social characteristics; they are greedy, selfish, exploitative, without empathy, fear-mongering and manipulative. Our two friend heroes do not fit in; they are artists: Ernest is a musician and Celestine loves to draw. Both are not appreciated for their talents and Ernest lives alone in his ramshackle house while Celestine, an orphan, must steal bear teeth to survive. Through a “random” series of events in which Ernest nearly eats Celestine, the two strike a spark of empathy, love, and understanding. This lifts both beyond the fear and death-embracing, indoctrinating cultures that attempted to brainwash them in the name of sustaining an unfortunate paradigm of existence. With their artistic sensibilities they appreciate each other’s gifts and find a peaceful and pleasant “way of being.” These experiences allow them to tap into a reservoir of hope, love, and loyalty so that they might overcome the horrors of what threatens to destroy them when each is caught and imprisoned by the “enemy” side.
Ernest & Celestine, directed by Stephane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner.
Forest Whitaker (Ernest), Mackenzie Foy (Celestine), Lauren Bacall (The Grey One-mouse), Paul Giamatti (Rat Judge), William H. Macy (Mouse Dentist), Jeffrey Wright (Grizzly Judge) do a fine job with their characterizations. Whitaker is grumpy, yawny, sleepy, kind with humorous grunts and groans. Foy is delicate, sweet, and serenely heroic as one would hope Celestine would be. The animations pair beautifully with the selected actors’ portrayals. Lauren Bacall is practically unrecognizable and scary as are Wright and Giamatti. I did love Macy’s removed and “matter-of-fact” explanation of why the bear teeth are of paramount importance to mice survival, and his transformation into bully as he threatens Celestine not to come back until she achieves her bear teeth quota.
If you have not seen the film yet, take your kids or grandchildren who will appreciate it. Do not pass up the opportunity to see it. You will appreciate the underlying themes and animation, music, and screenplay artistry that blend to form a perfect and satisfying whole.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
Gidion’s Knot by Johnna Adams. A Play About a Teacher, a Single Mom and Her Son.
L to R: Dara O’Brien and Karen Leiner in Gidion’s Knot by Johnna Adams, directed by Austin Pendleton. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Humans are self-deceivers; they often avoid confronting painful truths. When/if their frauds lead to catastrophe, then they are forced to look at how their self-duplicity created the consequences. With self-deception, there is the inevitable manipulation of others and the abusive “passing the blame” of one’s hated flaws onto these victims who may or may not suspect the manipulator’s ulterior motives. If the victims are enablers, they accept the blame and help push the abuser into their catastrophe. Ideally, the sooner one confronts the horrific inner Gorgon of truth, the better. Confrontation leads to enlightenment and growth. Delay, brings stony emotions, obfuscations, and more lies, until there is collapse, self-destruction, or madness.
In her play Gidion’s Knot, Johnna Adams explores how a mother and a fifth grade teacher dance around the “truth” of an incident which involves Gidion who was in Heather Clark’s fifth grade public school class. The dance provokes mother Corryn (Karen Leiner), and teacher Heather (Dara O’Brien), to inadvertently lay bare their souls in an interesting power manipulation. Rather than confront their inner Gorgon, and help one another, they pity, judge, condemn, project, and appear cold-hearted: all acts of self-deception and obfuscation. As the play records their convolutions, we, the audience, try to unravel the mystery of what happened to Gidion and what is happening in the present between the two women. But our attempt to unravel the knots of lies and truths remains feeble. In a fog we wonder about the significance of what we are seeing and question if these characters will ever acknowledge their inner Gorgon, thus destroying its power over them.
Playwright Johnna Adams has contrived a complex, hyper-charged conundrum of a play. Directed with precision, insight and sensitivity by Austin Pendleton, Gidion’s Knot leaves one spinning about the characters’ manipulations and duplicities as it examines the issue of social and parental responsibility. I cannot envision many other directors who so aptly could have created an atmosphere to elicit the marvelous performances. Because of the team’s united efforts this amazing production thrills and provokes.
Dara O’Brien in Gidion’s Knot by Johnna Adams, directed by Austin Pendleton at 59E59 Theaters. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Pendleton’s talents adhere with the vivid, alive portrayals by actors Karen Leiner and Dara O’Brien. Their creation is a continuous thrumming of palpable tension that keeps us engaged. Can the mysteries be solved given the complexities and needs of the characters? Pendleton’s, Leiner’s and O’Brien’s masterful work illuminates the charades, blinding rationales, and subtle justifications the characters use to avoid their miserable inner truths. We recognize how Corryn’s and Heather’s self-deceptions have lead to catastrophe. Will these women see the light and help one another or resort to recriminations and judgements enabling and fomenting the inevitability of another disaster?
As the actors and director elucidate these points, the entanglements intensify. The more we attempt to extricate the truths, the more we are caught up in the characters’ rationalizations and self-fraud. We empathize because we are looking at ourselves. We realize that for them, there may be no way out except to live with an inner morass that will worsen. Unlike a Gordian Knot, an allusion aptly used by the playwright, the knot Gidion has created cannot be cut.
For the setting and backdrop Adams uses a conventional educational system and an atypical parent-teacher conference. Along the way she touches upon the issues of our present public educational system’s cultural assumptions about curriculum, appropriate behavior, and the responsibility of the parent, child, teacher, and system to produce learning. She also infers how these assumptions may run counter to the true nature of learning as art and how such learning prompts the finest art. Though parts of the play might appear to be contrived, (i.e. Gidion’s act, Corryn’s choice to put Gidion in a public school, the absence of communication between the school and parent), the playwright tries to smooth over the glitches with the characters’ logical explanations. Just at the point where one might find the contrivance an obstacle, Pendleton and the actors patch up the holes with brilliant performance art that is completely “in the moment.” We are swept up by the life we see and don’t give the contrivance much thought.
L to R: Karen Leiner and Dara O’Brien in Gidion’s Knot. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
The playwright focuses Gidion’s Knot around Corryn’s interaction with Heather during the conference. When Corryn first enters the classroom, we believe she is misplaced because Ms. Heather Clark is shocked that she’s come. Corryn tells her she is there to discover the reasons why Gidion, a brilliant student, has been given a suspension by Ms. Clark. She wants to understand what happened to her son and figure out the motivations for his behaviors. We suspect there is more to her initially benign response because of Heather’s amazement at her presence. As Corryn probes Heather for answers, she becomes hostile and aggressive, and the underlying tensions between the parent and the teacher grow. Corryn’s acidic comments push Heather Clark into retreat mode with long periods of silent acquiescence as she takes in Corryn’s opprobrium. Throughout the exchanges we wonder who is being truthful, who is avoiding reality and why is the “bullying” necessary?
Karen Leiner in Gidion’s Knot by Johnna Adams, directed by Austin Pendleton at 59E59 Theaters. Photo by Carol Rosegg.
Little by little, the playwright unfolds the mysteries. We find out why Heather Clark is shocked to see Corryn in her classroom. However, this initial revelation is only the beginning. Gidion has left a knot to unravel about his behavior; we search for answers about the extent to which Corryn and Heather might have been culpable in effecting Gidion’s nullifying actions. The playwright adeptly guides the audience through the teacher’s and parent’s perspectives. From Corryn’s perspective we want to know more from Heather Clark. Surely, the teacher understands what happened to Gidion. We understand Corryn’s need to manipulate, browbeat, and abuse the truth from Heather. However, we know from Heather’s reticence that she is protecting someone and is keeping certain situations in her classroom confidential. Aligning with Heather’s professional perspective, then, she appears to be in the right. We assume that Corryn is too emotionally invested to see clearly and rationally. But who is Heather protecting? Heather? The principal? The children? Gidion? Corryn? And from what?
Because of the superb performances which ooze strain and inner turmoil, we yearn to understand and this suspense keeps our attention. As more of the complications are revealed, the less truth we know. The more vitriol Corryn expresses, the farther she moves from inner understanding of herself and her impact on her son. The more Heather Clark enables Corryn’s bitter “truth” seeking with her spare explanations, the less we understand about Gidion’s motivation and Heather’s part in it. Was Gidion’s suspension truly justified? Or was it an example of the public education system curtailing sensitivity, artistry, and creativity as suggested by Corryn? Does the letter that Corryn finds in Gidion’s desk reveal he has been damaged by classmates? Or is there a deeper, hidden truth which will have ramifications upon Corryn’s understanding of herself and her son?
Throughout the play we are riveted because we are off balance. We do not know who is “fronting” whom. By the conclusion we are uncertain and that is the best we can hope for because the characters are inscrutable. We should not be projecting our own failed, misplaced assumptions on them. The issues of where parental responsibility and social responsibility begin and end are not resolved. We do understand that the educational system presented by the playwright (somewhat contrived) is not ready to deal with who or what Gidion is, but then neither is Corryn. Lastly, there is Gidion. In fifth grade, he is past the age of accountability. To what extent does the final culpability rest with him?
Gidion’s Knot was performed at 59E59 Theaters in a limited engagement.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
‘Take Me Back’ by Emily Schwindt, A Play About the Heartland of America.
James Kautz in Take Me Back by Emily Schwend, directed by Jay Stull at Walkerspace. Photo by Russ Rowland.
Thomas Wolf said in Look Homeward Angel, that one can never really go home again. This is particularly true for those who have established themselves in careers and have become successful. Not only have they picked themselves up and replanted roots in an environment where they can flourish, they are often loath to associate with their origins especially if the memories are unhappy ones. But what happens to those who have no where else to go? Home isn’t always the place where they have to take you in.
Emily Schwend in Take Me Back, directed by Jay Stull, explores the scenario of a young man who has returned home in desperation. As the play opens, we note that Bill (James Kautz) has served time in jail for theft. Unable to start elsewhere with no education, few prospects, no money or other place to live, he has moved in with his diabetic mom (a fine performance by Charlotte Booker). He attempts to take care of her. He tries to control her eating habits and get her to take her blood sugar in the morning and during the day. Above all he monitors her like a security guard to make sure she stays off the sweets. The exchanges between mother and son are humorous, and Sue’s furtive stashing of candies and goodies brings knowing chuckles from the audience. Kautz and Charlotte Booker have established a rapport that feels right as this mother and son attempt to adjust to circumstances where each are dependent on the other, though it is not necessarily a dependence that is desired or appreciated.
L to R: James Kautz and Charlotte Booker in Take Me Back by Emily Schwend, directed by Jay Stull at Walkerspace. Photo by Russ Rowland.
Frustrated that he has mucked up his life and upset that his mom is not listening to his adjurations about her diabetes, Bill resorts back to his old thieving ways. What opportunities are open to him in Oklahoma except to work in a Walmart and make the minimum wage? He can only see a series of unrewarding empty decades ahead. For him that is not better than nothing. The exciting allure of his old life beckons with the promise of a quick buck and an easy inside job. It is only when former girlfriend Julie shows up that he begins to believe that he might be able to get along in this desolate environment. When she reciprocates in an affectionate way and says she will come back and see him, he realizes that perhaps there is the hope that they can be together. He has correctly surmised she does not love her husband and is unhappy in her marriage.
L to R: Boo Killebrew and James Kautz in Take Me Back by Emily Schwend, directed by Jay Stull at Walkerspace. Photo by Russ Rowland.
Schwend has established themes that will resonate with all who have lived in this country during the last twenty years. There is the issue that the children will have to care for their aging parents who are starting on the road to dementia and who have multiple physical problems, including type two diabetes. There is also the issue of few employment opportunities away from larger coastal cities if one doesn’t have an advanced college degree, technical skills, or show entrepreneurial promise in creating one’s own opportunities. Another issue is the sad fact that children after divorce or other major life changes have moved back in with parents to share economic burdens. Worse, some have found it nearly impossible to leave home because they can’t afford living alone or sharing rent.
L to R: Jay Eisenberg and James Kautz in Take Me Back by Emily Schwend, directed by Jay Stull at Walkerspace. Photo by Russ Rowland.
Sub rosa issues weaving throughout the play point to a shrinking middle class, increasing economic hardship, and no employment opportunities. These have created a declining social community. Meanwhile, the prison population of which Bill had been a part has continued to soar. Underlying all these themes is that the humdrum, boring every day existence of work at a “dead end” job is no existence. Anything that can prompt one to escape (excessive entertainment, drugs, alcohol, addictions, the seduction of petty crime) is what a young people will seek out to release themselves from the boredom of “life” that is not living. Only family can get folks through. But what hope is there if the family is a parent in decline? There is the possibility of love and a relationship with someone to share one’s existence with, perhaps.
Schwend’s play is filled with pathos. There are a few surprising twists. The ensemble brings it all together under the competent direction of Jay Stull. The underlying questions Schwend asks will be confronting the U.S. in the next decades. How can we create more employment in decent, interesting jobs that pay well? How can we shore up the heartland with opportunities to stabilize the social community and strengthen it? Will resolving these problems be enough to keep men and women out of jail? The questions are important ones. Schwend has brought them to the fore without indicating political answers. With her homely characterizations, dynamic relationships, and important themes, she has given us much to contemplate.
The New York City premiere of Take Me Back will be performed at Walkerspace through March 22nd.
This review first appeared on Blogcritics.
CAROLE DI TOSTI 