Archives for February 2009

“Fame sometimes hath created something out of nothing. She hath made whole countries more than nature ever did, especially near the poles, and then hath peopled them likewise with inhabitants of her own invention, pigmies, giants, and amazons: yea, fame is sometimes like unto a mushroom, which Pliny recounts to be the greatest miracle in nature, because growing and having no root, as fame no ground of her reports.”
Thomas Fuller, The Holy State

I’m back in New York and making the theatrical rounds after a long absence. Today’s Wall Street Journal drama column is accordingly devoted to three off-Broadway productions, Lynn Nottage’s Ruined, the Classic Stage Company’s production of Uncle Vanya, and the Irish Repertory Theatre’s revival of Brian Friel’s Aristocrats. Here’s an excerpt.
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Lynn Nottage writes political plays–or, rather, plays about people whose lives have been touched by politics. This crucial distinction is what makes her a playwright rather than a propagandist, and “Ruined,” in which she shows us what things have come to in the bloody, brutal land that dares to call itself the Democratic Republic of Congo, leaves no doubt that the author of “Intimate Apparel” and “Crumbs from the Table of Joy” is one of the best playwrights that we have.
Inspired by Bertolt Brecht’s “Mother Courage,” “Ruined” is set in a small-town brothel run by Mama Nadi (Saidah Arrika Ekulona), a ruthless businesswoman who is as hard as nails and as coarse as rock salt. Though her homeland has been reduced to the state of nature by the insane nihilism of Central African politics, she keeps the war of all against all at bay by insisting that her customers check their bullets at the door. To that door comes Sophie (Condola Rashad), a homeless teenager who has been “ruined,” meaning that her genitalia have been mutilated by rapists. Unable to prostitute herself, Sophie instead keeps Mama Nadi’s books, sings for her supper (very beautifully, too) and dreams of a day when the “bush laws” that have laid waste to her battered flesh will somehow be repealed.
All this is tough and truthful stuff, and it is to Ms. Nottage’s infinite credit that she does not present it as an illustrated lecture but instead uses the terrible realities of Congolese life as the raw material of an immensely compelling human drama about the lives and hopes of her characters, each of whom is portrayed not as a political cartoon but as a recognizable person….
Anton Chekhov has been all over town this season. First came the recent Broadway production of “The Seagull,” then the Bridge Project’s “Cherry Orchard,” and now Classic Stage Company’s “Uncle Vanya.” Like its predecessors, this “Vanya” is a flawed enterprise whose defects arise from what I assume to be a specifically directorial decision: The acting is jarringly contemporary, the décor unabashedly traditional. Denis O’Hare’s flip, whiny Vanya could have stepped straight off the set of a Woody Allen movie, while Peter Sarsgaard’s blasé Astrov sounds like John Malkovich. Austin Pendleton, the director, is a gifted artist (he wrote “Orson’s Shadow”) who knows his Chekhov, but I can’t see how the performances he’s drawn from his equally gifted cast are supposed to hook up with Santo Loquasto’s old-fashioned country-house set and Suzy Benzinger’s pre-revolutionary costumes….
Not only has Brian Friel adapted several of Chekhov’s plays, but he’s written one of his own. “Aristocrats” is just the sort of play that the master himself might have penned had he passed his youth in 20th-century Ireland instead of 19th-century Russia. A near-plotless 1979 study of a family whose once-wealthy members have receded into shabby gentility, “Aristocrats” is one of Mr. Friel’s most complex portraits of how the Irish grappled with–or tried to ignore–the coming of modernity. That makes the play a natural for the Irish Repertory Theatre, my favorite Off-Broadway company, and Charlotte Moore’s staging is an admirably straightforward piece of work that makes its dramatic points with discreet clarity….
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Read the whole thing here.

Much has been made in recent weeks of the alleged use by American military interrogators of loud music in order to extract confessions and information from suspected terrorists. Reprieve, a British human-rights group, has launched a campaign aimed at stamping out what it calls “music torture.” It has also published a list of music that has reportedly been used in such interrogations. The selections range from AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” to “I Love You,” the theme song from Barney & Friends. Most of them, it turns out, are heavy metal or hip-hop, a fact that struck me as worthy of discussion in my Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column.
Why do interrogators prefer heavy metal to Mozart–especially given the fact that recorded classical music is now being used to drive homeless people out of Amtrak stations? And why is music the only art form deemed suitable for torture-related purposes? To find out, pick up a copy of Saturday’s Journal and see what I have to say.
UPDATE: Read the whole thing here.

“The traveller, however virginal and enthusiastic, does not enjoy an unbroken ecstasy. He has periods of gloom, periods when he asks himself the object of all these exertions, and puts the question whether or not he is really experiencing pleasure. At such times he suspects that he is not seeing the right things, that the characteristic, the right aspects of these strange scenes are escaping him. He looks forward dully to the days of his holiday yet to pass, and wonders how he will dispose of them. He is disgusted because his money is not more, his command of the language so slight, and his capacity for enjoyment so limited.”
Arnold Bennett, journal entry, Oct. 25, 1897

I’ve resisted doing this list as it pretty much exhausts all my cocktail party ammo — but for the sake of unity I’ll follow Terry and OGIC into the breech. Forgive me if any of this duplicates anything I already have nattered on to you about online or in person.
1. I once rode an elevator with W.S. Merwin after a reading. I was supposed to try to get an interview with him. Choked.
2. My taste in music is an ongoing source of embarrassment to me — and my stepkids.
3. I love reading in the bath.
4. I like to eat out and before I go to sleep I often lie in bed and re-play really great meals I’ve had. (My stepdaughter does this too.)
5. My mother is named after the French painter LeBrun.
6. I recently learned that both my (half) sister and I share an affection for the word “haberdashery” and both associate it with our dad.
7. I wish there was a game show devoted to questions about Jane Eyre. Not only because I think I’d do well, but also because it’d be a pleasure to meet all the other contestants.
8. I’m easily agitated by movie violence, especially if there are guns waving around even if they’re only there for comic effect (e.g., Return of the Pink Panther). It’s a ridiculous and (thus far) un-masterable fear …
9. … I do, however, really enjoy well-choreographed fight scenes. A few favorite cinematic/tv ones are Jackie Chan with the wooden shoes in Who Am I?, the T. Rex v. King Kong fight in Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake, and the fight between Buffy and Angel at the end of “Becoming” part 2.
10. I was diagnosed as dyslexic as a kid. So was my sister. As adults, we both fetish-ize books and reading. I don’t think it’s unrelated.
11. My dyslexia was caught early and I became a reading maniac. My favorite way to read as a kid was hanging upside down from the furniture around the house, like a bat. It hurts my back to think about this now.
12. I’ve flown on the Concorde.
13. My mom is dog crazy. One Christmas a family friend gave her the Christopher Guest movie Best In Show, i.e., the definitive film about dog craziness, as a present. Later, the friend asked my mom what she thought of the movie. My mom answered, “Those were some beautiful dogs.”
14. I have trouble with depression and trot around outside a lot to keep it in check. Sometimes this makes me feel like a melancholic dog that needs a lot of walking or gives way to molt.
15. I’m a member of the Unitarian Church in Asheville. My husband Lowell isn’t. When I’m behind on my tithing and we have to write a big check to catch up, he says it’s like “paying off a bad gambling debt.”
16. The minister who married us conducted Carl Sandburg’s funeral service in 1967.
17. The first sports event I remember watching with any interest was the 1992 Kentucky-Duke game that ended with the Laettner bucket.
18. I always seem to live in places that start with “A”: Appleton, Amherst, Austin, Atlanta, Asheville.
19. Our household’s favorite baseball player is Julio Franco, who retired last year. You know those Little League pitchers who are secretly 26 years old? When he was last playing, Julio’s age was officially 49 but you knew if they cut him open and counted the rings it’d turn out to be more like 80. I love him for that and for never, ever swinging at a first pitch. It made me sad that there wasn’t more hoopla when he retired.
20. When I visit a new city, I like to walk the entire length of — or as far as I can go — either north-south or east-west. Not into the suburbs, just to the edges of whatever map I have. Really prolonged, non-destination-oriented walking. Some of my best travel experiences have happened walking this way (Boston, Santiago, Buenos Aires, San Francisco, Minneapolis).
21. I love libraries and can get pretty wound up talking about their importance. Short version: God bless librarians and God bless the right to knowledge and beauty.
22. One of my earliest report cards said, “Carrie enjoys talking to [best friend] too much during class time.” True — all through school. Through work. Through life. A terrible habit, but I’ve been exceptionally fortunate in the friends I’ve made along the way.
23. I think a lot of life is like an awkward scene out of a Barbara Pym novel. Instance: In college I was going somewhere off-campus and ended up walking beside a guy — very elegant, fine-boned, blond — who I often sat next to in Nabokov seminar and who was headed to the same destination. Felt very Cossack-y jostling along beside him. Said, “So, I see you keep falling asleep in class — HA HA!” and he looked at me, very embarrassed, and said he couldn’t help it, he had a condition.
24. Lowell’s and my current big, quixotic plan is to figure out how we can live in a bigger city (preferably abroad) for one to three months a year. Preferred spots to start: Boston, Edinburgh or Antwerp.
25. If I played roller derby, my roller derby name would be Steph N. Wolf.

Here’s my list of recommended Broadway, off-Broadway, and out-of-town shows, updated weekly. In all cases, I gave these shows favorable reviews (if sometimes qualifiedly so) in The Wall Street Journal when they opened. For more information, click on the title.

Warning: Broadway shows marked with an asterisk were sold out, or nearly so, last week.

BROADWAY:

• Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps (comedy, G, suitable for bright children, reviewed here)

• August: Osage County (drama, R, adult subject matter, reviewed here)

• Avenue Q (musical, R, adult subject matter and one show-stopping scene of puppet-on-puppet sex, reviewed here)

• The Little Mermaid (musical, G, entirely suitable for children, reviewed here)

• South Pacific * (musical, G/PG-13, some sexual content, brilliantly staged but unsuitable for viewers acutely allergic to preachiness, reviewed here)

OFF BROADWAY:

• The Cherry Orchard (elegiac comedy, G, not suitable for children or immature adults, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

• The Cripple of Inishmaan (black comedy, PG-13, extended through Mar. 15, reviewed here)

• Enter Laughing (musical, PG-13, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

• The Fantasticks (musical, G, suitable for children capable of enjoying a love story, reviewed here)

IN CHICAGO:

• The Little Foxes (drama, PG-13, adult subject matter, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

• Macbeth (tragedy, PG-13/R, nudity and graphic violence, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

IN LENOX, MASS:

• Bad Dates (comedy, PG-13, closes Mar. 8, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK ON BROADWAY:

• Speed-the-Plow (serious comedy, PG-13/R, closes Feb. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING NEXT WEEK IN CHICAGO:

• The Seafarer (drama, PG-13, closes Feb. 22, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN KANSAS CITY:

• The Glass Menagerie (drama, G, unsuitable for children, reviewed here)

CLOSING SUNDAY IN SAN DIEGO:

• Six Degrees of Separation (serious comedy, R, nudity and adult subject matter, reviewed here)

“Two thousand dear ladies. All very careful and diplomatic with one another. Ever so sweet and catty, you know. I can hear that sweet-and-catty sound through the curtain while the house lights are still on. They all applaud with their gloves on, never too hard or too much. They’re busier watching each other than the show.”
Cyril Ritchard (quoted in Holiday, Sept. 1960)

Only for you, Terry:
1. Was named with Laura Petrie in mind.

2. Have never broken a bone, gotten stitches, or had surgery.

3. Was a girl scout, but not long enough to earn any badges.

4. Was the tallest girl in my grade until about age 12 and loved it. A doctor told my parents I would grow up to be 5’9″ but I never made it. I’m 5’7″ and still disappointed.

5. Favorite song at age 4: “Brand New Key” by Melanie.

6. Poems I know by heart: “Kubla Khan,” “To Autumn,” “The Tyger,” “Spring and Fall, to a Young Child,” “Full Fathom Five” from the Tempest.

7. Desperately miss sending and receiving mail through the post office.

8. Don’t have a musical bone in my body…

9. …but can bake a mean cake.

10. Never took a course in philosophy, economics, or psychology…

11. …but was a crack student in math, testing through the roof, and still wonder what might have been.

12. Flunked my first driving test while pulling out of the parking spot.

13. Wish to travel to Alaska, the Scottish Highlands, and the Canadian Rockies; think beaches are overrated.

14. Look something up in the dictionary most days–in the book, not the Web site.

15. Coffee snob.

16. In a high school writing workshop, submitted an epistolary roman à clef short story that was passed around the entire student population and made its shy author, for a short time, notorious.

17. Worked at the publishing imprint that bought and then rejected Dreams From My Father.

18. First book review assignment ever: a life of River Phoenix.

19. As a child, was approached in a Toronto park to shoot a spot for a television ad promoting the Canadian kids’ show The Friendly Giant. Had to say “I like Geoffrey Giraffe” and received a Canadian dollar for my efforts, which my parents still have.

20. Paid $250 a month in rent when I last lived in New York in 1993. Actually, it wasn’t rent but lawyers’ fees–the tenants were suing the owners at the time.

21. Have read Pride and Prejudice more times than any other book.

22. Was president of student council in 9th grade, before switching to private school and becoming shy.

23. Have checked off every movie I’ve seen in my copy of Pauline Kael’s 5001 Nights at the Movies.

24. Wish I were a morning person; I love being up in the early morning, once I get over the pain, but rarely get up earlier than I have to.

25. Can never have too many socks. There’s no such thing.