America’s “melting pot” experiment is the Babel effect in reverse. Instead of shattering one people into thousands of different tribes, America joins thousands of tribes together—melting them like tin soldiers on a hot plate, then fusing them into a single alloy of sterner stuff. Well, that’s the theory. The experiment is still in progress.
21st century Miami puts the melting pot theory to the acid test. Michael McKeever’s The Miamians (originally titled The Melt) explores the experiment. It isn’t always pretty. His play paints a portrait of a schizoid city—a city of memory that's also a city of amnesia.
On the one hand, Miami is a subtropical paradise of deeply held cultures and traditions. It’s simultaneously a subtropical Etch-a-Sketch which casually erases its rich history—paradise lost to the wrecking ball. Vast neighborhoods become blank slates for new development, high rises very much like Tower of Babel. The people who once lived in these neighborhoods don’t melt together; the ex-neighbors melt away, taking their histories with them. According to McKeever, Miami doesn’t suffer from a clash of cultures. It suffers from a clash of culture and the forces of cultural amnesia.
In The Miamians, that clash resonates in the stories of intertwining families from widely (wildly) different backgrounds—and surprisingly similar values. There’s a gay couple, a black family, a Jewish family, a Cuban family. They’re a rainbow of humanity, worthy of a Benetton ad. And they’re all such nice people. In an alternate selection of characters, McKeever could’ve given us Tony Montana from Scarface or the serial killer from Dexter. Or, say, Crockett and Tubbs from Miami Vice. He could’ve given us almost anybody. And that’s the point. Miami isn’t just a city; it’s a world. Any cross-section of Miamians is, by definition, arbitrary. Narrowing it down to six characters is like walking into a vast library and pulling out six books. In a city like Miami, chances are, the books will be wildly different and vastly interesting. McKeever’s big point?
Burning down the library is a bad idea.
McKeever opens with a story from the lost-and-found department. A character named Isaac remembers his maternal grandfather—Israel Zangwill, a playwright. Except for a few English majors, nobody else remembers his name or his play: The Melting Pot. But all America remembers the central image of Zangwill’s play: a multitude of tribes, melting and fusing together. Isaac wonders how hot the pot has to get for all those tribes to melt together. But that’s misdirection on the part of the playwright. The melting pot? Please.
McKeever thinks it’s a lousy idea. He doesn’t want to melt the tribes together. He’s in love with the tribes’ differences—in their disparate recollections. Sacred stories. Cultural memory. Whatever you call it, he wants us to love it too. He reminds us how fragile such memories can be. He shakes us up with a powerful image of memory deletion—and file recovery.
Remember Isaac? The character who told the story about the playwright at the beginning of the play?
By play’s end, Isaac doesn’t remember Isaac. His mind is a blank slate, thanks to Alzheimer’s. His stories are gone, at least from his own memory. But his family promises to remember Isaac’s stories for him. And pass them down. Isaac doesn’t understand their promise. But they do; and they mean it. Isaac’s story is worth saving. They all are.
McKeever thinks so. Clearly.
That’s the point of his play. It’s not a subtle point. He’d rather be clear.
To paraphrase an old TV show: There are 5.5 million stories in the city of Miami. “The Miamians” tells you six of them. There’s more where that came from. But if you tear down the old neighborhoods and kick the people out, the stories will be gone.
Don’t burn down the library. Even if a developer hands you a big check to put up some shiny new buildings. Don’t. Miami isn’t the buildings.
It’s the people, stupid.
‘The Miamians’
Short version: Miami: you can’t go home again.
Through May 24
Florida Studio Theatre
1241 North Palm Ave., Sarasota
366-9000
www.floridastudiotheatre.org.
Friday, April 4, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
A horse is a horse
Peter Shaffer's Equus is a tough play to summarize. So I'll just do it badly. Once upon a time in England a stable boy went nuts and blinded some horses. The cause is a crackpot, post-Christian pagan religion in his own mind. Or maybe an unhappy childhood. A shrink examines the kid. Instead of healing him, he starts to question his own religion of psychiatry. So it goes.
This Asolo production presents the play’s twisted, emerging narrative as a counterpoint of bewildered sanity (the shrink’s point of view) and divine madness (Alan’s point of view, sometime ecstatic, sometimes hopeless.) The director frames the action in psychological space. Physical space? Well, there isn't much. You don’t get a sense of specific people interacting in a specific place and time. The inventive set is as spare and minimalist as an anal-retentive’s desk. The world on stage is a world of words; the world beyond the words is only hinted at. In this production, the gritty, physical Brittan of 1973 is less real than Alan’s mad dream of his horse god.
Technically, the production is first rate. The starts and stops of the conversational rhythms: the dance of action inside the minimal set: a lighted Cartesian grid below an arch—suggesting, as needed, a stable, sanitarium, or a home.
Emotionally, it’s as good as it gets. Michael Donald Edwards’ direction gets under your skin. The actors inhabit their characters. Cardenas is damn good as the mad Alan, a lunatic John Boy embodying the viciousness of innocence; Mum and Dad could easily come off as jerks, but Millman and Jones both manage to create unique individuals you care about; Gormezano is fine as a normal teenage lass attracted to a lad who isn’t so normal; Randy Danson creates a person out of her role as the Nurse, otherwise known as Ms. Draw-Out-the-Protagonist; Whitworth, finally, is brilliant as the shrink, eating his heart out, trying to do his job when he’s not so sure it should be done. Both direction and performance are masterful. And it's great subject matter.
The text they're performing is brilliant, with language approaching the heights of Shakespeare at times. That said, the text has flaws. And deliberate deceptions. (There's an extended analysis at the end for those who actually care.) But it boils down to beautiful language covers up bad logic.
Shaffer’s brilliant play feels like a brilliant cheat—a series of allegorical chess moves in which the playwright’s unbelievable, impossible opponent is engineered to lose. Rational Psychiatry vs. Pagan Splendor. Checkmate in 16 moves . The playwright wins! Brilliant Mr. Shaffer. Simply brilliant!
Well, not that brilliant. Real loonies aren’t like Alan. Real psychiatrists aren’t like Dysart — a Freudian who talks like a Jungian and makes the fundamental assumption that psychiatric treatment destroys the soul.
Shaffer offers a believable portrait of madness. His portrait of sanity is unbelievable. It isn’t even a strawman.
It isn’t even there.
‘Equus’
Short version: Brilliant answers. Stupid questions.
Through May 4
An Asolo Repertory production
FSU Center for the Arts
5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
351-8000
Nitpicky analysis below ...
Friday, February 29, 2008
'The Duchess of Malfi' at FSU/Asolo Conservatory
The hit man’s tragedy
John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614) makes Macbeth seem like a feel-good romp. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Everybody dies. (Everybody you care about.) The moral of the play: Life sucks.
The plot is convoluted and dependent on cultural codes that don’t run on our current mental software. Essentially, the recently widowed (and still young) Duchess of Malfi (Elisabeth Ahrens) secretly marries Antonio Bologna (a man below her station played by Dolph Paulsen). The happy couple has kids and keep that a secret too. The Duchess’ unhappy brothers (David Yearta as the Machiavellian Cardinal and DeMario McGrew as the incestuously inclined Ferdinand) find out about the kids but not the marriage. At first, they think the Duchess has just been screwing around. When they do find out about the secret marriage, they decide to kill her anyway because hubby is low-class. But they torture her first—psychologically. It’s not quite as bad as, say, Hostel, but it’s pretty bad. After that, the play takes a surprising turn—but more on that later.
All of this is presented in dense, deeply-deep Elizabethan language—self-consciously derivative of Shakespeare, but not quite as good. The effect is like Nabokov going back in time and doing a Bard impersonation. (Except he’d probably do a better job than Webster.) It’s as mannered and artificial as a Japanese “Noh” drama.
Anybody staging this stuff in the present is left with two choices:
A) Do an archaeological recreation of the text-as-artifact. Present this stuff exactly as they’d do it back in the day with no apologies or explanations.
B) Frame the artificiality in a larger artificiality. Say, an assortment of post-modern foofaraw.
As you’ve probably guessed, option (B) is what the Asolo Conservatory did in their recent production directed by Susannah Gellert. The actors are in modern dress. The action takes place in what looks like a crappy motel room with a pull out bed, a church-lady-type electric organ, two video monitors and a microphone on a stand. Actors interview each other with a vidcam and you see it on the monitors. Others take turns banging the organ and doing karaoke on the mike. Above it all, a sign proclaims: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EVIL. I’ll take the Conservatory’s word for it, though Webster’s play seems to offer evidence to the contrary.
During intermission, I heard a few audience members whining, “I couldn’t understand what was happening with the actors in modern dress in that crappy motel room.” Bull. I found that the lack of a literal set forced me to pay more attention to the words. Hey, we’re in a castle now. If you say so, I’ll imagine it. But first, I have to hear you. The lack of costumes and scenery cues forced me to really listen—so I listened and I figured most of it out. Even so, there were lots of times I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
My problem with the production isn’t its lack of period cues or the post-modern gimcrackery as such. (I usually like gimcrackery.) But the structure built around the play’s original structure doesn’t add up to anything – CSI: Malfi, a video blog, a murderous game show, whatever. It isn’t a structure. The bits of business are random. (Some are rip-offs, including one dead steal from Kill Bill and another bit swiped from Blue Velvet.) What should be a frame to see through often turns into an opaque window. That’s my problem. But so what?
I figure the logic behind it all is more pedagogical than dramaturgical. If this had been a typical Asolo mainstage production intended to keep an audience happy, some contemporary playwright would’ve whacked about a third of Webster’s copyright-free original material and made the crooked roads run straight. As this was a Conservatory production intended for teaching purposes, you get all of it—clocking in at 80 minutes in the first act and an hour in the second. Needless to say the students get a workout. And some audience members got worn out.
If you’ve got the stamina to hang in there, it really picks up in the second act. (Trust me.) The Duchess is killed very quickly. (That “I was five and he was six” riff lifted from Kill Bill had me expecting her to take revenge with a samurai sword, but it was not to be.) Bosola (Jason Peck) the killer-for-hire in the red bandana and Def Leppard t-shirt, suddenly gets second thoughts—and it’s like Iago going “What was I thinking?” (At this point, I literally stop slouching, sit up and take notice.) The stone killer becomes a human being—and, effectively, the hero of the play.
Without warning, The Duchess of Malfi turns into The Hit Man’s Tragedy—and from here on it gets interesting, if damn depressing. (Maybe it’s my imagination, but Webster’s writing seems to really get better—as if he got his hands on some really good coffee.) Bosola concludes the play by killing the two swinish brothers who paid him to set their sister up. Bosola dies too, of course. Before the curtain comes down, Antonio dies, the Duchess dies, the kids, the rotten, scheming brothers and various pretty women who get in their way. It all ends badly. But it’s great theater.
Inside the post-modern frame, the acting is consistently good and true to the original characters. The direction veers from dead brilliant to why-the-hell-did-she-do-that? The ride ain’t always smooth. But it’s definitely worth the ride.
Does everything work? No. This is an experimental production and I wouldn’t expect it too. Not all the experiments work, but I applaud the mad scientist gutsiness behind it all. A standard-issue costume drama would have been the easy choice. Gellert’s post-mod production of Malfi is the road less taken. She takes risks; she forces you to be involved; she makes you question the assumptions you carry inside your skull when you enter the theater.
It’s thought provoking theater at its best.
'The Duchess of Malfi'
Short version: What’s it all about, Malfi?
Through March 16
FSU/Asolo Conservatory production
Cook Theatre, FSU Center for the Arts
5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
351-8000
John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (1614) makes Macbeth seem like a feel-good romp. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. Everybody dies. (Everybody you care about.) The moral of the play: Life sucks.
The plot is convoluted and dependent on cultural codes that don’t run on our current mental software. Essentially, the recently widowed (and still young) Duchess of Malfi (Elisabeth Ahrens) secretly marries Antonio Bologna (a man below her station played by Dolph Paulsen). The happy couple has kids and keep that a secret too. The Duchess’ unhappy brothers (David Yearta as the Machiavellian Cardinal and DeMario McGrew as the incestuously inclined Ferdinand) find out about the kids but not the marriage. At first, they think the Duchess has just been screwing around. When they do find out about the secret marriage, they decide to kill her anyway because hubby is low-class. But they torture her first—psychologically. It’s not quite as bad as, say, Hostel, but it’s pretty bad. After that, the play takes a surprising turn—but more on that later.
All of this is presented in dense, deeply-deep Elizabethan language—self-consciously derivative of Shakespeare, but not quite as good. The effect is like Nabokov going back in time and doing a Bard impersonation. (Except he’d probably do a better job than Webster.) It’s as mannered and artificial as a Japanese “Noh” drama.
Anybody staging this stuff in the present is left with two choices:
A) Do an archaeological recreation of the text-as-artifact. Present this stuff exactly as they’d do it back in the day with no apologies or explanations.
B) Frame the artificiality in a larger artificiality. Say, an assortment of post-modern foofaraw.
As you’ve probably guessed, option (B) is what the Asolo Conservatory did in their recent production directed by Susannah Gellert. The actors are in modern dress. The action takes place in what looks like a crappy motel room with a pull out bed, a church-lady-type electric organ, two video monitors and a microphone on a stand. Actors interview each other with a vidcam and you see it on the monitors. Others take turns banging the organ and doing karaoke on the mike. Above it all, a sign proclaims: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS EVIL. I’ll take the Conservatory’s word for it, though Webster’s play seems to offer evidence to the contrary.
During intermission, I heard a few audience members whining, “I couldn’t understand what was happening with the actors in modern dress in that crappy motel room.” Bull. I found that the lack of a literal set forced me to pay more attention to the words. Hey, we’re in a castle now. If you say so, I’ll imagine it. But first, I have to hear you. The lack of costumes and scenery cues forced me to really listen—so I listened and I figured most of it out. Even so, there were lots of times I didn’t know what the hell was going on.
My problem with the production isn’t its lack of period cues or the post-modern gimcrackery as such. (I usually like gimcrackery.) But the structure built around the play’s original structure doesn’t add up to anything – CSI: Malfi, a video blog, a murderous game show, whatever. It isn’t a structure. The bits of business are random. (Some are rip-offs, including one dead steal from Kill Bill and another bit swiped from Blue Velvet.) What should be a frame to see through often turns into an opaque window. That’s my problem. But so what?
I figure the logic behind it all is more pedagogical than dramaturgical. If this had been a typical Asolo mainstage production intended to keep an audience happy, some contemporary playwright would’ve whacked about a third of Webster’s copyright-free original material and made the crooked roads run straight. As this was a Conservatory production intended for teaching purposes, you get all of it—clocking in at 80 minutes in the first act and an hour in the second. Needless to say the students get a workout. And some audience members got worn out.
If you’ve got the stamina to hang in there, it really picks up in the second act. (Trust me.) The Duchess is killed very quickly. (That “I was five and he was six” riff lifted from Kill Bill had me expecting her to take revenge with a samurai sword, but it was not to be.) Bosola (Jason Peck) the killer-for-hire in the red bandana and Def Leppard t-shirt, suddenly gets second thoughts—and it’s like Iago going “What was I thinking?” (At this point, I literally stop slouching, sit up and take notice.) The stone killer becomes a human being—and, effectively, the hero of the play.
Without warning, The Duchess of Malfi turns into The Hit Man’s Tragedy—and from here on it gets interesting, if damn depressing. (Maybe it’s my imagination, but Webster’s writing seems to really get better—as if he got his hands on some really good coffee.) Bosola concludes the play by killing the two swinish brothers who paid him to set their sister up. Bosola dies too, of course. Before the curtain comes down, Antonio dies, the Duchess dies, the kids, the rotten, scheming brothers and various pretty women who get in their way. It all ends badly. But it’s great theater.
Inside the post-modern frame, the acting is consistently good and true to the original characters. The direction veers from dead brilliant to why-the-hell-did-she-do-that? The ride ain’t always smooth. But it’s definitely worth the ride.
Does everything work? No. This is an experimental production and I wouldn’t expect it too. Not all the experiments work, but I applaud the mad scientist gutsiness behind it all. A standard-issue costume drama would have been the easy choice. Gellert’s post-mod production of Malfi is the road less taken. She takes risks; she forces you to be involved; she makes you question the assumptions you carry inside your skull when you enter the theater.
It’s thought provoking theater at its best.
'The Duchess of Malfi'
Short version: What’s it all about, Malfi?
Through March 16
FSU/Asolo Conservatory production
Cook Theatre, FSU Center for the Arts
5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
351-8000
'Jewtopia' at Florida Studio Theatre
Oy to the World
Jewishness is a groove. The Jewish dating scene isn’t.
“Utopia,” according to philosopher Sir Thomas More is an ideal civilization without any lawyers. “Jewtopia,” according to playwrights Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, is an enchanted kingdom containing 500,000 unattached Jewish women. (i.e., JDate, a website for Jewish singles.) Chris O’Connell (Patrick Noonan) leads his friend, Adam Lipschitz (Brandon Beilis), into that realm on a quest for the ideal Jewish Princess Bride. It’s Chris’ quest too. Adam, a non-observant Jew, wants to find a nice Jewish girl to please his family. Chris is a gentile of Irish-Catholic extraction who has converted to Judaism. He wants to find a nice Jewish girl who will relieve him of the burden of decision-making. Forever.
Adam’s Jewtopian journey becomes a series of bad dates. There’s the Hassidic lovely who sprays a can of Mace in his face; a high-energy, non-stop talker who dances him off his feet; and a sports maniac—155 dates in all, all hilariously played by Jessica Smolins. To further complicate matters, Chris-the-convert thinks that Adam isn’t Jewish enough—and pressures his friend to dress up as four different Jewish personas: a “Fiddler on the Roof” refugee; a manly Jew who likes football, sweating and beer; an art school Jew with an Edwards Scissorhands haircut; and a hyper Jew who dances like a loon. Adam’s romantic quest fails.
Then Adam emerges from Jewtopia, winds up in the hospital and finds the right girl, Rachel (Leanne Cabrera). OK, she’s a Buddhist from Mongolia, but she’s a doctor! Chris has already found his girl, Allison Cohen (Smolins again). Along with Jewish soul mates, the Gen-X guys find every possible Jewish stereotype—including Jewish stereotypes of gentiles. (Such as, “Top Ten Traits that Identify You as a Goy,” which include taking less than an hour to say goodbye and NASCAR fandom.) All seems well, until Adam and Chris and their fiancées celebrate Passover Seder with Adam’s family. Why is this night different from all other nights? Because it’s the Seder from hell. Adam’s mother isn’t happy that his bride is a member of a different tribe (although Rachel brightly points out the many cultural parallels). Pre-bris Chris exposes his Irish identity. Through it all, Adam’s sister (Smolins in hilarious redux) boils with bratty adolescent angst at the children’s table, dropping f-bombs and rude gestures whenever it’s her turn to speak. (Why do we dip the bitter herbs? Why can’t you stop controlling my life?) Everything that can go wrong does, and then gets worse. In the end, the kids get married and everybody’s happy.
Jay Berkow directs with the verve and rhythms of stand-up comedy. (Fittingly, as Fogel and Wolfson’s play was born as sketch material.) Beilis and Noonan click nicely together as the two male leads. As supporting players, Smolins (as bratty sister, the J-Date babes and Adam’s bride) always steals the show; Bonnie Black puts a woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown spin on two different Jewish mothers; Jon Kohler keeps his head down as Adam’s Jewish dad; Peter Levine makes for a slightly off-center rabbi; Cabrera plays her character totally straight with loads of gravitas—and it’s a stitch. Nayna Ramey's clever set (which resembles the JDate website) is a comedy-creating character in its own right. Did I mention this play is funny?
It’s funny. There, I mentioned it.
Is it culturally sensitive?
Nah. This play has a few stereotypes. I’m lying. It’s stuffed with stereotypes. It’s like the stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers where every conceivable stereotype has been packed into a tiny room. Some reviewers have referred to this as Borsht Belt comedy. Or broad comedy. They don’t get it. It’s broad comedy, but smart broad comedy, in the tradition of Mel Brooks, the early Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce. The play isn’t cramming people into narrow definitions of identity to make fun of them. The narrow definitions of identity are the joke. Is Jewishness a religion, an ethnicity, a culture? All of the above and none of the above.
In the end, the characters burst out of the tiny room. Chris reveals the epiphany that drew him to Judaism—a Hasidic wedding where everyone knew the words to a song and joined in, one at a time, like characters in a musical. Fulfilling his dream, one by one, the characters on stage start singing (with Adam on guitar) in a loopy, Adam Sandlereseque groove. Chris joins in and gets his definition of Judaism.
It’s a groove.
‘Jewtopia’
Short version: A Jew and a Gentile walk into the Internet
Through March 28
Florida Studio Theatre
1241 North Palm Ave., Sarasota
366-9000
Jewishness is a groove. The Jewish dating scene isn’t.
“Utopia,” according to philosopher Sir Thomas More is an ideal civilization without any lawyers. “Jewtopia,” according to playwrights Bryan Fogel and Sam Wolfson, is an enchanted kingdom containing 500,000 unattached Jewish women. (i.e., JDate, a website for Jewish singles.) Chris O’Connell (Patrick Noonan) leads his friend, Adam Lipschitz (Brandon Beilis), into that realm on a quest for the ideal Jewish Princess Bride. It’s Chris’ quest too. Adam, a non-observant Jew, wants to find a nice Jewish girl to please his family. Chris is a gentile of Irish-Catholic extraction who has converted to Judaism. He wants to find a nice Jewish girl who will relieve him of the burden of decision-making. Forever.
Adam’s Jewtopian journey becomes a series of bad dates. There’s the Hassidic lovely who sprays a can of Mace in his face; a high-energy, non-stop talker who dances him off his feet; and a sports maniac—155 dates in all, all hilariously played by Jessica Smolins. To further complicate matters, Chris-the-convert thinks that Adam isn’t Jewish enough—and pressures his friend to dress up as four different Jewish personas: a “Fiddler on the Roof” refugee; a manly Jew who likes football, sweating and beer; an art school Jew with an Edwards Scissorhands haircut; and a hyper Jew who dances like a loon. Adam’s romantic quest fails.
Then Adam emerges from Jewtopia, winds up in the hospital and finds the right girl, Rachel (Leanne Cabrera). OK, she’s a Buddhist from Mongolia, but she’s a doctor! Chris has already found his girl, Allison Cohen (Smolins again). Along with Jewish soul mates, the Gen-X guys find every possible Jewish stereotype—including Jewish stereotypes of gentiles. (Such as, “Top Ten Traits that Identify You as a Goy,” which include taking less than an hour to say goodbye and NASCAR fandom.) All seems well, until Adam and Chris and their fiancées celebrate Passover Seder with Adam’s family. Why is this night different from all other nights? Because it’s the Seder from hell. Adam’s mother isn’t happy that his bride is a member of a different tribe (although Rachel brightly points out the many cultural parallels). Pre-bris Chris exposes his Irish identity. Through it all, Adam’s sister (Smolins in hilarious redux) boils with bratty adolescent angst at the children’s table, dropping f-bombs and rude gestures whenever it’s her turn to speak. (Why do we dip the bitter herbs? Why can’t you stop controlling my life?) Everything that can go wrong does, and then gets worse. In the end, the kids get married and everybody’s happy.
Jay Berkow directs with the verve and rhythms of stand-up comedy. (Fittingly, as Fogel and Wolfson’s play was born as sketch material.) Beilis and Noonan click nicely together as the two male leads. As supporting players, Smolins (as bratty sister, the J-Date babes and Adam’s bride) always steals the show; Bonnie Black puts a woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown spin on two different Jewish mothers; Jon Kohler keeps his head down as Adam’s Jewish dad; Peter Levine makes for a slightly off-center rabbi; Cabrera plays her character totally straight with loads of gravitas—and it’s a stitch. Nayna Ramey's clever set (which resembles the JDate website) is a comedy-creating character in its own right. Did I mention this play is funny?
It’s funny. There, I mentioned it.
Is it culturally sensitive?
Nah. This play has a few stereotypes. I’m lying. It’s stuffed with stereotypes. It’s like the stateroom scene in the Marx Brothers where every conceivable stereotype has been packed into a tiny room. Some reviewers have referred to this as Borsht Belt comedy. Or broad comedy. They don’t get it. It’s broad comedy, but smart broad comedy, in the tradition of Mel Brooks, the early Woody Allen and Lenny Bruce. The play isn’t cramming people into narrow definitions of identity to make fun of them. The narrow definitions of identity are the joke. Is Jewishness a religion, an ethnicity, a culture? All of the above and none of the above.
In the end, the characters burst out of the tiny room. Chris reveals the epiphany that drew him to Judaism—a Hasidic wedding where everyone knew the words to a song and joined in, one at a time, like characters in a musical. Fulfilling his dream, one by one, the characters on stage start singing (with Adam on guitar) in a loopy, Adam Sandlereseque groove. Chris joins in and gets his definition of Judaism.
It’s a groove.
‘Jewtopia’
Short version: A Jew and a Gentile walk into the Internet
Through March 28
Florida Studio Theatre
1241 North Palm Ave., Sarasota
366-9000
Saturday, February 9, 2008
The artist who stole Christmas
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Kevin Dean hates Santa Claus. And, while we’re on the subject, Christmas.
This exhibit of his bizarre installations proves it beyond doubt. Brutal imagery—well, OK, sickeningly cute imagery with brutal implications—predominates in this surreal mindwalk. Cutesy-pie snowmen, 3D Last Suppers, and jars full of indefinable somethings out of The Other or Frank Zappa’s Kenny’s Little Creatures.
Dean, as post-modernist, conceptual artists do, has raised the level of difficulty for himself. It’s not enough to paint a painting. No. Hell no. Much of his work is in the form of maddeningly specific installations: arrangements of art objects and an insane collector’s dream junkyard of kitsch religious and Christmassy crap. The stuff is cool to look at. But you figure it’s a pain in the ass to set up exactly so.
Dean's art speaks in two different voices, like an overdubbed recording. One voice speaks with the highfalutin dialect of artistic symbolism from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Mary’s blue robe=purity, etc. Don’t forget your artistic decoder ring! That high, deep symbolic language resonates against styrene snowmen and rotating Christmas color wheels. But even that isn’t tough enough.
Dean not only speaks in two voices. He puts his quotes inside quotes. Yep.
Dean’s created the art in character: the work you see is the creation of Dean’s altered ego–a Midwestern, hippy artist named Brandon Whitcomb who, in the implied backstory, followed the Via Dolorosa of the American suffering artist. Whitcomb suffered and died for his art, yep. But, in the spirit of John Wayne, he killed himself by eating, smoking and drinking to death. It’s an all-American martyrdom. A secret mourning for a love lost in a Kent State-style massacre.
This soft, sweet drama lurks inside the hard candy shell of Dean's harsh satire. He takes it seriously; at the same time, he doesn't. It's hard to get a fix on the man. Dean's art reminds me of those 3D icons of Jesus. The image changes, depending on how you look at it. It's hard to nail him down. No evil pun intended ...
But what's he really saying? Is Dean mocking the artist-martyr archetype or the harsh system that screws artists over? What's he really think?
Don't ask me.
It’s up to you to figure it out. He isn’t trying to ruin Christmas. But Dean isn’t doing your job either.
What he’s doing, it seems to me, is building a world. He’s been working at it for 23 years. Hell, I can’t claim objectivity. I remember Dean, back in the early 1990s back when I tried to start an arts paper in the beautiful arts town by the sea, you know, Sarasota. Dean. Putting the bits and pieces of this stuff together. Lecturing students (in character as some academic shmuck) about the life and death of Whitcomb.
I love this stuff. I can’t claim to define what he’s up to.
Like God’s world, the world Dean made is damaged. As are the people in it.
Beneath all the kitsch and crap, the sense of the sacred fights to come out.
It haunts me.
Like those stories they used to tell in church when I was a kid.
Or Santa.
‘Brandon Whitcomb: A Retrospective After Life’
Short version: If you meet Santa on the road, kill him.
When: Through March 8
What: Kevin Dean's mind-blowing art installation.
Where: Mack B. Projects, 500 Tallevast Rd.
Phone: 359-0654
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Crazy for You
Lars And The Real Girl presents the improbable tale of Lars Lindstrom, a socially inept dude in a middle-American small town right out of A Prairie Home Companion. He's shy of thirty and shy about meeting women. Lars solves his social anxiety disorder by purchasing a $6,500, anatomically correct female doll (the "Real Girl" of the title) — after which, he gives her a name (Bianca) and a back story, starts treating her like a real girl, and introduces her to the people he's close to. Instead of locking Lars in the loony bin, the town shrink advises Lars' friends and family to play along. They do.You probably think you know where the movie's going — but it doesn't go there. It's not a twee allegory of the power of belief to turn fantasy into reality. (Or, for that matter, a Jack Black movie.) Screenwriter Nancy Oliver and director Craig Gillespie had something more original in mind.
Oliver's hero — Lars — is a damaged human being and not an allegory. Oliver did what screenwriters often don’t: She took her premise seriously and worked out its implications realistically. Rather than pushing buttons for effect, she showed us what the life of this character (somebody who experiences physical touch with another human being as pain) would be like. She gave us an honest story, not a cute story.
After years of Hollywood conditioning, you don't expect that. You're jonesing for an allegorical fix. Somehow, Bianca is going to become (a thousand critics googling “Pygmalion” as we speak) a real real girl.
The Minnesota villagers humor Lars in his delusion. A typical Hollywood movie would take that premise and do something cute with it — find a way to turn Bianca into a "real" girl.
One real life woman would gradually substitute for Lars’ plastic, fantastic chick — and probably change her name to "Bianca." Lars would never notice the seamless transition.
Either that, or some cheapjack "Magical Realism" in which Bianca literally tranforms into a real girl.
That’s not what happens in Oliver’s story.
Instead, Lars wakes up from his delusion on some level (and, in fact, desiring a real-life woman) makes a decision (subconsciously or consciously) that his doll woman must die. In the delusional narrative Lars creates, Bianca gets sick and dies. When she’s finally dead, he howls with pain. After that, he does connect with a real real girl. But there’s no painless substitution or cute ending — it’s more like chopping his arm off.
Granted the premise, that’s what would really happen — though it may be argued that people aren’t as nice in the real world as they are in the Minnesota of Nancy Oliver’s imagination. I’d like to think they are — or could be — especially in the way they act to the very real and very damaged people among us.
One “Dogville” is enough.
Nitpicky analysis:
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Ronin critic
Hi kids. This is your favorite critic speaking. I was raised by a critic. I eventually grew up, and turned into a critic. People paid me for it. I figured it was the natural order of things. My destiny. Nah.
First I was downsized. I hung in there as a freelancer. For boring reasons I won't get into, that doesn't work anymore. Basically, I could make more money competing with illegal farm workers picking tomatoes. Poor me. But let's cut to the chase.
As of now, I'm a Ronin critic. Which is to say, nobody's paying me to throw stones (or flowers) at plays and movies -- at least for now. No one is to blame. The Cold Equations of economics have spoken. The Invisible Hand has slapped me to the curb. I don't take it personally.
But, until the Invisible Hand changes its mind, I'm writing this stuff for free. Yep. Like a chump, dolt, poltroon, sap, feeb, chucklehead, I'm just giving it away. After I write the stuff somebody's still paying me for, of course.
OK. Seeing as how I've got nothing to lose, it's as good a time as any to regurgitate a statement of critical principles. (I'll stick to live theater, but most of this applies to film and TV.)
The script is the thing
Many critics approach live theatrical performances like judges at a figure skating contest. They hold up imaginary signs -- 10-9-3 — ranking the director, actors and technical people. The story behind the exercise is an afterthought, or no thought at all. This may be useful to theatergoers who don't want to waste their precious time, but it’s not my style.
To me, a play is a primarily a work of fiction. The actual performance is a delivery system for the script. I start with the script. I talk about the story.
See, I'm not just a lazy bastard cranking out plot summaries. I actually think the story's important.
I trust my own responses
If I love (or hate) the play when I'm watching it, I don't try to talk myself out of it when I write about it. My first response is my most honest response.
Screw the intentional fallacy
When I see a play, my natural tendency is to say, "OK, here's how I'd do it." I fight that tendency. I force myself to ask what the writer wanted to do. What were the goals? Did they succeed?
So, you can have a lousy idea and a brilliant execution, a great idea and a lousy script. You can also have an EVIL idea and a great or lousy script. (In the world of film, Leni Reifensthal comes to mind. She made brilliant movies promoting Nazism.)
If a script is fundamentally wrongheaded, the actors and directors can all hit a "10" and it's still a waste of time.
I judge the story first. Then I judge the performance.
That's pretty much it.
First I was downsized. I hung in there as a freelancer. For boring reasons I won't get into, that doesn't work anymore. Basically, I could make more money competing with illegal farm workers picking tomatoes. Poor me. But let's cut to the chase.
As of now, I'm a Ronin critic. Which is to say, nobody's paying me to throw stones (or flowers) at plays and movies -- at least for now. No one is to blame. The Cold Equations of economics have spoken. The Invisible Hand has slapped me to the curb. I don't take it personally.
But, until the Invisible Hand changes its mind, I'm writing this stuff for free. Yep. Like a chump, dolt, poltroon, sap, feeb, chucklehead, I'm just giving it away. After I write the stuff somebody's still paying me for, of course.
OK. Seeing as how I've got nothing to lose, it's as good a time as any to regurgitate a statement of critical principles. (I'll stick to live theater, but most of this applies to film and TV.)
The script is the thing
Many critics approach live theatrical performances like judges at a figure skating contest. They hold up imaginary signs -- 10-9-3 — ranking the director, actors and technical people. The story behind the exercise is an afterthought, or no thought at all. This may be useful to theatergoers who don't want to waste their precious time, but it’s not my style.
To me, a play is a primarily a work of fiction. The actual performance is a delivery system for the script. I start with the script. I talk about the story.
See, I'm not just a lazy bastard cranking out plot summaries. I actually think the story's important.
I trust my own responses
If I love (or hate) the play when I'm watching it, I don't try to talk myself out of it when I write about it. My first response is my most honest response.
Screw the intentional fallacy
When I see a play, my natural tendency is to say, "OK, here's how I'd do it." I fight that tendency. I force myself to ask what the writer wanted to do. What were the goals? Did they succeed?
So, you can have a lousy idea and a brilliant execution, a great idea and a lousy script. You can also have an EVIL idea and a great or lousy script. (In the world of film, Leni Reifensthal comes to mind. She made brilliant movies promoting Nazism.)
If a script is fundamentally wrongheaded, the actors and directors can all hit a "10" and it's still a waste of time.
I judge the story first. Then I judge the performance.
That's pretty much it.
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