Marilyn: Forever Blonde

In Tommy, the ever-naughty director Ken Russell postulated a religion worshiping Marilyn Monroe — Eric Clapton (who was God, after all) leading a procession of devotees in pouty Marilyn masks, obligingly wheeling a massive icon of Marilyn from that scene in The Seven Year Itch, her skirt now blown up for all eternity. Over the top, yeah, but not far from the truth. Like Elvis in years to come, Marilyn's death made her larger than life.

Sunny Thompson does her best to make Marilyn life-sized in Marilyn: Forever Blonde, her one-woman show at the Asolo Rep.

The script behind the play was written by her husband, Greg Thompson, who put the words on paper before he knew her — and saw Sunny as the perfect Marilyn the second he met her.

All the words in Thompson's script are Marilyn's own, sifted from press releases, interviews, and tapes given to psychiatrists.

What emerges is what we'd expect but might not want to face. Marilyn (aka Norma Jean) invented blonde ambition. An orphan and an outsider, she climbed the Hollywood ladder against the odds. For women in the 50s and 60s, the rungs of that ladder were a series of casting couches. Marilyn obliged, because she knew she was good. She wasn't alone. She made it to the top, because she really was good. Then she fell apart.

And it seems to me, you lived your life like a candle in the wind ...

Ah, shut up, Elton. We all know how Marilyn's story ends — dead at age 36 from too many pills. Though the jury's still out on whether her overdose was suicide.

Sunny Thompson makes you want to cry at Marilyn's tragically wasted potential. She gets into Marilyn's sexy, seductive skin and makes the audience itch. From the breathless delivery to the undulating walk, she's got Marilyn's surface mannerisms down — and the beating heart behind it all.

It's a fine performance — and a performance from the heart.

Still, there’s something missing. The script behind her performance doesn’t capture Marilyn’s mind. Blame her husband for that — though I’m sure he had the best intentions. Greg Thompson boiled down his script from the words Marilyn said or printed in public. He didn’t put any words in Marilyn’s mouth or try to read her mind. Oddly, that “honesty” created a subtle dishonesty. Marilyn’s public words were part of her deliberately crafted public face. But the playwright took them at face value.

Bad move. Obviously, there’s a difference between the person and the persona — even if it draws on elements of an actor’s real personality. Jackie Gleason was not Ralph Kramden. The real Marilyn Monroe wasn’t the naïve sex bomb we saw on screen.

But Thompson’s play doesn’t separate “Marilyn” the character from the real-world Marilyn who invented her. That breathless, vulnerable, naïve sex bomb was Marilyn’s creation. That character is both drop-dead sexy — and a parody of male notions of an all-American sex goddess. It’s a brilliant creation – and a brilliant fiction. Thompson doesn’t look past the fiction to the intelligence behind it.

Marilyn Monroe was a comic genius. That’s what I wanted to see — and that's what's missing.

I'm tired of feeling sorry for Marilyn. I want to applaud her for the genius that she was, damn it — right up there with Jackie Gleason, Groucho Marx and all the rest of them.

This is not to trash Sunny Thompson's performance. She channels Marilyn onstage in an uncanny way. But I wanted to see the mask drop — if just for a second. It's a lifetime performance. I'm still haunted by it. What I saw was great. But it's what I've seen before — in the standard liturgy of the Eternal Church of the Blessed Marilyn. Sunny, with respect, tell the playwright to do a rewrite. Break the idol. Reveal the mind.

Next time, show me something I didn't see.

Marilyn: Forever Blonde
Through July 10
FSU Center for the Arts
5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
351-8000

No blues for these ‘Cowgirls’

Tom Robbins to the contrary, not all "Cowgirls" get the blues. Some get country ...

Case in point, the eponymous Cowgirls of "Cowgirls," now kicking up their heels at Florida Studio Theatre, in a production directed by Mary Murfitt. (Murfitt played in the musical's FST premiere back in 1995. She also wrote the music and lyrics. Betsy Howie wrote the script.)

The story behind the musical is as tangled as the World's Largest Ball of Twine. But I'll try to straighten it out.

After a disastrous summer tour, The Cog Hill Trio, an ensemble of female classical musicians, head off to Hiram Hall for their final concert. They're expecting the Kansas cousin of Carnegie Hall. Thanks to a bad phone connection, the owner, Jo Carlson (Angela C. Howell), is expecting the thoroughly countrified, cornpone Cowgirl Trio. When they finally show up, Jo's shocked to discover that she's booked a snooty classical musical group. They're appalled to find out that Hiram Hall is a redneck roadhouse resembling Bob's Country Bunker in The Blues Brothers.

The trio takes the gig anyway, because it's either that or come home broke and disgraced. Their Saturday night concert is a make-or-break night for Jo as well. If it isn't a smash hit, the bank forecloses on her place first thing Monday morning. Against her better judgement, Jo gives the uptight trio a two-day crash course in country music. Comedy ensues. And, just to state the obvious, country music does, too.

Great tunes. But Howie's strong character study is the glue that holds this musical together.

The Cog Hill Trio, for example, is a true band of misfits: Lee (Joanna Parson), a New Age, lesbian cellist; Rita (Franca Vercelloni), a pregnant pianist whose husband wants her to stay home; Mary Lou (Sarah Hund), a high-strung violinist. Jo, the roadhouse owner, is a true force of nature — a no-nonsense Alpha Woman dealing with her father's dual inheritance: Hiram Hall and a mountain of debt. Jo's faithful waitresses, big-haired Mickey (Chelsea Costa) and math whiz Mo (Emily Grosland), are also wannabe country singers; they're pissed-off that Jo won't them take the stage for the big concert. By the end of the play, they all have a shootout, everyone dies and Hiram Hall burns down.

Nah. Just kidding, folks. That's not the way these things work and you know it. The concert is a raging success. Everybody takes the stage and Hiram Hall is saved.

While the musical's upbeat conclusion is never in doubt, getting there is all the fun. Cowgirls is a warmhearted, feel-good, tug-on-your-heartstrings experience from start to finish. It’s so much fun, it’s easy to overlook what a tour de force performance the actor/musicians put in. Leaping from genre to genre takes amazing versatility, and they’ve got it.

Behind the performance, Howie's script introduces you to some sharply defined, quirky individuals (who all happen to have XX chromosomes) and makes you care about them. It's easy to be warmhearted, manipulative and fake — that's called corn. Being warmhearted and honest is tough, but she pulls it off.

Murfitt's a great director — and a great songwriter, to boot. Her original songs are fantastic on many levels. They're a love letter to country music standards but never derivative. They're character-driven and support the story. They're damn good tunes that take you all over the emotional map. They're pure country — and ignore the ghettos of musical genre, at the same time. The "country" of country music is the country of the human heart, after all. Murfitt's songs gently make the point that all great music comes from the heart.

Which is another way of saying all great music is a little bit country.

Cowgirls
Through July 3
Florida Studio Theatre
1241 North Palm Ave., Sarasota
941-366-9000
www.floridastudiotheatre.org.

Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein

If a contemporary performer imitates, say, 19th-century composer Franz Liszt, who's to say they got it wrong? Recording technology didn't exist back then. For all we know, Liszt really did sound like Roger Daltry.

That doesn't apply to 20th-century composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. The maestro may be gone, but he left behind miles of film, audio recordings and videotapes. We know exactly what Bernstein sounded like -- and we'll know if a living performer portraying him misses the mark.

Hershey Felder is both the star and author of Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein, a one-man show depicting Bernstein's life and work, now playing at the Asolo Rep. With a display of chutzpah Bernstein might approve of, Felder plays a clip from one of Bernstein's Young People's Concerts before he takes the stage. He's daring the audience to compare. Well, Felder meets and exceeds his self-made Pepsi challenge. His performance goes beyond great imitation to the realm of Shirley McClaine. He seems to be channeling the man.

Felder's performance takes the form of one of Bernstein's broadcasts -- in this case, presumably his final one. Playing and singing at a grand piano, Felder opens with one of Bernstein's burned-in-your-brain compositions from West Side Story -- namely, "Somewhere." From there, Felder's performance continues, alternating between snippets of Barnstein's compositions and his first-person autobiographical narrative -- lifted, I assume, from journal entries, magazine and TV interviews and stitched together with inference.

We learn that Bernstein came from an immigrant family of deeply religious Jews. That he was a musical prodigy. That his father didn't want his son to grow up to be a professional musician. That he did anyway. That Bernstein's protegés included Aaron Copland, Dimitri Mitropoulos and Fritz Reiner. That some of his protegés were also lovers. That his nearly overnight success was basically good luck. (And sounds like a Broadway musical premise -- he got his big break at a major concert because the other conductor was sick.) That Bernstein deeply resented a "two-bit reporter's hatchet job" about a benefit party he threw for the Black Panthers. (Referring to Tom Wolfe, actually.) That he admired Wagner's music, hated his anti-Semitic philosophy, but admired his honesty. That -- in defiance of the atonal fad of most serious composers and music critics of the time -- he loved melody. That he loved his wife Felicia. That -- in his own act of honesty -- Bernstein walked away from his wife and family to pursue openly gay relationships. That, tireless music educator and beloved conductor that he was, Bernstein wanted to be remembered as a composer -- and felt like a failure because the only Bernstein tunes anyone could remember were from West Side Story.

"Lives of the artists" dramas tend to take the same form. Basically, the artist is on a mission from God to create -- and they do. Felder's drama is more unconventional -- and mostly takes place in the brilliant, self-contradictory mind of the composer. Bernstein may be on a mission from God -- or actually be the God of modern music, as he claims at one point. But when the last note sounds, he's not sure if his mission succeeded.

The jury is still out. (I plan to listen to Bernstein's compositions the next chance I get.)

But Felder's mission clearly did.

It's a brilliant, unforgettable performance.

Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein
June 8-12
An Asolo Rep production
FSU Center for the Arts
5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
351-8000

Just for laughs, here's a link to Tom Wolfe's piece:


Radical Chic

Two Jews Walk Into a War: Preview

Here's a link to my preview of Two Jews Walk into a War in this week's Ticket in the Sarasota Herald Tribune: Two Jews Walk into a War. Text posted below:


Two Jews take a leap of faith in Kabul in new play

The title of Seth Rozin’s play sounds like the set-up for a joke – “Two Jews Walk Into a War …”
It really is a joke, Rozin says, an existential one.

The play, which opens May 5 at Florida Studio Theatre’s Gompertz Theatre, is about the only two surviving Jews in Kabul, Afghanistan, who are hiding in a bombed-out synagogue at the end of the Taliban’s regime.

“Ishaq and Zeblyan should support each other,” Rozin says. “They’re the last Jews left, and they hate each other! It’s one of history’s grim jokes — and the joke is on them.”

Not all the play’s jokes are grim. Rozin uses his unlikely duo to create a kind of vaudeville of the absurd. Bickering, mismatched characters are a comic staple, after all. But expect more than “The Odd Couple” in Kabul.

“Although they despise each other, they force themselves to work together,” he says. “Ishaq and Zeblyan plan to rebuild the Jewish community by re-creating a Torah scroll to attract a rabbi.” Rozin explains that the Taliban burned the synagogue’s original scroll. “Fortunately, Ishaq knows the Torah by heart. He speaks and Zeblyan writes.”

But would a new Torah scroll actually attract a rabbi?

“Probably not,” he says. “Their project may seem foolish, even crazy. But they feel compelled. You can call it a leap of faith.”

Their faith compels them to write, he says. But writing a new Torah makes them question their faith. Zeblyan asks most of the questions. Ishaq hates the constant interruptions and sees it as a lack of faith.

“Zeblyan starts by questioning religious minutia,” Rozin explains. “‘Why can we eat elephants but not rock badgers?’ He winds up asking bigger questions that anyone can relate to, whatever their faith.”
Rozin didn’t plan to write a parable of faith.

“I’m an atheist from a long line of non-observing Jews,” he says. “The seed was a news item that struck me as existentially funny. As I got to know my characters, they started telling me what they wanted, and the story veered off from the facts. Rewriting the Torah was their idea, and it surprised me.”

Rozin adds that his play is not a theology lesson, or any kind of lesson.

“The questions are more important than the answers,” he says. “It’s mostly a comic journey, but I’m not locked into that. I don’t impose a tone or a message. I want a sense of life as it happens — what emerges from these two characters in this place and time.”

Director Kate Alexander loves that raw spontaneity.

“Rozin’s comedy flows out of his flesh-and-blood characters,” she says. “We’ve got two great comic actors: Warren Kelley as Zeblyan and George Crowley as Ishaq. They’re brilliant improvisers and wonderful physical comedians, and they really sink their teeth into his visceral, gutsy dialogue. As a director, my job is to create a playground and say, ‘Go to town, guys.’ They did! They made me laugh so hard I was forced to leave the rehearsal many times.”

Both actors have appeared at FST before. Kelly played the husband in “Sylvia” last summer, and Crowley has been seen in “Dinner With Friends,” “Gross Indecency,” “Ten Unknowns” and “Proof.”
Rozin is the author of several plays that have been presented in regional theaters across the country. He also is the founder and producing artistic director of InterAct Theatre Company in Philadelphia.

Alexander notes that scenic and costume designer Marcella Beckwith and lighting designer Robert Perry spent weeks to get a “very specific look and feel” for Afghanistan. “Our set is evocative, but there’s a lot of research behind it.”

She adds that the bombed-out synagogue suggests the relentless history outside.

“It’s a place of ancient stones, except for one electric blue plastic chair,” she says. “Western civilization is encroaching and you know it.”

Tartuffery

Before Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker, there was Tartuffe -- the title character of Moliere's play, and the latest FSU/Asolo Conservatory production.

Le plot summary ...

Tartuffe (Geoff Knox) is an itinerant street preacher in 17th-century France. Like Bakker and Swaggart in centuries to come, Tartuffe is saintly on the outside and oversexed within. Beneath Tartuffe's hard candy shell of religiosity, there lurks a soft, gooey core of lust. Slick, manipulative bastard that he is, Tartuffe keeps it well-hidden.

In the course of Moliere's play, Tartuffe latches onto Orgon (Tony Stopperan), a dull man of means in 17th-century France who seems to think that Tartuffe is Jesus' kid brother. After insinuating himself as Orgon's perpetual house guest, Tartuffe gets Orgon to promise him his daughter's hand in marriage (Ashley Scallon), thus voiding Orgon's original consent to her true love (Benjamin Boucvalt); Orgon also gives Tartuffe a claim to his estate. Creep that he is, Tartuffe remains dissatisfied. He still wants to get into the pants (or patalons) of Orgon's wife (Summer Dawn Wallace). After Orgon hides under a table, Tartuffe's scheme is exposed. Happily, Orgon's wife isn't screwed. Sadly, Tartuffe has the deed to Orgon's estate. Orgon is screwed -- along with everyone else. Mais bien sur, Louis XIV appears like a deus ex machina from above and sets things straight. Moral order is restored and the charlatan punished. The music of Lady Gaga's Poker Face plays.

It's a fun ride. Beneath the pomp and ceremony, Richard Wilbur's rhymed couplet translation is smart -- though it can't disguise the artificiality of Moliere's original. (Basically, the characters make speeches, one at a time.) But that's OK. Director Wes Grantom's production zips along with the speed of a screwball comedy. (In a recent radio interview, Grantom said this pace is true to the productions of the time. Audiences were sharp back then.) The performances are great -- especially Megan DeLay as Dorine, the family maid, who functions as a human reality principle. She stands for common sense. Not heresy. The same can be said of the playwright, Moliere. His play makes that clear. Very clear.

Moliere seems to spend half his time saying, "My target is religious hypocrisy. Not religion. I love religion, especially Catholic religion. Let's be very clear on that point." The playwright spends the rest of his time kissing King Louis XIV's ass. It didn't help. Moliere got in trouble anyway. I can't help but think Moliere saw it coming -- but he wrote the play anyway. Why?

Because it mattered to him.

Moliere stuck his neck out to write this play. He took the risk of pissing the king off -- a king with absolute power. He knew the risks.

But he wrote it anyway.

I can't help but think that it was personal to Moliere. That he'd seen people burned by pseudo-saintly charlatans speaking in the name of God. His friends, people he cared about. Beneath Moliere's fine language, there's a white-hot anger. And a truth.

Tartuffe may be a fictional character. But Tartuffery is very real.

And bullshit is eternal.

In 1664, 1912 or 2011, the principle holds true: If someone tells you, "God commands you to give me money," that's the time to run for the hills.

Or hit them.

'Tartuffe'
Through May 1
FSU/Asolo Conservatory production
Historic Asolo Theatre
5401 Bay Shore Road, Sarasota
351-8000

I ain't afraid of no 'Ghost-Writer'

Once upon a time in the early 20th century, Franklin Woolsey (Colin Lane), a celebrated writer in the prolix Henry James mode, started dictating his novels to a typist. As in: a cute, young, female typist named Myra (Amy Tribbey). Franklin's pushy wife Vivian (Hollis McCarthy) wasn’t thrilled, but his literary output exploded. Over time, Myra became more of a collaborator than a passive secretary. Then, one day, Woolsey had a fatal heart attack in mid-sentence. Eventually, Myra heard his voice again and resumed typing, determined to finish his last novel.

OK. Such are the bare facts of Michael Hollinger's play, now hitting the stage at Florida Studio Theatre. Beyond these facts, the play poses a multiple choice question: Is Myra (A) nuts (B) committing a conscious fraud (C) continuing her collaboration (D) actually hearing his voice or (E) all of the above …?

For most of the play, an unseen investigator challenges Myra with these questions. That investigator (who represents Woolsey’s unhappy widow who’s trying to quash Myra's posthumous collaboration) seems to lean toward either the nuts or fraud theories. I have my own theory — but damned if Hollinger's play spells it out.

Whose authorial voice is it anyway?

That isn't the point — or the point that Hollinger cares about. Ghost-Writer isn’t a ghost story — or an anti-ghost story. It’s a love story — and an obvious metaphor for the writing process. Myra and Franklin romance the blank page. Their collaboration is better than sex. Granted the reticence of these Ragtime-era characters, it's a slow burn. That smoldering sensibility is what he cares about.

Like James Joyce, Hollinger loves the music of writing — not the words on the page, but the physical act of writing. Ghost-Writer jumps into that music with both feet: the back-and-forth rhythm of dictation and typing; the counterpoint of voice and typewriter. It's a love affair. Maybe with words, maybe between two people, alive or dead, creating words together. The boundary remains fuzzy, but the music is compelling.

Director Kate Alexander gets the music right — the slow, hypnotic, seductive pace Hollinger was going for. Tribbey is fine as the emotional center of the whirlwind: a woman desperately in love with a man who isn't there; the voice of sanity who knows her words sound crazy. Fine performances also from Lane and McCarthy. His dead author character is more like an open question: Is he there or not? Her wounded widow character is an accusation: Are you for real?

A thousand puns rise up like shades. A haunting production. A spirited performance. But let's run like hell past the graveyard and speak plainly ...

Great theater.

See it.

Ghost-Writer
Through June 4
Florida Studio Theatre
1241 North Palm Ave., Sarasota
366-9000
floridastudiotheatre.org.

Ride the "Death Trap"!!!!

OK, a few words about the Asolo Rep production of Death Trap. But first, a few words about the thriller genre ...

As a dramatic genre, thrillers have the staying power of, say, Jacobean revenge tragedy. Which is to say, the genre isn't dead, but it's been eaten by other genres. A contemporary play may have thriller elements, but we want more psychological depth. A contemporary movie may have thriller elements, but we want more stuff blowing up. There are very few pure thrillers anymore.

Which is another way of saying: Ira Lavin's Death Trap is of its time. Lavin was a brilliant novelist and screenwriter -- at his best, on a par with William Goldman. Lavin wrote "Rosemary's Baby," "The Boys from Brazil" and a few other things. He knew what he was doing.

So, on the subject of thrillers, Lavin saw the bloody handwriting on the wall. He knew the thriller genre was dying. "Death Trap" is as much an epitaph as a love letter as a parody. I could tell you the plot, but thrillers don't work if you know what happens. So let's put it this way.

Lavin made a great roller coaster ride, full of exciting twists and turns. It's a fun ride. For contemporary writers, that ride is pretty much closed -- except as a technical exercise. For contemporary audiences, the ride is still a hoot.

Death Trap
Through May 14
An Asolo Rep production
FSU Center for the Arts
5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota
351-8000