Friendship is Miles Away

I hate that I'm writing this review the week after "Christmas is Miles Away," by English playwright Chloe Moss, has closed here in New York. Let's just say I was lucky to see it. Produced and Directed by my friend Geordie Broadwater, the play chronicles the breakdown of a long-standing friendship between two Manchester boys as they grow into men.

Unsurprisingly, the two are very different, and their differences only blanch and tighten with age. Christie's father dies, he falls in with a girl named Julie, which proves to be his first major love affair. Luke goes off to be a soldier while Christie stays at home to paint at the local art college. The New York Times review really says it all . . . Ms. Moss' dialogue is the shining star of this play, totally natural, and also wonderfully exotic with the nooks and crannies of the Manchester gab. While all three actors are talented, Roger Lirtsman, who plays Luke, is absolutely stunning. His total and complete physical commitment to the character outshines the other two actors, who still seem a bit young and inexperienced in comparison. Lirtsman's tics (Luke has an uncomfortable large and frequent smile) indicate there's more to him than meets the eye. His discomfort (again, that incredible smile) during an intervention Julie organizes is so palpable, I cried. I literally cried.

I had never heard of Chloe Moss, but you can bet your bottom dollar I'll be keeping my eye out to see more from her, and to purchase a collection of her plays. (Is there one? There should be). All I know, is that after I left the theater, I was still crying, thinking of my childhood friends (and even some current ones) and wondering if I'd done them wrong. It's so easy to let friendships slip through one's fingers as you grow and change. You find yourself seeking out that person when you were thirteen . . . but of course they've changed, and you have too.

What defines a friendship? Does it end when you no longer have anything in common? What about friendships that never had anything in common? I'm the first to admit that I'm too judgmental. If a friend mentions they voted for Bush or McCain, I strike them off my list. I say to myself, "We have nothing in common." Is that really true? Should I value my friends for the way they see the world differently than I do?

Who have I lost through my own immaturity, my quickness to judge, my mindless self-indulgence?

Can we, do we want to reconcile?

Exit the King

Last Wednesday, as part of my birthday present, I traveled uptown to see Geoffrey Rush's adaptation of Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King. The play was a new production of the same Rush put on in Melbourne, newly cast with the devastatingly stately Susan Sarandon and blazing, childlike Lauren Ambrose.

In my experience, Theater of the Absurd can be cloying, or totally boring. But this production is exceptional in that it is brimming with life, unafraid to make fun of itself, and more importantly, unafraid to get serious when things need to get serious. King Berenger is over four-hundred years old. His kingdom has fallen into ruin. As days go by, it actually shrinks in size, people and places falling into a growing abyss. At the beginning of the play, his first wife, Queen Marguerite (Sarandon) calls Queen Marie (Ambrose), his younger, second wife, into the throne room to tell her that the King is finally dying.

Hysterically, Marie refuses to believe Marguerite, or the doctor, who verifies that the King will not live. Marie begs them to keep the information from him, but both insist that he must know so he can come to terms with both his life and its inevitable ending. As the King enters the throne room, Marguerite lowers the boom. Of course the King is in total denial, insisting he feels fine when he can barely stand. Near the end of the first act Marguerite cools informs him that he only has an hour and a half to live, at the end of which he will die and the play will be over.

As the play features a corrupt, impotent monarch, the play's director, Neil Armfield could have gone a very direct route:

And very nearly does, in a monologue given by the King's guard, during which he praises him for his efforts in "national security," and even quotes haphazardly from "O Captain, My Captain," much like a frat boy at a patriotic event might, moved by emotion (unsure of the poem's actual inspiration). Instead the production focuses on the King's loss of power in a generally human sense, which levels him and then grounds him to the point where he is totally alone. At first, he loses his capability to order people and things around. He commands rain, there is none. He commands the guard to walk two paces, he cannot. He demands Marie to come to him, she claims she's forgotten how to use her legs. His executive orders are lost.

In remembering his childhood, the King regresses, and is confined to a wheelchair. He makes a paltry attempt at bonding with his mistreated maid, in which they both celebrate the joys of stew ("Those lovely carrots!" he exclaims), but it's a lost cause. The damage has already been done. Queen Marie remains convinced that he will live on if he continues to love her, but the ravages of his disease prevent him from recognizing her, and she disappears. Soon he is left alone on the stage with Queen Marguerite, who has, it turns out, been right about everything all along.

This production's success is its ability to wax philosophically without being heavy-handed. Convinced that he would never die unless he "decided" to, the King is mentally and emotionally unprepared for his demise. His false confidence in his own immortality is the very cause of his downfall. Queen Marguerite says he has no excuse. You should have thought of this everyday, she says. The fact that death will come. Everyday, at least five minutes a day. It's not altogether bad advice.

While we live for others in life, the transition to death is one we must make alone. The superb set design, lighting, and of course the talents of this cast reinforce Berenger's metamorphosis from King to man, nothing but a broken down instrument, left in the wings. Even if one isn't quite ready to think about the prospect of death for five minutes a day, every day, Exit the King is not to be missed.

33 Variations

33 Variations is a new play by Moisés Kaufman, the man who brought us The Laramie Project. Now, 33 Variations is more of standard well-made play, whereas Laramie is more of a theatre-documentary of sorts, made up of soundbites Kaufman collected when he visited the town where Matthew Shepard was murdered.

Starring the formidable (and totally hot, still) Jane Fonda, Kaufman's new play tells the story of Dr. Katherine Brandt, a musicologist with a specialization on Beethoven, who is dying of Lou Gerig's disease.





Fonda as Barbarella; Fonda, present day: still hot.

Dr. Brandt is obsessed with Beethoven's interpretation of Diabelli's waltz. When asked to write one variation on the piece, Beethoven ends up writing an astounding thirty-three separate variations. And, if he'd had this way, and his health, he most likely would have written more. What was it about he waltz that obsessed him so? And why was he so determined to finish the variations when he was dying, and had more pressing compositions like The Requiem and the Ninth Symphony to consider?

Fonda is, unbelievably, 72 years old, and her presence at the beginning of the play seems to suggest a very, very young fifty. To cast Fonda in a role that calls for the character's severe physical degeneration only highlights the total and utter devastation of this illness. As a professor, it is most heartbreaking when Dr. Brandt points out to her research companion, that her tongue has stopped working. Communication, in this play, in life, is everything.

But then there's the art, and the music. She travels to Germany against the advice of her doctor's nurse, played by Colin Hanks, who, predictably, falls in love with Dr. Brandt's hardened, worthless daughter, played by Samantha Mathis. Mathis, a washed-up movie star from the early nineties, should have promise. But as I watched her in the play, I realized this is something I'd been saying her entire career. Honestly, Mathis cannot act. She is not an actress, and her failure in this role really damages the mother-daughter tension in the play.

I want to like you, Mathis. But, I just can't.

Colin Hanks does a little bit better job of being the comic relief-y goofball of the play, but being Tom Hanks' kid won't save you every time, Colin. If you really want to be an actor, you've got to learn how to be comfortable onstage. So do some more theater, and get back to me.

Overall, this play is entertaining, and heartfelt. But let's get real here, Kaufman. You've basically just written another version of W;t, and inserted Beethoven for John Donne . . . hence the semi-colon in its title. (W;t tells the story of a John Donne scholar, also a mature, formidable lady, dying of ovarian cancer). I suppose, if I hadn't seen W;t, I would think 33 Variations a damn good piece of work. But the fact of the matter is, I have seen it, and dammit Kaufman, you've just borrowed a bit too much. Unfortunately for you, Margaret Edson is smarter than you, and she's written a better play.

33 Variations surely has its moments. The set design is beautiful, and in one moment, during an x-Ray, Dr. Brandt leans back in exhaustion to find herself leaning against Beethoven himself.


Yes, he's in the play. For the most part, it works. Occasionally, it's annoying. W;it doesn't engage in these sort of shenanigans, and without comic relief, it can become totally depressing. But there, I've said it: 33 Variations isn't very original.

That said, it's still worth seeing for Fonda's performance. She has completely committed to this character, physically and emotionally, and to watch an actor like Fonda at the top of her game at her age is like watching an aging all-star athlete beat the hopeful young underdog. There's certainly something inspirational about this, and Dr. Brandt's final monologue, which reminds us that the whole point of a variation is to pick apart a theme, to see where each route leads, is the whole point of living. That it's about each moment. The details.

For us healthy people, this remains a very important message.

The Waves

Last night was the feather in my weekend's cap, largely due to The National Theater's production of Virginia Woolf's The Waves now showing at the Duke Theater on 42nd street.

Ben Brantley has given it a fantastic review over at the NYT, if you're interested in what a real critic has to say.

While Virginia Woolf is, undoubtedly, my favorite writer (both of fiction and nonfiction), her work is notably difficult to stage. Most adaptations consist of a talented English actress simply reading from the text, as if it were a monologue. Kate Williams, the director here, has blown that tradition out of the water.

I was skeptical about the idea of live video imaging to go along with her prose. However, as the play went on, what the actors (who function also as video and sound technicians on the stage) were capable of creating put to rest any doubts I had as to whether this sort of “media adaptation” would work for Woolf’s prose. Her language, illuminated by the silky English accents of these players, literally came to life on the stage. If you’ve read Woolf, you know about her concept of “moments of being”—small, seemingly simple events or sensations that, in a moment, are capable of revealing something important to us about our lives. The video helped to bring these moments to the forefront, by zooming in on the actor’s face, or hands—these detailed emotions, usually unreadable from several rows back, were projected at the intensity of film. Not to be outdone by cinema, however, the actions and activities of the actors still on the stage made it more than a simple exercise in filmmaking. All sounds were reinforced by separate players, using props (styrofoam plates, brushes, the pouring of water, the crunching of leaves underfoot) as if these minute sensory signals had been illuminated, magnified—as they often are when one thinks back on a moment so chillingly beautiful that it sticks in one’s mind forever.

The production is an absolute joy, both to the Woolf reader, and to those yet unfamiliar with her work. I’m excited and hopeful that Kate Williams’ future National Theater productions will make their way across the pond.

If you live in New York, run to the theater. It closes Saturday.

If you don't live in New York, read The Waves. It will change you forever.

Art versus Action: Richard Nelson's Conversations in Tusculum

Sunday night I was lucky enough to see the final dress rehearsal before previews for Richard Nelson's new play Conversations in Tusculum, at the Public Theater. Steve Buscemi was also in attendance and I had to resist the urge to grab him and kiss him on both cheeks.

The play takes place in 45 B.C. in the months before the assassination of Julius Caesar. The main characters are Cicero, played by the monolithic Brian Dennehy, Brutus, played by the elegant Aidan Quinn, and Cassius, played by the electric David Strathairn. (Talk about an all-star cast!) Now, before your ideas about togas and stilted dialogue chase you away from this post, give me a minute.

First of all, there are no togas (sorry, ladies), or awkward pseduo-Shakespearean dialogue. Nelson's greatest achievement here may be his ability to write dialogue that is completely modern and yet artfully archaic at the same time. None of the actors speak in accents or strange rhythms. They are three friends discussing a political situation: a tyrant has grown too big for his britches, and the question is now, what to do.

Cicero takes to his pen, avoiding Caesar's growing power and the recent death of his only beloved daughter by writing tracts on the nature of death and the unavoidable future. Brutus drinks himself silly and gets red in the face, and Cassius agressively ignores Servilia (Brutus' mother and Caesar's former lover) for sending his wife as a whore to the emperor.

In this play, the word "Caesar," could be easily exchanged with "Bush." In fact, the descriptions of Caesar's behavior (past alcoholism, government really run by his advisors, and PERPETUAL WAR) highlight the obvious similarities between the two leaders. But the emotions echoed in some of the monologues, in particular with Cassius, struck a chord with most members of the audience. (How could I tell? The "mmmm"s and "ha!"s were a good indication).

So, are the crimes of the Bush administration still important even with Obama moving full speed ahead into "change"? This play answers in a resounding "YES." The collective you have to ask yourself, how do we move on from these terrors without forgetting them? And how do we punish Bush for what he has done to our country?

More importantly, if one is not a soldier or a politician, how can we take a stand against injustice? Is art enough?

For Brutus, the answer is no. But Cicero's case is more complex. In the play, when Brutus first suggests that Caesar must die, Cicero refuses to listen and quits the room. But after Brutus and Cassius (and Cicero, too, by proxy) have been humiliated by Caesar's squirrely, manipulative ways, all Cicero can offer to Brutus' proclimation is a grimace.

I find myself making the same grimace as I watch Obama make his glowing speeches after his victories this week. Like Cicero, I am all for change, but the question that keeps nagging and me, sticking its little talons into my heart, is how?

How?



Conversations in Tusculum opens at The Public Theater on March 11th. For tickets and more information, go here.

Theatre Review: Hedda Gabler

Hedda Gabler, a production by Thomas Ostermeier
Brooklyn Academy of Music, December 2nd 2006

Hedda Gabler is quite easily my favorite play of all time. When I heard that BAM was doing yet another production (it seemed almost too soon) to follow last year's zeitgeist starring the brilliant Cate Blanchett, I was intrigued. Not only did it seem an incredible act to follow, but this production was being performed in German with English supertitles, and it was modernized. I had to see.

The star of the show was the set. In Ostermeier's production, Hedda and Tesman live in a Frank Lloyd-Wright-esque glass house (literally) with a key-lime sofa and concrete walls. The set pieces are mounted on a black stage which is fitted with hydraulics and turns a complete 360 degrees. As if that weren't enough to get theatre people going, a mirror has been mounted above the stage, so that no matter where the characters go, the audience can see them from all angles wandering about the house.

Katharina Shuttler, our Hedda, is a pixie of a woman. About two feet shorter than the lanky gawky Tesman played by Lars Eidinger, she flits around the stage like a perturbed tinkerbell, exuding the same sexuality as Nabokov's Lolita-deceivingly innocent and dripping with sex.

Mr. Ostermeier has also fitted this production with a soundtrack by the Beach Boys, and without an intermission, the small breaks after each Act are totally necessary--but rather than filling them with darkness or empty stage time, he has the concrete wall turn towards the audience and work as a film screen. One particularly interesting and touching scene was that of Hedda, in a car, driving down the highway while Brian Wilson's "God Only Knows" blasts from the speakers.

I've always read Hedda as a fucked up love-story of sorts. Lovborg and Hedda seem to share this undying hatred of the world and by the idiots that surround them, and there are lines that imply such a sexual connection that cannot be ignored. As Lovborg calls Hedda by her maiden name, “Will I ever be able to call you Hedda Gabler?” chills ran down my spine. Unfortunately, the only time the audience gets evidence of Hedda’s passionate connection to Lovborg is when she destroys the manuscript Mrs. Elvsted and he have labored over for so long. In this production, the manuscript is a laptop which Hedda places between her legs “Now I will destroy Lovborg and Nora’s child!” and smashes to death with a hammer. But the connection between the two former lovers seems lost when Hedda gives Lovborg the gun and tells him to “Make it glorious.” Shuttler is leaning against the wall in way that suggests she could care less whether Lovborg offs himself or not, regardless of it being glorious. The two actors were so far apart—I just wanted to walk onstage and push them together in some sort of romantic embrace, or at least one final touch or kiss. But then, this modern Hedda, and things are more complicated, I suppose.

Ostermeier’s production of Hedda is rife with sadism and humor, best illustrated by his interpretation of the last scene. We all know how it ends. BANG!!! Hedda retreats into the other room, and the ceiling mirror is tilted so the audience can’t see the final shot—Tesman says, “She’s playing with those pistols again…..Hedda?” Silence. As he smirks, he remarks, “She’s shot herself,” and laughs. Brack retorts, “What a naughty thing to do.” The audience, along with Brack, Tesman, and Mrs. Elvsted, all laugh as the stage rotates around to reveal Hedda, propped up one leg under the other, pistol wound to the temple, blood spattered all over the concrete.

Traditionally, Tesman usually walks off the stage, finds Hedda and runs screaming back into the main room, “She’s shot herself!” Upon which Brack replies, “What kind of a person who do such a horrible thing???” Curtain.

In this production, the three remaining actors go about their business putting together Lovborg’s notes, as the stage rotates again and again, “God Only Knows,” comes back on, silently mocking Hedda’s suicide—since life certainly goes on without Hedda. No one even notices that she’s dead!

I found myself laughing, just like the rest of the audience. In retrospect, though, I wonder, should we really be laughing at Hedda? Is her suicide a non-issue in today’s society, where women (sometimes) can get what they want without having to shoot themselves or stick their heads in an oven, their middle fingers an eternal “fuck you” to those who have done them wrong?

I’m not so sure. In 1890, Hedda was a girl who knew what she wanted. In 2006, Hedda’s a girl that doesn’t want anything—just only to not be surrounded by men who act like horny teenagers or lovestruck schoolboys. Hedda’s pistols are the symbol of power and control—she strives the whole play to feel the way she does with a warm gun in her hands. Do modern day women want the same power? Or are we still manipulating others and ourselves into thinking we’re content?