Tag Archives: Theater

A Tale of Two Cities (with Students!)

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This is a guest post by Anne, my muse, she writes the following: So my musee thinks that I should write a blog entry for him. The muse is not amused, but here goes.

Last Saturday, Le Marquis was fighting off a virus, and didn’t feel like going to the High School play, “A Raisin in the Sun”. He missed a good show! I had read the play back in the day, when I was a high school student, but seeing it live was much better. The students did a great job, and I didn’t detect any muffed lines or technical difficulties. It’s always fun for me to see the student thespians, as sometimes the characters they play are so different from their own personalities. In addition, some of the actors are very shy and reserved in real life, so it is even more rewarding to see them on stage. I know I didn’t have that kind of courage to even try out when I was that age. Bravo!

[I heard on NPR this week about a sequel to “Raisin”, called “Clybourn Park”. In this two act play, the first act is set immediately after the conclusion of “Raisin”. The black family has moved the white neighborhood of Clybourn Park. This act deals with the problems that they encountered while integrating. The second act is set fifty years later. Clybourn Park is now a rundown neighborhood. A white couple has just purchased the house. They encounter pushback from the all black neighborhood that is fighting gentrification.]

Wednesday, Joanie and I joined the Science Book Club on the yellow school bus. We rode to Springfield, Illinois to see Rebecca Skloot, author of “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”. Henrietta Lacks was a poor, black woman who died of cervical cancer in 1951. A sample of her cancer cells was taken without her knowledge. This sample became the first human line of immortal cells, and paved the way for many breakthroughs, including the polio vaccine. The book is a very good book, and the students were excited to meet the author. Ms. Skloot interspersed her talk with passages from the book. She also updated us on the status of the Lacks family and the foundation set up to help them. After the talk, she answered questions from the audience. Then there was a book signing in the lobby of the auditorium. She graciously agreed to pose for a picture with our group after she had signed all the books. We will have a dinner discussion next Wednesday at the high school. I’m interested to see the students’ reactions. I dozed a bit on the way home, and it was far too noisy to hold a real discussion.

Red

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What is Art? Is it “Red”, arterial red, sunrise red, scarlet or rust? Is it the red phone that is connected to the Kremlin? Is it commie red? Is it over the mantle Sherwin William’s red? Is it dried blood-red? The Rep’s season opener, “Red”, asks these questions, about art, or more particularly about Mark Rothko’s art.

This two actor play explores the mid-twentieth century, New York art scene by focusing upon Rothko’s commission for the Four Season’s restaurant. Rothko, the trendiest artist of his day, was given the most lucrative commission of his day; all to cover the walls of what would become New York’s toniest restaurant. Before this play, I was ignorant of Rothko and his telltale black and red, abstract impressionism. As a study guide, I read the Post-Dispatch’s preview of this play, which concentrated upon the mechanics of art direction, with a detailed explanation of how the fake Rothko’s were created.

This research put me roughly on a par with the other actor in this play, Rothko’s new assistant. At one point in the play the assistant asks, “Do you really care what I think? “ Rothko answers, “Not at all.” Assistant and audience act as spectators to the main act that is Rothko. Rothko alternately rails against, and then revels in, the art scene that has made him famous. At the end of the play, Rothko repudiates his commission. He cannot bear the thought of his beloved artworks forever suffering, the haughtiness of the Four Season’s and its patrons, “I still can’t believe that I tried to impress the wine guy.”

The play alludes to, but never shows Rothko’s suicide, Van Gogh, Jackson Pollack’s convertible crash are both discussed. Rothko’s assistant even finds him “dead” drunk on the floor, but instead of slit wrists, coated in dried blood; it is only red paint. While Rothko relished toppling his cubist predecessors, he also reviled his pop-art successors, Warhol, Lichtenstein and Rosenquist. “Red” left me with the impression of a talented, but deeply troubled individual. He was one that systematically pushed away all friendship and love and in the end died by his own hand, a high price to pay on the altar of art.

The Mikado

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Friday night, Anne and I went to go see The Mikado, the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta. Like previous year’s productions, this one was also produced by the New York Gilbert and Sullivan Society and was performed at the Touhill Theater on UMSL’s campus. The Mikado was written in 1895, a time when England was the center of the world and Japan was a far away and mysterious land. Setting the show in Japan allowed Gilbert and Sullivan breathing room for their satire and barbs that this show launches against British society.

I must admit that going to see The Mikado on the same day as the massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami was an awkward coincidence. The Mikado is a comic opera that primarily pokes fun at death and even at its inception was considered rather a dark comedy, especially for a Gilbert and Sullivan work. This combined with its Japanese setting suggested that some sort of announcement might be made before the performance, but none ever came.

During the day on Friday, I watched some of the video of the tsunami as it wreaked the Japanese coastline. I also monitored the progress of this wave as it raced across the Pacific Ocean, a substantial portion of our family lives on the West Coast. Fortunately, nothing more than a few boats were knocked about, at least in the vicinity of our family. I wake today to the news that one of the Japanese nuclear power plants could be melting down. This disaster’s script is beginning to sound like a bad Godzilla movie.

I spent the first year of my life in Japan. My Dad, a naval officer, was stationed there. It was too early in my life to remember anything first hand from that time, but stories from my folks have been passed down to me. This link is to one such story. One habit that was brought back with us from Japan was the habit of removing our shoes, when we entered the house. This habit is universal in Japan, but here in the states, it is a bit unusual, or at least my friends always thought so. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Japanese people in this their hour of trial.

Over the Tavern

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Anne and I braved the winter storm that had descended upon Saint Louis this weekend, to see the Sunday matinée of the Rep’s latest production, Over the Tavern.  This play was alternately funny, poignant and eventually redemptive.  Set in Buffalo at the end of the Eisenhower administration the play is mainly an irreverent remembrance of the author’s Polish-Catholic upbringing.

The Pazinski family comprises most of the cast.  Chet, the angry father is a hard man whose life turned out very differently from what he had hoped for.  Ellen, the long suffering mother tries to keep their children in line while hoping they have a better childhood than she had.  Chet and Ellen have four children.  At 16, Annie is the oldest child and is just starting to work through her new emotions as a young woman.  The play is only somewhat autobiographical; the author actually had two sisters, so he claims to have combined their worst qualities into one.  Eddie, 15, is a teenager with a desire to make his own way in the world, but might cause some trouble along the way.  Everyone’s favorite ray of sunshine, Georgie, 13, may be cognitively disabled, but in the vernacular of that time, he is a retard.  Still he brings great joy and unity to his family.  Finally, there is Rudy, 12, the comedian of the family and the author personified.  There is one more family member, but he never appears in the play, that is Pops, Chet’s father.  In some ways Pops is a shade that overshadows everyone.  The only non-family member to appear in the play is Sister Clarissa.  She and Rudy battle each other for his immortal soul across the battlefields of catechism, confirmation training and Catholic dogma.

The first act of this play ladles heavily the angst of a family on the verge of dysfunction.  Atop this angry base, layers of Catholic humor are liberally leavened.  The word trite comes to mind.  Come the intermission this mix had not gone down so well for me and I was left with a sour stomach.  In the second act, one-by-one the characters come to Jesus until finally the prodigal father is also redeemed.  I guess that the author felt that he first had to tear us all down, before he could begin to build us up again.  By the final curtain though, I left satisfied with the play.  Theatrically, we must sin first, before we are saved.

I come, in part, from Polish-Catholics.  Maybe that is why I didn’t find all of the play’s jokes so funny.  But what eventually won me over was the author’s more serious treatment of Polish-Catholics.  Like some of the problems that the Pazinski family wrestled with in the play, I wrestle with today.  To some extent I think that all parents do.  We want the best for our children.  We want to raise them right.  Sometimes our wants prevent us from seeing what they really need.

The High Road

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On Tuesday, we saw writer Matthew Lombardo’s autobiographical play, High.  This play is certainly the Rep’s hottest ticket this season.  It is billed as a world premier and features the movie actress Kathleen Turner.  This three actor play revolves around the combative relationship of drug counselor, Sister Jamison Connolly, played by Turner and a 19 year-old drug user named Cody that she is charged with treating.  High explores the themes of truth, forgiveness, redemption and human fallibility.  The play’s themes and their treatments are mature, under 18 years of age is not allowed in the audience.

High is a star vehicle and Kathleen Turner is at the wheel.  As Sister Jamie, she isn’t some crusty old Mother Superior; there are no wimples, nor any bursting into song.  She is an aggressive, foul-mouthed model of arrogance.  Her famously husky voice has now descended near the bass-baritone range.  She relishes the sound of her own profane voice and uses it as a weapon to hold her audience hostage for the play’s entire two-hour duration.

In addition to language, High also features nudity.  Stoned again, Cody attempts to assault Sister Jamie.  It has been many years since nudity has appeared upon the Rep’s stage.  The last occurrence was in Madame M.  The Rep is shown at the Loretto-Hilton, on the campus of Webster University.  Webster was once run by the Sisters of Loretto and they still hold sway there.  By all accounts, Madame M created such uproar that the Rep eventually launched their Off Ramp series, for “those kind of plays”.  High with its strong Catholic and religious overtones must have been exempted from any such prohibitions.

Violence permeates High.  Not violence on stage, even Cody’s attempted assault is shutdown before it can begin, but the violence that has permeated the lives of the characters in High.  This play’s rap sheet is stupendous both in its length and in its breath.  I counted multiple cases of murder, rape, pedophilia, prostitution, drug abuse and the list goes on, almost to, no beyond, the limits of credulity.  This is the failing of High and its self-described drug addict writer.  Maybe these crimes are as common as described, but sitting in an audience of gray-haired doctors and lawyers they seem simply unbelievable, unconvincing. 

All in all, I liked the play.  Turner’s star power won the day and made the play, but I have a bone to pick with the Reps’ artistic director, Steven Woolf.  Maybe in the theater business, “world premier” is like extra virgin is to the olive oil industry; both are first, but only by degree.  Before High premiered in Saint Louis, it first premiered in Hartford and Cincinnati, but Mr. Woolf continues to represent his show as the world premier, and not just the last stop of this off to Broadway play’s extra virgin tour.

Cast: Kathleen Turner (Sister Jamison Connelly), Michael Berresse (Father Michael Delpapp), Evan Jonigkeit (Cody Randall)

OBTW, Happy Birthday, Jay!