STAGE: Parade

At the enthusiastic recommendation of neighbors, we decided to check out Parade at the Mark Taper. While the notion of a musical about a lynching doesn't sound very auspicious, it turns out to be surprisingly excellent theatre with some beautiful numbers in it. The story is lifted fairly intact from an actual historical incident in 1913 Atlanta, the drummed-up conviction of Leo Frank, a Jewish New Yorker factory boss, for the murder of a young teenage girl. The case proved to be a lightning rod for festering southern resentment of northern interference, bubbling out in vicious xenophobia. While the courtroom drama of a media-whipped, rumor-driven frame-up eventually unraveling provides the center of the story, much of the beauty of the musical comes from the development of the relationship between Leo Frank and his wife after he is imprisoned, when she proves her real mettle and he comes to realize how much he's taken his wife for granted. There are many memorable numbers: a charming early duet showing the young girl playfully holding a young suitor at bay ("The Picture Show"), a powerful ensemble number at her burial ("It Don't Make Sense"), the two testimonies of the dubious main witness ("That's What He Said"), and Leo and Lucille's "picnic" in his prison cell ("All the Wasted Time"). The cast was strong all around, lead by T.R. Knight as Leo Frank (who totally became his character and made me forget Gray's Anatomy for the evening) and Lara Pulver showing understated strength as his wife, and featuring a number of stage veterans -- Michael Berresse, Davis Gaines, Charlotte d'Amboise, David St. Louis, Christian Hoff, P.J. Griffith -- all masterfully handling multiple roles, and with young newcomers Curt Hansen and Rose Sezniak performing admirably with this strong cast. The choreography and stagecraft are wonderful, beautifully capturing the time, place, and spirit of the show. The parade of coached witnesses, and the enactment of some of the testimony and flashbacks were memorably visualized. The creative use of the simple set, augmented by a few furniture props and sliding panels in the stage floor, did a remarkable job of vividly conjuring a home, a courtroom, a street, a prison cell, a ballroom, a factory office, and a city street. This remarkable piece of theatre only ran for a couple of months when it opened on Broadway in 1998, but it also garnered a couple of Tony awards, and has since gained attention in revival, and last night, we could certainly see why.

STAGE: August: Osage County

August: Osage County, the Tony-award winning best play of 2008, is here at the Ahmanson now. Though the performance runs three and a half hours (with two intermissions), the lively play kept us all engrossed to the end. Tracy Letts' story of a family gathering in response to the patriarch's disappearance packs all the drama and intensity of an Albee play, but leavened with a bit more humor, and with the cast and complexity of a telenovela. Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf meets Six Feet Under, if you will. Like Who's Afraid, it touches on themes of disappointment of not living up to one's full academic potential, but that's only a bit of background texture to the soap opera of addiction, suicide, incest, infidelity, and pedophilia. The Fisher family of Six Feet Under has got nothing on the Weston family of Osage County when it comes to putting the "fun" in dysfunctional family. Amidst all of the family secrets that get revealed, the play thoughtfully probes the relationships between children and parents, between sisters, and between spouses. An all-around strong cast was lead by Estelle Parsons in a memorable performance as the pill-popping matriarch (and the 82-year-old actress is amazingly fit, running up and down the stairs often in the play). The whole ensemble worked great magic together, and many moments in the play benefited from their impeccable comic and dramatic timing. The entire play takes place on a single set, a doll-house-style cut-away three-story home, with the only change of scene being the shift of light from one room to another. It suits perfectly, giving the story just enough space to unfold, while keeping the intensity of a single set (the play never steps out to get some air, so to speak). There's a bit of porch, allowing characters to enter and exit the family house, and have a few moments outside, but the house totally dominates the stage and underscores the fixedness of the central character, who is the only family member never to leave the house throughout the play. Amidst this train-wreck of a family, there are some good laughs, powerful drama, and great humanity.

STAGE: Phèdre

Sometimes I am incredibly lucky, and last night was one of those times. I had heard about the (British) National Theatre's production of Racine's Phèdre, lead by Dame Helen Mirren, which was causing sensations in London, and was coming to the US for twelve performances only, in Washington DC. I figured that would be one of those great events I'd just have to hear about from others. But then I was in Washington for a business trip this week, discovered it was the same week Phedre was in town, and thanks to CraigsList and some help from a good friend, I was able to score a ticket. I paid a premium, but it was so worth it. The play is a classic tragedy, coming from the ancient Greek drama Hippolytus by Euripides, adapted by the 17th century French master playwright Racine, and translated into modern English by poet Ted Hughes. The simple but beautiful set for this production echoes that pedigree. Racine's version all takes place in a single setting, in the palace of Troezen, with one side open to the sky, allowing his characters to literally move in and out of the light. Director Nicholas Hytner remains true to that concept, realizing the palace as a floor and ceiling of travertine, with a large hunk of rough travertine covering an exit, and a brilliant blue sky off to the right. To an Angeleno, the giant travertine tiles immediately conjure the Getty Center, an allusion which hits the perfect note of a modern reflection of ancient Greece. The tragedy is raw by modern standards, a roller-coaster of pity and horror, unleavened by lighter moments, driving inexorably to its horrible end. Histrionic speeches vividly express passion and anguish along the way. It's not a modern mode, but the Hughes translation in Hytner's hands felt Shakespearean, with hints of Edward Albee. And the remarkable cast brings it home. Helen Mirren's Phèdre exposes palpable passion and anguish (Phèdre is hopelessly in love with her stepson, knows how horrible that is, and struggles to avert it), verging on madness and suicide, her voice modulating loud and soft, high and low, expressing the waves of emotion in her character. And at times she speaks volumes just with a slight movement of her body. When she learns that Hippolytus loves another woman, a tightening of her body and a turn of her head vividly convey to the audience the emotional bullet she's just received, while revealing nothing to her husband. Dominic Cooper as Hippolytus captures the scope of that noble tortured character, forswearing love but then falling in love with the exiled daughter of his father's enemy. When fatally wronged by his father, he refuses to vindicate himself in order to spare his father the even-worse truth. Hippolytus keeps much bottled up, but Cooper's excellent portrayal succeeds in conveying the emotions within the reserved exterior, and the cost of maintaining that reserve. Other standout performances included John Shrapnel as Theramene, old counselor to Hippolytus, who rises to great Shakespearean proportions in the climax when he recounts the death of Hippolytus; and Ruth Negga as Aricia, the noble princess who drags in the remains of Hippolytus in the end (like Stevie in the third act of Albee's The Goat). The performance was breathtaking from start to horrifying finish.

As the play unfolded, I realized that I had seen a performance of the original Euripides tragedy that it was based on (a few years ago at the newly reopened Getty Villa). It hadn't hit me right away, as Racine's play is called Phèdre, while Euripides' play is called Hippolytus. But that just begins to tell the ways in which Racine shifted the focus and changed the play. The story is nearly the same in its outline, but in Euripides, Hippolytus is the tragic hero, cursed by the goddess Aphrodite because he spurns her in favor of Artemis, while Phaedra is an innocent pawn of the goddess, who kills herself before acting on her feelings. Racine turns the focus of the play on Phèdre, making her more culpable (though influenced by her Machiavellian nurse), and making Hippolytus more noble, and also adding the new wrinkle of Aricia, giving Hippolytus a forbidden love of his own. In Euripides, the goddesses actually appear in the play, and actively intervene in events, while in Racine, the gods are off-stage and the humans are undone by their own passions and flaws. A great drama stands the test of time, carrying its truth even as it is reinterpreted by different generations. In some ways, this play seems ancient, but at the same time, we read its echoes in recent headlines. Makes me wonder whether Racine should be my next quest. And I'll certainly keep an eye out for other National Theatre productions. Theatre of this caliber is worth going to lengths to see. (And apparently there's a new venture afoot at National Theatre to do live broadcasts of some of their productions to cinemas around the world. Check out NT Live.)

FILM: My One And Only

In the title sequence of My One And Only, vintage 1950 postcards from Boston, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Albuquerque, and Los Angeles are sequenced, artfully combined with period photos and symbols of those places, set to vintage music, all foreshadowing the charming period-piece road-trip movie that is to come. A beautiful sky-blue Cadillac Eldorado convertible is the vehicle for the cross-country trip, but the route is more a journey of self-discovery than just following Highway 66. Renee Zellweger is perfect as Anne Devereaux, a middle-aged but still beautiful southern belle who walks out on her womanizing band-leader husband (Kevin Bacon), taking her two sons with her, along with a handful of cash, and the fierce determination that she will find a better husband (and father for the boys). She meets a series of former beaus and prospective second husbands in a series of cities, but she also meets setback after setback, challenging her conviction that "things will always work out in the end". Nonetheless, she keeps her head high, and things do work out, though not in the way that she had expected. (Of course, another of Anne's aphorisms is that "a lady should never do what is expected.") Kevin Bacon, whom we see in the beginning, and who pops up at various other points, is great in his part as the charming but irresponsible ex-husband, and many of Anne's subsequent suitors are a parade of nicely done small roles by Steven Weber, Chris Noth, and Eric McCormack. Nick Stahl oozes James Dean / early Brando-esque charm in a bit as her quietly smoldering neighbor in Pittsburgh. But the other real star of the show is Logan Lerman, who plays her older son George, a young would-be writer whose favorite book is Catcher in the Rye, probably because he's strongly relating to Holden Caulfield's teenage angst. Lerman, whose character also narrates the film, gives an amazing performance of George's worldly savvy (some of it modeled on his father) and teenage pretend-self-confidence with self-searching vulnerability peeking through the cracks. In the beginning, George thinks his mother is silly, and he wants to go back to New York and his father. But as they journey together, he discovers less to admire about his father and eventually more to admire about his mother. It's a touching, thoughtful, and charming film, and like the Cadillac they drive, a classic American beauty to behold.

BOOKS: The Chosen

This past couple weeks, I've really enjoyed listening to The Chosen, by Chaim Potok. It's one of those classic books that I thought I should catch up on, especially after Potok's works kept popping up in various conversations lately. (The most surprising and random was last Sunday, when I asked at family dinner if anyone had read any Potok. Turns out my mother was also in the middle of The Chosen, having picked it up on a sale table at the bookstore, not knowing anything about it.) The story follows an unlikely friendship between two boys in 1940's Brooklyn through high school and college. Though they live just a few blocks apart, Danny, a Hasidic orthodox Jew (black caftan, beard, earlocks), and Reuven, a modern orthodox Jew, had never crossed paths until Danny nearly took out Reuven's eye in a baseball game. I enjoyed learning much about Hasidic Judaism that I didn't know, their history, their distinctive practices (like dynastic leaders), as it unfolded in the two boys getting to know each other, and their distinct experiences of their "common" faith. The backdrop of the story exposed the events of World War II and the founding of Israel, which while well known events, was made fresh in the way these people experienced it at the moment. The story also contemplated father-son relationships, contrasting the close relationship Reuven had with his father (a teacher and later a Zionist activist), versus Danny's silent relationship with his father (the tzadik of his community, a position to be inherited by Danny). The narrator, Jonathan Davis, did a great job reading this book, properly pronouncing all the Hebrew and Yiddish words, and all with a good Longg Island accent. His voicing was given wing, I think, by Potok's great ear for natural dialog with these characters. An opening epigram in the book really stayed with me: a description of how a trout fights when it is hooked, and how the other trout swimming by see its struggle but don't understand it because they can't see the hook and the line. The book is a real lesson in empathy and compassion, as well as Jewish history.

FILM: Julie & Julia

What a delightful, utterly charming film we enjoyed in Julie & Julia. Meryl Streep delivers another amazing tour de force in portraying Julia Child, a daunting task not only because Julia is so well known, but because she is so distinctive in her voice and mannerisms that it's got to be fiendishly difficult to portray her without falling into parody. But Streep, under Nora Ephron's direction, does an amazing job. As my mother said, Streep was more Julia Child than Julia Child. (The cinematographer also gets props for making the 5'6" Streep look as grande as the 6'2" Child.) But while the film was all about Julia, it was not all about Meryl, and she was surrounded by an awesome cast. Stanley Tucci was endearing as her husband Paul Child, and Amy Adams was perfect for Julie, the main character of the other story. As the trailer tells us, Julie & Julia is based on two true stories, and it is the clever interposing of these two stories, five decades and an ocean apart, that elevates the film from just a great biography. The film moves back and forth between Julia, in 1950s Paris, discovering her love of French cooking and her aim to write a cookbook, and Julie, a sympathetic young woman feeling frustrated in her job, cramped in her Queens apartment, and left behind by her more successful friends, who undertakes a project to cook her way through the entire Julia Child cookbook in year, and to blog about it. It was a delight to see her accomplishments and her setbacks as she gained confidence through her ambitious task. There were times when her experiments got a bit out of control, and she got a bit obsessed with her blog, and she's lucky she had such a supportive husband. Hmm, that last sentence could hit a bit close to home… I could relate a bit too closely to how crushed she felt watching her husband douse with salt the boeuf bourguignon she had slaved over. But I could also relate to the joy she found in cooking, and could admire her spirit in going beyond her comfort zone (like tackling the lobster and the formidable deboning of the duck). Meanwhile, getting to know Julia was absolutely inspirational. While I naturally admired her culinary talent, what was revelatory was learning about her indomitable personality, her pluck for always moving forward cheerfully despite adversity, and her wonderful relationship with her loving husband. We've seen a number of romance flicks this summer, but I think Julia and Paul may be the best romance of the summer. I left this film uplifted on so many counts: the inspirational lives, the rapturous cuisine, the visual valentine to Paris in the 1950s. Among other things, I want to run out and buy her cookbook and try out some of those recipes. But I also plan to read Julia's autobiography. The recipe I left most inspired to try was her recipe for joie de vivre.

UPDATE 8/22/09: I've heard from a number of people who liked Julia and hated Julie, such as this review in Gourmet, by someone who knew Julia personally. It's worth reading the comments as well as the review itself. A number of folks there come to Julie Powell's defense. I don't think Julie was trying to be a new Julia. She was trying to find some meaning in a grim life by taking on an extraordinary challenge (both the cooking and the blogging). I came away from the film with a much-renewed admiration for Julia, but I laughed when she talked about making French cooking accessible for the "servantless American", and thought to myself, yeah, the servantless jobless American who has time to spend hours in the kitchen. As someone who can very keenly relate to the challenge of trying to cook good food after coming home from a full day's work, as well as the challenge of trying to write a blog every single day, I think Julie Powell is undeservedly unappreciated by this reviewer.

FILM: The Ugly Truth

And to think that Katherine Heigl once complained that the writers on Gray's Anatomy weren't giving her good enough material. We saw The Ugly Truth this weekend, and the ugly truth about this film is, while passably pleasant enough for summer fluff, it's cheesy, predictable, and derivative. The premise promised to be a sparky battle of the sexes, set against the conflict of quality versus ratings-driven TV news programming. So I'm expecting Broadcast News crossed with Adam's Rib. Katherine Heigl's character started out strong and serious like Holly Hunter, but she turned into a cartoon with a goofy happy dance the minute Eric Winter dropped his towel. (In retrospect, the eye candy may have been the high point of the film.) The story degenerated into a soapy romance with mostly cardboard characters whose one development you could see coming like Andersen's Pea Soup on Interstate 5, with the plot, such as it was, advanced by a series of puerile gags. The remote ear-piece thing? The spill in the lap? Cheesy and done before. And vibrating panties? Really? (And the result, such a cheap imitation of Meg Ryan's unforgettable salad in When Harry Met Sally.) The film was enjoyable, mostly due to the sheer force of charm from Heigl and Gerard Butler, who just might have been Hepburn and Tracy had they been given a much better script. Alas, this script was just a big dollop of Velveeta. Not for the lactose-intolerant.

FILM: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

On Thursday afternoon, I snuck out with a couple of colleagues for an "offsite" to see the latest Harry Potter episode. We all really enjoyed it. Of course any discussion of a Harry Potter movie centers around how faithful it was to the book. Personally, I hold no unrealistic expectations that they can render the book completely in the film version. There's just too much to fit, and I accept that things must be cut. I think they captured the essential elements: the Death Eaters and their reign of terror are on the rise, the kids are experiencing typical teenage romances, and Harry, along with Hermione and Ron, are left at the end with the huge task of finding the remaining horcruxes to kill you-know-who. I think they did a good job of surgically removing certain plot elements, like the parts about Cornelius Fudge and the Ministry, while keeping the overall story coherent and intact. Some choices in the end, however, were a bit puzzling. Could there not have been at least a bit of a fight? In the film, it seems a bit odd that the other teachers and students are nowhere to be seen, as the Death Eaters turn over a few chairs and then leave. And it was a bit odd for Harry to just quietly lurk and passively watch the final scene (in the book, he is petrified by Dumbledore, but the film omitted that). But even though the ending was anticlimactic, I think it was unavoidably so. That's just how this book ends. Unlike the previous books, where the kids break for summer, this time their future is filled with terror and uncertainty. Though the Death Eaters didn't seem to do much in the end, their triumph was that of the terrorist, a psychological blow, to put a Dark Mark in the sky over Hogwarts, eliminating the last "safe space" for the good guys. That's what this film is about is the onset of terror. The gist of this film was perfectly captured in a wordless moment where Mrs. Weasley watches with a mixture of grief and resolution as her house burns. The end of this film is just like the end of the first Lord of the Rings movie: it basically leaves off with things looking bleak, and the heroes contemplating the seemingly impossible task they must complete in order to save the world as we know it. The young actors continue to do a fine job in their roles, refining their chops as some roles get more complicated (especially Malfoy). And of course veteran oldsters (Rickman, Gambon, Smith, etc) are all brilliant. I think they did a fine job with this film, and I enjoyed it very much.

Just to add a couple personal idiosyncratic notes. First, a quibble. The Felix Felicis potion was supposed to be luminescent gold. Would that have been so hard to get right in the film? On the upside, I loved all the rugged Scottish Highlands scenery, which seemed more prominent in this film. That is magical countryside indeed.

BOOKS: The History of Love

What a quietly moving and thoroughly spell-binding novel Nicole Krauss has written in The History of Love. The first several chapters in, I thought the book was going to be some good character sketches, but without much of a plot. While I was enjoying the characters just being characters, I failed to notice until much later the fantastic subtle web of interconnection that had been woven around these characters, and had ensnared me to see it fully unfold. It's been said that a butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world. The History of Love tells of a young writer who pours out his first, fleeting yet lifelong love into an unpublished manuscript, and how it touches the lives and loves of others across two translations, three continents, and seven decades. And of how choosing the wrong sentence might change the course of a lifetime. The book made me think of Love in the Time of Cholera, as both are epic paeans to a lifetime of love (mostly in the abstract), their pivotal characters carrying an enduring unrequited love for a girl who marries and spends her life with someone else. But where Florentino Ariza spends his life whoring around, Krauss' hero Leopold Gursky spends his life writing. Gursky thinks no one will read his pages, but he has no idea how far-reaching his impact will be. In the end, he touches the lives of others more profoundly and positively than Garcia-Marquez' hero. Of course one doesn't expect much of Gursky when we first meet him, as a cranky, eccentric old man. But as his story unfolds, I grew fond of him, crankiness and eccentricities and all. His story comes out interleaved with the coming of age story of a teen girl and her younger brother dealing with the loss of their father when they were very young, and the story of a Jewish refugee and writer in South America. And perhaps the story is even more about the girl than about Gursky. While the novel jumps from 1930s Poland to 1960s Chile to contemporary New York, I found the narrative flow surprisingly natural and not too hard to follow, especially as the latent threads running through the disparate stories begin to manifest. Krauss' intricate story is brought to life by her ear for voice and her vivid characters. By the end, I was rapt in its magic web.

FILM: (500) Days of Summer

We mostly enjoyed (500) Days of Summer, a light quirky romantic comedy, or, as the narrator might insist, not a romantic comedy but a comedy about romance. The film plays with all sorts of conventions, including inverting the typical romcom formula with a hopelessly romantic boy and a free-spirited, commitment-phobic girl, and a timeline that chronicles their year-and-a-half long relationship starting at day (382) and bouncing back to day (10) and forward again to (127) and back to day (2), or something like that. The story-telling is entirely subjective from the hopelessly romantic boy's point of view, and the film plays with the subjectivity, free-flowing from straightforward life scenes to voiceovers, split-screens (expectations vs. reality), classic movie parodies and a break-out musical number (not counting the karaoke). The film is also a visual valentine to downtown Los Angeles, as seen through the eyes of our hopeless romantic (who's a frustrated architect working at a greeting card company) as he shares his urban appreciation with the object of his amorous attention. The film thrives on the utterly charming performances of its stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, the great visuals, and the dynamic non-linear unfolding of the relationship. I did mostly enjoy it, even though I did feel the ending felt a bit flat. Summer was such a fresh and intriguing character, and it just felt like she collapsed from 3D to 2D at the end, inexplicably becoming quite conventional. In retrospect, I appreciate that it's actually quite realistic and understandable given the strong subjectivity of the story being from his point of view. A curveball from his point of view might be a straight line from her point of view, but all we ever had was his point of view. And being a hopeless romantic myself, I left pleased that hopeless romance was ultimately vindicated, as it should be in a light summer romcom. Pleased but just a bit let down that the denouement didn't quite live up to the convention-defying creativity of the rest of the film. Nonetheless, if you love a quirky romance (or Los Angeles architecture), you'll enjoy this. Who knew Ikea could be so fun?

FILM: Patrik 1,5

I'm glad that George has been keeping his ears open for good OutFest films, since we've never managed to be proactive about the film festival. Fortunately, we were able to get spur-of-the-moment tickets for this evening's showing of Patrik 1,5, a charming Swedish film, presented under the stars at the Ford Amphitheater. It was a lovely summer night, and we enjoyed the heartfelt film very much. The film tells the story of Göran, a handsome sensitive doctor, his husband Sven who's a bit rougher around the edges, and their goal to move into a suburban neighborhood, adopt a baby, and have a nice family. Actually, it's a bit more Göran's goal than Sven's, the latter already having a teenage daughter from a previous straight marriage. But they press on, and the story gets its title twist when through a bureaucratic error, their anticipated 1.5-year-old adoptee turns out to be a 15-year-old juvenile delinquent, with a foul mouth, a bad attitude, a dose of homophobia, and a history of violence. Göran, Sven, and Patrik all have a lot to work through, but it is great to see the relationships develop, and how each affects the others. The story of this improbable family develops against the backdrop of Swedish suburbia, and the film pokes gentle fun at neighborhood dynamics -- neighborhood associations, garage sales and parties, and the pressure to keep up one's garden. At the same time, it explores the diversity of acceptance of a gay couple in the neighborhood, with reactions ranging from open acceptance to simmering hostility, with a lot of awkward politeness in between. While it touches on heavier subjects, it is never ponderous, and the tone is lightly sentimental throughout. It's a great story about genuine family values.

FILM: The Hangover

We laughed and laughed last night watching The Hangover. I generally don't go for sophomoric humor, but every once in a while, a low-brow film just gets so creative and so funny that it transcends the genre (think Animal House). The Hangover really hits it, and I think what makes it work is the totally outrageous story and the creative way it is unfolded. The film opens with a funny and attention-stoking scene from near the end of the story, then rewinds to the beginning with four guys going off for a bachelor party in Vegas, splurging on a suite at Caesar's Palace, and kicking off the evening with shots of Jagermeister on the roof of the hotel. A cool time-lapse sequence of darkening sky followed by dawn over the Vegas skyline tells us that the night has passed, and we flash forward to the guys waking up from an awful hangover, and none of them can remember anything of the night before to explain why the suite is trashed, a couple of wild animals are wandering loose in it, and the groom is nowhere to be found. From there ensues a totally wild, crazy, hysterical adventure around Vegas to try to piece together what the heck happened, and to find the groom so they can get him to the wedding on time. What unfolds is so zany and so unexpected that, if you tried to imagine the wildest "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas" story, this film would show you the limits of your imagination. If you could stop laughing long enough to try.