Friday, January 14, 2011

Graney Steps Down

Well this is news: as first broken by Eric and Andy's Reviews You Can Iews, Sean Graney will be stepping down as artistic director of The Hypocrites, the Chicago theatre company that he founded in 1997. He'll be replaced by Halena Kays, a company member at The Hypocrites and the current artistic director founder of Barrel of Monkeys.

(Confidential to Anderson Lawfer and Eric Roach: screw you guys, with your scoops and your good journalism! You're making the rest of us bloggers look bad!)

I've previously stated my love of the work that Graney does, both with The Hypocrites and at other theatres. (I think I went from cautious admirer to full-on fan with the fall 2008 one-two punch of The Threepenny Opera with The Hypocrites and Edward II with Chicago Shakespeare.) The good news is that this work will continue--he's slated to direct two shows a season for at least the next two seasons with The Hypocrites, and I have no doubt at other theatres as well. It's a good thing--nobody explodes a classic play and picks up the pieces quite like him, and his success rate is astonishingly high. While I don't think I've ever seen Kays' work (or, shamefully, ever gone to a Barrel of Monkeys show), I've heard nothing but good things about her. (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention tireless managing director Megan Wildebour, who will continue to be awesome and make things happen in that way that managing directors of small companies do.)

So congratulations to everyone at the Hypocrites for arranging a smooth and artistically exciting way to continue the strong work that the company does. I look forward to seeing more shows there. (This isn't just me saying that--I'm seeing "The Pirates of Penzance" tomorrow night.) And Sean, if you ever leave Chicago, I'll be very angry. Finally, readers, I leave you with two pictures.

This is what the past looks like:


And this is what the future looks like:



Both photos by Sandro

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

News Roundup

Two pieces of good news and one very sad one:

Steppenwolf's praised production of Lisa D'Amour's Detroit is moving to Broadway in the fall. It's always good to see a new American play on Broadway, and I hope it does well. (I never got to see it, but heard great things.) Hopefully the original cast will be kept and a good play done well without stars will reach some level of Broadway success. I know, I'm an optimist.

Also in Steppenwolf news, Jon Michael Hill will appear in their production of The Hot L Baltimore. This is excellent news for two reasons: first, that Hill is a dynamic and exceptional performer, and any chance to see him onstage is a treat. Second, this indicates that, despite his role on ABC's Detroit 1-8-7, he's remaining committed to theatre and Chicago. I hope that his returns are frequent.

It's always sad to report a death, but particularly so when that death comes shockingly early. Allison Powell, an ensemble member at Filament Theatre died at the age of 28 from a sudden illness on January 2nd. There will be a memorial event for her on Friday, and Filament has announced that they are funding a gift in her memory. See the press release below for all of the details. Our profoundest thoughts and sympathies are with all of her family and friends.


*** THE FILAMENT THEATRE ENSEMBLE MOURNS THE LOSS OF ALLISON POWELL***
***Allison Powell Memorial Event and Artist's Gift***



Allison Powell of the Filament Theatre Ensemble passed away from a sudden illness on January 2, 2011 at the age of 28. In addition to serving as the company's business manager, Allison adapted Filament's most recent production, Choose Thine Own Adventure – a Shakespearean choose-your-own-adventure play which enjoyed a very successful run at the Underground Lounge through December 11, 2010.




Allison attended elementary school in Lilburn, Georgia, then moved to Maui, Hawaii, where she graduated with honors from Seabury Hall. She graduated cum laude from Colgate University in New York, majoring in religion and philosophy. She also studied at St. Andrews University, Scotland and in Melbourne, Australia, where she spent a year as an independent researcher studying Aboriginal ceremony and performance. During her college years she was active in experimental theatre and after graduation worked in the San Francisco theater community. She moved to Chicago in 2009 and joined the executive staff of the Filament Theatre Ensemble shortly thereafter. She planned on attending graduate school to study religious ritual and performance in the fall.




The Filament Theatre Ensemble is profoundly grateful for her contributions to the company, and are continuing her legacy with an annual gift to Chicago-based artists in Allison's name. Allison recognized the challenges of the lifestyle of the artist, and believed firmly that artists should be monetarily compensated for their work. The Filament Theatre Ensemble is establishing “Allie's Gift” to provide individual Chicago artists with funds to grow and support their artistic careers. This gift will be offered annually on Allison's birthday, April 26. More details will be available on the Filament Theatre Ensemble website in the coming days.




A public celebration of Allison's life will be held at 7:00pm on Friday, January 14 at the Menomonee Club located at 1535 North Dayton Street. A broadcast of her celebration event held in Marietta, GA, will be shown and will begin at 7:30, with time to share stories and memories. If you plan to attend please RSVP by emailing info@filamenttheatre.org or calling (773) 270-1660.




For more information about the service, “Allie's Gift”, or to share memories, please visit www.filamenttheatre.org or call (773) 270-1660.


--


Peter Oyloe
Filament Theatre Ensemble // Marketing Director
www.filamenttheatre.org
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d–till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
-Walt Whitman

Friday, January 7, 2011

Discussing "The Tempest"

Welcome to the latest installment of the occasional collaboration between Tim Brayton, of the invaluable film blog Antagony and Ecstasy (no, I'm not exactly sure what the title means either) and myself, on the subject of film/theatre crossovers. Today's subject is Julie Taymor's film version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with Helen Mirren, cast across gender lines as Prospera. The film has died a quick death at the box office--by its second week of release in Chicago, it was playing once a day at one movie theatre in the entire Chicagoland area, and now it seems to have disappeared entirely.

We'll explore in a little while whether it deserves this fate, but first, let's discuss the source material, William Shakespeare's play, for a bit. Tim, want to start us off there?


Tim: I know we don't agree, as I'm sure you'll point out, but I rather like the play. It's undoubtedly lesser Shakespeare, but I'd still rank it among the 24 or so of his 38 plays that I think are more excellent than not.

It's largely un-dramatic: a exiled duke/magician assembles all of the people who've wronged him on an island, toys with them, and then reveals himself and takes his title back. And that's part of what I like about it. It's a play largely about the joy of creating things for the sake of it. Four centuries of criticism have made it a cliche that the main character, Prospero, "is" William Shakespeare, but I think that's such a durable idea only because it fits so obviously well: The Tempest is about a man who controls the fates of everyone around him entirely, "writing" the events that happen to them (recall that this was one of the few Shakespearean plays with no known source for its story).

With Hamlet, King Lear, the Henriad, and so many other plays behind him, I like to suppose that the Shakespeare of 1610 didn't feel like he had anything left to prove with drama, and so set himself to a single piece of pure fancy. It's about magic and spectacle, and it is magical and spectacular, and that's it - a Jacobean precursor to a Michael Bay film, perhaps. But much more appealing than that.


Zev: I'll go on the record as saying that The Tempest is one of my least favorites of Shakespeare's plays. (I've never read Timon of Athens or The Two Gentlemen of Verona, so the bottom of my personal ranking is Cymbeline.) Even if it's not among Shakespeare's very worst, it certainly seems to command a critical respect and frequency of production way out of proportion to its quality. The Tempest may be better than something like Titus Andronicus, but as trashy as Titus is, at least it keeps the audience riveted. (Incidentally, Titus was Taymor's first film, and is one of the best filmed Shakespeares ever.) It's all too easy for an audience's attention to drift away from The Tempest.

I think our differing opinions on the play come down to something fundamental in our perspectives: narrative and storytelling are of much more importance to me than they are to you. And The Tempest's narrative is, frankly, a mess. Compare Twelfth Night, where the loss of a single scene would cause the whole plot to collapse, with the flabby storytelling on display in The Tempest, where whole swathes of the play could be cut without any effect.

The play also suffers from insipid lovers, unfunny clowns, and unthreatening villains. There are really only three characters of significant interest: Prospero, the sorcerer, Ariel, his androgynous sprite of a servant, and Caliban, the "savage" who was born on the island and is now kept by Prospero as another servant.

This isn't to say the play is a total loss. The language is among Shakespeare's most beautiful, there's an opportunity for some wondrous staging, and strong acting can make even the weaker material work. (And if Prospero is played by a beloved actor near the end of his career, as is often the case, little else matters.) It's certainly possible for The Tempest to be good. But has Taymor managed this?


Tim: Certainly, The Tempest has little enough concrete drama to it that it seems to attract all sorts of weird and experimental readings: without even glancing at its many stage versions in the last few decades, I can immediately point to the '50s sci-fi picture Forbidden Planet and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books as two versions that do things very different from any "standard" version of the play. It was for this reason that I was especially excited for Taymor's vision: as you've mentioned, Titus was a masterpiece, largely because she took a fairly stupid piece of nastiness, and made it into one of the most fascinating commentaries on the impulse towards fascism that I think I've ever seen.

And since the first thing we all learned about Taymor's Tempest was the casting of Helen Mirren as Prospero - I'm sorry, Prospera - it seemed like something pretty great was in the offing. After all, one of the few things explicit about the play is its patriarchalism: Prospero is the very model of an Alpha Male, commanding Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda all about, and his treatment of the castaways has all the feeling, to me anyway, of a dick-measuring contest. So I was pretty darn excited to see what a female director (though not an appreciably feminist one) would do with a gender flip, still one of the boldest things you can do with Shakespeare.

It turns out, she doesn't do much. The biggest effect of the change seems to be that Mirren gets to play a part with a pretty awesome monologue that she wouldn't otherwise get to recite. But there's not a single thing that would have materially changed about this film if Prospera had been a guy, just like always.

And that, in essence, seems to be the big, monolithic fact about Taymor's adaptation: it doesn't really do anything. It’s flashy and full of crazy spectacle and huge over-elaborate costumes that make look Mirren like a raven constructed out of obsidian shards, and it’s all bent towards absolutely no coherent end whatsoever. Unless you've thought of something I missed?

Zev: I'd have to agree on that. No overarching principle or metaphor is apparent, and the many choices feel arbitrary. One could argue that it's a good thing that the cross-gender casting barely registers, but think of the missed opportunities! Mirrenís capable of extraordinary work, and an actress with her fierce intelligence could have explored the power and contradictions in the character to thrilling effect. But she doesn't do anything particularly exciting here. She has the strongest command of the verse of the cast, but by the end, I was left feeling "Yeah, that was pretty good." And for a Helen Mirren performance, that counts as a major disappointment. (I'll leave the question of her relative attractiveness to you, as you're the one with the raging crush on her.)

But the character who suffers most from Taymor's approach is Caliban. The character is immensely problematic: he was born on the island, but Prospera stole it from him when she was exiled there. She and her daughter, Miranda, kept him and raised him in their home, educating him, until he tried to rape Miranda. By the time the play starts, heís exiled to a hut outside of their home, and is used only for menial tasks--carrying logs, and the like. Obviously, the character of a "savage," who attempts to rape the virginal young woman who taught him language and is now constantly insulted and kept as a slave, is immensely troubling to modern audiences. It's hard not to read the whole character as a full-throated endorsement of colonialism and slavery, and contemporary interpretations need to take care to make the character palatable and non-racist.

Remarkably, Taymor seems completely unaware of this minefield. The film's representation of Caliban is...well, let's just call it remarkably insensitive. Djimon Honsou, who plays Caliban, is the only non-white actor on screen, aside from the Boatswain, who gets maybe a minute onscreen, which makes him the "other" from the start. His physical representation is even more disturbing--he has patches of skin that are bleached white, is covered with mud and scars, and wears only a raggedy loincloth. Often when he appears, the soundtrack helpfully adds in "tribal" drums and didgeridoos. Add in the way the camera caresses his partly-exposed buttocks for a little dash of sexual exoticism, and it makes for a profoundly troubling representation.

Were you bothered by this as well? And what other choices would you say worked or didn't?


Tim: Oh, man, don't make me think about Caliban. There are only two possibilities: one is that Taymor is an utter idiot, and the other is that she hates black people, and she's too clever to be an utter idiot.

"What other choices would you say worked or didn't?" Choices? What choices? All I saw were a lot of ideas pitched at the screen with no thought for what effect they had (of which Caliban is merely the most odious), the very opposite of a creative "choice". It's like the director had a bet that she couldn't make a complete movie out of changing tones with every single new scene.

Though I guess she, or somebody, did "choose" to put Ben Whishaw's Ariel (the second-best performance in the movie, by my lights) in those terrible fake boobs. She chose to introduce Prospera with a series of jump cuts to her screaming face, like she was the villain in a slasher movie. She chose to have Russell Brand and Alfred Molina humiliate themselves as the most foppish clowns in any Shakespeare adaptation. She chose to wildly miscast Chris Cooper and David Strathairn as the Duke of Milan and King of Naples. She probably didn't choose the dodgy-ass CGI that keeps cropping up, especially in the ghost hounds sequence; but it shouldn't have come to having that CGI absolutely ruin Prospera's big monologue, one of everybody's favorite bits in the whole thing.

If I were going to defend Taymor's vision - and oh how I wish I could! She has never before failed me - it might be along these lines: since the play was originally just one big spectacle as the Globe audience might have appreciated spectacle, all she's doing is stripping the play down from any kind of "reading", and just giving us the 2010 equivalent of spectacle: lots of effects, lots of famous people, big swooping camera. But that's doing too much work for her, and ignores the fact that so much of it doesn't work: most of the acting, most of the swooping, the execrable Elliot Goldenthal score. But I tire myself; what were your least favorite bits?


Zev: I'm entirely in agreement on that awful score, the completely inappropriate introduction of Prospera, the disturbing fake boobs, and everything else you mentioned. To that, I would only add the bizarre costumes (apparently Milan is the kingdom of zippers, as every Milanese character has several dozen per garment) and Reeve Carney's performance as Ferdinand. He seems to be going for a dreamy, laid-back romanticism, which is not necessarily a bad choice for a character who has virtually no personality beyond how smitten he is. But his line delivery is a disaster. Not only does he mangle the verse, he can't even manage the words very well. Rather than dreamy romance, his slurred deliveries indicate a state somewhere between stoned and developmentally disabled. It's hands-down the worst performance in the film--and nobody is exactly doing their best work on screen, though I agree that Mirren and Whishaw give the most interesting performances. One wonders what Taymor saw in him: she also cast him in the title role of the Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway, which makes that already notorious project look even more dire.

I think we've pretty much gotten the point across, though we could inventory the film's failings for paragraphs more if we chose. But here's my closing thought, related to what you said above: even if the film is meant to be nothing but spectacle, it doesn't succeed. The problem isn't just that the special effects are generally blah and the CGI looks bush-league, or that they frequently detract from the play's best elements. It's that the film's entire visual aesthetic is...uninspired. Taymor's first three films, whatever their flaws, were stuffed with images and moments that made you drop your jaw in wonder. But I can only remember one such moment in The Tempest: a shot, early in the film, of four of Prospera's victims walking out of the water, unscathed by their wreck. It reminds you of what the movie could have been, if Taymor had had a better handle on the material and her actors. It's all the more frustrating that she's ended up with a film that's alternately misconceived and dull.

Any final thoughts on your end?


Tim: Final thoughts? I suppose "Julie Taymor owes me $12" would just be mean.

When all is said and done, the worst thing about The Tempest is that I don't even hate it. I just felt really let down and deflated by how boring it was, and disappointed by pretty much everything on screen. Disappointed that Taymor was making the first Tempest of the CGI age, and only dreamt up the most superficial fantasies. Disappointed that the once in a lifetime chance for Helen Mirren to play one of the great boys' roles was wasted, unless some unlikely brave director decides to give us Henry IV with Lady Jane Falstaff, or Queen Lear. Disappointed that it felt so rushed and disjointed, like a college paper you write over breakfast the day it's due. Like the play or not, you have to agree that The Tempest deserves better than this.

And dammit, Julie Taymor owes me $12.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

Unpopular With The Populace

Happy New Year, everyone. There's a more extensive post coming later tonight, but for now, a quick thought:

In high school, I was a huge, obsessive fan of Stephen Sondheim. I bought every CD I could get my hands on. I obsessed over every song. I thought every single thing he ever touched was pure gold. I probably drove everyone I knew crazy with my obsession.

And I still love his music, but eventually, well, I had it pretty well memorized. Listening to a cast album hundreds of times pretty much ingrains it in your head. And as a result, I haven't listened to some of his shows in years. I still love his work, and will defend it to anyone, but I don't relate in nearly so obsessive a way. I'm even capable of recognizing that some of his songs aren't the greatest things ever written. It's probably a healthy development.

But as a result, that means that I haven't listened to some of his shows all the way through for literally years. They're still in my head somewhere, but I haven't actually experienced the music in a long time. Which is understandable, but still a shame.

But over my commutes last night and this morning, I listened to Anyone Can Whistle. And I had forgotten how stunning it is.

It's probably the most egregious example of a common occurence in Sondheim's career: books that undercut the score's brilliance at every turn. Arthur Laurents' book is, no question, a disaster zone: a terribly scattered satire that doesn't hit nearly enough targets, which clashes with the human love story being told within. And I'm not just saying this based on its reputation: I was lucky enough to see it when Pegasus Players produced it in 2004. While the production was variable in quality, it was still clear that no revival could make this show really work.

But the score...just wow. To choose just two moments in a string of brilliant pieces: in "Me and My Town," the opening number, the corrupt mayoress (Angela Lansbury in the original, brilliant as always) sings a jazzy lament over her town's dire situation. And then her backup singers come out, and it turns into a deranged dance number about a small town affected by economic depression. It's impossible to explain how demented the effect is, but I was walking down the street with a goofy smile plastered on my face at the sheer delightful audacious lunacy of it.

The first act ends with a sequence called "Simple". In brief, it centers on a doctor who claims that he can determine who in a mixed group is crazy and who isn't. He does so, perverting logic and confusing everyone around him, through 13 minutes of increasing musical and mental derangement. It's quite impressive as it goes along, building to a crescendo of lunacy. Then the music cuts out, the doctor tells everyone "You are all mad," and, in a burst of circus music, the entire cast appears onstage, wildly applauding and laughing at the audience. Even coming from a pair of earbuds, it sent chills up my spine.

So the moral, if there is one, is this: you know that CD you love, but haven't listened to in years? Pull it out and listen to it again. You'll remember why.

Also, you should really get a copy of Anyone Can Whistle.

And Stephen Sondheim is still God.