Let's see. It started with James Lapine and William Finn's "March of the Falsettos" in October. Then I kind of got lost in travel, the election and a bad case of the flu (or was it just the blues over the election results?).
I have a hard time tallking about musicals because I'm not a fan of the form. There are exceptions, like anything Sondheim and South Pacific but, in general, don't expect me to turn cartwheels over anything else. Case in point, the current revival of "Falsettos' which I found to be dated and thin on story. Yes, there is a story: married man leaves wife and son for another man but tries to keep the wife and son and thereby have it all. And aids enters in, of course. I find this subject a little tired at this point in time. In the years since Falsettos" debuted we have had the great Tony Kushner's "Angels in America", which has so much more depth and universality, not to mention the explosive "The Normal Heart," by aids activist Larry Kramer. Neither are musicals, but they share common themes. The minimal and cheap-feeling set by star architect David Rockwell was more what I would expect from a high school production, interconnecting cubes that were reconfigured from scene to scene on a bare stage. That said, the music and the performances are good enough to sustain the two plus hours and it's perhaps a better bet than seeing "Fiddler on the Roof" for the umpteenth time.
Another revival, David Hare's "Plenty" with Rachel Weisz at the Public, does not fare as well. I'm a huge fan of Hare. If you're a regular reader of this blog you will know how I swooned over the recent Broadway revival of "Skylight" with Carey Mulligan and Bill Nye. In 1982, "Plenty" with Kate Nelligan, also at the Public, felt profound. The story is of a resistance fighter in WW2 who carries with her the memory of a great love who she met at a hightened moment in time and then never saw again. Ultimately this romanticized memory destroys her life because it was not merely the man but the moment in time that she cannot replicate. In the current production, as directed by David Leveaux, it felt like a one-night-stand gone bad. Whatever immediacy I felt in 1982 was gone. Weisz was more Cosmo girl than Gloria Steinem. I missed the strength.
But two dance pieces at BAM delivered.
With music by Morton Feldman, Shen Wei's gorgeous painted backdrop and a libretto by Samuel Beckett, "Neither" was an evening of blissfully beautiful and controlled dance marred only by some distracting business with plastic wrap dropping from the ceiling and enveloping the dancers toward the end. The lighting by Jennifer Tipton and production design by Rocco DiSanto, both old pros, were superb but, ultimately, it's the dance. "to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither." - Samuel Beckett
The Belgian choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker is a big favorite of mine. Her company Rosas is forever stretching the boundaries of dance, blurring it with other artforms. In "Vortex Contemporum" her Rosas company works with Ictus, a Brussels-based contemporary music ensemble who appear on stage with the dancers. On a bare stage, save for a grand piano, dancers and musicians work off each other, music guiding dancers and dancers influencing the music. Fresh and thought-provoking, it didn't embrace me the way "En Atendant" did in 2010 or "Cesena" in 2011, both also at BAM, but it didn't leave me empty.
And, to round out October, there was Soho Rep's "Duat," an exploration of queer black identity by Daniel Alexander Jones. The first act, beautifully directed by Will Davis, tells the story of his "otherness" from boyhood to early adulthood (the very gifted Tenzin Gund Morrow and Toissaint Jeanlouis) wrapped around the library card catalogue system. I couldn't get enough of seeing the young Jones morph into the person he became. Unfortunately the second act goes bit wild and has no cohesiveness, most of the action taking place in a classroom where Jones comes out in drag as a statuesque teacher and the ensemble of actors are students who are preparing to perform as flowers. I didn't get it and wish that Jones had left well alone after the perfect act that preceded it.
So that rounds up October. Yes, October! I told you I was behind. Look my very opinionated thoughts on November in the next few days.
