Putting Up My Shingle Again

Apologies for my long absence but life has been fairly chaotic recently. I'm back and had much to comment on.

April 13th was my second time at Irish Arts Center for Muldoon's Picnic.  The evening kicked off with the hilarious "I Haven't Seen The Movie But I've Read The Book" performed by Paul Muldoon and the Wayside Shrines. Also on the roster were the writer and memoirist Mary Karr, Irish poet Nuala Ni Dhomhanaill and Larry Kirwan of Black 47. 

Nuala Ni Dhomhanaill read her poems in Irish Gaelic paired with Muldoon's  translations.  Her mermaid poems are myth but such that she considers 'a basic, fundamental structuring of our (the Irish) reality, a narrative that we place on the chaos of sensation to make sense of our lives.'

Larry Kirwan read a passage about Rory Gallagher from his book "The History of Irish Music" and performed songs from "Transport," his musical about Irish women deported to Australia in 1846.  But it was his story about his recent visit to a community of Irish called Red Legs who haved lived on Barbados since the 17th Century, brought there as slaves for British planters, that resonated most profoundly. 

Mary Karr surprised with her rocking performance of "I Hate That Big Fat Bitch Who Had You First" which she wrote with Rodney Crowell and performed here with The Wayside Shrines.

But the unexpected visit of Larry Kirwan's 20-something son Rory (named no doubt for Rory Gallagher) performing a spoken word piece got the youth vote and was the highlight of the evening. 

I look forward to many more Muldoon's picnics.  They will resume in the Fall.  For more information you can visit  www.irishartscenter.org  or follow Irish Arts Center on Facebook.

I'll be back with observations about my beloved Soho Rep's readings from their current Writer/Director Lab, a mini-review of "An American In Paris", snarky comments about the new musical "Iowa" and "The Heidi Chronicals" and much, much more.

"Skylight" is Heaven

Seeing "Skylight" last week was heaven.  I've been an enormous fan of the playwright David Hare since I first saw "Teeth and Smiles" in London in 1975 (with Helen Mirren, no less).  A few years later, in New York, I was treated to Kate Nelligan's splendid performance in "Plenty" and, more recently, "The Vertical Hour" with Bill Nighy and Julianne Moore.   I can't say that I have loved every work by Mr. Hare, the screenplay for "The Hours" being high on my list of belly-flops, but when he sticks to theatre he is in my personal canon along with Rabe, Pinter, Albee and Stoppard.

At first I thought, "Oh, no!" when Bill Nighy entered, all nervous tics and jutting angles, but Carey Mulligan  grounded him with her still, solid performance. As they interacted his physical schtick fell away and we were in the moment with this couple who are forever intertwined despite the difference in their ages and political beliefs, beliefs that will never make it possible for the two to actually share a life.  It's painful to watch, but oh so exhilarating.

Mulligan's performance as Kyra is magnificent.  She continues in the line of fine actresses to perform Hare's work from Helen Mirren to Kate Nelligan to Blaire Brown and Julianne Moore.  I had not thought she had it in her based on her performance as Nina in "The Seagull" several years ago which I found wan and dull but she has matured as a stage actress and, based on this performance, can now be considered one of the finest actresses of her generation. 

Nighy is excellent once he loses his mannerisms and allows himself to become Tom.  Matthew Beard, as his son Edward, in two key scenes with Mulligan, is good as well.  But they owe the success of their performances to Mulligan who is fierce, smart and strong.

Bedlam's Twice Told "Twelfth Night"

I had the extreme pleasure of seeing Bedlam's "Twelfth Night" and its sister "What You Will" this past week.  Previously I had seen Bedlam's "Hamlet" and "Sense and Sensibility."  What sets this company apart, far apart, is that they perform with an extremely limited number of actors.  "Hamlet" was performed by three men and one woman, "Sense and Sensibility" by about eight(I don't remember the exact number) and the current "Twelfth Night" and "What You Will" by three men and two women playing mulitiple roles and crossing gender lines to do so. Both tellings of "Twelfth Night" are delightful and completely different stylistically.

 "Twelfth Night" deconstructs the play with the actors performing in their own clothes and without props aside from a long wooden table and a couple of chairs. They mingle with the audience before, during and after the performance and the telling of the play feels off-hand, almost casual.  Still, the audience is propelled along by the story and the frenetic energy of the ensemble.  Viola and Cesario are played in this version by Eric Tucker, the director and also one of the founders of the company.  Not so strange for a man to play Viola when one considers that in Shakespeare's day the female parts were played by boys.

"What You Will" is a more conventional, although stylized, interpretation of the play.  It opens with the actors, dressed entirely in white, emerging from under a large white sail (and closes with the same).  For the most part the women play the female roles and the men the male although Andrus Nichols, Bedlam's co-founder who plays Olivia here, does double up as Sir Toby who, in this version, is a woman.  The pacing is elegant and beautifully blocked to allow for the constant changes in character by the five actors.

The casts for both plays are completed by Edmund Lewis who interprets Malviolio in two very different ways, Tom O'Keefe who does the same with Feste, and Susannah Millonzi as Viola in "What You Will" and Olivia in "Twelfth Night." 

The company does play around a bit with Shakespeare's text but to good purpose and nothing of import is missing from either performance.

The two plays run through May 2nd at  the Dorothy Strelsin Theater, 312 West 36th Street.  Get your tickets soon because the theatre seats less than 100 people. Their website is theatrebedlam.org.

 

"Wolf Hall" is Howling Good

First I read the books.  Somewhat reluctantly, I admit.  I was worried "Wolf Hall" and it's sequal "Bring Up The Bodies" would read like pop history but to my relief they were enthralling and historically accurate.  At least I think they are.  In the current (the) Paris Review there is a long and engaging interview with the author of both books, Hilary Mantel in which she claims that they are indeed.  The books are narrated in the first person by Thomas Cromwell.   Mantel draws us in to the story the fictional story she has created within this context and the books are hard to put down. 

This past week I attended both parts of The Royal Shakespeare Company's "Wolf Hall" at the Winter Garden Theatre.   Ben Miles, last seen in New York in 2009 in "The Norman Conquests" but best know on this side of the pond as the handsome, not very bright womanizer in the British sitcom "Coupling," is Cromwell. 

Ben Miles is remarkable.  Since the books are a kind of interior monologue, as Cromwell (or as Anne calls him "Crumwheel") he commands the stage for the  entirety of the plays. Historically we know that Cromwell was a common man, the son of a blacksmith, who lifted himself up through his intelligence and shrewd business dealings to become Henry VIII's confident and chief advisor. Although Miles is not an especially large man, on stage he creates the aura of being a massive presence, both physically and intellectually. His Cromwell has the magnetism, present in the books, that draws both friends and enemies to him and the thick skin necessary to survive at court.  And everyone is a little in love with him, including Henry.

The performances are all pretty perfect. Nathaniel Parker is mercurial and imposing as Henry and Lydia Leonard the most devious Anne one would want to imagine.  I also especially liked Leah Brotherhead's layered and complicated Jane Seymour.  But the standout in Part I is John Ramm as the self-flagulating religious scholar, and eventually Lord Chancellor, Thomas More. More loses favor with Henry at the end of Part I when he refuses to accept Anne Boleyn as Henry's queen and as a result is headless in Part II. Our loss.

But it really Ben Miles' play, as it should be. 

"The Tallest Tree in the Forest"

I wish I could say that I loved "The Tallest Tree in the Forest" but I can't.  I wanted to.  A play about the great black actor and activist Paul Robeson, directed by Moises Kaufman, should be right up my alley.  Unfortunately I do not respond well to one-man/woman shows no matter how talented the actor, in this case Daniel Beaty. 

Beaty makes for a splendid Robeson.  He can sing.  He has a voice to match Robeson's own and the songs were pure bliss to listen to, accompanied as he is by a small group of excellent musicians on-stage throughout the two hour performance.  He can act, as he proves to us as he vocally cycles through multiple characters who touched on Robeson's life.  I wish he hadn't.  I wish he had stuck to being Robeson and had a few other actors to play these roles. I suppose one reason for this may be that Daniel Beaty is a good deal shorter than Robeson was and, as such, this would have presented some problems in casting.  But there were too many characters for him to play and it was confusing, many of them sounding too much alike.

The play is also too linear for my taste.  We get the full progression of Robeson's life from boy to husband to successful actor, singer and activist and on to his old age, alone and defeated.  But even with the seemingly detailed progression of his life important chunks are left out.  His work with O'Neill on "All God's Chillun Got Wings" is in but not the more important "The Emperor Jones," for example. 

What does work though is when he addresses Robeson's political beliefs:  his journey to The Soviet Union through war-time Berlin, his appearance before the House Un-American Activities and the ambiguity of his relationship with the Soviet Union once his Jewish friends there begin to be persecuted.  The moral dilemna for him is whether he can criticize the country where he, a black man, feels equal even as others are made to feel they are not. Now this is the play about Robeson I wanted to see.

Muldoon's Picnic

About a week ago, on March 9th,  I went to Muldoon's Picnic at the Irish Arts Center, my first event to which I was invited as a blogger! Thank you, Louise.  The Picnic is the creation of  Paul Muldoon, the acclaimed Irish poet who has taught at Princeton for almost three decades.  He has begun staging this event several times a year at The Irish Arts Center. The upside is all the wonderful talent involved.  The downside is that there is no food, kind of bad form for an event billed as a picnic!

The line-up this past Monday included the following:  Paul Muldoon doing a spoken word homage to his wife's shopping habits,  Muldoon's teenage son Asher and Sammy Grob performing songs from their nascent musical "Poesical the Moesical", the black poet and poetry editor of the Harvard Review Major Jackson, the band Wayside Shrines, Irish comic writer Kevin Barry, Michael Cerveris (currently appearing in the Broadway musical "Fun Home") and Loose Cattle.

The joint was packed and a rollicking time was had by all.  Muldoon is a deft hand at juggling acts, including splitting the reading of Kevin Barry's comic murder mystery in 17 short chapters "Ox Mountain Death Song" into two parts, read before and after the intermission. This, for me, was the highlight of the evening.  Barry is a marvelous reader and brought his odd and unusual characters to life in an audacious manner.  I suggest that, in addition to seeking out his books in print("Ox Mountain Death Song" was published in the New Yorker), it would be worthwhile to hunt out podcasts because to hear him read is half the fun.

Major Jackson teaches poetry at the University of Vermont and Bennington but his poetry skips between Vermont where he teaches, Harlem where he grew up and Florida where his wife lives. His poems focus on race and sex and the human condition; his readings fluid and imbued with humor.

The songs performed from "Poesical the Moesical" were far more sophisticated than one would expect from teenagers.  Asher and Sammy had a great patter going that brought to my mind the Rat Pack.  They have an act that is a throwback to that time but simultaneously smart and timely.

Both bands were great fun.  Ceveris and Loose Cattle have a great Cajun feel but the Princeton-based Wayside Shrines with whom Muldoon also performs are pure Hell's Kitchen Irish.

Muldoon didn't put a lot of emphasis on his own poetry, choosing to yield the spotlight to the rest of the performers more often than not but his spoken word paean to a man imprisoned in Asia for trying to satisfy his wife's designer shopping itch was hilarious.

The Irish Arts Center is west of 10th Avenue on 51st Street.  The next one is scheduled for April 13th and will feature Mary Karr. Buy your tickets early.   It is worth the hike.http://www.irishartscenter.org/literature/muldoons_picnic_4_13_15.html

"Let The Right One" If You Care

I did not see either the original Swedish movie of "Let The Right One In," or the American remake retitled "Let Me In," both considered to be quite good, because I have an aversion to vampire stories.  So I surprised myself by wanting to see the National Theatre of Scotland's theatrical version of the story at St. Ann's Warehouse. 

The National Theatre of Scotland was established in 2006 and describes itself as being "a theatre without walls and building-free." This was used to great effect in their astounding production "Black Watch" about a Scottish Army regiment in Iraq which I saw at St. Ann's Warehouse in 2007.  "Black Watch" was staged in the round with the actors moving in an out among the audience, making the realities of war all the more present and horrifying.  

"Let The Right One In" is presented here in a more conventional setting.  The stage is a forest of trees. Set pieces are wheeled on and off as needed but the trees remain throughout.  The play has a dance-like quality and is beautiful choreographed. The trees, the snow (yes, there is snow), the various set pieces all make for props to be circled, climbed and hidden behind. One can see that it would be possible to stage the play "without walls," in a actual forest perhaps, but in the current staging at St. Ann's we never forget that we are the audience, on the outside looking in, distanced from the story. 

The actors are all exceptional, the ones playing multiple roles moving in an out of character with ease.  Unfortunately though, I found the story thin and predictable and even a little boring.  However, if you loved the movies and if vampire stories are your thing then this might hit the spot for you.