Theater: That Hopey Changey Thing, Oct. 2013 at the Public Theater

A quiet and typical family scene opens:  preparations are being made for a family dinner in a liberal suburban town in New York state.

Newcomer Tim is introduced to a family of four adult siblings and their memory-challenged uncle Ben. 

Written and directed by Richard Nelson, there's just enough-of-everything present in the room to create an evening of surprise, drama, humor, and sharp daggers of politicized anger and - even - irrational hatred. Underscoring the dialogue is the premise that one of the siblings, Jane, is researching a book that she imagines might be useful as a societal autobiography: the manner and mores of common social situations revealing deeper beliefs and values by both "what is said" and "what is not said."

The playwright has cleverly focused the audience's attention on the unspoken. 

A brilliant piece of writing and beautifully acted.  -dp

From Joe Dziemianowicz's review in the New York Post: 

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/hopey-changey-wake-reviews-fine-tuned-ensembes-drive-political-plays-article-1.450088

Fine-tuned ensembles drive two politically charged plays at the Public Theater.
Richard Nelson's "That Hopey Changey Thing" begins with a dying cry of a dog, Oliver. The whimper echoes the sick feelings of everyone at the cozy Rhinebeck home of high-school English teacher Barbara Apple (Maryann Plunkett). 

She lives there with her ailing uncle Benjamin (Jon DeVries), a retired actor with amnesia brought on by a heart attack. Also on hand are Barbara's siblings -- Richard (Jay O. Sanders), a state lawyer, Marian (Laila Robins), a second-grade teacher, and Jane (J. Smith-Cameron), a writer who's brought her actor boyfriend Tim (Shuler Hensley).

It's Election Night 2010 (as in Tuesday) and this liberal Democratic clan expects a beating at the polls. Talk turns to "us" and "them," Cuomo, who's a shoo-in, and disenchantment with Obama. The mention of Sarah Palin (whose quote inspires the title) causes choking. Ditto when Richard reveals he has taken a job with the Republicans.

For timeliness, "Hopey Changey," presented as part of the Public's issue-oriented Lab series, has immediacy. But the election-night setting is just a convenience. What makes the play interesting is the detailed portrait that emerges of the all-American Apples -- a group with polish, bruises and maybe a even worm or two.

Nelson, who directs his play, evokes the Apples in conversation that sounds as natural as breathing. And the cast couldn't be better.

There's also a never-seen character, Toby, a new pooch for Benjamin to replace Oliver, who kept soiling the house in his dying days. Toby makes the same messes his predecessor did. In that way, he's like a lot of elected officials.


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/hopey-changey-wake-reviews-fine-tuned-ensembes-drive-political-plays-article-1.450088#ixzz2j1mF2I3E

Theater: Fun Home

From the review by Joe Dziemianowicz in the New York Daily News: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/fun-home-theater-review-article-1.1492941

The dearly departed were well cared for at the Bechdel funeral home in small-town Pennsylvania. 

“We remove all signs of trauma,” promises family-man proprietor Bruce Bechdel.
But the same can’t be said about the Bechdels themselves. 

The family shows several signs of trauma, especially the haunted Alison, who struggles with her past and the man who raised her.

So it goes in “Fun Home,” the achingly beautiful musical at the Public Theater. It speaks to one family and all families torn by secrets and lies.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music-arts/fun-home-theater-review-article-1.1492941#ixzz2j1kgcP7n

Theater: Wallace Shawn's "Grasses of a Thousand Colors" at the Public Theater, Oct. 2013

In this masterful epic play, Wallace Shawn takes us down the treacherous path of reasonableness. He's comfortable in his robe and slippers; he sees us, the audience, and welcomes us. Are we flattered when he tells us we look like a box of chocolates, ready to be eaten and enjoyed? Yes! Are we sympathetic with his ambitions as a scientist to solve the greatest problem of humankind: insufficient food? Yes! Are we entertained by stories of sexual prowess and sexual adventure? No surprise: Yes!

Written by Wallace Shawn and directed by Andre Gregory, the play unfolds as a futuristic vision of the accidental destruction of the world.  The lead character, Ben, has invented an improvement to the food chain. As audience, we experience the anguish of self-destruction while entertained by Ben's life story in which overt and outlandish sexual behavior is a symptom of the new illness he has imposed on humankind.  Is this a mirror of our "reasonable" present-day lives? Frighteningly I must answer, yes.  -dp

More from critic John Lahr's 2009 review in the New Yorker Magazine:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/theatre/2009/06/01/090601crth_theatre_lahr

At the beginning of the three-hour “Grasses of a Thousand Colors” (superbly directed by André Gregory), Shawn is at it again: he stands before us as Ben, a scientist and a memoirist, in a black dressing gown, black monogrammed slippers, and black cravat, and plays his familiar wrong-footing game of self-deprecation. He is dressed as an agent of darkness, but he is bright with good will. “Well. Hello, everybody. Hello! Hello there!” he says, in his lisping, halting, high-pitched voice. He goes on, “When you’re all so nicely sitting there and listening to me, I’m deriving a great deal of pleasure from each and every one of you, as if you were chocolates I was eating.” In this futuristic dream play, eating and being eaten are important leitmotifs. Ben, we learn, is one of the barbarians who have devoured the planet, and, beneath his charm, he is as unrepentant as a hedge-fund manager. “Loaves, with Fishes, for Dinner” is the title of the memoir from which he reads to us, and which hints at his majestic self-infatuation.

Ben is perhaps the most unreliable of Shawn’s many unreliable narrators. His smugness—“I was born lucky”—is rivalled only by the imperialism of his convictions. “We’re fixers, improvers,” he says of his optimistic generation. The thing that he has fixed, it turns out, is the “problem of food.” As he pompously puts it, “There was, on the one hand, an enormous crowd of entities—ourselves and others—roaming the planet, trying to sustain themselves, or, in other words, looking for something to eat; and on the other hand there was a tiny, inadequate crowd of entities available on the planet to be eaten.” The appliance of Ben’s science allows the animal kingdom—frogs, cows, his own dog, Rufus, and, by implication, Homo sapiens—to feed on its own kind, as well as on the corpses of other animals. The discovery has made him rich; it has also destroyed the food chain. Things have gone disastrously wrong: animals are dying, and people are vomiting and keeling over.  (jump to link to read complete review)

Thurs. Oct. 17th: Esteli Gomez, soprano, and Colin Davin, guitar

An evening of songs for soprano voice and guitar entitled "Ancient Melodies, Modern Echoes" was presented at the Holy Trinity Lutheran Church at 65th St. and Central Park West.

The program was split 3-ways between composer Benjamin Britten (1913-1976) ("perhaps the greatest 20th century composer of art songs"), Renaissance composer John Dowland (1563-1626), and a single piece by contemporary composer Caroline Shaw.

Of Dowland's songs, I loved the ancient poetry written in the time of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare. This excerpt from Come Again:

Come again, Sweet love doth now invite, Thy graces that refrain, To do me due delight,  To see, to hear, to touch, to kiss, to die, With thee again in sweetest sympathy. 

Come again, That I may cease to mourn, Through thy unkind disdain: For now left and forlorn I sit, I sigh, I weep, I faint, I die, In deadly pain and endless misery.

All the day, The sun that lends me shine, By frowns do cause me pine, And feeds me with delay, Her smiles my springs, that makes my joys to grow, Her frowns the Winters of my woe.  (and poem continues...)

Of Britten's many songs, it was a special treat to follow along through the sections of Nocturnal after John Dowland, op. 70 for solo guitar and, in the last part, soprano voice:

i.      Musingly  

ii.     Very Agitated 

iii.    Restless 

iv.    Uneasy 

v.     March-Like 

vi.    Dreaming 

vii.   Gently Rocking 

viii.  Passacaglia 

ix.    Slow and Quiet ("Come, heavy Sleep")

It was a marvelous performance in the lovely and colorful setting of the church. It was extra special to be there with son Elliot.

Tues. Oct. 14th: The Gotham Jazzmen (free weekly noon concert)

Piano. Upright bass. Clarinet. Cornet. Drums. Trombone.

The professional pedigrees of the Gotham Jazzmen, as they like to be known when they are performing at the New York Public Library of the Performing Arts (Lincoln Center, UWS), would combine to be a couple of hundred years of music education and performance.

They gave us a rich, nuanced experience of New Orlean's-type jazz.  Some hits from their set list (from my notes, might be slightly wrong titles!):

• Bye Bye Blackbird
• Everybody Loves My Baby
• How Deep is the Ocean
• Crazy Rhythm
• Creole Love Song
• Christopher Columbus
• Willow Weep for Me
• Me, Myself and I

I can't wait to become a regular at their Tuesday noon concerts.  Three of them have another band called The Creole Cookin' Jazz Band, which is performing on Sunday nights from 7-10 pm at Arthur's Tavern in Greenwich Village, NYC.  http://www.arthurstavernnyc.com/performances.html

Sunday Oct. 13th: "The Forty Part Motet" in the Fuentidueña Chapel, the Cloisters, NYC

The Cloisters Museum, part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC, hosted this exhilarating soundscape performed by 40 speakers set up in an oval inside a 12th century chapel.

"The Forty Part Motet (2001), a sound installation by Janet Cardiff (Canadian, born 1957), will be the first presentation of contemporary art at The Cloisters."

It made me wonder what it would be like to be a choir member able to perform an exquisite piece of complex music. By walking the perimeter, as the first video below demonstrates, the listener is able to focus on individual voices, one at a time. I was thrilled to practically hear a new piece of music come to life at various speakers, experiencing each chorister's personal soundscape, as I walked the perimeter.

The Cloisters describes this as an installation of contemporary art - the first one ever - at the museum. Perhaps they could make this a permanent exhibition? It would be an awesome addition.

From YouTube, a good example of the soundscape (although in a different architectural setting):

 

 More about the project, as performed in another location: