Sunday, November 29, 2009

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Cymbeline














I was lucky enough to see the  Fiasco Theatre's production of Shakespeare's Cymbeline.   Six talented actors perform the roles of 24 characters in a small  black box theater, with several boxes and one sturdy trunk as props and set pieces. Besides the voice work of reciting Shakespeare's poetry as if it were natural speech, each actor at the drop of a hat also sings either alone or together in a beautiful blend of voices.  The cast is also called on to play musical instruments, including but not limited to guitar, banjo, french horn, and lots of different kinds of drums. 


The pace is amazing.  Scenes blend into one another  quickly and organically, and people move locations the only indication that we are elsewhere the placement of the all important trunk.  At one point the actor Ben Steinfeld performing the role of Iacomo in the act of sneaking out of a lady's bedroom must crawl out the trap door of the valiant trunk and just as he was about to deliver a line, a siren from the street blared. Instead of trying to speak his lines over the trumpeting noise, he paused, and in his eyes let the audience know that he was now hearing what we were hearing as an audience, not as an actor in a play, and when the siren stopped, he picked up his lines again and resumed, but with just the tiniest acknowledgment in his eyes that we knew what he was doing.  All the time he was waiting for the noise to stop, he was acting, though, in character as the scoundrel trying to win a bet about a woman's fidelity.

It is a pleasure to watch such a capable cast perform a complicated play with the utmost clarity and simplicity and style.  This company is truly wonderful.  Every time they sang together as an ensemble I felt deeply happy.  I hope that I get to see them again soon.  It is a shame it was such a short run again-- they deserve a much bigger audience.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Poetry Reading November 15














Went to a poetry reading in honor of Home Planet News
Donald Lev residing
summoning the spirit of his late great wife
Enid Dame













there was a water main break on Carmine Street
in front of the Greenwich Village Cafe
Flashing lights and jackhammers
People read regardless
an indomitable group of poets
shouting out their words
as the street caved in
and was opened up and scooped out
Waiters brought caskets of water in clear plastic
buckets for what? toilets to be flushed?
It wasn't clear
Every time the door opened
the noise increased tenfold
On this balmy November night
we closed up the windows tight
so that the words could be heard

Saturday, November 7, 2009

La Danse

La Danse dir Frederick Wiseman, 2009



Today at the Film Forum theater  crowds of people came  to see this movie.  All three screenings were sold out.   Perhaps  it is to have the rare chance to see the documentary master Frederick Wiseman's  movie  on the big screen or perhaps it is because the footage of the ballet is so extraordinarily faithful to the intention of the company.

Wiseman's opening shots establish location in as rhythmic and rigorous a beat as the dancers at the barre. Wiseman locates us first underground, in the bowels of the Paris Opera building, then in the hallways, then up the steps, and so on until at one point we get to see a beekeeper on the roof harvesting honey.  Who knew the bees we had heard were in decline were thriving on the rooftops of Paris?

Wiseman slowly leads us into the workings of the ballet company considered one of the greatest in the world. But first we get to know the building where they work and the city where the building is.  I don’t know why he needs so many shots of the city of Paris even though I too love Paris and think it is one of the most successful examples of a metropolis that knows how to preserve its very heart, beautiful, built to human scale, architecture.

But we really want to see the dancers learning how to dance the dances that we see when they are perfected.  Isn’t that why we came? And to see the woman spray painting the worn out toe shoes so that they look new?    And the man applying glue with the precision of an aeronautical engineer so that the sequin will stay just so.  We want to see the rows of costumes rolled in, each one tagged with the dancer’s name.  We want to see the handicraft of preparing the tutus, and the mounds of tulle before they become costumes, and the make up and the wigs.  There is so much  individual labor that goes into such the jewel- like work art of  ballet.  So many unknown people, like the woman dying the dress.  These are the behind the scenes images that stay with me.  That and the painstaking one on one tutorials that convey the steps of the choreography from a dance master to his dancer.  The individuals who make the dance possible are not just the choreographers and the dancers but the painters keeping the walls of the studios fresh.  Even though the movie is called La Danse, to me the movie is  an ode to labor.

35 Rhums



The movie unfolds with the slow pace of real life and the risk of boring its audience.  We watch real trains in real time come and go through the suburbs with nothing visually arresting to keep our attention, just the usual jumble of wires and train tracks and cereal box buildings.

The main character, a middle aged single father named Lionel (like the train set), lives with his beautiful young adult daughter who attends university in Paris.  Lionel says little, but his still face expresses his concern for his daughter's future, I think.   Their relationship is so loving and intimate that you wonder if they are sleeping together, but no, it's just the tension that builds as they determine what  they should do for each other to set each other free.

There is one scene that finally reveals how the reticent man is feeling.  Denis, the director, clearly loves the way this beautiful actor looks, getting in and out of his bathrobe.  And so do other women who cotton to him even when there is evidently nothing tying him down to any of them.    He has come to the restaurant with his daughter and a friend, and then hits on the waitress who is younger and more beautiful than his friend.

As they dance,  you see how the father has desires just like any other man, and the audience intuits that he wants the daughter to experience and enjoy them too.