Could the pope be Catholic? Film at eleven

The news has been more ludicrous than usual lately, and at times I have found myself wondering whether it's all a big practical joke. You know how, on or around April 1, newspapers sometimes put out an "April Fool's Edition" with one or more hoax stories? I think we're in the middle of a monthlong version of that.

Surely serious news outlets didn't fall for the AEI's PR trap and frame Cheney and Obama's nearly simultaneous but not-at-all equivalent speeches as a "debate" or a "competition"... did they? Professional journalists wouldn't really repeat Cheney's bald-faced lies and self-contradictions as though they were legitimate criticisms... would they? The notion that the word "empathy" is some kind of sinister "code" wouldn't be repeated with a straight face in the national news... would it? The accusation that Sonia Sotomayor is a "reverse-racist" would be beneath the dignity of all but the most raving lunatics... wouldn't it? The Associated Press would never run a "news analysis" piece this hacky and laughable, right? And so on and so on.

The moment I figured out that this was all a cosmic joke came a few days ago, when I heard a television news reader announce, very seriously, that some relatives of the infamous "Jon & Kate" are concerned that the couple "may be exploiting their children."

That made me laugh out loud. Of course they're exploiting their children! They star in a reality show about how they have a lot of small kids. That's the whole show. That's what they're famous for: they let cameras follow them around when they're with their kids. The only reason the show isn't called Jon & Kate Exploit Their Eight Children is that it doesn't rhyme (and also gives away too much of the "plot").

Are you seriously just figuring this out now, concerned relatives? Because if I were a news analyst, I would be pitching another story. Here's the headline: "Concerned Relatives of Jon & Kate Exploiting the Increased Attention Being Paid to Jon & Kate as a Consequence of Their Having Spent the Last Five Years Exploiting Their Children." I mean, come ON.

I loved you in Monsters Inc.

My latest celebrity-on-the-street sighting: John Goodman, on his way (presumably) to Studio 54. Which reminded me: Waiting for Godot got really enthusiastic reviews. And this in a season when Roundabout has been the not-for-profit everyone loves to hate. I guess that means I have to see it.

Have you been to the TKTS booth since it reopened in Duffy Square? It's cute and everything -- I like those stairs, and I like that you can see the boards while you're standing in line. But: why did they leave so little room between the ticket windows and the curb? It's still so cramped. Isn't that the sort of thing a redesign should fix? Not only is it really difficult to walk away from the window once you've bought your tickets; when you do manage to free yourself, you're standing in the path of people trying to cross the street. It's not ideal.

When I was last at the booth, buying not-discounted-enough tickets for God of Carnage (only 30% off, and $83 should be full price for orchestra seats at a 90-minute play, if you ask me), I got in a line that looked short but, of course, wasn't, because the people in front of me took forever to complete their transaction. I gathered that this was due to their knowing very little English. I could only hear the TKTS guy's side of the exchange, because he was speaking into a microphone. And it went like this: "Hairspray? Hairspray is closed. Do you mean Hair? [Tourists confer briefly, then say something in broken English, ending with "...Hairspray."] I'm tryna TELL you, Hairspray is CLOSED. DO YOU MEAN HAIR?!" And so it went, back and forth, until finally (I think) they ended up with tickets for Mary Poppins. Meanwhile, the people at the window next to us were asking, in equally uncertain English, "Do you have Wy-ked?" It's a regular United Nations down there in Duffy Square, I'm telling you.

Bad Idea Bears

I'm not sure whether I've been doing a really bad job keeping up with theatre news, or whether I heard this one a while ago and simply blocked it from my memory. Probably both. But did you know Phylicia Rashad is taking over the role of Violet Weston in August: Osage County in less than two weeks? It's true! And no, they're not turning the Weston family black (or mixed-race) to accomodate this casting. In fact, original cast member Amy Morton is coming back on the same date. All of which strikes me as...odd. (And not just me, obviously -- everyone else filed their confusion/dismay two months ago.) But wait, this is the good part. Here's how I found out -- I went to the official website for the show and saw the button that says, "Learn more about Phylicia and Jenny Craig. See our latest offer."

I saw Deanna Dunagan -- awesome -- and I saw Estelle Parsons -- also awesome -- but I probably won't rush out to see Phylicia. Who knows, maybe she'll be a better fit for the part than I'm imagining, but the fact that she was cast without any significant plausibility adjustments in the cast around her makes me suspect the production in general has jumped the shark. However, since they've updated the homepage to reference Rashad's weight-loss spokesperson gig, I'm wondering whether the script will get some tweaks, too. Like, maybe, instead of cancer, Violet can just have a weight problem. And she can turn to Jenny Craig to help kick her diet-pill addiction! A happy ending!

You might have noticed I haven't commented at all on the Tony nominations. This is partly because I'm busy, but mostly because I'm completely unexcited about this year's Tonys. Oh, I have a few thoughts here and there... But I can't remember when I've been so un-invested in who got nominated and who will win, especially in the musicals categories. It's all meh. And now, this headline on Playbill.com:

Neil Patrick Harris to Host 63rd Annual Tony Awards

They really don't want me to watch this year, do they?

Irena's Vow, reviewed

I mentioned a while back that I had been to see Irena's Vow. The takeaway, in four words: Great story, lousy play. If you'd like more details, my review is in the May 8 issue of Commonweal -- and available to nonsubscribers online.

Playwright Dan Gordon focuses narrowly on Opdyke’s plan to save Jewish lives, cramming the events of several years into a bumpy ninety minutes. The result is a hurried exercise in Holocaust-drama shorthand: swastika armbands, yellow stars, uneven German accents. So many factual details have been removed, for expediency, that the plot feels less than credible. And though Tovah Feldshuh gives a commanding performance as Irena (Opdyke’s Polish name), she is constantly in motion, rushing from one plot point to the next. Irena addresses the audience almost constantly, but she never seems to stand still long enough for anyone to get to know her.

Opdyke's story is so remarkable it beggars belief -- and that's if you tell it accurately. The version in the play is particularly difficult to swallow because, as it turns out, it's playing fast and loose with the facts. (For example: How did they manage to hide a newborn baby without its cries being heard? The play never explains...probably because, in reality, they didn't. The Jews left the cellar where they were hiding before the baby was born.) Adam Feldman's review in Time Out New York, which I've just read, makes a good argument for why such fabrications are particularly troubling in a play that appropriates the solemn duty of Holocaust remembrance. My objections to the playwright's departing from the facts were less ethical than practical -- if you're going to change things, your changes should at least have some sort of dramatic advantage. Don't take out details that would make the story better, for heaven's sake. Anyway, historical inaccuracies aren't the only problem the play has: it's also hampered by a (mostly) weak cast, clunky dialogue, and (as Charles Isherwood rightly noted) an awkward sense of humor. Tovah Feldshuh's performance is quite good -- better than it has any right to be, considering she's nearing 60 and her character is around 20 -- but the play is otherwise a disappointment. The best thing about it, for me, was that it moved me to look for Opdyke's memoir, In My Hands, which is a much more thorough and rewarding telling of her story. I recommend the book, but skip the play.

P.S. Restricted View readers have a special fondness for writers getting defensive and embarrassing themselves on the Internet. In that spirit, I direct you to this post of Adam Feldman's on the TONY blog... with comments from Dan Gordon, responding to Feldman's (completely fair) criticisms. That's... no way to demonstrate your talent as a writer, Mr. Gordon.

Oh, lordy

Let's see, what have I not been blogging about lately? Celebrity sightings, for one: Swoosie Kurtz, in the audience at MTC's Ruined! Brian d'Arcy James, on his way to the Broadway to get into his Shrek makeup!

And then there are all the shows I've seen and not told you about. Let's start with a relatively recent one: Lincoln Center's revival of Joe Turner's Come and Gone, directed by Bartlett Sher. Like everything Sher directs, this production has a cool set and is lovely to look at. And, of course, that's not quite enough. Sher seems to have focused all his attention on making the comic parts come across. The play gets plenty of laughs -- at least, it did when I saw it -- but after a while the approach feels condescending and inappropriate. The production isn't taking the characters seriously. By the second act, the audience was whooping so loudly at every hint of romance, I felt like I was in the studio audience for a taping of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. And, as you can imagine, that meant when the the play turned serious, the audience was left behind. There's a scene, late in the play, when Herald Loomis is slain by the spirit. He falls to the ground, writhing and babbling, and the people in the audience cackled and hooted, because they thought the whole thing was a comedy routine. Oh, those turn-of-the-century black people and their ridiculous spiritual practices!

In that atmosphere, the ending falls totally flat. I left thinking, "I'm still not sure what this play means, but I'm sure it's not whatever Bartlett Sher thinks it means." For enlightenment I turned to my man Michael Feingold at the Village Voice, brilliant as usual:

In memoriam

In memory of Bea Arthur, I would like to remind you of this excellent NBC 60th Anniversary celebration clip, which I posted almost 2 years ago. The clip has since been removed from YouTube (NBC won't let us have any fun!), but maybe you can recall what it was like to watch Nell Carter, Alfonso Ribeiro, Charlotte Rae, Soleil Moon Frye, et al. sing "Family" from Dreamgirls. Nobody came closer to making it work than Bea did. You see her enter, set down her bag of "groceries," turn to the camera and sing, "We are a family, like a giant tree..." and you think, wow, Bea Arthur could do just about anything with dignity and flair. What a treasure. RIP.

On Caryl Churchill's "Play for Gaza"

[Cross-posted from dotCommonweal.]

I'm a week late in issuing this recommendation, but I encourage you to read the cover story from the April 13 issue of The Nation, "Tell Her the Truth" by Tony Kushner and Alisa Solomon. Kushner is a major American playwright (he won the Pulitzer for his two-part drama Angels in America), and Solomon is a perceptive theatre critic and the coeditor, with Kushner, of Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Paliestinian Conflict. Their article in The Nation is a careful study of British playwright Caryl Churchill's controversial work Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza.

Churchill is unquestionably a political provocateur. But it would be a serious mistake to leave it at that, for she is also a towering talent. Her plays (among them Cloud Nine, Top Girls, and A Number) fearlessly take on politically sensitive issues in all their uncomfortable ambiguity. At the same time, they tend to push boldly against established theatrical conventions. In recent years Churchill's plays have been especially spare and unsparing. I saw Far Away, a darkly fanciful meditation on the devastating effects of war, in London in 2001. The performance was 45 minutes long, but I have never seen a play whose impact was so direct and lasting. I get chills even now when I think of it.

Kushner and Solomon's article is valuable, I think, for several reasons: first, it directly confronts, and attempts to move past, the neuralgia that surrounds, and interferes with, any discussion of the situation in Israel and Palestine. Second, it clearly and carefully explains how a work of art, and especially a work of theater, can contribute to such a discussion, if it is permitted to function as art and not as a political tract. In this I think the article shares some ground with Cathleen Kaveny's recent piece for Commonweal about The Vagina Monologues and how Catholics might fruitfully respond to the popularity of that play on college campuses. A major difference, of course, is that (at least in the judgments of Kaveny and Kushner and Solomon), Churchill's work, unlike Ensler's, is an artistic achievement worthy of high esteem. This gives way to the third good reason to read the piece from The Nation: Kushner and Solomon's insightful reading of Seven Jewish Children as a dramatic text.

Though you'd never guess from the descriptions offered by its detractors, the play is dense, beautiful, elusive and intentionally indeterminate. This is not to say that the play isn't also direct and incendiary. It is. It's disturbing, it's provocative, but appropriately so, given the magnitude of the calamity it enfolds in its pages. Any play about the crisis in the Middle East that doesn't arouse anger and distress has missed the point.

Of course, the distress aroused by Seven Jewish Children has been, in many cases, completely detached from the actual content of the play. And reporting on the controversy tends to depend on unhelpfully rigid viewpoints (for example, a recent headline from the New York Times: "Readings and Talks for Pro-Gaza Playlet"). From Kushner and Solomon's article:

The now-rote hysteria with which non-Israeli criticism of Israel is met--most recently dismayingly effective in quashing Chas Freeman as President Obama's nominee to chair the National Intelligence Council--has a considerable and ignoble record of stifling opinion and preventing unintimidated, meaningful discussion, in the cultural sphere as well as in the political. The power of art to open us to the subjectivities of others is especially threatening to those who insist on a single narrative.

One of the remarkable features of Caryl Churchill's recent plays is the scarcity of stage directions -- what Kushner and Solomon refer to as Churchill's "relinquishing nearly all traditional authorial control." In this case, she has left everything but the words to the discretion of the artists who produce and perform the play.

The play consists of seven sequences, each composed of approximately twenty simple sentences, almost all of which begin with the words "Tell her" or "Don't tell her." There is no place-and-time setting specified for the sequences, and the lines are not assigned to specific characters. In fact, there isn't a character list or even a suggested number of performers, and the text looks less like a play than the poem it also is.

Churchill has been accused of writing a one-sided political tract, but in fact she has placed a great deal of faith in the insight and interpretive powers of directors, actors, and audiences.

Any director and company approaching the play will have to decide whether and how the audience will be made aware of the radical degree to which the written text has insisted, through its lack of character identification or stage action, on collaboration. Surely it's essential to understanding Seven Jewish Children that against the specifics of the script, the playwright, relinquishing nearly all traditional authorial control, engineers a far-greater-than-usual slippage among text and performance and audience reception, producing an unusually large amount of room for variant readings.

If that sounds intriguing, you can download the play (in .pdf form, from the Royal Court Theatre website) and read it for yourself. It is brief -- only eight printed pages -- but there is much more to it than the controversy over its performance would suggest.

Also, torture

This morning I wrote a dotCommonweal post recommending Mark Danner's New York Review of Books article "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means." It's not a cheerful read, but I do think it's essential to understanding the situation we're in as a country, how we got here, and what's riding on the choices we make going forward.

Andrew Sullivan has been another valuable source and aggregator of information on this topic, especially since yesterday, when Obama released the "torture memos." So I've been checking in today to read Sullivan's roundups of reactions around the Web, and was quite surprised to find that the most recent one includes me! I assumed I'd have to provoke another fight with a New Yorker staff writer before I'd get the attention of the Dish again. I'm certainly no expert on law or foreign policy, but the Danner article (and his previous one, which I linked to at dotComm) helps to fill in a lot of necessary background.

What's your NPR name?

Steve Inskeep... Kai Rysdal... Dina Temple-Raston... There's a hypnotic, even totemic quality to the names of National Public Radio personalities. What about you? If you reported in the field for Morning Edition, how would you sign off? Your boring old actual name probably can't compete. But thanks to the efforts of Lianablog (linked from the NPR culture blog Monkey See), there's an easy way for you to build your very own NPR-worthy name.

Here’s how it works: You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.

Genius! From New York, this is Molelie Ross-on-Wye. Back to you...

Come on, come on, push!

For me, this video captures something of the joy of Easter -- and the arrival of spring. (Make sure you have your sound turned on.)


Little D Hatching Out of the Egg from Class 1-208 on Vimeo.

Happy Easter!