With all due respect

I didn't spend much of my weekend trip to Georgia sightseeing (we were there for a wedding). But we did have time for a stroll around the Decatur Cemetery. Lots of great Southern names from generations past, but this one was my favorite...


May (s)he rest in peace.

Mollie Sudgen, RIP

I will miss you, other "Mollie"! As young Mr. Grace would say, You've done very well.

Even if you've never seen Are You Being Served?, Sudgen's is an obituary worth reading.

After making shells for the Royal Navy in an armaments factory during World War II, she studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. Her first role was the juvenile lead in “Dear Octopus.”

Truly the Greatest Generation. And did you know this?

“Are You Being Served?” was made in 1972 as a one-shot segment of another series, “Comedy Playhouse,” but when the killing of several Israeli athletes sent the 1972 Summer Olympics into chaos, the BBC, faced with hours of empty air time, rushed the series onto its schedule. There it stayed for more than a decade.

Why isn't that in the history books?!

"Make it gay"

I found something funny in the Commonweal magazine archives, which you can see over at dotCommonweal. I don't want to ruin it, but let's just say it involves the phrase "Coke party for the youngsters." Catholics in the 1950s weren't as uptight as you think!

The man in the mirror

I'm already sick of hearing about Michael Jackson. But one thing I can say about his death is that it has brought together the nation by giving us an opportunity to stare at pictures of the man, compare the recent shots to the ones from his childhood, and collectively ask ourselves, "What the hell happened?" (And aren't you glad you don't have to watch him get old? I am.)

Perhaps the most compact and culturally layered treatment of this theme comes from the Wall Street Journal's "Speakeasy" blog, which today is featuring a look at how MJ's "hedcuts" have changed through the years. (H/t CJR's The Kicker.) Truly spooky. As a bonus, there's this sentence, which says so much... "According to research database ProQuest, Jackson was first mentioned in The Wall Street Journal in a Sept. 25, 1980 article entitled 'Record Buyers Remain Loyal To Black Music.'"

P.S. Also: Holy crap, the sky last night!

You've got a place to go

I know I'm supposed to say something about the death of Michael Jackson, and what he meant to me, but honestly, I don't have an emotional reaction to record. I, uh, like some Jackson 5 songs, and about half of Thriller is good, and I've always been amused by his Paul McCartney duets. And I didn't know "Don't Stop Till You Get Enough" and "Smooth Criminal" were MJ songs until a couple years ago, but finding that out increased my regard for the man tenfold, because those songs are cool. But I am a touch too young, or just a touch too out-of-touch, for Michael Jackson to really loom large in my legend. (There was a girl in my high school who was utterly devoted to MJ, but the rest of us thought this was bizarre. Like being a huge fan of cockroaches. It was the mid-90s, after all, and MJ was becoming increasingly difficult to look at. This girl took it very personally if you said so, though. She loved the middle-aged Michael the way the young Michael loved Ben.)

So you should go read my friend Marla's blog instead, because she has the best Michael-Jackson-related story I've ever heard.

I was planning to celebrate Mr. Jackson's memory by watching my favorite You Tube video -- the one of the walrus dancing to "Smooth Criminal." But I see now that "This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Warner Music Group." Booooo, Warner Music Group. It wasn't even the whole song! Oh well. I'll have to go do my own awkward dance, in tribute. Who wants to join?

Tony telecast 2009

As I mentioned, I was less than enthusiastic about this year's Tony Award contenders. I haven't even seen any of the Best Musical nominees -- and worse, I don't particularly want to, even now. But I still watched, of course, and I found the telecast more enjoyable than I expected. This year it seemed to have a split personality: more pandering and embarrassing than ever when it came to musicals (and musical numbers), but at the same time rather dignified and not as desperate to impress as it has seemed in the past. Maybe that's because there were so many widely-known screen actors on Broadway this year, or maybe they just committed to not apologizing for honoring theatre as an art in its own right. But if it weren't for the fact that I turned off the television feeling thoroughly depressed about the state of the modern musical, I would have to give this year's Tony broadcast high marks. Since we couldn't watch together, I offer my traditional Restricted View recap.

God of Carnage and August: Osage County, reviewed

In the June 5 issue of Commonweal -- just in time for the Tonys! -- I review Yasmina Reza's new play God of Carnage, alongside its neighbor on 45th Street, Tracy Letts's August: Osage County. I thought it would be interesting to discuss last year's Best Play winner alongside this year's favorite, especially since August represented a major departure from the formula for success that Reza established back in 1998 with Art. My review is available online for all you nonsubscribers. Here's a taste:

At first God of Carnage pits one couple against the other; then it shifts to a battle of the sexes, with wives aligned against husbands. By the end, each character is alienated, feeling betrayed even by his or her own spouse. “You force yourself to rise above petty-mindedness and you end up humiliated. On your own,” Veronica sulks. Her husband (James Gandolfini) replies gloomily, “We’re always on our own. Everywhere.”

...It is difficult to say whether Reza really believes any of this, and it seems almost beside the point to ask. The play is so thoroughly entertaining that it doesn’t need to be convincing. Reza manages a number of hilarious surprises, and some artful bons mots, as the couples’ predictable conflict unfolds. God of Carnage is a superficial but highly amusing dance of ideas, brought to vivid life by a uniformly excellent cast....

Where God of Carnage is an intellectual diversion, August: Osage County is an emotional workout. Letts’s play is a portrait of a family whose dysfunction takes on every conceivable form: sibling rivalry, suicide, addiction, adultery, incest, jealousy, and greed. The plot is a series of shocking revelations, but nothing that transpires among the Weston siblings and in-laws is quite as astonishing as the cruelty with which the ailing matriarch, Violet, eviscerates her children....

August is more authentic and more satisfying than God of Carnage, but in the end it is not much more profound. The endless, hysterical miseries of the Westons seem constructed to defeat the idea that human fates are determined by any divinity, even a savage one. The play is compelling not because it offers any insights, but because its characters and their suffering are so immediate and real.

Read the whole thing for more on how I think the two plays resonate, and how they differ.

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?