Category: Theater

Tidy Tidbits: Guthrie, Wilson & Itani

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It is high summer in Florida and that means temperatures of 90 to 92 every day with overnight lows never below 75.  For some of us, like me, that means more time inside; for the lizards among us, it’s great for basking, or baking, in the sun.  So I strive to take advantage of the smaller crowds with movies and museum visits, trips to the theater, and sampling new restaurants.  This past week we did nearly all of these.

FOLKSY AMERICANA

 

On Tuesday, we saw the traveling musical, Woody Sez:  The Life and Music of Woody Guthrie.”  The play opened in Edinburgh in 2007 and actually has been performed more often in Europe than in the U.S.  It is more like a concert with lots of narrative of Woody’s life using Guthrie’s own words.  Four actors comprise the cast with a whole host of musical instruments from guitar to banjo to mandolin to harmonica and more.  I found it a bit slow initially, but then I was captured by the music and the story of Woody’s rambling and roving life, full of social protest and a desire to record the hardship and determination of the farmers and workers of the Dust Bowl era.  The key to its success is its sparkling, loose-limbed star, creator and director, David Lutken.  It is clear he is convinced of the importance of Guthrie’s legacy.  For an interview with Mr. Lutken, see:  http://onmilwaukee.com/ent/articles/woodysez.html

 

AT THE MOVIES

Woody Guthrie shone a spotlight on hard times and harsh conditions with his music.  Brian Wilson’s musical creativity set him apart, but personal demons, seeming madness, and unappreciative relatives and friends kept him from being fully recognized for that talent.  Love and Mercy, based on Wilson’s life, uses two actors to portray him, Paul Dano as the young musician and songwriter, and John Cusack as the middle-aged Brian under guard and coping with illness and bad choices.  Paul Giamatti plays a very convincing manipulative doctor and Elizabeth Banks is Melinda, a beautiful savior.  There are a few slow points, but overall it’s an absorbing, albeit not happy, film.  And for fans of the 60’s and the Beach Boys, packed with their songs.

INTERNMENT:  WHAT I’M READING

I was not aware that the Canadian government had also put individuals of Japanese descent into camps during WWII. But they did, some 21,000 of them.  Frances Itani has written a meditative novel Requiem, about an artist’s experience as a young boy in one of these camps.  It is 1997 and artist Bin is driving across Canada from Toronto to visit family on the west coast.  His wife died recently and he spends the drive reflecting on their life together, his boyhood and his son Greg’s upbringing.  It is a novel of relationships—fathers and sons and husbands and wives—looking back in time.  Itani has said that she enjoys researching her books and she spent six years reading source material and interviewing people before writing this. I also learned that her husband spent part of his childhood in a camp which answered my question about whether she had any personal connection with these events.

On the Road: Here & There

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NEW YORK

The streets of the Big  Apple were thick with tourists and the weather was sunny and warm. A pleasant change of pace from our quiet island life.  We walked briskly down 6th Avenue, joined the High Line at 23rd Street, and then decamped to Chelsea Market, an adventure in food and eating we had not previously explored.  Lunch at Cull and Pistol Oyster Bar was a savory salmon burger for me and a very large bowl of gumbo for my spouse—just perfect.  We continued our walk through the angled tangled streets of the West Village ending up in Washington Square Park.  On the way, we paused for some serious browsing, and of course a few purchases, at Three Lives, my current favorite NY bookstore.  Have to qualify that since I have favorite bookstores here at home, in Maine and elsewhere!

Most of the weekend was spent on the green lawn of suburban Connecticut enjoying the bright sun and the crisp air and celebrating our granddaughter’s birthday.  At three, she fully gets and embraces the concepts of birthday (“I’m not two, I’m not four, I’m three!”) and party.  She and her young friends romped and ran and had a very lively time.  It was an afternoon of balloons and bikes, of ice cream cake and candy, of bubbles and chalk.  What could be better?

On Tuesday evening,back in New York,  we had the extreme pleasure of seeing Helen Mirren in The Audience.  She was marvelous, effortlessly capturing the novice queen in black with Churchill, her first prime minister, and then moving forward and back in time over the years and the prime ministers, aging to how the queen looks today and then reverting.  I thought Churchill and Harold Wilson were particularly notable, although the scene with Tony Blair contains a wonderful moment of contemporary humor.  The accents can make it hard to get all the dialogue, but the theater does display a transcription which, if you are seated close enough, is most helpful.

SARASOTA THEATER

Last week we immersed ourselves in the music of Frank Loesser at Asolo Rep’s production of the new musical, Luck Be a Lady.  Loesser wrote words and music for more than 700 songs and a number of Broadway musicals including Guys and Dolls and How to Succeed in Business...  Familiar favorite songs include:  “Standing on the Corner” and “Once in Love with Amy.”  This play does not have a standard plot, but rather follows two couples, one older and one young, as they re-visit an old ballroom.  It was a most pleasant afternoon.

RECENT READING

I quickly read poet Elizabeth Alexander’s new memoir, The Light of the World, about the life and sudden death of her 50 year old husband, artist and chef, Ficre Ghebreyesus.  Unlike some memoirs about the death of a spouse, the tone is not unrelieved sorrow, but rather the sadness is tempered by her account of his joy in living, his nurturing love for their two sons, and his experience as a child of war and an immigrant several times over.  I learned much about his homeland Eritrea, his African roots and her African American heritage.  As you might expect, her writing is lyrical, almost musical at times.

[Source of image:  www.gtkp.com]

Tidy Tidbits: Reading, Cheese & Theater

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READING WOMEN

Our local paper included an article from the Washington Post by Alyssa Rosenberg about reading a year’s worth of books written by women.  That’s a fine idea, but she carried it a step further and did a pair of books each month for a total of 24.  I was intrigued and checked to see how many of these titles I had already read, a disappointing five in all.

Some of her pairings were unusual and some I will follow up.  For example, she paired My Brilliant Friend, which I’m happy to report I did finish and enjoyed, with Last Things by Jenny Offill, a first novel set in contemporary Vermont.  Calling each of these “slim,” however, is misleading as the Ferrante novel is a dense 300+ pages.  The Margaret Fuller biography by Marshall is paired with Marriage: A History by Stephanie Coontz—interesting since Fuller spent the bulk of her life as a single woman.  And Louise Erdrich’s beautiful novel, The Round House, is paired with The Secret History by Donna Tartt.  I loved the Erdrich book and certainly know of Tartt’s work; each novel is told from the male perspective.  There are more on Rosenberg’s list, but I’ll leave you to explore the rest.

CHEESE

We were in upstate New York (really upstate in the Finger Lakes region) last week.   Thanks to a recommendation from my sister-in-law, my sisters and I ventured into the countryside to visit the Muranda Cheese Company. It’s outside Waterloo, and on the way, we passed through the pleasant town of Seneca Falls, home of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park.  Seneca Falls was the site of the 1848 Women’s Rights Convention.

On their farm, the Murray family raises Registered Holsteins; the milk from these cows is used for producing a wide range of cheeses which are aged, cut, and wrapped here.  For a modest $2.00 each, we were invited to taste 15 different cheeses.  They included several cheddars, Gouda, Colby, a killer blue, and an array of smoked and flavored cheeses—with garlic and chives, bacon, and sundried tomatoes.  Our host was knowledgeable and friendly and we each went home with more cheese!  And, not a surprise, you can order their cheese online.

CULTURE NOTE

We recently saw a first-rate production of Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz’s play, Sotto Voce.  It focuses on the relationship between an elderly female novelist and a young male student, both of whom have connections to the 1939 doomed voyage of  the S. S. St. Louis.  This boat was taking Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany to Cuba, but was denied entry there and also turned away by the U.S.  The two main characters in the play never meet face to face, and all their interactions happen by phone or e-mail.  It is a play of voices and silences, very creatively staged.

Tidy Tidbits: Film & Theater

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TIDY TIDBITS:  Film & Theater

This was a week when we gorged on culture, films especially.  The Sarasota Film Festival (SFF) is celebrating its 17th year, and over the course of ten days 270 films, a mix of documentaries and feature films, are screened.  We were late getting tickets, having been away, but still managed to see several noteworthy films.  Most of these are making the rounds of a number of film festivals, and at least some of them are set for commercial release in the next three to six months.  Here are my thoughts and my recommendations:

Dior and I.  An excellent film about the fashion industry and Raf Simons’ first couture collection for the House of Dior.  Featuring both passages from Christian Dior’s memoir and the suspenseful account of the creation of Simons’ collection,  this is documentary film making at its best.  If you ever wondered why haute couture is so dear, then seeing all the hand work involved here, you will understand.  The film was also the focus of a recent NY Times piece in their style magazine.  Not for fashionistas only.

For the Record.  A documentary about court stenographers and those who do closed captioning for TV shows and the like.  I really enjoyed this film.  My husband got bored and snoozed a bit.  There was the excitement of the competition to see who was the fastest transcriber, and one of the contestants was local, from Sarasota.  I think my librarian and linguistically-inclined friends would enjoy this one.

Blood, Sweat and Beer.  The subject of this film is the craft beer industry and it portrayed two start-ups, one in Ocean City, Maryland, whose owner was having a rough time due to a copyright infringement law suit, and the other in a very depressed former Pennsylvania steel town.  Two energetic recent college graduates took on the challenge of creating a brewery and pub in Braddock in the midst of abject poverty and neglect.  The film could have used more editing, but it gives you a sense of how pervasive the craft beer industry has become.

Wildlike.  A feature-length film set midst the gorgeous Alaskan scenery, this is the story of a teenage girl who is sent to stay with her uncle.  She has problems with his behavior and runs away and attaches herself to a middle aged backpacker who has recently lost his wife and is trying to find some peace and solace in Denali National Park. Sensitively done and worth viewing.

Paradise, FL.  Another feature film, this one shot in the Sarasota Bay area and hence of interest due to its local color.  It’s a depressing tale of drug addiction and family strife straining the friendship and loyalty between two young male fishermen.  Overly long and drawn out, it still held my interest.  It would be better with some judicious cutting.

Theater

Asolo Rep did it again with their marvelous production of Somerset Maugham’s Our Betters!  This was the equal of anything you’d see on Broadway and was both well cast and well staged.  Featuring four women, all of whom were part of the exodus of American heiresses to Britain to find titled husbands, it was funny, fabulous and thought provoking about the role of women.  This director chose to move the time of the play from 1917 to the 1920’s in order to have costumes that were more flowing and allowed the women characters greater freedom of movement.  An inspired decision!