Score One for Ennui

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa has had some success as a playwright with four or five of his plays being commissioned and produced by some prestigious regional theaters and he has been courted by several NYC based off-Broadway not-for-profits, including the Manhattan Theatre Club and the Second Stage Theatre. I think this clout has permitted the mounting of Good Boys and True at Second Stage. I can think of no other reason to put it on the boards. This sucker is one long 85 minutes of no-touch talk; without much believability to back it up. To me it looks more like a revenge play than anything else.

Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa must have had a horrible time in high school; no doubt akin to the one portrayed in this play. St. Joseph’s is a sports-driven Catholic school for boys and woe to the non-jock and, heaven forbid, the nascent homosexuals in the student body. The playwright’s character-surrogate is obviously the role of Justin who is the most articulate and together homosexual high school senior ever born.

The impact of the scenery is significant in that it almost totally exists of a hundred or more immoveable and intractable sports trophies in well-lighted niches; even the ceiling drips with them. This, of course, symbolizes the school and its shiny implacability crushes anything that goes on below, thus proving that nothing that anybody says or does is going to change one whit the policies and self-serving politics of the church’s saintly dogma.

A star student/athlete is accused of a fairly rotten heterosexual crime and the effect of this event reverberates throughout the pre-ivy high school, and the lives of the families on both sides are ruined (maybe). No one is totally innocent, including the school itself. Oh, yeah, although not alluded to in the play; placing this scandal in 1988 precludes the truly horrendous crimes subsequently perpetrated (and covered up) by the Catholic church.

Scott Ellis directs with zero nuance. The actors seem to be forever putting on and taking off their coats and our poor fallen hero seems to not understand in the least what he’s done wrong. The poor actor stuck in this role even has to say “Oh, Mom” in a variety of Beaver Cleaver ways. Oh, Mawummmmmm, like she was chastising him that he forgot to eat his Cheerios.

If Mr. Aguirre-Sacasa thinks he’s exacted revenge on his old school, he’s mistaken. St. Joseph’s 10; playwright 3.

Too Old for Rock and Roll?

The Broadway show Spring Awakening is the subject of this particular blog but before I get into my impression(s) of it I want to make a statement--more of a question really. Well, several questions. At what point in a show’s run do the producers, directors, actors and even stagehands forget that the majority of the audience is seeing and hearing it for the first time? At what point do backstage or onstage personnel forget that the words count for something? Through a thousand repetitions I’m sure all of them understand every word, every performance, and can quote (and probably sing) them flawlessly, without hesitation.

I also understand that it is important that the artists are keeping it “fresh” and are concentrating on making a beautiful sound. I appreciate these efforts but I don’t see why clarity should be sacrificed. In the modern musical lyrics are plot-forwarding words and they need to be handled as such. Diction, children, diction!

Of course, in the modern rock musical, the decibel level doesn’t help. At what point is meaning lost through sheer volume? I think this has become a major problem on and off-Broadway and someone in every production needs to address the reality. Yes, by all means, go see the current production of Rent (closing in September) but bring an interpreter.

Spring Awakening is based on an 1891 play by German playwright Frank Wedekind. It is filled with all kinds of kinky stuff like puritanical sexual repression, evil officialdom, pubescent sexual awakening, cutesy homosexuality, a little S&M, child abuse, gratuitous (hetero) sex and nudity, suicide, violence, abortion, death, ghostly visitations and, I think (if I got the ending right) a touch of redemption. I’m not real sure about the redemption part but I’m under the impression our brave prison-escaping hero probably took the first steam locomotive out of town, probably to America; perhaps on the Titanic. Spring Awakening has all those things and some swirling stage mist that made me glad I was sitting in the mezzanine.

It also has some pretty good, pleasant-to-the-ear rock music, sung in 21st-century American Idol-ish style by a cast of wonderful, very young, actor/singers. I hate to use the word but the juxtaposition of modern rock music superimposed upon an 1890’s Germanic milieu was pretty damned “interesting.” Even though that sounds condescending I don’t mean it that way. I was never bored. The tech side of the production is top notch and sometimes visually stunning. Oh, yeah, lest I forget, I don’t agree with having audience members seated on stage which is, maybe, a holdover from its original off-Broadway production. I don’t really want to see gratuitous nose-picking by anybody; much less someone not paid to do it.

Spring Awakening won several Tony Awards in 2007 including Best Musical, Director (Mike Mayer), Choreographer (Bill T. Jones) Book (Steven Sater), Score (Sater & Duncan Sheik), Orchestrations (Sheik) and Lighting (Kevin Adams). All well deserved.

Art Harangue Deferred

About five years ago there was a public art installation at Rockefeller Center of a sculpture by Takashi Murakami called Tongari-Kun; which evidently translates from the Japanese as “Mr. Pointy.” Cute, I thought at the time, nice display; whimsical and festive; perfect for that particular location. In the interim Mr. Murakami has established himself as some sort cash cow of the Asian art world and a comprehensive retrospective of his work has been installed in 18,500 square feet of gallery space at the Brooklyn Museum.

Mr. Pointy is, indeed, part of the exhibition. I guess I should be bemused by this turn of events but, for a while, I was fairly outraged. I initially wrote quite a tirade expressing my feelings about WHAT IS ART AND WHAT AIN’T, but I’ve reconsidered and my umbrage has cooled to puzzlement. I suppose there is precedence for this sort of thing; Andy Warhol immediately pops to mind and, to a degree, Keith Haring, but I think those two artists, in their prime, were pretty much thumbing their noses at what was, and still is, an on-going art “establishment.”

Murakami has taken it to the brink of insanity with his subversion of Japanese anime (animation) and manga (comic books). Rather than give you a whole bunch of scholarly reasons why I think this exhibition does not belong at the Brooklyn Museum (in the same building that houses one of the most breathtaking Rodin collections in the world), I will just say this: it’s cute, nicely displayed, whimsical and festive. I did not, however, buy the coffee cup.

Oh, that reminds me, Mr. Murakami has designed a bunch of stuff for Louis Vuitton and there is an in-exhibition shop selling handbags for $2,210 and wall hangings for $10,000. The overall title of the show is © MURAKAMI and that little copyright symbol says it all.

This is the banner for the show. Get my drift?






Update: May 30, 2008: Houseguest's request got me back to this exhibit. My opinion hasn't changed from my first impressions but one thing is different. Someone else must have thought this exhibit through and now, arrayed discreetly behind "Mr. Pointy" at the front entrance are a dozen Rodin sculptures. I'm not saying I had the least influence on this decision but, hey, ya know?

A Brussels Sprout Memory

The Atomium is a monument built for the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair. It is 335-feet tall, with nine steel spheres connected so that the whole forms the shape of a cell of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times. It was supposed to be a temporary structure but yesterday Belgium celebrated it’s golden anniverary.

I just wasted a half hour looking for a very bad photo I have of me standing in front of The Atomium making it seem like it was growing out of the top of my head or, alternately, a very ornate hat. 1958, huh? Yes, children, I was there; a very callow youth, and the photo shows it (if I can find it) and now, 50 years later, we are both still around even though, unlike myself, The Atomium needed some major repairs. I paid a return visit to Brussels in about 1970 and even then it was looking a bit dingy and the surrounding area had been poorly maintained.

A $43 million renovation on The Atomium finally began in March 2004 and it reopened in Februay of 2006. The renovations included replacing the faded aluminium sheets on the spheres with stainless steel, thus permanently returning the original, spectacular, sheen to its surfaces.

This trip to Belgium in 1958 was my very first sojourn to a foreign soil and is, thus, firmly etched in my memory. It’s sheen, like the surface of the newly clad Atomium, will always be fresh.

Soul Food

I planted this weeping cherry tree in the late Fall of 1999. A mere stripling, maybe three feet tall and essentially barren of branches, it was easily carried in one hand. I never thought it would attain the height and beauty it has. Each year it has doubled in size and now reaches, I would judge, about 18-20 feet to the tippy top branches and is now at eye level from my second-story bedroom window. It is always a joy to behold all year 'round but right now it also feeds the soul. Nature's infinite beauty cannot be replicated...

Going once...going twice...

I’ve always been intrigued by Lucian Freud’s portraits, especially the nudes, both men and women.

Uncompromising truth is sometimes difficult to look at and I think he captures this facet in all of us to an excruciating degree. He refuses to paint “pretty;” including his self-portraits (shown here).

I mentioned to a friend one time that if I were ever going to pose for a particular artist I would choose Lucian Freud and he said “I thought you already had” and sent me this photograph of a painting done in 1994 of Leigh Bowery, a performance artist and a friend of Freud’s. Oh for goodness sake, say I, he obviously doesn’t need me to pose for him, having already visited this type of torso a number of times.



Anyway, this topic has come to mind because a 1995 painting of Freud’s, Benefits Supervisor Sleeping, is coming up for auction at Christie’s on May 13th. If you think you might like a large painting of a voluptuous woman on a dilapidated sofa hanging above your mantelpiece, now’s your chance. It’s offered from a private European collection and it has been estimated that it will sell for $25 million to $35 million. If so, it will set a record for any work by a living artist to be sold at auction. I understand the woman who posed for this painting, one Sue Tilley, was paid $40 to do so. I would do it for less if it included some decent coffee, a fresh bagel (with a generous helping of cream cheese) and, of course, a well-heated atelier.

Update - April 25, 2008

This received from yet another peanut gallery. An unsolicited contribution, without comment, but yet another gleeful insult to my personal anatomy. Harrumph!




Update - May 18, 2008

Benefits Supervisor Sleeping sold at auction to a Russian billionaire for $33,641,000. Her beauty will grace his private residence and will not be displayed in a museum. Certain individuals are dismayed by this turn of events and certain individuals are pleased with this outcome.

Here Comes Da Pope! (ka-ching, ka-ching)

This beautifully detailed bobble-head statue, by Bosley Bobbers, of Pope Benedict XVI stands 8" tall, is made of heavy quality resin and comes in a beautifully decorated box with pictures of the pope, the Vatican and some interesting history of his life. This pope bobble-head is a fabulous gift and a great investment.

To round off this holy trinity you can also buy bobble-heads of Pope John Paul II and, the ultimate collectible, Jesus. $12.95 each. In stock. Buy now!

Welcome to Beijing

These are the “Fuwa,” and they are the official mascots of the 2008 Olympics which will take place later this year in Beijing, China. Color-coordinated with the five olympic rings, they are named Beibei (the fish), Jingjing (the panda), Huanhuan (the Olympic flame), Yingying (the Tibetan antelope) and Nini (the swallow).

The official propaganda: [The Fuwa] embody both the landscape and the dreams and aspirations of people from every part of the vast country of China. In their origins and their headpieces, you can see the five elements of nature -- the sea, forest, fire, earth and sky -- all stylistically rendered in ways that represent the deep traditional influences of Chinese folk art and ornamentation. Fuwa will seek to unite the world in peace and friendship through the Olympic spirit. Dedicated to helping Beijing 2008 spread its theme of One World, One Dream to every continent, Fuwa reflect the deep desire of the Chinese people to reach out to the world in friendship through the Games -- and to invite every man, woman and child to take part in the great celebration of human solidarity that China will host in the light of the flame in 2008.

I would have liked to have sat in on the copy-writing sessions that came up with that stuff; the gag-quotient must have been off the charts.

Anyway, I don’t know about you but I think these creatures are more than a little creepy. You might also notice that Yingying, the Tibetan antelope, is the only one on the run and might be (symbolically, of course) in fear of her very existence. I wonder what the Dalaidalai Lamalama thinks about this.

Of course I may not be the first
one that should be consulted on
consumer reaction(s) since the
Teletubbies also freaked me out
when they first hit the tube (and
the toy stores).

If you paid the least bit of attention you might have noticed the combined names, Bei and Jing, are the city where the games will take place. The next three, Huan, Ying and Ni mean “welcome to” in chinese and, of course, a new industry is born as millions of trinkets, tchotchkes, stuffed creatures and who knows what all are pushed onto a greedy and gullible public. Hopefully these items will not contain anything lead-based or have electronic listening devices (or worse) planted in their cute little butts.

Oh, it just occurred to me to ask and I’m amazed I didn’t think of it before; which one is the gay one?