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Les Miserables: There's A Grief That Can't Be Spoken

Of all the "big eighties" musicals (Phantom, Cats, Dreamgirls, etc), I've long suspected that Les Miserables is the best known and least understood of the bunch. More than the others - only Phantom really comes close - Les Miz isn't really so much a traditional musical comedy as much as it is light opera, a style very popular early on in American musical theater, but that eventually got subsumed into the opera houses of most of America (along with Gilbert and Sullivan and Porgy and Bess). Light operas and operettas were the sort of thing Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald did for MGM, where there was a lot of emphatic singing and usually little spoken dialogue, but it didn't quite qualify as "serious" opera because they were more recent, and tended towards more popular melodies.

Few people get that Les Miserables, in French, was originally more of a song cycle with some staging, before Cameron Mackintosh swept the whole thing up, translated it into English and gave it an elaborate staging in London. Even then, the initial reaction to it as a piece of theater was as more of an event, not easily categorized as traditional, straight musical theater. As it made its way to Broadway, Les Miz became treated more conventionally, even though, as a show, it actually has next to no spoken dialogue, is mostly sung-through, and relies heavily on recitative as well as traditional "numbers," which often function, in the show, more as solo arias, or duets and trios, amongst main characters. It's a short hop, really, from Les Miz to La Boheme, shorter than the hop to, say, a Phantom. The musical themes assemble and reassemble in the different numbers, and the show's first act closer, "One Day More," gradually blends the different threads preceding it into a stunning thematic whole.

Thus, in some ways, it's unfair to come to Les Miz expecting the familiar contours of the form that's been identified, since World War 2, as the American musical comedy. Les Miz is more thematically dense, more musically demanding, even if it does not, fully, fit the form of conventional opera. More than any show in recent memory, it is a singer's show - it requires, first, singers who can act more than actors who can sing (never mind dancers; the show is almost entirely free of traditional choreography). Arguably, Les Miserables has attained its cult status, and its rabid fan base by being staged as a musical, while playing to its operatic pretensions.

And so Les Miz arrives on film, proving that it still has worlds to conquer, its operatic pretensions in place, its place in pop culture secure. Tom Hooper's adaptation is all the junkies could expect - big, bold, brash and full of soaring musical moments. However well made, it cannot entirely mask the show's book flaws, and while visually magnificent, it can often feel somewhat less than the sum of its parts. And as always, the show rises and falls, most, on the strengths and weaknesses of its singers.

Many have argued that the film's weakest link is Russell Crowe as Javert, obviously the most actorly of the film's lead singers. Crowe has worked hard, and he does have singing experience (a band with him and his brothers is big in Australia), but his limited range is apparent, and at times he does struggle. But I think Crowe is being sold short for what he brings as an actor (and then too, the part of Javert is easy to treat harshly). At his best - his version of Stars, or Javert's eventual death scene - Crowe wisely undersings and retains the humanity of his character where others would go for bombast, or reach for the rafters. Crowe knows film well enough to understand its intimacy, and he connects with the camera in ways that others don't do quite as well. It's an idiosyncratic, star turn performance that works more than it doesn't.

On the other hand, there's Hugh Jackman, muscling his way through Jean Valjean with his usual scene chewing, always "on" qualities, who seems genuinely miscast. Valjean is the show's most brutal part, a screamingly high tenor role where the singer has to hit the highest notes with a full on belt. It's a singing skill that really encompasses a handful of men (there have been, I think, maybe 8-10 Valjeans  on Broadway in the life of the show)... and Jackman just isn't one of them. It's painful, really, to see the vocal strain as he tries to put over crucial numbers, none more so than the cruelly high "Bring Him Home." Lord knows, Jackman's qualities of pure showmanship can overcome most obstacles... but a note out of reach doesn't magically get reachable. And his acting can only take that so far.

The film starts with Valjean being paroled after 19 years in hard labor for stealing a loaf of bread during the French Revolution. Unfortuately, his parole makes him (shades of today) a virtual persona non grata in civilized society, and so he faces an agonizing (those notes!) dilemma of turning to crime or hiding in a new identitity. Assuming a fake name and a false identity, Valjean becomes a town mayor and factory owner, where a young woman named Fantine loses her job when the other women turn on her because of the foreman's obvious preference for her good looks. This leads Fantine on her own downward spiral, which she describes in her number "I Dreamed A Dream."

Anne Hathaway's appearance, 20 minutes in (she's gone by about 20 minutes later) is the film's down payment on greatness, and Hathaway shines so bright the effect is nearly mesmerizing. Gaunt and grim, she slogs her way through Fantine's travails, and though she's not the vocally strongest Fantine (Patti Lupone, for Christ's sake, was the original), Hathaway has that quality I've only seen in Marion Cotillard on film, of truly being able to act a song so thoroughly, all other doubts wash away. Bewildered, hurt, scared and desperate... all of this and more plays across her face as she attacks the song, sometimes letting emotion overwhelm her notes, other times, hitting them all the harder and more accurately to let the music do its job. Her performance is the most solid Oscar entrant I've seen all year.

Les Miz is a sprawling show, and Fantine's death leads to the real meat of the show, where Valjean adopts Fantine's daughter, Cosette, from a rapacious couple of innkeepers whose every thought is stealing (the Thernadiers, here played expertly by Helena Bonham Carter and Sacha Baron Cohen). Still running from his jailer Javert, Valejean and Cosette wind up in Paris in 1832 as an eventualy botched student revolutionary protest sweeps up a group of young men, including Marius, Cosette's suitor, and the Thernadier's daughter, Eponine.

This is one of the great legendarily down shows, and virtually all of the show's most memorable numbers are death scene last gasps, interpsersed with dripping declarations of undying love and the occasional call to stand up and fight for freedom. The ideas are big, the music swells, but the lyrics are often surprisingly small, and often trite. Les Miz succeeds best, and affects most, when its not trying too hard, pushing too high, or smacking us with the obvious. But even its most shameless moments can pack a surprising punch.

After Hathaway, Jackman and Crowe, the biggest vocal surprises are Eddie Redmayne and Amanda Seyfried as the lovers Marius and Cosette. Redmayne is a foursquare romantic tenor in great voice, and Seyfried has a glorious light soprano that lifts her material way higher than I remember when I saw the show. The Eponine role is a natural stunner and she delivers. Carter and Cohen are aces as the Thernadiers. And the smaller roles - Gavroche, Enjolrais - work as reliably as one should expect.

Tom Hooper's direction is less assured than one might expect, as he seems to struggle with balancing the intimacy of the characters and their solos with the bombast and enormity of the action surrounding them. Les Miz, on stage, is memorably presented on a spinning disc, rotating characters on and off, and Hooper does his best to try and recreate the effect with pull backs and dolly shots to surround the sets, but he also frames his soloists in super tight, unforgiving closeups (Hathaway's lack of Hollywood vanity is remarkable), and the mix of shots doesn't make either choice necessarily effective. Hooper's focus on soloists robs "One Day More" of some its punch, Fantine's death is poorly staged, and Jackman's showiness would look less desperate if Hooper pulled back. None of this can diminish the power of the strongest numbers (Dream, On My Own, Empty Chairs at Empty Tables, Master of the House), but  by the end, the show feels more like a slog than a journey.

Still, for its flaws, indeed perhaps because imperfection keeps this monster human scale rather than enormous and bloated, Les Miserables manages a surprising amount of subtlety, genuine emotion, and soaring power. Indeed, the film's attempts at intimacy solve a number of the second act book problems the show carries with it, which allows the show to feel more like an altogether more inclusive whole. All of which make it, for me, the Oscar contender to beat for Best Picture (I'll do Lincoln shortly), and a glorious adaptation of a misunderstood theatrical event. Someone may try again... but good luck with that. This one will stand pretty tall regardless, for a long time. 

Rock Of Ages: Sticky Sweet

Rock and Roll has a long, checkered history on film; in part, I suspect, it's because the anarchic rebel heart of rock can't really be subsumed or captured by Hollywood's embrace of the most "conventional" conventions. So much of what defines pop culture - the very structures of our popular entertainments - are the hoariest notions of storytelling enshrined onscreen. From HIgh School Confidential to The Girl Can't Help It, through Help! and the counterculture apex of Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy, into the seventies era morass of Streisand's A Star Is Born and Midler's Rose.... Hollywood's history is littered with attempts to use "rock" as a way to give voice to a "youth culture" as a way to challenge a "status quo" that fails on all counts. 

If Rock of Ages is a dreadful dud - and it's surely one of the most dreadful, duddiest attempts out there - it would be a mistake
to isolate it as a lone example of the "rock musical" gone bad. "Rock musicals" are, in fact, generally problematic, the good ones (I'd say, well, Hair... and then what? Grease?) not so far from the bad, and all struggling with, as I said, trying to square a circle of presenting youthful rebellion in a clean, neat Hollywood package.

Sloppy and lazy, Rock of Ages pulls together a fairly random set of eighties "rock" songs, packages them up with a fairly limp familiar plotline of "I wanna be a star!" and flails around in search of a conclusion. Originally created for the theater, Rock of Ages - still running - is mostly a tired excuse to pull in kids my age with a vaguely familiar soundtrack of songs from our youth, packing them in even if, under even mild examination, the show is illiterate and incoherent. One of the most obvious problems is the show's soundtrack, which  vaguely assembles  eighties "hair metal" songs, a genre which, I'd argue, isn't really a genre at all: the real story of the eighties is how the notion of "rock" splintered apart after a seventies era apex of Album-oriented rock (AOR, in radio parlance) and hard rock ubiquitousness. By the mid-eighties, "rock" was, in many ways, nearly dead, with hair metal and other sub-genres simply serving as the dead end for diehards - who, it could be noted, amount to a white working class of mostly men holding out against the resurgence of dance and urban music that was really changing the face of pop.

That whitneness is a large chunk of Rock of Ages' dilemma onscreen, only partially solved by the late appearance of Mary J. Blige, in what appears to be the show's second act. By then we've been introduced to Sherri, a young aspiring singer who leaves Oklahoma to come to LA and pursue her dream. She quickly gets mugged (this happens in more Broadway shows than you might think), and meets her male counterpart, also an aspiring singer who works in The Bourbon Room, a larger scale club space that has a long history of launching and promoting up and coming rock acts. Drew, the young man, brings Sherri to the cliub, gets her a job, and the two begin a fairly conventional romance.  The club, meanwhile, under pressure from Moral Majority types, is struggling to stay in the black, and the owner pins his hopes on a desperate plan to revive the club's fortunes with a concert by popular band Arsenal, fronted by the charismatic, yet odd, Stacee Jaxx.

Tom Cruise, as you may have heard, plays Stacee Jaxx, and the performance is, by now, classic Cruise: a true movie star, Cruise may not be the strongest actor, but he plays Tom Cruise really, really well, and to the extent that Stacee Jaxx works, it's because Cruise exudes the star quality needed to pull it off. Say what you will, but Cruise has never been one to just phone it in, and he's not starting now. There's an intensity and determination to his performance that goes a long way to lifting this material above where it might be otherwise, and Cruise deserves credit, as he did in Magnolia, with proving that he's at his best, often, in these supporting roles where he can dare to be less than entirely likable.

But Cruise is no singer, and it shows. As much as he swaggers and stomps through his backstage drama, once he's onstage as Jaxx, Cruise's studied approach to "Rock God" reveals his limitations. Compare Cruise, for instance, to Blige, and the contrast is obvious: Blige, as usual, inhabits her singing with a passion that's almost impossible to bottle. Cruise, by contrast, gives the impression of moving across the stage, striking pose after pose, vaguely reminding us of other stars (Jagger, Tyler... you know the drill), without a real feel for how these stars found their stage presences in the songs they sang. It doesn't make him a failure in the part, but it's a reminder, however subtle, that Cruise is, in some ways, enitirely miscast in this role, struggling to make it work.

Much of the casting is similarly head scratching: actors with no real musical background, like Cruise, Alec Baldwin and Paul Giamati (who makes the film's irredeemable villain so irredeemable as to be a cartoon), against more traditional musical theater types like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Diego Boneta and Julianne Hough, and more rock and radio based types like Blige and Russell Brand.  That the musical theater types fare best (CZJ, however thankless her role is as the uptight antirocker, can't hide her ways with a good number) gives away the game that for all its claims to a rock and roll heart, Rock of Ages is grounded, really, in terribly conventional musical theater cliches: this is a showbiz, backstage musical with "rock songs" where 42nd Street should be, which goes a long way towards explaining why it doesn't really work.

As the young leads, Hough and Boneta are pretty enough - too pretty, really, on both counts - but they're both saddled with some of the worst of this film's material, particularly Boneta, mouthing words to Foreigner and Journey songs that seem, in context, like gibberish. Hough, as she demonstrated in the Footloose remake, is tougher and smarter than the limited, good girl in trouble business she has to put over here. Her character's hardest choice is going from waitress to stripper, and Hough radiates the kind of unreality that she's too sweet to get too jaded from it all, but even she's too smart to buy it.

The film struggles, really with the challenge of being "Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll" while being the more PG-13 "Smooches, Occasional Drinking and Pop Rock" family friendly alternative. No one in the movie gets stoned, never mind the odd absence of coke or heroin, even in an ostensible mess like Stacee Jaxx (Cruise is no one's idea of a hardcore alcoholic, no matter how he strolls around, scotch bottles in hand). And while the film pants with a kind of soft porn leeriness, the sexual situations are mostly tame, even in an obvious over the top number like the version of "I Want to Know What Love Is" that Jaxx sings while laying Malin Akermann's patently unbelievable Rolling Stone reporter on the back room pool table. Raunchy sex never had it so sad.

Most everything is this film is a pale carbon of other, not necessarily better, but still more committed rock films. Mark Wahberg, I think, can rest easy knowing that his own turn in Rock Star - along with Jennifer Aniston's - has more heft than anything Hough or Boneta can produce. Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous is way more true to the seventies era ethos of groupie/rock god, Rolling Stone excess than anything here. Blige's turn as a strip club owner with a heart of gold is essentially Cher's role in Burlesque, and both women have the star power to exceed weak material, but even Burlesque feels more ultimately authentic than anything Rock of Ages can conjure. 

Perhaps most weirdly, the flm can't shake the odd homoerotic undertone of its material; there's a whole lot of creepy male bonding on display here, too much crotch level interest in the men's leather pants to be ignored (Cruise, ever the tease, can't resist parading around in codpiece, jockstrap and assless chaps, and even his twin gun tats aimed at crotch level are really gay porn iconography). The film's cringiest, yet oddly sublime scene has Baldwin's club owner finally admitting his dirty desires for Brand, as the club's manager, to the tune of "Can't Fight This Feeling" the REO Speedwagon tune rock fans are most likely to call "That's so gay." That Brand has the verve to do the number in his best Freddie Mercury impression only adds to the subtlety, and to his credit, Baldwin is actor enough to sbubsume his "straight stud" history and commit to the moment at hand.

Fundamentally, though, that psychotic number is, in a nutshell, all the Vegas-y, trashy incoherence that sums up everything wrong with Rock of Ages: the wrong material, the wrong performers, the wrong (and false) emotional notes (as a runner up, among a "hard to choose just one" field, let's nominate Blige's strip club ode to "Any Way You Want It"). Director Adam Shankman can't begin to find a sustaining tone for this material, veering between satire, leaden humor, and melodrama without ever touching passion, intensity or ecstasy in any real way. Shankman managed to make sense of all of this with Hairspray (and try not to imagine how Blige could have steamrolled the Queen Latifah role there, either), but that just underlines where pop rock conventions and Hollywood work best in familar frames. Rock of Ages can either fit in the box and be denuded of its real danger and pathos... or it can soar. This film decidedly doesn't, with it's feet firmly on the floor, however strewn with used beer cans.

Finally, this film deserves two final slaps: one for the shoddy score, which is too lazy to include either Def Leppard's title track or Steve Perry's "Oh Sherrie", despite the obvious references to the lead character. Too many of the numbers smash together incongruous pairings (Harden My Heart and Shadows of the Night? We're Not Gonna Take It and We Built This City?), and find little musical payoff. Too many of the songs, especially the Foreigner material, turn out to be full of weak lyrics (making Mick Jones his generation's Jerry Herman, I think). Even the moments that work - especially Cruise's actorly reading of "Pour Some Sugar on Me," which was already all about sex, but becomes all about sex and Tom Cruise - have a sleazy obviousness that's trite. And yet more insulting, if that's possible, is the sleazy costuming which make the eighties look even worse than we all might remember them - from Zeta Jones' ill fitting suits to Hough's hooker streetwear, to Boneta and Cruise in tight jeans and nothing to the imagination tops, this film makes a whole era into a sleazy looking cartoon. And that, I suspect, is its real point. Hot and sticky sweet... those used to be good things. I swear.

This American Lie

Maybe it's just a matter of timing - I didn't see it until late Friday afternoon, and the paid blogosphere does seem to cut out before Happy Hour on Fridays - but I'm surprised that the exposure of Mike Daisey as something of a fraud isn't resonating more on the right.

That may sound odd, but bear with me.

The discrediting of NPR has been an odd hobbyhorse of the right's most ardent screechers, something about the confluence of soothing voices, liberal boilerplate, and perceived objectivity, from what I can tell (roll that all up in a ball and you get... Nina Totenberg). James O'Keefe, in one of his more amusing sideshows, helped take out the head of fundraising at NPR with a tape of a conversation with a fake Middle Eastern investor, which led to a stunning series of off-point comments from senior officials at NPR that mostly made matters worse. NPR was also at the center of the Juan Williams "scandal", in which Williams was dropped as a commentator after telling Bill O'Reilly that he harbored suspicions that Muslims on his flights were possibly terrorists. 

Given all that, surely someone on the right will spend the weekend chortling as This American Life, one of NPR's most popular shows, has had to retract its most popular podcast, an episode recorded with Mike Daisey about Apple's dubious record manufacturing iPads and iPhones in China. Adapted from his monologue "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs", "Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory" garnered a lot of attention, and started a string of modestly bad press for Apple, which has tried to minimize the fallout while trying to beef up standards at its plants (and I say "modestly bad" because none of it has really hurt Apple's sales or profits). 

Daisey's claims - that Apple's plants were rife with child workers and exposure to dangerous chemicals, among other horrendous practices - had been questioned by knowledgable reporters (though the practices were also confirmed by their reporting), but it wasn't until this week that Marketplace, PRI's business show (also on NPR), found Daisey's chinese translator who was with him on that trip, who said much of what Daisey claimed to witness - speaking to child workers, or observing workers injured from chemical exposure - never happened. Daisey calls it "dramatic license", now, and TAL is red faced.

But this isn't really just about This American Life; the New York Times has already had to issue its own correction to an online op-ed Daisey wrote making similar claims, and the Associated Press is looking at retracting coverage they did of Daisey on the topic as well. Others will surely follow. Even New York's Public Theater, where Daisey's show has been running, had to issue a statement generally supporting Daisey, but admitting that the show is not exactly entirely accurate (and that's okay, cause that's how drama works. Or something).

Perhaps you can see where I'm going with this - this is a "Mainstream Media" disaster of large proportions, undermining a popular storyline (corporate malfeasance! Cheap Chinese manufacturing practices! Labor rights!) that the right already can't stand. And this, really, is a classic unforced error: no James O'Keefe fakery needed, no dicey ideologue like Juan Williams to make the scapegoat. This was, as Ira Glass admitted, simply shoddy journalism that tends to undermine the credibility of a show like This American Life - failing to ask basic questions, check primary sources, or to make sure that information was fully confirmed. It doesn't help that TAL often comes off as smug, slightly sanctimonious, and hipper than thou on most topics it covers; this was hubris waiting for a fall.

Conservatives may shy away form this because it is, after all, Apple; on the one hand, an emblem of exactly the kind of capitalism they want to enshrine, while at the same time, a do-gooder sort of firm that liberals love to shop because it seems hip and cool and socially conscious. Embracing the discrediting of Daisey, when Apple still faces unpleasant questions about its corporate actions and conditions in factories, could easily be a two-edged sword, and it may just be that conservatives miss the connections: all that raling against MSM and bad journalism is less potent when there's no obvious political payoff.

On the other hand, it's the very clean spin of the Daisey case that I think should give lefty defenders of NPR through the previous scandals some pause: it's one thing to have been pranked by O'Keefe and his ilk, it's no fun having to defend the notion that Juan Williams didn't deserve all of what he got... but the through-line here is much like the unraveling of the NYT after Jayson Blair: lying to your editors shouldn't be this easy, and it's just arrogance to have missed the signs that this report was seriously flawed. Many lefties will, no doubt, want to take the line that Daisey's real disaster is undermining the efforts to investigate Chinese factories. But this, really, amounts to "he may have stretched the truth, but he wasn't wrong" and that's not true. This wasn't stretching, it was fabrication and falsehoods. Journalism can't let that stand. And NPR, as a whole and not just on one program, probably needs to reexamine its mission and how that mission is pursued. 

Most imortantly, though, is that listeners probably need to also ak more questions, and take less reporting at face value. That's the reality of our current American Lives.

Articles We Never Finished Reading: All This, And Daddy Issues Too?

Seriously?

“Horizon” was the first play by O’Neill I ever read, at 9 or 10, and as a black-and-white introduction to a dramatist’s worldview it’s not inappropriate reading for preadolescents. (On the other hand, its portrait of life as a dream-smothering joker might well scar a sensitive, unformed mind. Thanks a lot, Dad, for the recommendation.)

- The often astonishing Ben Brantley, piling daddy issues on top of his so-so critical writing, in a review of Eugene O'Neill's Beyond The Horizon at Irish Rep.

Down East

Apparently, I decided to take some time off.

I feel better about these occasional pauses if I make a decision ahead of time - plan ahead, that's what I prefer (which, objectively, I also disapprove of in myself - I'd love to be a more "seat of the pants" kind of girl/weboy... but it's just not happening). Instead, life just kind of catches up to me... and something's got to give.

There's this debate, each time, in me: do I write about the not writing, or just move on as if everything just resumes normally? I hate to just leave the breaks unacknowledged, and sometimes writing about not writing is all I've got to give. And blogging, after all, was something I started so I could write about what's happening. Or not happening. Sometimes, not writing is all.

The past week was hard, but satisfying - a lot of productive time at work, a chance to show myself as someone seriously interested in management. I wasn't always like this; it's a recent development. For a while, I figured being a writer/barista was enough; then writer/shift supervisor. Now, maybe some sort of manager. Maybe that's the best I can do on spontaneous plans: I'd rather not have a career with goals, just let it unfold as it unfolds.

I'm weird that way.

This past week also marked the beginning of serious rehearsals for my summer foray into musical theater; last year, I reawakened my theater interests with a local production of Annie. This year, I'm happily back in the thick of my summer troupe doing Curtains. It's much fun... but a week of rehearsals only to get up at 4:30 to open the next morning does take a lot of a person.

So, here I sit, a week or so later, ensconced in my Aunt and Uncle's house in Maine, back for a slow summer weekend, and a chance to decompress. As usual, the relaxed air - and reduced heat - makes contemplation a little easier. 

Yesterday was an easy day, with a relaxed lunch, some time on the internet, and an amazing dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants. Tonight, it's a cookout after this morning's breakfast at the local maple syrup store. And probably a trip to the local museum.

Starting Tuesday, it's back into the thick of work and rehearsals, and who knows how that will go; another short break may be in the cards. For now, it's a nice break Down East, and a chance to reconnect. And that's pretty good.

A Few More Words From The Terrible TV Criticism Of Alessandra Stanley

It's false equivalency time!

On Monday’s episode of  MTV could show minors in the kind of flagrante delicto that is usually reserved for mature audiences. Yet most adult Americans still can’t watch Al Jazeera English on television — even now, when the world is transfixed by images of Egypt in revolt.

It seems like a perverse application of free speech. But sex is sexier than foreign affairs and it certainly sells better. Freedom of expression is guaranteed to all Americans, but mostly it follows the money.

Yes, that's right, Alessandra Stanley has decided to link Skins and the Egyptian Revolution, as presented by Al Jazeera!

Can you figure out how to veer from discussing the slanted coverage of a news network to the sleazy business of selling teen sexuality on a scripted British import? Neither can Stanley, though she lurches all over the place, and eventually settles on "ratings" as her basis for cable systems not carrying Al Jazeera but still carrying MTV. That's not "analysis", that's desperation.

And, as if that's not enough, Stanley isn't done throwing in the kitchen sink:

To be fair, Al Jazeera English may be providing the most up-close and personal coverage round-the-clock, but it isn’t necessarily the best. And “Skins” isn’t the worst series for young people on cable, not by far. That would be “Jersey Shore.”

"To be fair"? How about "to try and throw in yet another complete non sequitour"?

And "Jersey Shore"? Seriously?

None of this is necessarily surprising - Stanley's long been the best example of worst criticism the Times has to offer... which is saying something in a pool that includes, still, the blatherings of Ben Brantley. Still, even for Stanley's usual lousy standards, this column was especially, awesomely, bad.

It's a shame, because the Times has actually been putting some effort into recasting its Arts pages, improving the quality of coverage, smoothing out its terrible instincts for flashy trash and simultaneous Upper East Side superiority (Which explains the Music department's apparent schizophrenic love of gangsta rap and opera). The Sunday section is almost readable again, Brantley is balanced with the perceptive analysis of Charles Isherwood, Manohla Dargis seems to be less and less of a presence on the film side. But for all the good... there's still Stanley and her astonishingly lame TV reviews. Does this nightmare ever end?

By the way, just to wrap up how lousy this column is: the problem with Skins is that it's not very good, which is the kind of situation where pushing the envelope on salaciousness is meant to cover weak writing and fairly bad acting (it's hard to find great acting talent under 18, and the market is seriously tapped out). Skins is mostly further proof that British shows rarely transfer well to America (The Office is an exception that actually helps prove the rule). Al Jazeera's inability to increase its presence on American cable systems deserves a full, separate article. And Jersey Shore's popularity, while mind blowing, is not inexplicable, and mostly a reminder that America's television habits are not generally, a reflection of good taste. Which, really, should help Alessandra Stanley, and still, somehow, doesn't.

Life Upon The Wicked Stage

I didn't - seriously - plan on a 4 week semi-hiatus to pursue a dream of community theater. When I started rehearsals, I figured I could blog on off days, or days where I just had rehearsal and not work. Neither of those quite happened, never mind the days of getting up 4:30 to work, with rehearsal starting at 7 that evening, home at 11 to do it all again.

What did happen was something of a creative reawakening, at least for me; it's partly the chance to go back and do things I never felt I did enough of in my - gloriously misspent - youth, and partly it's a chance to be around people who do the things I like to do for the same reason - a love of doing it, just for the joy of seeing it through.

Annie is a show which covers a wide swath of ages among performers - we have children age 5 and up, and adults into their fifties and sixties (never mind our director, who's been at this for 40 years with no real sign of slowing down) - and so the experience has been a cross section of the life in performing. You see everything from the nergetic dreams of the young to the seasoned, even world weariness of the elders, all enthralled with playing dress up, pretending to open invisible doors, and sing cheerful songs about the Depression.

If I have never been quite so tired, I have also been never quite so happily at peace.

And so today, in preparation for opening night I have brought a fresh tube of mascara (I still need to stop for some foundation), I need to move a  button on my butler outfit, press my clothes, and make photocopies of script to use during the simulation of a radio broadcast. I am reminded of one of J in B's best creations ever - the drag name of Vera Similitude. It's fun trying to make everything so real.

All of this has gotten me thinking about performing, about the life we lead and how much of it is, indeed, a performance; these things I remember about the people who can be so dramatic - I really do find myself at home with theatrical people - remind me that the capacity for it carries over into life generally. Acting, oddly, is what makes me impatient with people who "fake it" in real life; for goodness sake, commit to your performance. Don't pretend. Good acting isn't defined by the audience not believing it.

I'm sure this experience has changed me, as experiences do - I have met a whole new group of people, deepened existing friendships, learned a few things about myself, and, at this late age, even learned a few things about acting and singing on stage (if only confirming that someone in my high school career clearly missed the fact that I am quite capable of a solo on stage. Take that, Mr. Vogelman). It isn't easy - what thing worth doing ever is? - and it requires conservation of energy... but for those moments, on stage, flying without a net (literally, as I tripped over someone in dress rehearsal), it is breathtaking and fun and joyous. Life upon the wicked stage for me.

And so, with performances getting under way, the end is in sight, one way or another. As yesterday demonstrated, I am getting back into the grrove of balancing writing back into the daily schedule of things. And though I've managed to keep my distance from a lot of daily news, I'm not completely out of the loop, and find myself, yet again, with a lot of things to say. And now, with the time to say them... and my creative juices flowing a bit more vividly than they were... this should get interesting. Well, I like to think it's been interesting all along. But a blog should make a fine stage, and spotlight - for some time to come.

Three Bucks, Two Bags, One Me.

A brief expansion on a previous post: Yes, I am in Annie. No, I am not playing Annie. Or an Orphan. Or Miss Hannigan (that would be my dear friend Chris, who got me into this whole thing). I am playing Drake, the Butler, a man in Hooverville, and the Sound Effects Guy on the radio show.

This clarification is offered because I have been asked about ten times so far "are you playing an orphan?" This was cute. Once. 

Also, you are welcome to come and see our lovely show. Just ask me for details in the comments, or e-mail me (my blog name, folowed by the number one, at g-mail).

One day a penthouse... tonight the Y. Carry on, people.

Seven Minutes

My friend Red is getting married.

This is one of those wonderful bits of "personal business" that's been providing some of my offline distraction lately - I'm thrilled for her, and for Steve, her fiance, and I'm in the wedding party. (And by the way, not all the "personal business" is nearly so wonderful... but never mind. Let's stay in the happy place.)

So last night we had a little engagement party for Red and her man down in a dive bar on the Lower East Side - well, really more of a "dive bar" in that it seemed like one of those artful reconstructions of the real thing than the actual thing itself - and I was reminded of what it is to be friends with my Red... part of a smart circle of really interesting folks.

It was great to see the "Brandeis Girls", friends from her college years who've remained remarkably tight knit and connected; and the other ones, like me, that Red's collected over the years, and who bounce off one another in interesting ways making fascinating sparks.

I mention all of this because I wound up in a long, fun conversation with an actor friend in this circle, husband to one of Red's most supportive friends (and beautiful, even at nine months pregnant like last night). Joey is a real working actor, a journeyman who's found his niche in many ways, and works pretty regularly in a field that's not the most secure. After talking about his most recent theatrical experience, we moved on to a wide ranging musing about acting, writing, and creative pursuits generally.

We talked about the challenge of talking about writing, or really any creative endeavor - that really, you don't want to share much, that we hold our work close to our hearts, and the act of showing them is a brave one. And that, if you share to much, it may keep you from creating the work: talking, rather than doing. I was sort of interested to hear Joey say that he doesn't talk about acting, and it's true - he'll tell you what he's done... but not the process of what he's doing, how he finds a character or creates a role.

Writing is hard; we were both keenly aware of it (and so was Red, who admitted the grind of daily blogging was getting to her). And it's hard, sometimes, to get started and keep going. Joey mentioned a playwright acquaintance who was a runner, like he was, and they talked about the "seven minute warmup" of running - that you have to run for about seven minutes before the endorphins kick in and it becomes a kick, even fun, to do it. But you have to go through the first seven, often painful and difficult, minutes to get there... you can't avoid it.

The creative process, he pointed out, was very similar; you have to take those "seven minutes" of pain to get to a place where the writing, or the whatever, just flows, and when you do - like a painter friend he has who can go days just painting and sleeping in his studio space - you may not want to stop.

And I thought... Exactly.

It was just the conversation I needed - talking to someone who "gets it" about the creative process, the process of creating. Letting out, for just a moment, the dreams and ideas that animate what we do.... and remembering that what we do is hard, and rewarding. And we do it because it's hard... and rewarding. And I thought it might be nice to share that with you.

And to get on with the seven minutes. Thanks, Joey.

Work!!!

I don't miss cable - much - but if I did, a big piece of my pain would be missing RuPaul's Drag Race... which I sort of dismissed, ahead of time, as gimmicky and a little obvious. Wrong, girl... utterly wrong.

Queerty has a nice sum-up of this week's premiere, and you can watch the show in segments here, for free.

I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised; it would be easy to work up a cliche of bitchy queens, backstabbing and cattiness... but that's Project Runway (if you ask me), and that kind of underlines the difference between fashion and theater. The drag queens I have known - one of my first writing gigs out of school was for the local gay rag, covering drag shows - have always struck me with being fundamentally decent, both to outsiders and to each other. They know what they do... and they know that it's hard. There's a mutual respect among peers for doing the work.

Sure, the show is over-the-top and the girls work it... that's the show's real strength (and if I had to do a design your own costume contest... and then show it to Bob Mackie, I'd just die). But what touched me, and will keep me coming back, was seeing the backstage, we're all in this together vibe. And credit to Ru, for doing the best out-Tyra of Tyra and the Next Top Model thing... she still knows how to work it, too.

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