Sunday, March 17, 2024

Off-Broadway Play Review—“The Ally” at the Public Theater

The Ally
Written by Itamar Moses; directed by Lila Neugebauer
Performances through April 7, 2024
Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, NYC
publictheater.org

Josh Radnor in Itamar Moses' The Ally (photo: Joan Marcus)

In a perceptive program note for his new play The Ally, Itamar Moses describes his feelings as a “left-wing, American Jew with Israeli-immigrant parents” when tackling important current issues. He admits that he is unafraid to say certain things, but when it came to more fraught subjects, he “didn’t know where to begin because what I had to say was too confused, too contradictory, too raw.”

Such honesty is present on every page of The Ally, which is also confused, contradictory and raw in its story of Asaf, a left-wing, American Jew with Israeli-immigrant parents who is not a playwright but a university professor. After he agrees to sign a petition blaming the local police for the death of a young black man, other students convince him to advise their nonpartisan group to host a controversial anti-Israeli speaker on campus. He becomes the center of a storm where he is accused of being anti-Palestinian, anti-Israeli and a white supremacist.

Moses incisively paints Asaf as the face of the inherent contradictions in a strain of American liberalism: he wants to get involved but doesn’t really stick his neck out while worrying about hurting the very people he hopes to help. But Moses stacks the deck dramatically (if almost surely purposely): Asaf is married to Gwen, who’s Asian; his ex-girlfriend Nakia is not only Black but author of the petition that starts Asaf’s troubles since it also uses the term “genocide” in reference to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and Baron, the student who first asks Asaf to sign that petition, is also Black and the cousin of the cops’ victim.

These characters are joined by pivotal supporting roles—the students who ask Asaf to sponsor their new organization, the Palestinian Farid and the liberal Jew Rachel; and Reuven, a right-wing Jewish student who berates Asaf for his weak-kneed liberalism—who form the core arguments of The Ally.  

Most of the play’s scenes show Asaf with one or more of these characters, their arguments constantly colliding. It’s often thrilling to watch, as Moses’ dialogue has real bite and never condescends, while director Lila Neugebauer astutely keeps the focus on the interactions as well as the words. Take an early conversation between Asaf and Gwen as he becomes more reluctant about signing the petition:

GWEN: I’m not telling you what to do. But if one sentence is your only problem with a, like you said, a 20-page document, then maybe—
ASAF: Well, except there is one other thing.
GWEN: What? 
ASAF: They use the word genocide.
GWEN: What?
ASAF: Here. “Failure to do so will leave the United States complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.” Which, again, so much of what happens there is terrible, truly. But: genocide? That’s a term you really can’t just throw around. Especially ... Well: you know.

After awhile, these discussions, however elegantly written and performed, start to sound like haranguing, like reading a particularly densely written op-ed or even the rare closely argued comment on Facebook. That’s all part of Moses’ point about responding to urgent issues, but even the two tensest scenes come off as strident and singleminded, detracting from their power: Farid’s moving climactic Act 2 speech describing his West Bank family’s hurtful losses loss and, below, Reuven’s forceful Act 1-ending explanation for why Asaf has been duped.

ASAF: I thought it meant “Never Again” for anyone, not just us.
REUVEN: That’s right. It means “Never Again” for anyone. Including us.
ASAF: So you’re saying we can’t even discuss how Israel deals with the Palestinians because to do so will trigger a series of events that will lead inevitably to a second holocaust.
REUVEN: No. What I’m saying is the entire so-called “conversation” around this issue is nothing more than propaganda designed to create the conditions for a second holocaust.
ASAF: I think that’s alarmist.
REUVEN: And I think the people who sounded the alarm last time were also told they were being alarmist.
ASAF: Last time we were a tiny minority scattered across Europe! We didn’t have an army! We didn’t have a nuclear weapon! This time the Israelis are the majority, they have the power, they—!
REUVEN: Compared to who?
ASAF: The Palestinians!
REUVEN: But this conflict is not between the Israelis and the Palestinians!
ASAF: What? Of course it is!
REUVEN: No! It’s only framed this way so one can conclude that Israel is the oppressor! But this is not now, nor has it ever been, an Israeli-Palestinian conflict in which a Palestinian minority is surrounded by millions of Jews. It is and has always been a Jewish-Arab one in which a Palestinian minority is surrounded by millions of Jews who are themselves surrounded by hundreds of millions of other Arabs not to mention the Persians of Iran! Don’t you see? This is how antisemitism works! Why it is invisible to the left unless someone shouts “kill the Jews” and sometimes even then! Because the only xenophobia the left understands is the kind that paints the other as inferior. Jew-hatred depends upon the opposite: a myth of dangerous superiority. “Yes, they are small in number, but they pull all the strings.” Antisemitism adopts the trappings of a strike against the powerful so that it can masquerade as part of a struggle for social justice! As a progressive cause! So when you say we redefine all criticism of Israel as antisemitism you have it backwards: antisemitism was intentionally disguised as criticism of Israel, by our enemies, as a response to the founding of the state! And you can see how effective it has been! It is now impossible for left-wing Western intellectuals to assign any responsibility at all to the Arabs for what goes on in a region they dominate completely! But no one forced the Arab League to invade in ’48, or again in ’67 …

Yet despite its built-in limitations as living, breathing drama, The Ally remains an intelligent two hours in the theater, its superb cast anchored by Josh Radnor’s formidable Asaf. As the center of all the arguments and as Moses’ stand-in, Radnor gives a beautifully shaded portrayal that humanely embodies the raw contradictions and confusions that make up the playwright’s stalwart liberalism. 

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

March '24 Digital Week I

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 
Wonka 
(Warner Bros)
In this colorful but pretty soulless prequel, Timothee Chalamet makes a charming young Willy Wonka who’s surrounded by a bunch of supporting characters who are less silly sidekicks than major annoyances—actors like Olivia Colman, High Grant (as a sullen Oompa Loompa!), Sally Hawkins and Rowan Atkinson are all made forgettable by Paul King’s mediocre direction. There’s garishness and bright colors galore, but the songs try too hard to match those from the original Gene Wilder classic (a couple of those, of course, return) and Chalamet, for all his energy, can only do so much. But since this was a huge hit, it will certainly generate more prequel sequels. The film looks ravishing in UHD; extras include several making-of featurettes.

Migration 
(Universal)
Director Benjamin Renner and writer Mike White have made a cute cartoon fable about a family of birds who migrate from New England to Jamaica with a pit stop in Manhattan along the way. The animation is impressive, the jokiness and sappiness both land in equal measure, and the large voice cast—including Kumail Nanjiani, Elizabeth Banks, Keegan-Michael Key, Awkwafina and Danny DeVito—makes the most of the snappy dialogue, which might be enough for most families, and especially parents. It looks terrific on UHD; extras are making-of featurettes.

In-Theater/Streaming Release of the Week 
Poor Things 
(Searchlight)
In his latest insufferably smug feature, Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has freely adapted Scottish author Alasdair Gray’s 1992 novel, a Candide-like journey from innocence to adulthood for a woman who has been reanimated by a lunatic Dr. Frankenstein-ish scientist. In Lanthimos’ hands, however, Gray’s sharp satire has been reanimated so crudely and ham-fistedly that its 140 minutes drag on like 140 hours. It’s set in a steampunk version of Europe and, although the sets and costumes are initially intriguing, soon rigor mortis sets in, and we’re left with Lanthimos’ gregariously ugly visuals: he returns again and again to fisheye-lens shots like a baby playing with his favorite rattle. Lead actors Emma Stone and Mark Ruffalo give scandalously broad performances that should be shunned instead of showered with awards. Crazily enough, Willem Dafoe, never known for his subtlety, is the least obnoxious performer here, which is a win of sorts, I guess.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Dr. Cheon and the Lost Talisman 
(Well Go USA)
In this weirdly compelling fantasy, Dr. Cheon makes his living performing fake exorcisms online takes on the case of a possessed young girl: and lo and behold, all his beliefs—and disbeliefs—about the spirit world come into question. First-time director Kim Seong-sik has fun conjuring the mysterious goings-on that affect his protagonist, and the special effects complement, rather than overwhelm, the supernatural storyline. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer.

The Moon 
(Well Go USA)
After the first South Korean mission to the moon goes spectacularly wrong, a second mission also malfunctions, leaving one brave astronaut stranded in space while a disgraced mission-control director is brought in to try and salvage the nation’s lunar dreams in director Kim Yong-hwa’s far-fetched but simplemindedly entertaining sci-fi epic. It ends as a sentimental paean to Korean ingenuity—high (or low) lighted by a bunch of kids worshiping the spaceman—but before that Kim keeps losing focus by intercutting between the continuous (anti)climaxes in space and the predictably worried reactions of those on earth. It all looks impressive on Blu-ray; the lone extra is a making-of featurette.

CD Release of the Week
Britten—Violin and Double Concertos 
(Orfeo)
Two youthful works by English composer Benjamin Britten (1913-76) make up this superb new recording, but “youthful” doesn’t mean “immature”—on the contrary, Britten’s Violin Concerto, written when he was 26, is one of his masterpieces, a vigorous and incisive workout for the instrument; soloist Baiba Skride is more than up to the task throughout. Skride also deftly plays the violin part in the Double Concerto, which Britten wrote when he was 19. Although not as memorable as the later Violin Concerto, it’s still a singularly attractive work, and Ivan Vukčević is an inspired partner on the viola. Marin Alsop leads the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra in perfect accompaniment for both works.

Tuesday, March 5, 2024

Film Series Roundup—Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2024

Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2024
Through March 10, 2024
Film at Lincoln Center, New York, NY
filmlinc.org

Back for its 29th edition, Film at Lincoln Center’s long-running annual series included 21 new films. Here are my reviews of a half-dozen of those entries.



The Animal Kingdom (Magnolia Pictures; opens March 15)
In Thomas Cailley’s dystopian drama, some humans have started mutating into wild animals including some who have developed large wings and try to fly; is civilization unraveling, or is it a new type of evolutionary leap into the future? François (Romain Duris), worried about his afflicted wife, moves with his teenage son Émile (Paul Kircher) to be close to her, and they enter a world of hybrid humans. Calley’s conceit is certainly a high-wire act—eye-popping makeup, effects and photography vividly bring this bizarre but all too real new universe to life—yet his film often wavers, whether in the obvious metaphors for the fear of outsiders or in a wan subplot featuring Adèle Exarchopoulos, an actress incapable of a false note, but who is hamstrung by her role as a sympathetic cop. She and Duris deserve better scenes than Cailley gives them. 


Consent 
Vanessa Springora’s soul-baring 2020 memoir created a sensation in France as she described a nonconsensual relationship with writer Gabriel Matzneff, who was 50 when he groomed her as his lover at age 13, and now Vanessa Filho—who adapted the book with Springora—has made a daring, often difficult to watch adaptation that clearly details how the self-admitted pedophile (who wrote quite openly about his scandalous sexual behavior with young boys and girls but was shielded by a literary establishment that looked askance at the real-life consequences) stealthily to her under his wing, emotionally and sexually. Jean-Paul Rouve is creepily persuasive as the destructive Matzneff, Laetitia Casta is scarily pathetic as Vanessa’s complicit mother and the great Elodie Bouchez has a magnificent cameo as the adult Vanessa. But it’s the simply spectacular Kim Higelin, as Vanessa from ages 13 to 18 (Higelin is 24 in real life), who is the beating and bleeding heart of the film, a dynamic piece of acting that is also emotionally shattering to watch.


Just the Two of Us (Music Box Films)
Writer-director Valérie Donzelli pairs with current French cinema It Girl, Belgian actress Virginie Efira, for a twisty thriller that begins as a whirlwind romance when Blanche (Efira), still hurting from a recent breakup, falls for the charming Grégoire (Melvil Poupaud). They immediately marry, but it’s not long before she realizes he’s not the man of her dreams: yet it takes several years and two children before she finally takes action to escape his emotional and physical abuse. Efira is her usual powerhouse self, both as Blanche and her suspicious twin sister Rose, but not enough is made of the siblings’ relationship (or with that of their mother) to justify the amount of screen time it receives. Surprisingly, this routine feature was co-written with Audrey Diwan, who wrote and directed last year’s memorable abortion drama, Happening, doubling the disappointment.



Marguerite’s Theorem (Distrib Films US)
Co-writer-director Anna Novion has created pulse-pounding suspense from the seemingly mundane subject of math: a grad school numbers whiz, Marguerite (a superlative and complex turn by Belgian actress Ella Rumpf), sees her academic life fall apart when it’s discovered that the theorem she has worked on for years has a fatal error. Novion’s brilliantly observed character study follows a young woman who realizes that her life can consist of much more than mere numbers and proofs on a blackboard; director and actress make Marguerite one of the most compelling characters I’ve seen onscreen in some time, and it’s easy to share in her triumphs (her first orgasm is particularly wittily shot) and cheer for her ultimate mathematical—and personal—redemption.



On the Adamant
In a very distinguished career, French documentarian Nicolas Philibert has made insightful films about subjects ranging from French national radio to rural schooling—in his latest, he aims his sharp eye and lens on the Adamant, a barge on the Seine that serves as a mental health daycare center for adults and provides nurturing activities with a dedicated staff. Philibert, in his usual discerning way, records the interactions between the patients and the doctors and other staff members, along with perceptive and touching interviews, making for another in a long line of generously humane portraits.



Red Island
Robin Campillo’s most recent film, 2017's BPM: Beats Per Minute, was a feisty, angry and absorbing chronicle of ’90s AIDS activism in France and the formation of ACT UP. His latest, equally autobiographical, feature returns him to childhood, growing up on a French military base on the island of Madagascar. The young protagonist, Thomas, feels left out of family activities and often passes his time daydreaming about a superhero comic book—whose adventures are amusingly visualized by Campillo—and then finds a fellow friend in a young Vietnamese girl, Suzanne. Campillo has made a moody if diffuse work that shows a sympathetic eye but also too often a preference for visual audacity over depth.

Sunday, March 3, 2024

Off-Broadway Play Review—“Russian Troll Farm” with Christine Lahti

Russian Troll Farm
Written by Sarah Gancher; directed by Darko Tresnjak
Performances through March 1, 2024
Vineyard Theatre, 108 East 15th Street, New York, NY
vineyardtheatre.org

Christine Lahti and Haskell King in Russian Troll Farm (photo: Carol Rosegg)

Sarah Gancher’s Russian Troll Farm began life online during the COVID-19 lockdown, showing workers at the (real) Internet Research Agency during the 2016 presidential elections, posting disinformation while posing as Americans interacting on Facebook and Twitter.

Four years later, its themes of election interference and fake news are unfortunately still with us, but the play itself seems to be in limbo. Gancher writes fast-paced dialogue and director Darko Tresnjak has dressed up his slick staging with visuals that feature lots of video overlays to complement Alexander Dodge’s amusingly antiseptic set, but the commentary on social media is less insightful than perfunctory.

The main problem is that the characters are stereotypes. There’s nerdy whiz kid Egor; annoying reactionary Steve; dullard Nikolai; disillusioned journalist Masha; and their strict supervisor Ljuba, who at least gets a solid backstory—she worked for the KGB as well as Putin—but is just another chessboard piece for the author to manipulate. 

Tresnjak allows his actors to play into those stereotypes, especially Haskell King (Egor) and Renata Friedman (Masha), who are unable to find any subtlety in characters already flattened on the page. John Lavelle (Steve), conversely, yells his way through many of his lines, playing to the audience as a combination of Jack Black and Zach Galifianakis at their most obnoxious. It’s sometimes funny, but often not. 

That leaves Christine Lahti, who provides the play’s high point in a stunning 15-minute monologue describing Ljuba’s hellish life in the Soviet Union and then the new Russia. As written, it’s melodramatically bathetic—yet Lahti, through a combination of her winning stage presence and forceful acting, squeezes the soliloquy for whatever juice of humanity she can, throwing into relief the metaphorical trolling of the rest of the play.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

February '24 Digital Week II

In-Theater Releases of the Week 
Kiss the Future 
(Fifth Season)
The Bosnian War waged in the mid ’90s in the former Yugoslavia not only destroyed lives and neighborhoods but also shook ordinary citizens’ souls to their core. Nenad Cicin-Sain’s riveting documentary looks at that fraught time through the lens of music—first through the ordinary people who used it as a mechanism to have some sort of normalcy during the war but also through the Irish band U2, whose ZOO-TV tour captured the zeitgeist of the 24-hour news cycle, which was exploited by American aid worker Bill S. Carter (on whose memoir this film is based). He managed to interview Bono, get comments from Sarajevo residents played on stadiums’ video screens via satellite during U2’s European tour to raise awareness and finally get the band to come to the beleaguered city for the a concert that would bring together thousands of jubilant fans. New, emotional interviews with many of the those involved—Bono, the Edge, Carter, news correspondent Christine Amanpour, and several Bosnian journalists and citizens—are contrasted with vividly horrific archival footage of the murderous siege of Sarajevo to paint an unforgettable picture of how music helps heal the worst wounds.

Io Capitano 
(Cohen Media Group)
In Italian director Matteo Garrone’s intensely dramatic—if slightly manipulative—new feature, Senegalese teens Seydou (Seydou Sarr) and Moussa (Moustapha Fall) take what little funds they have and try to get to Europe, little realizing the horrors that await them. They are captured, separated and tortured in Libya, abandoned but reunited in North Africa, and finally go via the Mediterranean to southern Italy—but only if 16-year-old novice Seydou can pilot the boat filled with dozens of migrants. Garrone captures the humanity of these people desperate for a new start alongside the inhumanity of many others. If manipulation and contrivance didn’t intrude, Io Capitano would be a masterpiece, not simply a superior melodrama. But there’s that staggeringly moving final shot of Seydou, the face of non-actor Sarr going through so many conflicting emotions that he should be in the running for every award there is.  

Veselka—The Rainbow on the Corner at the Center of the World 
(Fiore Media Group)
The famed Ukrainian restaurant on Second Avenue in Manhattan’s East Village is the subject of Michael Fiore’s engaging but often enraging documentary narrated by David Duchovny that shows how the current owner Jason and his father Tom, the previous owner, allow their place to double as a safe haven for locals after the COVID-19 lockdown and for fellow Ukrainians after Putin’s forces invaded their home country in February 2022. Fiore perceptively follows Tom, Jason and several of their employees as they first navigate COVID and its aftermath, then find themselves worrying constantly about family members still in Ukraine when the invasion starts. Some are able to leave and arrive in New York, where they must acclimate to a new country and culture, even though the familial feel of Veselka itself and their loved ones who are already working there helps. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Twilight
(Arbelos)
Hungarian director György Fehér, an associate of Béla Tarr—whose use of slow tracking shots and stark B&W camerawork became ubiquitous in his films—made his debut in 1990 with this strikingly composed procedural. Although he only made one more film (Passion, a fiery if convoluted 1998 adaptation of The Postman Always Rings Twice) before his death in 2003 at age 63, the accomplished Fehér has made a resonant exploration of a detective who investigates horrific child murders. Instead of Tarr’s existential dread, Fehér zeroes in on society’s alienation; there are several extraordinary sequences—shot by master cinematographer Miklós Gurbán, who also did the grading of this brand-new, beautifully restored hi-def transfer—including very unsettling close-up “interviews” with two young girls. Extras include interviews with Gurbán and film editor Mária Czielik, along with two early Fehér shorts: 1969’s Öregek and 1970’s Tomikám.

Tchaikovsky—None But the Lonely Heart 
(Naxos)
The music of Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky is inherently theatrical—witness his operas and ballets that are centerpieces of the modern stage repertoire—but his songs are less well-known; but even resourceful director Christof Roy comes to grief trying to stitch together several of the master’s songs and a few chamber pieces into a workable narrative. In this 2021 staging in Frankfurt, Germany, the music is lovely, the singing (especially by soprano Olesya Golovneva and mezzo Kelsey Lauritano) is gorgeous, but it comes off as a stylized recital, the performers moving robotically onstage while two pianists alternate in their accompaniment. It’s certainly nice to hear, but not so much to see. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

Wagner—Das Rheingold 
(Naxos)
The first opera of Richard Wagner’s epic Ring cycle is also by far the shortest: he himself refers to it as a “prelude,” a 2-1/2-hour set-up of the story to come in the next three mammoth-length music dramas. In this 2021 Berlin Opera staging by director Stefan Herheim, the setting is modernly nondescript, which to my eyes loses some of the grandeur of a timeless conflict among gods and humans. But the music making by the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin conducted by Donald Runnicles is first-rate and the singing by a hugely capable cast is led by Derek Welton’s Wotan, the supreme god, and Markus Brück as the dwarf Alberich, whose curse fatally haunts the rest of the tetralogy. There’s excellent hi-def video and audio.

4K/UHD Release of the Week 
Contagion 
(Warner Bros)
Steven Soderbergh’s nail-biting 2011 suspense drama, which realistically paints a horrifying glimpse at the outbreak of an unknown disease that engulfs much of the planet, has only grown in stature since the COVID-19 pandemic. In a series of plausibly shot, edited and acted sequences, the movie scarily shows how our globally connected 21st-century world looks like when it’s affected in such a monstrous way. A superb ensemble cast, from Matt Damon and Kate Winslet to Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ehle, make this a most entertaining but truly frightening film as well as an uncanny predictor in its final scenes. On UHD, Soderbergh’s stark, documentary-like style has brilliantly preserved; the extras comprise archival featurettes about the film and the science behind it, including interviews with cast, crew and experts.

CD Release of the Week
Neave Trio—A Room of Her Own 
(Chandos)
This superlative disc comprises piano trios by four important women composers of the late 19th and early 20th century—Ethel Smyth from England and three Frenchwomen, Lili Boulanger, Cécile Chaminade and Germaine Tailleferre—and although all were written when they were in their 20s, the moods are vastly different, from the strikingly dramatic Deux pièces of Boulanger (she would die within a year of completing the work) to the attractively lyrical Chaminade trio. But for my money, it’s the Smyth trio (clocking in at 31 minutes) that’s the most substantial work, both in its length and artistry. All four works have been given lovely and restrained performances by the always compelling Neave Trio.

Monday, February 26, 2024

Off-Broadway Play Review—Kate Douglas’ “The Apiary”

The Apiary
Written by Kate Douglas; directed by Kate Whoriskey
Performances through March 3, 2024
Second Stage Theater, 305 West 43rd Street, New York, NY
2st.com

Taylor Schilling and Nimene Wureh in The Apiary (photo: Joan Marcus)

The Apiary, Kate Douglas’ clever speculative sci-fi/horror hybrid, takes place 22 years in the future, in an underfunded research lab, where three women—supervisor Gwen and her employees Zora and Pilar—are trying to figure out, despite neglect from the higher-ups, why bees have been dying almost to extinction and whether it can be stopped. They discover how accidentally after a former employee, CeCe, succumbs to cancer while in the lab and they realize the bees have ingested her flesh, enabling them to start reproducing normally again.

With the hard-nosed Gwen (an impressively brittle Taylor Schilling) out of the loop, brainy Zora (a stellar April Matthis) and emotional Pilar (the excellent Carmen M. Herlihy) surreptitiously experiment late at night and on weekends, bringing in people with terminal illnesses who want to further the cause of science by allowing their bodies to be used as fertilizer for the bees. But their experiment is almost too successful, leading to greater visibility, publicity and, soon, adequate funding for the apiary. But can they keep up the pace of supplying human bodies so the bees will continue to multiply?

Despite its offbeat, Twilight Zone-like plot, Douglas smartly keeps The Apiary small-scale. It opens with an evocative monologue about the magical quality of bees that’s spoken by CeCe (persuasively played by the chameleonic Nimene Wureh, who also pops up as some of the experiment’s subjects). Director Kate Whoriskey’s savvy staging comprises Walt Spengler’s striking set, Amith Chandrashaker’s resourceful lighting and Christopher Darbassie’s canny sound design. But Whoriskey misguidedly adds a dancer who appears periodically, wearing a gas mask, her lithe movements representing the bees…or something.  

These unfortunate stylized interludes have the effect of breaking the play’s often hypnotic spell, which is too bad, because Douglas’ stinging dialogue more effectively complements the bizarre but realistic world she has created.

Monday, February 19, 2024

Broadway Musical Review—Kelli O’Hara in “Days of Wine and Roses”

Days of Wine and Roses 
Book by Craig Lucas; music and lyrics by Adam Guettel
Directed by Michael Greif; choreographed by Sergio Trujillo and Karla Puno Garcia
Performances through April 28, 2024
Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, NYC
daysofwineandrosebroadway.com

Brian d'Arcy James and Kelli O'Hara in Days of Wine and Roses (photo: Joan Marcus)

Based on the 1962 Blake Edwards film starring Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick, the musical version of Days of Wines and Roses hews fairly closely to the script by JP Miller (itself based on Miller’s 1958 teleplay), exploring the relationship between go-getter ad exec Joe Clay and the boss’s attractive secretary Kirsten Arnesen, which begins when he charms her into having her first drink (she dislikes the taste of liquor but loves chocolate, so he orders her a Brandy Alexander—and she’s hooked). They are soon married, but Joe’s excessive drinking while keeping up appearances with his clients and superiors kills his work ethic and gets him fired.

Meanwhile, once Kirsten discovers a taste for liquor, she becomes an even worse alcoholic than Joe. He is able to clean up his act but can’t convince his wife to do so—she soon leaves Joe and their daughter Lila to sleep with strangers she picks up to fuel her drinking habit. It’s certainly not an original story, but Days of Wines and Roses works effectively, even touchingly, because Joe and Kirsten are an ordinary couple whose relationship is destroyed by addiction. 

While I doubt anyone was begging for a stage musical of Roses, it does have a quiet power. Craig Lucas’ book distills the essence of Joe and Kirsten’s descent into darkness in a series of fleet scenes, even if it lays on the water imagery too thickly, apparently to show that these lives are awash in liquid. Adam Guettel’s music (his lyrics are mostly commonplace, sadly) often excitingly adapts the musical idioms of the ’50s and ’60s setting, the jazzy and bluesy chromaticism underscoring the initial ecstasy and culminating agony of the couple’s long and winding journey.

Most tantalizing is how the song interludes are used. Aside from Lila briefly joining in near the end, only Joe and Kirsten sing, and only occasionally in a duet; it’s usually one or the other. It’s an interesting way to separate the couple from those around them, even close to them (like Kirsten’s skeptical elderly father or Joe’s frustrated Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor), underlining their walled-off world of pain and addiction. The subtly imaginative choreography by Sergio Trujillo and Karla Puno Garcia visualizes both their togetherness and separation.

Michael Greif’s exemplary staging keeps its focus on the couple even as it sketches the surrounding, and vibrant, New York milieu. (Miller’s teleplay and movie script were set in San Francisco.) Especially helpful in this regard are Ben Stanton’s illuminating lighting, Dede Ayite’s on-target costumes, Lizzie Clachan’s expressive sets and Kai Harada’s clever sound design. 

Of course, nothing would work without powerhouse performers at its center. Brian d’Arcy James’ natural charm, likability and stellar singing gain sympathy for Joe even when he’s selfishly sending his wife to her ruin. And, as Kirsten, Kelli O’Hara is again spectacular, another indelible portrait of a woman damaged by the man and the circumstances around her in a career filled with such characters. (See The Light in the Piazza, Far from Heaven and The Bridges of Madison County, for starters.) O’Hara’s exquisite vocals are nearly unmatched at harnessing pure emotion from a single note, and she and her scene partner together become a singular, memorable vision.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

February '24 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 
American Fiction 
(MGM)
Writer-director Cord Jefferson’s often savagely funny satire of how deeply racism is embedded in the American psyche, based on Percival Everett’s 2001 novel, Erasure, explores the many ramifications of frustrated author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison’s transparent attempt to write a banal novel that white publishers and audiences will lap up as “authentically Black”—and is disgusted when it becomes a major phenomenon. The film also tenderly chronicles Monk’s dysfunctional family, and these scenes, playing off the sardonic episodes, provide its heft. The magisterial acting comprises Jeffrey Wright’s towering portrayal of Ellison, Sterling K. Brown’s wounded brother Cliff and a fabulous female quartet: Tracee Ellis Ross (Monk’s sister Lisa), Issa Rae (successful author Sintara Golden), Erika Alexander (Monk’s love interest Coralie) and the ageless Leslie Uggams (the family matriarch Agnes).

Ennio 
(Film Forum/Music Box)
Ennio Morricone, the great Italian film composer, is the subject of Giuseppe Tornatore’s loving 2-1/2 hour glimpse at the incredible career of a musical artist who worked with many different directors—including Sergio Leone, Marco Bellocchio,  Bernardo Bertolucci, Roland Joffe and Tornatore himself, for whom Morricone composed the score of the international breakthrough, Cinema Paradiso—and in many different styles, from conservative to postmodern; it’s exhilarating to simply watch Morricone discuss his music so casually and so charmingly. Of course, Ennio is also crammed with paeans from adoring colleagues and admirers, including Bellocchio, Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Pat Metheny, Hans Zimmer and even Bruce Springsteen.

My Sole Desire 
(Omnibus)
In director-cowriter Lucie Borleteau’s intriguingly off-kilter character study, Manon, a young woman, starts performing at a Parisian strip club under a new name: Aurora. While working there, she becomes very close to Mia, one of the place’s star attractions, and finds herself falling in love, confusing the issue for herself, Mia and Mia’s boyfriend. Borleateau paints a dramatically effective portrait of the grimy milieu in which these people interact, making it much more than a spectacle of the flesh—although it succeeds at that too. In the leads, both Louise Chevillotte (Manon/Aurora) and Zita Hanrot (Mia) given complexly layered performances. 

Perfect Days
 
(Neon)
Nominated for best international film at this year’s Oscars, Wim Wenders’ sensitively directed feature follows Hirayama, a Tokyo public-bathroom cleaner, in his quotidian activities and daily interactions whether his usual routines or occurrences that shake him out of his comfort zone. It may seem prosaic, but Wenders has made one of his best and most persuasively understated character studies, centered by Kôji Yakusho’s exquisitely low-key portrayal of Hirayama, who has a slightly bemused look on his face no matter how absurd or offbeat things become.

The Taste of Things 
(IFC Films)
Culinary eroticism—a better euphemism than food porn—is at the heart of Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung’s film, set in 1885 at a rural French chateau, that explores the relationship of a wealthy epicure, Dodin, and his beloved cook for two decades, Eugénie. Hung—who won best director at last year’s Cannes Film Festival—and his expert cinematographer, Jonathan Ricquebourg, linger over Eugénie or Dodin making meals, ther camera roving about the kitchen trying to catch every detail…and the viewer can almost savor the aromas. As Eugénie and Dodin, Juliette Binoche and Benoît Magimel are beautifully restrained; they may not create conventional sparks but that doesn’t mean there’s a lack of chemistry. Rather, the joy in their lives comes from subtle moments like culinary creations and not overt emotion. The same could be said of the movie itself, whose subtext is largely “food is love,” which isn’t very illuminating. But a marvelous ending links past and present satisfyingly, as Eugénie finally gets the final word.

Blu-ray Release of the Week
A Creature Was Stirring 
(Well Go USA)
In this bizarre but surprisingly dull horror flick, Chrissy Metz (This Is Us) plays Faith, a nurse who keeps her daughter (named Charm, of course) uncomfortably numbed by methadone—soon they both find themselves battling, first, a few dumb intruders and, later, an lethal entity that is both figurative and literal. First-time feature director Damien LeVeck tries to make this into something quiet and subtle early on, but Shannon Wells’ flimsy script doesn’t help out, so the geysers of blood and monster appearances pop up at regular intervals to try and save face. The elaborate effects and creature design by master Tate Steinsiek help overcome the undercooked addiction theme. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer.

DVD Releases of the Week 
Magnum P.I.—Complete 5th Season
Magnum P.I.—Complete Series 
(CBS/Paramount)
The final season of this breezy reboot of another beloved TV series consists of 20 episodes that highlight the entertaining interplay of actors Jay Hernandez and Perdita Weeks, whose portrayals of the investigators (and couple) Thomas Magnum and Juliet Higgins make these familiar tales of crime-solving in visually stunning Hawaiian locales pleasurable. Extras on the five-disc set are deleted scenes. The complete series set, which comprises 24 discs holding all of the five seasons’ 96 episodes, includes more than two hours of special features, including on-set featurettes, a Hawaii Five-O crossover episode, deleted/extended scenes and gag reels.

CD Release of the Week
César Franck—Les Béatitudes
(Fuga Libera)
French composer César Franck (1822-90) is best known for his innovative Symphony in F Minor and a pair of lovely chamber works, the A-major Violin Sonata and F-minor Piano Quintet. But this remarkable oratorio (which took Franck a decade to write, between 1869 and 1879, and which he only heard in a reduced version before his death), nearly two hours and composed for a huge array of instrumental and vocal forces, might even eclipse those masterpieces as his greatest work. (And I say this as someone unfamiliar with it until now.) The sheer beauty and majesty of the music even surpasses what one would expect from such a thrilling religious vocal work, particularly in this monumental performance by the Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liège, led by conductor Gergely Madaras, the Hungarian National Choir and a superlative group of eight vocal soloists. 

Thursday, February 8, 2024

Broadway Play Review—Joshua Harmon’s “Prayer for the French Republic”

Prayer for the French Republic
Written by Joshua Harmon
Directed by David Cromer
Through March 3, 2024
Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY
manhattantheatreclub.com

The cast of Prayer for the French Republic (photo: Jeremy Daniel)

Joshua Harmon’s earlier plays spotlighted his strengths and weaknesses. The bluntly titled Bad Jews alternated between hilariously devastating takedowns and being strident and redundant, with characters that exist merely to show off his cleverness. He followed that with Significant Other, a dark comedy also crammed with riotously funny dialogue alongside crass and snide moments, that at least carried an emotional weight that the sour Bad Jews lacked.  

Harmon’s new play, Prayer for the French Republic, is both more ambitious than and an extension of these works. At his best, Harmon chronicles relationships in constant flux, usually through amusing conversations that lay bare their fraying bonds. In Prayer, the Salomon family precariously lives through two eras of intense anti-Semitism in France: the years 1944-46 and 2016-17. 

The family’s patriarch and matriarch, Adolphe and Irma, fearfully live in their Parisian flat during World War II.  Their daughter Jacqueline and her family fled to Cuba before the war began. But both sons, Robert and Lucien, and their families were arrested and taken away to a concentration camp. Only Lucien has returned, his teenage son Pierre in tow. The older couple, with Adolphe the proud proprietor of the family’s long-running piano store, starts rebuilding their shattered postwar lives as Lucien and Pierre try to come to terms with what they lived through.

Seven decades later, Pierre’s children, son Patrick and daughter Marcelle, have their own families in Paris. Patrick—the play’s cynical narrator—is at arm’s length from his sister, her husband Charles, and adult children, son Daniel and daughter Elodie. Molly, a distant American cousin from New York, arrives to stay awhile (she’s attending college a couple hours away and spends every weekend at their apartment), and her appearance coincides with ominous occurrences like when Daniel is attacked while simply walking on the street. A bemused Marcelle can't believe he won’t wear a baseball cap over his yarmulke so passersby won’t notice he’s Jewish, while Charles—a Sephardic Jew from Algeria—is starting to think the family should move to the Holy Land because it’s too dangerous in supposedly civilized France.

Charles lays bare his feelings to his wife in the play’s most emotionally powerful monologue:

I’m scared, Marcelle. You lay everything out, you lay it out so rationally, and I hear every word you’re saying, but I’m scared. We are Jews. We are Jews. The only reason we're still on this planet is because we learned to get out of dangerous situations before they got the better of us. Something is happening in the world, and it’s happening in our country, too—I can feel it. I feel it when I walk with Daniel, I feel it when I read the left-wing editorials, I feel it watching Le Pen and her base, all stirred up. Something is happening, and when that thing comes, I don’t want to have to pray so my own country will protect me from it.

For more than three hours, Harmon juxtaposes scenes of the Salomons 70 years apart, and although some are wry or incisive, the overall arc of the play remains shapeless, with no dramatic climax or revelation. The closest Harmon comes is the late arrival of the elderly Pierre, who is told his beloved daughter’s family is leaving France for good, but the scene is sadly more perfunctory than profound, as is the final image of several generations of the Salomons gathered around the piano at center stage to sing the French national anthem.

Sprinkled throughout are clumsy, clunky passages that feel like outtakes from his earlier plays. When the cousins begin falling for each other, Daniel flirts with Molly: “You want me to take my shirt off and play some Bob Dylan?” Later, after Molly tells him how sexy it is that she has a French boyfriend in Paris, we actually get such a scene, as a shirtless Daniel strums his guitar and sings “Forever Young” to her as if we’ve suddenly been dropped into a rom-com.

The ’40s scenes cover familiar ground for anyone who’s seen movies, plays or TV series about the Holocaust, but the scenes set in our racist present are more compelling, if only because the friction between the curt Patrick and accomplished Marcelle underlines this dramatization of assimilated Jews realizing that all that’s been accomplished since Hitler’s defeat and the creation of Israel is starting to be erased by the casual antisemitism and hatred that has surged as autocrats (and would-be dictators) have risen to power.

David Cromer’s direction adroitly smooths over the ragged edges of Harmon’s less than felicitous writing; Takeshi Kata’s evocative set, Amith Chandrashaker’s astute lighting, Sarah Laux’s spot-on costumes and Daniel Kluger’s excellent music and sound design give the play all the trappings of a masterpiece without actually being one.

The acting is, with one exception, superb, led by Betsy Aidem’s magisterial Marcelle, Nancy Robinette’s devastatingly wounded Irma, Richard Masur’s quietly shattering cameo as the old Pierre and Francis Benhamou’s sardonic Elodie—the latter even excelling in a hamfisted bar scene where Elodie destroys Molly’s oblivious liberal jargon about supporting Israel. Benhamou makes the clichés her character spouts sound truly organic, a real accomplishment.

Only an uncomfortable Anthony Edwards as our guide Patrick (a showy role that’s not particularly illuminating) falls short. In that he’s similar to Harmon himself, who aims high but often misses. 

Friday, February 2, 2024

Musical Review—“Once Upon a Mattress” at Encores With Sutton Foster

Once Upon a Mattress
Music by Mary Rodgers, lyrics by Marshall Barer
Book by Jay Thompson, Dean Fuller, and Marshall Barer
Directed by Lear deBessonet; choreography by Lorin Latarro
Performances January 24-February 4, 2024
New York City Center, 131 West 55th Street, NYC
nycitycenter.org

Sutton Foster and cast in Once Upon a Mattress (photo: Joan Marcus)

Occasionally role and performer combine for a happy marriage. The musical Once Upon a Mattress, based on Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Princess and the Pea, is one example. When the show opened on Broadway in 1959, Carol Burnett played Princess Winnifred, the last hope for a kingdom desperately needing a new bride for Prince Dauntless because all other marriages will be able to take place. By all accounts, Burnett’s unique and physical style was perfect for this slightly silly crowd-pleaser whose tuneful songs by Mary Rodgers covered up for the uneven lyrics and book.

Fast-forward 65 years to Sutton Foster headlining a two-week Encores run at City Center. Since it’s been adapted and updated by Amy Sherman-Palladino (with whom Foster worked on the TV series Bunheads) so there are a few topical references and fewer goofy characters running around. But it all hinges on Foster, and she proves herself as physically adept—in different but equally agile ways—as Burnett. 

Of course, Foster’s vocal pipes and comedic facility have never been questioned, and she acquits herself magnificently in her big musical numbers, “The Swamps of Home” and “Happily Ever After,” and she can rat-a-tat the rush of quips and one liners as well as anyone. But it’s her physical prowess throughout that’s simply astonishing. 

From the moment she crawls over the castle wall to make her initial entrance through her bounding around the stage during “Shy” and the first-act closer “Song of Love” to, even more impressively at the end, displaying incredibly precise movements while trying futilely to fall asleep, showing herself as a gymnast nearly on par with Simon Biles, Foster's performance is extraordinary. That she does occasional Carol Burnett-like mannerisms is a bit excessive, but who cares? (Skylar Fox is credited with “Physical Comedy & Effects,” so he may deserve plaudits as well.)

Director Lear deBessonet and choreographer Lorin Latarro shrewdly don’t foreground Foster; for all her talent and stamina, the Broadway superstar fits easily into the harmonious musical-comedy ensemble that includes such premium hams as Harriet Harris, Michael Urie, David Patrick Kelly and Cheyenne Jackson. Meanwhile, Nikki Renée Daniels sounds as ravishing as she looks, while J. Harrison Ghee—the breakthrough star of last season’s Some Like It Hot—consolidates his singing, dancing and comic talents in the expanded role of the Jester.

Yet, even as the Encores Orchestra sounds sumptuous under Mary-Mitchell Campbell’s musical direction and David Zinn’s amusing sets and Andrea Hood’s colorful costumes make it a visual treasure, this is Sutton Foster’s show all the way. Which brings up the question: will this Mattress transfer to Broadway after Foster is finished with Sweeney Todd?

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

January '24 Digital Week IV

In-Theater Releases of the Week 
The Zone of Interest 
(A24)
Jonathan Glazer’s loose adaptation of a Martin Amis novel looks at the banality of evil through the family of Auschwitz Commandant Hoss, who lives next door to the death camp with his wife Hedwig and their five children, including a toddler. They go about their daily lives, hosting parties, the kids going to school, the parents planning their postwar future, all while he works as a large cog in the murderous machine that was the Holocaust. Though brilliantly executed, the film comes off as a stunt that doesn’t do much more than repeat sequences where what is going on in their lives and in their world goes unmentioned for 105 minutes. There’s extraordinarily effective sound design and Glazer allows himself flourishes like a local girl hiding food at night where the camp workers will be sure to find it the next day, shot in stark B&W; but the ending, in which modern-day custodians at the Auschwitz museum are seen going about their daily work while Hoss retches in an empty Nazi office building, is a meretricious copout. 

The Peasants 
(Sony Pictures Classics)
Filmed using the same astonishing hand-painted technique as the 2017 feature Loving Vincent—also made by the duo responsible for that earlier success, DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman—this picturesque journey through four seasons in a small Polish village, centered around a beautiful free spirit, Magda, who loves a married farmer but agrees to marry his widowed elderly father. What ensues is alternately sorrowful and affecting, horrible and hopeful. It’s old-fashioned in its storytelling—the original novel, by Polish author Władysław Reymont, won the Nobel prize for Literature—but the dazzling colors embedded in the strikingly rendered animation make this breathtaking to watch.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 
Samson et Dalila 
(Opus Arte)
French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’ most successful opera, a musically poetic retelling of the Biblical story of the Jewish strongman Samson extracting revenge on his lover Dalila and the Philistines, is given an intelligent 2022 reading at London’s Royal Opera House. Well staged by director Richard Jonees, the opera showcases two monumental performances: South Korean tenor Seokjong Baek as Samson and Latvian superstar mezzo Elīna Garanča as Delilah, particularly in her ravishing second-act arias. There are short extras of conductor Claudio Pappano discussing the opera, and the hi-def video and audio are first-rate.

The Sea Shall Not Have Them/Albert, RN 
(Cohen Film Collection)
This pair of World War II dramas, crisply directed by Lewis Gilbert (who would later go on to direct three James Bond features), is so obscure that even Leonard Maltin’s comprehensive movie guide doesn’t include them. 1954’s The Sea Shall Not Have Them follows the difficult days after a crew of British airmen are shot down, adrift in the North Sea. And 1953’s Albert, RN is set in a POW camp where British and American naval officers try and escape. Both pictures, which feature typically tuneful scores by the great British composer Malcolm Arnold, look quite good in new hi-def transfers.

Silent Night 
(Lionsgate)
Veteran director John Woo is at his best in long, choreographed action sequences, and his latest feature has that in spades as he follows a grieving father who goes to war against gang members who killed his son in a drive-by shooting. We watch him training, stalking, finally attacking, and Woo follows suit, heightening the tension until it’s ready to explode—it’s too bad that he loses it at the end with a ridiculous ending in which our hero acts stupidly confronting his final adversary and fatally hesitates. Still, the 100 minutes move quickly, and Joel Kinnaman plays the silent—hence the title—man on a mission with an impressive singlemindedness. Unfortunately, as his sorrowful wife, Catalina Sandino Moreno is wasted. The film looks superb on Blu; lone extra is a making-of featurette. 

Wolf Pack 
(Well Go USA)
In this action-heavy adventure, a paramilitary-trained physician (!) looking to uncover the truth behind his father’s suspicious killing joins a group of mercenaries that discovers a vast conspiracy that could threaten the lives of millions of innocent civilians. It’s not the most original tale, but writer-director Michael Chang has dialed up the fighting sequences to 11, and many fans of this genre of filmmaking will surely overlook everything else: the routine plotting, acting and characterizations. There’s an excellent Blu-ray transfer.

DVD Releases of the Week 
Billions—Complete 6th Season
Billions—Complete Series 
(Showtime/Paramount)
Obviously season five sans Axe was subpar by Billions standards, so for the series’ final season look who’s back: in an effort to stop the Trump-like Prince from succeeding in his shady campaign to become U.S. president, the unlikely team of D.A. Chuck Rhoades and his former enemy Axe becomes an actual thing. While it doesn’t reach the delirious heights of earlier seasons—indeed, it comes off as even more contrived than anything else in the show’s checkered history—there’s fun to be had as Prince tries to ward off Chuck, Wendy, Axe and all the rest. The acting by Paul Giamatti, Maggie Siff, Asia Kate Dillon, David Constabile, Condola Rashad, Corey Stoll and Damien Lewis is much better than last season’s phone-in performances. Extras are two featurettes. 

The complete boxed set of all six seasons of Billions gives the show’s fans much more bang for their buck, with all 84 episodes included on 28 discs. Also featured are more than an hour’s worth of extras that encompass several making-of and behind-the-scenes featurettes.

CD Release of the Week
Bridget Kibbey—Crossing the Ocean 
(Pentatone)
Harp virtuoso Bridget Kibbey, who has already demonstrated her bona fides in much of the 19th- and 20th-century repertoire for her instrument, on this new disc performs works by contemporary composers whom she has commissioned. The result is as beguiling and affecting as anything she’s ever done, and she again shows why she is second to none in these new pieces for solo harp. There are six composers from six countries, including David Bruce, Kati Agócs, Kinan Azmeh, and Paquito d’Rivera, who have written varied works that showcase her astonishing technique, with a bonus on the lovely set of Three Butterfly Songs by Avner Dorman: the still formidable soprano Dawn Upshaw. But make no mistake: this is Kibbey’s show, and she is the star, especially on Du Yun’s poignant closer, The Ocean Within. Kibbey will show off her prowess in local concerts at Lincoln Center on February 10, Weill Recital Hall/Carnegie Hall on February 21, and Bridgehampton, Long Island, on Apri1 13.