Concert Review—Suzanne Vega at Queens College

Suzanne Vega

Kupferberg Center for the Arts, Queens College, Flushing, Queens

September 27, 2004

suzannevega.com

Suzanne Vega at Queens College

When I first saw Suzanne Vega, on the 1987 Solitude Standing tour at Massey Hall in Toronto, I was struck not only by her pinpoint songs, which tell personal stories in a fresh and direct way with that crystalline conversational voice, but also by her natural stage presence and amusingly deadpan anecdotes, which were as illuminating as those sharply cutting songs.

That dual ability was still on display at Queens College’s Lefrak Concert Hall—the first time, the longtime Manhattan resident said, she’s ever played a concert in Queens, a borough she remembered as the destination for holiday visits to her aunt’s place in Jamaica—for a stop on Vega’s latest tour, titled Old Songs, New Songs and Other Songs. 

Although those of us who’ve seen Vega many times (this was my ninth time, in nine different venues in New York State and Canada—plus the two times I saw her perform off-Broadway, in Carson McCullers Talks About Love and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice) have heard these stories before, she always makes them sound fresh and new, even when recounting for the umpteenth time the genesis of her lovely paean to young love, “Gypsy.”

Unsurprisingly, her durable “Old Songs” were the primary focus, right from the opening “Marlene on the Wall,” from her eponymous debut album and one of Vega’s signature tunes; Vega donned a top hat as she sang, in a tip of the hat to Marlene Dietrich. Next up were the bouncy title track from her 99.9 F° album and the somber ballad “Caramel.” Throughout the evening, as Vega alternated between playing acoustic guitar and simply singing, her longtime musical collaborator Gerry Leonard contributed both atmospheric and stinging lead guitar lines.

Gerry Leonard (left) and Vega

The rest of the show mixed songs from her debut (“Small Blue Thing,” “The Queen and the Soldier,” “Some Journey”), her two hits (“Luka” and “Tom’s Diner,” forever ruined by the NDA remix, like Clapton turning “Layla” into a comatose ballad) and a handful of songs from the ‘90s, 2000s and 2010s (“In Liverpool,” “Tombstone” and the haunting final encore “Rosemary”). 

Among the “Other Songs” was Vega’s surprisingly faithful cover of Lou Reed’s downtown classic, “Walk on the Wild Side,” which she has been performing live on several tours. The “New Songs” comprised two tunes, so new that Vega sang them reading from lyric sheets: the nicely observational “Speaker’s Corner,” which tackled free speech; and the sardonic but crudely metaphorical “Rats,” about rodents overwhelming New York City.

Among the many gems in Vega’s set, standing out was “Penitent,” from her criminally overlooked 2001 album Songs in Red and Gray, which had the misfortune of being released a couple weeks after the September 11 terrorist attacks. One of her most beautiful but heartbreaking songs about a broken relationship, it was performed with the mournful passion that is Vega at her most compelling. 

October '24 Digital Week I

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Lee 

(Roadside Attractions/Vertical)

Kate Winslet gives her usual fierce performance in this conventional biopic of Lee Miller, an American free spirit who made her name in Europe and became one of the most important WWII correspondents/photographers. Director Ellen Kuras, best known for her gritty cinematography in films by Spike Lee and Sam Mendes, brings a weary verisimilitude to the horrors Miller witnessed and recorded, including the first glimpses of the Nazi death camps. Winslet is unafraid to bare herself—histrionically and physically—and there’s excellent support by Alexander Skarsgård, Marion Cotillard, Noémie Merlant, Andrea Riseborough and Josh O’Connor, who plays Miller’s adult son in a not entirely successful subversion of the standard biopic interview arc. Too bad Andy Samberg, as a fellow war photographer, is merely adequate.

Daaaaaalí! 

(Music Box Films)

French director Quentin Dupieux is a one-man wrecking crew, writing, directing, photographing and editing his parodic films but also running his flimsy ideas into the ground relentlessly so that, even though they’re short (this one clocks in at 77 minutes), his films feel stretched beyond endurance. His latest, a fake biopic about the Spanish surrealist painter, has a germ of an idea—a young Frenchwoman tries to get Dalí to participate in a documentary about his life, but everything goes wrong—but does nothing with it. Dupieux’s desperate attempts at cleverness—Dalí is played by five different actors, none of whom makes an impression; and there’s brazen thievery galore from Dalí’s occasional cinematic collaborator, Luis Bunuel—add up to little. Holding it together is Anaïs Demoustier, whose natural likability keeps a modicum of interest, but even she (in her fourth Dupieux appearance) can’t conjure laughs where they are none.

Streaming Release of the Week 

Mother Nocturna 

(Buffalo 8)

In Daniele Campea’s portentous psychological drama, wolf biologist Agnese has been recently discharged from a mental hospital, which has not retarded the progress of her transformation, both physically and mentally, due to the moon’s pull on her. Needless to say, her husband Riccardo and their daughter Arianna are worried about what’s happening to Agnese and have to deal with their own emotional difficulties. Campea writes and directs with more bluntness than finesse, his dark visuals and dream/nightmare sequences only occasionally giving the material a coherent dramatic shape. It’s up to the actors to provide the heavy lifting, and Susanna Costaglione (Agnese), Edoardo Oliva (Riccardo) and especially Sofia Ponente (Arianna) do their considerable best to make this self-serious drama less risible than it would otherwise have been.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Despicable Me 4 

(Universal)

One of Dreamworks’ biggest hits, the latest entry in the Despicable Me franchise balances those irritating minions with the amusing adventures of a family whose ex-supervillain father, Gru, is trying to go straight. Director Chris Renaud finds the requisite humor in the situation that will simultaneously appeal to the kids and their parents equally. The visuals are vibrant, the voice cast is often hilarious (although Steve Carell is too hammy as Gru), and the laughs and sappiness coexist happily. The UHD transfer looks sumptuous; extras include two new mini-movies (Game Over and Over, Benny’s Birthday), deleted scenes and making-of featurettes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

The Creature 

(Severin)

A pair of ’70s Spanish features, which are crude if effective examples of filmmaking under Franco as well as just after his dictatorship was toppled in 1976, feature canines in lead roles as potent symbols of Franco’s inhumane regime that considered its enemies no better than wild animals.  Director Eloy de la Iglesia’s unsettling 1977 drama focuses on a couple who adopt a stray dog after the wife miscarries; soon she shows an unhealthily close attachment to it, which her conservative husband discovers may have included unusual intimacy. De la Iglesia milks this creepy plot device for all that it’s worth—including as a metaphor for Franco’s Spain—and actress Ana Belén persuasively plays the besotted wife. The film has a superbly grainy transfer; extras comprise an interview with assistant director Alejo Loren as well as an intro by and interview with French director Gaspar Noé, who’s a big fan.

A Dog Called Vengeance 

(Severin)

Director Antonio Isasi’s post-Franco 1977 revenge flick follows Ungria, an escaped political prisoner who is relentlessly pursued by the title canine after Ungria kills his master in self-defense. Isasi follows the fugitive’s fate as relentlessly as the dog does, and the climax is a showdown between wronged man and vengeful beast. As the unfortunate Ungria, Jason Miller provides the necessary gravitas, while the great Italian actress Lea Massari is equally good as Muriel, a willing stranger who helps Ungria whether in or out of bed. The film looks impressive on Blu-ray; extras comprise an interviews with actress Marisa Paredes (who was married to Isasi) and Maria Isasi, daughter of the director and Paredes. 

CD Releases of the Week 

Antonín Dvořák—Symphonies 6-9; Works by Smetana and Janáček 

(LSO Live)

This four-disc collection—celebrating the 25th anniversary of the London Symphony Orchestra’s label, LSO Live—brings together the seminal recordings Sir Colin Davis made between 1999 and 2005 with the LSO of the final four symphonies of Czech master Antonín Dvořák, culminating with his masterpiece, No. 9, the New World Symphony. A terrific version of Dvořák’s contemporary Bedřich Smetana’s monumental Má Vlast rounds out the stellar contributions by Davis and the LSO; also included is a wonderful 2018 recording brass-heavy Sinfonietta by another Czech composer, the great Leoš Janáček, by Sir Simon Rattle and the LSO.

Vagn Holmboe—String Quartets Vol. 3 

(Dacapo)

Vagn Holmboe (1909-96) did not reach the storied heights of his compatriot Carl Nielsen as Denmark’s preeminent composer, but he still accumulated a solid, very impressive body of work. His 13 symphonies are a formidable accomplishment in their own right, and his 17 string quartets encompass a terrain as wide as the 15 quartets for which another contemporary, Dmitri Shostakovich, is justly celebrated. In the third volume of its journey through Holmboe’s quartets, the Nightingale String Quartet performs two of his middle-period quartets (No. 4, from 1953-54, and No. 5, from 1955) alongside his penultimate quartet (No. 16, from 1981). Holmboe’s musical language is often pared down to the essentials in these works; as the Nightingale members demonstrate, these quartets never lack intensity or intimacy.

September '24 Digital Week III

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

The Substance 

(Mubi)

Although French writer-director Coralie Fargeat’s body-horror feature is simply ludicrous, it does have a few scenes that will stay with you, whether you want them to or not—but for the most part, this tale of an aging Hollywood beauty queen who takes an elixir in a desperate attempt to remain young and attractive is too pleased with its one-note plot device to be anything more than a demented little satire that glories in its constant sprays of vomit and, especially, blood, especially in a witless finale (comprising several fake endings) that’s a cross between The Elephant Man and Carrie, of all things. Elsewhere, Fargeat genuflects at the altar of Kubrick, with countless visual allusions to (or ripoffs of) The Shining and an aural one to 2001, but they only show up Fargeat as a poseur. Much has been made of Demi Moore’s performance as the wannabe ageless Elisabeth Sparkle—she’s not bad, but the makeup and visual effects outact her. Much better is Margaret Whalley, who brings true sparkle to the role of Elisabeth’s younger self, Sue. Too bad both women are at the mercy of a filmmaker who never knows when to say enough, let alone cut. (Then there’s the ridiculously hammy Dennis Quaid, who seems to have been directed by Fargeat with a taser.) If you’re in the mood for a 140-minute directorial sledgehammer, then your mileage may vary. 

A Mistake 

(Quiver Distribution)

In what’s easily her best screen performance, Elizabeth Banks plays a successful surgeon who must own up to an error made under her watch during what should have been a routine operation that goes wrong. Writer-director Christine Jeffs starts out by creating a methodical, pinpoint drama that mirrors her heroine’s personality and lifestyle, but soon goes off the dramatic rails with contrived occurrences (one involving her girlfriend’s dog and the other the young resident who made the mistake while under pressure) that prevents the film from becoming an illuminating character study, despite Banks’ intense portrayal.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 

Black Sabbath—The End 

(Mercury Studios)

The final Black Sabbath show—before a delirious hometown crowd in Birmingham, England, in 2017—is everything fans could ask for: the goodbye of the most influential originators of heavy metal in a 100-minute concert crammed with their most famous (and infamous) songs, from the opening darkness of “Black Sabbath” to the closing chug of “Paranoid.” Ozzy Osbourne is in surprisingly good vocal form, considering he has been pretty much unable to sing live since, riffmaster Tony Iommi churns out memorable blasts from his guitar and Geezer Butler’s bass playing is as propulsive as ever. Fill-in drummer Tommy Clufetos, much younger than the core trio, keeps the beat relentlessly. The hi-def video and audio are stupendous; lone extra is in-studio footage of the band creating a final handful of songs in The Angelic Sessions.

The Long Good Friday 

(Criterion)

In his first major role, Bob Hoskins gives a dazzling portrayal of a London underworld leader who finds himself in a ramped-up turf war that includes the long tentacles of the IRA—as bombs explode and supplicants end up dead. John Mackenzie’s brutal 1980 gangster flick colorfully depicts the eruption of violence, and it’s chockful of great moments, like the shower scene with a young Pierce Brosnan (in his film debut); alongside Hoskins is a terrific Helen Mirren as his loyal but fiercely independent moll. The film looks good and grainy in UHD—extras include An Accidental Studio, a 2019 documentary about George Harrison’s Handmade Films, which produced the film; an hour-long making-of feature; Mackenzie’s commentary; and interviews with cinematographer Phil Méheux and screenwriter Barrie Keeffe.

Blu-ray Release of the Week 

Before Dawn 

(Well Go USA)

In co-writer and director Jordon Prince-Wright’s earnest but oh so familiar war drama, naïve Aussie teen Jim Collins leaves his family’s farm in the outback to enlist in an army regiment going to France to fight in the Great War (WWI); he assumes he’ll only be gone a few months—but ends up trying to survive a years-long morass that showed the futility of the fighting. Although much is telegraphed, there are a couple of powerful moments, notably in cutting from the trenches to the  Collins’ home, with Levi Miller’s sensitive Jim holding it tenuously together.

DVD/CD Release of the Week

Rainbow—Live in Munich 

(Mercury Studios)

This 1977 concert by hard rockers Rainbow in their best incarnation—leader and guitarist Ritchie Blackmore with powerhouse vocalist Ronnie James Dio front and center—features jams on nearly every song: the 105-minute concert comprises only eight tunes. That instrumental-vocal interplay makes this a top-notch show, whether the extended, sizzling rendition of “Man on the Silver Mountain” or the epic one-two finale punch of the 27-minute barnburner “Still I’m Sad” and blistering 16-minute “Do You Close Your Eyes.” Two CDs include the audio of the entire concert; one DVD provides decent-looking video and three excellent audio options to choose from.

CD Release of the Week 

Neave Trio—Rooted 

(Chandos)

For this adventurous trio’s latest release, four composers whose music was heavily influenced by folk idioms are performed: Czechs Bedrich Smetana and Josef Suk, Switzerland’s Frank Martin and African-American Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Their works run the gamut from Smetana’s haunting G-minor Piano Trio (written after his beloved four-year-old daughter’s death) to Martin’s expressive Trio on Popular Irish Melodies; in between are Coleridge-Taylor’s lovely Five Negro Melodies and Suk’s evocative Petit Trio. As usual, the Neave Trio (violinist Anna Williams, cellist Mikhail Veselov and pianist Eri Nakamura) plays these works with a gripping immediacy that makes you think you’re hearing them for the first time.

September '24 Digital Week II

In-Theater Release of the Week 

My Old Ass 

(Amazon MGM)

Although Aubrey Plaza is her usual irresistible self as 39-year-old Elliott, who warns the 18-year-old version—who’s about to leave her stifling home life in rural Ontario to attend college in Toronto—not to fall in love with the guy she will definitely fall in love with, but it’s Maisy Stella, as younger Elliott, who gives a revelatory performance. Stella’s film debut is, well, stellar, giving writer-director Megan Park’s shrewd study its added kick. By turns hilarious and sad, goofy and smart, ridiculous and sublime, My Old Ass is a gas—and for that we must thank Park, Plaza and Stella, a most formidable cinematic trio.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

Eric Clapton—Slowhand at 70: Live at the Royal Albert Hall 

(Mercury)

To celebrate his 70th birthday, Eric Clapton performed at London's Royal Albert Hall in May 2015 by running through his five-decade career as the preeminent British blues guitar god. His incendiary fretwork on “Key to the Highway” and “Crossroads” remains peerless, but it's surprising that he still insists on digging out the dull acoustic version of “Layla” instead of the fiery original. But that’s the only quibble with this memorable two-hour musical showcase, which also includes matchless contributions from band members Steve Gadd (drums), Nathan East (bass) and Paul Carrack (keyboards and vocals). The film looks and sounds superb in UHD; lone extra is the scintillating blues workout, “Little Queen of Spades,” which for some reason is not part of the concert but a separate 17-minute bonus track.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Late Night with the Devil 

(IFC/Shudder)

The directing-writing-editing team, brothers Colin and Cameron Cairnes, have made a clever horror film that shows reverence for classic late-night TV as well as flicks about possession that proliferated in the wake of The Exorcist. But this eerie story about talk-show host Jack Delroy (a fine performance by David Dastmalchian) who gets his deserved comeuppance on his Halloween show in 1977 shoots its load in the first hour then stumbles badly for the final 30 minutes. The steelbook release features the film on Blu—which looks terrific—and DVD; extras include Dastmalchian’s commentary, the Cairnes brothers’ Q&A and behind the scenes footage, along with a packet of fake memorabilia from Delroy’s show.

Tótem 

(Janus Contemporaries)

For her sophomore feature, Mexican writer-director Lila Avilés has made a gentle but emotionally forceful study of seven-year-old Sol, who is part of the preparations for her father’s birthday party at her grandparents’ house—but her beloved dad is grievously sick, and slowly Sol, her mother and the rest of the family realize the gravity of the impending celebration. Eschewing sentimentality or condescension, Avilés vividly etches Sol’s world with a mix of heartbreaking sadness and earned humor, and her compassionate film is anchored by the amazing young actress Naíma Sentíes. The film looks beautiful on Blu; lone extra is an interview with Avilés.

Verdi—Macbeth 

(Unitel)

Italian master Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) composed two of the best Shakespearean operas, Otello and Falstaff, at the end of his long career: this earlier adaptation is more straightforwardly conventional than those late masterpieces. Still, it’s got a fiercely compelling plot and Verdi does well with scenes like Macbeth’s ghostly apparition and Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking. Too bad Krzysztof Warlikowski’s antiseptically modern staging at last year’s Salzburg Festival is set in what looks like a vast waiting room, losing the tragic grandeur. At least the leads Vladislav Sulimsky and Asmik Grigorian are excellent, while Philippe Jordan leads the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Chorus in a vivid reading of Verdi’s score. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Release of the Week

Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Carousel 

(Chandos)

Yet another Rodgers & Hammerstein classic gets the deluxe Chandos treatment—on the heels of Oklahoma comes this lush-sounding, beautifully sung recording of one of the saddest but most exhilarating musicals in the R&H canon, the story of Billy Bigelow, who watches over his beloved Julie and daughter Louise from the great beyond. Stagings of the musical must deal with its moral complexities, but recordings can concentrate on the fabulous music, from the wonderful “Carousel Waltz” to two of the most shattering songs the pair ever wrote, “If I Loved You” and “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” sung by a top cast led by Nathaniel Hackmann, Mikaela Bennett and Sierra Boggess, and performed by the Sinfonia of London under conductor John Wilson. 

September '24 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Didi 

(Universal)

Harkening to the heyday of John Hughes, writer-director Sean Wang’s expressive, insightful distillation of the teenage experience is—at least in most movies like this—seen as universal, however different is kids’ background and upbringing. Wang introduces Chris, a Taiwanese American teen annoyed with his mom, scared of his grandmother and hating his older sister. He’s a geek with a small circle of friends and a crush on a girl named Madi (the charming Mahaela Park), with whom he hopes to have his first kiss—until he, being a goofy teen, screws things up. Wang writes and directs with a sympathetic eye and this specific adolescent era (it’s 2008 and the kids are using AOL messenger and flip phones) is shrewdly observed. The persuasive cast is led by Izaac Wang’s authentically gawky Chris and Joan Chen as his embarrassing but loving mom. 

I’ll Be Right There 

(Brainstorm/Universal)

Edie Falco gives a beautifully restrained portrayal of Wanda, a middle-aged woman juggling many  personal issues—her ex, who has a new family, can’t afford to pay his half of their pregnant daughter’s upcoming wedding; her son is a complete screw-up; she breaks up with her slightly dull if well-meaning boyfriend while she’s having a fling with a younger woman; and her overbearing mother is glad that what she thought was cancer is “only” leukemia. Director Brendan Walsh and writer Jim Beggarly intentionally stack the deck against Wanda, making her the problem-solver for everyone but herself; but, although stretched thin after 95 minutes, Falco (nicely complemented by Jeanne Berlin, Bradley Whitford and Michael Rappaport) plays it so subtly and perfectly that we become invested in her despite the dramatic weaknesses.

#UNTRUTH—The Psychology of Trumpism

(Bronson Park)

The mental and existential maladies that inhabit Donald Trump are explored in this intriguing if diffuse documentary by director Dan Partland, who speaks to the usual TV  pundits/historians/psychologists (including talking-head George Conway, congressman Joe Walsh and former RNC chairman Michael Steele)  explicate about how and why Trump remains a threat to democracy with his authoritarian bent and even kowtows to other dictators. But since everything is recounted for the umpteenth time, even if as persuasively as it’s done here, those who should watch it will consider it the ultimate untruth of a deep state and its colluding media.

4K/UHD Release of the Week

The Watchers 

(Warner Bros)

Following in the clunky footsteps of her father M. Night Shyamalan, Ishana Night Shyamalan debuts as a feature director with this well-made but derivative horror entry about four people trapped in a prison of sorts in the middle of the deep, dark woods, where seemingly malevolent entities known as watchers will not allow them to escape. There are a few hair-raising twists and turns and an ending that is more bittersweet than bitter, but even fine performers like Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell and Olwen Fouéré can’t overcome the built-in limitations of the tale and the teller. The UHD image looks spectacular; extras are four featurettes and deleted scenes.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

L’elisir d’amore/The Elixir of Love 

(Opus Arte)

A pair of Gaetano Donizetti operas, one comic, the other tragic, present both sides of the Italian master’s well-worn but entertaining bel canto style. This most amusing rom-com gets a fizzy 2023 Royal Opera House staging in London by Laurent Pelly. Donizetti’s merry music is ably played by the Royal Opera Orchestra and Chorus led by Sesto Quatrini, and there are finely-wrought comic performances by Bryn Terfel as Doctor Dulcamara, Liparit Avetisyan as the pining Nemorino, and the redoubtable American soprano Nadine Sierra—the most attractive singer in opera today, in both senses—as the strong-willed heroine Adina. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio; extras are interviews with the cast and creative team.

Lucie de Lammermoor 

(Dynamic)

Donizetti’s operatic tragedy about a young woman caught up in feuding families who goes mad is best known in its original Italian-language version, but the French version is heard in Jacopo Spirei’s staging last year at the Donizetti Opera Festival. Best about this production is the excellent Italian soprano Caterina Sala, who brings down the house with her immaculate singing and intense acting. Spirei’s production otherwise puts this warhorse through its paces well enough; Pierre Dumoussand leads the orchestra and chorus in an effective reading of the score. There’s quite good hi-def video and audio. 

Succession—The Complete Series 

(Warner Bros)

This compelling and hilarious series about ultrarich corporatists chugged along for four highly watchable seasons, including the shocking but inevitable plot twist early in the final season that finally pointed to a real conclusion that the title always hinted at. The tension between an ultra- successful media corporation’s founder, Logan Roy, and his adult children, all of whom are unworthy to take the reins—sons Kendall, Roman and Connor as well as daughter Shiv—reaches tragicomic heights worthy of Shakespeare. Superb writing is complemented by magisterial acting by Brian Cox, who plays the Lear-like Logan, to Jeremy Strong (Kendall), Kieran Culkin (Roman), Sarah Snook (Shiv) and the scene-stealing J. Smith-Cameron as the family’s shrewd associate Gerri. All 39 episodes are included on 12 discs, and the hi-def image looks dazzling throughout. More than 20 bonus features include “Inside the Episode” featurettes, character recaps and cast and crew interviews.

CD Releases of the Week 

Fauré—Nocturnes 

& Barcarolles 

(Harmonia Mundi)

Although the large-scale works by French master Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924)—the opera Pénélope, grand cantata Prométhée and his famous Requiem—are brilliantly realized, the composer seemed to work even more effectively in smaller forms, as witness his mighty chamber music—his piano trio, quartets and quintets; cello and violin sonatas; and string quartet are all masterpieces, along with several volumes of magnificent solo piano music. Just months after Lucas Debargue’s CD set tackled the complete piano works—which are filled with intimacy, subtlety and expressiveness—another French pianist is heard on disc playing several of his nocturnes and barcarolles, forms that the composer returned to again and again throughout his long career. Aline Piboule plays these elegant works with an impassioned clarity that brings out their stylistic similarities as well as striking differences. 

Schoenberg/Fauré—Pelléas et Mélisande 

(Alpha Classics)

A famous symbolist play by Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande was adapted by composers ranging from Jean Sibelius to Claude Debussy, whose extraordinary opera is the most famous—and it deserves every accolade, for it’s a one-of-a-kind masterwork. This disc comprises the orchestral accounts by composers who are antithetical—20th-century provocateur Arnold Schoenberg and 19th-century master Gabriel Fauré (again). Schoenberg composed some of his most luscious music for this tragic but compelling story of a fatal romance, while Fauré’s suite of incidental music for a stage production of the play is marked by his usual precision and quiet eloquence, embodied in the famous Sicilienne, one of his most ravishing melodies. Conductor Paavo Jarvi leads the Frankfurt Radio Symphony in propulsive accounts of both works. 

Off-Broadway Play Review—“Cellino v. Barnes”

Cellino v. Barnes

Written by Mike B. Breen and David Rafailedes

Directed by Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse

Performances through October 13, 2024

Asylum NYC, 123 East 24th Street, New York, NY

cellino-v-barnes.com

Eric William Morris and Noah Weisberg in Cellino v. Barnes (photo: Marc J. Franklin)

A couple of Buffalo legends, personal-injury attorneys Ross Cellino and Steve Barnes became famous—then infamous—for their billboards and earworm jingle that was heard on radio and TV ads throughout Western New York (and which seemed to follow me as they opened offices in New York City and Long Island). The melody for “888-8888” will unfortunately remain embedded in anyone’s head who’s ever heard it, including those audiences who see Cellino v. Barnes, a purposefully silly, occasionally funny parody of how the men began, then ended, their law norm-shattering partnership in Buffalo. 

Anyone wanting real insights into the ethics and gamesmanship of all ambulance chasing attorneys—Cellino and Barnes were preceded by the legendary William Mattar, whose last name had the good fortune to rhyme with “hurt in a car,” as Cellino jealously points out—will need to look elsewhere, for Cellino v. Barnes is content to throw anything and everything at the wall and see what sticks. It has the feel of an SNL skit gone rogue: Starting with the notion that Barnes was an insufferable egghead and Cellino was a complete idiot, the play, cleverly staged by Wesley Taylor and Alex Wyse, ricochets from one extreme to another, shooting off in all directions simultaneously with variable comic results.

Writers Mike B. Breen (who’s from Buffalo) and David Rafailedes originally wrote Cellino v. Barnes in 2018 as a vehicle for themselves to perform, so it’s not surprising that the play contains a lot of rat-a-tat dialogue and a surfeit of knockabout physical comedy. The actors in this staging—Eric William Morris (Cellino) and Noah Weisberg (Barnes)—certainly deserve praise for their breathless performances, although Weisberg’s Barnes bald cap is quite distracting…which may be the point. 

For 80 minutes, Morris and Weisberg race around the cramped stage reenacting the men’s quick rise to becoming a multi-million-dollar firm, first in Western New York then downstate. It begins as a bromance and ends with the pair squaring off in a prize fight; before the finale, they joke that the bitter, acrimonious battle leading to their split and forming separate firms—the Barnes Firm and Cellino Law—was simply a PR stunt. 

Of course, Barnes’ 2020 death with his niece in a small plane crash is not mentioned at all, since it’s a sad and bizarre epilogue to a compellingly strange story. It also underlines how reality usually writes a much more complicated ending than two playwrights can, however amusing they make their quick run-through.

August '24 Digital Week III

In-Theater Releases of the Week 

Close Your Eyes 

(Film Movement)

Spanish director Victor Erice has only made four films in a career stretching back a half-century—his latest (and most likely last) finds the 84-year-old auteur spinning a yarn about an actor gone missing while making a movie decades earlier and the attempts by his colleagues, daughter and interested journalists to track him down. It’s a not very subtle exploration of the power of cinematic images and of the past in our lives, although there’s some clever use of a film-within-a-film and the always haunting eyes of Ana Torrent, who plays the missing actor’s daughter and who was unforgettable as the little girl in Erice’s debut film, the overrated The Spirit of the Beehive. By the time, its ponderous 170-minute running time is finished, the film has played out as a sort of shaggy-dog story that’s both too literal and not literal enough, climaxing with an obvious and too casual visualization of its title.

The Falling Star 

(Kino Lorber)

In their latest absurdist feature, Belgian duo Dominique Abel and Fiona Gordon spin an offbeat web ensnaring a bartender, his double, his ex, and a hitman—all of whom are at the daffy mercy of their creators . Like Aki Kaurismaki and Quentin Dupieux, Abel and Gordon create deadpan, goofily improbable worlds that can only happen in the movies; but like Kaurismaki and Dupieux, Abel and Gordon often stuff their films full of precious, fey, even enervating material that mitigates any pleasure gotten from their unalloyed gems of visual or verbal humor. And—as here—when the entire film stops dead in its tracks so the cast can perform an incongruous happy dance, you’re in dire straits. 

The Wasp 

(Shout Studios)

How two women who were friends as kids but fell out over bullying and abuse get together to kill one’s husband is the unlikely plot of an overwrought and progressively more irritating drama written by Morgan Lloyd Malcom, based on her own play. Guillem Morales’ film is basically a two-hander set mainly in one room, but opened up a bit and with others flitting by—including a nosy young neighbor who improbably peeks into windows at just the wrong times. Viewer interest in the women’s plight depends on tolerance for contrivance and clumsy symbolism (even the title is literalized early on). Naomi Harris and Natalie Dormer, troopers both, give intense performances but are defeated by the heavyhanded material.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

Langgaard—Antikrist 

(Naxos)

Danish composer Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) is anything but a household name in music, yet his lone opera—despite never being produced in his lifetime—has gotten much attention over the decades, and this eye-opening 2023 Berlin State Opera staging shows off this fierce 1920s’ drama as an unsettling and staggering work of musical theater art. Ersan Mondtag’s colossally realized staging comprises his own brilliant sets and costumes (the latter with Annika Lu) transforming several singers into the demons that Langgaard calls for. The cast is uniformly superb throughout, and the orchestra and chorus play vividly under conductor Stephan Zilias. There’s excellent hi-def video and audio; too bad there are no contextualizing extras or interviews about Langgaard’s work  and this production.

Mozart—Le nozze di Figaro 

(Unitel)

One of the classic comic operas, Figaro contains some of Mozart’s most sublime music and beautiful arias, all at the service of Lorenzo da Ponte’s near-perfect libretto. This 2023 Salzburg Festival production, staged adroitly by Martin Kusej, is crammed with talented singing actors who give wonderfully funny but meaty portrayals of these cunningly conceived characters—Krzysztof Baczyk’s Figaro, Sabine Devieilhe’s Susanna and Lea Desandre’s Cherubino are the best of a superb cast. Leading the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna State Opera Chorus with aplomb are Raphael Pinchon and Jorn Hinnerk Andresen, respectively; both hi-def video and audio are first-rate.

Ride 

(Well Go USA)

As a father desperate to treat his young daughter’s rare form of cancer, C. Thomas Howell gives a formidable portrayal that’s the heart of writer-director-star Jake Allyn’s well-intentioned if cliched character study. Allyn himself plays Howell’s rootless son—his driving while drunk caused an accident that badly injured his sister, although her hospital stay led doctors to discover her cancer—a rodeo vet hoping to earn enough to pay for her treatment. The always underrated Annabeth Gish is on hand as Howell’s ex-wife, Allyn’s mom, and the local sheriff, who’s investigating a theft and shooting that just might involve both of them. It’s all very soap-operaish, but the excellent acting and Allyn’s flavorful directing are major assets. The film’s hi-def transfer is crisp and clean; extras are actor interviews.

Berkshires, Summer 2024—“Pipe Dream” at Berkshire Theatre Group, Boston Symphony Orchestra at Tanglewood

Pipe Dream

Music by Richard Rodgers, book & lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Directed by Kat Yen, choreography by Isadora Wolfe

Performances through August 31, 2024

Unicorn Theatre, 6 East Street, Stockbridge, Massachusetts

berkshiretheatregroup.org

Boston Symphony Orchestra

Performances through August 31, 2024

Tanglewood, Lenox, Massachusetts

tanglewood.org

Ah, summer in the Berkshires—beautiful weather (usually!), bucolic landscapes, great museums, concerts and theater. It’s pretty much been an annual tradition for us for three decades. This summer, we saw the wonderful Mad magazine exhibit at the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge and the Clark Art Institute’s revelatory exhibition of Caribbean artist Guillaume Lethière, along with a couple concerts at Tanglewood and a Rodgers & Hammerstein revival at the Berkshire Theatre Group.

Joe Joseph and Noa Luz Barenblat in Pipe Dream (photo: Caelan Carlough)

Pipe Dream, one of R&H’s more bizarre items—based on John Steinbeck’s novels Cannery Row and Sweet Thursday—is set among the populace of seaside Monterey, California, and centers around Doc, a marine biologist, and Suzy, a new gal who becomes a prostitute in the local brothel. They fall in love, but take awhile to admit it. The show hasn’t been on Broadway since its disastrous 1955 premiere; it was last in New York in a beautifully sung 2012 Encores revival with Laura Osnes, Will Chase and Leslie Uggams that nevertheless could do nothing with the dramatically diffuse romance.

The tunes are there, of course, but several sound like outtakes or discarded versions of other, better-known R&H tunes, like Suzy’s first number, “Everybody’s Got a Home But Me,” which is similar to “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” And a large ensemble—there are more than a dozen singing roles—dilutes any emotional or dramatic impact, since we keep bouncing around among Monterey’s many outcasts, male and female.

Since the Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge is a tiny jewel box, director Kat Yen and choreographer Isadora Wolfe seem hamstrung about what they can accomplish. Jimmy Stubbs’ movable sets help, although a pivotal scene between Doc and Suzy in an abandoned boiler is nearly impossible to see from all the seats. 

The six-piece ensemble, led by pianist and music director Jacob Kerzner, acquits itself well, although we lose the sumptuous orchestral sound Rodgers’ tunes need. Noa Luz Barenblat’s Suzy, though a bit standoffish, has a gleaming singing voice (although the incandescent Laura Osnes at Encores was pitch perfect in the role). The rest of the accomplished cast is led by Joe Joseph’s Doc and Sharone Sayregh’s madam Fauna. Too bad it might be a pipe dream to hope for a perfect Pipe Dream production.

Leila Josefowicz (standing, left) playing Stravinsky's Violin Concerto (photo: Hilary Scott)

Tanglewood has been the go-to summer destination for outdoor classical performances for decades; the Boston Symphony Orchestra has made its summer home there since 1936. Spending a day on the grounds is to immerse oneself in the history of outdoor music making, even if our first performance was indoors, in the Linde Center for Music and Learning, which opened in 2019, and where several Tanglewood Music Center Fellows—students who come from around the world every summer to perform and study—played a lovely chamber recital.

Music by Debussy (sonata for flute, viola and harp) and Ravel (piano trio) bookended Jessie Montgomery’s new Concerto Grosso, which the composer—who spoke before the performance—described as “a contemporary take on the baroque dynamic of solo against ripeno” in a program note. The Fellows played with enthusiasm and precision, bringing out Debussy’s elegance, Montgomery’s spontaneity and Ravel’s ravishment.

Our Tanglewood evening culminated with a marvelous BSO concert in the venerable Koussevitzky Music Shed. Finnish conductor Dalia Stasevska led an adventurous summer program, opening with fellow Finn Jean Sibelius’ Canzonetta, in an arrangement by Igor Stravinsky for clarinets, horns, harp and double bass. Then came Stravinsky’s own Violin Concerto, a rare enough appearance on any program, which was played with exuberance by the brilliant Leila Josefowicz, who didn't need a score: she was so focused that she nearly bumped into the BSO violinists behind her—they pulled their music stand back to give her more room.

After intermission, Stasevska corralled her forces for a nimble reading of Sibelius’ brooding Symphony No. 5, whose rousing finale left the audience sated.

August '24 Digital Week II

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Green Border 

(Kino Lorber)

The border crisis—a political hot potato not only in the U.S. but Europe as well—is the subject of Agnieszka Holland’s incendiary film, which forcefully wears its anger on its sleeve. Never sugarcoating her stance, Holland climbs onto her metaphorical soapbox to bemoan the treatment of migrants by gaslighting politicians and intolerant police/border guards but even well-intentioned activists who are less effective than they hope to be. The film takes place in 2021 on the border between Poland and Belarus, a heavily forested area. Opening with a drone shot over the dense cluster of deep green foliage (hence the evocative title), Holland cuts to the sharp, stark B&W photography of Tomasz Naumiuk for the rest of the film’s 150 minutes. Holland and cowriters Maciej Pisuk and Gabriela Łazarkiewicz-Sieczko are unafraid to be unsubtle, repeatedly showing that inhumanity and dehumanization are baked into the process of dealing with so many refugees. Then there are moments of shared humanity: African refugees and the children of the family in a safe house, or the tow truck driver who volunteers to help transport refugees. Alongside professional actors as border guards, police and activists, Holland adroitly assembled amateurs to play refugees, and their authentic, lived-in appearance greatly contributes to Green Border’s verisimilitude.

Caligula—The Ultimate Cut 

(Drafthouse)

When it was originally released in 1980, director Tinto Brass and writer Gore Vidal disowned the film they had worked on, ostensibly because producer and Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione gratuitously added hardcore inserts to a movie that was already an explicit chronicle of ancient Rome’s debauchery during Caligula’s reign. It’s considered one of the worst films ever made—it’s not, just a humorless mess—and has gained a cult following. But producer Thomas Negovan decided, when pristine footage was found, to create an entirely new version, pointedly without  Guccione’s X-rated scenes. At nearly three hours, “the ultimate cut” wallows in the same repetitious depravity as the earlier version, but perhaps even more ponderously—maybe Guccione was right adding porn to alleviate the rest. Yes, Malcolm McDowell’s entertainingly hammy Caligula gets to breathe a little more, and Brass’ eye for composition and design is more fully discernable. While it’s no lost masterpiece, Caligula is a fuzzy but watchable mess.

The Good Half 

(Utopia)

When aspiring writer Renn returns to his hometown of Cleveland for his mother Lily’s funeral, he must deal with his sister Leigh, father Darren, and his stepfather Rick along with Zoe, the therapist he met on the plane and his own memories of his relationship with Lily—the good and bad, hence the title—in Robert Schwartzman’s alternately wise and wobbly character study. Some intimate moments (between Renn and the three women in his life) ring true, while others (a confrontation between Renn and Rick, a late-night break-in of Rick and Lily’s home) decidedly don’t. There’s a fine cast—Nick Jonas (Renn), Brittany Snow (Leigh), Matt Walsh (Darren), David Arquette (Rick) and Alexandra Shipp (Zoe)—that’s led by a gracious, winning turn as Lily by Elisabeth Shue.

4K/UHD Releases of the Week

The Bikeriders 

(Universal)

In Jeff Nichols’ fact-based drama, a group of motorcycle riders forms a club in the Chicago area in the 1960s, and we watch its growth and demise—and the irretrievable damage to those involved—through the eyes of Kathy (a game but misdirected Jodie Comer), wife of biker Benny. Based on Nichols’ conventional treatment, this subject doesn’t cry out for dramatization; a documentary might have been a better alternative. The disjointed and episodic approach—an interviewer talks to Kathy years later—lacks narrative propulsion; even the bike-riding sequences are desultory. Tom Hardy (Johnny, the club’s founder) and Austin Butler (Benny) inhabit their roles persuasively, but a little of this goes a long way; Nichols doesn’t personalize these characters’ stories enough to make them individuals worth watching. There’s a fine UHD transfer; extras comprise Nichols’ commentary and cast and crew interviews.

Furiosa—A Mad Max Saga 

(Warner Bros)

The last Mad Max sequel, 2015’s Fury Road with Charlize Theron, had the usual breathtaking stuntwork and razor-sharp filmmaking, but there’s something distancing about watching a bunch of survivors vying for supremacy amid the industrial and desert wastelands that populate the series’ post-apocalyptic setting. The latest, Furiosa, is more of the same—even an emotive, appealing performer like Anya Taylor-Joy gets lost in the endless chase sequences. Of course, George Miller is a superior hand at this sort of thing, but for all the technical proficiency, I prefer the bygone days of the first Mad Max films, where the stunts and visual imaginativeness were actually in front of the camera and not so much CGI. The film does look spectacular in 4K; extras include several interviews and featurettes.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Martinů—The Greek Passion 

(Unitel)

Czech composer Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959), an underrated 20th century giant whose estimable musical career ran the stylistic gamut from chamber music to stage works, created this powerful opera from a novel by Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis, which is set in a small village during the Passion Play that recreates the days before Jesus’ crucifixion. Simon Stone’s uncluttered 2023 production—the first time the Salzburg Festival staged a Martinů work—makes a crucial change from Martinů’s libretto: the Turkish refugees arriving in the village have a much bigger role, an obvious allusion to Europe’s current refugee crisis. Although it adds an interesting aspect to the story, it detracts from the small-scale drama at hand. It is a musically riveting account as Maxime Pascal leads the Vienna Philharmonic in a perceptive run through Martinů’s arresting score, while a fine singing cast is led by Sebastian Kohlhepp, Sara Jakubiak and Christina Gansch.

DVD Releases of the Week 

The Escort 

(Film Movement)

This excruciatingly slow, blackly comic 2023 exploration of Croatia’s seedy underbelly, the final film of director Lukas Nola before dying of cancer at age 58, in 2022, has unsavory characters exploiting, double crossing, harassing, and blackmailing one another, as 40-year-old businessman Miro—after having sex and sharing cocaine with her—discovers dead escort Maja in his hotel bathroom, and things unsurprisingly spiral from there. Nola made a heavily satiric drama about his country’s cynicism and corruption, but since everyone is appalling it’s simply loads of thickly laded-on dramatic irony alongside metaphorical shots of birds and animals. Lena Medar as Maja and Hrvojka Begović as Miro’s wife Darija on enliven the proceedings in their brief appearances. 

Marguerite’s Theorem 

(Distrib Films US)

Co-writer-director Anna Novion has created pulse-pounding suspense out of the seemingly mundane subject of math: a grad school 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 slowly realizes that her life can be far more than mere numbers and proofs on a blackboard; Novion and Rumpf make Marguerite a truly compelling character, and it’s easy to share in her triumphs (her first orgasm is particularly wittily shot) and to cheer for her ultimate redemption.

CD Release of the Week 

Rautavaara/Aho—joy & asymmetry 

(BIS)

Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara—who died in 2016 at age 87—and his contemporary, Kalevi Aho (b. 1949), are the focus of this excellent disc of unaccompanied choral works; although the four Rautavaara works take up two-thirds of the recording, it’s Aho’s shimmering Joy and Asymmetry that the release is titled after. Still, Rautavaara’s varied musicality is matchless: his opener, The First Elegy, based on a Rilke poem, is beautifully realized, while the final work, A Book of Life, puts the listener on a thoughtful musical journey. Throughout, the Helsinki Chamber Choir and several mesmerizing solo voices bring these lovely works to vivid life; Nils Schweckendiek conducts sensitively.