Broadway Musical Review—“Water for Elephants”

Water for Elephants

Book by Rick Elice; music and lyrics by PigPen Theatre Co.

Directed by Jessica Stone

Through September 8, 2024

Imperial Theatre, 249 West 45th Street, NYC

waterforelephantsthemusical.com

Isabelle McCalla in Water for Elephants (photo: Matt Murphy)

Based on Sara Gruen’s 2006 novel that became a mediocre 2011 movie, Water for Elephants has splashed down on Broadway. And the most dazzling moments of this musical set in a circus are exclusively visual: the incredible acrobats and dancers as well as—impressively if derivatively—the puppetry that brings the captive animal performers, including Rosie the elephant, to life.

But despite that, Water for Elephants has songs that are unmemorable and a story that makes soap operas look like Shakespeare. The romantic triangle spotlights our desperate Depression hero, Jacob Jankowski, who joins the circus after a rural New York State performance—since his dad was a vet and Jacob studied it in school, he’s taken on as the new horse doc; Marlena, the beautiful star of the horse show; and ringmaster and circus owner August, who’s Marlena’s loving but brutal husband.

Jacob and Marlena meet cutely when he gives her recommendations about her ailing Silver Star, then they grow closer while training Rosie, who August hopes will be the big new attraction the circus needs. The musical then turns into a romantic rectangle, but its predictability overwhelms it: is anyone shocked by the comeuppance August contrives for aging circus veteran, Camel (who also was close to Jacob)? Then there's the unabashedly sentimental framing device of an elderly Jacob (played by the old pro Gregg Edelman), wandering into a circus from the rest home and telling his story to the workers—and us.

That Water for Elephants isn’t completely risible is due to Jessica Stone’s savvy staging that, whenever the love story cloys, comes to the rescue with spectacular acrobats or boisterously busy dance numbers—credit also to Shana Carroll and Jesse Robb’s clever choreography, Carroll’s lively circus design, Takeshi Kata’s evocative sets, Bradley King’s sharp lighting and David Israel Reynoso’s detailed costumes. 

Then there’s the arresting appearance of several adorable animals, from a pet pooch and the circus monkeys to the unfortunate Silver Star, who gets the show’s best moment when Antoine Boissereau exquisitely performs a ballet in the air to visualize the animal’s suffering. Rosie, by contrast, isn’t very imaginatively thought out; in any case, the anthropomorphic animals’ look and movement are cut from the same cloth as the puppetry of The Lion King and War Horse, tweaked by Ray Wetmore & JR Goodman and Camille Labarre but coming in a distant second.

The merely serviceable songs by PigPen Theatre Co. and book by Rick Elice are enlivened by the large and energetic cast, with the lovers Marlena and Jacob winningly enacted by Isabelle McCalla—who might soon give Lea Michele a run for her money—and Grant Gustin. They might not save Water for Elephants from drowning, but the show is a mild diversion. 

April '24 Digital Week II

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Coup de Chance 

(MPI International)

For his 50th film, Woody Allen returns to the blunt morality tales of Match Point and Solitary Man, this time set in Paris—and spoken in French (a language he doesn’t speak): a beautiful young wife runs into an old schoolmate and begins an affair, which triggers her jealous husband’s radar, with ultimately fatal results. Woody foregoes the complex moral study of a masterpiece like Crimes and Misdemeanors for a straightforward story with an O. Henry twist; it’s minor but satisfying, thanks to his economical directing, Vittorio Storaro’s glistening photography and the persuasive performances, especially by the always winning Lou de Laâge.

The Beast 

(Sideshow/Janus)

French director Bertrand Bonello has tackled provocative subjects as disparate as pornography, prostitution, terrorism and zombies. His latest, though, is a loose, middling adaptation of a fascinating novella by Henry James (The Beast in the Jungle); Bonello follows Gabrielle, a young woman whose DNA has purified and emptied of emotions, and he shows her past lives, from 1910 to 2044. The 145-minute film is turgid and slow-paced, and even the myriad stylishness Bonello partakes in—split screens, changing aspect ratios, freeze frames, slow-motion, rewinding, voiceovers—are desperate stratagems to hide the lack of any compelling characterizations or insights. Even the usually magnetic Lea Seydoux at its center—and with fine support from George McKay, who reportedly learned French for the role—can’t keep this from becoming wan and moribund, except for a stunning underwater sequence halfway through. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Monster 

(Well Go USA)

Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda has made several memorable films about family bonds and their complexities, and his latest is a riveting, potent drama about the ramifications of a bullying accusation made against a schoolteacher. As usual with Kore-eda, the plot is like a pebble being thrown into a pond: its reverberations take in superbly etched studies of several characters, with flashbacks and shifting points of view keeping us on edge and involved. The director has enormous sympathy for each of them in turn, his sensitive and insightful approach always paying dividends, and leading to a surprising, emotionally devastating finale. It goes without saying it’s exceptionally acted from a large cast. The film looks wonderful on Blu; lone extra is an English dub.

Lisa Frankenstein 

(Focus/Universal)

In this soggy spoof of and homage to silly ’80s horror comedies, writer Diablo Cody has fashioned an occasionally funny but ultimately derivative tale of teenager Lisa, who meets and starts a secret relationship with a male zombie from the Victorian era. It sounds icky and, for the most part, it is—neophyte director Zelda Williams and Cody lean into the goofiness of the era it’s set (1989), but that only goes so far: it’s up to Kathryn Newton and Cole Sprouse as the unlikely couple to make this enjoyable at times. The Blu-ray transfer is terrific; extras include Williams’ audio commentary, interview with Cody and Williams, deleted scenes, and making-of featurettes.

Night Swim 

(Universal)

This waterlogged attempt at a supernatural horror film is saddled with protagonists—a suburban family consisting of an ill, retired major leaguer, his wife, their son and daughter—that act moronically from the start, as the family buys the house even after the dad nearly drowns after falling into the seemingly haunted pool. Once strange things start happening—which we know about since we saw a girl drown in the pool in the film’s intro—it spirals into true risibility as it steals from better movies like Jaws and Poltergeist. As the parents, Wyatt Russell and especially Kerry Condon try but fail to keep their heads above water, and writer/director Bryce McGuire is unable to throw the cast a lifeline. It looks good on Blu; extras include several on-set featurettes.

Die Walküre 

(Naxos)

The second opera of Richard Wagner’s fabled Ring cycle receives a 2021 Berlin State Opera staging by director Stefan Herheim that’s part perplexing and part powerful—here’s hoping that the production becomes clearer in the final two Ring operas, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung. Conductor Donald Runnicles nicely harnesses the massive orchestral forces, and the singers (especially Iain Paterson’s Wotan, Elisabeth Teige’s Sieglinde and Nina Stemme’s Brunnhilde—handle the treacherous vocal writing spectacularly. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

CD Releases of the Week 

Fauré—Complete Music for Solo Piano 

(Sony Classical)

French composer Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) was a master of smaller forms, as witness his magnificent chamber music—his piano trio, quartets and quintets; cello and violin sonatas; and string quartet are all masterpieces. His larger works—the opera Pénélope; grand cantata Prométhée and his famous Requiem—are equally brilliant, but, as this new set of complete solo piano music attests, Fauré is justly celebrated for his intimately-scaled works. Young French pianist Lucas Debargue tackles Fauré’s solo piano oeuvre with passion and precision; the Nocturnes and Barcarolles that Fauré composed throughout his life are imposing in their variety and majesty, and other works—the early F-major Ballade and the late 9 Préludes—sound both revelatory and reassuringly familiar in Debargue’s expressive hands.

Weinberg—Four Sonatas for Solo Cello 

(Arcana)

Russia’s Mieczysław Weinberg (1919-96) sadly never witnessed his musical renaissance, which began with his shattering Holocaust opera The Passenger, several productions of which were followed by many first-rate recordings of his varied orchestral and chamber music released in the past couple decades. Weinberg’s set of four solo cello sonatas (written between 1960 and 1986) nods to Bach’s renowned half-dozen suites—Benjamin Britten also composed three suites for Mstislav Rostropovich between 1964 and 1971—but there’s also a modernity to Weinberg’s technical demands that sets the four works apart. Cellist Mario Brunello plays magnificently throughout, and these formidable sonatas are another aspect of Weinberg’s large body of work that continues to be performed and appreciated.

Film Series Roundup—Director Patricia Rozema Retrospective

Patricia Rozema Retrospective

Through April 11, 2024

Roxy Cinema

2 Avenue of the Americas, New York City

Roxycinemanewyork.com

Director Patricia Rozema

Canadian director Patricia Rozema has been making highly personal and idiosyncratic films for several decades now, although in America she is barely known. The Roxy’s retrospective—the first in New York that I can recall—comprises several films, including several rarely seen ones.

I Saw the Mermaids Singing

In 1987, Rozema made her feature debut with I Saw the Mermaids Singing, a lightweight, alternately enervating and charming comedy about Polly, an aimless young woman who latches onto her new boss Gabrielle, an elegant gallery owner, discovering new things about herself along the way. Although Sheila McCarthy makes a winning heroine, the unfocused film’s literal flights of fancy and narrative tangents are more cutesy than witty.

White Room

With her next film, Rozema would find her own voice, even though she calls it an “abject failure” (whether jokingly or not I don’t know). 1990’s White Room, which has never been released in the U.S., is an unnerving neo-noir about naïve garderner Norm, who witnesses the murder of rock star Madelaine X (an all too briefly seen Margot Kidder), then gets involved with the mysterious Jane, whom he meets at the funeral. Maurice Godin is a wooden Norm, but Kate Nelligan gives one of her best performances as Jane, a sensual and maternal presence that dominates the movie—shot, as many of her films are, in an always photogenic Toronto. 

When Night Is Falling

In 1995, Rozema made When Night Is Falling, a trenchantly observed study of the intimate relationship between Camille, a married philosophy professor, and Petra, a traveling circus performer. Although it sounds like mere softcore titillation, Rozema’s direction and writing as well as the first-rate acting from her cast—Pascale Bussières as Camille, Rachael Crawford as Petra, and Henry Czerny as Camilla’s professor boyfriend Martin—makes it one of the more memorable of the mid ’90s entries into lesbian drama.

Mansfield Park

Also part of the Roxy retro are Rozema’s first two films made outside Canada, unsurprisingly featuring formidable heroines—and stellar performances—at their center. Mansfield Park (1999) remains one of the most original Jane Austen adaptations, with Frances O’Connor at her most winning as Fanny. And Rozema’s contribution to the 2000 omnibus series Beckett on Film, the one-woman play Happy Days, stars a mesmerizing Rosaleen Linehan as one of Beckett’s greatest creations, Winnie, who’s buried up to neck in sand.

Happy Days

Too bad that Rozema’s most recent feature, 2018’s Mouthpiece, does little with the conceit that Norah Sadava and Amy Nostbakken brought to their original play—both enact aspects of the metaphorically named Cassandra, a woman dealing with her mother’s death. Only an admittedly perfect final image redeems this otherwise one-note film, but that shouldn’t detract anyone from seeing the other titles in this long-awaited retrospective.

April '24 Digital Week I

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

La Chimera 

(Neon)

Alice Rohrwacher has been one of our brightest filmmakers since her unforgettable debut, Corpo Celeste, debuted at the 2011 New York Film Festival. Her 2014 follow-up, The Wonders, relied too heavily on forced Felliniesque whimsy, but 2018’s Happy as Lazzaro got the balance between reality and surrealism right. Her latest cinematic fable again traverses that thin line and is as pointed and poignant as anything she’s done. It follows Arthur (Josh O’Connor, excellent in a bilingual role), an English archeologist who robs Truscan sites of artifacts while pining for his girlfriend Beniamina, his own chimera—an impossible-to-find treasure—and remaining in touch with her family, especially boisterous grandmother Flora (Isabella Rossellini, in her liveliest performance in years). Rohrwacher’s sumptuous film is alternately humorous and sad, angry and melancholic—an enormously affecting exploration of coming to terms with one’s past.

Against All Enemies 

(Mighty Pictures)

Necessary but scary is a good description of Charlie Sadoff’s incriminating study about how and why so many veterans of the U.S. armed forces gravitate toward militias and other white supremacist groups, which look ahead—or even forward—to what many of them consider the next civil war. Sadoff talks with military vets, generals and civilians, along with experts on the subjects (especially Kathleen Belew, who has written expertly about the white power and paramilitary movements), all illuminating a subject that will probably be relevant indefinitely—unfortunately. But why Sadoff ends the film with the fact-free rantings of the unhinged Eric “General E” Braden is a real head-scratcher.

The Lie—The Murder of Grace Millane 

(Brainstorm Media)

The awful story of Grace Millane—a 21-year-old English woman who was brutally murdered while vacationing in New Zealand by her Tinder date—is recounted in Helena Coan’s documentary that’s cannily structured like a procedural. After Grace goes missing, the police question a man who was seen on CCTV cameras with her hours before her disappearance—and his version of the story is methodically debunked by the cops and by Coan, who uses the voluminous footage captured of the suspect’s movements to definitely show that he was, in fact, her murderer. What’s most heartbreaking is his not-unusual excuse that they had rough sex and her death was accident—something she could not rebut. 

4K/UHD Release of the Week

All Ladies Do It 

(Cult Epics)

Now 91, Italian director Tinto Brass has made playfully erotic films full of pulchritude falling just  short of hardcore for several decades, and this 1992 riff on the Mozart opera Cosi fan tutte—also the film’s original Italian title—is a prime example: Diana, the gorgeous, teasing wife of a bespectacled husband, titillates him with made-up tales of sexual escapades, but when he angrily throws her out after seeing marks on her body, she goes further than before. As usual with Brass, there’s a surfeit of simulated sexual sequences, and his lead performer, the Romanian actress Claudia Koll, is a histrionic knockout. The superb UHD transfer allows viewers to gaze at Koll as intimately as her director did; extras include a commentary, Brass interview and on-set footage. 

Blu-ray Releases of the Week 

Doktor Faustus 

(Dynamic)

Italian composer Ferrucio Busoni’s greatest opera—which was completed after he died in 1924—is rarely produced for some reason but has two meaty roles for the leading protagonist and antagonist. This 2023 staging in Florence, directed by Davide Livermore, is a well-paced reading of this complex parable about the nature of good and evil. Busoni’s imposing music is performed superbly by the orchestra and chorus of Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, conducted by Cornelius Meister, while the exemplary cast is led by Dietrich Henschel’s Faust and Daniel Brenna’s Mephistopheles. The hi-def video and audio are also excellent.

Maskarade 

(Naxos)

Norwegian composer Carl Nielsen wrote two operas, neither of which is frequently performed—the underrated Biblical tragedy, Saul and David, and the frisky comic romp, Maskarade, the latter getting an enjoyable 2021 production by director Tobias Kratzer at Frankfurt Opera. Despite his reputation as a self-serious composer, Nielsen’s engaging music keeps the pace moving fluidly, and Kratzer’s staging is abetted by a fine and large vocal cast and the Frankfurt Opera orchestra and chorus led by conductor Titus Engel. There’s first-rate hi-def video and audio.

Polar Rescue 

Born to Fly 

(Well Go USA)

These Chinese films home in on the basics of storytelling to create effective flicks for unfinicky audiences. In Polar Rescue, an 8-year-old boy wanders off into the wilderness after his dad punishes him for his misbehavior, and while they search for him, guilt becomes an overwhelming factor; despite some sloppy writing, director Chi-Leung Law constructs a tidy thriller that has the guts to end on a down note. Liu Xiaoshi’s Born to Fly has exciting aerial sequences that compensate for more moribund segments on earth as daring pilots test updated fighter jets to try and keep pace with the meddling American air force. Both films have crisp, clean hi-def transfers.

CD Release of the Week

Noémie Chemali—Opus 961 

(Dreyer-Gaido)

Noémie Chemali, a gifted Lebanese French-American violist, has titled her first solo album after the area code for Lebanon as a tribute to the people there following the devastating 2020 explosion that damaged the seafront area—as she says in the disc’s program note, her grandmother’s house in that neighborhood was destroyed. Chemali’s disc comprises works by six Lebanese composers written in the past decade, including her own Kadishat, a lovely miniature with a yearning viola line. Chemali displays her formidable technique on the other works, including Mary Kouyoumdjian’s The Revolt of the Stars, inspired by an Armenian fable, and Wajdi Abou Diab’s rhythmically challenging The Moraba’ Dance. Chemali and her musical cohort (including Yann Chemali, who plays the cello on Kadishat) make beautiful, engaging music together.

Off-Broadway Play Review—“Corruption” at Lincoln Center Theater

Corruption

Written by J.T. Rogers; directed by Bartlett Sher

Performances through April 14, 2024

Mitzi Newhouse Theater, 150 West 65th Street, NYC

lct.org

A scene from Corruption (photo: T. Charles Erickson)

In Corruption, playwright J.T. Rogers tackles what he considers an early salvo in our ongoing—and, seemingly, losing—war with alternative facts and media manipulation: the phone-hacking scandal that engulfed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, News Corp, and specifically his now-defunct tabloid News of the World and its editor Rebekah Brooks. 

Rogers and director Bartlett Sher have constructed a breathless real-life drama that plays like a nail-biting thriller: even those in the audience who know the outcome are on the edge of their seats as it plays out, since Rogers’ writing and Sher’s staging create a kaleidoscope that alternates between the expansive (media shenanigans and the government’s initially hesitant investigation) and the personal (the effects on ordinary people, especially the family of polarizing politician Tom Watson, who made it his crusade to take down Brooks and Murdoch) in an absorbing 2-1/2 hours.

In 2016’s Oslo—which told the complicated story of the attempt to broker a peace deal between Israel and Palestine—Rogers and Sher created the blueprint for making lively theater about recent history. Like Oslo, Corruption at times moves too quickly and tries to cover too much, sometimes skating superficially across issues. Some of the scenes between Watson and his understanding but frustrated wife Siobhan, while dramatically necessary, simply move the play forward without being truly gripping.

Far more successful are the dramatizations of behind-the-scenes movements by Brooks and Murdoch—the latter through the unseen Rupert’s CEO son, James, and Tom Crone, the mogul’s legal counsel—as well as the unlikely coupling of Watson’s small office and journalists from The Independent and The Guardian, who hope to collect enough evidence proving the culpability of News Corp (whose upper management’s standard line was that they didn’t know what was going on—and, by the way, we’re not doing it any more) and somehow dent the Murdoch empire’s ubiquity.

It’s these scenes—shuttling back and forth among News Corp machinations, Watson and the journalists’ probes (often at great personal risk) and the government’s tardy but welcome inquiry—that are the racing heart of Corruption, as Rogers’ fleet scenes are given an excitingly cinematic sheen by Sher on the small Newhouse stage with major assists from Michael Yeargan’s sets, Donald Holder’s lighting and 59 Productions’ projections. A ring of video screens above the stage displays various news broadcasts’ “breaking news,” also projected onto the rear wall, along with various tweets Watson sends out in a desperate attempt to gain attention for his initially foundering investigation. 

There’s an amusing moment when, despondent, Watson realizes he needs some sort of public acknowledgement of his efforts; suddenly, none other than George Michael approvingly retweets his posts and Michael’s “Freedom ’90” rings out, closing the first act with the song’s supermodel-stuffed music video playing on those very screens. 

In a play with more than three dozen speaking parts, nearly all of the actors in the excellent ensemble do double, triple, quadruple duty, among whom the very able Dylan Baker, Anthony Cochrane, Eleanor Handley, Robyn Kerr and Michael Siberry stand out. In a tricky role, Saffron Burrows makes Rebekah Brooks formidably sinister without ever turning her into a stock villain. 

At the play’s center is Toby Stephens as the fascinatingly flawed Tom Watson, an unlikely whistleblower at the center of a scandal that threatens to destroy previously held norms of democracy and what’s considered the truth. Watson was no stranger to lowdown dirty politics, and Stephens catches every nuance of his abrasive, aggressive personality. 

Stephens even gives Rogers’ concluding soapbox dialogue (“We will fight because the truth matters, and we will not allow it to be chopped up and sold for parts. We will fight, as long and hard as it takes, because this is our democracy. And that is worth fighting for. So you stand up. You hear me? Stand up.”) the honest commitment it needs to end Corruption with a bang.

March '24 Digital Week III

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Limbo 

(Music Box)

In the Australian Outback, Travis, a burned-out cop, arrives to look into the still unsolved case of a young Aboriginal girl’s murder two decades earlier—his presence dredges up old wounds and bad feelings for many of the locals. In writer-director Ivan Sen’s impressive feature, the investigation is secondary to the character interactions: his moody B&W cinematography, in tantalizing shades of grey, mirrors the depths that Travis (a superb Simon Baker) goes to in his futile hope to find some closure.

Carol Doda Topless at the Condor 

(Picturehouse)

Marlo McKenzie and Jonathan Parker’s fascinating documentary sheds light on the life and times of the pioneering performer Carol Doda, who danced in San Francisco in the early ‘60s, helping to pave the way for more permissive rules and more daring artistic expression alongside other legends like comic Lenny Bruce. With valuable archival interviews and footage interspersed with current talking heads who place Doda’s actions and the reactions to her in historical and social contexts, McKenzie and Parker have made an informative, enlightening look at a world that’s not as distant as it seems in our own era of closemindedness.

Club Zero 

(Film Movement)

Austrian director Jessica Hausner has always been provocative, and her latest film is no different: in an exclusive private school, Miss Novak arrives to teach students about responsible eating, which seems innocuous enough at first but it soon dominates their every breath to the point where their closest relationships are damaged and their very lives are endangered. It’s too studied and obvious to be effective, since Hausner and cowriter Géraldine Bajard stack the deck from the start and provide no insight, just shock value (one of the students eats her own vomit). The sleepy performances contribute to the flatness, with even good actors like Sidse Babett Knudsen and Mia Wasikowska reduced to poses. Hausner’s clean, unfussy filmmaking works against her this time. 

House of Lust 

(Capelight)

When 27-year-old Emma decides to moonlight as a prostitute in a high-class Parisian brothel in order to research a novel about sex workers that she’s planning to write, she finds herself in over her head as she must deal with being isolated from her family as well as her newly formed relationships with fellow workers and the complications of getting too intimate with the customers. Director Anissa Bonnefont treads a thin line between exploration and exploitation, sometimes blurring it so she seems unsure what point she’s making. But Ana Girardot’s Emma is a resilient and persuasive center of an occasionally confused film.

Reckless Summer 

(Capelight)

In French writer-director Rodolphe Tissot’s erotically charged character study, 15-year-old Solange—whose parents have just separated—discovers her own sexuality and how it affects the males in her life (including her heavy-metal loving former babysitter). Solange is a precocious young heroine whose creator sometimes muddies the dramatic and psychological waters, but the sensational, openly raw performance by Louisiane Gouverneur makes the teenager worthy of our attention throughout.

Blu-ray Releases of the Week

The Crime Is Mine 

(Music Box)

French director Francois Ozon, who turns out films quickly like a Gallic Woody Allen, returns with a tongue-in-cheek drama about Madeleine, a struggling actress who uses her trial for killing an elderly letcher (she’s acquitted, thanks to Pauline, her close friend, roommate and struggling lawyer) as a springboard to fame and fortune on the stage and screen. Ozon’s direction wavers between excessively campy and wittily on-target, and the large cast has a blast: Nadia Tereszkiewicz as Madeleine, Rebecca Marder as Pauline, Isabelle Huppert as a possible rival killer, Fabrice Luchini as an investigator and Andre Dussolier as Madeleine’s fiancée’s rich and unhappy father. The artificial settings look deliriously colorful on Blu; extras include a making-of featurette, interviews with Ozon, Marder and Tereszkiewicz, deleted scenes, and a blooper reel.

The Iron Claw 

(Lionsgate)

Writer-director Sean Durkin’s solidly entertaining biopic of wrestler Kevin Von Erich and his cursed family—including all four of his brothers, three of whom also wrestled and all of whom died way too young—is also quite touching, even if it pushes sentimental buttons like the cringy finale of a reunion among his brothers. But it’s well-paced, with excitingly done wrestling sequences and truthful intimate moments as well as a top-notch cast led by Zak Efron, Jeremy Allen White, Lily James and Maura Tierney. There’s a quite good hi-def transfer; extras are a making-of featurette and a cast/crew Q&A.

Wednesday—Complete 1st Season 

(Warner Bros)

The hit Netflix series—which is returning for a second season—follows the dark daughter of the Addams family in her exploits trying to solve murders at the school her mother Morticia also attended. If the show’s eight episodes are too jokey-scary in the way of Tim Burton’s own films from Beetlejuice to Alice in Wonderland, it’s because Burton had a big hand here, executive producing and even directing four of the episodes. Of course, it’s demented fun, with a distinctive cartoonish visual look; best of all is Jenna Ortega’s bullseye portrayal of Wednesday, charmingly winning and wittily spiteful. It all looks eye-popping in hi-def.

CD Release of the Week 

Echoes of Eastern Europe—Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra

(Beau Fleuve)

For their latest first-rate recording, JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra presents two works separated by over a century but linked by their Eastern European roots: Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony No. 7 (1885) and David Ludwig’s Violin Concerto (2015). Written for his then new wife, the superb violinist Bella Hristova, Ludwig’s three-movement concerto includes musical references to her father Yuri Chichkov’s violin concerto and Ludwig’s Czech ancestry and gives Hristova plenty of room to show off her elegant and emotional playing. The Dvořák work might not equal his final two symphonies—the masterly Eighth and “New World”—but contains much lovely music nevertheless. Falletta and the BPO shine mightily throughout.

March '24 Digital Week II

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week 

Knox Goes Away 

(Saban Films)

Michael Keaton gives a sly performance as an aging hitman who’s just discovered he has a sort of fast-moving dementia; before he completely loses his facilities, he decides to help out his estranged son, who arrives on his doorstep bloodied and telling a wild story. Director Keaton has helmed an effective contraption, with Gregory Poirier’s script doing double duty a cleverly constructed yarn and a psychological character study. It isn’t flawless, but it remains interesting until the final shot. There are also brief but memorable supporting bits by Marcia Gay Harden and Al Pacino.

Much Ado About Dying 

(First Run)

Simon Chambers’ moving and intensely personal documentary follows his eccentric Uncle David, whom Chambers chronicles for several years after he gets an email from David asking him to come over because he is “dying.” Chambers shows David as a lively, performative character who quotes Shakespeare speeches (King Lear is a special favorite) but remains riveting throughout. It’s an often difficult watch, but it’s filled with humor and empathy that makes this positively life-affirming, despite the fact that we are watching an elderly man suffering greatly, at least physically, before dying. 

One Life 

(Bleecker Street)

Based on the true story of Nicolas Winton, a British stockbroker who, while in Czechoslovakia in 1938, just after the Nazis took over, help bring many Jewish children to safety in England, James Hawes’ drama is no Schindler’s List, but a low-key, unabashedly sentimental tale of goodness triumphing, at least a little, over evil. The ending recreation of Winton discovering the great good that he’s done is genuinely touching, and it’s all enacted with intensity by Anthony Hopkins and Johnny Flynn as the elderly and younger Winton; the unsung actress Romola Garai as Doreen Warriner, a humanitarian who helped Winton; Helen Bonham Carter as Winton’s forceful mother, Babi; and the great Lena Olin as Winton’s wife Grete.

Remembering Gene Wilder

(Kino Lorber)

Ron Frank’s lovely but ineffably sad valentine to the beloved comic actor, who died of Alzheimer’s in 2016, makes for bittersweet but elevating viewing. Letting Wilder himself narrate his own life story (thanks to an audiobook he recorded years earlier), Frank adroitly mixes film clips, vintage interviews and on-set tomfoolery with poignant talking-head reminiscences from many people in Wilder’s personal and professional life, including his widow, Karen; Richard Pryor’s daughter, Rain; writer Alan Zweibel; and, last but not least, Wilder’s partner in crime for two of their most memorable cinematic collaborations, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks.

4K/UHD Release of the Week 

The Color Purple 

(Warner Bros)

I had thought that a musical version of Alice Walker’s classic novel—and, by extension, Steven Spielberg’s classic 1985 film adaptation—was unnecessary, although the Broadway staging I saw in 2015, starring Cynthia Erivo, at least allowed her to blow the roof of the theater. But Blitz Bazawule’s movie adaptation of the stage musical is mainly arid, despite lively performances by Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo and even Jon Batiste in a small role. But musically this Color Purple can’t hold a candle to Walker’s prose or Spielberg’s camera; dramatically, it hits all the beats but never feels organic or lived-in. The UHD transfer looks fantastic; extras include interviews and featurettes.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Driving Madeleine 

(Cohen Media Group)

Director Christian Carion has made a darker Driving Miss Daisy in this contrived but entertaining melodramatic vehicle about middle-aged Parisian cabbie Charles desperate for a good fare who picks up  Madeleine, a spry, ornery 92-year-old going to live in a home for the infirm and wants one last drive through her beloved Paris beforehand. Madeleine’s dramatically eventful life includes many flashbacks, which Carion handles adroitly if predictably. Like Miss Daisy, Carion’s film is anchored by superb acting by Alice Isaaz is a winning and energetic young Madeleine who charmingly complements the brilliant performance of force of nature Line Renaud as old Madeleine as well as the always reliable Dany Boon who makes the one-dimensionally written Charles into a realistically crusty but sympathetic foil. There’s an excellent hi-def transfer; the lone extra is a Carion post-screening interview.

Rick and Morty—Complete 7th Season 

(Warner Bros)

For seven seasons and 71 episodes, this nuttily gleeful animated series about mad scientist Rick and always supportive grandson Morty keeps building new levels of insanity, both visually and verbally. The latest 10-episode season was the first without voice work by co-creator Mark Roiland, dropped from the show after abuse allegations—later dismissed—surfaced against him. But the lunacy is still there; among many guest voices are Hugh Jackman (as himself!), Liev Schreiber, Christina Hendricks and Ice-T.  It’s all colorfully dazzling on Blu-ray; extras include features Inside the Episodes, Directing Unmortricken, The Characters of Season 7 and Inside Season 7.

DVD Release of the Week

A Balance 

(Film Movement)

Japanese writer-director Yujiro Harumoto’s often perplexing but fascinating chamber drama closely looks at broadcast journalist Yuko (Kumi Takiuchi) who, while working on a story about the grieving families of children who committed suicide after being bullied, discovers that her father holds a dark secret that she must deal with. Although the film clocks in at a lengthy 150 minutes, Harumoto sharply focuses on the moral dilemmas of Yuko, who is embodied with complexity and subtlety by Takiuchi. 

CD Release of the Week 

Laws Of Solitude: Strauss—4 Last Songs 

(Alpha)

German composer Richard Strauss (1864-1949) did his best work for the voice, in both his operas and songs; and his Four Last Songs are the very pinnacle of his artistic achievement, a valedictory climax to a lifetime of writing beautifully, especially for the female voice. This compelling disc presents the song set twice—in the original orchestral version and the less frequently heard piano version. Soprano Asmik Grigorian sounds radiant in both versions, the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under conductor Mikko Franck providing tasteful accompaniment a la the final scene of Strauss’ final opera Capriccio. The version for piano (played exquisitely by Markus Hinterhäuser) finds Grigorian in a more intimate mode; if the orchestral version is ultimately preferable, Grigorian makes mighty cases for both. 

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 (especially since it doesn’t address what’s happened in Gaza since October 7), The Ally remains an intelligent two hours in the theater, its superb cast anchored by Josh Radnor’s formidable Asaf. As the center of the arguments and as Moses’ stand-in, Radnor’s portrayal humanely embodies the raw contradictions and confusions that make up the playwright’s stalwart liberalism. 

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.