Life is a Highway

John Chamberlain: Choices at the Guggenheim Museum

            John Chamberlain, a revolutionary, definition-skirting sculptor who lived and worked on Shelter Island, and the Guggenheim Museum have a special relationship.  For one, in 1966 and 1977 Chamberlain received a John S. Guggenheim Fellowship from the same foundation that funds the family’s numerous art museums.  But the bond is more than direct connection.  Chamberlain’s works seem to have been made for the blinding white walls of the turning, sloping halls of the Guggenheim, and vice versa.  Each writhing medusa of scrap metal Chamberlain has molded into a non-representative visual boasts its own alcove, and each bursts from within like a flower designed to be planted just where it is.  Even if not all of Chamberlain’s sculptures are perfect, or even beautiful per se, their oneness with the Guggenheim more than makes up for it.

            John Chamberlain has described work on his sculptures to be similar to “handling toilet paper,” and the final product to be something akin to “bed sheets after a night of raucous sex.”  Well, however you may choose to look at his work, the truth of it is that the sculptures are nothing more than what they’re made of—discarded, junkyard cars.  Chamberlain takes exclusively the garbage, the dregs of societal life, and crafts them into something exclusively different and indefinable.  There’s something about these explosions of chrome, and also something very familiar; most likely because in one way they are pop art from the boundaries of what pop art really means, and at the same time the purest expression of Americana.  (After all, there are few things Americans love more than cars.) This is what makes them so interesting to look at, because aesthetically they don’t fall into any one category.

            But as the lights reflect marvelously off their multifaceted surfaces they develop a category of their own, one Chamberlain has created for himself.  My personal favorites were the arcing tubes of aluminum foil braided together and curling in unusual and somehow profound positions, balancing on one or two outcrops as the rest aim up to the Guggenheim’s majestic skylight.  A good example is the colossal silver beauty in the museum entryway, which must point up four floors.  However, not all of Chamberlain’s choices turn out for the better.  Early on in his career came a series of compressed garbage cubes containing anchovy packets and cigarette boxes pressed into a frame-thin composition.  These pale in comparison to the three-dimensional efforts of later in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, which the open alcoves of the museum provide ample opportunity to walk all the way around and consider from all angles.

            The pieces themselves aren’t the only art.  To name his pieces Chamberlain often wrote unrelated words and phrases on index cards and shuffled them, using the often humorous results to name his pieces.  Often they have little to do with what the work looks like or even means (which, Chamberlain has tried to emphasize, is always nothing, just expressionism), but they are entertaining, and they contribute to Chamberlain’s artsy and mysterious persona.

            Sadly, Chamberlain isn’t with us to promote that persona and wasn’t even there to view the culmination of his life’s work on display at the Guggenheim.  He died of natural causes at 84 in December.  However, I’m sure he’d be proud of the justice the museum did to him in setting up an exhibition as purely enjoyable as this one was, and one that showed him to be as creative and dynamic as he was.  His work, though not impeccable (but is anyone’s, really?) is excellent, and it made my afternoon brighter to watch the midday sun bounce off his tinfoil and steel creations.

Bread and Circuses

Nanni Moretti's We Have a Pope

            We Have a Pope (opening April 6th), director/writer Nanni Moretti’s new film about an elected pontiff (Michael Piccoli) who has a panic attack and refuses to present himself on the balcony of the Vatican, is the work of an admitted “non-believer.” It contains no Catholic caricatures, no references to priest sex scandals, and is as little critical toward the Church as any movie could be.  Even Vatican Radio endorsed it.  That’s all very well, but the movie is rambling, odd, without any obvious point or plot, and is—if I can be blunt—bad.  Catholics are welcomed to see it and would not be offended by its portrayal of cardinals, Vatican spokespeople, or Il Papa himself, but if they’ve ever seen a good movie before and have any powers of comparison, I’d advise them to stay home.

            Moretti, in interviews, is defiantly proud of his film and won’t hear a word against it.  Perhaps this is because he thinks he did something with it that he affirmatively did not.  There were two ways Moretti could have taken We Have a Pope, that is to say comically or dramatically.  The film has endless potential for comedy, concerning a cardinal, referred to only by his last name, Melville, who, when elected Pope as a dark horse candidate, has a panic attack, insisting he can’t do it and then escaping his Vatican retainers and disappearing into Rome.  Moretti could have taken this to the extreme, turning Father Melville into a Mel Brooks-type character, who wanders through the city getting up to mischief a Pope usually skirts.  But there’s potential for drama, too.  Soon after Melville’s difficulties, the Vatican brings in a world-renowned psychoanalyst, Professor Brezzi (Moretti).  Moretti (as a writer, not as Brezzi) could also have leaned toward a King’s Speech-style relationship, a very dramatic and serious situation which ended with an overcoming of Melville’s fears.  The problem, I think, is that the proud Nanni Moretti refused to look to the work of his predecessors and insisted on making a film that had no clear definition, and hovered somewhere in between drama and comedy.  In the right hands this can lead to something great, but in Moretti’s it seems indecisive and strange, and the audience can’t get behind the decisions the characters make.

            For one, Melville says the reason he can’t take the job is because he “can’t remember anything.” I’m no Brezzi, but that doesn’t seem like a valid plot point, considering Melville can remember everything—he doesn’t have amnesia (if he had, the film would have made infinitely more sense) and he spouts information from his past constantly, including some tales that spark a useless story detour wherein he becomes obsessed with a community theater production of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull.  And that’s not the only deviation from the storyline.  Characters veer back and forth from the three-act method constantly, starting up volleyball tournaments to keep the cardinals, trapped in conclave, occupied, sending out search parties for Melville and then immediately giving up on them, installing a Swiss guard in the papal apartments to fool the crowd in St. Peter’s Square, and various other nonsensical pursuits.  These ridiculous and useless diversions mean nothing to the actual storyline.  As a result they end up detracting from any actual progress, to say nothing of where the story is going, which—spoiler alert—is nowhere.

            I could say that We Have a Pope tried to be funny or dramatic, but it didn’t even make an attempt.  The content creators for the film appeared to wait by the sidelines as Brezzi did in the volleyball games he created, and just stand by to see where it went.  Sorry, Moretti—looks like you bet on the wrong team.

More Realistic Dates for That Space Odyssey

Beyond Planet Earth at the American Museum of Natural History

            There’s a certain enigmatic appeal that comes with deep space—the complete uncertainty of what could possibly be out there beyond the atmosphere, or solar system, or galaxy.  But the reality is space is a very simple thing; and that’s everything else, or, to put it more simply, everything beyond us.  Still, that everything is unbelievably, shockingly vast, and that’s why I’ve always had a special admiration for the people at the world’s space programs.  They are cartographers and explorers not unlike Magellan or Verrazano, instructed to discover and map things no human being can boast to describe in their entirety—the infinite emptiness that is outer space.  How they do it and what their plans are is on display at the beautifully staged and surprisingly in-depth Museum of Natural History Exhibition, Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration, running through August.

            Beyond Planet Earth lays bare the details of why our space program is so very necessary.  From the rocky plains of the moon, which, I can accurately report after testing out a blast of its stench from a “Smell the Moon!” booth, smell not unlike pungent cigarette smoke, to the simulated red, rolling hills of Mars, where manikins in skintight space-suits bounce x-rays off the rocks, the future of NASA and its sister organizations around the world is explored.  The space race, the exhibit insists, is not yet over.  There are milestones yet unreached, and we may be the first to reach them. 

            The past is documented as well, and our arrival on the moon is primary among the clear, interesting information laid out near the entrance to the exhibit.  The theme of national triumph, however, continues throughout, inspired by exhibition curator Michael Shara, also a pioneer of the plans for a lunar elevator (which is exactly what it sounds like).  He surely gets his point across.  There is innovation everywhere when it comes to space travel, as this exhibit, in itself innovative, explains quite nicely, and to halt the process of innovation is an intellectual crime.

            But it’s not only the facts and figures Beyond Planet Earth dives into, although those provide nothing but delight to the viewer.  It also looks into public perception of space, as in science fiction or doomsday theories.  Chief among reference in the Mars section is Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds: the radio show, the book, and both movies.   War of the Worlds, of course, documents the Earthly visitation of a malevolent Martian race bent on—you guessed it—war.  Why go this route in a purely scientific exhibition? Maybe because the one thing astronomers have wanted more than anything throughout history is to discover life somewhere else but here, to know that we are not alone in the universe.  And indeed, every mission we have undertaken and every venture described in the exhibition has a final product of finding or introducing life on another planet.  Terraforming Mars, scientists hope, would either help us discover some microbe or—dare I say—fungus that grows in the frozen poles, any probe that studies any planet in the universe is only looking for signs of life, and we’ve even sent out satellites with inscribed and recorded greetings from the humans.  Forgive me if I overstep my boundaries, but might the aliens find us a bit desperate if our little gold-plated machine says “Hello” in 55 different languages?

            Scientists don’t just hope for life in space, of course.  Beyond Planet Earth declares that one day we will mine the asteroids and the moon, set up bases on secondary planet after secondary planet, and be self-declared lords of the solar system, and one day, the galaxy.  But the truth is that all the wonderfully organized data and exquisite dioramas set up in the exhibit are only a hope, and are far from reality.  We can only hope that the space program workers are as good at their jobs as the researchers at the museum are at theirs, and, as the show’s slogan encourages, “Look up.  Above you, the universe.” Hopefully somewhere out there is something we can reach, and achieve the great triumph that the majesty of space deserves.

Once on Another Island

Once at the Bernard B. Jacobs Theater

            The new musical Once, based on the Academy Award-winning film about an Irish musician and a Czech immigrant who bond over music over one week together, is perhaps defined by what’s going on onstage as the audience files into the theater.  Sure, the house lights are on, and people wait patiently for the show to begin just as they would anywhere else, but before the audience’s eyes a full-on jamboree is underway up on the dais.  The actors jump and dance and pluck at stringed instruments in a tight cluster, surrounded by audience members, who are freely allowed to meander up among them.

            Yes, in this show the actors play the instruments, and even the lowliest supporting character lugs a bass as he delivers his lines.  This seems to be because the show’s calling card is bare-bones, less than fancy, simplistic delivery of the story.  Is this a good thing? Maybe not, but it’s given just as well as it can be given what it’s got going for it.

            Guy (Steve Kazee), a depressed Irish musician (although I guess that’s redundant), is considering giving up his music after his mother’s death and his abandonment by his girlfriend.  However, wouldn’t you know it, he’s brought out of his brooding, mysterious sulk by a (supposedly) beautiful Czech immigrant, Girl (Cristin Milioti), who convinces him to fix her broken vacuum cleaner and record what she’s sure will be a hit song in her burly friend Billy (Paul Whitty)’s music shop.  And so it begins.

            It seems like a recipe for an unlikely hit.  There’s one immobile set, which resembles a bar in the musical’s setting of Dublin, functioning as at least three other locations, and backed by the bare, uncovered brick walls of the theater.  It features the traditional Celtic melodies of yore accompanied by little old men playing mandolins, and long, sweeping dances punctuated by unorthodox lighting that leaves the viewer dazed and confused.  Sounds like what I like to call hipster bait.

            But it’s not enough.  There’s something about Once that is cold and uninviting, almost dead.  It’s not as warm or open as the film was, mainly because the film employed cinema verite and accessible actors (Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova, who also wrote the music and lyrics for the musical adaptation) to bring the audience into the film, while the actors in the musical seem like a haughty clique, too good to let their fans into their world.

            If the cast members were smart they’d see it’s not enough to be great singers and great instrumentalists, which, undoubtedly, they are.  You must employ a dynamic, a pattern, to draw people in to the story and character development, a feat Once comes close to achieving, ironically, only once, when Girl brings Guy to visit her apartment to meet her fellow Czech mother, daughter, and roommates (Anne L. Nathan, Ripley Sobo/Mackayla Twiggs, Will Connolly, Elizabeth A. Davis, and Lucas Papaelias respectively).  They employ a method of portraying those who hail from the Czech Republic effectively—less humor is more.  (A recurring catchphrase of the six is “I’m always serious.  I’m Czech.") When it’s first expressed by Girl it’s a little disconcerting, but when seen as a form of camaraderie by a group of, frankly, quite funny actors, it’s almost hysterical.  However, when their traditional, vibrant Czech song ends it’s back to the grey boredom of Ireland. 

It’s a truly dull place, Dublin, or so the musical leads me to believe, and even when the characters try to counteract it by declaring their love for their “beautiful” city, I don’t buy it.  I’d remind the flat group of people around whom Once revolves in what city they’re performing, and then ask them to compare.  I’m sure they’d be disappointed with the results.

Hell is Other Players

Damn Yankees at the Paper Mill Playhouse

            Whose side is the Devil really on?

            An interesting question.  Certainly Applegate, the Devil’s suave, debonair alter ego (Howard McGillin, who played the Phantom of the Opera on Broadway for over ten years) in Adler and Ross’s Damn Yankees (running through April 1), is on the audience’s good side.  McGillin pours so much sickly-sweet core evil—not to mention incredible talent—into the performance that he becomes the demon in the pinstriped suit the American audience just loves to hate.  But he is on the bad side of the protagonist, Joe Boyd (Joseph Kolinski), whom he swindles into handing over the deed for his soul in exchange for his transformation into “Shoeless” Joe Hardy (Christopher Charles Wood), the slugger who can lead Joe’s team, the Washington Senators, to victory over those damn Yankees.  Applegate’s plan is to bring the hopes of the Senators’ fans unbearably high, only to crush them when he takes possession of Boyd’s soul and makes him throw the pennant-deciding game against New York in late September.  Yes, it’s pretty clear that no matter who may seek to please or displease the silver-haired Applegate, the only team he’s on is his own.

            Damn Yankees has earned its renown for an array of reasons over the course of its many productions, but perhaps most famously for the portrayal of the two Mephistophelean antagonists, Applegate and his personal home-wrecker, Lola, played in this production by Chryssie Whitehead.  Lola, of course, was played in the original 1955 production and 1958 film by Fosse wife #2 Gwen Verdon, then Bebe Neuwirth in 1994, and, most recently, Jane Krakowski of 30 Rock fame in the 2008 Encores! revival.  Perhaps boasting an even more star-studded list, however, is Satan himself, who’s been played by Ray Walston, Vincent Price, Jerry Lewis, and Sean Hayes, in that order.  It’s difficult to put the current Applegate and associate up against their colleagues—if they can even be called that—but McMillan does very well, maintaining a boastful bravado and simmering wickedness that Jack from Will and Grace couldn’t muster even if he tried.  Whitehead is less memorable, mainly due to pure star power—that is to say, lack of.  She tries, but she doesn’t match up to most of the main characters, especially her brimstone-soaked boss and Christopher Charles Wood, a brilliant dancer and singer who acts circles around his chubby counterpart Joseph Kolinski, who dulls “Six Months Out of Every Year” unbearably.

            Not only that, but the adaption of the Faust legend has been warped considerably from its original Broadway plot.  Song locations are shifted and lines like Applegate’s “Don’t you have another version of that thing?” when forced to take the oath in court are cut entirely.  It’s enjoyable; hugely so, but any audience member can tell from the start how much more the Playhouse could have done with it.  Richard Adler and Jerry Ross are also responsible for another epic of musical theater, The Pajama Game, and they deserve better than what the company and director have to offer.

            But don’t let me put you off.  If there’s one reason to go see Damn Yankees before April Fool’s Day—or perhaps it should be two reasons—it’s the leads on both sides of the Force, as it were: Wood and McMillan.  The two are shining stars in their respective roles, talented in all quadrants of the stage actor’s portfolio, and their duels not only represent the battles between good and evil, but are also vastly entertaining.  Look for Wood’s performance in his duet with Lola (although he originally shared it with Applegate), “Two Lost Souls,” and McMillan’s show-stealing, house-collapsing rendition of “Those Were the Good Old Days,” wherein Old Nick recounts the many abominations in human history he’s had a hand in.

            Damn Yankees is a more recent classic than most, written in the mid-fifties when theater had begun to approach its dropping-off point into the quagmires of adaptions from film and Andrew Lloyd Weber, and the history behind it is more than enough justification for becoming absorbed in its love-of-the-game magic.  Baseball is more than a plot point, however, it’s also a motif—an overriding theme that overtakes the audience as they settle into their seats.  The lights dim, the curtain rises… Play ball!

Rage and Profanity on the Upper West Side

Seminar at the John Golden Theater

            The new play Seminar, written by Theresa Rebeck, is the work of a creative angry with the process.  In the course of the production writers are called “feral cats” and “talented nobodies” and the process of writing a novel is generally scorned and bemoaned.  However, it’s also the work of a writer who truly admires her fellow writers and what they go through every day, and who looks at the process of writing as more than putting words on a page, but as the shaping of a language into something profound and beautiful, something even the feral cats can be proud of.

            Beyond the written word of the script, though, the play belongs to Alan Rickman, the internationally-renowned actor who is perhaps best known for portraying Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series, and whose low, gravelly, and extremely British voice has him eternally typecast as the misunderstood villain.  In person Rickman is more powerful than imaginable on the screen.  The lines spill from his mouth with great fluidity of motion and spirit, and when in the midst of a rant (as his character, private writing teacher Leonard, usually is), he leans forward as if he must put extra strength behind the delivery for it to hit home.  We don’t need it, though, as we’re already in thrall of the ability we see on the stage.     

            Writing, as many such behind-the-scenes stories have told us, is depressing, and the four young adults who’ve signed up for Leonard’s class are no exception to the writers’ rule.  Kate (Lily Rabe), a bespectacled twenty-something who’s been working on the same Jane Austen homage for six years, is the patron of the ten weekly meetings in her massive apartment her parents rent to her for eight hundred dollars a month and can’t handle Leonard spewing abuse at her mediocre work.  Martin (Hamish Linklater) is a cowardly and poor deadbeat living in Queens who can’t bear for anyone to see his work, let alone his teachers.  Izzy (Hetienne Park) is the pathetic Martin’s love interest and a proponent of Asian eroticism in writing to get ahead.  She’s provocative enough to first sleep with Leonard and then Martin after he tells her she could do much better than Rickman’s character.  Finally, there’s the effeminately dressed Douglas (Jerry O’Connell, who played quarterback Frank Cushman in Jerry Maguire), whose father’s name is so familiar in literary circles he can get his work published in The New Yorker even if it is, in Leonard’s words, “whorish.” The individual whirlwind depressions of the four collide explosively under Leonard’s tutelage as they struggle not to insult each other’s work and to keep their own from Leonard’s critical eyes.

            Leonard has his own problems.  He’s gone through the novelist’s paces (he describes writing your second novel as “the ninth circle of Hell”) before his career trailed off and he ended up teaching university creative writing classes and then being accused of plagiarism by one of his students.  He was then forced to take on editing and private teaching jobs and found himself to be good at them.  Unfortunately for his private pupils, though, his style can be a little intense, and it’s not long in the six-room apartment before tensions arise and all present are forced to address them.

            Though a little pretentious and including nudity and expletives for their own sake in places, the script is perfectly acceptable, and anyway it’s not the words you’re thinking of but the thought behind them.  The actors deliver the lines like writers, walk like writers, and act like writers.  It’s a writers’ play that can only be called great because of the actors.  In this way it’s almost like a meeting in the middle, a compromise between the cast and creators to achieve something that is fully worth seeing.

Up in the Air

Boeing-Boeing at the Paper Mill Playhouse

 

            The classic 1960 French farce Boeing-Boeing, written by Marc Camoletti and the most performed French play in the world, is playing through February 12 at the Paper Mill Playhouse, where it is rightly well-received.  The play, which played on the West End for seven years and was revived twice on Broadway, follows an American-turned-Parisian architect whose blissful lifestyle depends on the timetables of the three major airlines.  He’s got it all figured out, as he explains to his houseguest, an old college friend—polygamy.  But polygamy on a schedule; that is to say, polygamy with three flight attendants, one of whom is always up, one of whom is always down, and one of whom is always pending.

            Said playboy, Bernard (Matt Walton in this production, but famously played in the 1965 film by Tony Curtis), is simultaneously engaged to independent American hostess Gloria (Heather Parcells), possessive Italian Gabriella (Brynn O’Malley) and forceful and fiercely patriotic German Gretchen (Anne Horak).  He juggles them constantly and throws their nationalities around like he’s referring to his car collection “My German/My Italian/My American.”  Each day the menu and decorations change with the help of his overworked housekeeper Berthe (Beth Leavel), whose heavily French-accented catchphrase is “It isn’t easy, you know.”  Things go perfectly smoothly, as Bernard is all too happy to show off to his Wisconsinite college buddy Robert (John Scherer).  But as the schedule is torn to pieces by the four Rolls-Royce engines of the Super Boeing, which goes fast enough to land all three fiancés in his Paris apartment at once, Bernard, Berthe, and a reluctant Robert are forced to drive themselves crazy arranging it so that the wives-to-be never meet.         

            Boeing-Boeing is fast-paced, exciting, and hysterically funny.  Robert is new to this world of immorality, as he constantly complains, comparing and contrasting his apparent new lifestyle to that of his Midwestern home, and the audience is drawn in, too, but in a different way—with interest.  We legitimately want to see what happens.  It’s not painful comedy like Curb Your Enthusiasm, where the spectator feels so uncomfortable with the main character’s problems that they’re tempted to cover their eyes and curl up in the fetal position.  It’s more similar to the easygoing but still entertaining comedy of the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera or, especially, Room Service.  We feel empathetic towards Robert and Bernard as their timetables fall to pieces, but not so much so that we wish it would end.  In fact, we wish it would go on much, much longer.

            The cast works so well together that they resemble a well-oiled machine.  When one attendant walks out, another walks in, and the imperative for Bernard’s operation is that none enter a room at the same time.  This makes for some odd strategies interpreted by the foreign air hostesses to be a symptom of Americanism, and for Gloria a symptom of the disease that is the unwelcome guest.  Robert must immediately claim rooms occupied by competing fiancés, such as the room where Bernard and his current female companion usually sleep, or must cut in line for the bathroom when the American is taking a bath and the Italian wants one herself. 

            The comedy in some ways resembles slapstick.  When Berthe first realizes that all three attendants are in the flat together, she screams and collapses, causing Bernard and Robert to collapse themselves into stress-induced tears.  In this campaign even Robert is overworked, and it shows.  While he’s trying to warn Bernard to leave for the country with the Italian before Bernard has realized their new problem, his face turns red and his hair flops wildly around as he jumps and makes what may seem to be ridiculous insistences.  But at the end of it all, faces return to normal color, Berthe is happy with her new 30% raise (long story), and the two men relax on the couch and open a bottle of champagne each.  They’re happy it’s over, but we’re happy we were there to enjoy the ride.