2.23.08: Parade at the History Theater

Admittedly, the idea of a Jewish businessman being lynched for a murder he didn’t commit doesn’t immediately make people want to break out in song. (It takes a while.) But with Parade, a joint production of the Minnesota Jewish Theater Company and Theater Latté Da, you can have your murder and sing about it, too.

Theater purists have long argued that the musical is a maligned art form that has been all but destroyed by Andrew Lloyd Webber and the theater of saccharine spectacle. To those who still believe in it, musical theater has the potential to be a form of storytelling more akin to opera (but with less vibrato), capable of driving a powerful narrative while simultaneously mining a deeper emotional palette through music and song. In theory, the bigger the themes are, the better suited a story is for musical theater done right. 

Well, themes don’t get much bigger than the ones in Parade, and fortunately, Theater Latté Da artistic director Peter Rothstein is a true believer. He founded Latté Da as an incubator for the possibilities of musical theater, and time after time—and again in Parade—, he’s proven that musicals don’t have to be all sentiment and schmaltz; they can be complex, persuasive, and compelling on their own terms, even if sales of the soundtrack CD might come up a little short.

Originally produced in 1998 in New York at the Lincoln Center Theater, Parade is based on the true story of Leo Frank, a Jewish business manager from Brooklyn who, in 1913, was accused of, tried, and eventually lynched for the murder of a teenage girl who worked in the factory he managed in Atlanta, Georgia. Frank was innocent, but he got swept up in an inexorable tide of corruption, politics, bigotry, and blood thirst. Besides being a Jew from New York, he was a Yankee, he was smart, he was successful, and he was quite literally a pencil-necked geek (he ran a pencil factory).

Although the singing and music in Parade are first rate, the interesting thing about it is how well the songs dig beneath layer after layer of Southern pretense to expose the true motives behind the efficient scapegoating of Leo Frank. Frank, played by Dieter Bierbrauer, is clearly trapped in a culture he doesn’t understand. The kangaroo court that tries him is a mockery, and the evidence against him false, but the governor, district attorney, a newspaper publisher, and sleazy reporter all want him to be guilty—therefore, as they say in the South, “He done it.”

Parade is an enormous undertaking involving twenty-five actors, a six-piece orchestra, and a great deal of technical support, so pooling resources with the Minnesota Jewish Theatre Company makes both thematic and practical sense. Director Rothstein has wisely cast equity talent in the key singing roles, so—with only a few minor exceptions—the actual music part of this show is eminently listenable. Ann Michels, as Leo Frank’s wife, and Shawn Hamilton, as a duplicitous factory worker, are both outstanding. And sound designer Montana Johnson deserves special recognition for miking this thing better than most professional Broadway road shows that come through town.

But the reason you should go see Parade, especially if you’re not the type of person who hates musicals, is to see what the art form is capable of in hands as deft as Peter Rothstein’s. I won’t lie to you—there are a few numbers that get the needle on the schmaltz-meter jumping—but for the most part, Parade is a courageous, ambitious undertaking that succeeds on far more levels than anyone has a right to expect outside of Broadway. It may be one of the worst-named shows in history, but pulling it off this well is a great achievement.

2.21.08: Tuscaloosa script reading at the Guthrie

Glasgow Phillip’s Tuscaloosa is the kind of book that eats at you like a bad dream. Chockablock with sex, racial tension, and festering family secrets, the slim but steamy Southern coming-of-age page-turner is easy to mock, but also awfully hard to shake off.

Published in 1994 to favorable reviews, but a small audience, it embraces the conventions of the Southern novel but also laughs at them. You can dismiss it as the precocious literary debut of a twenty-four-year-old Bay Area–raised Brown grad (who himself calls the book “little more than accomplished Southern voice fan fiction”) because, well, it kind of is. But just try forgetting it. You can’t.

In our skip-the-book-give-me-the-DVD age, though, there’s a more pressing debate at hand: What kind of movie would it make? My guess is a pretty damn good one. And it seems an especially good match for Phil Harder, the talented Minneapolis–based music video and commercial director who has adapted Tuscaloosa for the screen and intends to make it his first full-length feature film.

The film’s financing and cast are still coming together, but last night Harder and a group of actors assembled at the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio for an animated reading of the script—the latest installment in The Screenwriters’ Workshop’s always-enjoyable ScriptNight series. Dave Salmela and band performed a suitably melancholic opening number as the actors, scripts in-hand, took to the spare stage lined with chairs.

Among the familiar faces recruited for the reading: Prairie Home Companion vets Tim Russell and Sue Scott; local theater fixtures Namir Smallwood and Marvette Knight; and Nicole Vicius, an LA-based actress who has had small parts in Half Nelson and Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and who made a very good case last night why she should be cast in the film. Reading the lead role of Billy Williams was TC-to-New-York transplant (and Josh Hartnett buddy) Sam Rosen, soon to be seen in two local films—the Wyatt McDill-directed Four Boxes with Justin Kirk and Nobody, set to shoot soon with Rob Perez at the helm.

Rosen’s Billy is a rudderless pothead and recent college grad who tends the grounds at the mental institution his father runs in 1972 Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and is haunted by his mother’s sudden disappearance with her female lover (the family’s black maid) when he was three years old. The script shuttles wildly between speculations about the women’s last days before they died in a mysterious fire, Billy’s growing love affair with a troubled young hospital patient, and also his awkward friendship with the son of his mother’s paramour.

Tuscaloosa the book clocks in at a scrawny 191 pages, its breathless pace fitting for a story whose narrator is hurtling headlong into a big ol’ mess disguised as liberation. The flip side, of course, is that there’s not a lot of room for exposition. When the biblical allusions and Southern stew of taboos start stacking up, you want to beg Phillips to let you up for air.

Oddly, all this bodes well for Tuscaloosa the film. Whereas most movies condense and compress the hell out of a book, leaving much of the subtlety and character motivation on the cutting-room floor, I think there’s a real opportunity to take Phillips’ poetic potboiler and give it some room to breathe. The work-in-progress script read last night still seems like a whirlwind (I suspect it will get a significant overhaul before it ever sees the screen), but the bones are there.

As a director-for-hire to the likes of Hilary Duff, Liz Phair, Prince, and the Foo Fighters, Harder has amassed a huge portfolio of music videos that moves easily between real and dream worlds. His Michel Gondry-ish fondness for low-tech-looking visual effects and his interest in regional texture would seem to be just the imaginative eye needed to translate Tuscaloosa’s comic-tragic dreaminess to the screen. Also working in the film’s favor? Its Minneapolis–based producer, Christine Walker (Factotum, American Splendor), who has a track record of working magic on a shoestring.

Could Tuscaloosa be that rare adaptation that improves upon the original? Possibly. In Phillips’ memoir which humorously chronicles his failed attempt to write a follow-up to Tuscaloosa, he recalls being interviewed by novelist Jonathan Franzen, who was trolling Stanford University asking the question, Do books really matter anymore?

At the time, Phillips was scratching his eyes out trying and failing to write a second novel and becoming more depressed by the day. Needless to say, he had some gloomy conclusions for Franzen: Books only matter if they’re on TV or made into movies. He was onto something. For Tuscaloosa, film is home.

2.20.08: My Fair Lady at the Orpheum

The acclaimed West End revival of My Fair Lady opened at the Orpheum last night. It’s been called “the perfect musical,” and sure, this production was great--the stage sets were gigantic and impressive and they moved around seamlessly, the costumes were pretty, Dane DeLisa’s Eliza Doolittle hit almost all the notes on “Wouldn’t It be Loverly,” and Tim Jerome stole the show as Eliza’s drunken daddy during both “With a Little Bit O’ Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time.”

Blah, blah, blah. Of course it was great, it’s a billion dollar bash produced by Lerner and Loewe and directed by Trevor Nunn (who directed King Lear and The Seagull at the Guthrie earlier this year), with dance numbers choreographed by Matthew Bourne (who choreographed Swan Lake at the State a couple of years ago). The classiest imports in theater, ladies and gentlemen.

By now, everybody knows the My Fair Lady story by heart, right? Upper-crust gentleman trains unwashed hussy in his upper-crust ways but in the end, the unwashed hussy turns out to be the true classy broad. Even if you don’t, you’ve seen it a million times, because Hollywood loves it: there are direct adaptations such as Richard Gere as Professor Higgins and Julia Roberts as Eliza Doolittle in Pretty Woman and Freddie Prinze Jr. as Higgins and Rachel Leigh Cook as Eliza in She’s All That. And there are movies that just borrow from the Pygmilion myth, such as Trading Places with Don Ameche as Higgins and Eddie Murphy as Liza.

Do you see, I’m fairly well versed in culture both high (Ovid, Shaw) and low (Marshall, Landis). I work hard on my own life of the mind, and I believe that at this point, somebody has to stick up for a kindred spirit, poor vilified Professor Higgins.

I mean, what’s Liza’s problem? For a few shillings—a charitable sliding scale for one of London’s most sought after phonetic professors—Higgins takes this flower girl into his own home, buys her a bunch of couture and jewelry, turns her on to Milton and Keats, helps make her dropped h’s stand up for themselves, and brings her to Buckingham Palace. And she gets upset because he takes the credit for her warm reception at the ball?

Look, I realize that my Morning After readership is 90% female, but ladies, hear me out. When did this male fantasy—generously helping a woman to define and achieve her goals—become perceived as boorish?

I mean, why isn’t Liza considered the boor? When she walks out on Higgins in a pique, she runs into Freddy Eynsford-Hill, a hopeless romantic who’s been waiting outside her window for days on end, and immediately starts berating him. First, she tears up a poem he’s written and then starts singing:

Words! Words! Words! I'm so sick of words!
I get words all day through;
First from him, now from you!
Is that all you blighters can do?

It sounds like a Hillary speech, and we all know how well that’s going over. (Maybe if she set it to an orchestra, and brought in Julie Andrews to sing it, she could’ve won in Wisconsin.)

Higgins gets a raw deal because he was written by a Commie in the first place. George Bernard Shaw took a decent, well-educated man, regarded as a bit of a maverick by The Establishment, and made him a sexist, capitalist pig. And then Alan Jay Werner made him sing songs like “A Hymn to Him,” with lyrics such as:

Why can't a woman be more like a man?
Men are so honest, so thoroughly square;
Eternally noble, historic'ly fair;
Who, when you win, will always give your back a pat.
Well, why can't a woman be like that?

When you put it like that, it sounds insensitive, even dastardly—dismissive of man’s capacity for evil. But we all know what he’s saying—why can’t a woman act like a gentleman? Why is Liza so prideful, so quick to resent help? Why doesn’t poor Higgins get the benefit of the doubt? Michelle Obama gets the benefit of the doubt (we all know she doesn’t really hate America), but she’s not a big mean dude with a London accent, evidently.

Higgins’ mission is not very different than say, Cher Horowitz’s mission in Clueless. Sure, maybe his pet project was chosen partly for self-aggrandizement, but his heart was always in the right place. And just like Jane Austen’s Emma, in the end, we know Higgins just really wanted to be loved, just not by, well, as he says, “a heartless guttersnipe.” In fact, Higgins almost a third wave feminist: intent on making Eliza an independent woman, who wouldn’t need the help of any man, including him. Higgins realizes that the depravity of the street can erode the values of anybody, of any gender. At heart, he’s just a good liberal. And we’re supposed to deride his motives because he picked a cute girl to clean up?

Anyway, forget the traditional Marxist, Feminist and Hollywood Populist readings of My Fair Lady. Instead, read this, dear reader, and give the good Professor a chance.

My Fair Lady plays through March 2 at the Orpheum.

2.17.08: Bethel Chamber Players at Bethel University

In a metropolitan area spoiled by two world-class orchestras, it’s easy to forget that the Twin Cities are full of first-rate classical musicians who play all over town, sometimes only for a handful of people, for the sheer love of the repertoire. Many of these performances cost little or nothing to attend, but if one happens to be at the right place at the right time, when the musical stars align, it’s possible to hear music as moving and sophisticated as anything offered up at Orchestra Hall.

On Sunday afternoon, I happened to be in the audience for one such concert at Bethel University’s Great Benson Hall. Presented by the Bethel Chamber Players, a group of faculty members in the music department at Bethel, the concert was free to anyone who could find their way to the hall. It was a perfect afternoon for chamber music—cold and windy, a terrible day to be outside—and a respectable number of students, friends, and fellow faculty were in attendance, though the hall was by no means full.

I was there because my son’s cello teacher, Hong Wang, an amazing musician from China who received his doctorate at the University of Minnesota, is the group’s cellist. Joining him were pianist Juan Li, a former Schubert Club competition winner; violinist Yuko Ninomiya Heberlein, an SPCO alum; and bassist Mark Kausch. And, because the group’s regular violist broke her finger a few weeks ago, veteran SPCO player Tamas Strasser filled in on viola.

All of these people are gifted players, so the expectations for technical precision are high at such a recital, but not exactly stratospheric. One expects some lovely music, competently played, but nothing extraordinary. Fortunately, music does not obey the laws of expectation, so it’s the surprises along the way, the things one doesn’t expect, that make many performances memorable.

The concert began with a spirited, nimble performance of Joseph Haydn’s Piano Trio no. 1 in G Major, the so-called Gypsy Rondo, a standard for piano, cello, and violin. It was well played by Li, Wang, and Herberlein, a nice taste of Haydn, but even the players could smell the dust it seems, for they then launched into a jazzy, energetic rendition of a piece called Primavera Protena Tango, by Argentinian composer Astor Piazzolla, who was a genius at mixing classical idioms, modern jazz, and Latin music into a unique musical cocktail. The piece is short, and wouldn’t feel out of place in a French bistro, but beneath its intoxicating rhythms lies a great deal of playful complexity. It’s a fun piece no matter what, but it’s also a smart, amusing piece if you know what to listen for, and this trio clearly enjoyed tossing something different into the usual chamber mix.

After intermission, SPCO violist Tamas Strasser and bassist Mark Kausch joined the trio onstage for the meat of the program, a presentation of Franz Schubert’s entire Trout Quintet, a work often heard in pieces but not often performed in its entirety. From the brisk opening passages, the quintet established a sure-footed confidence that carried it through the entire piece. But the magical moment—the one that’s difficult to plan for and happens only in the midst of a public performance, due to the delicate energy between musicians and an audience—arrived in the midst of the famously speedy scherzo section. With Wang and Strasser locked into sync on cello and viola, Li’s precise piano bubbling underneath, and Heberlein’s violin skipping along on top, Schubert’s Trout Quintet—which I’ve heard hundreds of times and is one of my favorite pieces—suddenly sprang to life in a way I’ve never heard before, with velocity, balance, and execution all clicking into place at once. The SPCO’s Strasser knew they had nailed it; his eyebrows were practically dancing. Wang let out a little smile, the classical music equivalent of pumping one’s fist in the air.

The moment didn’t last long. They held onto it for much of the fourth “song” movement and finished relatively strongly—but it was that fleeting moment in the middle of it all that made this performance memorable. The program was recorded, but I’m not certain the recording will do the performance justice. Sometimes, you just have to be in the right place, at the right time, to experience such moments. They are fragile and fleeting, here then gone.

Yet they happen all the time, in unexpected places all over the Twin Cities, and if you’re there when it happens, it’s hard not to feel lucky. It’s not often that you get more than you paid for.

2.15.08: Chek It, Baby at Bryant-Lake Bowl

Reviewing theater on The Morning After is ruining my life.

Saturday night, I saw Jade Esteban Estrada in Chek It, Baby, a one-man gay cabaret which fancifully interprets the great Russian playwright Anton Chekhov’s four masterpieces, The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard, through the lens of a one-man gay cabaret.

It was the second weekend of the Chekhov Festival, a heroic little theater weekend at the Byrant-Lake Bowl, featuring sixteen theater companies “breathing new life into the work of Anton Chekhov through inspired interpretations, inventive adaptations and original multi-disciplinary performance.” I’m not going to fib: it was cold out, and the prospect of reviewing experimental theater inspired by Chekhov seemed a little Theater Geek 101. I was dreading it, really, dreading a dual interpretation of Chekhov’s monologue On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco, one a straight monologue, the other a libretto (possibly with puppets). But I did the honorable thing—I dug into my couch, and waited to leave my apartment until the very last second. Flipping through the channels, landing on Tootsie on TCM for a little while, watching some coverage of the election, and then, unbelievably, yet somehow appropriately, discovering my ex-girlfriend Bonnie was premiering her new stand-up special on Comedy Central. My decision was made for me, right? (Isn’t it always, when you leave it to the whim of the remote?) I decided to blow off Tobacco and watch my own personal Trigorin do a half-hour on her new baby.

I am the seagull, dude.

I haven’t dated Bonnie in years, but it was a huge bummer: Bonnie on Comedy Central; me, sentenced to reviewing the Chekhov Festival at the Bryant-Lake Bowl.

But I made it to the late show dammit, because, to paraphrase Nina, “I am a writer!”

Yeah—probably a mistake.

Okay, I really don’t have anything against Estrada, whom the Topeka Capitol-Journal calls “one of the finest American solo theatre artists of the twenty-first century.” And I don’t have anything against the eleven other lonely souls sitting in the Bryant-Lake Bowl’s theater space, all of whom, based on where and when they laughed during the show, must have been huge Chekhov freaks, and most of whom, based on my extensive eavesdropping, spoke fluent Russian. No, I’m just feeling sorry for myself. And not for going solo right after watching an ex-girlfriend do jokes about her new baby on Comedy Central; no, more for going to experimental gay cabaret with millions of inside Chekhov jokes—and getting most of them.

What the hell is happening to me? Estrada came out to this techno music, making these surreal hand gestures, with his hair waxed into four dramatic spikes, a face full of clown makeup, flashing this gigantic grin. It was like somebody crushed a handful of Adderall into John Leguizamo’s applesauce. Terrifying. He started out by doing a skit that re-set Chekhov’s Three Sisters on a Maury-esque daytime talk show. I laughed at Natasha as an entitled lower-class striver because people like her are actually on Maury all the time. Answering Maury’s inquisition about her cuckolding of Andrei with that specific brand of daytime defiance, “Well, if my husband doesn’t care, I don’t see how it’s any of your business.” It was genuinely funny. I didn’t laugh very much when Estrada flipped on a bouffant wig, squeezed into a tight, short lime green dress and clambered on top a piano to sing a camp torch song inspired by Uncle Vanya, but his evangelical interpretation of The Cherry Orchard had its moments. And his coup de grace, in which he casts extras for a Hollywood version of The Seagull (starring Charo as Nena: “I am a seagull. Coochie, coochie!”), well, it was ridiculous and funny (if not ridiculously funny).

So yeah, I think I enjoyed Chek It, Baby. And I am profoundly disturbed by this.

It’s pretty clear there is nobody with whom I will ever really share a po-mo appreciation of Chekhov. I refuse to go combat boot, pierce-my-face, theater-class-loony like half the crowd in there, and unlike the other half, I’m not ready for my wild old Rooskie phase yet, either. I mean, I get it. Chekhov doesn’t have the appeal of an indie band. Or an Oscar-nominated movie. Or a great new restaurant. I am going to end up deranged, laughing maniacally to myself at John McCain-as-Lopakhin during late-night experimental theater festivals.

One tear.

But, wait a minute. Check it out: of all the great nineteenth-century Russian writers,  Chekhov is the most relatable to somebody that saw There Will Be Blood, just bought the new Vampire Weekend, and loves the cauliflower fritters at the 112. Because Chekhov still works in a world where you can run across your ex-girlfriend on Comedy Central. He’s been there before. He would’ve laughed at me—because he laughed at himself, even when it sucked. He wrote about dating artists, and he wrote about lazy writers, not to mention selfish mothers, jackass supervisors, and absentminded siblings, all people who surround us still. His characters are real—realer than Shakespeare’s by far—and ready for today’s stage, even if it’s late-night, one-man gay cabaret at the Bryant-Lake Bowl.

So please don’t keep making me do this by myself. Chek is worth it. Please.

The Chekhov Festival continues at Bryant-Lake Bowl through March 1, chekhovfestival.org

[1] She only did the first ten minutes on her new baby. Needless to say, the second twenty minutes of her set were much funnier.

2.15.08: The Stones at the Children's Theatre Co.

If you have a teenager, especially a teenage boy, I cannot recommend emphatically enough that you unplug them from the XBox for a few hours and cart their story-starved souls over to the Children’s Theatre to see The Stones.

Written and performed by two veteran actors from Australia’s Zeal Theatre, Tom Lycos and Stefo Nantsou, The Stones is based on the true story of two teenagers in Australia who were put on trial for manslaughter after kicking a rock off a freeway overpass, after t he stone smashed through the windshield of a car and killed the driver. From the raw material of this unfortunate incident, Lycos and Nantsou have created a brilliant two-person play that’s a refreshing departure from the didactic, feel-good theater so often seen on the CTC Stage.

The Stones takes audiences inside the minds of two teenagers (an unsavory prospect right off the bat) who have nothing better to do than goof off and goad each other into doing things neither one of them would probably do on their own. Though Lycos and Nantsou are middle-aged actors, they both do a fantastic (and hilarious) job of capturing the mindless instinct for trouble that plagues kids who have nothing better to do. Before the boys make their fatal mistake, they try out one stupid idea after another, any one of which could either kill them or cause massive property damage. When the consequences of their thoughtlessness finally catches up with them and the police investigation begins, Lycos and Nantsou become the police officers as well, switching seamlessly back and forth between stern, no-nonsense adults and the frightened, clueless kids.

What’s truly great about The Stones is that it doesn’t take sides. Rather, it presents the situation in such a way that there is no black and white, opening up a spirited debate about whether the boys are truly guilty of manslaughter and should be sent to jail, or whether they are merely guilty of a great deal of teenage stupidity and big steaming heap of bad luck. The boys themselves aren’t choirboys—each of them is clearly perched on that cusp of life where they could go either way, and the oldest doesn’t have much remorse for the killing—but the larger question is what society should do with these boys, and at what point do we expect people to take full responsibility for their own actions.

Plays that appeal to kids over the age of twelve don’t come to the Children’s Theatre very often, so don’t miss this opportunity. The Stones is smart, funny, tragic, and thought-provoking—and, as a special bonus for teens, features lots of loud electric guitar music played live by the actors themselves. Another concession to the ADD generation is that the show only an hour long, so your brooding teen can be back in front of their XBox in no time, wreaking the sort of electronic mayhem that would, in the real world, get them into a heap of trouble.

The Stones continues at the Children’s Theatre through March 9.

2.14.08: Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes at the Walker

Suburban life has always been a bundle of paradoxes. Just as soon as owning a modest rambler on a quarter-acre lot with enough backyard to roll out a Slip ‘n Slide became a cornerstone of the American Dream, it also began to represent everything that is misguided and disturbing about American life. Beneath that thin veneer of normalcy, so the myth goes, lies a festering sewer of angst, a wasteland of conformity and materialism that reduces life to a job, six hours of TV a day and a trip to Home Depot on the weekends. The sprawl, the isolation, the excessive lawn care—it’s all so creepy, so Stepford.

But if the burbs are so awful, why does more than half the American population live in them? And unless the majority of Americans are hopeless dullards (a possibility that cannot, alas, be entirely ruled out), how can the suburbs themselves be as dull as people seem to think?

They’re not, of course—one simply needs to know how to look at them. John Cheever fashioned an entire literary career out of suburban hypocrisy (or, as we city dwellers like to call it—gossip). In recent years, the industrial-entertainment complex has given us plenty of subversive suburban intrigue (Pleasantville, American Beauty, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, The Riches), and now—hard as it may be to fathom—the Walker Art Center has stepped into the breach with Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes, a show dedicated to, if nothing else, the cultural legitimacy of suburbia.

Worlds Away has taken up residence in the gallery recently abandoned by Frida Kahlo, and it is both more and less than one might expect. Architect Teddy Cruz’s mural of the political and practical dynamics of developing intelligent housing options along the California/Tijuana border is a mind numbing cluster of circles and arrows and photos that should probably be studied for an hour or two if you hope to make any sense of it. Likewise, some of the displays that dive deep into dilemmas of civic engineering and various re-uses of abandoned mall space look more like the kind of thing you’d see at a MnDOT planning meeting.

The show is arranged in three parts—architecture, car culture, and retail—but the most interesting (and entertaining) parts are less about the suburbs than they are about artists who have found something interesting to do with the layers of contradiction and pretense that conceal the “truth” about suburbia. Many of the photos have an entirely intentional “things are not what they seem” quality. One of the best is a photo by Larry Sultan that at first glance looks like some nice people lounging on a couch in a living room. A closer look reveals a movie camera and lights on the back patio with a guy holding a light meter over a pair of sprawled legs. Suddenly it’s clear that they’re shooting a porn film and the people on the couch are actors waiting for their cue—which is, evidently, a popular and lucrative use of suburban Los Angeles real estate.

Another interesting series features aerial photographs by Edward Ruscha of various empty parking lots. They are not pretty photos, but what’s fascinating are the patterns of oil stains left by the thousands of cars that have parked in those spaces; the wear and tear of a million individual shopping trips. It’s difficult to say what these pictures tell us beyond the fact that people at malls like to park as close to the door as possible, but the photos are undeniably mesmerizing in a Google–satellite-view sort of way.

The show is not without a sense of humor, though. By far my favorite piece is a photograph by Lee Stoetzel that looks from a distance like an ordinary suburban McMansion. But look closer and you can see that the house is actually made from pieces of McDonald’s food and packaging, with crumbled hamburger for a driveway (“ground” beef—get it?) and drink-cup lids for windows. A special nod must also go out to artist Stefanie Nagorka, who has created a sculpture entirely out of patio paving stones, something she apparently does for fun on the back lot at Menard’s when no one is looking.

There’s more, but the exhibit was only about 80 percent assembled for the press walk through. All in all, Worlds Away offers an extremely cerebral take on the idea of suburbia, and to the credit of curators Andrew Blauvelt and Tracy Myers, almost none of it is what you might expect. You won’t find anything here about the alarming proliferation of holiday lights in Eden Prairie or the existential implications of life in a cul-de-sac, but there are plenty of thought-provoking tidbits to browse and contemplate.

Rest assured that the mystery of the burbs will still be intact when you walk out. Which is as it should be, for there are some things in American life that cannot and should not be explained away—Chemlawn, Hummers, and lawn ornaments among them.

2.12.08: To Be Certain of the Dawn at Orchestra Hall

Last night’s Minnesota Orchestra concert at Orchestra Hall was a gut-wrenching experience I expect to be digesting for a very long while. It was a reprise of a major concert two seasons ago on the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, which saw the premiere of To Be Certain of the Dawn, an hour-long oratorio with music by Stephen Paulus and words by Michael Dennis Browne. Osmo Vänskä and the Minnesota Orchestra are recording it this week. The oratorio formed the major part of the concert, and was psychologically set up by an extremely effective trio of works on the first half.

Olivier Messiaen’s Abyss of the Birds for solo clarinet from the Quartet for the End of Time, which was written in 1940 while the composer was a prisoner of war, was played gorgeously by Burt Hara, who coaxed supple pianissimos out of nothingness and formed a desolate, plaintive, and ultimately hopeful world with his range of expression. Hara’s solo merged into Steve Heitzeg’s Wounded Fields for string orchestra, which is an elegy to all the victims of war. Heitzeg has an utter mastery of emotional, sweeping gestures that are at once heartbreaking and ennobling. With Wounded Fields, so sensitively rendered by the orchestra, he created a nearly visible depiction of the landscape that inspired him—the battlefields of Gettysburg overgrown with wildflowers. Janet Horvath soloed on Max Bruch’s Kol Nidre for solo cello and orchestra. Kol Nidre, the prayer for absolution and release from oaths, is chanted on the Day of Atonement in the Jewish tradition and dates to the Spanish Inquisition, when Jews were forced to renounce their faith. This performance had additional layers of meaning—because Bruch wrote music on Hebrew themes, his children were nearly victims of the Third Reich, and Horvath’s own parents were Holocaust survivors. Whether that informs her performance of this somber work or not, her playing is infused with a heartfelt passion.

Father Michael O’Connell, rector of the Basilica of Saint Mary, commissioned To Be Certain of the Dawn as a gift to the Jewish community in general, and Temple Israel in particular, in commemoration of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of the death camps. It is also inspired by Pope John Paul II’s 1998 statement on the Shoah, acknowledging that Jews were not responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus.

The oratorio begins (and ends) with the sound of the shofar, or ram’s horn, and Hebrew chanting by Barry Abelson, Temple Israel’s cantor. The first of the work’s three major sections, “Teshuvah (Renewal),” begins with the choir pleading to God to “create a great emptiness in me.” It is a desperate prayer that is answered ferociously—Paulus provides a violent acid torrent to wash out the wound. The self-reflective text is heavy with grief and guilt, and asks, "How did we think we might be recognized as You in all we failed to do?" A simple commandment from the Book of Leviticus, “You should love your neighbor as yourself,” that was found scrawled in both Hebrew and German on the ruins of a temple following Kristallnacht, serves as a leitmotif and is sung throughout the work in Hebrew, German, and English.

The second major section, “Remembrance,” is a beautiful and haunting homage to the victims of the Holocaust, especially the children. Pre-Holocaust photos from Roman Vishniac’s book, Children of a Vanished World, were projected and given imagined stories, poignantly told by a quartet of soloists (soprano Elizabeth Futral, mezzo Christina Baldwin, tenor John Tessier, and bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos).  I was struck by how quotidian the words Browne gave them were: two little girls eat bread and show off a new red coat; a boy wishes “it didn’t hurt where my tooth came out;” a grandfather dozes against a tree and dotes on his grandson. But each bears an undercurrent of hardship and dread, like fears of the knock on the door. These portraits are harshly punctuated by the chorus uttering the Nuremberg Laws, such as “Jews may not attend school; Jews may not ride bicycles...”

Throughout the work, the children’s voices (provided by the extremely well-prepared Minnesota Boychoir and Basilica’s Cathedral Choristers) offer blessings. The sublime words and music in the “Hymn to the Eternal Flame” sung by the Minnesota Chorale and the Basilica Cathedral Choir, children’s choruses and soprano solo, were what finally undid me, though—they called to mind both a potent symbol of not forgetting as well as the awful fire of the crematoriums—“every trembling in you, every blessing, every soul, every shining, woven into fire.”

The final major section, “Visions,” suggests peace rather than conflict, and also sets the words of Holocaust survivors. The last of those voices, Hinda Kibort’s, seems to sum up the spirit of the entire hour-long work: “I have lived in a world with no children . . . I would never live in a world of no children again.” The work’s final major chord alternates with the inherently unsettling tritone that by its nature defies resolution. The message is clear—the work of healing is not over, but rather it is handed to the listener. The final words, sung in Hebrew by the choruses and cantor, again call out the central commandment: “You should love your neighbor as yourself.”

2.9.08: Louis CK at the Pantages

Ladies and gentlemen of America, for the duration of this Morning After post, I would like you to imagine . . . to imagine that this review of Louis CK’s show at the Pantages last night . . . to imagine that this review is being read to you by the next President of the United States . . . the junior senator from Illinois . . . Barack . . . OBAMA!

[applause.]

Thank you. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, these are certainly uncertain times.

[applause.]

Uncertain times when an MSNBC guest host can be censured by a senator and a presidential candidate because that reporter used language more appropriate to a sit-com or an Entertainment Weekly article than a discussion on the marketability of the former first lady’s daughter . . . uncertain times, when the suspension of that same MSNBC guest host, a guest host who dared to use the phrase “pimped out” in a two-minute segment on the Clinton’s new marketing strategy, when that suspension is deemed to be insufficient by our former first lady, when that first lady chides the fifth estate with a letter that reads,  “Nothing justifies the kind of debasing language that David Shuster used and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient.”

[pause for a knit brow denoting quiet inner contemplation]

Yes, these are uncertain times. Now, I’m not with you today to excuse Mr. Shuster. I’m not here to excuse the scourge of prostitution, or the uncertain role of the now very adult Chelsea Clinton, or even the use of negative language on behalf of anyone in the marketing departments of either campaign! In fact, I am not here to excuse negativity on behalf of anyone . . . ever!

[applause.]

As you all know, I’m all about positive vibes, and, of course . . . CHANGE!

[applause]

No, ladies and gentlemen, I’m not here today to excuse David Shuster for accidentally calling Chelsea Clinton a whore. No, I’m here to tell you this: that last night, at the Pantages theater, the greatest stand-up comic working today came to Minneapolis. Louis CK, a man who has written both jokes and several very mediocre movies for Chris Rock! Chris Rock, of course, the greatest black stand-up comic working today!

[applause.]

You see, in these uncertain times, Mr. CK stands for something very important . . . something possibly much more important . . . than the audacity of hope.

[crowd gasps.]

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. CK stands for making the inappropriate joke at the appropriate time. He stands for turning America’s bullshit meter up to 11! He stands for saying what you mean, and meaning what you say!

[applause]

Even if that language would be upsetting on a show like Countdown or even Hardball. But Louis CK is not controlled by the culture of fear or the purveyors of false positivity! Last night, at the Pantages Theater, Louis CK, echoing great American comics of the past, comics like George Carlin and Lenny Bruce . . . last night, Louis CK bravely talked about the three most offensive words in the modern American language. But before I go any further, I'd like to give those who are easily offended by words an opportunity to plug their ears. For the three most hated, disgusting words are: faggot, cunt and . . . nigger.

[crowd looks around nervously.]

Ladies and gentlemen, I know, I know, if you use those words, even in a comedy club, losing your job and being publicly humiliated are not enough for the hounds of the PC witch hunt . . . no, you’re supposed to be deported to the island of Elba after your utility to the sanctimonious pundits on both the left and the right has expired. As the junior senator from New York said yesterday in her letter to the corporate bosses at MSNBC: “Nothing justifies that kind of debasing language . . . and no temporary suspension or half-hearted apology is sufficient.” I am here today, ladies and gentlemen, to argue that nothing justifies that kind of debasing language . . . except laughter. Deep, penetrating laughter . . . laughter that lets the message swoop in under the radar of our performance-enhanced outrage reflex. Laughter that swoops in under the vigilance of America’s suppressive superego and settles on top of the vast American heart. Last night, Mr. CK redirected our superego, redirected that petty outrage reflex that’s been built up by the mongers of special interests. Last night, he bravely told the crowd, “I am most offended when I hear the ‘n-word.’ No, not “nigger”—when I actually hear ‘the n-word.’”

[scattered laughter, but mostly crickets.]

Now, on the advice of my polling team, I’ve done my best to avoid talking about race during this campaign, but last night, Louis CK pointed out that people who use the n-word are just white people who want to use the word nigger. And you know what, ladies and gentlemen? Louis CK is right!

[crowd begins to panic.]

Last night, when Louis CK said, “When people like Nancy Grace use ‘n-word’ they’re making me say the real thing in my head. Why don’t you say it? Don’t make me say it!” Oh, and I also laughed—very, very deeply—when Louis CK pointed out how easy white people have it, at any time in history, even in the year two, when Louis said he would have no problem visiting if he had a time machine, even though he really didn’t know what was going on, but he could probably show up and the maitre d’ would say, “Yes, sir, we have a table waiting for you.”

[crowd laughs against its will. The older, Hillary–demo crosses their arms.]

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I laughed because it was a very funny way to shatter a taboo subject. And I laughed because, at least in public discourse, the list of taboos gets ever longer, while everyday the hysteria over who offended which group by making allusions to which taboo gets louder. Our news outlets don’t devote a quarter of the time to the daily casualties in Iraq as they do to the questionable comments of Don Imus, Bill Clinton, and now this hapless MSNBC guest host. Ladies and gentlemen, Louis CK is angry at the way things are, but not going from town to town, and talking about a warm and fuzzy place. He’s going to town to town acting as our bullshit mechanism. He’s stumping against careless language and hard-to-pin-down lies. His jokes circumvent the misleading politicians and subvert the endless marketing spin. Not by preaching like David Cross or Janeane Garafalo or Al Franken . . . no, by making us laugh.

And I hope he doesn’t change. 

02.05.08: Sweeney Todd at the State Theatre

As far as I’m concerned, Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd is a great American opera, despite being written in the popular idiom. (It’s reported that Sondheim is driven crazy by that contention, but then artists don’t always fully appreciate the art they create.) The complexity of the score is well beyond your average musical. The thematic use of music to tell the story, the rich melodic structure, and the complexity of the ensembles makes it an incredibly sophisticated work of art.

As such, the current national touring production does not do Sondheim’s masterpiece much justice. The work’s greatness is totally obscured by this production’s gimmicky concept and staging.

The show, like the current Tim Burton film, is based on a nineteenth-century melodrama about a mad barber seeking revenge for injustices perpetrated against he and his family years before, by slitting the throats of the perpetrators. He is in cahoots with Mrs. Lovett, who bakes his victims into unsavory meat pies. Hugh Wheeler’s book attempts to take the show to a higher metaphoric level of class struggle, but it works best as a Grand Guignol horror story.

The touring production is basically a chamber version of the show, where ten actors not only perform all the roles and act as the chorus, but also play all the instruments. As a result, the accompaniment is incredibly thin, and so is the vocal ensemble, which doesn’t even come close to delivering Sondheim’s full-throated choruses the way they are meant to be sung. And their greatest sin is to make the incredibly witty and incisive lyrics all but incomprehensible.

Directed and designed by John Doyle, this production won the Tony Award in 2006 for Best Revival and was acclaimed in New York. But to my mind, its stylized theatricality robs the story of both its horror and its humanity. Since the entire cast remains onstage for the entire show, the effect of Sweeney’s razor has little consequence. And the fact that cast members are playing instruments—even in the midst of their scenes—becomes distracting, limiting any kind of human interaction. When Mrs. Lovett comes onstage blowing two notes on a tuba, it just trivializes the whole proceedings.

Judy Kaye’s Mrs. Lovett is the bright light of the production, however—which is as it should be, because that part is written to steal the show. Kaye plays the outrageous character with enough subtlety to be both funny and menacing, and her rendition of  “A Little Priest” is the highlight of the show.

Despite his he-man swagger, David Hess’s Sweeney is about a size too small for the role. He does not dominate the stage, vocally or dramatically, as the mythic character should. And in the most extreme moments, he becomes so melodramatic that he loses all his humanity, depriving the story of an added level of emotional involvement and, indeed, tragedy.

As Johanna, Sweeney’s long lost daughter, Lauren Molina sings with an unpleasantly shrill soprano and plays the role so broadly that she loses all sense of being the sympathetic ingénue. Benjamin Magnuson makes a strong stab at being the romantic hero that tries to rescue her, but the production defeats him and it is impossible to care about their fates, once again robbing the show of its heart.

By contrast, the Tim Burton version currently in theaters has all the passion, danger, and pathos that’s missing from this production. In fact, the best local version of Sweeney Todd I've seen was at Bloomington Civic Theatre, where director John Command treated the story with both the grandeur and the humanity that it deserves. This version, despite its New York pedigree, feels done up on the cheap.

Sweeney Todd runs through February 10 at the State Theatre.

2.3.08: Anxiety Dreams at Altered Aesthetics

Altered Aesthetics has picked an irresistible premise for one of two shows currently up at the gallery. Who hasn't had dreams that the universe may be more malevolent than you thought? Anxiety Dreams, curated by Tonja Torgerson and Ellen Mueller, features the work of nine artists offering their take on this familiar expression of subconscious angst in the form of photographs, paintings, mixed media, and video.

References to childhood abound in nearly all of the pieces on display. If any thread connects the pieces in the show, it's that one. J. M. Culver's "Altered States," a huge charcoal and acrylic piece, may be the most successful at conveying the sense of vulnerability and tenuousness of both childhood and the dream world. An old man in slippers and a little girl, a window and a broken teetering chair, the elements are simple but evocative.

Alex Kuno's mixed media canvases go so far as to mimic the bright, colorful aesthetic of childhood with chalk, crayons, and watercolor. They could be out of a children's book, albeit a disturbing one. The artist depicts children in various states of distress discovering parts of a corpse, for instance, or fleeing across a stormy heath.

Andy Sturdevant's "Chiefs" series may be the sole exception. His work addresses a decidedly grownup fear. Sturdevant sets hand-painted plates (the kind you might see in your grandmother's kitchen) against a backdrop of faded wallpaper. The twist? The plates depict CEOs of major corporations: Xcel's Richard Kelly surrounded by a border of green and white flowers; Sallie Mae's Al Lord set against a geometric pattern in cornflower blue. The effect is somewhere between David Lynch and Michael Moore. Meant as a symbol of the invisible power undermining everyday people and contributing to a pervasive sense of anxiety, the plates are, says the artist, "an embodiment of financial panic."

White night gowns, paper-doll streamers, and haunted expressions figure prominently into Noelle McCleaf's photographs. Tonja Torgerson's bright, graphic shadow boxes depict not-so-bright-and-cheery subject matter. Lindsay Noble's zombie-like, life-sized, 3D cutouts are straight out of a down-market catalog. Each offers the familiar turned askew, much the way dreams do.

While you're there, check out the "Bitter Fruits" show upstairs. It's the larger of the two shows up at the gallery this month and features 150 works from eighty artists. The show looks at the role of women as social creatures and art objects.

Anxiety Dreams at Altered Aesthetics runs through Feb. 26.

2.2.08: The Syringa Tree at The Jungle Theater

I am not a crier. So don’t let the fact that I did not shed a tear at the end of The Syringa Tree color your decision to see it. In 2001, when it debuted in New York, people were supposedly so overcome with emotion that they sobbed all the way out into the street. Then again, New Yorkers are not known for their ability to contain their feelings. We Minnesotans, though—well, if you want us to cry, it better be something worth crying about. 

At the end of Saturday night’s performance I could hear people sniffling, and one woman a few rows in front of me dabbed her eye a couple of times, but the waterworks were pretty much over by the time people got to the dessert buffet. Once the wine was poured and people started chatting, all the talk was about what a magnificent actor Sarah Agnew is, and what a tremendous display of her acting talents the play is, and how even the most supremely talented of artists would think twice about taking on such a profoundly awesome professional challenge.

Indeed, if acting were ice skating, Pamela Gien’s The Syringa Tree would be an inverted quadruple toe loop with a triple sow-cow sit spin: about six hundred of them, back to back, with no rest, for an hour and a half. Everything about the play seems designed to ratchet up the level of difficulty. One actor playing more than twenty characters—check (twenty-two). Ridiculously broad age range—check (newborn to eighty-three). Multiple accents—check. White girl playing large, black nanny—check. White girl playing a black man—check (quite a few of them, actually).

Sarah Agnew has been lighting up the stage at Theatre de la Jeune Lune and the Guthrie for years now, but there is something about her decision to do this play that smacks of an actress throwing down the professional gauntlet: “You know I’m good, but I bet you didn’t know I was this good!”

Now we know. She is good, very good, though five or six of the characters in the play seem like they were tossed in just to impress the judges. Agnew is at her best while playing six-year-old Lizzie Grace, the daughter of a white doctor and his wife in 1960s South Africa who seem to have a whole house full of black folks working for them. I am not going to spoil the plot for you (because, honestly, I did not entirely follow the plot). Suffice it to say that there is a lot of tension between the whites and blacks, the police do a lot of sniffing around for an illegitimate baby that the doctor family is hiding, and everyone gets nervous whenever they come around—and for good reason, it turns out.

That’s all I’m going to say, except that holy multiple-personality disorder, that Sarah Agnew can act! It’s astonishing to watch her transition from character to character with such seamless ease. And the fact that she can sustain a conversation between five different characters in a room all by herself is a profound testament to her skills. Back and forth she goes, from a six-year-old nuisance to an annoyed mother to a black nanny to a menacing police officer to an aging grandmother. It’s a clinic. Watch and take notes.

One more thing: If the Ivey Awards are looking for someone to give an award to, lighting designer Barry Browning deserves one for The Syringa Tree. All the scene changes in this play—day, night, sunset, inside, outside—are done entirely with light. The craftsmanship is exquisite, because other than an oversized swing there is nothing to look at onstage but a textured background and Browning’s luminous artistry. It’s beautiful work—so beautiful that it might bring a tear to my eye if I were the sort of person who cried about things like that, which I’m not.

But go see the play anyway.

The Syringa Tree continues at The Jungle Theater through March 9. 

2.1.08: Warm Beer Cold Women at the Guthrie

The girl I wanted to take to Warm Beer Cold Women, the Guthrie musical “celebrating the music of Tom Waits,” forgot she made the date, and the girl I ended up going with has a Mexican boyfriend.

How Tom Waits is that?

But that’s nothing compared to Robert O. Berdahl’s bum trip—the writer, director, and star of Warm Beer snapped his Achilles messing around with a prop in his garage three weeks ago, but went on with the show anyway. Dude sang and danced on crutches, and there was an insert in the program hoping to excuse his last-minute surgery, a note promising “we are doing our best to embrace this beautiful malady and incorporate it into the show.”   

Warm Beer is definitely game: Berdahl and two other actors, Katy Hays and Dennis Curley, backed by a six-piece band, run through thirty-three Tom Waits tunes during the course of two hours. There’s not much of a plot tying everything together; it’s more like each song is performed as a self-contained skit, with the three actors portraying different characters—an ice-cream man sings “The Ice Cream Man,” a hooker from Minneapolis sings, “Xmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis,” a couple makes “Pick Up After You” a dysfunctional duet. If anything, the songs are set along the timeline of Tom Waits’ career—intermittently throughout the show, taped snippets of a Rolling Stone-type interview with Berdahl-as-Waits plays between songs. He answers the interviewer’s questions with stuff like, “I want my gravestone to read, ‘I Told You I Was Sick.’”

Warm Beer is entertaining enough to be a hit, especially in the smaller top-floor Dowling Studio. Hell, I’ll even give it its poster-ready pull quote: “Triple Espresso sings Tom Waits!” Look, I’m trying not to be a dink about this. If you’re a Tom Waits fan, I’m not going to tell you not to go, but if you’re really a Tom Waits fan, then here’s the deal: just because Waits’ music is campy, theatrical, operatic even (he’s an actor too, after all) doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to act it out. On his records, even concept records like Frank’s Wild Years, Waits cuts through the trappings of vaudeville schmaltz—trappings that he put there in the first place—because he’s too cool to give in to what he thinks to be “musical theater.” (Ironically, or maybe just defensively, during one of the interview snippets Berdahl-as-Waits says, “I hate musical theater.”) Waits is both more and less pretentious to settle for that; he’s not stuck on authenticity by any means, but he instinctively knows how to save camp from growing into corn. In Warm Beer, the actors sing their hearts out, gesturing to the back row, but I just don’t think “Time” (off 1985’s Rain Dogs) is right for the Broadway treatment. I mean, it’s easy to imagine what Zack from Down by Law would say.      

For example, the first series of songs takes place in the porkpie hat, down-and-out world Waits created in the seventies. And to see a guy in a stage prop porkpie belt out “Broken Bicycles” like it’s “Tom Waits Week” on American Idol—well, it just felt wrong. That’s not to say Warm Beer doesn’t have a few highlights. Katy Hays’ brass and toughness as a singer belie her perfect cheekbones, and she works it like Gena Rowlands in a Cassavettes movie, totally in character whether playing the tough broad in the dingy housecoat or the hussy in the shabby leopard-print coat. Her cover of “Xmas Card,” where she dreams about owning a used car lot so she can drive a different car every day, is devastating in its deluded hope. And Berdahl and Curley have their moments too, especially as Warm Beer gets past the seventies-period Waits and gets into his weirder eighties stuff. Berdahl’s crazed take on “Rain Dogs” was outrageous—he follows an accordion player to the stage wearing a full-length leather duster, a leather Amelia Earheart-style flight cap and aviator goggles, twirling a blown-out umbrella. And I liked Curley’s version of “Frank’s Wild Years,” where he imitates Waits’ whiskey-shot busted growl, singing into a microphone attached to the steering wheel of a rusted out ’55 Caddy, while Berdahl and Hays sweat out the chorus in a gypsy fever.

But ultimately, I guess I’m going to go Tom Waits-snob on this one. What do you expect? The girl I wanted to take forgot she made the date, and I ended up going with a girl who has a Mexican boyfriend. And it’s raining hammers. And it’s raining naiiiils. And it’s time, time, tiiiiime.