EXTRA CRITICUM

Up the Yangtze

Recently I had to pleasure of stumbling upon an excellent example of what documentary filmmaking can be when I saw Yung Chang's Up the Yangtze. Call me old-fashioned but lately I've been shying away from documentaries because the market seems to have been flooded by poorly conceived, shoddily produced, slapped together videos that simply assert a political point of view, better suited to the Op-Ed pages than a movie theatre. Call me crazy, but when I go to see a movie, I would like to be engaged by characters who are fully fleshed out three-dimensional living breathing animals... people I can care about spending 90-120 minutes with.

Endgame to Broadway?

There's talk of the recent BAM production of Beckett's Endgame following in the footsteps of Patrick Stewart's Scottish King. If this talk is true, this would be some coup. How long has it been since we've seen Beckett on a Broadway stage?

Tee-hee-hee! Somebody said a dirty word!

Is it just me? Or have Broadway audiences become completely prudish? Well, maybe not exactly prudish but... Why is it that these days an actor need merely utter "Fuck you!" to another actor on stage in order to evoke paroxysms of hysterical laughter from the audience, most notably from the orchestra section. It's as if these people had never before heard such language.

But surely they have. If they've been to a movie -- any American movie, practically! -- in the past decade,

Please! Take Out the Garbage!

I recently had the pleasure of hearing one of my plays read by a great group of actors at a reading organized by two producers and a director who I know and trust. The actual work that went into this -- one rehearsal, a mailing, some phoning up of commercial producers, etc. -- all went unusually well and so the experience is one I'm sure I'll look back on fondly.

Having said that, there was one thing that just stuck in my craw.

We're All in the Greenroom Now!

[Cross-posted on Mas as Hell Club.]

In the past decade, Americans have become far more media savvy than ever before with more newspaper column inches and television airtime minutes being devoted to behind-the-scenes backstory gossip than ever before. Even our presidential campaigns are not immune to this new obsession. In this brave new world, it seems everyone is an expert on strategy, spin and framing.

Gypsy

People call this the "perfect musical" but I just don't see it. Of course, this production is wonderful and, let's face it, since Tyne Daly and Bernadette Peters (and Rosalind Russell?) croaked their way through the role, it's refreshing to hear Ms. Lupone actually sing every note of the score, as written. Imagine that!

The Country Girl

My memory of this play was murky at best and I only went to see it because I got free tickets. I'd remembered not liking the play all that much when I read it during an Odets binge in college. We saw a very early preview, during which there were several uncomfortable moments with lines being dropped and even an entire scene had to be cut, I assume due to someone's trouble getting off book.

The Play-as-Blurb Syndrome

Has anyone noticed a recent trend in American theatre? Many new plays are being produced that can be easily encapsulated into a one or two paragraph blurb, suitable for a press release. Recently I had the pleasure of seeing the latest offering at Second Stage, where the new play Good Boys and True is currently running. This is a prime example of this syndrome, the play-as-blurb syndrome, I like to call it.

Welcome to EXTRA CRITICUM

We began on May 24, 2008 with the following.

Extra Criticum is a forum for commentary and dialogue about what's on the minds of artists working in the performing arts. That includes producers, designers, actors, writers, directors... anyone who's had a hand in the creation of theatre, film, opera, dance, music, TV, performance art—you name it.