EXTRA CRITICUM

Bringing a life to life: the challenges of writing a biographical play.

After seeing the Broadway production of Matthew Lombardo’s Looped the other night, I was struck by how the playwright endeavored to find a fresh approach to the biographical drama in Act One, and then fell into the trap of good old “confession and reconciliation” banality in Act Two, thereby turning a surprisingly entertaining evening into another disappointing attempt at bringing a life to life.

Disparity between Acts is not the sole domain of biographical plays, of course.  Many a great playwright has been stymied by second acts, and it is no small feat that Looped manages to entertain up until the predictable and preposterous confessional climax.  What keeps the play interesting in Act One is Lombardo’s fine and vital sense of comedy and, mainly, Valerie Harper’s brave and bravura turn as the bawdy Tallulah Bankhead.

What a difference the back-story makes!

I went to see a show the other night that I knew nothing about when I walked into the theatre. As we walked home after-wards, I learned a few things about the show that I had just seen. And what I learned completely changed my experience of it. And it got me thinking about context -- how important it is to how we take things in... how it impacts our experiences in ways far beyond our consciousness.

Here are the basic facts, followed by my impressions of elements of the show both BEFORE and AFTER I acquired this new knowledge of its back-story. I've color-coded it for easy reading. The BEFORE in green
and the AFTER in red.

My So-Called Other Life

This may come as a surprise to some of you, but I'm not just about movies. It's true, I do love watching musty Japanese art films, but occasionally I do other stuff, too. Like write fiction. As proof I offer you this: "There Is Joy Before the Angels of God," a short story I wrote that has just been published in the Winter 2010 issue of The Literary Review. It's available NOW at your finer bookstores!

ABC News Considers Midday News Show

 
The other day over at The Observer, Felix Gillette wrote that ABC is considering creating a midday news and lifestyle program. You can read the article here but seriously, here is what you need to know without a single click: ABC wants to kill their daytime dramas because it takes too much effort and too much money from their bottom line to produce. They would rather put on cheap news shows instead.

As I've written before, the net has been trying to kill the genre for years but, God love 'em, soaps fans will not go quietly. Unfortunately for soap fans the petitions and crabbing on Television Without Pity is falling on deaf ears as far as the network is concerned... but I don't really understand why advertisers are on board with this. Isn't it less desirable to be a sponsor for a show that no one watches (coughjaylenocough for example) than a show that a small but loyal fanbase watches? I guess the bottom line - effort vs return on investment is at play here - it's easier to make a cheap talk show and get a few viewers than have to employ a couple hundred people to put on a daytime drama (which, you know, is wooorrrrk!)

Brought to this island for a larger purpose: LOST and its metaphors

Watching the final season of LOST, I'm torn. Torn between feeling duped at having bought the notion that threads would be tied, mysteries explained, etc. etc. and feeling thrilled at the sheer scope of what this show is actually tackling... thematically, that is.

I suppose as it becomes more and more likely that nothing will make a shred of sense by the closing episode, it's comforting to turn one's attention to the broad themes. 

I'm beginning to think I do too much...

I was telling Roland just a few weeks ago that I intend to start blogging here more often, because I've got a lot of irons in the fire, pots on the stove, metaphors that need freshening. However, when you're that damn busy doing things, sometimes blogging about them slips further and further down the list.

However, there are two things that (I think) are a whole lot of fun coming up in the next week, so I am making it a point to spread the word.

First of all... (I have a friend who was an adjunct English professor who received a paper which began "firstable." It took her a few minutes to realize the student meant "first of all." And she was told NOT to grade him down for it. She lives in Canada now).

Screaming into the Abyss. The projectionist can't hear you cause he's not there.

Went to see a movie at the Chelsea Clearview the other night and the house lights were not dimmed for the feature, as is customary.

Several patrons started shouting "House Lights!" I think they thought that there was actually a human being in the booth. Someone who could hear them.

Proof Positive That The World Is About To End

Just when you thought that we might be OK, London's Mail on Sunday came up with The 100 Celebs Who Really Matter and, like all of these lists, it's very subjective of course and since I don't have an idea who the author, Piers Morgan, even is (clearly not one of the "100" even though apparently he's a judge on America's Got Talent - excuse me while I scratch my head and remember that this show is even still on) I'll have to assume (perhaps incorrectly, who knows) that he has some thought in his head and some criteria for this list above and beyond shilling for the people he works for (although, let's look at the number one spot... hmmm Simon Cowell, isn't that his boss on AGT?? Shocker!).

A Rose by Any Other Name [or: Catherine Zeta-Jones, A Class Act]

March 9, 2010. Curtain call at A Little Night Music at the Walter Kerr.

An eager Angela Lansbury fan races to the edge of the stage with an enormous bouquet of red roses—at least two dozen, maybe three. As Angela enters to take her bow, he can be seen desperately signalling to her, trying to catch her eye, thrusting his roses out over the footlights. But he is House Right and she Stage Right. Even if she had seen him, to cross to accept his roses would throw her straight into the path of her co-star, Ms. Catherine Zeta-Jones, who is about to enter for her own bow.

The Tortoise & the Hare: Bette Davis vs. Meryl Streep and their Oscar nods over the years

In honor of the Academy Awards tonight, we submit for your review, the following chart, comparing the Oscar nods received by two towering actress legends: Bette Davis and Meryl Streep.

As for theories as to why one may have outlpaced the other in this random race for a place in Oscar history, we leave it to you creative thinkers to conjure up a plausible explanation for the disparities.

A Small Craft Warning

I think it's a glorious thing when art, in whatever form, returns from the depth of your memory to offer comfort beside some experience occurring in present life. This week, as I was feeling quite sorry for myself at having allowed myself to be drawn in by a man, a piece from Tennessee Williams' Small Craft Warnings did just that for me.

Oy veh! Can someone please tell me what the word "dramaturgically" means?

I hear this word batted around constantly. Everywhere I turn I hear this sentence, or some variation on it.

We really tried to understand the piece dramaturgically.

A Week in the Life of an Opera Impresaria

Thought it might be fun (and informative!) to list some highlights from my busy week. See, I run a mid-size mid-country opera company... something some are calling an endangered species. Here's a snapshot of what this overworked and overcaffeinated working girl had in her calendar this week.

Playing it Safe: Art's Most Formidable Enemy

Just finished Todd London and Ben Pesner's eye-opening study of the landscape for new American plays. Outrageous Fortune is a tough read, not because it's not well-written and meticulously researched but because the content is so damned hard to swallow. It's a bitter pill. But the truth hurts. So much interesting commentary has already erupted over this important book, I won't bore you by adding my own two cents. (If you haven't caught any of the flurry of on-topic pontificating in the blogosphere, simply Google the title and much of it will appear.)

I want to focus on one of the threads that emerged for me in reading the book and that is: Fear. In quote after quote from Artistic Directors all across the U.S., the subtext was the same. I read it as follows:

Diva Is a Myth

Diva (1981) existed in my psyche as one of the most beautiful films ever and a paragon of cool. I remembered the unlikely romantic couple strolling through a blue-hued Paris at dawn accompanied by a Satie-esque piano piece. I remembered that there was a song from some obscure opera. Ahhhh... the music. I remembered it was a stylish film, pleasing to look at, full of great sets and interesting objects, like that beautiful, vintage, white Citroen. Mostly I remembered the punk, “Priest,” the fantastic Dominique Pinon who would later dazzle me in Delicatessen and make me think he was some kind of French re-incarnation of Charlie Chaplin. His was the face on the poster and on the soundtrack LP. Like any punk worth his safety pins, he was full of disdain. In fact, most of his lines begin with, “I don’t like…” Discovering the music he had pumping into his earpiece was to me one of the great cinematic jokes.