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22 mar '99
14 mar '99
7 mar '99
3 mar '99

22 mar '99

The Trojan Women, The Shakespeare Theatre, Washington

I saw an invited-audience dress rehearsal of this show, which opens to preview audiences tomorrow.

The stars of this show are the chorus of captured Trojan women. Their heads shaved, barefoot, clad in little more than hospital gowns, they speak, chant, and sing their sections solo, as antiphons, in unison, and in a cappella harmony.

The set and lights evoke a bombed-out government building in what could be today's Yugoslavia. The play's opening images, before words are spoken, are especially compelling. One chorus member huddles fetally in a cratered concrete wall, about three feet off the deck, upstage center. Her drab garments are almost the same color as the wall, and it's as is she's crawled inside to disappear.

Jonathan Fried is good as the preening Menelaus.

Unfortunately, the "trial" scene with Helen is problematic, and it degenerates into a something more like a session with Judge Judy, yielding some unintentional humor.

Michael Powell's Peeping Tom (1960) is very creepy. All the more so for being almost bloodless, even though four murders are committed. The killer, Mark, anticipates the impotent voyeur of sex, lies, and videotape. Something that I've noticed in Powell's films: there's usually one element that is eerily, intentionally fake-looking. Here, it's the slice of birthday cake that Helen gives to Mark.

Tony Goldwyn plays it safe with A Walk on the Moon, a conventional story of liberation (mainly sexual) in 1969's Summer of Love.

Do what you can to see Matthew Diamond's important documentary of Paul Taylor and his company, Dancemaker.

Taylor is the first son of Martha Graham's dysfunctional family of modern dancers, and is arguably our greatest living choreographer. The movie is a crisply edited, sweaty view from the wings of everything that goes into his artistry: labor disputes, technical snafus, dancers on the point of exhaustion. It's structured loosely on two elements: the company's tour of India, and the preparation for a new season at City Center, including the creation of 1997's "Piazzolla Caldera."

There is lots to see of the dances themselves, including archival footage of Taylor himself from 1962. What shines through is the loyalty of the dancers and staffers of the company to Taylor, and his loyalty to them in return. Also, it becomes clear how difficult it is to explain, even show, the choreographic process. What can you do with an art form that proceeds by suggestions like, "Now... if you could sort of throw her"?

Taylor's crunchy wit is also here. He retells the story he invented that "Company B" was inspired, out of desperation, by finding an Andrews Sisters recording in a city street trash can. That sly humor perhaps explains the KKK dance in Taylor's new "Oh, You Kid!"

14 mar '99

The Best of Roald Dahl, stories

In his fiction for adults, Roald Dahl was a factory of Twilight Zone-like plot twists. This collection spans works published as early as 1945, and as late as 1989, but Dahl hit his stride in the late 50's with nuggets of dark humor like "Georgy Porgy" and "Genesis and Catastrophe."

His ear for narrative is stronger than his ear for dialogue: the conversation that sets up the punch line of "Royal Jelly" is draggy. Indeed, many of his stories, like "Pig," read like fairy tales for grownups.

The quintessential character trait of a Dahl protagonist is smugness. The delight in these stories, what keeps you turning pages, is finding out how, even whether, the hero receives his comeuppance.

This collection includes the source material for the Tarantino segment of the movie Four Rooms, the story "Man from the South."

32 Stories: The Complete Optic Nerve Mini-Comics, by Adrian Tomine

This book appeared in my recommendations list at Amazon.com, and it was a happy purchase, as Tomine shows promise as a cartoonist and story-teller.

The earliest of these comics were drawn while he was still in high school, and they show an awkward, adolescent brio that is winning. "Back Break" is a pure scribble of pain, while "Train I Ride" incorporates an image from Edward Hopper.

The best of the lot are the later, more assured, definitely more ambiguous stories "Laundry" and "Happy Anniversary." Each of them is a detached, cool cucumber slice of Tomine's life.

October Sky is a touching, inspiring contribution to geek chic, with a strong ensemble cast. On the one hand, the plot device of dad settling the coal miners' strike so that the boys' science fair project could be rescued felt forced. On the other, if Laura Dern were my science teacher and had encouraged me with that megawatt smile to enter the science fair, I would have done it, no questions asked. Even if first prize were a trip to Indianapolis.

7 mar '99

I was glad that I overcame the cramped, gloomy Cineplex Odeon Janus 3, chattering audience members, and a subway car full of hockey fans to see John Boorman's The General, an economically told yarn of 90's real-life Irish gangster Martin Cahill. A neatly done set piece, a robbery of a jewelry wholesaler, put me in mind of a similar sequence in The Killers. The black and white film (black and gray, actually) casts its own glow on the story.

It's good to see that Jon Voight still has some good work in him, and I'm always happy to see Adrian Dunbar's mug. Brendan Gleeson is the cuddly, wily, apolitical Cahill, who is not really that bright. In his own way victorious at the end, he is just a boy playing at cops and robbers.

The only way to see Cruel Intentions is with a group of oversexed, cynical, inner-city teenagers at the mid-afternoon bargain matinee. A tasty, snarky romp, and no one escapes unmarked. A shout-out to Selma Blair as the klutzy virgin Cecile. Dag!

The Harmonists is a sweet, heartfelt tribute to the Comedian Harmonists, a six-man vocal group in Weimar Germany, wildly popular across Europe. Abolished by the Nazis because half of them were Jews, they might have been as big as the Beatles. Sehr nett.

At the Phillips Collection, through the end of the month, you will find a exhibition of 200 works from the Hallmark Photographic Collection. The show focuses on American-made images from approximately 1890-1990.

The sampler is rather comprehensive, even if a particular artist's best work is not represented: two possible exceptions are Ilse Bing's incomparable "Self-Portrait with Leica" (1931) and William Eggleston's "Tricycle." In this second piece, in a low-angle composition, a ginormous tricycle dwarfs a suburban house in its background. There are even non-threatening images from Robert Mapplethorpe and Joel-Peter Witkin.

What caught my eye were several works that prefigured later developments in various arts. A beautifully watery, smudgy study of pedestrians by Johan Hagemeyer from 1921 suggests paintings by Christopher Brown. Ralph Steiner's 1928 hard-edged collection of coffee cups and alarm clocks (six of them, reading various times from 7:45 to 8:10) has the same feel as Wayne Thiebaud's renderings of layer cakes. And "Reclining Woman" (1930) by Florence Henri has all the languor of one of Cindy Sherman's film stills.

3 mar '99

Original Bliss, a novel by A. L. Kennedy

I find it hard to describe my reactions to this novel. I can say that the story concerns two people in a great deal of pain, and that Kennedy makes you feel that pain. Her prose is spare and clear. Here is the menacing husband:

Mr. Brindle was calm when she joined him in the dimness of the living-room. He sat in his usual chair, watching a documentary about something to do with crime, and was not especially fatter or thinner than before, but made out of something very minorly different. His flesh seemed more porous and less convincing.

There is a happy ending, of sorts. Give this one a taste.

Fool Moon, Eisenhower Theatre, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington

Note to self: Row D in the Ike is too close to the stage, unless you want to study the floor mikes. Why are there floor mikes for a performance that's mostly mime?

Question for later: Have they installed a new grand drape in this theatre?

Note to self: Row D is not so close that you're pelted with popcorn and sprayed with water in the opening bit, but close enough.

Answer: No, it's not a new grand drape, it's more schtick. Be careful, Bill!

I laughed till my ears turned red at Bill Irwin and David Shiner's post-modern clowning. I'd been looking forward to the show, which has had three runs on Broadway, eventually making its way to D.C.

Shiner's persona is acerbic and dour, as if he's smelled something bad. He seems to say, "Who are these people? Don't they understand anything?" His greatest comedic skill is to turn anything into a bit. Did the musician miss a sound effect cue? Make it a bit. Did the audience member, recruited do a scene onstage, fluff the illusion and put her head through the imaginary window? Make it a bit. Did she steal your schtick? Make it a bit.

By contrast, Irwin's character is eager to please. Gifted with a set of features that look like they were made from a batch of thermoplastic that hadn't quite set, he's a one-man Punch and Judy show.

There is a one-upsmanship at work between the two, both in the characters they create and between them as actors. Building on one another, they do some damn fine work.

The Red Clay Ramblers provide transitional music from an astonishing array of instruments, serve as title cards, and generally act as chief cooks and bottle washers. I'm pleased they've revived the neglected classic, Homer and Jethro's "Pal-Yat-Chee," by way of Spike Jones.

Note to self: If you sit at intermission scribbling notes on your new Palm IIIx organizer, you will attract attention.

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