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25 may '99
17 may '99
1 may '99
12 apr '99
1 apr '99

25 may '99

Spring Series, The Washington Ballet, Terrace Theatre, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington

A representative outing from this company, whose style is classical, spiced with elements of jazz and modern. The fluid "Momentum", created by Choo-San Goh, was a last-minute replacement on the program, and is quite pleasing. On this occasion, Runqiao Du didn't seem to have the needed stamina for his partnering duties. The next piece, a premiere of "Sonata," with choreography by Krzysztof Pastor, seems too derivative of the dance by Goh.

But the evening was won by another new piece, the quirky, delightful "Antonio" by Nils Christe, with a score assembled from the works of Vivaldi. The casting calls for a semi-character part, that of Vivaldi, "the Red Priest," and an ensemble of ten women. The dancing features work on the floor, and passages with the dancers turned upstage. Black racer-back costumes, also designed by Christe, highlight the powerful dorsa on display. All the partnering is done by folding chairs, and the piece opens with a scramble that my ballet buddy Roxanne described as "the ladies' room at Sequoia."

I have found the perfect seats for the Terrace Theatre: M107 and 108.

How I Learned to Drive, by Paula Vogel, directed by Molly Brown, Arena Stage, Washington

This play has a sparkling crackerjack box of a structure: the action moves forward and backward in time, spiraling outward from a pivotal event in the relationship between Li'l Bit and her Uncle Peck, who molested her when she was a preteen. Vogel uses a number of effects -- scenelets, effective monologues, even a doo-wop chorus -- to explore this difficult emotional territory. Director Brown and the playwright work together on a number of staging details to show us Li'l Bit's rationalized distance from her own story: for example, stylized (almost Brechtian) freezes, and actors facing downstage when their characters would in fact be facing one another. In a key scene, two actors play Li'l Bit simultaneously: her wiser, mature self, and her 11-year-old self.

I should stress that this is also a very funny play. One of my favorite local young actors, Rhea Seehorn, outdoes Washington fixture Sarah Marshall in the schtick department. The evening was scuffed by an intermittent high-pitched squeal from the sound system.

The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare, directed by Michael Kahn, The Shakespeare Theatre, Washington

Again, I saw an invited-audience dress rehearsal of this show. I have learned not to sit behind the photographer.

This is a faithful reading of the show. It doesn't soft-pedal the Jew-vs.-Christian issue, but rather highlights it. There is more tension in the Lorenzo and Jessica subplot because of it.

Hal Holbrook, as Shylock, uses an accent that sounds authentic, but it interferes with his clarity of diction at times. Kahn has given him a vigorous setting for the "I am a Jew" monologue.

Now that the show has been before an audience, perhaps the director will soften some of the distracting comic business, say, in the second casket scene. Perhaps not.

There is a small but interesting show of photographs from the collection of the National Gallery of Art. It begins with three Talbots (and not the usual broom in the doorway). Ilse Bing, fast becoming one of my favorites, is represented by several images, including the swoopy, kinetic "Pont des Arts, Paris" from 1931. Photos by sculptor David Smith and painter Charles Sheeler are shown, as well as several early and late works by Robert Frank, who was a the subject of a recent retrospective here. A discovery for me is Roy Decarava, who has three wonderful, threatening, film noirish street scenes from the 50's.

Phil Reeves is the standout in Alexander Payne's Election as the irascible principal. Matthew Broderick and Reese Witherspoon also do fine work. The flick is enjoyable, but sometimes Payne feels like he has to spell it all out for us: the plot point with the janitor is emphasized unnecessarily.

The new film of A Midsummer Night's Dream is a jumble. The fairy scenes in the forest have the cheesy look of a Disney picture from the turn of the 60's. Titania, Oberon, and Puck are not at all ethereal: they lumber around a cramped sound stage, when they move at all. I don't understand the need to make Bottom a romantic focus. And whose idea was it that this is a story about bicycles?

On the other hand, the artisans' play is handled excellently, with an unexpected reading of Flute's Thisbe by Sam Rockwell. This despite too many reaction shots and a bit that owes too much to There's Something about Mary.

The text of the play is mostly intact. If the cleverly-punctuated prologue to Pyramus and Thisbe was cut, at least my favorite Shakespearean epithet ("Thou painted maypole!") was retained.

Projection difficulties at AMC Court House are noted.

17 may '99

Murray Louis and Nikolais Dance, Eisenhower Theatre, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington

The evening is a retrospective, of sorts, of the choreographer Alwin Nikolais, with works spanning the period from 1953 to 1985. Nikolais was a holistic innovator who designed his own lights and costumes and composed his own electronics-based scores. His influence on successor generations of dance companies, Pilobolus to name one, is unmistakable.

The works range from the quite good to the not so good. "Crucible," from 1985, provides a great example of some of Nikolais' astonishing lighting effects. It's a futuristic squiggle, with body parts whipped around like so many flagella. But the bare-chested and -breasted dancers left me with the question: what's the difference between this and soft-core porn?

Next is the fleshly clockwork of "Mechanical Organ," a suite from 1980. It's only in the man-woman duet here that Nikolais' dancers relate to one another as human beings, and even this interaction is caricatured.

But the next two dances, from 1953, are remarkable. "Tensile Involvement" uses strips of webbing anchored in the flies and the wings. The dancers cross and re-cross the stage, manipulating the webbing: watching the dance is like looking into a 4-dimensional cats-cradle. This eye-popping piece ends all too quickly. "Noumenon" completely envelops two men in shiny, stretchy, silvery fabric. Each dancer becomes a Brancusi sculpture, a pure abstraction.

After these, however, Nikolais' squarky musical inventions begin to pall, and the evening ends with two pieces from 1965's "Vaudeville of Elements" that haven't aged well. "Tower", with ad lib vocalizations from the cast, is a labored 60s bit about how groovy and crazy it is living in the city.

The Death and Life of Great American Cities, non-fiction by Jane Jacobs

This book, originally published in 1961, is a bracing splash of intellectual cold water. From the opening paragraphs, Jacobs' crunchy prose says she's not going to mince words:

This book is an attack on current city planning and rebuilding. It is also, and mostly, an attempt to introduce new principles of city planning and rebuilding.... My attack is not based on quibbles about rebuilding methods or hairsplitting about fashions in design.

It is a book of unconventional wisdom that proposes radical, common-sense solutions to the problems of slums, traffic, and keeping a city thriving. To Jacobs, the lifeblood of a city is diversity: diversity of people, diversity of uses. She also understands that a diverse, living district, like New York's Greenwich Village, carries the means of its own destruction, and she proposes ways to prevent it.

Even today, very few of her recommendations have been tried, while the cities rot away. Perhaps it is because her book so effectively slays sacred cows like planning commissions and highway builder Robert Moses, and criticizes respected authors like Lewis Mumford. Her command of the summary metaphor is masterful:

To approach a city ... as if it were a larger architectural problem, capable of being given order by converting it into a disciplined work of art, is to make the mistake of attempting to substitute art for life. The results of such profound confusion between art and life are neither life nor art. They are taxidermy.

Jacobs was groping towards what we would now call a systems analysis approach to cities. Her work deserves a larger audience, and it should be put to the test of actual practice.

It's a curiosity to read of developments in New York that were "recent" at the time of Jacobs' writing: the conversion of the avenues to one-way traffic; Moses' failed attempt to erode Washington Square Park that resulted in closing the park to vehicles altogether; the new, isolated, single-use grouping of cultural facilities into a place called Lincoln Center. Carnegie Hall, at first designated to become part of the Center, was spared, to the benefit of its surrounding neighborhood.

As far as the design of the new Modern Library edition of the book goes, I would have liked to see more generous whitespace on each page. This is the sort of book that cries out for personal annotations, illustrations, glosses, and counter-arguments in the margins.

The French gamine is alive and well and living in Isa, as played by Elodie Bouchez in The Dreamlife of Angels.

The Red Violin is a darling of the film festival circuit. It is lavishly done, but at its heart it is cold and empty. The idea of a peripatetic musical instrument with a soul was much more interestingly realized in a novel, Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes.

1 may '99

Cookie's Fortune is a diverting comic Southern Gothic. Good work from Glenn Close, Charles S. Dutton (why don't we see more or this guy?), and especially Patricia Neal. If this performance proves to be her valedictory, she has been done well by herself.

I liked the Chekhovian comedy of desire and self-destructiveness that is Olivier Assayas's Late August, Early September, which was screened here for Filmfest DC. Between musings on what it means to be creative and successful (not necessarily the same thing), we are treated to kinetic imagery, effective ambient sound, and a crowded but never cluttered frame.

Tony Bui's Three Seasons has some good things going for it: arresting images of contemporary Vietnam; contrasts of light and dark, poverty and affluence, East and West; and a polished look. But his four linked stories don't tell us anything new, anything surprising. There is nothing but the familiar tales of the cabbie and the prostitute, the recluse and the young scribe, the big race. It's a dish that doesn't cohere.

I viewed a workshop of plays by extremely young playwrights -- middle schoolers -- at Woolly Mammoth. I was impressed by some surprisingly good and imaginative writing, coached by the Artistic Director of Young Playwrights Theatre of Washington, Karen Zacarias. The plays were given enthusiastic, inventive readings by a professional group of older teens.

12 apr '99

Mark Morris Dance Group and Yo-Yo Ma, Center for the Arts, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia

The evening begins with 1997's "Falling Down Stairs," a lush, gorgeous ensemble piece, brimful of ideas. The dance is inseparable from its musical text, the Third Suite for unaccompanied cello by J. S. Bach.

The new piece is "The Argument," which flirts with realism and character shoes, and the evening ends with the sprawling, somewhat perplexing "Rhymes with Silver" from 1997. "Silver" was scored by Lou Harrison, one of the best contemporary composers for dance music.

The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi, directed by Tom Prewitt, Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Washington

Friedrich Dürrenmatt's vinegary political satire can become a bit talky at times, but the day is saved by Bruce Nelson's lovesick, crazed Count Bodo von Übelohe-Zabernsee. Just when we think a slow first act has ended, Bodo bursts from the back of the house and kicks the play into top gear with a manic, self-deprecating monologue.

Also noteworthy are Gary Telles, Ben Hulan, and Christopher Walker as the ensemble, listed in the program as Three Men with Hands in their Right Trenchcoat Pockets. They provide good loony business.

Go is a clever little black comedy of greedy people behaving not in their best interests. My complaint is that the last section wraps up the twisted plot a little too neatly. But in the end, Katie Holmes's Claire proves to be a good judge of character.

One feels like such a grouch to criticize God Said "Ha!", a comic monologue by Julia Sweeney about her brother's death from cancer, but the show is just not very good. This is a filmed version stage piece, and Sweeney can't decide whether to play to the camera or to an imaginary theatre audience. (She's been let down by her director, Julia Sweeney.) As a result, she's disconnected from her audience, and her emotions ring strangely superficial. About the laugh track that's been added, one can only say that it was a poor decision. There are annoying technical flaws in the sound and camera work.

The script doesn't even play, neither as film or stage piece. It's full of unaffecting digressions that go nowhere, without any payoff. At its best, it provides a few chuckles; at its worst, it's as sentimental as a reader-submitted blurb for the Reader's Digest.

But the afternoon was not a total loss: they were giving out free gum samples in the cinema lobby.

1 apr '99

Dance Theatre of Harlem, Opera House, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Washington

This company always delivers an eclectic mixed bill. It falters a bit with George Balanchine's "Bugaku," with music by Toshiro Mayuzumi. The dance is inspired by the movements of Gagaku, a Japanese courtly style. It may be that this dance looks better in the studio in leotards than on stage with its awkward costumes. Somewhat experimental, it features the women on pointe, but a lot of flexed feet and difficult stretches and balance changes. Unfortunately, this cast makes the dance look difficult.

Alicia Graf and the dancers redeem themselves with a newly expanded version of "South African Suite." Pure and simple wins the day: the set is a pair of raised platforms upstage; six musicians are on the deck downstage right. The jazzy score for string quartet and two percussionists, as well as the choreography, comes from a variety of sources, but is consistently joyful. Maybe the sound levels on the drums could be adjusted a bit.

The evening rounds out with a bit of spectacle in the company's signature "Firebird," created by John Taras. And about a zillion effortless bourrées. As the score is Stravinsky's shortened 1945 version, I left wanting to see more of the story.

The number plate on my subscription seat in the Opera House (C-113, first balcony) is missing. I wonder what that means.

I also saw the George Mason University Dance Company's Spring Concert. Of particular note is Susan Shields' "Sequence, Sometimes Metaphysical," a piece of fluidity that evokes mermaids singing on the beach. There is a lovely sequence of dancers executing chaîné turns from both sides of the stage, washing across one another like waves.

Extremities, stories by Kathe Koja

This is an uneven collection. The best of the lot have the murky yet clear mood of sexuality to be found in Koja's novel Kink, which is a much better work. Her protagonists, usually nameless, are often emotional anorexics. The subject of "Pas de Deux" makes the metaphor real:

As long as she had legs, arms, a back to bend or twist, as long as she could move she could dance.

Alone.

In the cold.

In the dark.

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