Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

Review: Circle Mirror Transformation
Wimberly Theatre, Boston
November 10, 2010

The Wasserstein Prize, named after the late playwright Wendy Wasserstein, was supposed to be awarded this week. Every year, the prize goes to an upcoming female playwright, 32 or younger. But no award was given, causing an outcry (at least in the theater world) that the committee is suggesting no young female playwrights are worthy. What about Annie Baker, some have asked?

Baker, who is 29, won an Obie Award for her two Off-Broadway plays Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. Now Boston has taken up Baker in residence, more or less, with "The Shirley, VT Plays," a trio of small-cast plays set in a small Vermont town. Though I didn't make it to all three, I caught Circle Mirror Transformation in its final week, and was impressed at the confidence and control of the author's voice.

Baker assembles five residents of Shirley, Vermont, who are taking part in an acting class led by the ebullient Marty, co-director of the community center and likely a former thespian (played with gusto by Besty Aidem). Part of Baker's charm is finding humor in the actorly rituals and exercises that fill these classes without poking too much fun. Marty's approach to theater is earnest and ebullient, though she is challenged after a few weeks by the gawky, near-silent teenager Lauren: "When are we going to do some acting?"

The play glides carefully forward without being pushed. Exchanges on break or after class set off small but electric frissons. Slowly the players who seem most together (including ex-actress Theresa, in the most grounded performance by Nadia Bowers) lose their balance, thrown off-kilter by the weight of these innocent classes. As weeks pass, the ensemble among the five breaks down, through relationships forged and failed, marriages rocked, and secrets shared. But the cast is unified, no doubt from Melia Bensussen's steady, calming direction. 

Despite Lauren's plea, no genuine on-stage acting occurs. They pass around sounds and gestures, lie still and count up to ten, re-enact their childhood bedrooms or parents' arguments. Most damaging of all, they share anonymous secrets ranging from porn addiction to being in love with a classmate. Baker records all these strange intimacies without passing judgment. She discovers the worth of these theatrical efforts: not to transport but to remind us. 

Have It Your Way?

I'm all for customization. My job is in custom textbooks, for goodness' sake. But yesterday I'm in Wendy's, and between looking at the menu and ordering a baked potato, I overhear one of those customers.

It's safe to say the man's a few cards short of a full deck. But when he starts by asking the price of every item he's stewing over, I expect trouble. And isn't it sad that I expect this sort of thing when I'm downtown? His next point of contention: "I don't know if I want fries with my combo." The cashier suggests a salad. More grousing, then the fries are back on the table. The cashier rings up a chicken sandwich.

"How do you know what I want?" he asks. Because he ordered a number 6, and that's the sandwich in the number 6 combo, she tells him. "But no, no, no," he says. "I don't get to pick what I want on it." It comes with lettuce, tomato, and mayo. "No, I don't want that. How come I don't get to pick? Right next door, over at Burger King, it's 'Have It Your Way'. But now you're telling me I have to have it your way. I'm the customer! I want it my way."

There are several possibilities. One, he's never been to Wendy's, which includes lettuce, tomato, and mayo on everything. Two, he's never been to a fast food restaurant. Otherwise, he would know to request what he wanted up front.

Then at the theatre afterward, a woman barges into her row in a huff, winter coat in hand. The coat check is closed for the evening, and she is appalled. I remember her exact words as she sits down: "This is inhuman." Ma'am, your coat is the size of an igloo, so I understand the inconvenience, but is inhuman the best word here? On a grand universal level, it's slightly above unwrapping candies during the show.

She was agitated because she couldn't have it her way. Well, I would prefer if my audiences didn't shuffle around noisily or text, but part of buying a ticket means that I have to share the space with others. Play nicely. As the last line of The Apartment goes, "Shut up and deal." It's not about doing it My Way. That philosophy's already killed a few in the Philippines, anyway.

The Great American Songbook: Unchained Melody

Written by: Alex North, Hy Zaret

First performed by: Todd Duncan, 1955

Since tonight is Halloween, I'm treating readers to a great American song in honor of Ghost. All we need to hear is that first "Oh, my love, my darling," and we are transported back twenty years, when Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore made pottery erotic.

But "Unchained Melody" was letting loose long before 1990. Alex North, film composer for A Streetcar Named Desire and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, was urged to write a song into his score for Unchained, a 1955 prison movie. (Now you understand the title, in all its creativity.) He teamed up with Hy Zaret, who was rumored to have written the lyrics for a girl when he was sixteen. Listen to how Todd Duncan (original star of the opera Porgy and Bess) croons it in his quasi-operatic fashion:

As expected, pottery wheels weren't spinning yet. The singer (a prison inmate) pined for freedom, not for sex: "I've hungered for your touch / A long, lonely time. / And time goes by so slowly / And time can do so much." Motown knew how to translate Alex North's jazz-flavored melody into a "Melody" that topped the R&B charts. Both Al Hibbler and Roy Hamilton (both videos linked) recorded North's ballad, now expanded to a full-length hit with busily swooping strings.

Still, Moore and Swayze might have spun urns in silence if not for The Righteous Brothers. Their 1965 cover has prevailed as the radio go-to, even if it owes a debt to Roy Hamilton's tremulous vocals. Bobby Hatfield, one of two Righteous Brothers, sang solo on the track, pouring out melismas and caressing every vowel. He even re-recorded the ballad after its recurrence in Ghost, insisting his falsetto had endured over time. It was strong to start with; listen to this live performance, which ends on a high G:

What keeps "Unchained Melody" in the Great American Songbook for me is that resilience. There's urgency and desperation in the lyrics: "Lonely rivers sigh / 'Wait for me, wait for me.'" The Righteous Brothers' cover is removed from the original anguish, but its sensuality convinces as the song builds to a full-voiced climax. Many artists continued to cover it, including Elvis in his later days. One thing's for sure: we haven't lost this loving feeling.

Though you might lose it looking at the album cover.

500 Million People Like This

Review: The Social Network

I remember friends coercing me into joining this Facebook website my first month of college. It was fall 2004, and the gimmick was that you could compare your interests (say, that The Godfather Part II was your favorite movie) with other users. But instead of spawning campus-wide movie nights, Facebook has grown into a grimly indispensable social sphere. Now, in a truly poetic turn of fate, Facebook users will be supplementing their profiles with The Social Network, a savvy modern thriller of wits and web-smarts rather than bank heists or shoot-outs.

When the project was announced, it was hard to foresee The Social Network as more than a marketing gizmo, a movie-of-the-week. But this prognosis underestimated the team of screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and director David Fincher, as well as a top-notch cast led by Jesse Eisenberg. Sorkin is an answer to calls of why don't they write pictures like that anymore?, a holdover from the screwball days tossing off fast-paced, scalpel-sharp dialogue that illuminates the Harvard hauteur and incisiveness.

Mark Zuckerberg and his allies (soon to be enemies) inhabit the dingy dormitories and social aspirations of this Harvard community, and all are in their own way moved by the exclusivity and their entitlement of Bacchanalian fantasies like "finals clubs." Everything's vying not for connection but for betterment. Soon Zuckerberg, along with co-founder and CFO Eduardo Saverin, has launched his own website for the who's who: Harvard e-mail addresses only for the first run of Facebook. But as with successful business ventures, the end game is expansion; Facebook moves from college to college at dizzying speed, thanks to marketing guru and infamous Napster founder Sean Parker (played by eternal frat-boy Justin Timberlake).

Fincher's directoral hand is felt most in the eerie social atmosphere--the physical, non-web-based, one. The camera spies on cheerless finals club meetings, back-alley tete a tetes, and Parker's seductive Facebook parties with menace. Though the Harvard students manage to create a phenomenon and become billionaires, the film reminds us that they haven't escaped the non-stop collegian parties they longed to join. The only character who sees past the Facebook zeitgeist is Saverin, the co-founder who is ousted when Parker proves better at securing investment capital. The film doesn't try to take sides--business is business. But thanks to Andrew Garfield's earnest performance, it's hard not to feel for Saverin, betrayed by flesh-and-blood friends for online ones.

The film is not just social commentary. The ironies of Facebook friending are well-noted already. And claims of misogyny, though intentional, aren't entirely forgivable: a female second-year law associate comes across much more naively than she should. The Social Network works primarily as intrigue, showing how they got there and how tenuous the climb was. Eisenberg doesn't try to cull favor as Zuckerberg. He projects his superiority with a grimace, a permanent non-smile that hints at the insecurity beneath. What was it all for? Sorkin's supposition that it was a girl all along feels superfluous, yet it's great to see Zuckerberg longing for connection at the end. Even as the creator of the world's largest social network, he still wants to be included.

Where My Mind Went Listening to Mahler

The Boston Symphony Orchestra began its 2010-2011 season last week, and I saw two consecutive Thursday night concerts. Each featured a symphony by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), a late Romantic composer infamous for his bombast. Now, if you've ever seen a Mahler symphony, let alone two back-to-back, you know what to expect. They are long. Over eighty minutes long. And even when one enjoys the music, one's mind tends to wander. Imagine this interior monologue (condensed, of course):

Movement I. I'm glad to see James Levine has recovered. What was the face he just made at the first violins? Did they screw up before they even started playing? Ahh, the opening fanfare; I forgot how simple Mahler is. Wait... simple? What am I saying? There are enough musicians on that stage to fill Rhode Island. I wonder how they all fit. Perhaps Symphony Hall removed the first few rows of chairs. These seats are terribly creaky. I wish that kid in front of me wouldn't bob his head to the beat. Is there a beat?

And it's over. What a swell symp... oh. That was just the first movement.

Movement II. This second movement is even darker than the first. Listen to those trills, the horn solos, the high violin passages. The program notes say "tempestuous." I bet it will rain when I leave. And is there an umbrella in my bag? I can't check now. The girl next to me is practically having an affair with my armrest. Why are there more empty seats for Mahler than there were for the first half? Did everyone else get the memo about how long this is?

In the last Mahler symphony I went to (No. 6), there was a cowbell. More cowbell, please? More cowbell?

Movement III. Thank goodness, the seventeenth movement. I'll get home before tomorrow. I should go into work early tomorrow, and take the afternoon off. Or maybe I will sleep in and show up at noon; my back's been a little stiff. Grown man behind me who is kneeing my chair repeatedly--you are not helping.

The ushers are rushing about in the corner. Hope that old man's all right. Is he breathing? If someone kicked it at Symphony Hall, would the concert stop? He could be wailing in agony, but you can't hear it over that music. Oh for the love of Mahler, man in Row L, get your middle-aged knee out of my seat cushion.

Movement IV. Groceries. I didn't buy groceries this week. Groceries require a whole movement of thought.

Movement V. The finale, at last! How come it took longer for the paramedics to arrive than the last movement? At least the old man's walking out. He's probably hungry. So am I, come to think of it. Maybe I shouldn't go to the gym before BSO concerts; too much of an appetite. Who was it that thought Mahler made pastries? Just down around the corner, come get your piece of Mahler's. I see the last page on the stands. Maybe it's a trick. Maybe there's an encore hidden behind their folders. Elaine Stritch thought Mahler was a baker, that's it!

Why is everyone rising? Is all this clapping written in? No: the symphony's over! We made it to the other side. You'll have to excuse me, fawning seat-neighbor. I have to get out of here presto. I've been thinking of nothing but Mahler for the past two hours.

For your reference: Elaine Stritch on Mahler.