Someone Tell Me, When Is It My Turn?

Review: Black Swan

When was the last time we witnessed a truly magnificent horror film? The kind that makes you squirm in your seat, bite your nails, and grip the armrest? Darron Aronofsky's Black Swan, a thriller that elevates ballet to Grand Guignol intensity, offers one of the most exhilarating visions of sustain terror in recent memory. Given Aronofsky's emphasis on fingernails, you might not want to chew yours.

His protege is Natalie Portman, who has rarely been given the chance to play a full-fledged woman before. Over the course of a strenuous performance, she breaks free from her girlish cocoon. She plays Nina, a ballerina of technical excellence who is hired for Swan Lake in a dual role: the demure White Swan, a natural fit, and the seductive Black Swan. The company's director (a sinuous Vincent Cassel) pushes her toward letting go of her rigidity. But in her drive for perfection, she slowly transforms from controlled and disciplined to violently reckless.

Beyond her unquenched lust for the role of the Black Swan, two women propel her toward paranoia. Mila Kunis plays her nemesis Lily, a fellow ballerina who seems to befriend Nina only to steal her part. Kunis meets the challenge of a character whose every enticing smile might be imagined. While Nina battles to keep her role, she also lives with her controlling mother (an excellent Barbra Hershey), who was once a dancer herself.

Aronofsky flirts dangerously close with parody, seeing just how far he can push the horror-genre elements. Shadows give way to lurkers; doors slam and wounds bleed. As Lily adopts the movements of the Black Swan, her offstage life is overwhelmed with hallucinations and self-harm. Even though it fulfills the horror-movie quotient for jump scenes, the film locates the emotional horror of unceasing dedication to an artistic ideal. Lily becomes consumed; the script mirrors with heavy doses of manipulation.

But these gimmicks speak to the glitz and the grittiness of the ballet world. Members of the industry toil for the opportunity to exhaust themselves physically and mentally. The scariest moments are visceral; danger lurks behind every curtain naturally, but we squirm most at mutilation to hands and toes. Black Swan is a real talent showcase for Aronofsky and Portman, as well as a splashy, riveting exercise in genre.

The Great American Songbook: "Bridge Over Troubled Water"

Written by: Paul Simon

First performed by: Art Garfunkel, 1970

For my Great American Songbook series, I try to spotlight songs that have become standards, not associated with just one artist. This latest entry in my desert island canon, though, was as iconic for its performers as for its timeliness. Released in January 1970 on Simon and Garfunkel's final studio album, the song captured the end of their relationship (until modern reunion concerts) and the end of the sixties. 

This year's end is fast approaching. Songs like this always seem at home to me over the holidays, joining seasonal weepers like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." Paul Simon penned an anthem to a country losing its identity, while senseless wars raged on... sound familiar? Meanwhile, the tsuris over who would sing--Simon or Garfunkel--led to bitterness and the dissolution of a thirteen-year partnership. Their final album was due to have twelve tracks, but they cut it short bickering over the last song. 

Once it went big, the usual suspects ate it up. Johnny Cash's cover, in the lowest key imaginable, gets points on simplicity; Simon's composition sounds like a back-porch church-town strummer. Aretha Franklin amped up the production with background singers and organ (sometimes accompanying herself). She changes the last verse to "Sail on, Silverboy": is this suddenly about romantic heartbreak? Then there's Elvis giving a straightforward cover, few stylistic additions, with room to breathe. 

These are all fine, catapulted the song into the public consciousness, but it's tough to surpass the tension of Garfunkel's original take. The drum hit going into the third verse, like explosions; the strings building to the last chord. Heard in a demo recording by Garfunkel, the final verse was more passive originally, offering some unknown "it" as a crutch rather than the speaker:

Sail on, Silvergirl, sail on high

Your time has come to shine
Put your faith on me

And if it shines, I'll see the sun

Upon your bedroom blinds

Like a bridge over troubled water

Let it be your guide

Like a bridge over troubled water

Let it be your guide

The recorded version concludes, "I will ease your mind." A more proactive statement in the midst of uncertainty.

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.