There's a Boat that's Leavin' Soon for New York

Review: The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess
American Repertory Theater, Cambridge
August 23, 2011

Porgy and Bess is one of the few operas first performed on Broadway. Even in 1935, George and Ira Gershwin and Dubose Heyward tinkered, paring down the music and adding dialogue. Now A.R.T. has given us a revival of Porgy and Bess as a musical, echoing its roots on the Broadway stage. With (mostly) careful scenework by Suzan Lori-Parks and respect from director Diane Paulus for what's come before, Porgy and Bess still succeeds in a more intimate setting.

Some of the intimacy comes from lowered keys and hushed orchestrations, fitting for the openings of Porgy and Bess's duets. The approach only suffers when the actors are made to riff the ends of songs, and in the dramatic "My Man's Gone Now," which doesn't quite capture the mourning widow's despair. But with those caveats, the production moves and breathes like it always has. Porgy and Bess has always been both beautiful and tragic. Without the operatic trappings, the show feels more tender, perhaps even more hopeful.

Norm Lewis finds joy and strength in Porgy, a crippled resident of Catfish Row who takes in the wayward Bess out of compassion. Audra McDonald is a natural as Bess, using the various colors of her soprano to portray Bess's shifting identities: a loose woman and drug addict terrorized by the abusive Crown (the excellent, operatic Philip Boykin), then reborn and accepted into the community. Their duet "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" was a highlight of the evening.

The ensemble benefits from Paulus's focus on the community: how they give and take to protect each other. The preview I attended had a revised ending, though, in which everyone turns their back on Bess. Only after she leaves for New York alone does Porgy choose to leave Catfish Row and pursue her. This sounds better in principle than in execution, but they might still be working on it. Overall, the modern look at Porgy and Bess, including racial relations and stereotypes, didn't seem so modern after all. The show has always been a fable, and with all its controversy, there's been that revolutionary spark. 

Update: It ain't necessarily so. The show now ends with something much closer to the original ending. Sometimes when things aren't broken, they don't need fixing.

Fly Me to the Seine

Review: Midnight in Paris

I haven't really written about the summer releases I've seen (like Horrible Bosses and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows-Part 2). I didn't see a point. Those movies accomplished what they wanted, but they weren't exactly food for thought. And it gets harder to find words for things that are perfectly fine for one viewing. Sure, you can write critically about anything, but why waste bandwidth?

The sleeper hit Midnight in Paris fits right in with the summer slate. Woody Allen's latest film is warm, affectionate, endearing, charming. The film is a light creme brulee, satisfying to sweettooths and sentimentalists, and perhaps only occasionally to Allen's most ironic, postmodern fans. None of the characters babble in intellectualisms, but there aren't really characters here anyhow.

Many have said that Owen Wilson acts as Woody Allen's stand-in, but the two are kind of opposites. Allen was a character-actor typical of the seventies, polarizing and idiosyncratic, incapable of supressing his opinion. Wilson is an innocent puppy, always casual, barely radical. Playing a frustrated novelist with an old soul, he represents what Woody Allen probably wishes he were: good-looking, easygoing, sentimental more than analytical. The film artfully fills out this wish as Wilson's novelist Gil travels back in time each midnight to the Golden Age of Paris: the gay twenties. Gil gets advice on his book from Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Stein. He finds a kindred soul in Picasso's lover (Marion Cotillard, equally adorable). And he escapes from his fiance's uncharmed family and the faux-intellectual Eurotrash she admires.

Who knows if the spell of Midnight in Paris will last for a second viewing? After a long polarizing career, Allen seems content to deliver us a nightcap. The film looks back to the romance of Manhattan--not a romance between people, but an affection for the city. Here again, the director's vision of Paris feels so evanescent that even thinking critically for a second might disturb our slumber.

Summertime, But the Livin's Not So Easy

Who's afraid of Stephen Sondheim? The creators (or should I say reconstructers?) of the new A.R.T. Porgy and Bess adaptation might be after he raked them across the coals in yesterday's New York Times. If you're at all interested in theater, Stephen Sondheim is not a man to take lightly. And if you're at all interested in the history of twentieth-century American music, Porgy and Bess is not an opera to take lightly, either.

Now I see no need to preserve every great work of art in a museum, shrouded in dust and years of abandonment. But Porgy and Bess, though undoubtedly controversial, is one of those Revolutionary Works of Art that has worked since its premiere in 1935. It's an opera, sure, but one that premiered on Broadway. Revivals have omitted scenes and recitative (scored/sung dialogue not in full song form). And this is accepted: Many operas are long and have alternate recits/arias or traditional cuts.

But here are some ground rules for adapting the classics, with quotes from the Times article about Porgy in blue:

1. Don't throw in more classics to pad out your show. ("The idea was briefly floated of interpolating outside Gershwin music into “Porgy.”") Last season's Promises, Promises gave Kristin Chenoweth two more numbers to sing, "I Say a Little Prayer" and "A House Is Not a Home," but at the expense of logic. Why would she sing about houses when she lives in an apartment?

2. Don't tell audiences they used to be dumb. (Director Diane Paulus: "I'm sorry, but to ask an audience these days to invest three hours in a show requires having your heroine be an understandable and fully rounded character.")

3. Be careful with changing the ending. What if Eliza didn't leave Henry Higgins? What if Juliet felt empowered enough as a woman to stand up and walk out of the tomb? Oh, wait, that happened, in brand-new original shows called My Fair Lady and West Side Story. But saying the authors wanted an ending they didn't write is just not true. (Bookwriter Susan-Lori Parks: "If [George Gershwin] had lived longer... he would have gone back to the story of ‘Porgy and Bess’ and made changes, including to the ending.”)

I have tickets for The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess--apparently the estate's preferred title, but we'll talk about ridiculous copyright issues another day--and I am intrigued and excited and nervous. Good for them for finding new ways to balance song and dialogue. Good for them for bringing new perspectives to a classic. But if Porgy starts singing "I Got Rhythm," I'm leaving at intermission.

No Holds Barred

Review: The Normal Heart

Golden Theater, New York

July 9, 2011

For a play so driven by immediacy, The Normal Heart lingers. When Larry Kramer wrote this diatribe against the AIDS crisis spreading through New York City, he was capturing the present: a time of anger and confusion, with lawmakers and medical practitioners turning a blind eye. AIDS (never referenced by name in the play; it was too early for that) had no basis in medical history. The beautiful thing about the recent revival of Kramer's play is the compassion beneath.

Protagonist Ned Weeks (a strong, grounded performance by Joe Mantello, known more as a director), is a stand-in for Kramer--a fighter who demands attention, demands to be treated with respect. Even angrier is his doctor Emma Brookner (Ellen Barkin, holding nothing back), who alone stands up in the medical profession to speak her mind. As a fly-on-the-wall look at the fear and paranoia surrounding the epidemic, the play still voices these fears. Kramer's play is more or less a soapbox; but though didactic, he provided an education to those who only got their news from The New York Times.

Ned falls in love with a Times reporter, Felix (John Benjamin Hickey, who provides the empathy and humanity the play needs), who is soon lost to the disease along with the hundreds in New York. At a time when gay marriages just began in New York, The Normal Heart feels just as necessary as it must have in 1985. Today we have more awareness about AIDS, more understanding. The revival doesn't seek to tear down walls but strives for togetherness. This may have been the strongest ensemble of actors I've seen in a play, all ten seemingly moved by the people they are portraying, acting without ego or self-consciousness. The play asks that we do the same.

You Gotta Get a Gimmick

Let's talk about TV ads. Most shows seem content with commercials, web campaigns, billboards. Ah, but when you live in a city, you see some interesting ways to get your show out there.

Like two weeks ago, when I was walking home through Coolidge Corner and handed free ice cream. My Nutty Buddy (delicious on an eighty-degree day) was wrapped in a sleeve for Necessary Roughness, some new USA network drama. I flipped through the promotional booklet hidden within my napkin, and noted that Necessary Roughness (which has a idiomatic two-word name just like every USA show) was premiering that tonight. 

Then last Thursday, we're looking out from the ninth-floor patio at work, and a protest goes down Newbury Street. Posters are held high, displaying "Who will save us?" over pictures that looked like Daniel Radcliffe from our high vantage point (ooh, Vantage Point... call the USA network!). Oh yeah, and the white Death Eater masks. It turns out that their banners for Miracle and eerie rally masks were not protesting the final Harry Potter film, but advertising Torchwood. Which prompted a colleague to say, "That's the first time I've thought about Torchwood in a year."

Awareness is everything. Do only third-tier cable shows pull off stunts like these? I did not watch Necessary Roughness. I did not watch Torchwood. I was too busy turning back to nab a second free ice cream cone.