A giant shout-out to a company that has a worthy mission, talented administration, and genuine love for theater and storytelling: Roundtable Ensemble. The producers of Goodbye Cruel World and Babel Tower, this small band of dedicated people made two wonderful repertory productions happen (no small feat in itself), wrangled a ton of personnel, allowed us all a tremendous amount of creative freedom (as well as comps--Thank you, Barry Shapiro!), and selflessly brought the work to audiences from senior centers, foster homes and schools among others.
Joshua Weiss, Kelly Ann Moore and Andrea Ghersetich deserve a tremendous amount of credit for the hard work of these past two months, and my hat is off to them. Henry Cheng, our GCW stage manager and Roundtable veteran, also gets a giant shout-out for being such a thoughtful and gregarious presence without whose commitment and energy we would all have surely fell on our faces.
Check out their website and consider helping them carry out their mission for many years to come.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
Recent Movies I Liked
These are not necessarily recent movies, but movies I saw or re-watched recently that I thought deserved a shout out on the blog:
+1.jpg)
This is just an amazingly well-shot, well-acted thriller from the UK that in actuality explores a lot more than you think it does as you watch it. It's an exploration of modern urban blight, human weakness, and revenge. Really methodically paced, so you can just marinate in the performances and the cinematography. The final act is devastating.
This came out a few years ago and I caught it on the Sundance channel about three-quarters over. At that particular moment I saw a sequence where Anton Yelchin has an acid trip and the music was simply too beautiful to ignore. As soon as the light guitar started playing this hypnotic wonderful score, the narrator of the filmstrip he watches of his anthropologist father in the amazon begins talking to him about how he is a member of the tribe and it was so well done I finished the movie and then went back and watched the beginning the next night it was on. The beginning is pretty light, but the end payoff is earned and there is a lot about adolescence and longing that seemed pretty universal to me. Great performances by Donald Sutherland, Yelchin, and even Chris Evans.
Ralph Richardson really makes O'Neill's language sing in this adaptation. I read the play in college and thought, "Man, this is really long. I like it, but it's sooooo looong." Well, Richardson's character is the eogotistical theatrical patriarch of the Tyrone family and it's that imperiousness and command of language that pushes you through it. I can't wait to see some of his other work, he is a master. Watched this for research for GCW. Not so much.
What can I say about this one? Another long movie but cinematically worth every minute. The acting is top shelf and the photography absolutely breathtaking. I'd never seen Omar Sharif in anything before either and I was really impressed all around. This was Dalton's pick and he did not disappoint.
Hats off to Guy Ritchie for getting such a lovable crew of thieves together. This cast could not go wrong. I pretty much liked everyone before I saw this, but the work here pushes them each a little outside their Hollywood leading men image and makes them all really goofy. Really goofy. I can only imagine what fun it must have been to work on this. Got to hand it to Mark Strong, man. The guy can really do it. And he's starting to become a household name after Sherlock Holmes and the upcoming Kick-Ass. We'll see.
Wow, surprise movie number six that I watched this very afternoon. Had to watch it with subtitles to get all of the dialogue, but by god this is right on the line between funny and scary, mainly because it deals with the ineptitude of government and outrageous behavior in politics. Hilarious seemingly improv-ed set pieces of miscommunication and incompetence in the grand, dry English tradition. Great accent research, too. I could listen to the Scots and the British and all the regional dialects in between for days.
And now that I wrote about a funny/scary movie it made me think of this one which is actually just flat-out terrifying scary. It basically chronicles a female suicide bomber being groomed by faceless, nameless handlers as she prepares for her mission to kill herself in Times Square. Not filled with heart pounding action sequences or even a ton of dialogue, the movie is instead an intimate study of routine and stubborn humanity. The camera exhaustively follows her going through actions that are entirely mundane yet loaded with menace because of the context. A scene in which she washes her face and brushes her teeth on the morning of the deed is slowly, sickeningly heightened as she meticulously uses every item in her toiletry bag and then throws those items away in turn: face cream, followed by her toothbrush, followed by the toothpaste, never to be needed again. There is also a lot of disturbing metaphor for the process of filmmaking as a whole. Getting details correct, getting the presentation just so, hair, makeup, costume, lighting. . . all these things appear in the film in some way or another but through the twisted lens of terrorism. To say nothing of the fact that the lead woman is walked through all of these details by people of different races, frustrating the natural human desire to lump one people together as the clear enemy. A very haunting, finely crafted movie that takes its time and is all the scarier for the investment. Some very powerful New York verite location shooting, too.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Transitions
Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how to synthesize what I've been learning about on-camera work with my theatre work. Specifically, experimenting with the use of physical stillness and exploring the idea of motivated movement. That is to say, getting rid of physical and vocal "filler." My friend Maria mentioned the idea of Doggie Zen to me long ago: dogs commit fully to whatever they are doing, and the thing they are interested in is the only thing they care about. They either get what they want or they change their focus to a new thing and start over again. I want to fully invest in what is actually the meat of the scene and have my body serve my objective (and clarify it, not muddle it). Should be eeeeasy.
Looking back, my theatre stuff was mostly from the more is more school. I felt if I wasn't engaged in some bit of business then I was invisible and not doing my job. Like a shark needing to move constantly. I was interested in listening, I guess, but a kind of furtive, aggressive listening. The more I watch great performances on film and mature physically, the more it seems to me that camera technique has a lot to offer stage technique and the two are not mutually exclusive as I've always thought.
Part of the successful execution of this synthesis as I understand it is the idea of unity. When you understand what it is you want to say, all of the disparate elements of performance should align to help you say it. "Movement" in my book never included stillness yet it can be just as powerful. I am now trying to use it as a tool for clarity. For example, finding in rehearsal decisive moments to move and introduce behavior that align with what other forces are in play. If you cross at this word or that word, does that illuminate your objective or does it draw the eye away from some one else's action? Does it advance you somehow in obtaining what you want? I guess I'm saying I am understanding the importance of taking ownership over your body, owning the choices you make. Or at least making them mean something, tying them in to the script. This is probably very elementary, but it just goes to show how when you coast on impulse you can get very lazy.
A lot of people do not like watching film actors onstage because they do disappear. They generally make choices that are too small or they don't have the physical life to magnetize audiences. I've seen a number of amazing film performances that are impossible to physically recreate onstage, but the idea of imbuing a shift of the eyes or a shallow breath with so much emotional energy has got my mind whirling, trying to find ways to give a giant minimalist performance in a 99-seat theater.
For me, the only way to give small moments their due and make them big is for their significance to be tied to a turning point or revelation in the text, or something repeated that echoes a previous moment with new resonance. In film, the score will swell and the camera can push in close and most of the work is external. In theater, I think an actor and director have to draw upon the audience's entire experience of the play to earn big moments. You have to lay in repetition as shorthand for history because you've really only got a short shared time together. And once you have established what world you're in and what behavior signifies what for a character, then you have established a pattern from which you can successfully break out of for massive effect. Physically and emotionally.
So: I am going to actually MAKE choices, be sure that they are unified with the world of the play, and then exploit the actor's shared history with the audience for effect. Pretty eeeeasy.
This blog was originally intended to be a forum for dialogue on craft and the arts, so that's where this post is coming from. But where else can I shamelessly post reviews? I'm trying to balance it all out.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
nytheatre.com
Here is the GCW review from nytheatre.com
Highlights include this very satisfying shout out to the whole cast:
At the center of the excellent six-person cast is Paco Tolson as Semyon (and a few other characters); he's a terrific everyman, at once put-upon and swaggering, vain and frightened out of his gourd. William Jackson Harper is sensationally good as Gran-Skubic and Curran Connor is deliciously slimy and vaguely malevolent as Semyon's neighbor Kalabushkin (both Harper and Connor also take a few other roles, too). Aaron Roman Weiner is very funny in a variety of guises—the butcher, clad in a blood-encrusted apron; the meek mailman who believes in the Cause, whatever the cost; and a decrepit old woman who lives in Semyon's building. Tami Stronach and Cindy Cheung show their versatility by each playing one of the glamorous actresses and also Semyon's drudge-like wife and mother-in-law (again, among other roles).
And here's to Robert:
The show's pace is fast and furious and the fourth-wall-breaking moments, which include most notably live sound effects played by whichever member(s) of the ensemble aren't needed for a particular scene, are great fun. If you think thought-provoking theatre that's literally about important issues like life and death, economics, politics, and the social contract can't be wildly entertaining, well, here's Robert Ross Parker to prove you wrong.
That's what we like...
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Feeling the Love
Here are two other reviews out now.
Read more: http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/theater/82305/goodbye-cruel-world-theater-review#ixzz0dkltlicF
Review by Ethan Kanfer
In 1928, the Soviet Union was only 11 years old, but playwrights like Nikolai Erdman were already giving voice to a frustrated citizenry by satirizing the regime’s hollow rhetoric and tangled bureaucracy. Not surprisingly, the state hit back, and Erdman’s creativity — and his citizenship — was stifled by the Stalin government. Erdman’s Samoubiitsa (The Suicide) didn’t see a full production until after the author’s death. To bring this historical artifact to light is in itself a worthwhile gesture. But Goodbye Cruel World is more than just a museum piece. Thanks to some high-octane performances and Robert Ross Parker’s sprightly adaptation, this fable of an Everyman in trouble is both informative and riotously entertaining.
Humiliated by his inability to find gainful unemployment, Semyon Semyonovich, played by Paco Tolson, scrapes together enough cash for a rusty tuba and an instruction book. His hopes of a career in music are dashed, however, when the instrument proves more difficult to learn than he expected. Growing increasingly despondent, Semyon considers shooting himself. Word quickly spreads, and soon our unlikely hero becomes finds himself surrounded by seemingly well-intentioned visitors.
In an effort to further their own causes, representatives of various special interests clamor to claim this tragic figure for their own. The State, The Proletariat, The Arts, Industry, The Church, and The Intelligentsia all believe they can curry political favor by turning hapless Semyon into a poster boy. An instant celebrity, Semyon is thrilled that his luck has changed. But there’s a problem. He’s not so sure he really wants to die, and now, with pressures mounting on all sides, he might have to go through with it.
Under Parker’s taut direction, the committed, versatile cast handles everything from slapstick beats to seething diatribes with deft precision. They are aided by Nick Francone’s comically dreary set and Theresa Squire and Antonia Ford-Roberts’s vaudeville-Bolshevik costumes. As enjoyable as the character’s antics are, however, there is a poignant side to their self-deluded speeches.
From flat bromides about the coming Revolution, to a wistful rendition of the Communist anthem “The Internationale,” Goodbyeis filled with touching depictions of what happens to the human spirit when a utopian dream becomes a totalitarian nightmare.
What makes director-adaptor Robert Ross Parker giggle? Based on his occasionally darling but overlong farce Goodbye Cruel World, he likes (in this order): pillowy wigs, Pythonesque sketches, execrable Russian accents and kazoos. He also wants his actors to enjoy themselves, so while a deliberately ramshackle set creaks cheerfully, his six antic performers (playing almost 20 characters) do their best to crack one another up.
Such rambunctiousness makes Parker’s zingy adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s biting satire, The Suicide, play like a lovable college production: It teeters from gleeful anarchy into simple sloppiness and doesn’t totter back. But with actors like inveterate scene-stealer Paco Tolson and comedy quarterback William Jackson Harper charging hard at every joke, even sophomoric humor deserves a passing grade.
Erdman’s play—a bitter, hilarious swipe at Soviet repression—is basically one gag. When rumors spread that Semyon (Tolson) wants to commit suicide, hordes of hangers-on materialize on his doorstep. The intelligentsia wants to wield his death as a political tool; the church hopes to claim him as a martyr. The joke: Socialist Stalin created a brisk free market in deaths. Belly laugh!
Parker adds literal bells and whistles to the narrative, getting the cast to multitask as musicians who drum out punctuation whenever anybody makes a funny. The stage business works well, and it’s always fun to watch actors racing through quick changes. But Parker’s choice of material is actually too good: His sweet-natured construction is friendly and featherlight while Erdman’s humor has a black, dangerous undertow. It’s not just in the high jinks, then, that Parker’s company sometimes finds itself helplessly carried away.—Helen Shaw
Read more: http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/theater/82305/goodbye-cruel-world-theater-review#ixzz0dkltlicF
Monday, January 25, 2010
Here's To Comic Invention
Photo of a photo by Jim Baldassare
The New York Times just published an amazing review of Goodbye Cruel World. I can't say how happy I am for everyone. Night after night I laugh and feel lucky to share the stage with people who are so funny and generous. Every time out it feels like the show is richer and more playful. Really excited to get into these last two weeks!
THEATER REVIEW | 'GOODBYE CRUEL WORLD'
Photo by Jim Baldassare
Here it is in print:
A Less-Than-Serious Suicide
To be or not to be, that is the punch line.
In “Goodbye Cruel World,” a comedy about death that will appeal to fans of “Weekend at Bernie’s” as well as those of Joe Orton’s “Loot,” Semyon (Paco Tolson) announces that he will shoot himself at the count of ... 1,000. After the flaws in this plan are exposed, Semyon communicates a series of distinct excuses not to kill himself through a multitude of precise facial expressions and body language while counting to the more manageable number of 15. It’s a small triumph of comic invention.
Robert Ross Parker, the co-artistic director of the cult theater troupe Vampire Cowboys, has staged this colloquial adaptation of Nikolai Erdman’s 1928 corrosive comedy, “The Suicide.” This rarely produced gem is a door-slamming farce wrapped inside a humanist attack on the Soviet regime. The original play, in which Semyon calls the Kremlin to tell the person answering the phone that he doesn’t like Marx (no one seems to care), was so biting that it was banned even after Stanislavski himself made a personal appeal on its behalf to Stalin.
The passing of time has made the play less provocative — although it was probably too dark for commercial audiences when it ran for less than two months on Broadway in 1980. Mr. Parker does not strain for relevance here and while he may gloss over some of the work’s darker absurdities, his target is pure, silly farce. And he hits it, dead-on.
Like Jimmy Stewart’s character in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” Semyon, an unemployed bumbler, comes to the realization that he’s worth more dead than alive. But instead of finding a guardian angel, his death wish invites a parade of exploiters looking to schedule a media-savvy suicide at noon. The most entertaining charlatan has to be Aristarch (William Jackson Harper, as a delightfully weepy hypocrite), who argues that Semyon must die for the noble cause of helping Aristarch’s career.
“I would shoot myself,” he concedes, “but unfortunately, I can’t, on principle.”
The production’s conclusion, which builds upon the send-up of the righteousness of acting on principle, is more sweet than bitter. As comedies about mortality go, this one is rather joyful. The saddest thing might be the realization of what the theater world lost when this play was banned. Erdman lived a long life, but after getting the message from Stalin, he understandably stopped writing for the stage. In a way, “The Suicide” was his.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Opening
Photo by Carol Rosegg
Tonight is opening night (matinee) and after three full-house energizing previews we are now fully prepared to rock it for the rest of the run.
It's difficult to express how much fun it was to rehearse this. Every single person brought intelligence, sophistication and craft to their roles, and every day as characters began to take shape it became harder and harder not to break in the middle of scenes. Robert's direction is so deft and the designers so in concert that we were still laughing our heads off during tech working out musical bits, parading costumes around and making some stage magic from the set.
I have learned a lot from the last few shows and cannot wait to get out there tonight.
All details can be found here at the Roundtable website.
Here it is in print:
Goodbye Cruel World
by Nikolai Erdman
adapted and directed by Robert Ross Parker
from a literal translation by Marina Raydun
The ArcLight Theater
152 W71st St. Downstairs (1 Train to 72nd)
Jan 14th - Feb 6th
Thursdays - Saturdays @ 8pm
Saturday Matinees @ 3pm
with Paco Tolson, William Jackson Harper, Cindy Cheung, Curran Connor, Tami Stronach and Aaron Roman Weiner.
Lights and Set: Nick Francone
Costumes: Theresa Squire and Antonia Ford-Roberts
Sound and Music: Shane Rettig
Stage Manager: Henry Cheng
Assistant Director: Adam Mazer
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)