This show will be popular because a good chunk of the theatregoing public will fall for anything delivered in a British or Irish accent. Delivered in anything else, this 95 minute slog of derivative, contrived, vapid one-man hamfistery with hokey audience participation would be savaged high and low as LA showcase theatre at its worst. Check the theatre’s website for details if you’re in the mood for it or the other two productions in repertory from this unclean alliance between the Odyssey and Fishamble of Dublin.
Magritte continues to fascinate the lay person although few of us can explain why. As an artist, Hutter is much farther along that road, letting various storytelling methods contend in workshop to see how best to convey her message. Movement, video, and some beguiling shadow puppetry alternate as the piece pokes at the modern psyche through the Belgian’s lens. A remarkable connection between surrealism and film noir and a recurring chess theme that simultaneously confuse and intrigue. One hopes that these win out over some of the talkier Freudian bits. The early look clocked in at a snappy forty five minutes but there’s promise here of a longer, richer evening.
When a grim year gets grimmer with no end in sight, those down-in-the-mouth over the decaying state of things can look to the arts for a pick-me-up. Pinter, Beckett, Kane… all can offer a glimmer of hope of a better world than our present one. Add Strindberg to this list and visit ‘Dance of Death’ now at The Odyssey in West L.A. until 19 November. Empty nesters Alice and Edgar live in isolation on a small, unnamed Scandinavian island awaiting their silver wedding anniversary. He is a minor military man, detesting all and detested by all in return. She is much younger, having given up a go-nowhere acting career to marry him. Two children and a life together did nothing to brighten twenty-five years of unrelenting mutual hatred.
Conor McPherson‘s 2012 adaptation reduces Strindberg’s original cast to three and a chess match begins immediately. Aging, ailing Edgar (Darrell Larson) and youthful, seething Alice (Lizzy Kimball) aren’t grandmasters but two nonetheless very effective opponents who know each other’s tactics and always have a nasty countermove at the ready. The relentless, active stalemate needs a stimulus and into this domestic prison – their house used to be one – drops her cousin Kurt (Jeff LeBeau). This poor sap brought the two together under duress in the distant past and becomes both a means to and an object of revenge, played for savagery and for keeps.
Edgar takes the chaotic route – alternately hale and sickly, a dancing Boyar one moment and bedridden the next. Alice is consistent, methodical, focussed. Kurt comes into this house of heartbreak composed and kind and later finds that both have and continue to conspire to his ruin. Ron Sossi’s brisk and mostly effective staging mines ores of deep, dark, Vantablack humor in the otherwise bleak script. Christopher Scott Murillo’s set, simultaneously spacious and claustrophobic, frames intrinsic contrasts of the story. Despite some residual signs of jelling, the audience is slowly pulled in, supporting and sympathizing with whichever character holds the floor at the moment. We, like Kurt, are played like a cigar-box banjo.
This is the play said to have inspired Albee’s George and Martha. One wonders if it similarly inspired the creators of ‘Married With Children’ and the ‘War of the Roses.’ Al and Peg, and Oliver and Barbara equally delight in childish games of control expressed vividly and physically. Divorce is obvious and available but far too easy. Neither wants the other to be free, let alone happy, and all bystanders are in play. This is of course not limited to fiction. The arts teach us much including that there’s usually something lurking under even the most banal situation. There’s usually some benefit to being aware of it if not for advancement at least for self-preservation. ‘Go placidly amid the noise and waste’ says Deteriorata, ‘And remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.’ As such ‘Dance’ does double duty. Fine entertainment on its surface and instruction between the lines.
Dance of Death
by August Strindberg, adapted by Conor McPherson
directed by Ron Sossi The Odyssey Theatre
Regular Performances
September 23 – November 19 2017
Visit the show webpage for dates and times
Online tickets through Ovationtix
or via the Box Office 310-477-2055 EXT. 2
The November 8th tragedy and the ascendance of the mephistocracy guaranteed the revival of Ionesco’s ‘Rhinoceros.‘ The play’s well-known humanist and anti-fascist themes make it an obvious, almost reflexive choice, guaranteed to please progressive audiences but this simple explanation does not do justice to the crackling rendition recently opened on Pacific Resident Theatre’s main stage.
Director Guillermo Cienfuegos, a skilled cast, and a top-notch production team deftly imbue subtlety and nuance while staying faithful to a brash, repetitive, and yes, absurd text in Derek Prouse‘s translation. Weak-willed alcoholic everyman Berenger sees his provincial town replete with its well-dressed residents, charming bistros, and local businesses overrun step-by-step and inch-by-inch by rhinos. His friends and neighbors are first alarmed, then intrigued, and ultimately co-opted. When the movement spreads worldwide he is left alone to declare his resistance in a final act of defiance.
Sweet coincidence had Ionesco releasing the play the same year that Rod Serling began ‘The Twilight Zone’ on American television. Berenger’s (Keith Stevenson) transformation from milquetoast to man begins with a thorough scolding and airing of his shortcomings from putative friend Jean (Alex Fernandez who looks suspiciously like Cienfuegos). A stampeding animal, unseen but definitely heard, interrupts this cafe intervention and draws the notice of all including local costermongers, residents, a logician, and a busking mime. The slapstick first act concerns itself with disbelief and some humorous attempts at analysis. Academics are funny and mimes are annoying in any era and in any circumstance.
Ionesco’s purposefully repetitive and clichéd dialogue can tire even a focussed reader. Fortunately, the cast delivers the needed dimension and shade bringing the words to vigorous life. Characters speak to and not at one another, conversations ebb and flow while pulling the viewer purposefully to a destination. Not all productions of absurdist material can manage this. Themes of desire and transformation are on par with the conventionally political. The long play does take time to find its feet and explodes in a riveting second of three acts. Berenger goes to Jean’s apartment to make amends for their quarrel only to watch his friend mutate before his eyes. Fernande-fuegos towers over Stevenson physically and vocally, bringing palpable rage to several minutes of sustained, mesmerizing terror. Later, Dudard (Jeff Lorch), Berenger’s rival in love and for advancement stands tall on the sidelines rationalizing the rhino onslaught, until Daisy (Carole Weyers) chooses against him. A simple slouch, a growl, and he too is off.
PRT’s mainstage is not large by any means and it would have been understandable had this been a minimalist, black-box affair, striking while the political iron was still hot. The company however committed to twelve performers, costumes (Christine Cover Ferro), lights (Justin Preston), full sets (David Maurer), and an evocative soundscape (Christopher Mosciatello). Several wildly clever stage transformations in the tight space rightly drew loud applause on opening night.
It would have been easy to map current faces onto Ionesco’s lecherous bosses, armchair socialists, deplorables, ladder climbers, and wonks. Cienfuegos wisely does not take the bait and manifest these to make any particular topical statement. It is also very easy to see the play as a blow for a pluralist, inclusive, and heterogeneous society against the reactionary. In actuality, the excellent but decidedly monochrome characters and cast are under concerted attack by dark, malevolent Asiatic and African forces. Nudge nudge, wink wink. Look back at the grisly campaign and grislier aftermath, a large segment of the US and the world views itself as stalwart Berenger refusing to capitulate to the invading other. There are many of them, they vote, and the division is not going away. That this ‘Rhinoceros’ speaks across the spectrum including both extremes is its triumph.
'Rhinoceros'by Eugène IonescoDirected by Guillermo CienfuegosPacific Resident Theatre - Mainstage13 July to 10 September 2017703 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA 90291Thursday – Saturday 8pm;Sunday 3pmTickets $25 to $34Purchase online or through the Box Office: 310-822-8392
The documentaries below were made in the 1970s by Lester Novros, then a professor at the USC film school where his students included George Lucas. The understated elegance of these films is nicely framed by Paul Novros‘s music. The younger Novros is a professor of jazz at CalArts. I asked him whether he had any soundtracks available. He was pleasantly surprised to be reminded of the work but has no separate recordings or scores.
Lester Novros and his Graphic Films studio had a major albeit little-known influence on Stanley Kubrick and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Special effects legend Douglas Trumbull worked with him in Los Angeles but ultimately moved to work directly with Kubrick in England. Barbara Miller’s article “Graphic Films and the Inception of 2001: A Space Odyssey” is good reading.
Big tankers tie up offshore and disgorge their contents into brightly lit and mostly inscrutable refineries. This sixty year old film by Shell Oil neatly explains the chemistry, chemical engineering, and physics of distillation that takes gives us our gasoline, diesel, oils, and waxes. In a different setting, it also gives us many different kinds of beverages.
To their substantial credit, Borda and Co. have replaced me and my like with others receptive to this vision and the organization is very, very healthy. But it is impossible to get off the mailing lists of a group that has (or should have) few empty seats. Full color brochures and postcards still arrive, telemarketers call about Disney Hall and Hollywood Bowl offers. The latter are quite knowledgeable, have discussed my reasons for not re-upping, and promise to click the buttons to unsubscribe me. It never takes, though. Now, some Big Data algorithm has told management that the Reaper will soon be at my door. This email is rather unnerving. Click for a zoomable image.
Kaleidoscope Chamber Orchestra’s Brahms Fourth in Santa Monica’s First Presbyterian Church showed off the group’s journey with democratic approaches to a hierarchical performance practice. There’s no need to reanalyze this staple of the repertoire – its overall arc of tragedy still contains some wonderful melody and gives each section ample opprtunity to shine. Excellent winds and horns set and held the stage with the ensemble growing tighter and more confident with phrasing as the piece developed. This specific mix of the orchestra’s large roster got accustomed to the space and one another in short order. Conductorless playing has to be difficult and must be doubly so when the music calls for soft and shimmering strings. The Brahms starts off this way and the Ives Unanswered Question is a few ethereal minutes of nothing but. Kaleidoscope upped the ante with strings in the sanctuary lobby, woodwinds in a balcony, and the horns offstage behind the altar. Execution fell just short of ambition but acknowledge the effort to add this to the degree of difficulty. The real Unanswered Question was, as is often the case, “Where’s the audience?” The Friday night turnout was reminiscent of Los Angeles theatre with performers outnumbering audience and that’s a shame. One hopes the Sunday matinee in Glendale fared better.
This group looks quite capable of handling Ives, broadly speaking. It would be great to hear those gonzo horns and winds in the rollicking finale of the Second Symphony with its invocations of Reveille, Columbia Gem of the Ocean, and the Camptown Races. Oh doo-dah-day.
Next up: Weinberg, Mozart, and Schoenberg on 23 January (LA Theatre Center) and 24 January (Santa Monica, First Presbyterian Church)
The season kickoff augurs well for the city’s newish conductorless ensemble. The Kaleidoscopes held a concert-cum-fundraiser of Prokofiev, Schoenberg (no, not that one), and Dvorak in the friendly and packed confines of the Colburn’s Zipper Hall. The Classical Symphony and the Cello Concerto showed that this experiment in democracy has a serious chance of success. The strings are very good and in synch, no mean feat since many of them can’t see one another. Most of the performers stand, the strong cello and bass unions negotiated chairs and stools respectively. The woodwinds and brass were terrific. The Phil’s Robert deMaine gave the group someone to focus on in the concerto but he didn’t assume the role of conductor without portfolio. Schoenberg’s (Adam, not Arnold) short Canto, winner of the group’s commission competition, brought Copland’s Quiet City to mind. It’s a heartfelt piece inspired by the composer’s sleeping infant unabashedly intent on evoking a specific response.
It’s not clear how the group handles dynamics and handoffs on its own but it does. There weren’t any obvious glances or nods in the first two pieces with some discreet glances among sections discernible in the Concerto’s rondo. It’s an impressive feat. A preconcert video showed the rehearsal philosophy with wry commentary from the participants – the democratic approach may make for talky rehearsals but there is payoff in the performance. The flute and woodwind work in the Prokofiev’s bravura final movement fired on all cylinders. Birds and fish flock and school, know where they’re going, and turn together in an instant. So do these mostly young folks many with current ties to the Colburn.
There’s talent up and down the roster and the leadership seems to know what it’s about. Four future performance weekends will take place at locations to be announced in Santa Monica and Glendale. Ives, Brahms, Weinberg, Mozart, Schoenberg (yes, that one), Messiaen, and Beethoven are on the schedule. So is John Adams but their taste will improve with age. On top of the concerts, they have outreach programs for youth and the underserved. It’s going to be fun watching them grow.
On the subject of bird behavior, Craig Reynolds’s ‘Boids’ computer models from the late 1980s mimic complex flocking patterns with some simple rules. Here are some latter-day examples set to a possibly recognizable tune.
