Tag: theater

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Buy/Sell/Date

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a very entertaining one-woman show by Sarah Jones called Sell/Buy/Date.  I had learned about Sarah Jones when listening to an episode of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Magic Lessons podcast.  In it, she was telling Elizabeth about her current project – a comedic theatrical production about sex trafficking.  Because that sounds like a hoot, right?

It turns out that Sarah Jones is also a Tony and Obie award-winning performer.  Her previous one-woman show, called Bridge & Tunnel was produced by Meryl Streep.

On the podcast, Sarah was very witty and smart and made liberal use of her amazing facility for accents to create all sorts of different characters.  When I saw that she was performing locally, I enlisted a friend and we went!

This performance was of the project she had mentioned on the podcast.  It was a one-woman show about people affected by the sex industry.  I knew that she would be inhabiting a tremendous range of characters, but I had no idea what to expect as far as the storyline.

The story was smartly rendered under the conceit that she was a professor in the future who was presenting a lecture.  In the future imagined in this work, technology enables the presenter to become inhabited by the recorded testimonies of various individuals.

I’d like to consider the two components of the piece: 1) the highly researched and provocative subject matter; and 2) her virtuosic performance, separately.

Sarah’s performance was amazing.  If I had been listening only and not watching, I would not have believed for a moment that all of those characters were being performed by one person.  Even the “lead” character had an impeccable British accent, although Sarah is not. But the virtuosity of her performance was not restricted to her vocal delivery.  Her physicality and facial expressions were also tremendously effective.  It was fantastic the way that that this tall, graceful, and elegant woman could move around the stage in a manner that left no doubt that she was, at that moment, actually an older, overweight, and not particularly athletic man.

In terms of the subject matter – she very deftly presented a highly provocative subject in a very insightful, balanced, and scientific way. There was nothing prurient about it.  Based on comments that she made in the podcast, I would have expected a more overtly biased perspective.  But by presenting the topic with an almost clinical tone, she left the audience to sit with their own feelings and biases, forcing all of us to think about the topic more than if she had shown her hand.

I was certainly eager to have the opportunity to discuss the performance with my friend. For me the topic leads down a rabbit hole of relationship power dynamics. As we talked, unraveling the threads of what we had just watched, we realized that there wasn’t any bow to wrap things up with, just more questions.

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My Midlife Cabaret

Calm down!  This post is not about my midlife cabaret.  I promise that I am going to stick to only singing in the car with the stereo turned up all the way (I don’t want to hear my singing either).

No, this is about a one-woman show that a friend of mine invited me to.  His friend from college had written/produced/was starring in it.  He knows that I am always up for an adventure and that I love interesting theatre. When he brought it up, I enthusiastically said “yes!” immediately.  What was there to consider?  A one-woman show in a performance space above a bar in North Hollywood on a Sunday night?  I am hard-pressed to come up with a reason to ever go to the valley, but Juliet Fischer-Schulein’s My Midlife Cabaret certainly was one.

Getting there was surprisingly reasonable (getting anywhere in LA in under 30 minutes is always a surprise).  We found our seats (right up front and center) and settled in.  I quickly realized that I was probably the only person in the place who didn’t actually know Juliet.  Everyone who did (basically everyone else there) was so nice which was great reflection on her, and I was looking forward to getting to meet her after the show.

The pianist and drummer took their places on the teeny, tiny stage.  The first thought that flashed through my mind was the poetry reading scene from So I Married An Axe Murderer (don’t you just love that movie?).  How great would it be if this show was all beat-style poetry and chain smoking?  It wasn’t of course, this was a cabaret after all.

Well, I certainly didn’t have to wait until after the show to get to know a whole lot about Juliet. She was a Rockette!  She got in trouble for kicking too high.  She had this whole wonderful life in her twenties performing on Broadway in A-list musicals.  And then she met her now-husband, fell in love, and decided to give up her career for happily-ever-after suburban life behind the orange curtain.

She was very open about the not-a-Hallmark-movie parts of her life that led her to create this show.  We’re around the same age and I could totally relate to what she was talking about (except for the part about having kids – I never fell for that trick).  Much in the way that she lost herself to her mommy-life in her thirties, I lost myself to my work-life during those years.

#midlifecrisis, #cliché, #trueanyway

I was just so proud of her.  For being so talented and disciplined, for keeping herself in great shape (she would have gotten in trouble for kicking too high if the Rockettes police had been there), for creating this whole show herself, and for being so open and brave to talk about things that are really hard for people to admit.

Today, if someone asked me how I knew Juliet, I would tell them that had seen her show and that she is my sister.  I’m so excited that she has rediscovered her creative voice and look forward to hearing what else she has to say (or sing).  I would like to thank her for inspiring and encouraging me to continue working on my creative path without even knowing it.

Here’s a short YouTube video about the show.

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Redemption of a Dogg

When your friend calls and asks if she should get tickets to the Snoop Dogg musical, you say, “YES!” Then once she’s got the tickets all lined up, you ask, “so what exactly are we going to see?”

Turns out that producer/director/playwright Je’Caryous Johnson has created a musical about Snoop Dogg called, Redemption of a Dogg.  Snoop plays himself and Tamar Braxton plays the angel trying to get her wings by helping the D-O-double G set things right.

I would describe the plot as sort-of A Christmas Carol meets It’s a Wonderful Life. Except that it was set at Easter rather than Christmas.  I kind-of would have loved it if it had been set at Christmastime, it could become another holiday entertainment classic like The Nutcracker or Diehard.  But maybe, because we were seeing it just before Thanksgiving that was probably the holiday that I had on the brain.

The inciting action is that rather than going to church with his family, Snoop books a big show for Easter Sunday.  Which of course means that we got a mini concert.  It was so fun, everyone was on their feet.  Then, when Snoop is leaving the gig, he gets shot by some gang members who have had a beef with him for all these years.  As he lays there dying, an angel appears and offers him a chance of going back to change what brought him to that moment.  The best part of this scene to me was the way that Snoop, as he lay there dramatically suffering from a gunshot, was in a very Martha Graham-style posture.  I like the idea that Snoop may have studied Graham technique (he is very graceful).

So, Snoop thinks he knows what he needs to do, and they go back in time to set young Snoop straight.  From here the show gets funny for me in a Scooby Doo kind-of way.  First the designated moment in time will play out, then they (Snoop and the Angel) will arrive and LITERALLY rewind the scene so that Snoop can make the change.  I’m not kidding, the soundtrack plays that cassette tape rewind sound and all the actors move backwards through the scene to where it began.  It is fantastic.  But when they return to the present, it turns out that whatever the change was had unintended consequences.  Snoop’s reactions when this happens are just priceless.  So, they go back again and try something else!

In the end, the moral of the story (my interpretation) is that if you changed your past, you wouldn’t be the person you are today; all you can do is do your best from this moment forward to be the best you that you can be.  Also, to respect your loved ones and not take them for granted.

And then, everyone lives happily ever after!

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A Fun Night at the Theatre

Guys, I saw a really fun play the other night!  We were laughing out loud.  I didn’t look at my watch once, I didn’t start squirming in my seat hoping for intermission, none of that.  The play, by Christopher Durang, is called Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike.

It’s about a middle-aged brother and his adopted sister who still live in their dead parents’ home. Then the other sister, who is a successful actress, comes home with her twenty-something boy toy and hijinks ensues.  I went in completely cold, I didn’t look at the program before the show started or anything.  Sometimes that is the best way to enjoy a performance because you don’t bother to develop any expectations about what you think you are going to see.

For me, the play starts off maybe sort-of melancholy, there is a lot of talking about missed opportunities and dissatisfaction with how their lives have turned out by Sonia and Vanya.   Fortunately, all the bellyaching is broken up by shots of wackiness which gives all the brooding a funny air.  And then there is this underlying, irrepressible optimism that is manifested in the character of Irina, the young ingénue from next door.

The highlight of the show by far is the character of Cassandra the housekeeper.  In this production, the role is played by Svetlana Efremova who is just delightful.  She plays this wacky character with effervescence and a graceful physicality.  She’s like a lovely, playful kitten romping in and out of everyone’s drama.  And her Russian accent just makes it so much better.  She steals the show.

I think there are other Chekhov references beyond the names of the brother and sisters, but I’m not enough of a theatre buff to know what they were.  I guess that is a testament to how good the play is because I totally enjoyed it without getting the inside jokes.  If you know Chekhov, you may appreciate the play on a deeper level.

Toward the end of the play, Vanya has this eight-minute monologue about the world that he grew up in.  It was wistful and sweet, and it went on long enough to make everyone a little uncomfortable.  To me it sounded exactly like when Mr. Man goes on one of his “back in the day” rants, which made me laugh.  I guess that everyone has heard someone’s version of that same thing at least a few million times.

If you are looking for a culture fix in the next couple weeks, this would be a fun show to catch.  It was funny.  The acting was great. I really enjoyed it.

Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike at South Coast Repertory through October 21, 2018

https://www.scr.org/calendar/view?id=10010

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A Night at the Theatre

My dear friends invited me to join them for a theatrical performance of Sense and Sensibility. You know I said yes!

I mean, who doesn’t like Jane Austen?  Ok, not everyone likes Jane Austen but she sure beats Charles Dickens, come on. And who doesn’t like the movie of Sense and Sensibility with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet?  You know you watch that on a rainy Sunday every so often.

I was super impressed when we arrived at the theatre by all of the Jane Austen fan club folks in attendance.  I mean, there were outfits and hats and impromptu dancing. It was really very cute.

The production itself maybe didn’t live up to its full potential.

It was three hours long, ok. That is a long time.  And you felt every minute of it.

The actress playing Marianne was clearly a very accomplished theatrical actor and her performance sparkled.  She projected and delivered her lines confidently.  Other members of the cast seemed challenged by the British accent which impacted their delivery.

The “colorblind” casting was an…interesting choice.  I probably could have gone along with it, you know suspension of disbelief and all, but what I can only call “age-blind” casting made it difficult.  When Margaret appears to be the same age as Marianne and Elinor  (whether or not the Dashwood sisters are of three different ethnicities) and Colonel Brandon seems to be the same age as Edward Farris, it gets confusing and for me the plot sort-of fell apart.

Also, many of the actors played multiple roles, which again is the sort of thing that I would try to go along with (suspension of disbelief) except that I really couldn’t tell the difference between John Dashwood, Mr. Jennings, and the Doctor. I still don’t know who the not Colonel Brandon guy in the ball scene was.

At any rate, whatever the production was lacking was made up for by the conversation during the car ride home.  I’ve already mentioned that this is one of my favorite things during ballet season.  Having that time together to be critical and appreciative and constructive and silly made my evening.

We dissected the acting, the direction, the set, and the costumes.  Why make this choice and then not take the logical next step?  If you wanted to play it straight, then why not go super traditional with the sets and the costumes? How interesting would it be if the story was set in another time/place?  When/where would you put it?  For some reason, the mid-twentieth century Southern U.S. comes to my mind. Would you change the script? Cut scenes?  Wouldn’t a re-write of the story be interesting? Like getting West Side Story out of Romeo and Juliet.