Orlando Explores Changing Gender and Time

Classic Stage Company's production of Orlando, based on Virginia Woolf's novel, is conventional Sarah Ruhl adaptation. By conventional Sarah Ruhl, I mean entirely unconventional storytelling. Eschewing traditional limits of time and gender, Orlando tells the story of a Seventeenth Century English nobleman, Orlando, who wakes up one day to find that he's actually a woman. After the transformation, every now and then Orlando also finds herself in a different century. Trying to convey the idea that human identity shouldn't be restricted to the period or gender that we're born into, Woolf's novel was an homage to her progressive friend, Vita Sackville-West.

Ruhl faithfully brings Woolf's post-modernist concepts to the stage. Supporting Orlando (Francesca Faridany), Ruhl has created three male ensemble characters who take on different roles. The actor with the most speaking parts, David Greenspan, plays a Queen who favors Orlando in the Seventeenth Century. He then morphs into a man playing a woman to woo the female Orlando in the second half. All three Ensemble members and Orlando narrate their actions as they perform them to advance the plot. For example, Orlando describes how he ice skates with his love interest, Sasha (Annika Boras), as they mime ice skating.

The first half of the play takes place in the early Seventeenth Century, letting the audience get well acquainted with Orlando before the gender/time-bending shenanigans begin. Orlando lays on the grass in the opening scene, trying to compose a poem. His rhyming "green" with "green" shows us that he still needs to get in touch with his inner artist. This quest to find himself essentially guides the rest of the play.

A story that's so much about the inner life of its eponymous character needs a strong actor. Francesca Faridany fulfills the role well. Known for playing gender-bending parts--I last saw her as Rosalind in All's Well That Ends Well--Faridany gracefully transitions from male to female here while retaining one personality. She convincingly plays a former man puzzled by the new constraints on his life. At one point, Orlando describes her newfound role of pouring tea and asking men how they would like it. While she doesn't seem to mind her new role, it makes us wonder how much of the gender roles that we adopt is actually acting. The one drawback of casting Faridany is that she reminds us a lot of Tilda Swinton in the film Orlando. They both have red hair and channel a certain androgyny. Happily, Faridany brings a more playful demeanor to Orlando than Swinton.

While leaving some loose ends open, Orlando is not really about plot, but about mood. Ruhl covers four centuries skillfully, retaining Orlando's consistent character throughout. The audience is left with a warm fuzzy feeling despite its liberal use of metaphysical hijinks.

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson: An Emo Musical

Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (or BBAJ as fans are already dubbing it) is a musical that could have been written by emo comparative literature and history graduate students. History dominates the musical's content while comp lit guides its structure. On the history side, BBAJ is ostensibly about the rise of Andrew Jackson (Benjamin Walker), the seventh president of the United States. It includes some accurate, yet little known facts. Did you know Jackson's wife was technically still married when the two of them got married? The characterization of John Calhoun (Darren Goldstein), Martin Van Buren, and Henry Clay are more amusing for those who remember them via AP US History. Van Buren and Clay are Yankee fops while Calhoun just cares about owning slaves. Most of the narrative history is presented by the storyteller (Kristine Nielsen), who appears to be a contemporary history teacher.

On the comparative literature side, BBAJ is one long, self-aware metaphor. It's super meta in that's it's cognizant of being a story about the Nineteenth Century told during the Twenty-First. Walker as Jackson talks directly to the narrator. Songs make references to Twentieth Century thinkers Michel Foucault and Susan Sontag. The lyrics helpfully tell us "she hadn't been born yet." On top of this, the production also parodies the emo sensibility. Whenever Jackson loses an election, or something doesn't go his way, he crosses his tight-legged jeans, tucks himself into his jacket and sulks in the corner. He and his wife Rachel initially bond over a bout of blood-letting. At one point, after Jackson's first failed presidential run, Cher's "Song for the Lonely" comes over the speaker system. A disco ball is busted out while Walker mimes slitting his wrists for several minutes.

Subtlety is not the goal here. Through such ribald storytelling, we are hit over the head with the comparisons between Jackson's presidential and current events. "Populism, Yeah Yeah," the opening number, draws parallels to the Tea Party. Jacksonites complain that Washington DC only represents Northeastern elitists while leaving frontiersmen like Jackson to fend against the Indians by themselves. Later, Jackson loses the election through the "Corrupt Bargain," which gave John Quincey Adams--"I should be president because my father was"--the presidency for promising Henry Clay Secretary of State. When Jackson emerges from political exile, going on to win the election of 1828, he finds that populism may not be the best strategy. After all, people voted for him so that he could make decisions for them. The question over the merits of direct democracy Jackson's final conflict.

Unfortunately, Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson loses momentum in its final moments. It simply suggests to the audience that there are downsides to populism without exploring it further. Jackson also commits his most treacherous actions towards Native Americans towards the end with a bit of forced self-reflection.

Now playing at the Bernard Jacobs theatre after premiering Off-Broadway last year, BBAJ draws crowds of young hipsters dressed up for a rock concert. Much of the musical does sound like a rock show. As opposed to other contemporary "rock operas" like Next to Normal, the music here is not continuous. Indeed, the soundtrack is only a little more than 30 minutes. Instead of telling the story, the songs here seem to serve as interludes that are an excuse to blare loud music and turn on low-level, colored house lights. While lacking depth, this style is highly entertaining.

Benjamin Walker's commanding presence as Andrew Jackson is the best part of the BBAJ. He hams up the emo parts unselfconsciously. Though he doesn't have a great singing voice, he does have a powerful one. His speeches and jokes truly endear Jackson to the audience. But at the end, we are still left to decide Jackson's legacy as either one of the greatest presidents of all time, or a murderer.

Time Stands Still is Far from Static

Two restless souls--he a foreign correspondent, she a photojournalist--come back to their Brooklyn apartment after she gets hurt on the job in Donald Margulies' new play Time Stands Still. After a successful Broadway run through Manhattan Theater Company in the 2008-2009 season, it is now back after a summer hiatus. Sarah Goodwin (Laura Linney) has just woken from a coma after a roadside bomb flung her from her car, simultaneously killing her translator, Tariq. Wearing a leg brace and facial scabs, she limps around the apartment while her partner Jamie attends to her. But Sarah is also quick to shrug off special treatment, allowing her editor Richard (Eric Bogosian), and his new girlfriend Mandy (Christina Ricci). When they ask about the explosion, Sarah replies, "Occupational hazard," in a typically practical manner.

After the first two scenes, we may feel that we have all four of these characters figured out. Sarah is a cerebral world-saving workaholic; Jamie is her perfect counterpart as a romantic journalist; Richard is suffering from a midlife crisis, which involves getting together with Mandy, an unintellectual event planner.

Slowly, through incremental, well-paced steps, Donald Margulies reveals the back story behind Sarah's stoicism and Jamie's obsequiousness. Margulies peels back the layers of their personalities to reveal that things aren't as simple as they first appear. Margulies has mastered the art of exposition through convincing dialogue. It's not surprising that Time Stands Still earned him a Tony nomination for best play last year. Just like how a real couple might not dive into everything that they did while apart for work, it takes Sarah and Jamie some time to warm up to each other here.

When they do, things they want to say to each other seem to explode out of their mouths. Jamie proposes they get married after eight years of living together. He claims it's a good idea for hospital visitation rights while giving off the hint there's something lingering beneath the surface. Perhaps it's Sarah's affair with her translator, Tariq, which she reveals in the next line. Perhaps it's Jamie's own breakdown after seeing children explode in front of him, causing him to leave Sarah with Tariq in the first place. Is Jamie trying to redeem himself? Is he just insecure? And where does Sarah's hesitancy come from?

Margulies provides the answers to these questions in the second act without hitting the audience over the head with the characters' motivations. There are no sudden epiphanies or revelations. Rather, the characters figure themselves out at the same time as the audience. Sarah and Jamie realize that their real problem may be that they simply want different things. Jamie, to settle down, but Sarah to keep traveling. At the same time, Sarah's starting to question her own motives for her profession.

In one of the most moving monologues in the play, Sarah tells Jamie how she kept shooting film despite a woman's protests after an explosion in Mosul. "What I did was so wrong it was indecent...They didn't want me taking pictures. That was a sacred place to them...I live off the suffering of strangers." Meanwhile, Mandy is the perfect counterpoint to Sarah's worldviews. Looking at Sarah's pictures, Mandy starts to get upset. "Why didn't you help them?" she wants to know. Indeed, why don't we help the millions of poor people in the world, is one of the questions Time Stands Still asks us to consider. But the more important one is how does our answer to that question effect our relationships?

Belle and Sebastian in Brooklyn

The rain held off for Belle and Sebastian's first stop in the US Thursday night in Brooklyn. Taking place at the Williamsburg Waterfront in a paved lot that overlooks the East River, the show was surprisingly packed for such dreary conditions in an outside venue. Indeed, earlier, people had been selling tickets for the show at half price on Craigslist. But there a couple thousand of us were, ready to hear Belle and Sebastian at their first live North American performance in four years. What was not surprising was that the show was packed with older people--by which I mean not in their twenties. This wasn't too surprising because Belle and Sebastian has been around since the 1990s.

These older concertgoers had a good time rocking to Teenage Fanclub, the opening act. Sounding like a classic rock band straight from the Seventies, the Scottish band crooned out conventional, yet pretty sounding love songs. "I don't need much when I still have thee," to a warming effect as the winds howled behind them.

Soon, Belle and Sebastian took the stage to raucous cheers. Unfortunately, the audience was kind of subdued by the song, "I Didn't See it Coming," from their new album "Belle and Sebastian Write About Love," which doesn't come out for another week in the States. (Due to some unfortunate paving, the floor space of the Williamsburg Waterfront is kind of slanted away from the stage, rendering it a challenge for me to see throughout the show. But this is no reflection on Belle and Sebastian). Luckily, the band made it up to us by following the new song with the more familiar "I'm a Cuckoo." We were relieved to discover that the rest of the set consisted mostly of songs from "Dear Catastrophe Waitress" and "If You're Feeling Sinister," their two most popular albums. They also threw in "The Boy with the Arab Strap," honoring a request, as well as a b-side from "Push Barman to Open New Wounds." Belle and Sebastian's live versions of many of their songs also added a bit extra. "Lord Anthony" departed the most from its album version as Murdoch slowed down the pauses in the song even more to build tension. The contrast between the acoustic beginning and the drum-infused ending truly revealed the energy of the song. The sound mix overall was perfection, allowing us to hear Stuart Murdoch sing his own lyrics even through the heavy winds.

Although they played eighteen songs total, the concert lasted nearly two hours because Belle and Sebastian expertly filled some time with well-chosen dialoguing. At one point, the guitarist Stevie Jackson, took the time to teach us some vocals of "I'm Not Living in the Real World." Later, the band took a break to throw toy footballs to children who were dragged to the concert by their parents.

Finally, Belle and Sebastian closed with a short encore consisting of two songs from "If You're Feeling Sinister." While the concert provided a good sampling of songs from the new album, it was more successful at invoking the first time you discovered Belle and Sebastian and fell in love with them.

Many Laughs but Few Thoughts from La Bete

David Hirson's La Bete got off to an inauspicious start when it first premiered on Broadway in 1991. After a few previews, it only made it two twenty-five performances. Perhaps this was because it's entirely in iambic pentameter and set in Seventeenth Century France. But now, it's going for its second Broadway run after a successful West End revival. Its run was so successful that the producers brought it straight to Broadway this fall without a break. La Bete made it to everyone's most anticipated fall theatre list from New York Magazine to Vogue.

Sitting in the last balcony row of the packed Music Box Theatre during a recent weekday performance, the laughter all around me affirmed the show's newfound popularity. People seemed to love the nearly forty minutes worth of jokes and play on words that opened this two hour production. Indeed, there is something delightful about the cognitive dissonance of hearing contemporary, dirty jokes in a play told in rhyming iambic pentameter set three hundred and fifty years earlier in France. Maybe it's because it makes us modern audiences feel smarter. Also making us feel smart is the whole irony of a play about plays.

The farcical gist of La Bete is that the esteemed playwright Elomire (David Hyde Pierce) gets a new player, Valere (Mark Rylance), foisted on him by his patron, the Princess (Joanna Lumley). Elomire is a man of ideas who writes "serious" plays. He has no tolerance of vulgarity for vulgarity's sake. Just look at him working when the play opens. Surrounded by a huge library of books, we see him scratching away with his quill in a somber corner desk. His solitude is quickly ruined by Valere, the Princess's recommendation who looks like he has been sleeping on the street. Valere quickly launches into a monologue about his thoughts on art as he tries to persuade Elomire that he's the perfect addition to his acting troupe.

Mark Rylance's Valere is the main reason to see La Bete. His 25 minute opening diabtribe comes off as what a naturally self-absorbed person would say. Without skipping a beat, he goes from asking Elomire if he's talked too much about himself right back to talking about himself. If ADD had been diagnosable in the Seventeenth Century, Valere would have had it. Valere flits from Cicero to The Bible as topics of conversation. Rylance uses his body--in addition to words--to produce a comic effect. Before Valere's arrival, Elomire warns that Valere spits as he speaks. Sure enough, Rylance arrives eating and spitting simultaneously. After all this food, Valere develops some gas. He finally relieves himself in Elomire's bathroom, straining and talking through a half-open door.

However, once Rylance's performance is over, things get serious. The Princess shows up to order Elomire to accept Valere. Except, you see, Elomire, the Princess, and Valere all have different ideas of what "art" ought to be. Hirson gives the Princess and Elomire lengthy speeches where they spell out their different beliefs. Though delivered in iambic pentameter, this part is quite unsubtle and boring. Elomire and the Princess state the positions that you'd expect from a wealthy 17th Century patron and a well-known 17th Century playwright.

Less boring--but still cliched--Hirson allows Valere to perform a play within a play that spells out his beliefs about the state of art in 17th Century France. Again, no surprise here. His play seems to criticize the formal artistic establishment. Finally, only in the last ten minutes of the play does Hirson introduce a key point of tension: Will the troupe's players go with Valere or with Elomire? Though the troupes make a pretty clear decision, the audience is left with an unclear message. Hirson does not spend enough time explaining either actors' opinions or art or where these opinions come from. This leads to an abrupt, and somewhat unsastisfying ending. Luckily, we are consoled by the remembrance of the first half of the play and its clever laughs.

Angry Little Foxes

Foxes are hungry, gnawing creatures. Constantly looking for ways to get ahead, they are also very practical. Jonathan Franzen even alludes to a fox chewing his own leg off to escape a trap in his novel, The Corrections. We can imagine foxes eating their own young if they have to. The Hubbards in Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes, fit this stereotype perfectly. The loud, chilling music that opens The New York Theatre Workshop's new production--under the direction of Ivo van Hove--reflects the violently loud, chilling ways in which the Hubbards use people to advance their own class ambitions.

The Hubbard men, Benjamin (Marton Csokas), Oscar (Thomas Jay Ryan), and Oscar's grown son Leo (Nick Westrate) seem to stalk and glower over the Hubbard women in the opening scene when the whole family celebrates a new deal they've struck with a Chicagoan businessman. This deal will turn the Hubbards' $225,000 investment into millions. Regina Hubbard Giddens (Elizabeth Marvel), Oscar and Ben's sister, is giddy with excitement. Van Hove's excruciatingly tactile production has a drunk Regina scratching the velvety carpets and walls with her entire body as if she expects the rich velvet to increase her own worth. Birdie Hubbard (Tina Benko), Oscar's wife, indulges Regina by listening to her dreams of living in a big city like Chicago.

Regina and Birdie's reveries are soon dispelled by the Hubbard men. They are moody because the deal isn't quite complete yet. Benjamin and Oscar still need Regina's share of the initial investment. But she being a woman, and this being the South, they need her husband Horace to officially hand over the money. Sadly for them, Horace (Christopher Evan Welch) is resting up at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland. Her brothers' demands stop Regina's daydreaming in its tracks. She immediately falls under their--or, more accurately, Ben's--spell, and joins them in conniving to get Horace's money. Mimicking her brothers' control over others, Regina has no qualms about manipulating her teenage daughter Alexandra (Cristin Milioti) to compel Horace's return. How far Regina will go to secure her fair share of the Hubbard fortune, and what consequences she'll suffer in turn form the central drama of the play.

This tension has been played out regularly since The Little Foxes first premiered in 1939. Revived several times on Broadway with a 1941 Bette Davis movie as well, the story of the Hubbards has survived the Twentieth Century. Hellman's script holds up even ten years into the Twenty-First Century for its exploration of the timeless American tragedy of constant striving. Ben, Oscar, and Regina repeat throughout that there are two types of people in the world: those who get ahead, and those who watch. Its clear that the Hubbards are in the first camp as we learn about Oscar's careful scheming to marry the most blue-blooded girl in town. According to Birdie, "My family was good....Ben Gubbard wanted the cotton and Oscar Hubbard married it for him. He was kind to me, then...Everybody knew what he married me for. Everybody but me."

Like all the other stories, Benko recounts this in a forlorn, matter-of-fact manner. In contrast to the violent physical action, the actors have more sober direction in line delivery that leads to devastating results. A line in Hellman's original play that calls for Regina to scream " I hope you die!, I hope you die soon!, I'll be waiting for you to die!" at Horace is delivered here by Marvel softly as she strokes her husband's head, as if she's actually putting a curse on him. This is indeed the more chilling option.

Initially set in the early Twentieth Century American South when the last of the plantation class was being overtaken by carpetbaggers and industrialists, The Little Foxes could be easily transported to the post-Lehman world where people are once again unsure of their fortunes. But one problem with van Hove's production is that it's temporally confused. On the one hand, a LCD monitor that's used to project the upstairs happenings suggest a modern day setting. On the other hand, the abundant use of the N word, the allusions to trains and cotton suggest the last century.

Since I saw the production in its first preview, there were a few technical glitches as well. The music during scene changes was a little overdone. The final scene ended abruptly when the music swelled to a sudden cut out. I'm hoping they've turned that into a slow fadeout by now. Nonetheless, the "van Hove treatment" makes The Little Foxes an intense viewing experience for modern audiences.

Trust: Don't Trust Those with Trust Funds

Trust, this season's mainstage opener at 2nd Stage Theater, begins on a spare stage. Large and embossed with some kind of metal, it feels like a dungeon. The only item present is a weird contraption hanging from the ceiling. Harry (Zach Braff) wanders on to the stage, just as surprised by these tools as we are. It's his first visit to a dominatrix, and he doesn't know what to expect. What he finds out is that the he is not a huge fan of dominatrix activities, and that dominatrixes are just like normal people. Indeed, Mistress Carol turns out to be Prudence Teller (Sutton Foster) from Harry's high school class. The power roles switch -- the first of many such switches -- as Harry reveals that he knows Prudence's real name.

Harry, it turns out, is quite an accomplished businessman who sold an internet start up for $300 million. He tells Prudence that he's looking to be dominated "on a whim." Perhaps he was bored. The writer Paul Weitz, who is better known for his screenplays (In Good Company), turns this potentially cliched idea of a rich man bored by his own wealth into a deeper character study in Trust. Prudence and Harry, both easily typed upon first meeting as a person who needs to dominate because of daddy issues and a person who needs to be dominated because everything came too easily to him, may actually be just the opposite.

Indeed, Harry, who appears to have an "aw-shucks" quality about him, immediately asks Prudence to help him manipulate his wife. Harry invites Prudence over to help him evaluate his wife without telling her that she's a dominatrix. Is Harry just a thoughtful husband, protecting his wife, or a controlling one?

Prudence does an odd 180 soon after. In one of the next scenes, Prudence asks her boyfriend, Morton (Bobby Cannavale), for rent money. He has just come back from gambling and hands her all his cash. When this isn't enough, she demands the balance. Morton immediately flies into a rage, twisting Prudence's body by her hair, and wrestling her down for some anger-fueled sex. "You love me," Morton repeats. Prudence seems to give in quite easily, making us wonder if she actually enjoys being dominated in this way and losing control over situations.

Prudence and Harry's significant others are just as complicated as their counterparts. Harry's wife Aleeza (Ari Graynor) is more than just a depressed housewife who hasn't accomplished anything. As we get closer to the truth of why she hasn't accomplished anything with her painting, we learn that Harry has played a bigger role in her apathy than it may first seem. Similarly, Morton is a book smart person--"I got a 1560 on the SATS"--who now spends all his time sitting around, trying to make a quick buck.

However, there's no time to develop sympathy for these characters. Although the characters are more complicated than they first appear, Weitz doesn't really reveal their depth until the end, when--in fits of genius--the characters figure each other out. The figuring out, however, felt like an exercise in hide the ball. Like Agatha Christie forcing us to try to figure out her killers' motives all the while hiding vital information from us until the end, Weitz makes each of his characters a therapist for another one, revealing their motivations to themselves and to us. For all the flaws of this style, however, it does make for delicious voyeurism.

In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play Not as Shocking as its Title Suggests

Sarah Ruhl is known to put some quirky, physically implausible things in her plays. In Eurydice, a retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice story, her characters enter a kind of purgatory where they lose their ability to read and write. But Eurydice's father communicates to her from the other side by writing letters, because he is the only dead person who can still write. In Dead Man's Cell Phone, the dead are more clearly present through the presence of a cell phone. In The Melancholy Play Ruhl introduces the idea of two twins separated at birth who are still psychically connected.

Knowing this about Ruhl's work, I was curious to see what fantastical elements she would bring into her latest play In the Next Room, or The Vibrator Play, which is having its DC premier at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre following a Broadway run last season at Lincoln Center. Curiously enough, the most transgressive thing about this play is all revealed in the title: the vibrator. Other than its insistent presence, The Vibrator Play follows a very traditional story arc in a commonly depicted time period.

It's the end of the Victorian age, and electricity is becoming more ubiquitous. The Givings are a well to do doctor (Eric Hissom) and his wife (Katie deBuys) who are embracing electricity both in their home and in the doctor's work. Mrs. Givings' slowly turning on and off of the lights in the opening scene is the first sign of electricity's vital role in the film and the late nineteenth century. Indeed, Dr. Givings has just purchased a new massage machine that's meant to relieve women of hysteria from build up in their wombs. Yes -- a vibrator.

With the help of his middle-aged midwife, Annie (Sarah Marshall), Dr. Givings begins to administer treatments to a housewife named Mrs. Daldry (Kimberly Gilbert) and an artist named Leo Irving (Cody Nickell). (That feat's thanks to the male version of a vibrator).

As Mrs. Daldry and Irving receive treatments, they let down their guards and reveal their problems to the audience. These problems are not very surprising. Mrs. Daldry is shy and doesn't feel enought; Irving, the free spirited artist he is, feels too much. We in the audience are also forced to get more comfortable with ourselves as we witness Mrs. Daldry's increasingly frequent orgasms. Her first one feels much longer than the three minutes it actually takes. Gilbert convincingly writes on the operating table like a sex novice. She even covers her mouth in embarrassment following the first few unseemly moans. After a few more sessions, though, Mrs. Daldry finds herself coming back for more voluntarily. She begins to dress more colorfully and behaves more confidently. Soon after both Mrs. Daldry and Leo Irving get so stimulated, their orgasms merely drift into the background of the play.

With the subject of sex and orgasms safely in the background, Ruhl draws our attention to the heart of the play: the Givingses' marriage. In some introductory remarks in the program, Ruhl writes that "I'm ultimately more interested in the relationships that expand around [the vibrator], and the whole notion of compartmentalization." Mrs. Givings is dismayed by how her husband separates his doctoring from her, as if she can't understand it, going so far as to lock the room when he leaves home. Mrs. Givings' curiousity gets the better of her, and she breaks in to the next room. Her discovery of the vibrator and break in illuminates a mutual breach of trust that the couple spend most of the play repairing.

While Ruhl makes the characters' motivations and actions perfectly clear, they are based on blunt characterizations. Mrs. Givings is too easily typed as the stifled romantic in Victorian times. Dr. Givings is too easily typed as the strict man of science who can never succumb to emotion. Only one of the Givingses convincingly changes by the end, but not until everyone has endured a lesson on how to see others for who they really are.

Me, Myself, and I

"Me, Myself, and I," which premiered in Princeton at the McCarter Theatre two years ago, is now making its New York premier at Playwright's Horizons. Edwards Albee's latest play--written as he approached his eighties--is not the heavy fare of is "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" days. Instead, "Me, Myself, and I" is an absurdist comedy that draws its laughs through wordplay and jokes about dramatic conventions. Indeed, it seems as though the character of the Doctor's only role is to point out double meanings and correct others' grammar to comic effect. As one character threatens that his dad will come back on a carriage led by black panthers to usurp the Doctor's role in the house, the Doctor remains unfazed. He simply asks, "Black Panthers? Even today? I didn't know they were still around."

In addition to being aware of grammar, the characters are excruciatingly aware of the fact that they're in a play--a fact which they enjoy pointing out. From the beginning, Albee allows his characters to speak directly to the audience. Standing alone in front of the proscenium, Otto asks "Do you like my mother?" In one scene depicting a picnic on a nearly bare stage, the Doctor remarks, "It's strange how things just disappear around here."

The reason I haven't mentioned the plot yet is because the plot is not the point. If you must know, the plot involves a set of twins, both of whom are named Otto. The only difference is that one is OTTO (Zachary Booth), the other otto (Preston Sadleir). Their mother (Elizabeth Ashley) is a bit of a crazy person whose husband left her right after she gave birth. Now, twenty-eight years later, she still can't tell the twins apart aside from the fact that one of them loves her and the other doesn't. She also resides with her Doctor. The action in the play revolves around tight few days following OTTO's announcement that he has a new brother, and thus, otto no longer exists.

While this set-up ostensibly could lead to some profound examinations into the nature of self and individuality, "Me, Myself and I" doesn't take itself anywhere near seriously enough to form some grand synthesis on these ideas. Instead, it gently jabs at the audience with its comic approach. Although otto goes around asking people "Do I exist?" in an increasingly shrill manner, we're never in doubt of his physical existence. What we are in doubt of is his ability to be whole without his brother. The relationship between OTTO and otto is only an extreme example of any close human relationship. At one point, OTTO complains that otto is a shadow that constantly stalks him. Any audience member who has felt responsibility for another person can empathize.

Albee is also interested in goodness. OTTO is ostensibly the evil twin, and otto the good. However, neither can fully embody his designated trait. Albee does not take this idea very far, though, and asks the viewers to draw their own conclusions. Overall, Albee's technique effectively asks us to contemplate some deep issues in a way that won't tax your little grey cells.

Learn the "Secrets of the Trade" at 59e59

For a play that's about the theater, Jonathan Tolins' Secrets of the Trade is surprisingly cinematic in its scope and narrative devices. Tolins' play -- which probably includes some autobiographical elements -- is a coming-of-age story about a theater-loving young adult named Andrew Lipman (Noah Robbins) who matures under the influence of a legendary stage director, Martin Kerner (John Glover). The play checks in with Andrew in mostly two year intervals from the age of sixteen when he first writes Kerner to ten years later. Andrew's initial fawning admiration for Kerner sours into a love-hate relationship as Kerner simultaneously educates and disappoints Andrew over the years.

In addition to the fallen-idol trope, Tolins integrates the anguished-parents trope as well. Peter and Joanne Lipman are the supportive parents who yearn for Andrew's admiration even as he comes to value Kerner's approval the most. Mr. Lipman suffers the irony of pushing his son to write to Kerner only to find himself losing to Kerner in the battle for Andrew's affection. The climax of the Lipmans' struggle with their son occurs after he has graduated from college and produces an avant garde autobiographical play that portrays his parents as suburban buffoons who don't understand their son. Mr. and Mrs. Lipman also represent dried up hopes. Peter Lipman had the chance to work with a famous architect and gave it up for his family. Joanne Lipman was a dancer in "her other life," who now only has memories of her performing days. Their performances make us think about our own processes of growing up and severing parental ties.

The New Yorker describes Secrets of the Trade as a comedy, and it does have many funny lines. The cynical assistant, Bradley, is played perfectly by Bill Brochtrup, who offers moments of comic relief as he alludes to Kerner's inner diva. But ultimately, Tolins is trying to illuminate the difficulties of growing up in an uncertain age.

The age here is the Reagan era. We're not so-subtly told that it's Reagan by the crackling radio at the beginning projecting the voice of an NPR announcer who says that Reagan has just won. While the Reagan era is irrelevant for the first half of the play, it takes a more prominent place in the viewer's mind once Tolins explores

The current Primary Stages production of the play at 59e59 Theaters benefits from a cast of seasoned actors. Amy Aquino, a regular on television, plays the aggrieved Jewish mother competing for her son's affection convincingly. She deadpans in the appropriate places and inspires the most sympathy in her snarky moments. Aquino's success isn't surprising since she was in the premier cast in LA's Black Dahlia Theater.

A Little Night Music

In A Little Night Music, Bernadette Peters doesn’t look a day over her 1985 self from Sunday in the Park with George. Peters, replacing Catherine Zeta Jones, plays Desiree Armfeldt, a middle-aged actress who seeks to rekindle a relationship with an old love after they see each other during one of her plays. But Desiree has two obstacles. First, Fredrik Egerman is now married to an eighteen year old, Anne. Second, Desiree has another lover—a married dragoon with a huge ego. Desiree’s decision to seek Fredrik’s affection takes her through the recesses of her memories, embracing nostalgia at every moment. The audience is along for this walk down memory lane. Peters’ strong, yet aging voice, is perfect for the role. We can hear all her regret in her wizened rendition of “Send in the Clowns.” She pauses at just the right times, and sheds real tears when she thinks she is losing Egerman. “Aren’t we a pair? Me with my feet on the ground; you in midair,” she reflects.

Desiree is not the only nostalgic character in A Little Night Music. Her mother, Mrs, Armfeldt, is played by the fabulous Elaine Stritch. In “Liaisons,” she hilariously recollects her past lovers—most of whom are now dead—and asks where they are now. It makes us wonder where our long lost friends are as well.

A Little Night Music builds a serious theme in that typically Sondheim way: through song lyrics and less through the libretto. Sondheim is a master of telling stories through multi-part songs with overlapping lines. The last song of the first act, “A Weekend in the Country” has each character revealing their motives for spending a weekend at Mrs. Armfeldt’s as the invitation is passed around. We learn that the dragoon is scheming to toss out Fredrik, while Anne schemes to keep an eye on her husband. The piece predicts the ensemble title song of Sondheim’s later musical, Into the Woods. That ten minute first number introduces all their characters and situations entirely in song, without a line of plain dialogue.

At the same time, A Little Night Music is not one of Sondheim’s masterpieces. While its music is consistently interesting, its shortfalls lie in its plot. Many of the songs seem only tangentially related to the plot. While “Liaisons,” advances the show’s themes, it doesn’t really advance the plot. A solo piece in the second act, “The Miller’s Wife,” sees Petra, the Egermans’ maid, preaching about enjoying one’s youth before settling down and getting married. But this is Petra’s seemingly only purpose in the show. Though she serves as a contrast to the virginal Anne, she doesn’t add anything to the texture of the show, even from an instrumental perspective.

The main thing preventing A Little Night Music from being great is its sudden ending. The tone shifts dramatically in the last ten minutes of the production, leading the audience to question the entire show that it just saw. When two characters run off together, throwing two others together, the theme of regret and a life poorly lived are completely gone as four characters begin seemingly new lives.

Chances, though, are that few people are seeing A Little Night Music for its plot or lessons. We're there to see Bernadette Peters. Her singing is remarkable, but her acting is a bit detached. It's as though her real-life role as a middle aged stage actress makes her character blend together with her real-life self. Desiree is difficult to separate from Peters. Still, Peters' nasal voice is perfect for deadpanning memorable lines from "You Must Meet My Wife" and other songs. A Little Night Music is overall quite memorable, even if mostly because of Peters' star power.

Wolves: A Metaphor for Love

Wolves is a play about 30-year old angst in New York City that grows into a play about 40-year old angst in New York City. It transforms from a play about growing up to a play about growing old. But it's a transformation with some rough patches.

Wolves opens with a couple driving home from a party. We can tell that Caleb (Josh Tyson) and Kay (Elizabeth Davis)'s relationship is on the rocks from their stifled car conversation. Flashbacks between them in the car and the party help fill in the gaps. Caleb is a former college football kicker who is now an unemployed writer. Delaney Britt Brewer's script doesn't reveal what Kay does for a living, but her elitist breeding comes across in the insecurities that Caleb expresses to Kay's friends during the party. "Where did you go to school?" Roslyn (Sarah Baskin) asks him. "Just a lower state school. One step up from a community college...One step down from KFC." Needless to say, Kay doesn't appreciate this self-deprecation, and confides to Ros that she's turning into her mother, with a permanent frown plastered to her face. In the midst of all this, Caleb gets hit on by a twenty-one year old who encourages him to take ecstasy. Back on the drive home, the combination of drugs and repressed emotions causes Caleb to hit a wolf. A debate ensues as to whether or not they should kill the wolf. Kay wants them to kill the wolf cause it's in pain, while Caleb can't bear the thought of killing a creature with "love in its eyes." The disagreement leads them to confront their own love for each other. (The wolf is a metaphor for love--get it?)

As you may have guessed, the wolf metaphor continues throughout the play's three (short) acts. In the second act, our attention shifts to Julie and her brother Elliot as they wait to throw their mothers' ashes to the wind. Julie is struggling with a recently ended relationship with Sasha, a woman who now "wants a family," who is now with the Caleb of the previous act. A hallucination involving a wolf suggests that she is afraid of love. The third act shifts back to Caleb--now with Sasha. They have a daughter named Wolf, through whom they speak to each other. This section is the most originally thought out. Wolf sits on a spinnable miniature house and reads out loud from pieces of paper that represent notes that Sasha and Caleb have supposedly written to each other. Unfortunately, the wolf metaphor is quite transparent--as are all the characters' feelings. They use elegant, yet improbably sentences to explain their feelings. For example, Caleb compares the phrase "I love you" to wall paint when he confronts Kay.

Staged in the intimate, 56-seat Theater C at 59e59, a major advantage is that there are only good seats in the house. However, the close-up look also magnifies the fact that Wolves takes on slightly more than it can chew. It could have done without the middle act. Neither Elliot nor Julie's characters are given enough time to develop. In fact, Brewer seems to take a shortcut by devoting a large portion of Julie's time to a hallucinatory scene. At the same time, I'd rather see a relatively obvious play than a willfully obscure one.

Next to Normal Provides Deep Catharsis

By intermission, there was nary a dry female eye surrounding me in the audience of last night's performance of Next to Normal at Broadway's Booth Theatre. It wasn't surprising that Tom Kitt's musical about the effects of a mother's bipolar on her family and self would have such an effect. After all, it did win the 2010 Pulitzer for drama, an accolade that is seldom bestowed on musicals. But Next to Normal is not your typical musical. It doesn't seek to transport you away from your problems to Oz, or the African jungles. Nor does it allow you to indulge in your favorite artists such as Frank Sinatra, Franki Valli, or even Green Day. Rather, Next to Normal forces audiences to dive inward and plumb the depths of their own emotions. In this way, it's more similar to a play than a typical musical.

Next to Normal is set in a typical American suburb during contemporary times. It opens with a "Just Another Day," where the mother, Diana (Marin Mazzie), sings "They're the perfect loving family, so adoring/And I love them every day of every week." Of course, this is the first sign that they're not the perfect loving family. The opening number ends with Diana making sandwiches on the floor. Her daughter Natalie (Meghann Fahy) storms off to leave her dad (Jason Danieley) to deal with this latest outburst. But this is no Desperate Housewives cliche of the soccer mom driven crazy by an boredom and routine. We soon learn that the source of Diana's angst is her son's death--sixteen years ago. She now imagines her son (Kyle Dean Massey) as a seventeen year old stomping around the house.

The major plot here, then, is how Diana treats her illness, and whether or not she can let go of the major cause -- her imagined son. Along the way, York also incorporates criticism of the medication of mental illness.The darkly funny piece entitled "My Psycho-pharmacologist And I," follows Diana through seven weeks of trying drug cocktails. In the background, the other characters sing "Zoloft and Paxil...Xanax and Prozac...these are a few of my favorite pills!" After seven weeks Diana tells the doctor, "I don't feel like myself. I don't feel anything," to which the good doc replies "Patient stable.

But Next to Normal is not a groundbreaking critique of the pharmaceutical industry. Its strength lies in its emotional depth and clarity. The two major relationships are between Diana and her husband Dan, and between Diana and Natalie. Diana's husband has been supportive all these years, but now must confront the fact that he may be enabling his wife. The chemistry is palpable between real-life couple Marin Mazzie and Jason Danieley throughout. Most poignant is a duet in which Dan explains why he's stayed with Diana through all these years of mental illness. It's entirely believable by this point that a husband would stay so steadfastly by, driven by a complex mixture of love and commitment. The duet asks audiences to think of their own commitments. Is there anyone you would stay by through decades of mental illness?

The relationship between mother and daughter is rarely explored in this way in musical theater. Natalie has essentially been ignored for her entire life as her mother obsesses over her dead brother, and her father obsesses over her mother. Now when her classmate Henry (Adam Chanler-Berat) wants to date her, she cannot handle all the attention. How Natalie juggles her hatred, and her longing for her mother at the same time is beautifully shown through her defensive persona. Natalie is given many sarcastic lines, which Fahy delivers well. It's enough to remind the audience of their own insecurities as well.

Next to Normal has been criticized for being too serious. This is a good thing. I hope that this production's seriousness will inspire more thinking-person's musicals on Broadway.

Bachelorette: Partying Gone Awry

Last night I attempted to see Bachelorette at the 2nd Stage Theater. Due to lack of internet and thus, lack of planning, I arrived 30 minutes late to this 90 minute production. Sweaty and embarrassed (I had gotten the time and location wrong), the production did a great job of taking my mind off of my travels, and throwing me right into the story. The set up was pretty clear. Becky is getting married, and she has invited her maid of honor, Regan (Tracee Chimo) to use her hotel room on the eve of the wedding. Unfortunately for Becky, Regan has decided to invite two of Becky's ex-friends, Katie and Gena. While Becky's still out doing night-before activities, the three remaining girls take the opportunity to party in the hotel room. Soon, the combination of alcohol, pot, and other drugs drive the girls to destroy the room, and to call each other out for previous misconduct.

I entered the theater right when Regan, Katie, and Gena decide to play with Becky's dress, tearing it as a result. Then a blame war resumes in which each tries to prove how the other is a worse person, and therefore more responsible for destroying Becky's room. Regan brings up Gena's abortion while a hurt Gena can only dejectedly reply, "Why did you say that?"

The answer to this question is slowly revealed over the next hour as Regan takes a center role. After the next scene change, we see Regan and Katie (Gena had gone to find a tailor for the dress) re-entering Becky's hotel room, each with a guy in tow. Regan's conversations with her guy Jeff (Eddie Kay Thomas) raises questions about Regan, such as why she is hooking up with other guys when she has a boyfriend. Why does she think her job, reading to child cancer patients, is "boring?" Meanwhile, Katie (Celia Keenan-Bolger) discusses her former prom queen status with her guy Joe (Fran Kranz). She reveals plenty of secrets while in her drunken stupor, inviting audiences to reflect on their own moments of inebriation.

Though there are many plays about late night conversations leading to "meaning," or revelation, there aren't many that do this convincingly. The dialogue in Bachelorette is natural, even in the most unsurprising moment, when one character reveals that one of their friends died of alcohol poisoning--a death that they've always felt some responsibility for. The naturalness of this story can be attributed both to the superb acting and the diction. The characters are supposed to be in their late twenties, and they believably speak like today's twentysomethings. The playwright, Leslye Headland, avoids the forced "dudes," and instead gives her characters an appropriate blend of wisdom and forced casualness. Regan interrupts her conversations to check her phone. "Ugh...I can't believe these guys keep texting me," she remarks while obviously delighted by the attention.

While the drugs and revelations are not particularly disturbing, the final confrontation between Regan and Becky is. This ten minute climax towards the end is worth the entire ninety minutes of the production. As Becky tries to understand the damage done to her hotel room, you can see Regan scheming to turn this into Becky's fault. The two then torture each other in a battle of saying the most hurtful things possible. In the end, you get to decide who wins.

One Day: Best Beach Read of 2010

It's not often that a cover of a nearly-kissing-couple reveals a profound novel underneath. David Nicholls bucks the trend by combining breezy language and fast-paced storytelling with epic themes and deep character portrayals in his new novel One Day.

One Day is quite gimmicky on the surface. It's about a boy (Dexter Mayhew) and a girl (Emma Morley) who have a one night stand the evening of university (they're British) graduation on July 15, 1988. The book then checks in with the two of them on July 15 of every year for the next twenty years. But the way Nicholls does this sets it apart from typical chick-lit fare. Instead of contriving a meeting every year, say at a wedding or randomly bumping into each other at a restaurant, Nicholls deliberately checks in with them each July 15, using the opportunity to fill us in on their lives the other 364 days of the year. Nicholls makes clear that Dex and Em are part of each others' lives year round. Instead of filling us in on their lives through removed third-person omniscient, he spends equal amounts of time communicating in Dex and Em's respective voices.

Through this method, we get two fully realized characters. One chapter set in the early Nineties begins with Dexter's voice: "These days the nights and mornings have a tendency to bleed into one another. Old fashioned notions of a.m. and p.m. have become obsolete and Dexter is seeing a lot more dawns that he once used to." A couple pages later, Nicholls switches to Em: "Emma Morley east well and drinks in moderation. These days she gets eight good hours sleep then wakes promptly of her accord just before six-thirty and drinks a large glass of water." These sentences don't simply fill us in on the characters' lives, but do it in such a way that shows what the characters think of themselves. These are thoughts that they would have believably used to describe themselves.

Sure, the characters each do a few things that make you want to roll your eyes, but their big decisions are recognizable to all. Immediately after the one night stand, for example, Dexter does a stint of world traveling, going from country to country "teaching English," but also bedding various women. He is then saved from the nomadic lifestyle by a television gig, becoming rich and more dependent on drugs in the process. Though this screams cliched rich-kid story, Nicholls excellent portrayal renders Dexter as a real person who needs to reconcile luck with success. In one passage, Dexter muses on how to "dump" his friends for more successful, attractive friends. Even if you haven't faced this specific problem, everyone can relate to the idea of outgrowing acquaintances. Meanwhile, Em must ask how to find the courage to do what she really wants as she endures a thankless job while yearning to be a writer.

Though Dex and Em eventually grow out of their twenties, the early twenties is a great time to read this book. From my perspective as a recent college grad, One Day provides perspective on how one's priorities change through the ages. Obsessed with success and being other people when their young, the characters learn to appreciate family and themselves over time. In this sense, it reminds me of a much more serious book, The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard, that follows two sisters from the 1950's through the 1980's. The difference is that One Day is written in a way that's conducive to the beach.

Nicholls provides some acute social commentary throughout. From the beginning, he makes fun of Emma's type even as he creates her. Looking around Emma's progressive, hipster-ish room during the one-night stand, Dex notes that "the problem with interesting girls is that they were all the same." Later, Nicholls jabs at overblown weddings:
"They have started to arrive. An endless cascade of luxuriously quilted envelopes, thumping onto the doormat. The wedding invitations."

Current events from 1988 to 2007 take a backseat in this book. (There's no mention of 9/11, but some discussion of the subsequent war). While the cultural references--"I have tickets to the London premier of Jurassic Park"--might attract audiences of a certain age, they are entirely gratuitous. Though the situations could have only occurred in the late 20th century and first decade of the twenty-first, the story of two young people figuring out their lives is timeless.

Passing Strange Explores Questions of Identity

Aaron Reed looks a bit awkward when he first takes the stage in the musical Passing Strange at The Studio Theater (through August 8). Reed plays a young Stew, the singer-songwriter behind the band The Negro Problem, in this musical about his life. (No worries--I hadn't heard of Stew either until Passing Strange premiered on Broadway last year). Passing Strange covers the period of Stew's creative germination, from the time he leaves his LA home as a teenager through his travels in Amsterdam and Berlin. When Reed first emerges, he plays the role of the uncertain teenager perfectly. He argues with his mother about not going to church, and needing to "find himself." But Reed's affected, whiny speaking voice transforms into a robust baritone when he sings. Halfway through the first half, Stew gets his wish and leaves for Amsterdam.

Stew undergoes the typical young adult trials of love and drugs. Meanwhile, his mother (Deidra LaWan Starnes) implores him to return home. Naturally, Stew ignores these wishes and continues his adventures on to Berlin in the second act.

Narrating throughout is the appropriately named character, "Narrator." Played by Stew himself in the Broadway production, this figure can also be thought of as an older Stew looking back on his life. He is expertly portrayed by Jahi Kearse in this production. The Narrator doubles as part of the band, and serves as a tongue-in-cheek link between the fiction of the stage and the reality of the audience. He makes many comments pointing out the fact that we're watching a performance.

Most importantly, the Narrator allows The Studio Theatre to adopt a minimalist approach to Passing Strange. The Narrator can tell us what city Stew's in without any fancy sets. Studio Theatre's Stage 4 is hardly even a stage. The raised platform is only a few feet--just enough room for Stew's mother to perch when she is singing from LA.The ensemble roams about the floor at the same level as the audience. Actually, we are higher because of the stadium seating. By stripping away all gratuitous flourishes, this approach forces audiences to connect with the actors. We can focus on the story and Stew's dilemmas. The jokes are also more heartfelt when close up. When Stew explains why he can't go home to see her, his mother responds "Your deep concern for yourself is really moving."

Though it covers some traditional themes, Passing Strange is no cliched bildungsroman. It also deals with issues of black identity and reality in art. When Stew is in Berlin he embraces the impoverished black American as his true self. He tells everyone that he grew up in the ghetto, where he dealt with hate every day. An ironic duet then ensues with Stew telling these stories of woe juxtaposed with his mother's stories of the American dream. "What will I do alone in my big two story house?" she sings as Stew tries to paint a portrait of himself as someone who grew up in a crack house.

Passing Strange explores authenticity without shoving it down out throats. The questions of what make's Stew's identity authentic are asked, but not fully resolved. The Narrator wryly remarks "Aren't you shocked when you find out that your life was determined by the decisions of a teenager?" We can all relate to those moments when you think of how different you are from previous years. Sometimes it takes years--more years than the period covered in Passing Strange--to figure out what one's identity truly is.

The Imperfect Imperfectionists

The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman has gotten a lot of press coverage since its debut. A "novel" about journalists working a struggling English-language paper based in Rome, it has attracted the attention of many journalists who might feel a connection. The Washington Post lauds The Imperfectionists as a novel "about what happens when professionals realize that their craft no longer has meaning in the world's eyes." This is a great idea, and could have led to profound character studies. Unfortunately, Rachman's execution of The Imperfectionists has resulted in several shallow portrayals of many instead of a more coherent examination of a few.

As many have pointed out, The Imperfectionists is more of a series of linked stories than a bona fide novel. Each chapter focuses on one employee of an unnamed international newspaper. (Rachman himself used to work at the International Herald Tribune). Each chapter explores how that employee undergoes an ironic twist as the newspaper marches towards its demise. So we've got the obituary writer who faces death in his personal life, a business writer who gets scammed, a devoted reader who doesn't know anything about current events, and so forth. Perhaps one ironic twist would be believable, but a dozen are not. As a whole, the stories make for a heavy handed way of saying "look how these characters have to confront their true selves just like how the newspaper needs to confront its true importance." Clever, perhaps, but not thought provoking.

This 280 page book consists of about a dozen 25 page stories. Rachman demonstrates that there's just not enough space in 25 pages to paint believable characters. He relies on types for most of them. There's the bitter, single middle aged woman who loves to complain about her proofreading job, but can't live without it (Ruby Zaga). There's the type-A Editor-in-Chief who must have control over her professional life, but lacks control over her personal life (Kathleen Solson). There's also the poor little soft rich kid publisher who went to Yale and inherited responsibility for the paper (Oliver Ott).

However, some segments are more original than others. The stories that do work successfully convey a person's entire life in a few short pages. The opening story is about Lloyd Burko, an aging foreign correspondent who is now short on cash, having been demoted to a freelancer. He roams the streets of Paris as he tries to rekindle with a daughter and then a son from two of four different marriages. We get the sense that he used to be a ladies man and is now reduced to watching his current, much younger wife, have affairs with the next door neighbor. Though Burko could have easily been a cliche of a washed-out asshole who everyone now loves to hate, Rachman puts us on his side immediately. We root for him as he attempts to seek redemption through his son.

Despite my criticisms, it's not like Rachman set out to write a profound, earth-shattering novel of ideas. The Imperfectionists succeeds as a light-hearted series of escapades. Funny lines are scattered about. Here is Arthur Gopal, the obit writer, trying to avoid work:

"No one had died. Or rather 107 people have in the previous minute, 154,000 in the past day, and 1,078,000 in the past week. But no one who matters. That's good — it has been nine days since his last obit and he hopes to extend his streak."

The Imperfectionists is a great beach read that will keep one's attention without creasing one's brow.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros: Hot Mess or Hippie Heaven?

Indie music shows have a reputation for being too hipster. Walk into the 9:30 Club on any given night and both band members and audience members alike will have on thick, plastic framed glasses, impossibly tight jeans, and intense facial hair. Last night's band, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, in contrast to the usual fare, was more hippie than hipster.

The relatively new ten member band is known for its unique sound that crosses Loretta Lynn with Jefferson Airplane. In other words, psychedelic country. The band tell relatable stories of love and family. Their most famous song, Home, has an interlude where the lead singers (Alex Ebert and Jade Castrinos) recount how they realized they loved each other after Jade fell out a window. Many of their stories have a home theme. "Janglin" is about returning home after some trials:

"Well our mama’s they left us
And our daddy’s took a ride
And we walked out of the castle
And we held our head up high"

All these stories are set to a bazaar of instruments, including the sitar and ukulele that were popular with 60's psych bands. Similar to 60's psych bands, some Magnetic Zeros were also decked out in Indian garb. Alex wore a white linen blazer, which he removed halfway through, and match pants. His hair looked like a birds nest on top of his head, and his beard would have made any Nineteenth Century woodsman jealous.

The hippie look would have been fine if it didn't carry over to the presentation of the show. Not only did he kind of look Christ-like, Alex had too much of a Messianic thing going on. He walked into the crowd three times. The last time was too close for comfort. He also dictated many aphorisms from the stage in between songs. Aphorisms about dying and such and how we should all love each other.

Jade was also a little too happy. As in so busy being happy she didn't show up for the first part of the show. She struck me as the manic pixie dream girl type. In addition to having a pixie haircut, she literally bounced around the stage, and seemed to be that person who the band has to put up with every night but always ultimately forgives. Aaron Embry (the pianist), who technically opened for the larger band, could barely do a complete set because Jade was so late. The last straw to Jade's behavior was during "Home." The audience was completely ready for the song by then and started getting excited from the first whistled notes. But then Jade went and messed up the lyrics to the second verse.

Unfortunately, my final memory of the show was ruined by Alex's insistence that everyone get on the floor for the last song. Yeah..the beer floor of the standing room only 9:30 club. This was difficult on many levels.

On balance, it was one of the least enjoyable, but more eventful concert experiences of the year thus far. If it wasn't for Gare's snarky presence, it would not have been fun.

David Mitchells Shows Off Storytelling Chops in The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet

Reading Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell's third novel, several years ago, I was impressed by how he wove together post-modern elements to form a thoroughly believable story arc spanning thousands of years. Cloud Atlas is technically a series of six linked stories that begins in the eighteenth century and ends at some unknown future civilization. The main character of each story finds the memoirs by the main character of a previous story, so that each story is revealed to be hidden in another story. Together, these tales form a sweeping meditation on humanity's failings and hopes.

Since Cloud Atlas, Mitchell has reverted to more traditional story-telling. His Black Swan Green is a semi-autobiographical novel of a boy growing up in England in the 1970's. Though not a thrilling story, Mitchell captures the tweenage boy's voice perfectly.

Mitchell's latest novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, reprises the straightforward approach to tell the story of a Dutch clerk falling in love with a Japanese mid-wife while uncovering corruption in 1799 Dejima, Japan. Jacob de Zoet is trying to make his fortune in a five year stint before returning to Holland to marry his sweetheart, Anna. Of course, the moment we read of Jacob's plans, we know things are probably not going to turn out quite the way he hopes. A fish out of water, his first mistake is to announce to some of his colleagues that he's there to help the chief root out corruption. His second mistake is to be too trusting of his superiors. His third is to fall in love with Orito, a disfigured Japanese mid-wife. Meanwhile, the war back in Europe between Holland and England brews, stirring up consequences for the small army of traders on Dejima.

All of these story lines are evoked with remarkable detail. Like in Black Swan Green, Mitchell is able to get into the minds of his characters and describe what they see convincingly. When first arriving in Japan, Jacob notices the “gnarled old women, pocked monks, unmarried girls with blackened teeth." These details are something that a Dutchman could believably pick up without having any insight into Japanese culture.

At the same time, this historical novel can not escape typical historical flourishes. The accents are awkward at times. The Dutch speak like Eighteenth Century Englishmen. When the Japanese speak Dutch, their sentences come out in stereotypically incorrect English. But when the Japanese speak to each other, presumably in Japanese, the sentences come out in stereotypically formal and stiff.

Though following a traditional approach, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is also a meditation on the art of storytelling itself. The plot of the novel is nearly entirely driven by minor characters' revelations through orally communicated stories. When most authors do this, the revelation comes as a convenient plot device, explaining away mysteries neatly with a bow on top. Most of the time, it's pretty fake though sometimes entertaining. Mitchell's stories feel real because he has explained the motivations behind why characters would keep their stories, and only reveal them at necessary moments. For example, an ex-convict doesn't reveal his secret past until he might get killed for not revealing it. In addition, Mitchell doesn't rely on story-as-revelation as his only method of revelation. An important revelation about paternity is discovered through the father's own eyes as he sets sights on his son.

Moreover, there are so many of these discrete anecdotes that they become a fact of life. It's as if everyone on Dejima sits around telling stories, so the reader never knows when one story in particular will be important. Early on, some of the traders sit around drinking. One tells the story of how another one pretended to be wealthy to get a wealthy wife, only to find that he had been tricked in the same way:

“On Mr Grote’s last trip home,” obliges Ouwehand, “he wooed a promising young heiress at her town house in Roomolenstraat who told him how her heirless, ailing papa yearned to see his dairy farm in the hands of a gentleman son-in-law, yet everywhere, she lamented, were thieving rascals posing as eligible bachelors. Mr Grote agreed that the Sea of Courtship seethes with sharks and spoke of the prejudice endured by the young colonial parvenu, as if the annual fortunes yielded by his plantations in Sumatra were less worthy than old monies. The turtledoves were wedded within a week. The day after their nuptials, the taverner presented the bill and each says to the other, ‘Settle the account, my heart’s music.’ But to their genuine horror, neither could, for bride and groom alike had spent their last beans on wooing the other! Mr Grote’s Sumatran plantations evaporated; the Roomolenstraat house reverted to a co-conspirator’s stage prop; the ailing father-in-law turned out to be a beer porter in rude health, not heirless but hairless.”

This anecdote isn't particularly useful except to say what types of desperate situations drive people to come to Dejima. But it is a funny story with lots of attention to detail. Such details make Thousand Autumns a vivid, satisfying read.

Inception Fails to Plant an Idea in My Mind

Christopher Nolan is known for mastering the art of the thoughtful thriller -- a suspenseful, high budget film that touches upon psychological or salient political issues. In Momento he questions the nature of memory. In The Dark Knight he addresses the side-effects of doing-good by making Batman a metaphor for interventionist America. Inception, his latest film, is a psychological thriller that questions the significance of waking life relative to dream states.

Inception opens with a close up image of the protagonist, Dom (Leonardo DiCaprio) washed up on an unknown shore. He gets picked up by guards and presented to an extremely old looking Asian man. The next scene flashes to some unknown time before, revealing the old man to be Saito (Ken Watanabe). Dom and his sidekick, Arthur (Joseph Gordon Levitt), seem to be trying to steal something from Saito. But just when you think you're getting the hang of things, the scene shifts yet again to images of the same characters sleeping in an entirely different setting. The next few scenes dart between images of the same characters in one of three different scenes: a decadent Japanese palace; a sketchy apartment in an politically unstable city; and a train. Despite the suspense, the writing manages to situate the viewer well.

We learn that Dom is an extractor who is paid to perform the illegal job of entering people's dreams to discover their thoughts and ideas. Extraction is usually done for corporate espionage purposes. When Dom fails on his mission to steal from Saito, the Japanese business man offers to let Dom work for him, but to perform a much trickier task than extraction. Saito wants Dom to do an inception--to place an idea in someone's head. Specifically, Dom is to plant the idea in an energy heir's (Cillian Murphy) mind to dismantle his father's company once his father passes away.

The idea of Inception is initially mind-blowing and thoroughly captivating as your mind works to find out all you can about this new idea. I enjoyed the expository scenes where Dom explains the mechanics of entering others' dreams to his new architect, Ariadne (Ellen Page). Also cool to see pictures of Parisian streets fold up over each other. But as the film continues, and the mind accepts the idea of extractions and inceptions, Inception becomes just another plot-driven thriller.

The entire film is basically centered around Saito's one assignment for Dom. Most of the characters are simply two-dimensional vehicles by which to advance the plot. Dom is the only fuller character. His three-dimensional history is manifested by flashbacks of his wife, Mal (Marion Cotillard), and of his children. We learn that he is so desperate to accept Saito's plan because it would allow him to go back to the United States, which he has been banned from due to a mysterious crime from his past. But even Dom's regrets and secrets become an obstacle to the team's mission when his teammates learn that he brings a projection of Mal into each of his missions. And she's out for revenge.

The lack of depth of characters reflect the lack of depth of Inception's world. Though the world of Inception looks like ours, it's not. It's a world where entering people's dreams, getting addicted to living in dreams, and extraction are all possible. In order to be convincing, the rules of this world simply can't be invented as the story goes along. Unfortunately, Inception doesn't feel wholly formed, in contrast to an Avatar, for instance, where an environment is introduced, fully-formed. Limitations to extraction and inception are randomly introduced throughout. It's apparently difficult to plant ideas because people need to think that these ideas came from themselves. Instead of just going into someone's dream, the team needs to go into a dream inside a dream inside a dream. Like many mediocre thrillers, Inception uses some convenient situations to build suspense. For instance, in normal dreams, one's death leads to them waking up from the dream. But in chemically induced sleeps, death leads to an indefinite state of limbo. This conveniently creates more obstacles for Dom when one of his team members gets wounded in a dream. Too bad the audience just needs to take this for granted and not ask many questions. Unfortunately, the need to take too many things for granted makes Inception a shallow portrayal of a rich idea.

The Kids Are All Right: Probably the Best Movie of the Summer

"You want a family so much, go out and make your own," Nic (Annette Bening), the controlling half of a lesbian couple, tells the sperm donor who has fathered her children, at one point in Lisa Cholodenko's new film, The Kids Are All Right. Though the film's plot tells the story of how a family of four--Nic and Jules (Julianne Moore) and their two teenage children--deal with the discovery of their sperm donor's identity, Nic's statement sums up the movie's deeper issues. Notably, what makes a family, how to welcome a stranger into a family, and how to let children grow up.

These themes, told through a strong script written by Cholodenko and Seth Blumberg, make the film appealing to a wide audience. Nic's doctor self contrasts nicely to Jules' relaxed joblessness. They also have a college-bound, academically inclined daughter, Joni, and a slightly rebellious fifteen year old son, Laser. Laser prompts Joni to reach out to their sperm donor when she turns eighteen. Paul soon enters the family's life in his older-yet-slightly-youthful-motorcycling-organic-restauranteur way. He clashes with Nic's orderly world, dividing the family between those who like Paul and those who don't.

But never mind these large issues; the brilliance is in the details. Cholodenko focuses on some choice moments to reveal Nic and Jule's relationship. Early on, they have sex to gay porn. It's loud, but completely untitillating at the same time like how any other married couple might make love. Laser later finds this porn and confronts his Moms about it. Their endearing explanation includes the fact that "women's sexuality is expressed internally, and sometimes we just need to see it externalized." Later, Nic reveals her sensitive side when she sings all of Joni Mitchell's "All I Want." "All I really really want our love to do is to bring out the best in me and in you too," Nic sings a cappela to a surprised audience of family members.

These lyrics speak to the type of the marriage Nic and Jules seem to strive towards: a companionate relationship where each partner expects to help the other one improve him or herself--not so different from the yuppie idea of a heterosexual companionate marriage.

Though the film is not overtly political, it seems significant that it takes place in California, a state that has recently repealed gay marriage. It implies that Nic and Jules married before the ban was passed. Though my no means perfect, their relationship is one that most couples can relate to. Jules announces that "marriage is fucking hard," and I could feel everyone in the audience nodding.

Critics have been swooning over The Kids Are All Right's "realistic portrayal of a lesbian relationship." But the realism of the relationship has also blinded reviewers to many other cliches in the film. Ruffalo's character, Paul, is entirely a cliche. It's the same scruffy-haired, somewhat irresponsible dude that Ruffalo always plays. He is suddenly jolted into a higher level of adulthood when he meets his biological children, and doesn't really know how to cope. Other cliches include the uptight person who drinks too much, and a daughter who yells at her parents that they need to let her grow up. These cliches make it easy to imagine the same story with a heterosexual couple, adopted kids, and the biological parents.

These cliches are ultimately forgivable since the film is so thought provoking in its own right, and beautifully acted. The family is quite memorable and not easily substituted in the mind. It will be difficult to find another release this summer that matches The Kids Are All Right.

She & Him Delight at 9:30 Club

The most memorable part of the She & Him show at the 9:30 Club last Wednesday occurred before Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward got on stage. Arriving around 9, for a slated 9:30 start-time, a few friends and I tried to squeeze our way to the front. We attributed the early packed-ness to the non-hipsterness of the crowd. When we finally found a spot to stand, two angry couples standing near us confronted us for encroaching on their territory. "We've been here since 7:30," one girl protested. An argument over who loved Zooey more then ensued. We stayed put in the end.

She & Him took the stage on time. Deschanel and Ward were joined by three musicians and The Chapin Sisters, their back up singers. Known for singing cute renditions of Sixties' songs in a lilting, breathy voice, Deschanel sounded much throatier live. She sang the first few songs with a deeper voice than I expected, and furrowed brows, as if she were really concentrating on the lyrics and hitting her tambourine at the right time. But maybe it was just to make sure the mix was right. The sound was definitely set to accentuate Zooey's voice, which I appreciated since She & Him's songs tell stories of love lost and found.

Deschanel and a Chapin sister jumped up and down in the background to Ward's solo riffs. Since it felt like 90 degrees in the packed 9:30 Club, I was impressed by their energy. In the middle of their set, Ward and Deschanel did a few acoustic songs alone, including a Joni Mitchell cover "You Turn Me On, I'm a Radio," and a brand new cover of the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice."

The main highlight was seeing M. Ward take a center stage from time to time in contrast to his more muted presence on either of their two albums, Volume I and Volume II. In addition to the solo musical interludes, Ward also had a mike set up on stage left for his few solo lines, like in "Rave On" and "You've Really Got a Hold on Me."

Though there were a few mistakes scattered about--Deschanel singing an extra bar, or coming in too early -- it was a fun show overall. Moreover, this is only She & Him's first headlining tour in the two years since their first album came out. If Ward and Deschanel already work so well together on stage, I look forward to Volume III and another tour.

How Lydia Davis is Redefining the Short Story

Lydia Davis is a perfect companion for a long flight. Writing stories that are often less than a page, her Collected Stories is conducive to putting down for nap time. At the same time, Davis' stories are compulsively readable. Many stories are revelatory, with the main insight wrapped in one or two particularly well-placed sentences. The reader keeps reading in anticipation of what surprise the next sentence might bring. Here's a story, "Disagreement," in its entirety:

"He said she was disagreeing with him. She said no, that was not true, he was disagreeing with her. This was about the screen door. That is should not be left open was her idea, because of the flies; his was that it could be left open first thing in the morning, when there were no flies on the deck. Anyway, he said, most of the flies came from other parts of the building: in fact, he was probably letting more of them out than in."

In this story, Davis employs her signature matter of fact tone to convey a series of events without judgment. She brings to light the ridiculousness of the disagreement by not providing any of the motivation behind it. In the telling of events, she also mirrors the typical pattern of an argument. Isn't it just like a couple to argue over something insignificant?

Davis' longer pieces often consist of shorter pieces stitched together under the umbrella of one title. For example, the memorable "We Miss You," is a series of individually titled sections about an elementary school classroom that writes letters to one of its hospital-ridden members over a holiday season in the 1940's. It's a mock analysis of the children's writing to their classmate. One section analyzes references to classmates - "only two children make references to their classmates"-- while other sections analyze spelling, references to Christmas presents, and references to classroom activities. Though each individual section is blandly told, narrowly focused on a somewhat boring topic, the entire exercise is a fascinating study of a way of looking at children's letters.

Indeed, Davis' main talent is revealing the thought and the meaning behind mundane actions. The New Yorker's James Wood points out that Davis' stories are self-aware in a non traditional way. Instead of allowing readers to eavesdrop on characters' thoughts, as in the standard short story, Davis allows readers to eavesdrop on the narrator's thoughts. So we are exposed to the agony behind small decisions. Here is a character waiting for someone to call, "When he calls me either he will then come to me, or he will not and I will be angry, and so I will have either him or my own anger, and this might be all right, since anger is always a great comfort, as I found with my husband."Davis simultaneously gives us much insight into the narrator—it’s probably a she; she is kind of neurotic—while holding back vital details. Why is this woman waiting for someone to call? Why is she waiting for someone who is not her husband to call? The story succeeds in making it possible for the woman to be anyone, yourself included. As she starts to analyze her impatience and anger, you do too.

Most of my friends have not heard of Lydia Davis, and I like to describe her as someone who’s pushing the edge of what the short story does—whatever that means. Though hard to describe, this kind of boundary bending style is something you know when you see it. Here’s a final example called “Head, Heart:”

“Heart weeps.
Head tries to help heart.
Head tells heart how it is, again: You will lose the ones you love.
I want them back, says heart . . .
Help, head. Help heart.”