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.”