May 20th, 2015 § Comments Off on Etcetera: David Letterman & Warren Zevon § permalink
I can’t compete with the literally hundreds of online tributes that are proliferating in advance of David Letterman’s final show this evening, except to say that I’ve been watching him since he debuted on NBC and now expect I will be getting to sleep even earlier, albeit less happily, after tonight’s show.
For the last several weeks, there has been a parade of frequent and favorite Letterman guests returning to the program for one last visit, but there’s one Letterman regular who won’t appear: Warren Zevon, the highly distinctive rock performer and writer who passed away in 2003.
Zevon appeared many times on both the NBC and CBS programs, famously making his last appearance in 2002, already diagnosed with the cancer that would take his life, as the sole program guest, the only person afforded that honor. It showed that Dave, who cultivated a curmudgeonly, ironic distance, was also fiercely loyal to those he cared about.
Though I’ve seen many of my musical idols live, I never got to see Zevon perform. So his appearances with Letterman were a particular gift, along with the Velcro Suit, the Stupid Pet Tricks, the Top Ten Lists, and so on, that everyone else is writing about this week. Below is a selection of Zevon’s appearances and performances. I miss Warren and, unless he surprises us by turning up on the air on some other program, I’ll miss Dave too, even though he’ll just be holed up in Connecticut or Montana somewhere, watching Harry grow up..
Are you still grumbling about “tweet seats”? Oh, that is so 2013. Time to get with the program and start worrying about the newest development in mobile tech, which could have a vastly more significant impact on the live performing arts.
At this year’s SXSW Festival, a new app, Meerkat, saw a frenzy of adoption by attendees, so much so that Twitter moved to quickly curtail the app’s access to Twitter data. The reason for that draconian move came clearer yesterday when the app Periscope, which is owned by Twitter, was launched as a direct competitor to Meerkat.
So what do they do? Both apps allow you to stream live video from your phone. Now, instead of taking something so pedestrian as a photograph via Instagram, or so cumbersome as shooting a video and then uploading it to YouTube, anyone with an iPhone and a dream can relay what they’re seeing in real time to their connections on these services. This will of course result in streams from countless teens doing teen oriented things for the entertainment of other teens, but it will also turn everyone who wishes to be into an instant broadcaster into one. Yesterday, Periscope immediately became a source for realtime video of the tragic explosion and fire in New York’s East Village.
Of course, as I experimented with Periscope (I’ve loaded Meerkat, but not tried it yet), I realized how significantly this could have an effect on live entertainment. Now, anyone adept enough at manipulating a smartphone from an audience seat might well be streaming your show, your concert, your opera to their friends and followers. If they can do so with a darkened screen and sufficient circulation to keep the blood from leaving their upraised hand and arm, the only thing stopping them would be vigilant ushers, chastising nearby patrons and battery life. For however long they sustain their stream, your content is on the air – and unlike YouTube, where if you find it, you can seek to have it removed, this is instantaneous and so there’s no taking it back.
I should say that I’m not endorsing this practice, any more than say, a play about graffiti artists is exhorting its audience to go out and start marring buildings with graffiti. I’m just pointing out that there’s a big new step in technology which could serve to let your content leak out into the world in a way that’s much harder to control than before (while also offering many new creative opportunities for communication) – and since these apps are just the first of their kind, they and competing apps will be rolling out ever more effective tools to stream what’s happening right in front of you, just as cell phone cameras and video will continue to improve their quality and versatility.
Scared yet?
Some will quickly say, as they have from the moment cell phones started ringing during soliloquies and operas, that there should be some way to simply jam signals inside entertainment venues. But the answer to that remains the same: private entities like theatre owners cannot employ such technology (which does exist) because they would be breaking the law by interfering with the public airwaves. No matter that the photos, video and streams may be violating copyright. That kind of widespread tampering with communications wouldn’t be allowed – and if it ever were, it could very well have a negative effect on patrons’ willingness to attend.
The quality of streams via these apps would leave much to be desired (think of your stream also capturing the heads of those in front of you, and the couple on your left whispering about their dinner plans). They’d hardly capture the work on stage at its best, but if your choice is $400 a ticket for Fish in the Dark or a free, erratic stream, you just might choose the latter.
Movie companies have been fighting in-theatre bootlegging since the advent of small video cameras, and one hears stories about advance screenings with ushers continually patrolling the aisles in search of telltale red lights (sometimes wearing night vision goggles) and assorted laser and infrared technologies designed to mar the surreptitious image capturing. But does that seem desirable or even feasible at live theatres?
I’m not shrieking about this problem because I expect plenty of others will. That said, I’m also not about to just instill fear in your hearts and run away. Having just chastised others for enumerating arts problems without offering ideas on how to address them, here’s my thought on how to try to stave off the onslaught of Meerkat and Periscope and their ilk: we have to solve the issues that are preventing U.S. based organizations from cinecasting on the model of NT Live.
Yes, the Metropolitan Opera has built a strong following for their Met Opera Live series. But we’re not seeing that success translate to other performing arts in a significant way, with theatre the most backward of all. I know it may seem counterintuitive, but if people have the opportunity to access high quality, low cost video of stage performances, they’re going to be considerably less interested in cheap live bootlegs in real time. It won’t stop the progression, but it will offer a more appealing alternative.
Video is now in the hands of virtually every person who attends the theatre, the opera, the ballet and so on. Short of frisking or wanding people for phones and having them secured in lockers at every performance space (can you imagine?), the genie is out of the bottle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not keen on the ramifications of these advances either, but there’s no point in damning reality. The question now is how do the arts respond – by seeking to police its audiences as if attending a performance resembled an ongoing TSA checkpoint, or by offering alternatives that just might make the newest developments unappealing or irrelevant?
But the field, commercial and not-for-profit alike, needs to get a move on, because even if this is the first you’ve heard of Periscope and Meerkat, it won’t be the last. Just wait until smartphones can record and stream in 3D.
P.S. Last week when I saw the Radio City Spring Spectacular, there was a caution against flash photography – not all photography, just flash. There may well have been a warning about video, but all it would have taken was a fake Twitter account and one of these apps to start sharing parts of the show with you as an untraceable scofflaw. Just imagine if I had activated Meerkat a bit sooner.
Hannah Cabell and Anna Chlumsky in David Adjmi’s 3C at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (Photo: Joan Marcus)
Seen any good productions of David Adjmi’s play 3C lately?
Sorry, that’s a trick question with a self-evident answer: of course you haven’t. That’s because in the two and a half years since it premiered at New York’s Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, no one has seen a production of 3C because no one is allowed to produce it, or publish it. Why, you ask? Because a company called DLT Entertainment doesn’t want you to.
3C is an alternate universe look at the 1970s sitcom Three’s Company, one of the prime examples of “jiggle television” from that era, which ran for years based off of the premise that in order to share an apartment with two unmarried women, an unmarried man had to pretend he was gay, to meet with the approval of the landlord. It was a huge hit in its day, and while it was the focus of criticism for its sexual liberality (and constant double entendres), it was viewed as lightweight entertainment with little on its mind but farce and sex (within network constraints), sex that never seemed to actually happen.
Looking at it with today’s eyes, it is a retrograde embarrassment, saved only, perhaps, by the charm and comedy chops of the late John Ritter. The constant jokes about Ritter’s sexual façade, the sexless marriage of the leering landlord and his wife, the macho posturings of the swinging single men, the airheadedness of the women – all have little place in our (hopefully) more enlightened society and the series has pretty much faded from view, save for the occasional resurrection in the wee hours of Nick at Night.
In 3C, Adjmi used the hopelessly out of date sitcom as the template for a despairing look at what life in Apartment 3C might have been had Ritter’s character actually been gay, had the landlord been genuinely predatory and so on. It did what many good parodies do: take a known work and turn it on its ear, making comment not simply on the work itself, but the period and attitudes in which it was first seen.
Enter DLT, which holds the rights to Three’s Company. They sent a cease and desist letter to Adjmi back in 2012 claiming that the show violated their copyright; Adjmi said he couldn’t afford to fight it. Numerous well-known playwrights wrote a letter in support of Adjmi and the controversy generated its first wave of press, including pieces in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Over time, there have been assorted legal filings by both parties, with another wave of press appearing last year just about this time, when Adjmi sued for the right to reclaim his play for production, with commensurate press coverage once again from the Times and Studio 360, among others.
Why do I dredge this all up now? Because the bottom line is that DLT is doing its level best to prevent a playwright from earning a living, and throwing everything they can into a specious argument to do so. They say, both in public comments and in their filings, that 3C might confuse audiences and reduce or eliminate the market for their own stage version (citing one they commissioned and one for which they granted permission to James Franco). They cite negative reviews of 3C as damaging to their property. And so on.
But while I’m no lawyer (though I’ve read all of the pertinent briefs on the subject), I can make perfect sense out of the following language from the U.S. Copyright Office, regarding Fair Use exception to copyright (boldface added for emphasis):
The 1961 Report of the Register of Copyrights on the General Revision of the U.S. Copyright Law cites examples of activities that courts have regarded as fair use: “quotation of excerpts in a review or criticism for purposes of illustration or comment; quotation of short passages in a scholarly or technical work, for illustration or clarification of the author’s observations; use in a parody of some of the content of the work parodied; summary of an address or article, with brief quotations, in a news report; reproduction by a library of a portion of a work to replace part of a damaged copy; reproduction by a teacher or student of a small part of a work to illustrate a lesson; reproduction of a work in legislative or judicial proceedings or reports; incidental and fortuitous reproduction, in a newsreel or broadcast, of a work located in the scene of an event being reported.”
As someone who has gone out on a limb at times defending copyright and author’s rights, I’d be the first person to cry foul if I thought DLT had the slightest case here. But 3C (which I’ve read, as it’s part of the legal filings on the case) is so obviously a parody that DLT’s actions seem to be preposterously obstructionist, designed not to protect their property from confusion, but to shield it from the inevitable criticisms that any straightforward presentation of the material would now surely generate.
Rather than just blather on about the motivations of DLT in preventing Adjmi from having his play produced and published, let me demonstrate that their argument is specious. To do so, I offer the following exhibit from Mad Magazine:
What’s fascinating here is that Mad, a formative influence for countless youths in the 60s and 70s especially, parodied Three’s Company while it was still on the air, seemed to already be aware of the show’s obviously puerile humor, was read in those days by millions of kids – and wasn’t sued for doing so. That was and is a major feature of Mad, deflating everything that comes around in pop culture through parody. The fact is, Adjmi’s script is far more pointed and insightful than any episode of Three’s Company and may well work without deep knowledge of the original show, just like the Mad version.
The most recent filing in the Adjmi-DLT situation comes from the Dramatists Legal Defense Fund, an offshoot of The Dramatists Guild. Like all of the filings in this case, it’s very informative about copyright in general and parody in particular, and it spells out the numerous precedents where the use of a prior work was permitted under fair use, with particular attention to the idea that when the new work is transformative – which 3C surely is – it is permitted (read the complete amicus curiae brief here). In addition to their many examples, I would add from my own misspent youth such works as Bored of the Rings, a 1969 book-length parody of Tolkien by some of the people who would go on to create the National Lampoon, where incidentally, DLDF president John Weidman exercised his own comic skills) and Airplane!, which took its plotline (and punctuation mark) of a poisoned airline crew directly, uncredited, from the 1957 film Zero Hour!More recently, the endlessly touring Potted Potter has successfully run without authorization, though clearly derived from the works of J.K. Rowling and prior to any authorized stage interpretation.
It’s been months since there have been filings for summary judgment in the case (August 2014, to be precise), and according to Bruce Johnson, the attorney at Davis Wright Tremaine in Seattle who is leading the fight on Adjmi’s behalf, there is no precise date by which there will be a ruling. Some might say that I’m essentially rehashing old news here, but I think it’s important that the case remains prominent in people’s minds, because it demonstrates the means by which a corporation is twisting a provision of copyright law to prevent an artist from having his work seen – and that’s censorship with a veneer of respectability conferred by legal filings under the umbrella of commerce. There may be others out there facing this situation, or contemplating work along the same lines, and this case may be suppressing their work or, depending upon the ultimate decision, putting them at risk as well.
We don’t all get to vote on this, unfortunately. But even armchair lawyers like me can see through DLT’s strategy. I just hope that the judge considering this case used to read humor magazines in his youth, which should provide plenty of precedent above and beyond what’s in the filings. 3C may take a comedy and make it bleak, but there’s humor to be found in DLT’s protestations, which are (IMHO) a joke.
P.S. I don’t hold the copyright to any of the images on this page. I’m reproducing them under Fair Use. Just FYI.
January 4th, 2015 § Comments Off on Down The Rabbit Hole With Meryl Streep, Kate Burton & More § permalink
One of the great pleasures of a long holiday period, with one’s office is closed for an extended time, is the freedom to go exploring, be it in life or online, guilt-free (or at least relatively so). That’s exactly what happened when I spotted a single tweet from the New York Post’s film critic, Lou Lumenick, who I’ve found to be a terrific and entertaining source of film knowledge and trivia. Lumenick’s timing, of course, is particularly apt, as the tweet led to a complete online video of Meryl Streep as Alice (of Lewis Carroll’s invention), just as Streep is onscreen right now in another updating and revision of children’s tales, Into The Woods.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Y15Crljk4
This particular Alice in Wonderland adaptation, written by Elizabeth Swados and produced by Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival, was far from unknown to me (though I’d not seen it onstage), but I had long forgotten that it had been recorded for television. Now this isn’t some obscurity from Streep’s pre-stardom days, but rather part of her initial rush of fame, following (among others) Manhattan, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Deer Hunter and Kramer vs. Kramer. But in addition to preserving one of Streep’s early stage performances, it saved those of a number of up-and-coming actors, including Deborah Rush (sexy and hilarious the following year in Noises Off), Mark Linn-Baker (who I had first seen in his student days at Yale), Debbie Allen (already seen in the films Fame and Ragtime) and the great, lost-too-soon Michael Jeter. How wonderful that the whole program is online (legally, I hope).
For once, the column of suggested videos that came up alongside the main screen on YouTube was actually a great predictor, because it tipped me that another Alice in Wonderland which had originated on stage was also online. Though it had lasted only weeks on Broadway in 1982-83, a revival of Eva Le Gallienne and Florida Friebus’s 1932 Alice version made it to TV as well, starring its original stage Alice, the then little-known Kate Burton, in the title role. While one can look back at the stage cast and be impressed – it included Edward Hibbert, Nicholas Martin, a young Mary Stuart Masterson and Le Gallienne herself – the TV cast was even more remarkable. Eve Arden, Kaye Ballard, James Coco, Andre de Shields, Colleen Dewhurst, Andre Gregory, Geoffrey Holder, Nathan Lane, Donald O’Connor, Maureen Stapleton and, most significantly and poignantly, Richard Burton, were all in the PBS version.
As it turns out, there was something in the air in the early 80s when it came to Alice in Wonderland, because yet another adaptation, this one wholly original to TV, turned up in 1985, melding stage and screen stars in a production that may have been made for TV, but still felt very theatrical. The cast included Red Buttons, Sid Caesar, Carol Channing, Imogene Coca, Sammy Davis Jr., Sherman Hemsley, Roddy McDowell, Robert Morley, Anthony Newley, Donald O’Connor (again, albeit in a different role) and Martha Raye; Scott Baio, Telly Savalas, Ringo Starr and Ringo Starr were also along for the ride. The musical staging was by Gillian Lynne (perhaps best known for her choreography of Cats), with songs by Steve Allen; the script was by playwright Paul Zindel and, curiouser and curiouser, it was produced by the master of disaster Irwin Allen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhXNgdlpegA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cufnyyEXX9g
Once my explorations had begun, I couldn’t stop. I was quickly led to a 1972 film version of which I was unaware, from England, which had yet another heavyweight roster of stars, with that special British cachet and, yet again, significant stage credits, as well serious comedy chops. Among those appearing in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland were Michael Crawford, Michael Hordern, Roy Kinnear, Spike Milligan, Dudley Moore, and Peter Sellers. The production looks, once again, rather stagey and the transfer to video is decidedly shaky; though the IMDB notes it as a film, I can’t help but think that it might have had TV roots in the UK, given the look of the production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT6BLVBta9Q
Rather more recent was the 1999 Alice in Wonderland, produced by Robert Halmi Sr. and Jr., part of a series of big fantasy TV movies they were creating at that time. While I recall not being too fond of it, having found all of the Halmi projects overblown, it has another noteworthy, largely British cast, and a screenplay by the great and too-often overlooked playwright Peter Barnes. In this fantasy mix were, among others, Simon Russell Beale, Robbie Coltrane, Whoopi Goldberg, Ben Kingsley, Christopher Lloyd, Miranda Richardson, Martin Short, Peter Ustinov, and Gene Wilder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKVlqQnkzok
There are, frankly, countless adaptations of Alice in Wonderland, for the stage, for film and for television, both live action and animated, and sometimes a mix of both; this foray is hardly comprehensive. But as one more demonstration of how Lewis Carroll’s tale proved to be (Cheshire) catnip for television, here’s an example from the very early days of the medium – even though in 1954 it comes from the seventh annual presentation of this particular version. With a cast including Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Art Carney, and Arthur Treacher, it’s very primitive, and I can’t help but wonder who appeared in the earlier versions, since technology allowing for “repeats” had yet to come into vogue.
For all that I found in my admittedly cursory search, there’s one more TV Alice in Wonderland that YouTube didn’t serve up to me – a 1955 Hallmark Hall of Fame version of the LeGallienne and Friebus script for NBC, with Le Gallienne, Tom Bosley, Maurice Evans and Elsa Lanchester, among others. If you happen to find it, do let me know. In the meantime, I trust the various incarnations above will be more than enough for a satisfying journey, like mine, down the rabbit hole. Happy new year to all!
As prestige movies open pell-mell in the next few weeks, and Oscar campaigns already underway blaze into full public awareness, one of the contenders will surely be The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley. It tells the story of Alan Turing, the British mathematician who is widely credited with breaking the Nazi’s “Enigma” code and whose name is regularly invoked in discussions of artificial intelligence, specifically over how or whether we might one day create a machine whose thoughts are indistinguishable from those of a human.
Alan Turing
As with any major film, especially one with Oscar hopes, there will be a near-avalanche of stories about the film: its director, its stars, its writer – and the man who inspired it. I don’t want to give much away for those unfamiliar with the tale, but Turing’s life truly encompassed World War II intrigue, intellectual triumph, reprehensible bias, persecution and injustice, and great tragedy. There’s going to be a cottage industry of stories on Turing – paeans, revisionist history, alternative views, and so on, right up through Oscar night.
For many, this may be their first encounter with the Turing story and they’ll be drawn in by the considerable glamour and talent of Cumberbatch and Knightley (I haven’t seen it yet, so I’m going solely on the advance word and promotion). There’s a cautionary part of the story that’s well worth being told many times over.
Broadway logo for Derek Jacobi in Breaking The Code
But for theatregoers with moderately long memories (I count myself among them), The Imitation Game will come as something less than a revelation historically, because the West End and Broadway beat the movies to the punch almost 30 years ago, with Derek Jacobi as Turing in Hugh Whitemore’s play Breaking The Code. Like The Imitation Game, it was based on Andrew Hodges’s book Alan Turing: The Enigma.
Breaking The Code played for six months in New York 1987-88, following on the heels of Jacobi’s triumphant performances in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s repertory of Cyrano de Bergerac and Much Ado About Nothing (both opposite Sinead Cusack); I was fortunate enough to have seen all three, and it cemented my deep admiration for Jacobi as one of the finest actors of his generation. As for the play, while I long believed that it was Jacobi who truly made the experience remarkable, and unrepeatable, I saw the show years later at the Berkshire Theatre Festival with Jamey Sheridan in the Turing role, and to my surprise I was once again fascinated and deeply moved.
Now of course vastly more people see most movies than see a play, but as Imitation Game launches, I was thrilled to discover that Jacobi’s performance has been preserved, in a 1996 BBC adaptation of the play by Hugh Whitemore, available online in its entirety.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S23yie-779k
While it is an adaptation, not simply a film of the play, the TV version will give us a chance to see two portrayals of one man by two superb actors, refracted through the views of different writers and directors – and societal growth and change regarding LGBTQ life and rights – at an interval of 30 years.
A couple of years ago, in conversation with a childhood friend on Facebook, we began recalling the hours spent in my basement listening to the early comedy records of Bill Cosby. Suddenly, a business associate from my adult life joined in, demanding to know how we could reminisce about this, given the many allegations made against Cosby, and the one out-of-court settlement, regarding his sexual assaults on women. Because the dialogue was focused on fond memories, not Cosby himself per se, and because this associate wouldn’t let it go, I unfriended him. I did so despite the fact that I knew of the charges, believed them, and had already ceased to enjoy Cosby’s new work. At that moment, however, I just wanted reverie.
I did not then, nor do I now, countenance any of the actions with which Cosby is charged. I abhor them. I feel deeply sympathetic towards, and supportive of, any woman who may have been harassed, drugged or assaulted by him. I wish that he could stand trial for what he’s been accused of, so that he could be tried in the judicial system and not solely in the media. This is a case in which justice will likely never be done, in which there will always be unanswered questions – especially from Cosby himself, whose silence, as they say, speaks volumes.
But I can’t deny how much Cosby’s comedy meant to me in my youth. Long-unseen friends recall it readily at a distance of 40 years. The only time my brother and I came together peacefully as kids was to listen to comedy recordings, which we committed to memory. Later, when I lived with my parents for a year post-college, my family gathered in the room in our house where my godmother spent the final year of her life, promptly at 8 pm on Thursday, to watch The Cosby Show.
So what do I do with treasured recollections in which an alleged predator played a central role? How can I even remember the work with warmth – work which in and of itself seems timeless in much of the material – even as I disavow its creator?
Audiences in England faced these same questions when the pedophilia scandal at the BBC arose, first over the late Jimmy Savile and a bit later over Rolf Harris. I followed those stories in horror and disbelief, though it was Harris whose work I actually knew: his novelty hit “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport” was a staple on the Dr. Demento radio show, another touchstone for me. In the case of Harris, who also became known as an artist, communities began removing his paintings and eradicating his murals. This is akin to what TV Land has just done by removing The Cosby Show from their line-up, to dissociate themselves from the now irrevocably tarnished brand and likely because no advertiser would accept the association. But in each case, those who were entertained, unknowing, must reconsider their relationship, to the men, and to the work. Let’s not forget that Stephen Collins, who portrayed the father on the popular family drama 7th Heaven, is under scrutiny for what appears to be self-admitted incidents of child abuse, surfaced during his contentious divorce proceedings.
In the cases of Savile, Harris, Collins and Cosby, the issue is criminal actions against others. Unconscionable. As an aside, it’s worth recalling that Paul Reubens was immediately shunned two decades ago following his arrest for masturbating in a porn theatre – a crime, at odds with his role as a Saturday morning children’s performer, but in that case a victimless one. Though he managed to secure acting roles intermittently, it’s only in the past few years that his Pee Wee Herman persona has been publicly embraced once again. I wonder whether his resurrection would have been possible had his transgression occurred in the era of social media – or whether he might have been rescued by it. Certainly it is social media which has allowed the long-standing allegations against Cosby to engage the public consciousness at last.
I could go underground with my appreciation of Cosby’s work, but that feels hypocritical. I cannot rewrite my past, even as it is – and should be – impossible to reconcile it with what has reemerged in the past few weeks, with greater traction than ever before. Given the enormous influence of The Cosby Show, I’m certainly far from the only person in this confused state; I suspect my affinity for the comedy recordings may be somewhat more rarified, especially among those younger than I am. No doubt I Spy and Fat Albert fans are experiencing profound dissonance as well. In fact, I hope they are.
I normally write because I have something very specific I want to say. In this case, I write because I’m grappling with deeply conflicted feelings. What do we all do when our childhood heroes are alleged, or revealed, to be profoundly different from the work and personae for which they became famous? How do we stand with victims, and against all such crimes, yet harbor genuinely warm memories created by the same artist? I can rethink my feelings about Cosby the man, and I have, but I don’t know that I can rethink my childhood, and the role he played in it. Should I? Can you? And if we truly can’t, where does that leave us? Are we hypocrites, or dupes, or forever divided as truth intrudes, maybe forcing us to even rewrite our own memories.
Addendum, 5 pm, November 20: As I discuss this post on Twitter, Facebook and e-mail, another corollary presents itself, though its not as clearcut. Phil Spector was convicted of murder, yet no one seems to shun the classic records he made as a producer. Is it because he’s not the named artist, and so the line is less clear? But let’s remember, whatever Cosby has done, his alleged crimes aren’t Phylicia Rashad’s, or Lisa Bonet’s, or Robert Culp’s, and so on. Must their work be excised and shunned because of their co-star’s actions? For that matter, have people stopped watching the Police Squad movies because of O.J. Simpson? It may be difficult not to view them through the prism of true-life revelations, but there seem to be no correct or consistent actions or reactions.
June 29th, 2014 § Comments Off on 10 Pop & Rock Musicals That Haven’t Reached NYC (Yet) § permalink
When Randy Newman’s Faust receives a one-night concert presentation this week as part of City Center’s Encores! Off Center series, its NYC debut could be the end of the road or a new beginning for this two decade old musical conceived by the prolific songwriter, whose early 70s songwriting fame has been eclipsed in many peoples’ minds by his popular film scores. Having started as a 1993 concept album featuring Newman, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Elton John and others, the show, co-written by David Mamet, made it to the stage of the La Jolla Playhouse in 1995 and then to Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 1996, under the direction of Michael Greif, in the same period that saw the launch of the Greif-directed Rent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1OPPi9e6LU
Over the years, there have been countless musicals created by or utilizing the music of rock and pop stars, from Paul Simon and Trey Anastasio to Abba and Elton John. But a handful of projects tied to popular recording artists have been launched around the U.S. and in England that, like Faust, never made it to New York. Here’s a quick rundown of some you may not know about.
The Education of Randy Newman/Harps & Angels
The lure of Randy Newman’s music has tempted many to want to bring it to the stage, and there have been two other efforts that didn’t get to NYC. The Education of Randy Newman played at South Coast Rep in 2000 and resurfaced at ACT in Seattle in 2002. Harps and Angels played at the Center Theatre Group’s Mark Taper Forum in 2010. The first show was an attempt to tell the story of Newman’s musical family, conceived by Michael Roth, Jerry Patch and Newman. At South Coast, it was directed by Myron Johnson and the cast included Alison Smith, Scott Waara, Jennifer Leigh Warren; in Seattle it was directed by Gordon Edelstein and Johnson and the cast included Daniel Jenkins and William Katt. Harps & Angels was conceived by Jack Viertel and directed by Jerry Zaks; the cast included Storm Large, Michael McKean and Katey Sagal.
What’s most surprising about these two attempts at a Newman revue is that there had already been a moderately successful one that did play New York long before either of the others were developed, back in 1982. First seen in NYC at the Astor Place Theatre, Maybe I’m Doing It Wrong was conceived and directed by Joan Micklin Silver, and the cast included Mark Linn-Baker and Deborah Rush. It was subsequently produced at the La Jolla Playhouse in 1984 in a revised production that featured Melanie Chartoff, Dann Florek, Dee Hoty and Paul McCrane under the direction of Susan Cox.
Zapata
For roughly a decade from the mid-60s to mid-70s, Harry Nilsson was at the top of his game as a singer songwriter, with multiple hit albums and chart-topping songs both for himself and other artists. He even created a made for television children’s cartoon, The Point, with a musical score that is indelibly remembered by those watching TV in the early 70s and now licensed for stage production. He also wrote the charming songs for the otherwise problematic Popeye movie with Robin Williams. But as chronicled in the recent documentary Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talking About Him)?, he was also an alcoholic who sabotaged his voice, his career and his health. His one stage effort, Zapata, about the famed Mexican revolutionary, never made it past a tryout run at the Goodspeed Opera House in 1980. Of course, part of the problem may have been Nilsson and his friend Ringo Starr spending more time at the Gelston House bar next door to Goodspeed than in the theatre itself. And in one of its more incongruous quirks, Zapata had its genesis in an idea from musical comedy star and game show host Bert Convy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cbm4w5IsGE
80 Days
A jukebox musical about the early days of The Kinks, Sunny Afternoon, is headed into the West End after a successful run at the Hampstead Theatre in London, but it’s not the first musical to feature songs by Ray Davies. 80 Days, an adaptation of Jules Verne’s Around The World In 80 Days by Davies and playwright Snoo Wilson (who replaced Barrie Keeffe) was offered up by the La Jolla Playhouse back in 1988; it trod a path forged decades earlier by no less than Orson Welles and Cole Porter, whose Broadway Around The World managed 75 performances in 1946. In La Jolla, 80 Days featured Timothy Landfield and Stephen Bogardus under Des McAnuff’s direction.
Our House
Among the leading lights of ska music for decades, the band Madness’s catalogue of hits were the basis for the musical Our House, an Ayckbournian musical that showed how one man’s life could go in two very different directions (long before If/Then). With a book by Tim Firth and directed by Matthew Warchus, the show was the surprise winner of the Olivier Award for Best Musical in 2003, beating out Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Bombay Dreams and Taboo. It wasn’t a long-running West End smash, but it has proven popular enough that its tenth anniversary was marked by a West End concert that reunited many of the original cast members and also featured Madness frontman Suggs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndnxGlGVxZM
We Will Rock You
We Will Rock You may well be the most successful rock musical to never play New York. Despite being critically reviled, it chalked up an 11-year West End run based on the popularity of the Queen catalogue, despite Ben Elton’s outlandish sci-fi storyline. It’s worth noting that the show has also toured the U.S. and played an extended run in Las Vegas, so New York may be one of the only major U.S. cities to have not been rocked by the show. Presumably it will also never see the sequel, which is reportedly in the works.
Yentl
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s cross-dressing heroine may have been heard by her Poppa over 30 years ago on film, but just last year she sang on stage at the Asolo Repertory Theatre in Florida using a score by Jill Sobule, of “I Kissed A Girl Fame.” No word on whether there’s any future life for the project, which used Leah Napolin’s non-musical play for its book and was directed by Gordon Greenberg.
Girlfriend
You might want to say I’m cheating because it did make it to Joe’s Pub, but Todd Almond’s reworking of Matthew Sweet songs into a coming of age romance hasn’t had a major outing in NYC on a legit stage. First seen at Berkeley Rep in 2012 and then in 2013 at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Almond took Sweet’s rocking and plaintive songs of alternately angry and mournful romance (the album included a love song to Winona Ryder) and made it a two-character musical for two young men.
Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots
This column would have been vastly briefer if it hadn’t been for the La Jolla Playhouse, which could lay claim to being the American theatre that sits most squarely and the intersection of musical theatre and popular music (let’s not forget two of their successes, including Jersey Boys and Tommy). Former artistic director Des McAnuff collaborated with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne on this futuristic tale using songs by the Lips; the theatre’s website synopsized the show thusly: “Yoshimi must choose between two boyfriends, but first she’s got to take down an army of pink robots. This magical tale of love and the struggle for survival is a poignant and humanistic story.” No word on whether our robot overlords will reach Manhattan.
The Ghost Brothers of Darkland County
The idea of Stephen King and John Mellencamp collaborating on a musical sounded pretty exciting when it was first announced, but after their show debuted at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater Company in 2012, many people realized that a musical created by people who had no experience writing a musical, or for that matter, for the stage, might be somewhat problematic. The following year, the show went out of tour in a pared down concert version, reversing the route of shows that showcase their wares in concerts before moving to full production. It suggests that the Ghost Brothers will be confined in little pink houses under a dome for the foreseeable future.
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I have no doubt that this rundown is incomplete. By all means, add other examples, including video links whenever possible, in the comments section below.
April 16th, 2014 § Comments Off on The Broadway ‘Soul Train’ Hasn’t Left The Station § permalink
Broadway dreams being immediately blown up into pending productions is something that really gets my goat. Why? Because it’s a case of hyperbole becoming ostensible fact in the press, and the only people it serves are those trying to make a nascent production into reality.
When I last wrote about this phenomenon about nine months ago (it really makes me cranky), I suggested that it makes an argument for why paid professional arts journalism is so essential – to separate real news from puffery. I regret to say that I’ve been proven wrong in that regard.
Here’s the problem. There is no Soul Train musical. No writers. No director. It’s unclear if any music rights have been acquired. All there is, right now, is a producer who has licensed the trademark and plans to develop a show.
Every article I saw actually makes note of this fact in some way, but it’s buried at least a few paragraphs in. One of the examples cited above makes it the very last sentence. But I’d be willing to bet that the vast majority of people who glanced at this story (with 120 Google News citations and climbing) thinks it’s a done deal.
Mind you, I take no pleasure in pointing this out, because I know three out of the four journalists involved in these stories pretty well, and I may get some grief from them. It’s certainly worth pointing out that journalists rarely write their own headlines, so the majority of the responsibility may not lie with the writers. In our clickbait world of online news, “happening” is much stronger than “may happen,” although such a distinction can be quickly elided by aggregators. But somewhere along the way, accuracy is sacrificed.
But I should in all fairness note that headlines more reflective of reality did appear: “Soul Train Aims To Pull Into Broadway Station” (Variety), “Soul Train May Boogie To Broadway” (The Grio, running an Associated Press story), and “Soul Train Making Tracks To Broadway?” (San Diego Union Tribune) are examples. Jim Hebert at the Union Tribune struck a strong note of skepticism in his copy, going so far as to say “don’t hold your breath on this one…” The cause is not lost.
I suppose if I were the producer and publicist for the show – and keep in mind I was a publicist for more than a decade – I’d be thrilled by the amount of attention garnered by the existence of a legal agreement. But when I see so many worthy arts activities that actually exist, eager and even desperate for media attention, this inflation of intentions is really rather depressing. I assume anyone who has a show that has already been written feels much the same way. But clearly the retro lure of a famous brand, with photos ready to run, holds greater sway than what’s happening now (those last three words actually being connected to a property someone may option any day).
In the film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, there’s a famous quote: “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” Fifty years later, it’s been simplified in a way that would make Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne and perhaps even Lee Marvin blanch, since we no longer wait for something to become legend: “Print the hype, with a great headline.”
December 4th, 2013 § Comments Off on The Good, The Live And The Ugly of Theatre On TV § permalink
Kirstie: tragedy tomorrow, travesty tonight
Outside of the annual Tony Awards broadcast, theatre is not a subject frequently dealt with on national television. So the next six days might be one of the richest confluences of theatre-related programming in recent memory, with three separate programs with roots in the theatre coming through America’s cable boxes between now and Monday night.
That said, I must immediately dash any expectations that the first of these programs in any way proves of benefit to theatre in America. Premiering tonight on TV Land, the series Kirstie features Cheers alumnus Kirstie Alley as the veteran star of 14 Broadway plays who, in the first episode, is reunited with the now-adult son she gave up for adoption in his infancy. That the show is a poor excuse for a sitcom is beyond my declared expertise, so I’ll contain my comments to its representation of theatrical life.
Kirstie is a show that seems to have been made by people who have watched movies about the theatre, and their creative liberties have been magnified into absurdity. Alley’s character lives in an apartment that seems sprung from 30s or 40s plays like The Royal Family, Accent On Youth or Old Acquaintance. Her career supports a full time personal assistant as well as a driver; there’s a chef in the pilot but he has disappeared in the three subsequent episodes available for review. How many stage stars can manage that? Could she have family money that would explain the largesse? Perhaps. But there’s no excuse for her decision, in the final moments of the opening night performance of her newest play, to delay the final curtain by adding dialogue meant as a declaration of affection for her once-abandoned son. It is patently absurd.
It’s worth noting that the series’ creator, Marco Pennette, has exercised his love of theatre on TV before, albeit through a supporting character. On the late 90s sitcom Caroline in the City, Amy Pietz played an actress who was appearing in the musical Cats, late in its long Broadway run. This afforded many sly and knowing digs at tired Broadway musicals that may well have been lost on much of the audience, but which jollied along those of us who watched primarily for Malcolm Gets’ performance. Kirstie offers little that sly beyond naming Rhea Perlman’s personal assistant character Thelma, a nod to the role played by Thelma Ritter in All About Eve. The only saving grace is that after the first two episodes, Kirstie’s depiction of theatre seems to become a footnote in the series, although Kristin Chenoweth’s cameo as an Eve Harrington type in the second show carries a bit of welcome snap that elevates the leaden comedy as much as possible (there’s also a terrific guest shot by Cloris Leachman as Alley’s estranged mother). But, in short, Kirstie makes Smash look like a documentary.
The second offering is the much promoted live broadcast of The Sound of Music, with Carrie Underwood leading the cast as Maria. Because it will be done live, it’s impossible to make any judgments, though I’m sure the commentary will be flying fast and furious during and after the broadcast on social media; I have already seen critiques of the cast recording, which was being streamed by Spotify yesterday.
Unlike almost everyone in the country, apparently, I am one of the very few who has never seen The Sound of Music, so I’ll be able to take the broadcast on its own terms. Yes, you read that right: I’ve never seen the show on stage and I’ve only seen snippets of the film (specifically Julie Andrews’ opening mountaintop twirl, the “Do Re Mi” and “16 Going on 17” numbers, and the final sequence with Von Trapp singing Edelweiss and the family’s subsequent escape). But I’m very pleased that there will be a version of the stage show to sit alongside the film for posterity, allowing fans and musical theatre students to get a sense of how a show can be altered for its screen incarnation (it joins Rent in this category). While the NBC presentation will be a peculiar hybrid of TV and theatre (it’s being produced for TV as if it were a stage production, though it is a one night only event that will play in person only for technicians, sans audience and audience reactions), I suspect it will prompt me to see the movie at long last, to make my own comparisons.
Audra McDonald in Six By Sondheim
Capping this trilogy, on Monday night, is the HBO documentary Six By Sondheim, directed by James Lapine and produced by (among others) former New York Times drama critic and lifelong musical theatre buff and expert Frank Rich. While the roughly 80 minute program makes the shrewd decision to focus musically on only six significant Sondheim songs, it casts a much wider net over the composer’s life and process than the title might suggest. It admirably features but a single talking head (in contrast to so many documentaries): that of Sondheim himself, drawn from a wide range of interviews over several decades. I was impressed to hear Sondheim, ever the wordsmith, drop “concatenate” and “serendipity” into a single sentence – no wonder this guy is the eminence grise of composer-lyricists, perhaps never to be equaled.
While his interrogators are mostly excised, there’s really something to be said for any show which manages to embrace moderators as diverse as Diane Sawyer, Tony Kushner and Mike Douglas and which squeezes in clips of performers like Cher and Patti LaBelle singing “Send In The Clowns” (LaBelle proves that, unlike Glynis Johns, she really knows how to hold a note). Another asset of the show is the newly produced performances of, among others, “I’m Still Here” (by Jarvis Cocker) and “Opening Doors” (with Jeremy Jordan, America Ferrara, Darren Criss, Laura Osnes and Sondheim himself as the producer seeking a “hummable melody”) which vary greatly in visual style thanks to contributions by different directors for each, most notably Todd Haynes.
A prized personal possession
As a big fan of Sondheim, but something short of a rabid one, the program certainly includes tales and tidbits I’d heard before, but packaged as elegantly as one could ask; I was certainly startled when the composer recommended liquor as an indispensable aid to writing a musical. Whatever one’s familiarity with Stephen Sondheim and his work, Six By Sondheim is a indispensable record that speeds by in a flash, and its presence on the dominant pay cable service puts other outlets like Ovation to shame. It would be naïve to expect a series of such programs from HBO, but Sondheim has many more memorable songs worth exploring; we can only hope that we may yet see more documentaries on his life and work as expert as this one, whatever the forum.
So gather around your viewing screen, set your DVR, or get ready to buy a couple of DVDs very shortly (definitely for Six By Sondheim; possibly for The Sound of Music). As for Kirstie, please stay away, so its travesty of theatre fails to make much of a mark anywhere. And, in the meantime, I hope you’ll join me in my daily prayer for season four of Slings and Arrows.
November 4th, 2013 § Comments Off on Your Friendly Neighborhood Theatrical Tell-All § permalink
It’s not unusual for book releases to be coordinated with a related event taking place elsewhere in the media circus: the autobiography that appears just as a star’s major film is coming out, the personal memoir that primes the public for a political campaign. However, no one can accuse Julie Taymor of engaging in such wanton promotion – she certainly can’t be pleased that Glen Berger’s Song of Spider-Man: The Inside Story of the Most Controversial Musical in Broadway History (Simon & Schuster, $25) debuts just as she returns to the stage with A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Theatre for a New Audience in Brooklyn. One imagines she’d have been happier if there were no book at all.
Countless people are reading and writing about the book as another chapter in the seemingly never-ending saga of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark, the headline generating musical that has been the target of brickbats from arts journalists virtually since the show was first announced. Spider-Man: TOTD seemed to throw raw meat to the media at every turn, ranging from fundraising challenges and production delays to several highly publicized cast injuries which seemed to turn the show into a latter-day Roman arena. It kept Patrick Healy of the Times and Michael Riedel of the Post in competition for breaking tidbits in a manner rarely seen before.
I didn’t find Berger’s book particularly revealing, largely because it covers ground that had been extensively reported elsewhere, and I confess to having consumed the events as they happened. In fact, I made a point of seeing the very final performance of the Taymor version and the opening night of the version reworked without her – and, for the most part, Berger’s – consent, after they had been supplanted by Philip William McKinley and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa respectively. Yes, I watched the show’s travails, as most did, as a theatrical car wreck in slow motion, a modern-day tragedy of creative hubris played played out in benday dots and rock chords.
For all that Berger recounts, the book constantly reminds the reader that it is the story of Spider-Man: TOTD as viewed through one person’s biased eyes – rather than the whole story. Berger goes out of his way to paint himself as a innocent caught up in the maelstrom of vastly more famous, and vastly wealthier, artists than himself. His emphasis on being separated from his family, of his personal financial troubles, of how different his world is from that of his acclaimed and wealthy collaborators Bono and Taymor – they grow tiresome, as if Berger deserves some sympathy or absolution for his role in the debacle by virtue of his less lofty perch. But he’s not exactly Nick Carraway observing the actions of Gatsby and the Buchanans – he’s a willing participant until his own calculations backfire on him, severing his ties forever with Taymor, who he has built up as his own artistic Daisy. To compare him to Faust conveys a grandeur I decline to confer.
The fact is, reading Berger’s book is like watching only one viewpoint from Rashomon, and one is all too aware that others undoubtedly have very different versions of the same events. I can’t help but suspect that the musical might at best be a page or two should Bono write his life story; producer Michael Cohl would no doubt recount the saga as a story of how he rescued a damaged show that most believed was dead on arrival; should Taymor tell her version, it will be of an artist (herself) persecuted by greedy philistines. Whether anyone will care to follow the tale repeatedly refracted through varying prisms is anyone’s guess, though that might be the only way to get the real story.
All of this should not suggest that Berger’s book has no value. It is, at the very least, a superb answer to the perennial question about troubled or failed shows: “Didn’t anyone realize how bad it was going to be?” The book is an encyclopedia of ignorance, ego and self-delusion, a look at how a theatrical property, especially one with such a high profile, almost becomes unstoppable, and the many ways in which it can go wrong, of how perspective is lost when you are so close to the work for so long. Aspiring producers should read it as a cautionary tale – not about a one-off disaster, but rather about when it pays to just say no, shut a show down, and move on, since Spider-Man may be the most expensive show to date, but there are plenty of complete flops that followed much the same misguided path.
Inevitably, Berger’s book will find its way onto many a theatrical bookshelf, even if it doesn’t have the elegance or educational value of many other books with which it shares conceptual and theatrical DNA. As I read it, I was reminded of a book about a vastly less well known disaster: playwright Arnold Wesker’s The Birth of Shylock, The Death of Zero Mostel, a chronicle of a quick Broadway flop notable mostly for the death of Mostel, its leading actor, who died while the show was trying out in Philadelphia. Like Berger, Wesker seems almost entirely unaware of his own complicity in the show’s failure, even as he repeatedly tells about his taking aside actors to countermand the edicts of the show’s director, John Dexter. Shylock the show is in the dustbin of Broadway history, whereas the legend of Spider-Man will surely go on; however, the author’s account of the production of Shylock makes for better literature than Song of Spider-Man.
While there are certainly great Broadway books of autobiography (Moss Hart’s Act One is an exemplar of the kind), more often than not the best chroniclers are those on the fringes or outside of a production entirely. Ted Chapin’s Everything Was Possible: The Birth of the Musical ‘Follies’ is an impeccable recent example of the former, derived from Chapin’s own notes as a production assistant on the original Follies; William Goldman’s The Season: A Candid Look At Broadway has long stood as a grand achievement of the latter. Of course, in both cases, the authors were given rare access, which seems almost impossible in the more media savvy world of today; the film industry was reminded about the danger of giving journalism too much access when critic Julie Solomon roamed free on the set of a Brian DePalma film, resulting in The Devil’s Candy: Anatomy of a Hollywood Fiasco, a detailed chronicle of the famous flop The Bonfire of the Vanities.
Though it covers work which is vastly less infamous and some 50 years in the past, I daresay that Jack O’Brien’s recent Jack Be Nimble: The Accidental Education of an Unintentional Director (Farrar Straus and Giroux, $35) is the more worthy, entertaining and educational insider theatre book of the year. While O’Brien could have easily produced a standard memoir, given his own considerable achievements as a director, he followed Chapin’s lead and instead opted to write about the access he had as a young man to a remarkable confluence of talents: the members of the APA and later the APA-Phoenix theatre companies, which included Richard Easton, Rosemary Harris and above all the now little-remembered Ellis Rabb. I know firsthand what a wealth of stories Jack can tell about his own exploits, but by deciding to honor the artists who formed his own aesthetic, he has written a work of history and memoir that is ultimately more important and informative than Berger’s attempt to make a few more dollars off the Spider-Man debacle.
Perhaps, one day, a young PA on Spider-Man: TOTD will emerge with his or her own book, to draw the truest picture of what went on as the web collapsed. Until then, we’re left with a lopsided recap of a story that we mostly know, told by what is called, in literary circles, an unreliable narrator.
I can’t compete with the literally hundreds of online tributes that are proliferating in advance of David Letterman’s final show this evening, except to say that I’ve been watching him since he debuted on NBC and now expect I will be getting to sleep even earlier, albeit less happily, after tonight’s show.
