"The 39 Steps," at the Huntington Theater -- Why?

If you are steeped in PBS dramas, comedies, and mega-series from Britain, you might like this play.

If you love Alfred Hitchcock's films, have seen them all three or four times, and are waiting for the next biography about him, one of his friends, or someone writing about him, to come out, you might like this play.

If you love funny exaggerations about the Scots, you definitely will like this play.

If you like the three stooges, you probably will like this play.

If you like everything British, and think you should have been born British, or think that perhaps you actually have a British soul even though you're not sure what that means, you might like this play.

If you like Sid Caeser's comedy show from the 50s (I've seen footage of it), you could like this play.

If you like all of the above, or resemble all of the above, you will surely like this play.

If you keep asking yourself the question, "Why was this play written? I mean, like, if it was written in 1949, I might say, sure, it's cute and funny. But why was it written now?" -- if you keep asking that question, you won't like this play.

Here's Marilyn on the play: "Well, if I finish a play, and I'm not totally bummed out and grossed out by it, then, yeah, I think it was a good play."

Great performances, especially the two clowns, who are exemplars of vaudevillian showmanship. The scenery and stage were a little too spare and dark (I know the idea was to spoof the Hitchcock noir ambience, but I was getting confused by the slapstick comedy fighting with the brooding darkness).

I basically fall into the category of the first few paragraphs above, and so I can agree with Marilyn...but I don't know why this play exists.

Ken Burns's "The War": not the same emotional experience as "The Civil War"

After two episodes of "The War" on PBS, we're absorbed by it, and are learning new things about that huge war and our involvement in it -- yet, I think it doesn't move with the same emotional weight that the Civil War series had. There's a storytelling element that isn't quite here. The Civil War had layers and layers of detail about people, much of it from their letters, or from historians, or from the wonderful commentators that Burns had (think of Shelby Foote). We got to live more of that series in our own imaginations.

Here, we're relying on the massive documentary footage. Of course. Yet, it's mute. The stories of the men and women who lived through the scenes are powerful, but somehow filtered by distance and time. The narration doesn't quite color the scenes.

You could say that Burns's more literary approach for the Civil War better fit the era, but I think it has more to do with the power of the literary word when telling history, when telling stories, whether from fifty years ago or a hundred fifty years ago.

A side note: the music for this series doesn't thread its way through as elegantly as the Civil War's music did. The music was identifiable, rich, and evocative. It was immediately recognizable and was repeated as codas and themes. With this series, we have big band music, alternated with occasional piano dirges and what sounds like a Japanese stringed instrument. It's not quite connecting the scenes and narrative.

It's a huge achievement, and I want to see the rest of it. But it's a different experience from the Civil War.

Theatre de la Jeune Lune's "Figaro"

Last Sunday, we saw "Figaro" the companion piece to the opera-play-circus "Don Juan Giovanni". But Figaro was a more cohesive production and had a trimmer narrative. We understood who the people were, and mostly what they were doing. Almost all the wonderful things we felt about Don Juan were here as well, the great singing, the great stagecraft, and the surprising acting performances (especially Momoko Tanno as Susanna, who doesn't get the mention and praise she deserves, at least not from Louise Kennedy at the Globe in her review of Figaro).

Why does Figaro -- Fig, to the count -- stay with the Count and continue serving him? The French Revolution is upending everything. Riots in the streets. The guillotines working. And yet, Fig stays with that tiresome, demanding, demented old fool. It can't be for the money -- the Count doesn't appear to have any left. His estate is about to be taken over by the mobs. Fig complains and rails at the count, sure, but there he is, preparing the Count's dinner, taking a beating outside the front gates of their house in order to get food for him, rushing -- yes, rushing -- to get a chair for the old man as he motions to sit down, waiting for trusty Fig to place the chair under him.

This is the man who attempted to humiliate Fig on his wedding day, attempted to invoke his sexual seignorial rights with Fig's bride, Susanna, and this is the man who boasts of it and taunts Fig even now.

And there is Fig, still getting that chair. I feel overwhelmed. It's so true. Of course Fig gets the chair for the Count. I don't know why, but I know it has to happen.

Once again, as in DJG, a ridiculous bit of simulated sex, utterly untrue to the spirit of the scene, the characters, or the play.

I would say that DJG evoked our emotions on a bigger, more chaotic scale than did Figaro.

There was that scene from Don Juan Giovanni -- the beautiful soprano bicycling around the stage, singing. Her foolish boyfriend tries to catch her, make her stop. She pedals faster and faster, singing and taunting the clueless fellow. Finally, the poor guy can't stand it any more and he collapses on his face while she pedals offstage -- cheerfully singing. We laughed and laughed.

"Don Juan Giovanni" at the American Repertory Theater

Last night at the ART, there were moments of this Theatre de la Jeune Lune opera-play-gymnastic production that made my heart race. It had some of the best theater I've seen in my life. The climax to Act One is the ensemble singing "Viva le Libertate!" as the huge battered black car lurches across the stage, the singers hugging the exterior and raising their fists in the air as they sang. I wanted to jump out of my seat, join them and help push the car out into the street to march around Harvard Square singing. And who knows and who cares why you're singing "Long Live Freedom!" at that point?

This is the second Theatre de la Jeune Lune production we've seen (saw Carmen last year). I loved the choreography and singing. It was nicely paced and the music and tempo worked the audience toward the various climactic moments. The physical agility of the actors was astounding and circus-like: they skipped and danced on the moving car, bicycled and ran around the enormous stage, kissed and caressed -- and all of it while singing Mozart! Then tension and sense of danger on stage was like watching trapeze artists.

The exhilaration I felt made me forget that what was actually happening on stage was...kind of scatterbrained. Why are we seeing that young Don Giovanni on the stage? He's not part of any narrative I could figure out, although he's a great singer, and his sidekick Leporello was terrific (the performer Bradley Greenwald played him as an Italian thug with a real sense of menace mixed with comedy). And how does Don Juan finally get thrown to Hell in the end? I couldn't figure it out (although it is a deus ex machina, in any case).

But I'm willing to live with the flaws.

Is the production saying that morality and God really don't matter? That morality is all hypocrisy in any event? The play/opera's heart seems to be with the cynical Don Juan (we loved Dominique Serrand in the role -- but Don Juan is still a bastard) and the confused rants from the frenetic Sganarelle. It can only be evil and self destructive to repeatedly lie and cheat Donna Anna (played and sung by Momoko Tanno, who sang so gorgeously). In this production, there's no satisfaction in the comeuppance that Don Juan suffers.

Other things we could have lived without: the brief instances of mock urination, simulated sex, and the juvenile jokes about George Bush and Republicans. These seemed awkward, almost grotesque attempts to establish street cred with the well-off Cambridge audience. These instances diminished the play, but they were fortunately overwhelmed by the rest of it -- the river of music and visual fantasy.

As we filed out, the out of breath actors stood in a receiving line in the lobby. What a wonderful idea. We shook each of their hands, and gushed to them about how much we loved their work and the production. It was inspiring.

Enough of Levi for now

I finished Primo Levi's "If not now, when?". The book is a fictional recreation of a band of Jewish partisans in their agonized wanderings through Europe in the last two years of WW II. I couldn't put it down. It kept me from going to sleep many nights. An irritating flaw in the book is how Levi too frequently turned the characters into representatives of whole peoples or movements. Some of their speeches and conversations are almost propagandistic. They don't sound real. It's as if Levi inserts himself to explain some historical or ideological background info. But you forgive him -- he's taken us on a hell of a ride.

As much as I love Levi, I have to take break from him.

The film "In Search of Mozart"

This film by Phil Grabsky is at the Museum of Fine Arts. It's a documentary outlining Mozart's life, with interspersed commentary from European music historians, instrumentalists, singers, and conductors. Here is a link to the MFA film info. It's playing again at the MFA on August 2. And you can get to the film's web site here.

I liked the film very much. Enjoyed learning about Mozart's financial and practical struggles to establish himself, the friction with his father, his boldness. Grabsky matches the synchronous music compositions to the events described by the narrator and the interviewees. Completely absorbing.

One problem for such films that Grabsky didn't completely resolve is that we're sometimes overwhelmed by information. There's Mozart's music, of course, which is in the background or foreground (as we watch and hear an orchestra or an opera in performance) almost all the time. There are the interviewed learned scholars and musicians describing their insights. There is the narrator. There is footage of letters, Baroque buildings in Salzburg and Vienna, street scenes, of modern performers acting, singing, playing -- everything that's visual. But the audience can only attend to so much at once. Some elements are just out of our focus. I think Grabsky does well, but I did find a few places -- such as where we watch and hear and orchestra, with closeups on soloists -- where we get taken by the music and can hardly hear the narrator telling us something important.

"Are we in...Salzburg now? Or Vienna? Was that his father who said that nasty to him?"

Ken Burns, in his documentaries, does such a great job of keeping us focused on these cinematic elements so that we absorb them, and he keeps them from conflicting with each other, so that we see and hear the details and nuances.

All those scholarly European music historians -- like, what's with their teeth? Maybe they're true, those jokes about how Europeans rarely go to dentists.

The New Rep Theater's "Side by Side by Sondheim"

We saw the New Repertory Theater's production of "Side by Side by Sondheim" at the Arsenal Center with a group of friends.

We all loved the show. To paraphrase the narrator, each song was like a small several act drama. Usually, the drama (or comedy, or tragedy) was about a marriage breaking up, a marriage forming, a marriage not meant to be, or a relationship that once was.

I liked Leigh Barrett, as usual. Her singing is always powerful, and her face and gestures are mobile. She surprises you. When she takes on a character in an instant, you feel her empathy and understanding for the character. Her song, "The Boy From...." was a scream. And sad at the same time, of course, since you know this girl's hopes for a man will always be skewed, and only a miracle will put the right man who returns her love in front of her. There are moments when Barrett just sends a chill through you.

Maryann Zschau sang "Send in the Clowns" well. But I liked Leigh Barrett's version from a couple of years ago, when she performed in "A Little Night Music" for the Lyric Stage. More understated. Schau sometimes let the tear and choke in her voice get to be a little too much.

Which was not the case when Schau did the funny "Can That Boy Fox Trot." She was a riot. She's got a wonderful, sexy voice, with a kind of smoker's tenor rasp.

I read that Brendan McNab was an 11th hour addition, that something happened to the actor originally signed for the show. He was terrific. Maybe not as strong a singer as the other two, but a wonderful showman. His "Could I Leave You" was from the heart.

I agreed with Louise Kennedy's remarks in the Boston Globe that some of the narrator's remarks and the boy-girl repartee onstage was cloying and silly. The jokes seemed labored, and the actors seemed pained to have to haul themselves through. It detracted from the sophisticated irony that imbues Sondheim's work. (Kennedy's full review is here.)

We all remarked on how "real" the actors seemed -- not over-pretty and right from the acting workshop. They all had mileage. And how else could it be for these Sondheim songs?

The movie, "Ratatouille"

We loved it. Would like to see it again, there's so much detail. Of course, it's full of feel-good politically correct moments, but I didn't care. You suppress some of your critical energy when you see animation like this, where the impossible happens, where rats talk and take on detailed human features.

That scene where Linguini tells all to Horst and the rest of the kitchen staff, telling them that it's a rat that has been guiding them all along, begging them all to stay for that important night with a restaurant full of customers -- they turn their noses up and march out of the kitchen. They abandon Linguine and Colette. How could they? The rats race in to the rescue and take over the kitchen. They're more noble than the humans.

More about "The Reawakening," by Primo Levi

I wondered how Primo Levi managed in that rough company. He a bookish, thin young man of about 23 (yet, a survivor of Auschwitz), surrounded by hundreds of Italian ex-POWs, herded about by the Russians. It was rough company.

The movie house scene, in which a traveling movie troupe stops at the transit camp and shows a 30s Hollywood adventure film is a scream. The Russian soldiers comically mobbing the barn that served as the cinema, smashing through the doors and carrying the splinters as weapons to use on each other, the wild assaults on the screen by the shouting men. And all through it, there is Levi's love for the Russians. Even the rude, heedless ones, he loves them all.

And the scene I most recall: stopping at a village where a crowd of exhausted, starving and thirsty captured German soldiers lay huddled together in the dust. Perhaps they'd been left there for days. They begged the Italians for water, but the Italians had none to share with them. What happened to those men?

Primo Levi's book, "The Reawakening"

I read a self-interview that Levi wrote, and in it he described the physical exhaustion and fear that oppressed the inmates of Auschwitz. That was a primary reason, he said, that they did not fight back, never organized a collective resistance, and never undertook the slightest aggressive measures in their own defense. There were other reasons, of course.

In my last message, I described my interpretation of what I read as the inmates' desperate grip on the camp routine -- it was their only grip on existence, on life. I think that's a valid interpretation, but I see that Levi emphasizes the more practical barrier of starvation. The slaves were just too exhausted to struggle. Those who did organize acts of resistance and rebellion, he writes, were paradoxically the better fed, the well-treated camp trustees among the prisoners. They alone were strong enough. A very few of them had hung on to some moral conscience, energy, and courage.

After finishing "Survival in Auschwitz," I couldn't wait to read Levi's followup memoir, "The Reawakening," the story of his release from the camp by the Russian army, and of the tortuous journey over many months to return to Italy. Some of the worst scenes of either book are in the interim period, when the Germans fled, leaving the eight hundred freezing, starving inmates in the infirmary, Levi among them. Hard to imagine scenes. The freezing bunks filled with dying men writhing in pain, lying in their own dysentery, begging endlessly for help until one by one they died. Levi describes them not without compassion, but with the detachment of a reporter, as if he recognizes that his most important job is to record what happened.

It's not actually a "release" from the camp -- there was still a war going on, and the Russians didn't simply permit the pitiful survivors to start walking back to their home countries.

He loves the Russians. He describes their faults -- their slovenliness, their chaos, their capricious brutality -- but he loves them. At times the Russians lose their identity, and they become a kind of beloved soulful Russian nation, a warm all-embracing, tolerant and generous thing. They are almost cartoonlike, and Levi's language becomes almost propagandistic.

I'm halfway through it now. More later.

Primo Levi's book, "Survival in Auschwitz"

Because we've heard and read and seen so much about it, we think we know about the Holocaust. I felt grateful to Levi for teaching the mechanics of the camp, its routines, its ploys, its organization.

It seems like it's organization that the men cling to. In their minute by minute fear and terror, they follow the strictly enforced and brutal routines. They cheat, but they don't deviate. There's one scene, in the middle of the narrative, in which a courageous prisoner is hanged before the entire camp. He and a group of others managed to blow up one of the crematoriums. Levi and the rest are in awe of him. They don't say a word. They aren't inspired to emulate him. They don't know what to feel, other than shame. Then they go back to their bunks and carry on. Knowing and expecting their own deaths, they still head back to their bunks and their stratagems for hustling more bread, more soup, a useful rag.

(More tomorrow. It's late.)

Charles Burnett's film, "Killer of Sheep"

If there's a narrative in Killer of Sheep, you have to make it up for yourself. There are vignettes of Stan, his wife, his children, and the others in their crumbling black Los Angeles neighborhood. Maybe it's in Stan's despairing attempts at making something, anything, work. His face and eyes look befuddled by everything he touches. Fixing the plumbing. Getting a check cashed. Hauling a car engine into his truck (but leaving it untethered, so that it falls and breaks as soon as he puts the truck in gear). He's always on the verge of stopping and crying. He seems to be unable to do anything well -- except for his horrible work at the slaughterhouse. There he looks sharp. He looks adept.

Like classic Italian films, the camera loves the people: the thugs stealing a TV, the stern old man who watches them over the fence, the fat prostitute, the boy that gets hit by a rock and cries while the others keep throwing.

I don't see the film as being about "black people." It's about Stan. Stan and his wife. His wife's attempts to break through his morose demeanor. It's terrible in some ways. A film without a driving narrative feels bleak. The last scene if of the sheep Stan is driving through a gate, a bottleneck, where they struggle, jump and fight over each other to go through the gate, to get inside to what's waiting for them.

We saw the film at the MFA on Saturday. There weren't many black faces in the sparse crowd. Maybe a couple. I had expected many more. The MFA doesn't attract many black faces, in general.