I liked all of Lopez's work, and his cityscapes in particular (contemporary views of Madrid seen from the concrete rooftops of apartment buildings). The building colors, faded from the sun, give off a kind of granite pink pastel light. They're huge. The city, painted in almost realistic detail, takes up only the lower third. Above is the pale almost white sky, dusty and smoggy, mounted like a summery halo.
I thought, "almost realistic". Where was the graffiti? Where were the parked and moving cars clogging all the narrow streets and alley? His Madrid is serene, spiritual.
Earlier, we saw the "El Greco to Velasquez" exhibit. What a great idea, having the two exhibits of Spanish artists staged at the same time!
El Greco's people are pale and gaunt. More than pale, they're chalky and starving. As if everything they've got is put into their prayers and devotions. One exception in the exhibit, in the painting, "Saint Martin and the Beggar", Saint Martin, mounted on a powerful white horse, gives half his beautiful green robe, to a beggar. The beggar is a young man, nearly naked, clean shaven, oddly fresh out of the barber shop -- and he's darker skinned than anyone else in El Greco's paintings.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Sunday, May 18, 2008
Jose Saramago's novel, "Blindness": would people really do that?
It's been two weeks since I finished Blindness, but life at work and in my chorus has been too busy to post, and I wanted to think about the book. I frequently think about it.
The very first sentence does what a first sentence should do -- grab you. People in cars at an intersection are waiting for a traffic light to turn green so they can go. They cannot. Something is holding them up. At the front of the line of cars, a man is desperately yelling inside his car. He has suddenly gone blind. And his blindness is contracted by all who come near him. The blindness spreads from person to person like an electric current.
It was hard to put down. The characters don't have names. They have identities -- the doctor, the doctor's wife, the girl with the sunglasses, the first man (the first man who went blind). I felt I was reading about a real world of flesh and blood people suddenly caught in a kind of hell where they faced extinction.
An entire world gone blind is that -- extinction. There can be no food, no organization, no leaders no followers, no future. Everyone will die.
I kept asking myself: would people act this way? The government treats the blind with immediate and brutal internment. Confined, the blind try to organize themselves. But the thugs among them are better organized; they form a gang that controls food and water in the detention center. They have a gun. They demand that women -- fellow blind inmates -- succumb to gang rapes. That rings true. Saramago tells us that we will behave like animals once our organizing structures and resources are denied us, and many will act instinctually to seize food and power. All will act, to some degree, without regard for the pain they inflict on others.
This is not so far from the moral atmosphere Primo Levi described in his books about the Nazi labor and death camps.
The very first sentence does what a first sentence should do -- grab you. People in cars at an intersection are waiting for a traffic light to turn green so they can go. They cannot. Something is holding them up. At the front of the line of cars, a man is desperately yelling inside his car. He has suddenly gone blind. And his blindness is contracted by all who come near him. The blindness spreads from person to person like an electric current.
It was hard to put down. The characters don't have names. They have identities -- the doctor, the doctor's wife, the girl with the sunglasses, the first man (the first man who went blind). I felt I was reading about a real world of flesh and blood people suddenly caught in a kind of hell where they faced extinction.
An entire world gone blind is that -- extinction. There can be no food, no organization, no leaders no followers, no future. Everyone will die.
I kept asking myself: would people act this way? The government treats the blind with immediate and brutal internment. Confined, the blind try to organize themselves. But the thugs among them are better organized; they form a gang that controls food and water in the detention center. They have a gun. They demand that women -- fellow blind inmates -- succumb to gang rapes. That rings true. Saramago tells us that we will behave like animals once our organizing structures and resources are denied us, and many will act instinctually to seize food and power. All will act, to some degree, without regard for the pain they inflict on others.
This is not so far from the moral atmosphere Primo Levi described in his books about the Nazi labor and death camps.
Monday, April 14, 2008
Panayiotis Terzakis singing "My Black Swallow"
We heard Panayiotis Terzakis and Maria Georgakarakou on Saturday night, in their concert, "Graecia Magna: Byzantine Hymns, Laments and Historical Songs from Early Modern Greece".
It could have been sleep-inducing -- the repetition of the minor keys, the melancholy of the poetry and the sounds -- but it was not. We loved it. The dark Taxiarchae church was the right setting. His voice is a little bigger than it was last year. Hers gets better after she warms up. There's a harsh edge to it early on. I like the wild yelps and inflections she gives the folk songs.
One song, "Mavro mou khelithoni -- My black swallow" was a small miniature of the whole concert. Here are the last few lines (taken from the program), about a man who wants to write a letter home:
They forced me to marry here in Armenia,
To an Aemenian girl, the daughter of a witch.
She put a spell on the ships, and they do not sail.
She put a spell on the sea, and it does not swell.
She put a spell on the rivers, and they do not flow.
She put a spell on me, and I do not come home.
It could have been sleep-inducing -- the repetition of the minor keys, the melancholy of the poetry and the sounds -- but it was not. We loved it. The dark Taxiarchae church was the right setting. His voice is a little bigger than it was last year. Hers gets better after she warms up. There's a harsh edge to it early on. I like the wild yelps and inflections she gives the folk songs.
One song, "Mavro mou khelithoni -- My black swallow" was a small miniature of the whole concert. Here are the last few lines (taken from the program), about a man who wants to write a letter home:
They forced me to marry here in Armenia,
To an Aemenian girl, the daughter of a witch.
She put a spell on the ships, and they do not sail.
She put a spell on the sea, and it does not swell.
She put a spell on the rivers, and they do not flow.
She put a spell on me, and I do not come home.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
When character is everything -- Alice Munro's short stories in "Castle Rock"
I finished Alice Munro's book of short stories, "Castle Rock," and was moved by her respectful depiction of the people in her family tree and childhood. The stories of ancestors are of course fictionalized, and they move on to stories apparently from her childhood in rural Ontario.
The stories themselves are slight narratives. They're less important than the characters, their thoughts, their obsessions, their moments of in-character or out-of-character behavior. I got caught up in them and felt fondly of the people, even those who weren't likable. It's so old fashioned in some ways. She almost seems lazy, simply recording seemingly inconsequential events lived on a boat crossing the Atlantic, of a young girl on isolated roads, of a father in a barnyard. The events barely come together to make a story. But I feel as if I can still see their faces, and expressions, and gestures.
The stories themselves are slight narratives. They're less important than the characters, their thoughts, their obsessions, their moments of in-character or out-of-character behavior. I got caught up in them and felt fondly of the people, even those who weren't likable. It's so old fashioned in some ways. She almost seems lazy, simply recording seemingly inconsequential events lived on a boat crossing the Atlantic, of a young girl on isolated roads, of a father in a barnyard. The events barely come together to make a story. But I feel as if I can still see their faces, and expressions, and gestures.
About the "Big Bang theory" of ending a play
A friend sent a link to an interesting op ed piece by Ed Siegel, the Boston Globe's former theater critic, about finishing a work of art powerfully. This is in regards to Conor McPherson's play, "Shining City." Siegel argues that a powerful ending sears the images of the work in our memories, and he feels the appearance of the "ghost" at the end of Shining City is such. I replied:
"I totally agree with Siegel -- a "big bang" ending can really shock and illuminate the story. In the last instant, we can get a profound understanding of what we've seen or heard, and what will happen from that moment on, after we leave the theater.
"But the audience has to "get it." In McPherson's ending seconds, what we get is confusion. Why are we seeing that macabre actress standing behind the door? The grieving older fellow in the play saw the ghost of his wife -- as he describes it, it looked like his wife, for all he knew, it actually was his wife, and that's what chilled and disturbed him. What was that bizarrely dressed actress at the end, behind the door? Did she look like the therapist's girlfriend? Not to me. If it was the ghost of the therapist's girlfriend, or a ghost of some other soul or demon appearing to him as an image of what he has to atone for...why would that be? Isn't shutting down his office and moving to be closer to the girlfriend and their daughter? The therapist says he doesn't believe in ghosts, and the play has almost nothing substantial to do with ghosts. Why introduce that image in the last instant?
"So I don't get it."
"I totally agree with Siegel -- a "big bang" ending can really shock and illuminate the story. In the last instant, we can get a profound understanding of what we've seen or heard, and what will happen from that moment on, after we leave the theater.
"But the audience has to "get it." In McPherson's ending seconds, what we get is confusion. Why are we seeing that macabre actress standing behind the door? The grieving older fellow in the play saw the ghost of his wife -- as he describes it, it looked like his wife, for all he knew, it actually was his wife, and that's what chilled and disturbed him. What was that bizarrely dressed actress at the end, behind the door? Did she look like the therapist's girlfriend? Not to me. If it was the ghost of the therapist's girlfriend, or a ghost of some other soul or demon appearing to him as an image of what he has to atone for...why would that be? Isn't shutting down his office and moving to be closer to the girlfriend and their daughter? The therapist says he doesn't believe in ghosts, and the play has almost nothing substantial to do with ghosts. Why introduce that image in the last instant?
"So I don't get it."
Monday, March 24, 2008
The Huntington's "Shining City": a short story made into a play
That a therapist would himself be in less-than-admirable moral or psychic shape is a truism. The play is based on that, and there's a parallel between the stories of Ian, the young ex-priest turned therapist, and his patient, John.
I thought it was fairly good theater. A bit static, since the heart of the play was really John's recitation of events off stage, troubling events that had happened earlier. There are one or two short stories basically being read aloud. And they would have been fine as literature. Here, they are dressed up as theater (with theater prices).
John the therapy patient (a middle aged fellow grieving the death of his wife from an accident, who believes his house is haunted with her ghost) recalls their life together and, in particular, his clumsy attempt to have an affair with an attractive woman he met at a party not long before his wife died. The affair was never consummated, as both people timidly, and wisely, shrunk back at the last moment.
There are plays that a group of actors with modest acting abilities would do well in, but this isn't one of them. Because so much of the play depends on the ability of a particular actor -- John -- to act and recite his story, without an excellent actor we would have a dreadful play. As it was, the four actors were very good, and we had scenes of good theater. (Well, at least I was able to understand about 70% of what the actors said, given their heavy Irish accents.)
There's a lot here that makes no sense at all -- Ian (the ex priest) brings a loutish "rent boy" to his apartment, Ian decides to move to be closer to his "fiance" (who is taking care of their daughter), and the appearance of a ghost in Ian's apartment in the last instant of the play (a silly and illogical attempt to strengthen the parallel to John's story). Our focus is painfully narrowed on the individual characters as they give their long monologues (like seeing a closeup on a movie screen for a long, long time).
Yet, I feel like I've seen decent Irish theater -- at least these are live flesh and blood characters, with live flesh and blood problems.
I thought it was fairly good theater. A bit static, since the heart of the play was really John's recitation of events off stage, troubling events that had happened earlier. There are one or two short stories basically being read aloud. And they would have been fine as literature. Here, they are dressed up as theater (with theater prices).
John the therapy patient (a middle aged fellow grieving the death of his wife from an accident, who believes his house is haunted with her ghost) recalls their life together and, in particular, his clumsy attempt to have an affair with an attractive woman he met at a party not long before his wife died. The affair was never consummated, as both people timidly, and wisely, shrunk back at the last moment.
There are plays that a group of actors with modest acting abilities would do well in, but this isn't one of them. Because so much of the play depends on the ability of a particular actor -- John -- to act and recite his story, without an excellent actor we would have a dreadful play. As it was, the four actors were very good, and we had scenes of good theater. (Well, at least I was able to understand about 70% of what the actors said, given their heavy Irish accents.)
There's a lot here that makes no sense at all -- Ian (the ex priest) brings a loutish "rent boy" to his apartment, Ian decides to move to be closer to his "fiance" (who is taking care of their daughter), and the appearance of a ghost in Ian's apartment in the last instant of the play (a silly and illogical attempt to strengthen the parallel to John's story). Our focus is painfully narrowed on the individual characters as they give their long monologues (like seeing a closeup on a movie screen for a long, long time).
Yet, I feel like I've seen decent Irish theater -- at least these are live flesh and blood characters, with live flesh and blood problems.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The Masterworks Chorale's "St. John's Passion"
I neglected to post last Sunday, after we saw the Chorale perform Bach's St. John's Passion. Many phrases sounded familiar to me, having just finished our own work on the two Bach cantatas. It seemed obvious that Steve Karidoyanes had gotten the Chorale to hit this Sunday just right. They gave off an energetic tension from the very first notes, as if this was genuinely important. The tone was lighter and tighter than we'd ever heard it.
Jason McStoots, the tenor, sang the role of the Evangelist. What a voice! It's high and sweet, with a pure consistent enunciation that never seems to lose its energy. Ulysses Thomas was the powerful baritone who sang Jesus's role. He has a beautiful rich voice. When he sang, "Mother, behold your son," my eyes nearly filled with tears.
The anti-semitic edge to St. John is there. (When the people are benignly referred to, they are simply, "the people." But when they want Christ's blood, they are "the Jews." As if somehow they were not all Jews, including Christ and his disciples.) He must have been a nut, or a propagandist. Sadly, what he did is preserved.
Jason McStoots, the tenor, sang the role of the Evangelist. What a voice! It's high and sweet, with a pure consistent enunciation that never seems to lose its energy. Ulysses Thomas was the powerful baritone who sang Jesus's role. He has a beautiful rich voice. When he sang, "Mother, behold your son," my eyes nearly filled with tears.
The anti-semitic edge to St. John is there. (When the people are benignly referred to, they are simply, "the people." But when they want Christ's blood, they are "the Jews." As if somehow they were not all Jews, including Christ and his disciples.) He must have been a nut, or a propagandist. Sadly, what he did is preserved.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Brookline Chorus: Two Bach Cantatas and Benjamin Britten
Our Brookline Chorus concert on Saturday night surprised me with the size of the crowd -- who knew that around 250 people would come out on Saturday night to hear a community chorus sing Bach and Britten?
We performed the pieces (Bach Cantatas 149 and 19, and Britten's cantata, "The Company of Heaven") better than we had ever sung them before. Lisa Graham, our conductor, had moved us through the preceding rehearsals just right. She radiated energy. The soloists (Alexandra Lang, Ethan Bremner, Stephanie Kacoyanis, and Sepp Hammer) were each terrific. The basses rolled through the endless snaking sixteenth notes of the Bach more crisply than ever before.
And the Britten piece sounded almost shockingly modern, by contrast. And yet, its subject was angels and Satan, and St. Michael. As if to talk and sing of such things in the 20th century was somehow still possible. How can you not feel captivated by lines that refer to God with, "...He, Whom angels with veiled faces adore...."?
We performed the pieces (Bach Cantatas 149 and 19, and Britten's cantata, "The Company of Heaven") better than we had ever sung them before. Lisa Graham, our conductor, had moved us through the preceding rehearsals just right. She radiated energy. The soloists (Alexandra Lang, Ethan Bremner, Stephanie Kacoyanis, and Sepp Hammer) were each terrific. The basses rolled through the endless snaking sixteenth notes of the Bach more crisply than ever before.
And the Britten piece sounded almost shockingly modern, by contrast. And yet, its subject was angels and Satan, and St. Michael. As if to talk and sing of such things in the 20th century was somehow still possible. How can you not feel captivated by lines that refer to God with, "...He, Whom angels with veiled faces adore...."?
Thursday, February 21, 2008
"Julius Caeser" at the A.R.T. -- tuning out the claptrap
We saw Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" at the American Repertory Theater this past Sunday. As usual, we had to fight hard to ignore the A.R.T.'s laughable and absurd directorial flourishes. I felt that the actors and the play managed to overcome the claptrap and show us a Brutus whose torment is the central issue in the first act -- does Brutus, a patriotic nobleman, act against Caesar when he threatens to become a despotic tyrant, even joining the plot to kill him, or does he acquiesce and become, in his terms, a well paid slave? The second act is about the bedfellows you make and the consequences after you've joined that plot and carried out the crime.
Of course, it would have helped if Shakespeare had shown us a Julius Caesar who actually seemed to be a tyrant, somebody willing to hack off a few heads or pluck a a couple of eyes out of his opponents before breakfast. Instead, we get an uncle-like figure who enjoys having his breakfast tea with his beautiful wife, calling for the day's augury from the local priestesses (Rome's version of the Times).
The lines were acted straightforwardly. Cassius is ravenous and terrific. A real schemer, with a genuine lean and hungry look. The actor who played Mark Antony, although not much in the way of a stage presence, did have the wonderful presence of mind to save the funeral oration scene -- Brutus walked off center stage before he was finished. He'd forgotten that he had more crucial lines. Mark Antony made two subtle whispering asides, the second loud enough for the audience to hear, and Brutus, startled, remembered the rest and bounded back into the rest of the oration.
The claptrap: black suits, hats, and sunglasses on the squad of conspirators -- yes, I got the insane grassy knoll allusion to the supposed CIA plotters who took part in the assassination of JFK -- which made them look like the Blues Brothers. Caesar rises up all bloody from the dead at the end of the first act and lets out a long primal (very primal) scream. I suppose that was to tip us off that his ghost was going to be around in the second act. The acrobatic stage entrances and exits by the lesser characters. The misplaced songs by the quite good jazz trio ("Suicide is dangerous"). The ensemble dance scene at the end of the play.
All of this only distracted from the drama. You can only feel embarassment for the actors.
Of course, it would have helped if Shakespeare had shown us a Julius Caesar who actually seemed to be a tyrant, somebody willing to hack off a few heads or pluck a a couple of eyes out of his opponents before breakfast. Instead, we get an uncle-like figure who enjoys having his breakfast tea with his beautiful wife, calling for the day's augury from the local priestesses (Rome's version of the Times).
The lines were acted straightforwardly. Cassius is ravenous and terrific. A real schemer, with a genuine lean and hungry look. The actor who played Mark Antony, although not much in the way of a stage presence, did have the wonderful presence of mind to save the funeral oration scene -- Brutus walked off center stage before he was finished. He'd forgotten that he had more crucial lines. Mark Antony made two subtle whispering asides, the second loud enough for the audience to hear, and Brutus, startled, remembered the rest and bounded back into the rest of the oration.
The claptrap: black suits, hats, and sunglasses on the squad of conspirators -- yes, I got the insane grassy knoll allusion to the supposed CIA plotters who took part in the assassination of JFK -- which made them look like the Blues Brothers. Caesar rises up all bloody from the dead at the end of the first act and lets out a long primal (very primal) scream. I suppose that was to tip us off that his ghost was going to be around in the second act. The acrobatic stage entrances and exits by the lesser characters. The misplaced songs by the quite good jazz trio ("Suicide is dangerous"). The ensemble dance scene at the end of the play.
All of this only distracted from the drama. You can only feel embarassment for the actors.
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
From Moby Dick: "Oh, my Captain! My Captain!"
Moby Dick was sighted by another ship. They're racing after him, and in his wake. Starbuck, struggling with his own precepts to save his men and himself from disaster, and to remain loyal to Ahab, makes a final appeal to Ahab.
"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's --wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away! --this instant let me alter the course! "
For a moment, Ahab softens, and takes part in the dream; he talks of his young wife and small son.
But it's over in the next moment. Crazy Ahab reminds himself at the last instant that he's bound to his fate, and demands that the ship and its men be the instrument of its fulfillment. Starbuck is in despair.
The next day, they sight Moby Dick, and the three day hunt begins.
"Oh, my Captain! my Captain! noble soul! grand old heart, after all! why should any one give chase to that hated fish! Away with me! let us fly these deadly waters! let us home! Wife and child, too, are Starbuck's --wife and child of his brotherly, sisterly, play-fellow youth; even as thine, sir, are the wife and child of thy loving, longing, paternal old age! Away! let us away! --this instant let me alter the course! "
For a moment, Ahab softens, and takes part in the dream; he talks of his young wife and small son.
But it's over in the next moment. Crazy Ahab reminds himself at the last instant that he's bound to his fate, and demands that the ship and its men be the instrument of its fulfillment. Starbuck is in despair.
The next day, they sight Moby Dick, and the three day hunt begins.
Monday, January 21, 2008
"Third" at the Huntington -- when characters are too nice
I keep expecting to dislike Wendy Wasserstein's plays: the characters are always appropriate and stereotypical emblems of their types -- the brassy domineering mother with a heart of gold, the self-assured publishing academic who still has an air of dittziness about her, the successful lawyer who knows all the lawyer jokes and tells them before anybody else can. Yet, I always enjoy her plays always laugh my way through them. They don't disappoint.
I enjoyed this play. Wonderful performances. Funny lines. Lovable characters...in fact, that's the hole in the play for me. Laurie Jameson, the professor, is such a likable woman, so composed and self-assured, so articulate, so dynamic, and full of warmth (she obviously loves her ailing friend, and puts up with her aging, difficult father) that when she accuses the supposedly right-wing student, Woodie, of plagiarism, and then doesn't relent -- what can we think other than that the playwright has not finished working on this play? We don't see the hot resentment in her that would make her do such a thing.
And Woodie. He is supposed to be a firebrand politically conservative right winger, a kind of lonely outcast in this rural liberal arts college in New Hampshire (or maybe it's Vermont). He is no such thing. He's nice. He is the boy next door. He practically idolizes professor Jameson and would gladly have an affair with her. And she likewise.
It doesn't make sense.
I enjoyed this play. Wonderful performances. Funny lines. Lovable characters...in fact, that's the hole in the play for me. Laurie Jameson, the professor, is such a likable woman, so composed and self-assured, so articulate, so dynamic, and full of warmth (she obviously loves her ailing friend, and puts up with her aging, difficult father) that when she accuses the supposedly right-wing student, Woodie, of plagiarism, and then doesn't relent -- what can we think other than that the playwright has not finished working on this play? We don't see the hot resentment in her that would make her do such a thing.
And Woodie. He is supposed to be a firebrand politically conservative right winger, a kind of lonely outcast in this rural liberal arts college in New Hampshire (or maybe it's Vermont). He is no such thing. He's nice. He is the boy next door. He practically idolizes professor Jameson and would gladly have an affair with her. And she likewise.
It doesn't make sense.
Monday, November 26, 2007
"Streamers" at the Huntington Theater
Leaving aside our reactions that David Rabe's play is full of stereotypes and cliches about young men in a barracks waiting to be sent to Vietnam, and that we are subjected to a series of dutifully instructive scenes meant to inform us about the nature of manhood, expressed and repressed homosexual identities, and the madness of war, and that the play careens toward a violent melodramatic climax that is completely nonsensical, and that this is not a play I would choose to see on Thanksgiving weekend...I do think there were solid theatrical moments here. Men do go crazy from something--from fear. Whether it's fear of being sent to Vietnam, fear of the two comically psychopathic sergeants, or fear of not being a man acceptable to the army and your bunkmates, the fear and menace is palpable.
If only Rabe had worked on the play a few more drafts.
If only Rabe had worked on the play a few more drafts.
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