ice storm

Why isn't this movie playing anywhere?

Hell, I'd see it on Christmas Day. And Boxing Day. And New Year's Day. And Valentine's Day. And . . .

The Original WTF Play

The Homecoming, Cort Theatre. That sound you hear on 48th Street at 10:30 every night is a lot of people scratching their heads over the second act of this play,which still, after over 40 years, feels like a deliberate kick in the face by the playwright. Great acting, but I'm not ashamed to say I still don't know what the foo is going on in this play.

The acting is fantastic, the performances are never less than riveting, and the family stuff is dark and hilarious and makes perfect sense until the sexual/power struggle stuff kicks in, at which point every expectation you have goes out the window, along with the logic of character and action. And it still works, on its own definitely unique terms, so what do I know?

Well, I don't know what's going on in that second act, I'll tell you that. Yes, it's about Ruth's homecoming, not Teddy's, but all the implications that its the three sons' dead mother come back to life (Ruth has three boys herself) seems like a desperate attempt to give thematic unity to an out-of-control script, and the "What do you say to a little prostitution, Ruth?/I say I need to see it in writing and here's my list of things to buy" turn to the plot, which could actually use some thematic development (woman as sex object), comes out of nowhere and then takes the play back with it.

My attempts to make sense of all this as we stood outside in the cold and watched Michael McKean sign autographs: "It's like nobody mentions the elephant in the room; and then the elephant disappears. You hear it; you see its shadow; but it never shows up." "I would have loved to have been in on the rehearsals, because all the actors know what's going on, even if we don't."

From Penelope Gilliat's review of the 1965 Royal Shakespeare production:

The drama in The Homecoming is not the plot. In Pinter it never is. It consists in the swaying of violent people as they gain minute advantages. A man who does the washing-up has the advantage over a man sitting in an armchair who thinks he can hear resentment in every swilling tea-leaf. The member of a married couple who stays up late has the advantage over the one who goes to bed first. A father has the advantage over his children as long as he can make them think of their birth and not let them remind him of his own death: the sons are condemned to ruminate interminably about what happened the night they were made in the image of those two people, at it.

Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess. I wonder if she came up with that while she was scratching her head and watching Ian Holm sign autographs.

Personally, I can't wait for the reviews when this opens so I can read Ben Brantley's "I refuse to admit I didn't understand this play" SAT essay on all things Pinter.

Call Security!

Thanks to the firewall at my day job, I am no longer able to post during working hours. Or comment on anyone else's blog. Or even see comments. Because, y'know, doing that instead of reading the Wall Street Journal online might do more damage to them than the sub-prime mortgage loan crisis.

I'm not surprised. This is, after all, a company which blocks me from reading The Nation online. (No joke.)

So what does this mean? More posts in the evening and the weekends. And tons o' fodder for a play or a novel.

Childrens Books for the Z Generation

Weekend Update

I Don't Like Mondays. Weekend? What weekend? It's mornings like this which totally reinforce my low self-esteem.

Sad realization #1: isn't that what a crappy day job is supposed to do?

Ben Brantley Reviews Au Revoir Parapluie

What he wrote:

Inspired by the myth of the wife-losing Orpheus, “Au Revoir Parapluie” conjures a tragicomic universe that thwarts, mocks and dissolves human pretensions, ambitions and illusions of permanence. The title, which translates as “Farewell, Umbrella,” is a nod to the futility of seeking shelter from life’s storms.

What it means in English:

Inspired by my total inability to comprehend intellectually why I was having so much fun, my review of “Au Revoir Parapluie” will contain CriticBuzz© like "tragicomic universe," "dissolves human pretensions," and "illusions of permanence." After which I will suck all the poetry out of the title and tell you its literal meaning, followed by the kind of symbolic explanation which got even me all A's in English.

Au Revoir, Parapluie

Ever wonder what Buster Keaton would have created if he'd been a choreographer?

Then go see Au Revoir, Parapluie at BAM before it closes on December 16th.

And yes, it's heretical to mention Keaton because choreographer/star James Thiérrée is actually the grandson of Charlie Chaplin. But watching him force his feet to walk or try to put on a jacket (okay, the jacket bit is pure WC Fields) is like watching an outtake from The General or Sherlock Junior.

Everyone in this piece is fantastic, the mood switches from slapstick to tenderness at the drop of a shuttlecock, and at times the visuals make you think you're watching the live-action version of a Miyazaki movie.

Seriously, I can't recommend this highly enough, and will probably try to see it again before it closes.

Tequila, noun. The devil.

Weekend update

I've got a leaf taped over my hoo hah. After mulled cider and taco salad Chez Ben Bradshaw, went to Southpaw to catch the end of the Novemberfest burlesque show and see The Woggles at midnight--which turned into 1 AM when the burlesquers, uhm, kept coming on late. Got home at 3 AM, woke up at 8, and started working on --

Deadline City, Part 1. -- Three Dead Slaves. Back in October my friend DJ gave me a deadline of December 3 to finish the next section of the Roman mystery novel, and as of Friday I have a complete Book Two. Except that the ending limps. It still needs another chapter, so I start working on it at 8:30 and by 11:30 I've drafted the first third of it. I type up what I've written, print it out, go to a coffee shop, and finish the second third, before taking a 90-minute nap and heading into Hoboken to see --

The band that never fails to deliver. -- The Woggles at Maxwell's. It's cold as a landlord's heart as I walk down Washington Street, but as warm as a Cratchit Christmas when I get to the club. Saw The Ribeye Brothers (very good), The Hi-Risers (my new favorite band), The Black Hollies (pretentious and boring, but they packed the biggest audience so go figure), and The Woggles, kicking ass as usual but this time as the closing band, which meant a full hour of great music from them. Home again at 3 AM, slept in till 9 AM, and started working on --

Deadline City, Part 2. -- the final third of the final chapter, which I finished at 11:57 AM in the Au Bon Pain downtown, while singing Ragged But Right (a Woggles song) to myself. Called DJ and reported in, then typed up the changes, and printed out a copy while downloading pictures from Friday and Saturday and --

I wish I had a river I could skate away on. -- finishing the third and final version of this year's Christmas CD, replacing one long song with three small tunes I found online. Then I took the printed copy to --

Thank you, Newcastle Brown Ale. -- Cornelia Street, where I parked myself in front of Madeline the bartender, had three Newcastles and a steak dinner, made continuity edits to Book Two, and plotted out the rest of the novel based on what I'd just finished, said plotting including answers to three major questions which have been bugging me quite literally for years about the plot. Went home at 9ish, typed in the edit changes, fell asleep on the couch while watching Paprika, and went to bed at 1.