White Hot Coriolanus

Back from the Shakespeare Theatre Company's IDR for Coriolanus at Sidney Harman Hall, and it's a stunning production.

As the ferocious warrior-aristocrat-traitor, Patrick Page is part Russell Crowe in Gladiator, part Alan Rickman in Die Hard, and part James Cagney in White Heat--the latter most especially brought to mind in scenes with mother Volumnia, who is played with Luponesque Mama Rose intensity by Diane D'Aquila.

I'm continuing my love affair with local stagecraft and singing praises of this production's costumes (designed by Murell Horton) and of the battle scenes evoked by a "chorus" of drummers (fight director  is Rick Sordelet; lead drummer and percussion coach is Philip Dickerson).

The IDR program is a plain-vanilla handout without actor bios; the only name I recognized from previous productions was Nick Dillenburg, one of "Two Gents" (Proteus) who in Coriolanus is one of the two tribunal representatives of the Roman citizens. Oddly, this character is played as kind of a nerd; Dillenburg is listed as an understudy for Coriolanus, pretty much the opposite. Well, having seen his bloody Proteus, I think Nick can handle it if Page wears himself out from his white-hot performance.

STC is pushing heavily for audiences to see both Coriolanus and their production of Schiller's Wallenstein, in a dramaturgical consideration of the "hero-traitor." My IDR friend is seeing the Wall but I'm giving it a pass. Seeing both in the same week as my forthcoming visit with Dolly at Ford's is just too much cognitive dissonance. Or something.

Coriolanus, previews March 28, opens April 9, 2013
directed by David Muse
Set designer: Blythe R.D. Quinlan
Lighting designer: Mark McCullough

Cast
Caius Martius, later Coriolanus: Patrick Page
Volumnia (his mother): Diane D'Aquila
Virgilia (his wife): Aaryn Kopp
Young Martius (his son): Hunter Zane
Menenius Aggripa: Robert Sicular
Cominius: Steve Pickering
Titus Lartius: Nick Dillenburg
Junius Brutus: Philip Goodwin
Sicinius Velutus: Derrick Lee Weeden
Tullus Aufidius: Reginald Andre Jackson

Back to the Futurists at the Movies

We're now just a couple of years away from the 2015 imagined in Back to the Future Part II (BTTF-II), and I'm ashamed to admit that I hadn't seen the movie (directed by Robert Zemeckis, co-written with Bob Gale)  since it first hit theaters in 1989. So I spent another weekend watching yet another sci-fi marathon, including the third installment of this popular trilogy. Perhaps my biggest shame: that I had never seen Part III until last weekend.

Arguably the biggest deal about sci-fi visions of the future is the flying car issue. BTTF-II gave us aerial traffic that looked a lot like the ground-based traffic we still have today. I did like the story's use of VTOL technology, though I do question how they imagined the engineers of the future could make these vehicles so quiet. The hoverboard was pure trend extrapolation; sadly there is little in the way of supermagnetic personal mobility at the consumer level just yet.

BTTF trilogy fans still entertain themselves with discussions of this past vision of the future we're approaching, but I take these films more or less at face value. They're entertainments. The special effects are there to show off the skills of special-effects departments, led by the awe-inspiring work of Industrial Light & Magic, the offspring of director George Lucas (one of the few movie makers who can truly be called a futurist).

What caught my eye at the end of BTTF-II was the listing of several "future consultants" in the credits. At IMDb, these eight individuals are lumped in with personal assistants, dog trainers, caterers, and body doubles under the category "Other Crew."

These "futurists" comprise an assortment of visual artists, including Mike Scheffe, the "construction coordinator" for the BTTF deLorean (the time machine), and hair and makeup designer Kerry Warn, whose other film credits include turning screen goddess Nicole Kidman into Virginia Woolfe for her Academy Award winning performance in The Hours.

This might be what real futurists do best--envision and present a visually realistic image of what the future may look and feel like.

The real futuring work in the film is less flashy than the holographic billboard for the 19th sequel of Jaws. It has to do with the existence not just of alternative scenarios, but of alternative realities. At any point when Biff or Marty or Doc could go back to the past to alter the linear path of the future, it created a new outcome and a new reality. But it did not (as happened in the original BTTF) erase the previous reality.

There's your solution to the time travel paradox: Not just multiple, but infinite universes.

And one more thing BTTF-II got terribly right: Any scenario in which a Donald Trump-like entity (to wit, rich Biff) has created a massively vulgar, decadent, and dissolute world is by definition a dystopia (see also the non-George Bailey scenario of "Pottersville" in It's a Wonderful Life).



Cynthia G. Wagner is editor of THE FUTURIST. Her opinions on sci-fi, physics, politics, and entertainment are strictly her own.

Stages of the Mind

My two most recent outings, Our Town at Ford's and Henry V at Folger, share the conceit of an actor reminding the audience that we are required to use our imaginations to help actualize the fiction they are about to present.

That's probably where the comparison ends, but it did stand out for me since I got to see these plays on subsequent Sunday matinees. Both are small stages; like Ford's, the Folger Shakespeare Library makes much with very little space, even without the minds of the audience filling in the gaps.

And, like Ford's, Folger presents challenges to the audience in search of a clear sight line. Not knowing from nothing, I landed a great view of the pillar you see prominent in the right balcony. Well, at least the chair wasn't bolted down and I could scoot closer in and lean my chin on the rail.

I have to admit to being a bit of a dork when the Stage Manager/Chorus tell me to picture the landscape of Grover's Corner or the fields at Agincourt, because I did just that, thanks to the actors handling this role, Portia for Our Town and Michael John Casey for Henry V.

Lots of "old friends" to see at Ford's, including Tom Story as a Simon Stimson with unusually convincing drunken cynicism. Since this was my first trip to Folger's, all were new to me. My friends, this time, were real people (i.e., audience), thanks to the Meetup group. The actors I hope to see around town again include the above-mentioned Casey and Katie deBuys, the young actress shockingly playing both "Katherine of France" and "Boy." It was one of the Meetup mates who noted this astonishing accomplishment of casting when she read the program.

And in the department of As Luck Would Have it, I was reading the Henry V program on the Metro on my way home, and a gentleman seeing the program in my hands asked how I enjoyed the play (very much). It turns out he was Katie's proud father, and I was happy to deliver our group's enthusiastic reviews of his daughter's work.

So we are all made-up families and friends in real worlds of the imagination. Or the other way around.

Love, hosaa
imagining reality