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

Our Town at 75

Despite my settled niche on the comfortable side of the footlights, I have once or twice trod the boards. (Treaded? Traid? Tried.) When I tried out for Our Town in high school, as everyone did, I had no real ambition or expectation of playing Emily, as everyone did.

When our acting teacher wandered down the line-up of junior and senior females, he immediately spotted the enormous potential in me to play a townsperson. An old one. Bespectacled and pale-haired, yes, I no doubt looked like Irene Ryan to the casual observer. I was cast among those nameless folks expected to sing in the church choir in Act II and sit in the cemetery in Act III. I wasn't really nameless. In the program, my character was identified as Second Dead Woman. I had two lines:

"I always liked that hymn. I was hoping they'd sing a hymn."

"T'ain't no time for him to be here."

The first line was pretty easy. The second line, my motivation was a bit ambiguous. Was he here in the middle of the night? Was he here in the middle of the busy season?

No matter. My principal shortcoming as an actress was lack of vocal power. No matter how loudly I thought I was hollering out my lines, the director said he couldn't hear me. This actually proved beneficial during the choir scenes. Heh.

My other shortcoming as an actress was the inability to see in the dark, particularly right after the blinding lights go to blackout. I never made it off stage once at the end of the play without bumping into every single folding chair set up for the dead people in that stage cemetery.

No matter. I am very comfortable in the audience. And now that I've finally found the one and only perfect seat in Ford's Theatre, I will enjoy their production of Our Town.

My tribute: OURTOWN @75 (with "It's in Every One of Us" performed by Clay Aiken, plus program and production art through the years).




Love, hosaa
remembering something in my bones....

Mamet's Mad Men

Glengarry Glen Ross = Hughie x 6.

Alexander Strain as "Richard Roma." Photo by Danisha Crosby

I really really really didn't want to go see a David Mamet play this season at Round House Theatre. Pulitzer Prize notwithstanding, there is nothing I can relate to here. And I'm still mad at David Mamet for once writing that "all drama is conflict." (I suppose it is, but not all conflicts are wars. See Thornton Wilder.)

I would have switched this ticket to get an extra one to one of the remaining productions, but my theater buddy refused since we didn't know anything about the new shows that RHT switched to when the new director took over. (Couldn't interest my Jewish friend in the Bible book writing play. Go figure.)

Another reason I wasn't anxious to see this production was that I only recognized one of the actors, Rick Foucheux as Shelly "the Machine" Levene. Foucheux's previous RHT credits include Pride and Prejudice and The Weir.

Rick Foucheux as "Shelly." Photo by Danisha Crosby

But as I glanced through the program, I recognized more of Round House's veteran character men:

• Alexander Strain as "Richard Roma," previously seen in Next Fall, My Name Is Asher Lev, and Lord of the Flies.
• Jeff Allin as "Dave Moss," previously seen in Young Robin Hood, Permanent Collection, and Treasure Island.
• Conrad Feininger as "George Aaronow," previously in Charming Billy.
• Kenyatta Rogers as "John Williamson," previously in Amadeus, A Wrinkle in Time, Eurydice, and A Lesson Before Dying.

(New to RHT were Jesse Terrill as "James Lingk" and Stephen Patrick Martin as "Baylen.")

So I had no complaint coming or going with the acting, nor with the nifty two-act set design (kudos, James Kronzer). Or the direction by Mitchell Hébert.

Nope, it's just Mamet. And I really shouldn't have had a complaint about Mamet, since his A Life in the Theatre was, it so happens, the first production I ever saw at RHT back in the old round schoolhouse venue.

Like the character of "Erie" in O'Neill's Hughie, though, these characters were just thoroughly contemptible. Didn't want to spend an evening with them. A woman behind me kept whispering to her husband, "This is painful. This is just painful." In the side section, another woman was putting on her lipstick. And another woman finally had enough and walked out. Speed that plow.

See you next at Folger's Henry V and, at Ford's, my village of happy nice people, Our Town.

Love, hosaa
de-Mameting

Hughie: Slices of (Low) Life

Back from last night's dress rehearsal of Hughie, the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of Eugene O'Neill's one-act mostly monologue, starring Richard Schiff (you'd remember him as Toby from West Wing but you wouldn't recognize him as Erie, the down-and-out Broadway johnny of O'Neill's world).

   

Richard Schiff rehearsal photo by Nella Vera.


For me, it was a mid-week adventure after a frustrating first half of the week at work. Journeys downtown on the Metro, with rain and wind threatening, fans heading to the Georgetown Hoyas game to compete with for a decent meal. Kinda exhausted and fed up before I even got to the play.

Picture it, a talker and a listener. The talker is full of what a big shot he is - name dropper, gets into all the best clubs, limos, Broadway, knows a guy that can get him all the best dope and dolls... yeah, you know the type. And the listener checks in and out of the talk, under the weight of this overbearing ego but stuck with it for the duration.

And then after I finished my meal, I headed to the play.

Yeah, my otherwise wonderful dinner at Ruby Tuesday's kindly gave me a preview of Schiff's performance of O'Neill's low-life character study, a warm-up act courtesy of a pot-bellied middle-aged Hoyas fan in the booth across from me loudly recollecting his glory days.

I will say my waiter/Night Clerk, Kevin, was a delight. I was undecided about dessert, so he brought me a plate with chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, and cherry sauce all over. Yum! And he didn't put it on my bill. I hope I tipped him enough. Thank you, young Kevin, for being the sweet interlude in my two-act reality/fiction experience of one of the things I hate most about humanity: Middle-aged men full of shit.

Anyway, as a 50-minute one-act play, my friend and I felt that this production of Hughie might leave a typical theater-goer a bit short-changed. I recommend you eat out first and go on a night when the Hoyas are playing. (I suspect Caps fans are not so O'Neillesque.)

Hughie by Eugene O'Neill
Shakespeare Theatre Company's Lansburgh Theatre
January 31 - March 17, 2013
Doug Hughes: Director
Cast:
Richard Schiff: "Erie" Smith
Randall Newsome: Night Clerk

love, hosaa

The Clay Aiken Christmas Experience, cont'd.

Picking up after the recaps of my own tour experience, I here offer the four stories that were read on tour. These were stories that were submitted by fans for the 2007 concert tour, and selected specially by Clay to be read again this time around while he went backstage to read a book. Or at least change his clothes. *g* Each of the stories segued into a song, so the montages here include those songs.

Story #1 is "Mary, Did You?" about how a mother found solace over the death of her son by meditating on the figure of Mary in the manger. It is followed by Clay's "Mary, Did You Know?"



For story #2, there was one story that was used through most of the tour, but a second "story #2" was recorded especially for one stop at which the reader and her son had a meet-and-greet with Clay. Both stories are about mothers and sons, and are followed by Clay's "Merry Christmas with Love." (For these montages, I used different clips for the song portion, so that each story-and-song montage is unique.)

Story #2 - "The Lights of Christmas" (with Kurt)


Story #2 - "Never Too Old" (with Mike)


The third story was told by Clay Aiken's mother, Faye, and preceded the "Sentimental Medley" ("Ill Be Home for Christmas," "The Christmas Song," and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas") during the tour. The story is presented here without the medley (I'm montaging that separately, due to length).

Story #3 - "Christmas Time's a-Comin'" (Faye's story)

[Update 1-21-2013: Here is the "teal" version of the Sentimental Medley, which followed Faye's story during the concert. Check back soon for the "purple" version!]
All four of these stories were published in the book Remember When, available from the National Inclusion Project.

For the record, I also submitted a story back in 2007, "Christmas and the Great Tormentor." I recorded it for my brother, that devil of a Christmas packaging tormentor. Someday I might post it here, but for now it's just a family thing.

Love, hosaa
Remembering when....