Orpheus and Hades Surf the Stage at UCSD

Corey Madden has been combing the beaches of Southern California talking to surfers for the last year.  She's talked to runaways living along Pacific Beach.  And she's spent a lot of time with professional surfers who have retired from the sport and now find themselves ostracized from the surfing community. 

Madden, the former associate artistic director at the Mark Taper Forum in LA for 15 years and now a visiting artist at UCSD, has also been thinking about Orpheus, the ancient myth of the Greek poet and rock star who could tame wild beasts with his lyre skills but who loses his love Eurydice to the underworld god Hades.  Madden combined her interest in surfing culture and the tale of Orpheus into a new musical called simply Surf Orpheus. It's currently being produced by the Theater and Dance Department at UCSD.  I recently went to a rehearsal of Surf Orpheus and took some photographs.

As you can see, it's a visually rich production with complicated moving set pieces and a big cast.  Madden partnered with noted choreographer Jaques Heim of Diavolo Dance company in LA and acclaimed composer Bruno Louchouarn to create the look and sonic world of Surf Orpheus.  A number of things stood out at rehearsal, not the least of which was the dedication of the undergraduate acting students, technical crew, and stage management team.  It's really quite amazing that UCSD supports a production of this scale at the undergraduate level. 

You can hear Corey Madden and Bruno Louchouarn talking about Surf Orpheus on These Days today.  The musical opens tonight, Tuesday, May 13th and runs May 17th.  Performances take place at the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theater on the La Jolla Playhouse campus.

Some Reading To Launch Your Week

Are you a fan of Canadian pianist Glenn Gould(pictured right)?  Sony Classical recently issued "Glenn Gould: The Complete Original Jacket Collection," an 80-CD - yes, I said 80!!! -  limited edition boxed set of all the studio recordings the pianist made for Columbia and CBS Masterworks.  The price is $222, which is surprisingly cheap for all you get. 

Starbucks is defending its book choice despite evidence that the author fabricated parts of the story.  

This is funny.  The theater critic at St. Paul Pioneer Press doesn't like the latest play from the Guthrie Theater and publishes a negative review.  The Guthrie then takes out a full page ad for the play in the Pioneer Press.  The ad features a full review from the theater critic at the twin cities' alternative weekly, CityPages.  It was, no surprise, a positive review.  

Check out the photographs of artist Vee Spears.  Her collection of child portraits called The Birthday Party are mesmerizing.  She was inspired by watching children play at being adults.  She shoots on polaroid film and then does post-processing digitally. 

David Ulin of  the LA Times has an essay on rereading favorite books from one's youth - do they hold up?  When you reread as an adult, with more experience and a whole different life lens, certain once cherished books may still resonate, or they may lose their spark. 

And, finally, who knew the hugely influential economist John Maynard Keynes had such an adventurous sex life?  Evan Zimroth is currently working to decipher his sex diaries.  Yes, Keynes kept sex diaries - written with codes - and they are kept in the archives at King's College in Cambridge.  Isn't it just like those kinky economists to keep sex diaries about their conquests?  I mean, you've seen one economist sex diary, you've seen them all...  

August Wilson’s Fences At Cygnet Theater

“Death ain’t nothing but a fastball on the outside corner,” says Troy Maxson, the central figure in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fences, currently on stage at Cygnet Theater.  Troy is a mix of bravado and nurtured bitterness, and he taunts death throughout the play.  He claims to have wrestled with both death and the devil, though it’s clear as this story unfolds, Troy’s personal demons aren’t giving up the fight.  

Troy is played by Antonio T.J. Johnson in this terrific co-production between Cygnet and the San Diego Black Ensemble Theater.  I loved this play.  Delicia Turner Sonnenberg directs a talented group of actors who make Wilson’s beautiful dialogue both sing and resonate.

Johnson, as Troy, is superb (the role of Troy was played by James Earl Jones on Broadway, and he won a Tony for it). He has fun with Troy’s ego-driven swagger while keeping the character’s self-doubt in play.  Johnson uses his size to great effect, making Troy a domineering figure but also agile and fluid. The anger in his physicality softens when he warms to his wife Rose (Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson, who is wonderful) or when grief takes over.

Wilson wrote Fences as part of a ten-play cycle charting the black experience in America.  Each play is set in a different decade of the 20th century (the cycle’s other Pulitzer Prize winner is The Piano Lesson).  The series is sometimes called The Pittsburgh Cycle because nine of the ten plays are set in Pittsburgh’s Hill District, an African-American neighborhood in the Pennsylvania manufacturing town where Wilson grew up.  

John Lahr (one of my heroes - he writes with such grace about the arts), the senior drama critic at The New Yorker, wrote of Wilson's plays: "The blues are catastrophe expressed lyrically; so are Wilson’s plays, which swing with the pulse of the African-American people, as they moved, over the decades, from property to personhood."

The themes in Fences are familiar to the stories we often tell.  There are stories of fathers and sons, and the struggles of marriage.  There’s the struggle for dignity in work and the pain of dreams denied.  And, most importantly, there is the story of race;  of how these familiar, universal themes unfold through the African-American experience. 

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On Sea of Tranquility, Moving West, And Writing Santa Fe

My friend Jessica and I never expected to end up in Southern California. We both grew up on the East Coast; I’d always imagined a 5^th floor walk-up in my future, or a haunted Victorian with bay windows and lots of nooks. But now we each live on canyons, with lots of glass and light.  Jess has a fire pit, for pete’s sake.  We don’t have fire pits back east.  We have fires in barrels on neighborhood corners, but no one drinks martinis standing around those.

I figured “Sea of Tranquility,” at The Old Globe Theatre, was a fitting play for us to see on Friday night. It’s playwright Howard Korder’s (the Globe’s Playwright-in-Residence) comic take on the persistent belief in the transformative powers of the West. 

Jess and I have recurring conversations about where we live; it’s our way of finding meaning here, a way of grafting our ideas of ourselves onto this still new and different place.  The main characters in “Sea of Tranquility” seek the West as a way to escape the past. What they find out, of course, is there is no escape.

Ben (Ted Koch), a psychologist, and his wife, Nessa (Erika Rolfsrud), sell their Connecticut home and relocate to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  When we first meet Ben, he’s in therapy with an older lesbian couple and a Jewish boy who has taken up the Nazi cause. His swastika-wear is a laugh offered in lieu of exploring the boy’s anger at his mother’s newfound sexuality.  I like the humor, but I would have preferred some insight into how his world has turned upside down.

We meet a number of Ben’s clients throughout the play; in fact, there are fourteen characters in Sea of Tranquility.  I felt like I was watching a series of vignettes that are supposed to tie together, but I couldn’t find the thread.   Ben is the link, but a weak one.  As a therapist, he’s the impetus for revelation from others, so when we’re later expected to make sense of his emotional life, I didn’t know or care enough about him. Actor Ted Koch does what he can with Ben, but the character is thinly drawn.  In fact, he’s more of a foil for the other characters and for Santa Fe itself. 

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Culture Lust Is Back

 

A lot has happened while Culture Lust was in the shop. 

Everyone continues to be shocked by the tragic death of 28-year-old actor Heath Ledger.   His passing has movie critics citing the deaths of James Dean, River Phoenix and even Marilyn Monroe as comparable stars who died as their careers were beginning to peak. 

I thought Ledger was making good career choices and am saddened that his life and work is cut short.  Brokeback Mountain had its problems and pleasures – one of the latter is the scene where Ennis discovers his and Jack’s shirts entwined in the back of Jack’s closet.  Ledger’s performance there broke my heart. 

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Despite Being a Nervous Wreck, I Loved Corteo

 

Cirque du Soleil is at the Del Mar Fairgrounds

 

Cirque du Soleil is in town with Corteo, one of its six touring productions. I went to the opening Friday night and let me tell you, it's all the things you hear about their shows: awe-inspiring! jaw-dropping! death-defying! Since compound adjectives seem to work when talking about Cirque, I'm going to add one of my own: nerve-wracking!

I was anxious the whole time about someone falling (phew, nobody did). I've developed a late but mild fear of heights, which obviously added to my anxiety. But it's also too unbelievable that people can twist their bodies in that way, or make them fly through the air, or suspend themselves 20 feet above the stage by a PIECE OF FABRIC!, or hula hoop across a tight rope 30 feet in the air. I mean, who does this? What is the molecular make-up of a person that says "Hey, I want to try that!"? It might be like the speed gene, which I definitely don't have (while driving, I've been called "grandma" more than once, but I brush it off. Safety first!).

But despite the damage to my nerves, Corteo is crazy fun and makes for a great night out. "Corteo" is Italian for cort?ge, which means procession. In this case, the procession is a funeral parade in the form of a carnival, all imagined by a dying clown. Not the scary, creepy kind of clown, the cute 16th-century Italian kind.

The costuming and set are gorgeous. It's a mix of 16th- century Italian fashion (think Commedia dell'arte), traditional big top wear, and the latest in gymnast chic. There's also less make-up in this show - you can see the performers' faces, which look all to cucumber cool as they're flying through the air.

My favorite numbers: A man climbing a ladder perched against...nothing! It just stood straight up in the air and he had to wiggle the whole way up to balance it. He flew up and down it and then brought out a bigger ladder and proceeded to slowly make his way up, balancing, with no net underneath.

There was also an amazing opening number which had women swinging from three elaborate chandeliers high above the stage. Oh, and a real crowd-pleaser, deservedly so, featured a female little person (not sure what the p.c. term is) attached to a bouquet of huge helium balloons. She floated out into the audience where people would gently push her feet to move her around as if passing a beach ball above their heads. Now that I'm writing it, it sounds kind of weird. But it was really magical and, at the very least, something you don't see every day.

Even if you've been to other Cirque du Soleil shows, I suspect these things never get old. Del Mar Fairgrounds hosts the big tent, and you can learn more here.

Oh, and check out this whistle performance from the show. This was the only act where I wasn't nervous that the performer would get hurt. I could care less about vocal chord strain.

Cygnet Theater Expands to Old Town

One of San Diego's most acclaimed mid-size theaters is growing a size larger. Cygnet Theater, based in the College area, has just leased the Old Town Theater for 10 years! Programming will now alternate between the College Area location, which is a 157-seat theater, and the historic Old Town Theater, which seats 248. According to Cygnet's Executive Director, Bill Schmidt: "The addition of this venue will allow us to more than double our ticket sales and expand our programming beyond the limitations of the current venue."

Cygnet Artistic Director Sean Murray assures San Diegans that such growth does not mean a change in programming: "It promises to be a home for us to explore and expand on the eclectic and surprising material we've become known for."

I, for one, am excited about what this means for adventurous theater in the city. While Cygnet isn't able to mount two shows in both spaces at the same time -- yet!-- the addition will allow them to extend more popular runs because they now have another space for rehearsals and set work for successive shows.

Cygnet plans to bring the Old Town Theater up to code with new lighting and sound equipment, among other renovations, and will begin producing work there in the fall of 2008.

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Union-Tribune Theater Critic Takes Buyout

Anne Marie Welsh

Anne Marie Welsh has been covering theater and dance at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 24 years. During her tenure, the paper has published nearly five thousand of her reviews, features, news stories and commentaries. I suspect that for many in our community, Anne Marie's insights and critical reflections became a way to engage with theater beyond the stage; a model for thinking and talking about how good theater explores our individual, social, and universal experiences in penetrating ways, and how bad theater doesn't.

This week, Anne Marie announced she's taking the Union-Tribune's buyout offer and leaving her post as theater critic. I was/am so troubled by this news. Newspapers everywhere are gutting staff, with arts coverage often the first to go. In many ways, we are a theater town. Our veteran critics, from prominent platforms, are crucial in fostering that identity and cementing its reality. We seem to be losing them on multiple fronts.

Below is an interview I conducted with Anne Marie over email. She has much to say about the challenges newspapers face, the role of arts criticism in emerging media, and shares some memorable moments in San Diego theater.

Anne Marie, why did you decide to take the buy-out?

The buyout offer was basically too good for someone like me to pass up; I always have many irons in the fire and dreams deferred by the demands of the job. Now I will get a year's pay, medical benefits until age 65 paid 25 percent by the company, plus all my accrued vacation and holiday pay, which in my case is quite a bit. The UT is that rare organization that offered a good pension as well; having been here 24 years, I have a little nest egg. The money won't last forever and no journalist works for the money anyway; it's a pittance compared to corporate salaries. But this "intermission" will allow me to realize a few of those dreams and re-orient my working life a bit. Two of my three sons are grown and on their own; the third is a junior in high school and getting ready to launch. And of course, these are tumultuous times in the newspaper business -- at every newspaper -- as we all adapt to the Internet and worry about killing trees for newsprint. And, finally, who knows when such an offer might come again?

You were on These Days yesterday to talk holiday theater, and when I asked you if we could discuss your leaving the UT on the air, you said "Not yet... I'm afraid I might cry." It's difficult then, to leave this post?

It is extremely difficult to leave this post, Angela. I came to San Diego for this job -- initially as the paper's dance critic, backup theater person behind Welton Jones, and its arts reporter. I came to know almost everyone working in the arts on both sides of the curtain, so to speak, because of my reportorial duties. And my passion for the performing arts is, apparently, unquenchable -- music and dance and performance and opera, as well as theater. For many years, I was able to teach dance history and criticism at State, UCSD, and USIU, which had a terrific musical theater program and good dance program. As a result, I came to know and admire the academic arts community as well. Though critics are in an awkward position socially among the artists they cover, I think most people knew that my heart was in the right place and that my work, even when it was negative, was written in a constructive spirit. I tried to be fair, honest and supportive without being a booster -- which of course does no one any good. It's been a great pleasure to watch the dance and theater community grow again, as it has lately, geometrically. It's gratifying to think I contributed at least a little to that growth, while it's also very sad to see the number of media outlets covering the arts here shrink and the news hole for the arts -- at least in print publications -- get smaller.

Do you know if the UT is going to fill your position?

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Humble Boy at New Village Arts:  Hamlet, Bees, and Family

Daren Scott, Rosina Reynolds and Dana Case in Humble Boy

Photo Credit: Adam Brick

Two weeks ago, on the Saturday before the fires, I went to see the New Village Arts' production of Humble Boy. I was all set to write about the play on Monday, fresh with insights and generally impressed with the whole affair. Of course, by 5 a.m. Monday, with fires burning north and south and producing live coverage from the studio, my mind was light years away from the English country garden that provides the setting for Humble Boy.

But now I can return. Thankfully. The Humble's garden is an interesting place to be, full of bee trivia, astrophysics, and, most centrally, family strife. The story centers on Felix Humble, a 35-year-old astrophysicist who has returned home for the funeral of his father, a prominent entomologist and beekeeper who died in the family garden. Felix's mother, Flora, is a handful. She's been valued for her beauty most of her life and as she ages, she fears irrelevance. Flora has also been having an affair, bored as she was with the devotion of her husband. Felix discovers his mother's affair during this visit and his anger mixed with his grief makes him... you guessed it... Hamlet! Hamlet, but surrounded by funnier people.

There's even an Ophelia in the role of Rosie, played by Jessica John, who I recently saw in Cygnet Theater's Communicating Doors. She's good in this production too, and keeping excellent company. Rosina Reynolds plays Flora, investing her with the right mix of bitterness, fragility and want of affection. Reynolds is always a pleasure to watch, and this role gives her plenty to work with.

Jim Chovick makes an impression as George Pye, Flora's crass and blustery love interest. He looks a little like W.C. Fields, wearing the uniform of a used car salesman. He's a blowhard with a big heart. George makes character-revealing statements like this one about his daughter: "She's not a looker but she's got character and I love her to bits." He makes you cringe, but he's also strangely lovable.

Humble Boy was written by British playwright Charlotte Jones. It's dense writing at times, but often really funny. The ending is predictable but touching - in large part because Rosina Reynolds just nails it. She has a "eureka moment" -- a theme in the play -- and while it could go terribly sentimental, it steers clear because of her performance.

Humble Boy runs through November 11th at New Village Arts, which finally has a new space. They're no longer in the Jazzercise building, though they still have a big Jazzercise ad in the program catalog featuring a woman sleek and toned. I was slightly bitter about the ad, only because I saw it after helping myself to cookies during intermission.

At any rate, the new space is refreshing - it's in downtown Carlsbad on B Street. And for the next two weeks, it comes equipped with its own English garden and bee hive!

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Off-Stage Drama Surrounding A Catered Affair, Both Starring Harvey Fierstein

Harvey Fierstein

There's something of a theater world brouhaha stirring around Harvey Fierstein's Old Globe production of A Catered Affair. While early reviews have generally been good, Charles McNulty, theater critic at the LA Times, panned the show last week. A Catered Affair is a musical that Fierstein adapted from the 1952 Paddy Chayefsky film of the same name. McNulty writes in his review:

Should we really be trawling for such mediocre source material without a sharp revitalizing vision? Chayefsky's expiration date passed long ago, yet Fierstein serves up the saga as though it were fresh milk. But let's return to the show without further ado -- this is a story line that's peculiarly vulnerable to being switched off during commercial breaks.

Ouch.

Fierstein apparently felt the critical sting and has since shot back at McNulty on his blog:

The man begins his piece by telling us that he hates the original film, hates the original teleplay, has no respect or even like for the work of Paddy Chayefsky, dislikes social drama in general, and downright loathes me. He then wastes the rest of his newspaper's space trying to justify his loathsome opinion. I'm sorry, friends, that's not reviewing, that's simply proselytizing.

I do love the word "loathe". It's so... dramatic. Note that Fierstein uses it twice, opting for "loathsome" the second go-around. Nice. Anyway, Fierstein goes on to call McNulty a bully:

But bullies don't play fair, do they? He dismissed our show before ever entering the theater. I think his newspaper should do likewise with his contract. Such open hostility for the art of creation does no one, least of all the LA Times readership, any service.

Fierstein is certainly influential on Broadway and has apparently been emailing some heavy hitters to complain about McNulty. Michael Riedel at the New York Post asks, is there really anything to be gained by going after critics? I'm not sure there is.

McNulty has a role in our culture, as do all critics, and it's a role that I value. I think the bigger question is whether or not today's criticism has somehow become too mean-spirited, resorting to snark and snide to keep up with the tone of the blogosphere and its reigning cool kids.

Personally, I didn't find McNulty's review mean-spirited. He clearly didn't like the play, but he was hardly showing "open hostility for the art of creation" - something he writes and thinks about for a living. Sure, McNulty reserved his most biting comments for Fierstein, but Fierstein's presence, and many adoring fan would say talent, is bigger than some small countries. Surely he can take a hit from McNulty without getting bruised and crying about it.

This kerfuffle will all blow over in no time and A Catered Affair will end up on Broadway, despite McNulty's vote. I have yet to see the play, but I'd love to hear from those who have - does the play feel dated? Is it funny? Touching and tender, as described by the Union-Tribune? Did you like the score? Let me know your thoughts.