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‘Forum’ Is a Pleasant Diversion at the Maltz Jupiter Theater

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The Maltz Ensemble  -- A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
 

Why see this production for the umpteenth time?  Sondheim. 

 

It’s now been a little more than a year since the passing of Stephen Sondheim, the leading composer/lyricist of 20th century musical theater.  His genius at wordplay is on full display with A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  After gaining fame as a lyricist for West Side Story and Gypsy, he finally had the opportunity realize his dream of being a composer as well with Forum.  It is the first Broadway production where he is credited as a composer/lyricist, some sixty years ago.   It was mainstream Broadway at the time but alas it is now a little dated.  The risqué sexual undercurrent was cutting edge then, but tame by today’s standards. 

 

Writing a farce was a challenge for Sondheim. The characters in Forum exist to keep us laughing, and Sondheim took up the challenge, bending rules of the “book musical” he had been taught by his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein.   It helped that the book is by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (of M*A*S*H fame) who were influenced by the plays of Plautus, a Roman playwright who is considered the father of contemporary farce,  

 

In a talk which was transcribed for the August 1978 Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Sondheim said: “… we worked on Forum for three years because Farce is, I think, the most difficult form of playwriting….. I think that Forum is the best Farce ever written…elegant and…tightly plotted. There’s not a wasted moment in Forum and the truth and the test of it is that the play is just as funny when performed by a group of high school students as it is when performed on Broadway it is based on situation, so solid, that you cannot not laugh.”

 

Which is the other reason for seeing this production in the newly renovated Maltz Jupiter Theater:  it fits their vision of becoming “Broadway South,” using their expanded and updated facilities to mount a full-blown production with original scenery, costumes, lighting and orchestration, and auditioning for very talented actors. 

Paul Louis (Marcus Lycus), Scott Cote (Pseudolus), Andrew Sellon (Senex), Jeremy Morse (Hysterium)

 

The plot is pretty straight forward, filled with sexual innuendo (albeit dated and schtick); it is about a conniving Roman slave (Pseudolus) who wants his freedom while his master (Hero) wants the virginal girl next door (Philia), and so the slave concocts a plan to achieve his master’s desire IF he will give him his freedom.  Every complication known to vaudevillian theater is thrown in the way.

 

When collaborating with Shevelove and Gelbart, Sondheim had Phil Silvers in mind when creating Pseudolus. Silvers played the role in a revival, but the original Broadway role went to Zero Mostel.  Nathan Lane is another luminary who played the role, so it’s a tough act to follow, yet this production’s Scott Cote measures up to the demands of the role.  He also has a better singing voice than those well-known predecessors.  The young master, Hero, is played by Steven Huynh with wide eyed innocence. He is in love with virginal Philia. Mackenzie Meadows delightfully displays Philia’s naïveté of just about everything but attracting a man.

 

Steven Huynh (Hero), Scott Cote (Pseudolus), Mackenzie Meadows (Philia)
 

One of those men is the Roman Captain, Miles Gloriosus, to whom the brothel owner, Marcus Lycus (Paul Louis), sold Phila (one of the many farcical complications).  Miles is indeed gloriously played by Sean William Davis.  (Think of the bravado of Lancelot singing “C'est Moi" in Camelot.).  Davis just oozes majesty and sex appeal on stage, his voice clarion.  He appears at the end of the first act and dominates the production from then on.

Sean William Davis (Miles Gloriosus)

 

There are many memorable and or amusing songs, particularly “Everybody Ought to Have a Maid,” “Pretty Little Picture, “and “I’m Calm” (the latter laughably delivered by Jeremy Morse as Hysterium).  But the best known song, sung with gusto by the cast, and one that Sondheim added to the show more or less at the last minute, is “Comedy Tonight” -- heeding the advice of Hammerstein that an opening number can make or break a show.   

 

Joining the ensemble of this production is Roberta Burke (Domina), Wayne LeGette (Erronius), and Andrew Sellon (Senex). The courtesans –  “Tintinabula, Panacea, Geminae Twins, Vibrata, and Gymnasia” – are so amusingly and seductively played by Cat Pagano, Ashley McManus, Melanie Farber, Minami Yushi, Laura Sky Herman, Kellyanna Polk Wackym, respectively, while ”The Proteans” who are called upon by the characters to play different roles to move the comedic plot along are entertainingly and energetically played by Cameron Benda, Alex Jorth, and Deon Ridley.

 

Director Jennifer Werner and Choreographer Ariel J. Reid have such a large cast rotating around the stage that there is never a dull moment.  The two hour running time with one intermission passes fast.

 

Musical Director Cary Fantel’s ensemble of eight musicians comes across like a larger orchestra and Scott Stauffer’s Sound Design is clear.

 

Maltz bolsters the professional nature of their production with the visual delights of Leslye Menshouse’s costume designs and Adam Koch’s colorful scenic designs of the homes of Lycus, Senex, and Erronius on a Roman street.

 

If you are a Sondheim fan or appreciate a night of diversion from the times we live in, you will want to see the Maltz’s production of Forum. Indeed. “Goodness and badness / Man in his madness / This time it turns out all right -- /Tragedy tomorrow / Comedy tonight!” 

Photographs by Jason Nuttle Photography

 

 




A Must-See Rendition of the Timeless ‘Twelve Angry Men’ at Palm Beach Dramaworks

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This is one of the finest productions in Dramawork’s long history of excellent offerings.  Here is a true ensemble effort, a PBD reunion of a group of the finest male actors who have graced their stage over the years.  Maybe it’s the times, or the intensity of this play with it’s realistic, fast paced dialogue, or the size and brilliance of the cast playing off one another, or the inspired direction, but the gestalt is a passionate, stunning production, which would hold up to accolades on Broadway.  It is an emphatic statement that live theatre is back.

 

 Seen against our present time when democracy itself has been under siege, this production takes flight with new meaning and relevancy, perhaps even more relevant today than when it was written by Reginald Rose as a teleplay in 1954, then adapted for the stage, and ultimately becoming the well known 1957 film. 

 

As a courtroom drama 12 Angry Men is unique as it does not take place in the courtroom, it unfolds during the deliberations of the jury, the courtroom details becoming clearer to the audience through the eyes of the 12 men charged with the responsibility of possibly condemning a 16 year old boy to death for the accused killing of his father.  The lapidary character performances by this all star cast exposes the jurors’ personality traits and deep held prejudices in this gripping nearly two hour performance. 

 

A jury is supposed to be composed of one’s peers, but the all white, male jury of the play was Rose’s statement that the jury pools of NYC in the 1950’s were typically not gender or racially inclusive.  This production again raises the issue whether an accused today can receive a trial by an impartial jury of one’s peers.  Although today we have greater inclusiveness there is now heightened political divisiveness.

 

As the house lights go down we see the empty, neglected courtroom and then hear a steady one note drone musical tone and the off stage judge ominously charging the jury: “I urge you to deliberate honestly and thoughtfully. If there is a reasonable doubt—then you must bring me a verdict of not guilty. If, however, there is no reasonable doubt—then you must, in good conscience, find the accused guilty.”--Then as the door to the jury room is opened by the guard, played by Cliff Goulet, the jurors file in from the courtroom. 

 

At first, just informal chatter as they find seats, and then the first show of hands reflect an initial rush to judgement.  The jurors have other things to do and as the defendant is “one of those people,” he’s probably guilty.  But it takes just one stalwart level-headed juror, the play’s protagonist, #8, faultlessly played by Tom Wahl who stands alone not rushing to judgement, embracing his character’s profound responsibility, assimilating what the Judge dispassionately said offstage.

 

Tom Wahl (#8), William Hayes (#3) Photo by Tim Stepien
 

He is the fulcrum ultimately bringing all the other jurors into his orbit of questioning a guilty verdict with “reasonable doubt” hanging in the stale hot air of the jury room.  Wahl’s performance is driven by his character’s patience and sense of impartiality. 

 

The Foreman, Juror #1 played by Tim Altmeyer, struggles to keep peace in the jury room while trying to count and recount votes, finally angrily (everyone gets his turn  to turn to anger) throwing down the gauntlet challenging someone else to take his place as Foreman.

 

A formidable antagonist to #8 is Juror #10, portrayed by an explosive Rob Donohoe.  He delivers a powerhouse performance displaying his inbred racial prejudices with increasing ferocity throughout the play. At first he is just perplexed that Juror #8 is the only one voting not guilty in the initial round  exclaiming, “Boy oh boy! There’s always one!”  (The irony is not lost on the audience that it takes only one.)  Nonetheless his other antics bring needed humor into the jury room.

 

Rob Donohoe (#10),Tim Altmeyer (#1) Photo by Tim Stepien

Wahl (#8) has another implacable opponent, Juror #3 who has a sad back story of estrangement from his son.  This challenging part is played by the Producing Artistic Director of PBD, William Hayes, his first time on stage in almost 20 years.  What must that have been like returning to his roots as an actor?  Hayes demonstrates he still has the right stuff to perform the strong-willed, one track minded juror who again and again swears he can never be convinced of the defendant’s innocence.  He is a bully and his personal history drives his thinking.  Hayes seethes, consumed by his belief in the boy’s guilt, pitiable in his final capitulation.

 

John Leonard Thompson deftly plays the impatient, wise-cracking and opinionated Juror #7.  His attitude could be summed up ‘Guilty, I got a ball game to get to! The whole deal is a waste of time!’  This contrasts to the 11th Juror, a European refuge played by David Kwiat with dignity.  It is #11 who later ironically (as an immigrant) reminds his fellow jurors of their sacred responsibility, derived from the Constitution.

 

David Kwiat (#11), Jim Ballard (#5), John Leonard Thompson (#7) Photo by Tim Stepien

 

Dennis Creaghan (# 9) does not say much at first, astutely playing the elder statesman, one who notices things and brings the wisdom of his years to the jury room.  Those observations are also a form of introspection as he heartrendingly comments on one of the elderly witnesses: “Nobody knows him, nobody quotes him, nobody seeks his advice after seventy-five years. That’s a very sad thing, to be nothing. A man like this needs to be recognized, to be listened to, to be quoted just once.”  His brand of wisdom comes in conflict with the robotic rationality of Juror #4, Gary Cadwallader who meticulously portrays a man of wealth, someone who thinks he sees things clearly.  His is yet another pivotal role played with great skill.

 

David Kwiat (#11), Rob Donohoe (#10), William Hayes (#3), Gary Cadwallader (#4), Jim Ballard (#5) Photo by Tim Stepien

 

Even the more minor parts have critical roles in the slow sway from guilty to not guilty.  Michael McKeever (#2) is a timid man whose opinion is easily impacted by the others, but is always adeptly in character as is Jim Ballard (#5) who hangs back for a while and finally comes forth with insight into the likely use of a switch blade knife, having come from the slums himself, which influences others in the group.  

 

Matthew W. Korinko (#6) carefully listens to his fellow jurors, but provides no particular insight, yet is among the first to change his vote and to defend other jurors who are verbally or even physically threatened.  Bruce Linser (#12) convincingly plays a supercilious advertising executive, imbued with his self importance but who will easily follow others’ lead.  Yet, it’s a key role as his vote waivers back and forth, almost a stand-in for the audience.  After all, as Juror #8 himself often infers, the conjectures being made are not necessarily “true” and it’s even possible they will be setting a murderer free, but the evidence doesn’t “seem” to rise beyond a reasonable doubt.

 

The fast paced action, highly influenced by the range of the characters’ personalities, exposes truths about them that quickly become more central than the details of the case itself.  Step by step they go from only one “not guilty” to the necessary unanimous not guilty as inbred prejudices, obduracy, and uncertainty yield to reason or merely exhaustion. 

 

J. Barry Lewis superbly directs this production and takes his queues for orchestrating the action from the text of the play, sometimes flowing onto sidebars between certain jurors while the others are not involved.  He finely tunes the performances so all the jurors stay in character – even when not speaking – body language and looks revealing inner personas, also capitalizing on what humor there is in the play for relief.  Mainly though, he draws the audience into this self contained bubble of a courtroom, on the hottest day in August, with the rising temperature and emotions visibly palpable. 

 

There are physical threats and confrontations which almost lead to violence as the play intensifies and Lewis, with the help of David A. Hyland, the Fight Choreographer, makes the most of impending physical confrontations and a few frightening moments in which a switch blade knife is ominously brandished.  All this takes place in real time, a working clock hanging on the wall, and although the jurors make reference to time, to the audience it flies by.

 

 

Scenic design is by Victor A. Becker who has created a metaphor for the justice system.  The courtroom is tired, one of the “12” overhead lights is out, the chairs don’t match, the floor is worn.  There are three large double hung windows outside of which one can see the Woolworth Building and other buildings of that time in seemingly 3 dimensional distant relief against an angry sky.  It is the ideal pressure cooker into which the jurors’ (and our focus) are locked.

 

Kirk Bookman’s lighting design has a realistic cutting edge lights on the Jurors, trapped in their deliberations while side lights and lightening beyond the windows illuminate the rain storm which falls during most of the 2nd half of the play.

 

Costume design is by the always artistic and inventive Brian O’Keefe, and although there are no costume changes there are 12 distinctive attires, mostly suit jackets and ties being removed as the play unfolds and the heat continues to build, sleeves rolled up.  Little details, like who should wear wedding rings and hair styles were determined by each character.

 

Sound design is by Roger Arnold focused on hidden mikes for the actors who sometimes have their backs to the audience when occasionally sitting more formally around the table (although even then, Lewis has them sit at slight angles for audience viewing).  “Music” is a monolithic drone tone at the beginning which reprises slightly differently at the conclusion.  During the very few quiet moments in the jury room some NYC sounds can be heard as well as ominous thunder as the storm hits outside and windows are hastily closed.

 

Towards the plays denouement, we are reminded about how little things change.  Near exhaustion Rob Donohoe (#10) delivers what could pass as “today’s news” about “replacement theory,” saying ”Don’t look at me like that! There’s a danger. For God’s sake, we’re living in a dangerous time, and if we don’t watch it, if we don’t smack them down whenever we can, then they are gonna own us. They’re gonna breed us out of existence.”  Absolutely chilling lines delivered by Donohoe with fervor, after which he retires to a chair exhausted, a sweaty mess.  It takes Tom Wahl’s character (#8) to break the tension, compassionately saying “It’s very hard to keep personal prejudice out of a thing like this. And no matter where you run into it, prejudice obscures the truth. “

 

How prescient this play was and still is, brilliant in its conception and presentation by one of the leading regional theatre companies in America.  It should not be missed.

Cast with Director and son of playwright (front center)



 

 

‘If Only In My Dreams’ Redux

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A few years ago I wrote one of my most heartfelt entries about Christmas.  I am not a religious person, but one does not experience a lifetime of Christmases and not be moved by its mere secular presence.  My feelings about the holiday have not changed and therefore I am copying that piece without the photographs it contained, and but embedding the performances of all four songs mentioned, my favorites of the holiday season. 

 

 If Only In My Dreams

 

And so the classic song "I'll Be Home For Christmas" ends with that memorable line “if only in my dreams.”

 

And that is sort of the way I feel at this stage of my life.  Christmases are now dreams of the past, anticipating the holiday as a child and then the pleasures Ann and I had in creating memorable holiday moments for our children as they grew up.  The classic song itself is particularly evocative of the distant past popularized by Bing Crosby and so many others, first recorded at the peak of WW II.

 

Undoubtedly it was played frequently by my mother and my grandparents with whom we lived while my father was in Germany at the conclusion of the War, wanting to get home, but he was part of the occupying force and didn’t make it home until right after Christmas 1945.  "I'll Be Home For Christmas" is probably implanted in the recesses in my mind as every time I hear it I feel a sudden melancholy.

 

When my father came home he brought a wooden replica of the Jeep he drove in Germany for me.  I don’t remember his return, or getting the Jeep, but somehow that 70 year old Jeep has accompanied me wherever I lived.  Sometimes when I look at it, I can hear "I'll Be Home For Christmas."

 

In some past blog entries I’ve posted videos of other Christmas songs I like to play, in particular the following:  “It's Love -- It's Christmas,”  a seldom performed Christmas song, written by none other than the great jazz pianist Bill Evans. And, then, “Christmas Time Is Here” is by Vince Guaraldi, a great jazz musician too but his music will always be associated with the Peanuts Christmas specials.

 

Finally, there is “Christmas Lullaby,” probably the most unknown Christmas song. It was written for Cary Grant by none other than Peggy Lee (Lyrics) and Cy Coleman (Music). It is the simplest of tunes and lyrics but therein is its beauty.

 

So, on the eve of this Christmas I post my piano rendition of “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” with fond memories of my Dad and Christmases past .

 

 

I’ll Be Home For Christmas

 


 

It's Love -- It's Christmas

 

 

 

Christmas Time Is Here

 

 

 

Christmas Lullaby

 

 

80B

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“80B” was the imaginative salutation of a homemade card from our friends, Art and Sydelle, to mark my 80th birthday, an alphanumeric version of the short version of my name.  The card was rendered with an original water color drawn by Art.  Beautiful. 

 

I normally don’t obsess over milestone birthdays.  There was always a future in my mind.  When I was much younger, future and infinity seemed to be in a one-to-one correlation. 

 

Beginning an octogenarian decade comes with the knowledge that unlike other decades, there is a different feeling about the future as the body goes beyond its expiration date.  So, the point is to make each day count.  Writing has always been important to me and I’m now turning to something I hope to finish.  You might call it Volume Three of my “explaining” series, this one “Explaining It to Me.”  It will be a personal memoir of a not very extraordinary person.  Now, there’s a blurb for the book!  Nonetheless, as I said in my first volume, getting thoughts down, working, focusing, is an end in itself.  Satisfying.  I’ll even incorporate the short stories I’ve written, ones I always feel are unfinished as every time I open those, I make revisions.  In print I’ll have to call them finished.

 

Time, time, time is now the main issue.  A race to a finish line.  Perhaps that may mean my writing in this space will be more limited, and if a review of a play or a book, more truncated. 

 

Speaking of which, is it coincidental that over my birthday I happened to pick up a book I’ve had in my-to-be -read pile for some time, Louis Begley’s last novel, The New Life of Hugo Gardner?  I wrote extensively about Begley, the author of the Schmidt trilogy, in my November 2012entry, “Schmidtie.” 


Among other details, I pointed out that Begley was at a stage in life when he wrote those novels that was a little ahead of my own stage, and The New Life of Hugo Gardnerseems to capture that again for me.  It is about the protagonist’s sense of a life well lived now in summation, a looking back, the outcomes of actions he either knowingly or by chance took in his life. He, as do I, is trying to retain a sense of control, living his remaining years on his terms.

 

Is this Begley’s final fictional statement?  Time will tell.  A brief summation without even naming characters explains why I ask that question.  Hugo Gardner concluded a career as a highly successful and influential journalist, assigned to the Paris office, happily married, two children.  Here he is in his 80s and is told he has prostate cancer and finds his wife has left him for a younger man.

 

His doctor wants to aggressively treat the condition.  Gardner instead prefers to watch and wait and if the waiting does not turn out well, take care of the business in Switzerland.  Like Schmitie, Gardner moves in wealthy, well connected society.  Ultimately we all have these existential dilemmas in common.

 

He is estranged from his daughter and uses his son as a go between in trying to understand his daughter, but they are not close as well.  He also has an ex-lover in Paris, and they get together again, Gardner thinking that there is a possibility of a long term relationship.  But the lover is caring for her invalid husband and wants Gardner simply nearby as a companion and occasional lover.  That has its starts and stops until the boom is lowered by her that she has reconciled with another, younger love, leaving Gardner in a state of limbo, mostly alienated from his family, and having to contend alone with his prostate decision.

 

He explains his big decision to refuse radiation to his long-time Doctor.  As Begley is prone to do, his dialogue does not carry quotation marks.  It works well in his narrative.  And his writing is precise, befitting Begley’s former profession as an attorney:

 

You have explained it all very clearly, I said, and I’m very grateful, but I really don’t want to do the radiation. Your cure may turn out to be a prelude to other illnesses and new dilemmas. Let’s roll the dice. We both know how it will end whatever we do – in exactly the same place.

 

Excuse me, Hugo, but this is nihilistic crap. Why don’t you say straight out that you were tired of life and want to commit suicide?

 

I could have shaken my head thank him and gone home but I felt the need to explain myself. I really didn’t want him to think I was nuts and lacking in respect.

 

Because that’s simply not true, I replied. Please don’t feel concerned. I’m not tired of life. I love life even though I’m lonely and often unhappy. But I want to live on my own terms. That means being capable of making my own decisions, of moving around without a walker or wheelchair. I’m accustomed to chronic pain in my lower back and the aches and pains in this and other joints that come and go but I wouldn’t want to live with great pain. Doesn’t that make sense to you?

 

He didn’t bother to answer.

 

Knowing I might have a similar discussion in my future makes this novel especially poignant.  So does the fact that I share many of the writer’s feelings.  Gardner not only has a NYC apartment, but a home close to Sag Harbor, another of my favorite places from my past, and after seeing his Doctor, he calls his housekeeper there and says get ready, I’m returning.  As fate would have it a younger (female) cousin lives nearby, now a widow, also remote from her children, and they’ve always had a fond relationship and I’ll leave it at that without revealing the denouement. 

 

If this is indeed Begley’s final fictional statement (he turns 90 later this year), it is a fine, thoughtful, perhaps cathartic work, and certainly, for me, relevant and moving.



 

2023 Jazz Cruise – Music Unites Us Again

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The Jazz Cruise vintage 2023 blew away the blues of years of Covid dormancy.  We had attended the 20th anniversary cruise in early 2020 right before Covid upended all of our lives and booked it for the following year which never came (or the following year).


The 2023 happening was extraordinary as one could feel a singular energy between the performers and the appreciative audience, an energy which has always been unique to the Jazz world but was enhanced by the long interval and a deep appreciation of what music means to these extraordinary artists and their audience.  We went from one venue to the next, lining up our day of sometimes as many as five different performances.  This sometimes meant skipping a meal (shocking on a nice ship!).

 

Speaking of the ship, I might as well mention that we were on the newly upgraded Celebrity Millennium, but it is a charted vessel through the Jazz Cruise, so everyone on board is there for the jazz only, with Celebrity merely operating the ship.  Even the destinations are secondary, many people (such as us) preferring to stay on board, passing up Costa Maya, Cozumel, and Nassau, places we have previously visited.

 

Bill Charlap, Ann, Bob

It is impossible to summarize all the wonderful artists we heard, saw, and frequently met and chatted with.  It is probably the only venue where the latter is possible.  Nothing like talking to a piano God such as Bill Charlap as we were both in the solarium in shorts! 

 

The first six intensive days

This photo of the first 6 days of activities summarizes (the 7th did not fit in the photograph) the frenzied pace and the extent of the artists on board.  Some of our little notations sketched out our “strategy” for making the most of our days, focusing on some of our favorites, although it does not show the serendipitous performances we caught as well, musicians who were new to us.  I’m certain we enjoyed a full eight to ten hours each day of music and talk with the musicians and other devoted fans.

 

Ann, Bob, Emmet Cohen

 

Here were some of the high points for us.  It is remarkable to witness the maturation of Emmet Cohen, who we first saw as a 28 year old at Dizzy’s (but has been involved in the Jazz Cruise practically right out of college).  His progression as a jazz pianist now places him near the top of such musicians, technically, soulfully, and multifaceted, eager and capable to play all forms of jazz, with a deep reverence for jazz history.  

 

Emmet made lemonade of the lemons Covid delivered, making more than 100 Monday night jazz performances from his Harlem apartment.   Live at “Emmet’s Place” frequently showcased many of his neighboring musicians, particularly his talented sidemen, bassist Russell Hall, and drummer, Kyle Poole.  Kyle is still his drummer, a talented recording artist and arranger in his own right, but his new bassist, on board the cruise as well, is Yasushi Nakamura.  Those Monday night shows were the highlight of the week for his fans during our quarantine.

 

Emmet Cohen, Yasushi Nakamura, Kyle Poole
 

Emmet has become a “rock star” at the age of 33 and an important part of the jazz cruise, as well as now touring the world.  We knew him when.  He organizes the popular Keyboard Capers towards the end of the cruise, all the talented pianists on board performing, with a camera cam projecting their keyboard strokes and then all of them lining up to take their turns with as many as 10 hands on the keyboard, such improvisional genius and pure love of the music and respect for one another.

 

Ann, Emmet Cohen
 

With “Emmet’s Place” Cohen has reimagined the music business model.  Forget about selling CDs.  Instead, go back to the days of Hayden and Mozart and seek patrons, but in this Internet world, smaller contributions from members of “Emmet Cohen Exclusive,” with four different levels of contributions.  We’ve been members from the get-go.  This allows such talented artists to free themselves from the music label, dependent on selling CDs (which have suffered in the Internet world), and to tour and to develop their unique styles (his CDs are part of the benefit of being a member, but the main one is knowing we along with hundreds (or thousands now) of others are helping an artist to reach his fullest potential).

 

For me, his popularity has a downside.  There was once a time I could email him about a Johnny Mandel song, as an example, and he’d eventually answer.  Now due to his enormous popularity he has a staff, a technical crew; he’s gone big time, but that’s fine.  It’s wonderful to watch him grow.

Bill Charlap

 

The other pianist whose performances we never missed was the incomparable Bill Charlap.  The other pianists on board have the same reverence.  With the exception of Oscar Peterson – and Emmet – my favorite ones are all named Bill: Bill Charlap, Bill Mays, and the late great Bill Evans.  As I mentioned, we happened to chat with Charlap as he passed through the Spa.  We were having a “health” breakfast.  I think he was a little perplexed when we told him that we have breakfast with him every morning.  Huh?  And we do.  We turn to Alexa and ask “her” to play the Bill Charlap trio.  He was amused and friendly.

 

All the “Bills” I mentioned, I think play with a similar sensibility.  I made that observation to him and, small world that music is, he said that Bill Mays is a close friend and he just spoke to him the day before.  Makes sense.  No wonder I am drawn so personally to their music.  The songs they prefer, and their styles are ones that I’m most familiar with, not that I can play anywhere at that level, but most of the songs they play are the same ones I play from the Great American songbook and Broadway.  At one of Charlap’s performances he played a song I’m intimately familiar with, a classic ballad I’ve tried to master, Alan Jay Lerner and Burton Lane’s “Too Late Now,” from the 1951 movie musical Royal Wedding.  As he was playing, I found the fake book version on my phone and was able to follow his unique style which he applied to the song, thinking maybe, just maybe, a little will rub off on me.

 

Bill Charlap, Peter Washington, Kenny Washington
 

Surprising to me was at times Charlap exhibited a sudden physicality in his performances along with his lyricism.  He seems like such a mild mannered person, a piano style which relies on a melancholy feel and suddenly an explosion of sound.  We sat close to him in each of his performances as he prefers the more intimate lounges (which were nonetheless packed to SRO).

 

Bill Charlap Keyboard Capers
 

The piano pyrotechnics of the younger pianists in Keyboard Capers was handed to Charlap to conclude, a salute to his stature by his contemporary greats.  Brilliantly, and in contrast, he concluded with the wistful “You Are My Sunshine” which I would put in the same category as two songs I like to sometimes conclude concerts with, “Smile” or ”Bye Bye Blackbird.”  Then all the other great pianists on board lined up for an extravaganza of multiple hands on the piano.  Just phenomenal.

 

Jeff Hamilton, Tamir Handleman, Jon Hamar

One of the pianists who we saw on the last cruise is Renee Rosnes, coincidentally Bill Charlap’s wife, who is a master in her own right, and I just have to wonder how it must be to grow up in such a talented family.  And then there is the incomparable Benny Green who we saw in several venues, once being interviewed with Tamir Handleman both of whom have their own distinctive styles.  Handleman is the pianist for the world class drummer, Jeff Hamilton Trio, along with the bassist Jon Hamar and we went to as many of their gigs as we could.  Jeff Hamilton is a drummer in his own elite league and has a rich history of playing with some of the great bands.

 

Benny Green accompanied Nicki Parrott who plays the bass and is a wonderful jazz vocalist (a little reminiscent of our favorite Doris Day).  Unbelievably she said it was the first time she has ever performed with Benny Green and the looks they were giving each other, back and forth, during their performance spoke adoration and respect.  It is something special in jazz as artists hand the melody back and forth for improvisation and then come together, almost like magic to me.   

Greg Hutchinson, Christian McBride, Benny Green
 

Green also was the pianist for the Jazz Hall of Fame bassist Christian McBride which honored the great bassist Ray Brown.

 

Tamir Hendelman, Leroy Downs, Benny Green
 

Benny Green and Tamir Hendelman were interviewed by Leroy Downs, talking about their own histories, approach to jazz piano.  Every word was fascinating.  But there was a certain body language and enthusiasm expressed by Green which Ann read as his being in a very different place in life than where he was when we saw him three years earlier, so she went up to him after the interview and made the observation.  Green was stunned.  He is such a soulful individual and he admitted that there was a woman in his life now and that he’s found a new level of contentment.  It showed in all his performances, with McBride, Parrott, and whenever he was called to play.  He is one of the greats in jazz piano, technically and emotionally.  

 

Also on board were established elder jazz greats, Monty Alexander, who we first heard in the early 1970s, a Caribbean pianist whose early work had that driving Caribbean rhythm.  We recently caught one of his performances at Dizzy’s too.   

 

Huston Person, Emmet Cohen, John Pizzarelli
 

Then the senior saxophonist, playing all the classics, Houston Person, now in his late 80s wowed every age in the audience.  He still has the heart and strength of a younger person (and had the courage to climb the five flights to Emmet Cohen’s apartment one night to perform with him).  We actually met Person three years ago at the 2020 cruise, sitting with he and his family on board in the restaurant waiting for our respective rooms to open, easily talking back and forth about music but our not knowing who he was.  He never said; we never asked and then we learned the legend we were honored to be sitting next to!  Then, although not an octogenarian like Alexander and Person is Wynton Marsalis who is almost synonymous with the word ‘jazz’ itself.  He’s won Grammy awards in five consecutive years.   

 

Dee Dee Bridgewater’s hilarious, playful solo with John Pizzarelli (above) was also memorable, honoring the induction of the late Joey DeFrancesco into the Jazz Cruise Hall of Fame.  Emmet Cohen also was part of the ceremony, playing Joey’s vintage Hammond along with Huston Person.

Ann Hampton Callaway and Trio
 

 

Ann Hampton Callaway, Ann
 

Ann Hampton Callaway and Niki Haris were in an elevator when we got on one day and as we pushed the button for the 7th floor they broke out into an impromptu song about riding to the 7th! (Nice chord in music.). We’ve seen Callaway many years ago at the Arts Garage and had a photo of that performance to show her later when she too was interviewed by Downs.  Talk about a soulful performer, a singer who knows how to sell a song.  And what a sense of humor, her standup routine being to pick on some guy as being her ex-husband, so I was determined to stay out of the first row! 

 

Tamir Hendelman, Tierney Sutton, Serge Merland

 

Tierney Sutton’s arrangements were memorable, one more great vocalist on board with so many others. She was accompanied by Tamir Hendelman, and her husband, guitarist Serge Merland.

 

Shelly Berg another pianist and educator of renown, who is one of the two directors of the shows, the other composer, bassist, and arranger, John Clayton, was omnipresent, playing and interviewing.  As with the last cruise, I loved attending Berg’s “Jazz University” lectures, this one covering a brief history of jazz juxtaposed to American history and what distinguishes a great jazz piano solo.  Imagine fitting that into an hour?  He did and played some selections as well.  I enjoyed watching Berg watching his many students perform, such as Emmet Cohen.

 

Shelly Berg, Samara Joy
 

One of his interviews though was with the “overnight” sensation, the 21-year-old Samara Joy.  He recorded it for XM radio as well.  We first took note of Joy, then a shy vocalist, about two years ago on Emmet’s Place.  She was just a senior in college as I recall then.  But by then she had already won the Sarah Vaughan International Jazz Competition, the range and control of her voice reminiscent of both Sara Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald, and as we learned in the interview, perhaps her greatest influence, Carmen McRae, who we saw in the late 1970s in an upper East side club.  We heard Joy sing one of our favorites, “Guess Who I Saw Today,” her range and intonation remarkable.  21 years old.  Imagine?  (BTW, I think Eydie Gorme’s version of that song, although a very different style, equally excellent.)

 

Berg asked her that if she could have a wish granted to sing a song with a pianist who has never accompanied her, she responded Sullivan Fortner who of course was on board and then with a little hesitation, her eyes opening wide, Bill Charlap.  That’s jazz, a circle of respect.

Bria Skonberg

 

Then, there is the unexpected.  A trumpet player, Bria Skonberg, played a song she wrote, “So Is The Day” and then broke out into song.  Extraordinary to have such a voice and presentation.  The rule on board is no videos are allowed.  I did take a few brief ones, those that are very personal to me, but will not post them.  There is a YouTube version of her song, so here is a link.  It starts with the vocals rather than the trumpet.  I think it is more effective the other way around as we heard it, a remarkable and unexpected moment.

 

As I mentioned, Emmet's Keyboard Capers is the concluding show in the main theater.  It is so special to me as all the great pianists on board come together, individually playing and then jamming together. It is a particularly joyous moment as these photographs attest.

Emmet Cohen Keyboard Capers

Emmet Cohen, Bill Charlap, Tamir Hendelman, Benny Green

Keyboard Capers Pianists

I’m leaving out so many of the greatest jazz artists we have seen in one place, ever, but I’m hoping my unrestrained enthusiasm makes up for the voids.  My apologies to all who I failed to mention.  So many of them.  But to Michael Lazaroff, the Executive Director of The Jazz Cruise (this being the first of four weeks of jazz on the ship, but this was Straight Ahead Jazz, our favorite, particularly the classic piano, bass, drum trio), our thanks for bringing us all together and to help us forget politics, Covid, and so many of the ills of the world.  United in music we stand.  And it’s all there, in one place.  Congratulations Michael!

The last night at sea...







 

Palm Beach Dramaworks Debuts the Hyperrealistic ‘The Science of Leaving Omaha’

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If The Science of Leaving Omaha makes you feel uncomfortable then this World Premiere succeeds.  It is a deeply affecting but frequently disheartening social commentary.  Playwright Carter W. Lewis explores so many themes in this tightly developed work: death, love, violence, and in particular the marginalization of a segment of our society.  It is a rare play that can convey philosophical weight, drama, and black comedy at the same time, concluding with a breathtaking scene of magical realism.  The Science of Leaving Omaha has been under development at the PB Dramaworkshop. 

 

Lewis’ play is brought to life by a cast making their PBD debuts.  The director Bruce Linser, who has been fully involved with its development, brings a deep sensitivity and passion to this project, which is clearly obvious from the opening scene.

 

There is a heightened sense of realism with an eerie dream-like deterministic inevitability as the play unfolds in front of a retort or cremation oven.  The “Science” includes details about the cremation process, as the occasional strange sounds from the retort seem to call out (as amusingly noted by the off-stage character “Mrs. B” in the play) “ask not for whom the cremator clunks it clunks for thee.”  The action takes place in real time late one night in this macabre setting.  The retort becomes a looming character onto itself and the technical details of its operation a metaphor for getting out of Omaha.

 

Nicholas-Tyler Corbin and Georgi James Photo by Tim Stephien
 

Two young people, each with issues of finding a place in a society that seems to offer them little hope or opportunity, are thrown together by chance.  There is no shortage of adversity in their lives, simply because of parents and birthplace.  Iris, played by Georgi James, is minding the nighttime basement office of a crematorium as the owner, “Mrs. B is super religious, and she thinks no one should crossover alone.”  James channels her character’s frustration, as she sits there working on an essay which she needs to qualify for her GED, but clearly this is a discouraging struggle for her and she feels marooned in Omaha.  James’ outstanding performance captures the anxiety of her character, along with her kookiness.  It is a particularly difficult part as her halting speech and erratic, fragile personality are purposely abstruse and she is on stage for the entire play.

 

There is a body bag there that night holding Ruth Ellen who was shot while on the back of a motorcycle driven by Baker, played by Nicholas-Tyler Corbin, as they were escaping from a bar.  Ruth Ellen was Baker’s wife for only one day.  He breaks into the crematorium to see her and make sure Ruth Ellen would “approve” of how her body is being handled, wanting to know about the details of her impending cremation.  Corbin flawlessly plays the volatile yet sensitive Baker, who also has been looking for answers to an amorphic future.  The actor projects a palpable sense of grief along with his anger at the system.  He played baseball and was hoping for a scholarship but found out his high school taught him nothing.  Anger, because he is stranded in Omaha where there are “lame ass people workin’ lame ass jobs n’ doin’ a lame ass job of it all.”

 

What begins as, possibly, a set up for more violence develops into a story of kindred spirits, Iris even seeing the possibility of running away from a life without opportunity with this stranger.  She’s quite jealous of Ruth Ellen as she sees how much she is loved.  Iris, however, does have a close relationship with Mrs. B, the owner of the Belladonna Funeral Home, who has assumed a motherly protective relationship to Iris.

 

Baker has been on the run ever since his last job as a ward attendant at “Lasting Hope Recovery Center,” yet another ironic touch, “with the young crazies.”  He and Ruth Ellen were bound for Albuquerque before their encounter with the police.  There are shifting moods in the play, ebbing and flowing with Baker’s volatility.  He makes it clear he’s mad at the world, not Iris. 

 

Merrina Millsapp and Georgi James Photo by Tim Stephien

 

Into the mix comes the night watchperson, “Security Sally” poignantly performed by Merrina Millsapp, who has never imagined she would ever actually have to draw her gun in her part time job.  She is yet another victim of society, raising children as a single parent, having to take this night job to survive.  But she is yet another “protector” of Iris and was assigned to a mall where Iris once had a melt-down and whose shame was captured on social media which went viral. 

 

The building tension is palpable and foreboding, the resolution surprising but fated as Iris – tearfully and plaintively delivered by James -- beseeches advice from the remote, offstage Mrs. B: “I mean, damn. Damn Mrs. B, I don’t know what to do, I just–Oh Mrs. B, I’m so scared.”  The best advice Mrs. B can give is to allow her to put on one of her opera records, which has been off limits, the music soaring at the conclusion.   Mrs. B clearly has aided Iris, given her a job (actually created one for her), and wants to help her succeed.  Could Mrs. B be a surrogate for a compassionate but powerless god?

 

 

The Scenic design by Michael Amico reflects the morose nature of the play, the basement of a funeral home owned by a Catholic Italian American family.  There is a replica of a cremation oven almost front-and-center and “a gurney garage” or what Iris amusingly calls “the wine cellar,” a place to temporarily put a body behind velvet red curtains.  Family pictures are scattered about (Amico uses ones of his own family), as well as a portrait of Jesus.   A sign hangs prominently, “Fire is the most tolerable third party,” which Henry David Thoreau meant for two people huddling around a campfire.  It has a more profound meaning here. 

 

Kirk Bookman’s lighting design is critical, insightful, full flat light in the middle of the night in a basement balanced with spots following the actors, but breathtaking when red hot lighting emanates from the open retort.

 

Sound design by Roger Arnold cleverly captures the strange clunking sounds of the retort, some unexpected, helping to build the tension.  There are sounds of metal expanding and flames heating up as well as the creak of the opening door.

 

Brian O’Keefe, the indefatigable costume designer captures the everyday dress of two unmoored contemporary young people, naturalistic and appropriate.  Iris is in jeans and a plaid shirt, poor serviceable clothing while Baker has that worn LL Bean look with ripped-knee jeans.

 

Director Bruce Linser pours his heart and soul into this piece, the action flowing and pausing where appropriate, the tension rising and falling like waves in an agitated ocean.  Both characters have their quiet contemplative moments and outbursts as well.  He succeeds but be prepared for an intentionally bumpy ride. 

 

So many plays are about the pursuit of the American Dream.  This one deals with the struggle for mere survival; there are no aspirations other than escape.  The Science of Omaha dramatically illustrates what happens when we abandon a large swath of our society, deprive them of opportunity and education, subject them to the microscope of endless bullying on social media, and corporate America adopts them as their servants at low-paying fast food or superstore jobs.  Such as the extreme classes of H.G. Well’s Time Machine where the underground Morlocks do the menial work to benefit the privileged, hedonistic Eloi, two classes of people that have become almost different species.  This is America today and the playwright perfectly captures the essence and the tragedy of the consequences. 


Nicholas-Tyler Corbin and Georgi James Photo by Tim Stephien



 

Remembering ‘Rabbit Remembered’

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Why reread Rabbit Remembered, Updike’s unexpected coda to his Rabbit Trilogy (included in his collection Licks of Love, 2000)?  Perhaps to seek refuge from the extreme craziness of today’s world. His writing remains as relevant today as when it was written 25 years ago.  Family dramas endure. Here we revisit the vestiges of Rabbit’s family, as Y2K is approaching.

 

Janice, Rabbit’s wife, is now remarried to Ronnie, a glad-handing ex insurance guy, with still some clients around, but basically he golfs with the boys at the Club.  He used to be Rabbit’s rival, for women particularly. Other than Janice, they’ve shared the sleep-around Ruth and Thelma, Ronnie’s now deceased wife with whom Rabbit had an affair as well.  These two guys have crossed metaphysical swords before and Ronnie’s antipathy to Rabbit lives on.

 

Rabbit’s son, Nelson is now divorced from Teresa who has moved to Ohio with his two emotionally damaged children.  He has an email relationship with the 14-year-old Roy, while his 19-year-old daughter Judy has withdrawn into a Walkman headset (if written today, she’d be a TikTok dependent). Nelson now lives in his childhood home with Ronnie and his mother.  He has recovered from his cocaine addiction and fiscal irresponsibility and Nelson now ironically has a job as a mental health counselor at the Fresh Start Day Treatment Center.  

 

Suddenly Janice is visited by a woman in her 30s, Annabelle, who claims to be Rabbit’s child. Her true father’s identity was revealed to her by her mother, Ruth, on her death bed. Nelson now has a half-sister.  He is elated and sees a path to his own “fresh start,” for him and his family.  Updike deflates such delusions and retains his gift for observing minutia, making it an important part of setting the emotional story:

 

[A] cloud passes overhead, and the shadow is almost chilling: that’s how you feel the new season, the shadows are sharper, and darker and the crickets sing under everything. With the terrible drought this summer, the leaves are turning early, those of the horse chestnuts curling brown at the edges, and the front yards were no one has watered have turned to flattened straw, a look Janice remembers from childhood, when you are closer to the ground and summer is endless.

 

Janice still thinks, even lovingly, about Rabbit in one of her reveries: how beautiful he had been…. in those high school halls– the height of him, the fine Viking hair slicked back in a ducktail, but trailing off in like sexy strands like Alan Ladd’s across his forehead, the way he would flick it back with his big, graceful, white hands while kidding with the other seniors, like that tall girlfriend of his called Mary Ann, his lids at cocky sleepy half-mast, the world of those halls his, him paying no attention, of course, to her, a ninth grader, a runt.

 

Nostalgically she also remembers the town of Brewer driving through it: Brewer pours by in her Le Baron, a river of bricks and signage….Janice can scarcely believe so much is gone and she is still is here to remember it…. She navigates without thinking under the Norway maples that she can remember half the size they are now, small enough that a child could reach the lowest branches with a jump…. Now the maples are grown so big, the sidewalks in some sections of town are buckling.

 

There is no end to the speculation about what Annabelle wants. “Ronnie,” Nelson almost never uses his stepfather‘s name, and says it now, swiftly, “This may be my SISTER. Dad used to hint sometimes there might be a sister. Here she has come to us, putting herself at our mercy.” “But what does she want, Nelson?” Janice asks. She feels better, cleaner in her mind, finding herself now on her husband’s side. “She wants money,” Ronnie, insists. “Why, she wants,” Nelson says, getting wild-eyed and high-voiced, defensive and, to his mother, touching, “she wants what everybody wants. She wants love.”

 

Nelson’s job as a mental health counselor gives Updike the opportunity for extensive social commentary about his modern world (what would he think and write of today’s?).  The inner voice of Nelson speaks: Schizophrenics don’t get wholly better…. they don’t relate. They don’t follow up. They can’t hold it together. It makes you marvel that most people hold it together, as well as they do: what a massive feat of neutron coordination just getting through the day involves. These dysfunctionals make him aware of how functional he is. They don’t bother him as normal people do. There are boundaries. There are forms to fill out, reports to write and file, a healing order. Each set of woes can be left behind in a folder in a drawer at the end of the day. Whereas in the outside world, there is no end of obligation, no protection from the needs and grief of others…. [B]ut it may be that his ear is jaded, hearing all day about families, dealing with all the variations of dependency and resentment, love, and its opposite, all the sickly interned can’t-get-away-from-itness of close relations...If society is the prison, families are the cells with no time off for good behavior good behavior…..

 

Janice is not the only character with Rabbit reveries.  Nelson is frequently thinks about the larger-than life Rabbit, Updike continuing his portrait of a man lost in America:  his father, had been a rebel of a sort, and a daredevil, but as he got older and tame he radiated happiness, at just the simplest American things, driving along in an automobile, the radio giving off music, the heater, giving off heat, delivering his son somewhere in this urban area that he knew block by block, intersection by intersection. At night, in the underlit ghostliness of the front seat their two shadows were linked it seem forever by blood. To Nelson as a child his own death seemed possible in so perilous a world, but he didn’t believe his father would ever die.

 

Nelson takes Annabel for lunch at a “new green” restaurant that he’s gone to for years and becomes hyperaware of his half sister – and Updike even dangles a question mark of the nature of this new found love – and in watching her he has an epiphany of where they are, swathed with symbolism:  [S]he still has, after living 20 years in the city, a country girl innocence that, if she has taken as his date, embarrasses Nelson. In his embarrassment, he studies the wall above the booths, whose theme is greenery -- ferns and bushes and overhanging branches, brushed on in many Forest shades. What he has never noticed before, all those years grabbing a bite at the corner, is that a pair of children are in the mural, in the middle distance with their back turned, a boy and a girl wearing old fashion, German outfits, pigtails and lederhosen, holding hands, lost.

 

At the heart of the novel is a family still in turmoil, the remaining wake of the passing ship of Rabbit:  [F]amily occasions have always given Janice some pain, assembling like a grim jury these people to whom we owe something, first, our parents and elders, and then our children and their children…Nelson thinks about Rabbit’s sister, Aunt Mim: [A]t  Dad‘s funeral, Aunt Mim seemed an animated, a irreverent slash of black among the dowdy mourners, but Dad had loved her, and she him, with the heavy helplessness of blood, that casts us into a family as if into a doom.

 

And that sense of doom hangs deeply in the novel: Nelson wonders why, no matter how cheerful and blameless the day’s activities have been, when you wake up in the middle of the night there is guilt in the air, a gnawing feeling of everything being slightly off, wrong — you in the wrong, and the world, too, as if darkness is a kind of light that shows us the depth we are about to fall into.  But Nelson is on his own to deal with his angst.  His mother loved Nelson for all they had been through together, but she was past the age where she could oblige his neediness. She and Ronnie left alone tended to each other’ needs one of which, never stated, was getting ready for death, which could start anytime now.

 

The ghost of Rabbit wanders throughout the novel.  In spite of Ronnie and Nelson’s adversarial relationship, Nelson turns to him and says, “Another reason I like you, Ronnie,” Nelson rushes on, the insight having just come to him with a force that needs to be vented, “is that you and I are about the last people left on the earth my father still bugs. He bugs us because we wanted his good opinion, and didn’t get it. He was worse than we are, but also better. He beat us out.”

 

The Rabbit tetralogy by John Updike still has the relevancy of a great family drama, no matter what the times.

 



Deconstructing Paul Newman

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There is a growing place for sadness as we age.  The illnesses and the passing of family members, friends and acquaintances plumb its depth.  Perhaps one reason I’m drawn to the movies on TCM, even if I’ve seen them, is the actors are frozen in time.  There is a sense of comfort and familiarity.

 

I am not a star-struck person, although during my lifetime I’ve casually met some Hollywood luminaries, such as Yul Brenner who was my seat mate on an Eastern Airlines shuttle flight, and once we attended the Academy Awards as my company published their annual index to those awards. 

 

But my more substantial casual meeting was with Joanne Woodward when we published Westport, Connecticut: The Story of a New England Town's Rise to Prominence.  In addition to her being a prominent actress (and wife of Paul Newman), she was very active in the Westport Country Playhouse and the Westport Historical Society and wrote the Forward for the book.  We had a publication party and I spent part of an afternoon in May 2000 with her, and toured the Historical Society with her as a guide, chatting about their early years in Westport and the coincidence that we were once neighbors, both with homes along the Saugatuck River, separated by Weston Road.  (Ann used to collect for United Fund in our immediate neighborhood and was assigned the Newman property, being warmly received by Joanne’s mother who lived in an adjacent house.)

 

During our three decades in Westport / Weston we saw Paul Newman in various venues, mostly restaurants.  Ann once selected apples across a large bin with him at a local farm.  We never bothered him.  All we knew was the guy on the screen.  Once he drove into our office parking lot in his modified VW Beetle with a Porsche engine.  Unfortunately, one of the women who worked for us spotted him from our second-floor office window.  And waited, along with others in the office for his return, and when he did, Ruthie (as I recall her name harking back to 1975 or so),  ran out the door as he got into his car and said something to the effect “Oh, Mr. Newman, won’t you wave to the others standing at the windows?” I understand he actually got out of the car and with a forced grin, waved. 

 

 

When he died, I wrote the following in this space:  “The town treated him pretty much like anyone else and that is the way he wanted it. He was just there, around town, and of course larger than life on the screen, and because of his extensive charity work, even on bottles of salad dressing. He was such a part of the fabric of all of our lives. I feel a profound sense of loss whenever I think of him, or see him on the screen or on those bottles of “Newman’s Own” which he funded to last into perpetuity for the benefit of progressive causes. He was iconic and an iconoclast at the same time, a true maverick who lived his life the way he wanted, not the way Hollywood normally dictates.”

 

But the point of writing this present essay is that I just finished reading his memoir Paul Newman; The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man.  Also, I recently learned that Sotheby’s is set to auction “more than 300 individual items that the legendary actors assembled and enjoyed throughout their 50-year marriage.”  All of those items apparently come from their Connecticut home, the one Joanne and I talked about that afternoon.

 

Tragically, Joanne was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s sometime in 2007 and only a few days later Paul was diagnosed with terminal cancer; he died in 2008.  Since then Ethan Hawke’s “The Last Movie Stars,” a six-part documentary about them was featured on HBO, and Newman’s memoir was published.  The Sotheby’s auction is the last step in deconstructing lives which heretofore have been an enigma.

 

Paul Newman agreed to be interviewed by his friend Stewart Stern for the memoir and a substantial amount of oral history was transcribed, but Newman did not publish it during his lifetime and destroyed some and when Stern passed in 2015 some duplicate notes came in possession of the Newman Woodward family. 

 

Their father wanted his children and grandchildren to understand his remoteness in his early years, his alcoholism, and to separate the man from the myth of a movie actor who had swagger and startling blue eyes.  That demeanor was overcompensation for feelings of inadequacy, as he always felt his acting skills were suspect in getting parts – that it was his good looks alone that counted for his early success..

 

In compiling the memoir, the editor David Rosenthal relied as much on friends, family, and colleagues as he does on the transcript of Newman’s recollections.  Nonetheless, the sense of the man comes through.  What I quote below are Newman’s own recollections.

 

He recognized (and to some degree lamented) that “Newman’s luck” contributed to his success, being born white, with those baby blues, and the fact that when James Dean died, he got more opportunities to play roles that would have gone to Dean.  He self-effacingly admits I never got the sense that anything I did on stage was spectacular or even something very exciting. It may have been workmanlike or OK, but was I really a highly highly knowledgeable actor?  I was a kid with an attractive exterior, had a tremendous amount of energy and a lot of personality.

 

Corroborating what Joanne told me about their early years, some of it was a struggle.  She didn’t go into specifics but Newman does.  He and Joanne met on the set of the Broadway production of Picnic and their affair began while Paul was still married to his first wife.  As he recalls, when I first got the job in Picnic, I had a wife and child (with another one on the way), and only $250 in the bank.  I don’t know how long I would have been able to stay afloat without some financial cushion or if the play didn’t have a long run. I had even applied for a job at the Hillside Avenue branch of the US post office in Queens. Ironically, at the time that was my own neighborhood post office.

 

Newman’s life and my own emotionally intersect in the behavior of our mothers, his nicknamed Tress and mine, Penny.   When his father was dying in a hospital he just needed to get Tress’ agreement to his estate plan, but she refused to sign anything; Tress kept yelling at him on his deathbed, accusing him and vilifying him. She wouldn’t let him fucking die!  Although not exactly the same, that was essentially my mother’s reaction as my father died.

 

Another similarity was that his mother turned on his wife, as mine did on my wife.  Tress was convinced that Joanne hated her and sought evidence.  Joanne would occasionally go out with Gore Vidal (who was gay) to the theatre as Newman’s and Woodward’s relationship was still clandestine.   At the opening of Ben Hur which Vidal co wrote, Tress noticed Gore and Joanne holding hands, chatting. Tress came to visit us in New York when I was on Broadway. We were driving one evening in my Volkswagen when suddenly my mother said to me “I know why your wife hates me! It’s because she’s having an affair with Gore Vidal.“ I slammed on the brakes and said “get out of the fucking car.” There were tears and apologies, but I still dropped her at the corner of 18th St., 5th Avenue.

 

My mother was quite a dame. She had an internal drummer, and that drummer was not affected by other reasons; there was a song going on with her and she stuck to it; if she thought something was going on in a certain way that’s the way it was it didn’t make any difference what actually happened; to her it wouldn’t change. And I didn’t speak to my mother again for 15 years. 

 

Was it all because of what she said about Joanne? No, not really; but it was such a relief to use that as an excuse to escape from her. She represented all my leaden baggage, the parts of myself that I didn’t like, that sense of subservience, uncertainty, not knowing where the next attack was coming from or what the reason for it might be.

 

We too hardly spoke to my own mother for ten years, for similar reasons, the only way to protect my family.  I know that feeling of relief as well.

 

Their marriage went through some rocky times, the drug overdose of his son, Scott, Newman’s own alcoholism and feeling like a fraud.  But at his side, mostly always was Joanne, and he (they) battled through it and I think that with his 1982 film, The Verdict, in which he plays an alcoholic attorney, he finally got in touch with Paul Newman, the real person and real actor and his films and stage work from there on came from a different place.  He also became a passionate and competent race car driver, and that swagger became more self-confidence.  Then there was the development of his philanthropy, most prominent, his food enterprises, the profit from which goes to worthy causes and The Hole in the Wall Gang.

 

But even in his charitable endeavors he is self-effacing.  I can afford to be charitable; I’m not going to be that really affected. Why will I suffer when I give away $10 million? That won’t change the way I live. I won’t eat less well. I can still stick a Buick engine in a Volvo.  I’ve had the luck of the draw, living in a democracy, being of the majority color, having an opportunity for education, enjoying the Bill of Rights, the four freedoms, and everything else.  The easiest thing I can do, frankly, is to give away money.

 

Yet he did it in a substantive way, more than most of his colleagues, and the endowment he created will live on.

 

We shared some of the same places and times and after all those years of living nearby the famous film legend, I too have finally gotten to know him. They were a unique couple but, in many ways, had ordinary lives and heartbreaks like the rest of us.

 

As the Woodward Newman Family state about the forthcoming auction, “Our parents have dedicated their lives to pursuing the things that inspired them, whether personally, professionally, or as collectors. We hope the public takes as much pleasure from this collection that our family has cherished for decades, which offers further insight into who they were beyond their glamorous Hollywood personas.”

 



August: Osage County -- an Epic Production of a Flawed Family and a Failed Dream

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This is the dead land / This is cactus land….T.S. Eliot

 

It is hot; the setting is dark.  Welcome to the maelstrom of the “Weston” family, Tracy Letts’ spellbinding play August: Osage County, among the best American plays ever written.  Palm Beach Dramaworks’ production is a riveting, gut-wrenching, fast-paced 3 plus hours with as much emotional impact as can be wrought on stage.  The disintegrating Weston family is a metaphor for American civilization itself.

 

The setting and the characters are very personal to the playwright, having grown up in Oklahoma, not far from Osage County.  Director William Hays perfectly renders Letts’ disturbing story, encouraging the actors to find their own sense of realism in delivering this unforgettable performance. 

 

Letts deals with big bold multi-layered themes even prophetic ones given what has transpired since the play was first staged in 2007.  Oklahoma was the destination of the infamous Trail of Tears, the result of Andrew Jackson’s “Indian Removal “policy.  Letts conflates this original American sin with the decline (and with his latest play, The Minutes, the destruction) of the American Dream. 

 

In a Prologue, we meet Beverly, a disillusioned, aging, one-published-volume poet, and the patriarch of the Weston family with its generational dysfunctional maladies of infidelity, alcoholism, and drug dependency.  He is interviewing a housekeeper, Johnna, a young Cheyenne woman.

 

Beverly alludes to poets T.S. Elliot and John Berryman.  Born in Oklahoma, Berryman suffered from alcoholism and depression.  In 1972 he committed suicide.  Not coincidentally, the worn Weston family home in the play is vintage 1972, although set in 2007.

 

He commends a T.S. Eliot work to Johnna, citing perplexing, disillusioned lines from the poet’s The Hollow Men beginning a framing device for the play, a portrait of the corrupted soul of the Weston family.  And so, the audience too, is drawn into their story.

 

Family Dinner at the Weston Home Photo by Alicia Donelan

 


This production features Sara Morsey in an impressive PBD debut as Violet Weston, Beverly’s bitter and manipulative pain pill addicted wife.  Her performance is electric, capable of rising from appearing nearly normal to being completely delusional, but even in her drug impaired state (or especially) she is capable of masterfully hurling the slings and arrows of invectives and recriminations, brandishing a sword of guilt, a textbook rageaholic.  It is her form of truth-telling.  She was carefully taught, admitting to her daughters during one calm moment in the play my mama was a nasty, mean old lady. I suppose that’s where I get it from.  

 

Beverly is inured to her, and counters with his long-time addiction: alcoholism. There are so many memorable scenes featuring Sara Morsey but her cathartic, abandoned and seductive dance to "Lay Down Sally," is a view into Violet’s primordial inner character and youth.  It is a role which rivals Mary Tyrone’s in Long Day’s Journey into Night.  Morsey’s explosive performance as Violet Weston rises to that level.

Ryffin Phoenix, Sara Morsey, Kathy McCafferty Photo by Alicia Donelan

 

Beverly Weston is played by Dennis Creaghan, a long-time PBD veteran, with a resigned miasma of defeat.  He has gone missing after hiring the Cheyenne housekeeper Johnna who is played by Ryffin Phoenix, her PBD debut, with a quiet dignity and steadfastness lacking in the other characters.  Beverly quotes Eliot to her, “Life is long”, and then leaves for his date with oblivion.

 

Beverly’s sudden, inexplicable disappearance brings together the three Weston daughters, all bearing family scars. 

 

Kathy McCafferty is the eldest daughter Barbara Fordham, the other leading role in the play.  McCafferty is no stranger to iconic PBD productions, having played Blanche in Streetcar Named Desire, Regina, in The Little Foxes, and Rosemary, in Outside Mullingar.  It is another McCafferty bravura performance tracing her character’s devolution from the “in charge” rival to her mother to the clear successor to her parents’ hopelessness, left with her father’s bottle of scotch, occupying her father’s desk chair reprising his interview with Johnna, and then a demoralized exit, not understanding her ineffectiveness.  It is yet another leading role which McCafferty makes her own with her astounding command of a wide range of emotions.

Kathy McCafferty, , Sara Morsey. Bruce Linser Photo by Alicia Donelan

 

She has brought her 14 year old daughter, Jean, deftly played by Allie Beltran, back to the family home.  Jean is struggling with her parents’ separation, as well as the normal angst of a teen thrown into a strange environment.  Barbara’s estranged husband, Bill, has come to support his soon to be ex-wife.  Bill, compassionately performed by Bruce Linser, is a university professor who is having an affair with one of his students.  

 

Margery Lowe, another long time acclaimed veteran of the Dramaworks stage is Ivy Weston, the fragile middle daughter, who carries the load of having spent years living near her childhood home and dysfunctional parents.  She is now carrying on a clandestine relationship with “Little Charles” (Iain Batchelor, his mainstage PBD debut) who she thinks is her cousin, and has a fantastical hope of moving to New York with him in the near future.  However this dream is as potentially stillborn as her two other sister’s expectations are for happiness in their own lives. 

 

The youngest daughter, Karen Weston, is gregariously performed by Niki Fridh, who is constantly trying to find validation.  She moved far away to Florida in an effort to ultimately find Mr. Right after a long string of Mr. Wrongs.  She brings home her fiancé, a thrice married, pot smoking, sleaze, Steve, played to perfection by Christopher Daftsios, another PBD newcomer.  All she can focus on is a long fantasized honeymoon in Belize.  

 

Further complicating the combustible plot, as secrets are exposed, is Violet’s overbearing sister, Mattie Fae Aiken, masterfully played by PBD veteran Laura Turnbull, a difficult role as she is mostly loathsome.  She arrives with her henpecked husband, Charlie, to provide the obligatory support to her sister, while displaying an atavistic viciousness towards her adult son "Little" Charles, more understandable as a dark secret is revealed at the end of the play. 

 

Her husband, Charlie, is skillfully performed by Stephen Trovillion, his PBD debut.  His acting chops are equal to his comic ones as he demonstrates when asked to say grace before the disastrous family dinner.  Although he (like the other men in the play) is ineffectual, in the end he and Bill have their stand-up-to-their-wives moments.  They are unfortunately both failed peacemakers.

 

That same dinner scene displays Iain Batchelor’s fine acting, struggling, as “Little” Charles, to rise above humiliation to make, unsuccessfully, an announcement concerning his love for much put-upon Ivy.  It is painful to watch although a skillful and affecting performance.  

 

As family scars and secrets are peeled away, and old worn dysfunctional roads are traveled, the play finally devolves into a hopeless whimper, completing the T.S. Eliot framing for the play.  The sole survivor, indeed the caretaker for this defeated family, is the noble Johnna, who we can see in the attic, calmly reading T.S. Eliot as the family erupts and disintegrates below.  In a pouch she wears her umbilical cord around her neck, a Cheyenne tradition of her soul having a destination when she dies.  And where do the Weston family souls go?  Or Western Civilization for that matter?

 

 It is not only the destruction of a single family but symbolically of “the dream,” the American Dream of success, happiness, the next generation being better off than the last, of equal opportunity. But Manifest Destiny was a corrupt foundation.

 

Kathy McCafferty ruminatively delivers Barbara’s monologue that encapsulates the play:  One of the last times I spoke with my father, we were talking about ... I don't know, the state of the world, something ... and he said, "You know, this country was always pretty much a whorehouse, but at least it used to have some promise. Now it’s just a shithole." And I think now maybe he was talking about something else, something more specific, something more personal to him ... this house? This family? His marriage? Himself? I don't know. But there was something sad in his voice--or no, not sad, he always sounded sad-something more hopeless than that. As if it had already happened. As if whatever was disappearing had already disappeared. As if it was too late. As if it was already over. And no one saw it go. This country, this experiment, America, this hubris: what a lament, if no one saw it go. Here today, gone tomorrow.--- Dissipation is actually much worse than cataclysm.  (Or as T.S. Eliot wrote “Not with a bang but with a whimper.”) 

 

Offsetting these heavy themes, Letts plants land mines of acerbic humor and F bombs galore; yes, some sudden laugh out loud moments, unusual in a great American tragedy.  No other drama can compare, although August has other similarities to the works by Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Eugene O’Neil, Arthur Miller and Sam Shepard (works of all have been produced at PBD).  Letts provides subtle hat tips to the great American playwrights, including the pivotal role of a safe deposit box, awakening memories of Lillian Hellman’s Little Foxes. 

 

Multiple Scenes in the Weston Home Photo by Alicia Donelan
 

The production successfully stages those difficult scenes where multiple conversations are going on.  This is especially true of the post funeral family dinner where Violet of all people reprimands the group that this is a funeral dinner not a cock fight.  It is a prelude to a down and dirty family wrestle-mania match: disturbing and realistically staged.  Hayes had the assistance of David Hyland who not only admirably played the part of Sheriff Gilbeau, but served as Fight Choreographer as well. 

 

This may be Hayes’ directorial masterpiece, his passion for the play becoming part of the fabric, the staging so organic.  He has created Letts’ vision of a window into which, we, the audience, can view these sometimes oh so uncomfortable truths.  Some will relate more than others to these flawed characters.  All will leave the theater, somewhat stunned and emotionally drained and yet entertained.  He cast the play perfectly and led the actors to places rarely seen.

 

The technical crew of PBD has created the right ambiance for this epic play.  The scenic design is by Michael Amico who has designed scores of previous PBD productions.  The multiple locations of the moody, dark prairie house are on full display.  The windows are covered so there is no differentiation between night and day.  They live in the shadows as T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men.   

 

Lighting atmosphere by Kirk Bookman enhances the realism and keeps the audience focused.  There are exceptional lighting moments such as the one on Violet in her first drug induced appearance at the top of the stairs and the flickering TV light drawing in Charlie, Little Charlie, and Jean.

 

Resident Costume Designer Brian O’Keefe has created everyday clothing emphasizing the distinctive characters in the play.  Funeral attire is black, the women in dresses except for Ivy’s pants suit to which Violet cuttingly says You look like a magician’s assistant.  And O’Keefe’s costume does.  Violet's stunning funeral dress fits her to perfection. O’Keefe, can build any wardrobe piece single-handedly.

 

Roger Arnold’s sound design embeds microphones in the walls to capture actors speaking with their backs to us, and ones to carry the sounds of overlapping conversations.  It is a cacophony of family factions arguing at different points on the set as you can see Jean with her hands on her ears.  The western sounds of the harmonica fill the brief transitional scenes.

 

This is a high energy, passionate production of one of the great American plays.  The experience of seeing it on the intimate Palm Beach Dramaworks stage in West Palm Beach is extraordinary.  

 

 

NY, NY, In the Cold Rain

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Every year we try to get to NYC for a stay on the Upper West Side, go to theatre, and see our “kids” (Jon and Tracie, Megan and Chris).  I usually write lots of details about the numerous sites and high points, but alas, weather at the end of April did not cooperate and instead an intense and raw rain made some of our plans obsolete. 

 

But first upon our arrival, when the weather was still good, dinner at Jon and Tracie's apartment which overlooks the Hudson River.

 

 

As luck would have it, though, our son booked us into a boutique UWS hotel, the Wallace, and in spite of the construction across the street, the requisite NYC street sounds, fire engines, police, early morning garbage trucks, it was a wonderful choice as we had a separate living area to hunker down with family or just ourselves to “duck out” of the weather, mostly a cold blustery rain.

 

The weather spoiled some of our plans but we managed to enjoy, not only all six of us being together, but being able to get to most of the shows and performances we had booked, special restaurants too such as the Boulud Sud where it looks like we arrived from the frozen tundra.  (The photo, left to right, Megan, Ann, Bob, Chris, Tracie, Jon.)

 

 

The highlight for me, though, was going back in time to the Village Vanguard, remembering I was there in the early 1960s for a performance by Oscar Peterson.  I was in college and sat at the bar with one of my college or HS buddies. Doesn’t look like they changed much.  This time the rising luminary was Samara Joy, just in her early 20s.  We saw her first perform at Emmet’s Place before she even graduated from college and then again on the Jazz Cruise. 

 

Unfortunately, I was unable to get a good photograph of her because of the crowd and lighting so this will have to do.

 

 

Nonetheless, her Web Site has all the pix and information one might need. Her team has swung into high gear with performances scheduled all over the world and to see her emergence as a top jazz performer in such a short time is remarkable.

 

She is the real deal, a natural, titanic talent, often compared to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan, you might even say having Ella’s range and Sarah’s smoky quality. But she is herself, her own style.  We once heard her sing Guess Who I Saw Today, perhaps it was on Emmet’s Place, exactly as the song was written, with the unforgettable final verse,

Guess who I saw today, my dear!

I've never been so shocked before.

I headed blindly for the door.

They didn't see me passing through,

Guess who I saw today? [Repeat: x3]

I saw you!

 

Instead at the Vanguard she inter-spaced lyrics from another song, affecting in some ways but lacking that three word axe that falls at the end.  Many singers have made “”Guess” a signature song.  We love the one by Edie Gorme and hope that Samantha stays with at least some of the standard lyrics.  But she could sing the telephone book, and we’d be there.

 

The two shows that we managed to get to in spite of the weather were like the bookends to one another.

 

Some Like It Hot is loosely based on the movie and it is traditional Broadway energy with fabulous performances and clever, complicated staging, tap dancing galore too.  I thought it had all the best elements that a Broadway production had to offer plus farce with the moving doors, not knowing what characters would dance, or sneak out of each one.  Huge cast.  While the music was enjoyable, maybe only one or two songs were memorable in some way, yet no wonder it has just been nominated for 13 Tony awards.

 

Then there was the Lincoln Center production of Camelot, reimagined by Aaron Sorkin.  This production is minimalist, with lighting being particularly important (almost like a Greek Tragedy), and although the “book” has been revised they have essentially retained the glorious Lerner and Lowe songs and orchestrations with a 30 piece orchestra.   Ironically, who should we see there for that performance, but none other than Lin-Manuel Miranda, a special collaborator for New York, New York, with John Kander which we were unable to get to (although we had tickets) because of torrential cold rain and the inability to get a cab or Uber.  So that was the one major plan that fell through.

 

 

Nonetheless, being in NY, and at a hotel where we had some separate living space during the storms, made it another wonderful visit to the past.  Maybe we will have to avoid future April showers and storms and visit during the lusty month of May, “that lovely month when ev'ryone goes / Blissfully astray.”









 

 

Topdog / Underdog Encapsulates Brotherly Love, Rivalry and Despair

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Palm Beach Dramaworks concludes its outstanding 2022/23 season with Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-WinningTopdog / Underdog.  When it premiered some twenty years ago it had an absurdist slant, but it has now moved closer to stark realism.  Director Be Boyd further bends this stunning new PBD production toward the dystopian reality of today.  It is a tragic-comedy, an ode to black men and their estrangement from the American Dream.  The three-card Monte leitmotif of the play is steeped in metaphor and symbolism characterizing the America of today, a zero-sum game of being either a winner or loser, frequently merely by the nature of one’s birth.

 

This production evokes a deep emotional resonance on many different thematic levels, a family drama, a cautionary tale of racially based economic inequality, and the consequences of dealing with mental illness, guns and violence.  It is a perfect two-hander play that nonetheless comes across as big drama in the hands of Director Be Boyd and the Palm Beach Dramaworks team.

 

The rhythmic street language of the play is mesmerizing, an incantation drawing you into the lives of two black brothers who were given the names of “Lincoln” and “Booth” a great cosmic joke perpetrated by their boozy, philandering father who, along with their mother, long ago abandoned both when they were just youngsters, both boys unformed and uneducated.

 

Now in their 30s, they share Booth’s rundown cramped boarding room, a place where brotherly love and rivalry abound as well as the hardships of being dealt a bad hand in life. 

 

Director Be Boyd and the PBD technical crew bring the outside chaos inside the brothers’ lives where mere survival is the bottom line.  The toilet is down the hall.  Lincoln even pees into a cup on stage.

 

George Anthony Richardson and Jovon Jacobs Photo by Alicia Donelan

 

Lincoln was once a highly successful three-card-Monte hustler which he walked away from after his partner was shot.  He now has a “real” job, as honest Abe Lincoln, wearing a stovepipe hat and whiteface, at an arcade attraction.  Like Franz Kafka’s “Hunger Artist,” he now strives for perfection playing his namesake so customers can line up to “assassinate” him.  He is always working on his skills as a performance artist (or during slow moments, composing songs in his head), Booth even making suggestions for his improvement on the one hand while really wanting him to go back to “the game.”

 

Booth is ferociously performed by Jovon Jacobs who is appearing in his third PBD production.  He just gets better as an actor each time and now is at the top of his game.  Booth can only dream of being a three-card Monte hustler as he lacks the artistry of his older brother.  His are dreams of money and women, obsessed with making his girlfriend Grace love and have sex with him.  His expertise is being a crook, a shoplifter.

  

Jacobs’ internal energy seems infinite, explosive, attacking the words, seething from within.  His character’s fantasies drive the physicality of his performance, his magnetism frenetic, with exuberant mannerisms.  It is a bravura performance.  The striptease of his stolen goods shows great comic chops. 

 

George Anthony Richardson and Jovon Jacobs Photo by Alicia Donelan
 

Lincoln is played with a quiet dignity, befitting his namesake, by George Anthony Richardson (PBD debut), remarkably a last-minute replacement for the actor originally cast.  Serendipitously Richardson was the understudy for the recent Tony Nominated revival of the play, so he hits the ground running, although future performances will build upon the chemistry between these two fine actors who have had so little time together.

 

Richardson’s role as the sometimes more than tolerant, submissive older brother, resigned to his job and performance, does finally give in to the draw of “the game”...…..like the alcoholism that runs in his family, a compulsive generational hopelessness.  Richardson effectively portrays his character with docile resignation, but transforms into an animated actor with smooth hands and mesmerizing voice when he deals the cards.  This is his milieu.   

 

He has one steady customer who whispers in his ear, does the show go on when no one is looking?  The monologue leading up to this frequent visitor has particular relevance in today’s times, where everyday violence and shootings are endemic to our lives.  What might have been unimaginable not long ago, a carnival attraction for the mock assassination of a President such as Lincoln, impersonated not only by someone named Lincoln, but a black man as well, could be ordinary in today’s sideshow.

 

He says he can see his arcade customers in the reflection of a silver metal fuse box in the partial darkness, the image being upside down, remarking about his usual customer:  And there he is.  Standing behind me.  Standing in position.  Standing upside down.  Theres some feet shapes on the floor so he knows just where he oughta stand.  So he wont miss.  Thuh gun is always cold…..And when the gun touches me he can feel that Im warm and he knows Im alive.  And if Im alive then he can shoot me dead.  And for a minute, with him hanging back there behind me, its real.  Me looking at him upside down and him looking at me looking like Lincoln.  Then he shoots I slump down and close my eyes.  And he goes out thuh other way.  More come in.  Uh whole day full.  Bunches of kids, little good for nothings, in they school uniforms.  Businessmen smelling like two for one martinis.  Tourists in they theme park t-shirts to catch it all on film.  Housewives with they mouths closed tight, shooting more than once.  They all get so into it.  I do my best for them.  And now they talking bout cutting me, replacing me with uh wax dummy.

 

Booth wants his brother to return to “the game,” being hustlers together.  BOOTH: It was you and me against the world, Link.  It could be that way again.  Lincoln though doubts Booth would even have the skills to be the “sideman” playing along with the dealer, suckering people in.  LINCOLN: First thing you learn is what is.  Next thing you learn is what aint.  You don’t know what is you don’t know what aint, you don’t know shit.  Dark humor abounds in the play.

 

Offstage characters of Lincoln’s former wife Cookie, and Booth’s fixation on his on and off girlfriend Grace, give rise to anther central theme, masculinity and sexuality, a story of domination of women, or more pathetically, not having one, certainly not like their father who use to have them, leaving leftovers for Lincoln when he was just a young boy.  These relationships give further rise to their rivalry and trash talking.

 

Given their names and their love/enmity relationship, we all know this is going to end badly, but in leading to the how, why, and when, Director Be Boyd builds on the intrinsic conflict and tension.

 


 

As important as the text, is the look and feel of the production which starts with the scenic design by Seth Howard, his PBD debut, depicting their small claustrophobic room, built on a cold concrete slab, elevated at an angle, the squalor and chaos of the outside discernible.  It is like a price fighting ring, but without the ropes, where blood will be split as the rivalry for “topdog” is never ending. 

 

Kirk Bookman, lighting designer, floods the dingy dark space with light from the outside, and during transitional moments projects images of the black experience bringing in an element of their world in the form of a documentary.  This is well done from a lighting perspective but was a directorial choice and I wonder whether just the musical rap transitions would have sufficed.

 

The sound design by Roger Arnold contributes to the pulse of the play, with those of the city noises rising to a roar at times like an incoming freight train underscoring their victimization.

 

Brian O’Keefe’s costume designs reinforce their disheveled, poverty plagued world, interpreting their personalities without creating archetypical characters.  Booth’s stolen suits, ties and shoes are redolent of off the rack circa Target.  Lincoln’s “work attire” which we only fully see at the beginning of the play captures the absurdist quality of the play, his hand-me-down clothes from the previous performer, stovepipe hat, dime store beard, and his white face, a triumph for both O’Keefe’s clothing design and Bookman’s lighting. This creepy image of honest Abe will stay with you long after you leave the theater.

 

The final con brings out the ultimate fury of Booth, returning us to the futility of their lives, their lost sense of purpose and the ultimate price of mental illness.  The tragic ending is gut-wrenching.  This production is yet another testament to Palm Beach Dramaworks’ commitment to "theatre to think about."

 

Whose Freedom is it Anyway?

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I originally wrote this a few weeks ago for the Palm Beach Post as an Opinion Piece.  The paper published others of mine before, but they chose not to in this case.  Perhaps it is because of the ennui of thoughts and prayers on the subject.

 

Therefore I publish it here as the dreaded date of July 1 approaches, when Florida House Bill (HB) 543 goes into effect. This was advocated by the Republican majority and Governor DeSantis, further expanding the 2nd amendment to allow permit-less carry of weapons in Florida.

 

It will lead to more gun deaths in the state.  I’ve expressed my views on the subject of gun control numerous times in this space and consider this a summation and further expansion. 

 

The very preamble to the Constitution states it was to “insure domestic tranquility.” The proliferation of modern weaponry instead has facilitated a form of domestic dread.

 

Whose Freedom is it Anyway?

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address articulated four fundamental human rights that should be universally protected.

 

    Freedom of Speech

    Freedom of Worship

    Freedom from Want

    Freedom from Fear

 

In 1943 Norman Rockwell immortalized those Freedoms in paintings which were reproduced in “The Saturday Evening Post.” We saw the originals when visiting the New York Historical Museum in 2018

 

The painting “Freedom from Fear” depicts two children safely sleeping in their beds as their parents look on, the wife tucking them in, and the husband holding a newspaper which partially reveals a headline about the Blitz Bombings in London. 

 

That primary freedom we all want for ourselves and especially for our children, and our grandchildren, has mutated into the “freedom” to own and even carry military style weapons.  We now have two “competing” freedoms and a culture that celebrates weapons.

 

In Texas the sound of gunfire, just for the “fun” is so pervasive it is accepted as the norm in rural areas.  The recent Texas Mall shooting was the 199th Mass shooting of this year in the United States.   Next month it will be lawful to carry a concealed weapon in Florida, without a permit and without training.  Expect more gun violence here.

 

This is not the first time that we’ve had “freedoms” square off against one another.

 

At one time smoking was the accepted norm. It was part of our culture, as firmly entrenched as guns are today.  It took decades to remove the Marlboro Man from the popular American Mind.  The tobacco industry’s relentless ads subliminally communicated tough American independence.  Science proved that the ubiquity of 2nd hand smoke has a detrimental impact on non-smokers. Living in a smoke free environment transcends the freedom of smokers to deny that fundamental right.  Laws were finally changed.  

 

 

Similarly, we have a gun culture representing so called American independence.  Some of our elected representatives even “celebrate” that “freedom” with social network pictures of themselves posing with weapons of war, even with their young children.  This form of indoctrination is not much different than the wide-spread smoking advertising which permeated the media of the past.  We genuflected to the tobacco industry as we now do to the NRA.

 

The time has come for our representatives to recognize that their constituents’ freedom to live in relative safety transcends the rights of gun owners to embrace AR-15s and to legislate against the deadly mixture of “stand your ground” and “permit-less carry” laws.  Recently we’ve seen anecdotal evidence of the consequences of the former, innocent people being shot because they mistakenly rang a doorbell or drove into the wrong driveway.  The gun owner simply felt “threatened.”

 

Furthermore, “permit-less carry” puts impossible demands on our police who now may have to go into a public place where a shot has been fired and suddenly scores of untrained citizens are there with their guns drawn.

 

The widespread carrying of guns simply leads to more deadly gun consequences.  The United States has more guns than citizens; it also has an exponentially higher rate of gun deaths and accidents.  It is a statistical inevitability.

 

One of the standard arguments against doing anything, even by those who agree that something must be done, is that there are so many weapons “out there” it is hopeless.  In the early 1980s we also thought that regulating smoking was hopeless.  It took years, but a civilized solution finally prevailed.

 

It has to start somewhere, sometime.  We need to change the gun culture; our representatives have to either agree or be voted out.  Weapons of war need to be outlawed. 

 

As in New Zealand, Congress needs to provide meaningful dollars for an amnesty period for turning in such weapons of war, paying fair market price for them.  After that period, anyone who is discovered with one (no door-to-door seizures, another fabricated action gun-mongers caution) would be subject to legal recourse.

 

Weapons would have to be registered, just like motor vehicles (the unregulated use of which would make them even be more dangerous).  As with automobiles, those with more than a certain number would be considered a dealer and subjected to another level of registration and scrutiny.

 

“Stand your ground” “permit-less carry” laws must be changed. The freedom to live in relative safety must prevail over the freedom to own (and carry) military style weapons

 

It's Summertime, Summertime, Sum Sum Summertime

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Oh, the sweet innocence of The Jamies’ song, their one and only big hit from 1958, that opening line nicely summing up my years as a high school somnambulist. I paid dearly for my penchant to “to live and have some thrills,” as another part of the song goes.

 

Fast forward more than sixty years. In one’s retirement one would think those halcyon thoughts of carefree abandonment could be rekindled.  Now, it’s the new responsibility of merely staying healthy. “It's summertime (ba-bam-bam)” so now we plan our brief trips around the realities of trying to see out kids, both more than a thousand miles away with their spouses (we also have a grand-dog who we will meet in August). 

 

Those plans now are burdened by the overpopulated and digitized world of today.  I need not go into all the details but suffice it to say, being an octogenarian, competing for space in a world which would not be recognizable in 1958, has its challenges. However, along with its frustrations, there are some throwbacks to the civilized past. One young lady noticing we were having trouble hearing the so called loudspeaker over the airport din, volunteered to act as an interpreter.  It’s not that my hearing is bad; it’s the audio-multitasking part.  So, lest this entry becomes the sour grapes that I could easily write, I publically say thank you to the people who care.  Still, it is a crazy world.

 

We flew up to a regional airport, HPN, from our regional airport, PBI, that in itself a delicate feat given all sorts of possible delays, but managed to get there only an hour late to pick up a car I had reserved with Avis/Budget (now merged for the greater good of the shareholders) and after a half hour of waiting for my checked in advance car, all license and payment information provided on line, an uncaring employee, after clattering away at his computer, tossed me the keys to a Toyota 4-Runner although I had rented a mid-sized car, not a truck. “Take it or leave it” he said.  “It’s the only vehicles for rent from anyone.”

 

So, we gathered our luggage and pole vaulted into our truck after finally finding in a parking lot to which we had to drag our suitcases and off we went on the old Merritt Parkway, always under construction and always stop and go traffic finally arriving at our hotel, one that is near our old boat now owned and beautifully maintained by our son Jonathan and daughter-in-law Tracie. We’ve stayed at this Marriott on and off for 25 years, seeking it out as a hurricane haven when we were living on the boat ourselves each summer. But the hotel has regressed with smaller rooms, no shelving and a refrigerator that never worked. Needless to say, it was packed with no options.

 

Our older son Chris and his significant other Megan drove down the next day from the Boston area to stay at the same hotel and finally, our little family was able to get together, one of the high points of the trip for us.

 

Captain Jonathan had a nice surprise ready for us all the next day, engines revved for a cruise, casting off the lines as soon as we all boarded.  The weather had been threatening and we were not expecting it.

 Here he is on the Bridge above.

 

We passed the house in which we lived before moving to Florida, exactly in the center of this photograph, the two-story home.

 

 

After the weekend, all took leave except for Jonathan who works remotely and ourselves who were hoping to recapture more of our old boating life.  Sitting on the boat in the harbor it was if no time had passed other than we are now just visitors. Those thoughts went through me as I sat looking out, Ann on the couch reading, her ponytail flowing over the cushion (the refrains of The Big Bopper repeat in my head still, “Chantilly lace and a pretty face / And a ponytail hangin' down / A wiggle in her walk and a giggle in her talk / Make the world go 'round.”) 

 

With no one down at the docks, it is eerily quiet. There is now a persistent east wind bringing in clouds, some cool temperatures, and an occasional light shower.  The door to the boat is open and I ingest the cool humid flow.  This easterly wind induces random slapping of waves on the hull and the chines, the only sounds I hear, continuous, and if I sat here forever, and the wind never shifted, that slapping would be in a one to one relation with eternity.  Reveries now shift to reality.

 Aside from visiting our family, having some excellent meals, we were able to see our old boating friends, Ray and Sue.  All of us in some way have had our health issues, probably Ray and me with the most serious ones, indebted to our wives for keeping us going. 

 

 

And Ann managed to see our close friend, Betty, for lunch and reminisce about their 50 year friendship.  I had hired Betty as a copyeditor way back in the early 1970s but for the last twenty five years she has free lanced as one of the leading and most sought after copy editors in scientific publishing.  That was not her academic background, but it just came naturally to her.

 

The week flew by and before we knew it, we were back on the jammed Merritt Parkway, returning to White Plains Airport, and although I promised not to bitch, I must scratch this one.  Finally getting our truck back into the lot, and having lunch at the airport (which used to have a very nice restaurant but now catering to bar hoppers and fast foodians), we reluctantly went into the “pen” to get through TSA.  This airport has a holding area, as if you are cattle, totally disorganized, and dependent on prior connections / aircraft. 

 

 

Happily for us, our fully booked JB A320 flight arrived on time from Orlando and, a miracle, they called for boarding the aircraft on time. People were sitting or lying all over the floor it was so packed.  Grateful for this little gift, we stood, and got on line.  After committing ourselves, an announcement was made that they had no pilot for the plane.  But he was taking a limousine from JFK to HPN so 175 people had to wait for his arrival and hope his vehicle isn’t involved in a traffic issue.  Altogether crazy but given other horror stories of traveling post Covid, we are grateful, and, in particular, to see our “kids” no matter what.

 

So come on and change your ways

It's summertime (ba-bam-bam)








 

Evocative Literary Works -- Avid Reader and The Personal Librarian

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JP Morgan Library
 

While recently traveling, I read two different, interesting books: Robert Gottlieb’s Avid Reader and a historical novel, unusual as it was written by two people, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, The Personal Librarian. 

 

The former was recommended to me in 2017 by a friend of my son Jonathan.  He knew I’d find it particularly relevant as Gottlieb was a leading trade publisher (very different than my publishing world though) and my literary interests.  Apparently, I put the book on my Amazon wish list, and finally was able to find a used copy through an Amazon partner.  It turned out to be a “withdrawn” copy from the Public Library District of Columbia, a labyrinth path to languish on my shelves until recently.  It’s also ironic as the protagonist of the other book, The Personal Librarian, was from the District of Columbia. At the core of each work are books and publishing.

 

My wife recommended the latter, an unusual tale about the remarkable woman, Bella da Costa Greene a person of color who passed for white and lived her life that way, dedicated to building the J.P Morgan Library, in effect becoming a partner in that endeavor with the most powerful man in the world at the time.  Although historically accurate, many of the personal details had to be imagined; hence, a work of historical fiction.

 

Both books were redolent of aspects of my past.  At one time I was nearly enrolled in Pratt’s Master of Library Science program but life had different plans for me, starting in publishing right out of college, which leads me to the more personal work (for me) Gottlieb’s memoir, Avid Reader. 

 

His career in trade publishing a little parallels mine in academic publishing, both of us compulsive workers, both loving our jobs which we considered a way of life more than working itself.  He was ten years older than I, quickly rising to Simon & Schuster’s editor-in-chief, then occupying that same position becoming president of Alfred A. Knopf.  He then served as the Editor of The New Yorker returning to Knopf as “editor ex officio.”

 

If our paths crossed at all it was at the American Bookseller’s Association or PEN.  He did not bother attending the Frankfurt Bookfair as I did.  My kind of publishing required me there to negotiate co-publishing rights with English publishers and develop the international marketing of our own publications.  Plenty of trade publishers sought out the Frankfurt Bookfair (for the parties alone), but Gottlieb was dedicated to the art of editing and had no time for the usual trade frivolities, such as those parties and long two martini lunches, etc.  He was an editor in the mold of Maxwell Perkins and Gordon Lish (with whom he worked). 

 

Among the literary luminaries he worked with was his own discovery (and Gottlieb was only 26 years old then), Joseph Heller, and his then titled novel “Catch 18.”  By the time it was being set in type, though, the best- selling Leon Uris was coming out with Mila 18 so Gottlieb and team scrambled for a new title, and it was suggested that “Catch-11”might be used but then there was the fear that it would be confused with the film Ocean’s 11. Heller suggested 14 but Gottlieb considered it “flavorless” and with time growing short, spent a sleepless night and finally came up with Catch-22.  He called Heller: ‘”Joe, I’ve got it! Twenty-two! It’s even funnier than eighteen!’ Obviously the notion that one number was funnier than another number was a classic example of self-delusion, but we wanted to be deluded.”

 

 

But when I read that he considered Heller’s Something Happened one of the greatest novels of its time (I agree), it was then I resolved to write him upon completion of his autobiography to say how much I admired his work and his work ethic.  What are the odds that a book I bought years ago, and just recently picked up to read, should be written by someone who passed away while I was reading it?  I was heartbroken about missing the opportunity. He had an uncanny ability to communicate his life in such a personal voice.  I feel as if he was talking to me.  It is a rare autobiography which lacks self-censorship (the greatest fault of my own memoir in process), vital, a man who loved, loved what he did.

 

 

My old, beaten clothbound copy of Something Happened has followed us from house to house in Connecticut and now Florida.  Perhaps the time has come to put it on my “to be read (again)” list, a list that simply is like the expanding universe.

 

What a life and career.  He was indeed an avid reader as a kid. It helps that he was brilliant, and a quintessential New Yorker, who took advantage of all the cultural opportunities of the city.  In fact, in his later years became involved in the world of ballet, befriending Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine.  He became a ballet critic and he thought his attraction to the art was because it is all about movement, a world of difference from his literary life.  My wife’s favorite ballet company of the last 20 years has been the Miami City Ballet and its very continued existence was due to Gottlieb’s efforts and his friendship with Edward Villella, the company’s founder (Gottlieb maintained a home in Miami as well as an apartment in Paris).

 

He sometimes would pull all-nighters on behalf of his authors to read their new works or to edit ones submitted for publishing. He took no vacations and long holiday weekends meant he could get more work done.

 

Again comparing my own publishing life, I always felt that the more I got done, the more there was to do.  My family knew my favorite working day of the week was Mondays.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

Gottlieb said "I hated dinners out. Restaurants didn’t appeal to me. I didn’t go to movies or parties, play sports or watch sports. I literally didn’t know how to turn on the TV."  He saw himself in service of the author; authors, coworkers and friends were all part of his extended family.  He did have a family, married twice, the second marriage the charm (as was mine), to Maria Tucci the actress.

 

As I was finishing the book, he died at the age at 92.  I lamented his death and the lost opportunity of writing to him.  In his own voice, he makes a good point though: “I attempt not to think about death, but there’s no avoiding the fact that we are all the pre-dead.  I try not to brood about my lessening, physical forces, and try to avoid what I’m sure is the number one killer: stress. Luckily, I don’t use up psychic energy and living in regret. What’s the point? Or in worrying about the future. Why encourage anxiety ? The present is hard enough.”

 

Speaking of anxiety, indeed, can one imagine the day-to-day grind of living a life of self-imposed duplicity, such as the one portrayed in The Personal Librarian? 

 


Bryan daily eagle and pilot 28 Feb 1913
 

This work of historical fiction by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray is about Belle da Costa Greene’s personal and professional life. As J. P. Morgan's “personal” librarian, she helped build the incredible J.P. Morgan Library, JPM, many years her elder, never realized she was black.  She passed for white and that's how she had to lead her life, to protect her position, one of enormous responsibility as she represented JPM at auctions, operating completely autonomously.  It was a disadvantage enough being a woman in that world of antiquarian collecting and preservation.  It was also the way she protected her mother and siblings, who she supported throughout her life.  One can imagine the ensuing complications and her perpetual fear of being “outted.” 

 

Passing for white estranged her from her father, Richard Theodore Greener, Harvard College's first Black graduate.  He became Dean of Howard University’s Law School and a tireless advocate of equal rights during the Reconstruction.  This became a schism in his family.  His wife wanted her and her children to have the benefits of being thought of as white, fabricating a tale about Portuguese lineage and changing their name from Greener to Greene to disassociate them from him.

 

Belle finally found a way to embrace her father’s teachings and at the same time creating a research library second to none when, after JP Morgan’s death, she convinced his son Jack to make the library a gift to New York City.  She thought he could approve, putting these treasures indirectly in the hands of the people.

 

This gave her some closure and it took the writing team of the experienced novelist, Marie Benedict, and a bestselling writer, Victoria Christopher Murray to imagine the complete tale.  In the process, they became best friends and the joy they shared researching and writing shows on every page.

 

Avid Reader and The Personal Librarian, as different as they are, share that commonality, the joy of books. That was my world and how lucky I was to be a small part of it.

 

The Continuing Political Piñata of the Pandemic

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It was one of my better Op-eds, “Freedom” for the Few at the Expense of All (August, 2021)

 

The impetus for writing it almost exactly two years ago was DeSantis’ response to Covid at the time.  It was when he retreated from his original response (which was tempered by some sobering data), and he went rogue for political reasons turning Dr. Fauci into the enemy of the “freedom loving” people of Florida.

 

I walk into restaurants, theaters, or just down the street now and wonder, was it all just a bad dream?  Not really, the dream has morphed into yet another bad dream.  Maybe a worse one?

 

We now have more reliable data, but with the engine of conspiracy theories, abetted by social networking, it filters into the self-serving grab for political power, and we fail to learn from experience. The anti-intellectual vein of the American psyche goes deep, and populists very effectively tap into that.

 

One only has to read the July 22 New York Times article The Steep Cost of Ron DeSantis's Vaccine Turnabout, and then the lead editorial in the July 26 Wall Street Journal, The Real DeSantis COVIDRecord

 

Nowadays, an alternative reality is easy to “prove” and the WSJ does a pretty good job at that.  I’m not going to dissect the two, but my article from two years ago makes some of the same points as the NYT.

 

I will however quote the concluding paragraph of the WSJ article as it is so emblematic of how we can choose to look at this horrible episode in American history: “The lockdown damage continues, but progressives can’t admit they were wrong.  Nor can Mr. Trump.  So they are trying to take down Mr. DeSantis for being right.”

 

There was no “right” or “wrong” when we went through the dark Covid tunnel.  There was scientific advice about responding to the rapidly moving target of the pandemic, and that advice was based on informed experience. However, I don’t recall anyone claiming that it was a hard and fast “truth.” It was thought to be the best advice at the time.  Who was closer to the “truth”, Dr. Fauci or Dr. MyPillowGuy?

 

Trump’s “Evita moment,” ripping off his mask, after climbing the steps to the White House balcony (gasping for air), following his Covid treatment at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, was clearly a high point of his political narcissism.  Look at me!  Look at me! Mr. Tough Guy!  But he received the experimental monoclonal antibody treatment not available to most of his fellow Americans who were dying from Covid.  He did not opt for the "miracle cures" he advocated (and probably killed some of his cult supplicants) such as hydroxychloroquine or injecting disinfectants.  No, he listened to health experts.

 

So would have DeSantis with his own life on the line. Instead, he surrounded himself with hand-picked health advisors who supported his views, all calculated to put him in the White House in 2024.  Lots of luck with that Governor; you didn’t count on the increasing popularity of your indicted adversary.  Trump or DeSantis: demagoguery is their commonality.


Was it But a Bad Dream?

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I’m referring to those long months of Covid confinement and panic.  Was our fate a ventilator made in Detroit or, worse, a body bag in a refrigerator truck?  Would we ever see our loved ones again not to mention taking a trip, on a plane, or the horror of it, a ship?

 

 

It’s as if a dam broke loose and the inflationary tentacles of demand for normalcy has reached deep into the pockets of liberated consumers.  This year we too have followed the flock having been on a Jazz Cruise in January, a trip to our beloved NYC, my returning home and Ann going to Milan for 2 weeks, and then visiting our son and daughter in law on our old boat in CT in June.  We just returned from our long delayed trip to Boston to see our older son Chris and his significant other Megan.  While in Boston we hooked up with my best friend from college, Bruce, and his wife, Bonnie.  A lot was packed into just four nights and three days.

 

So this was our third round trip domestic flight in the last few months. As with the others, not a vacant seat, this one to and from Boston packed to the hilt on an extended Boeing 737-900. 

 

Landing at Logan during rush hour on a weekday presented issues, the Delta arrival gate football field lengths away from baggage claim and then cabs another football field away, with few available.  Our luck, the Sumner Tunnel/Route 1A South was closed for restoration so the less than two mile journey to the Omni Seaport Hotel moved at a snail’s pace.  But, compared to the real horror stories you hear about travel today, all was taken in stride.

 

The Omni is a relatively new hotel.  The entire Seaport section of Boston seems to be under construction.  It is a happening place.  It was a convenient spot to have a lovely dinner with Chris and Megan our second night there; spending quality time with them, the main reason for our short trip. 

 

 

The following day I was up and out early to walk the Seaport, mostly deserted but the sky and air brought back our New England days and our boating life.  It was the very noticeable change not only in temperature as well as the low humidity that commanded my attention.  Leaning against the railing of the wharf to which ferries to Provincetown were docked and loading, there was a nearly irresistible urge to buy a one way ticket and disappear onto the Cape.

 

After doing so much boating to places like Block Island, Nantucket, Martha’s Vineyard and Cuttyhunk during our once-upon days, I always wanted to live, permanently, on an island.  But the Cape would do as well.  So much for unrealistic reveries.

 

 

Later, we had a leisurely lunch with my best friend from college, Bruce, and his wife Bonnie.  We are all simpatico, looking at our long lives with gratitude and now apprehension about the future for our “kids.”  They have two daughters; we have two sons.  Neither of us have grandchildren.

 

We had looked forward to Saturday with anticipation as we were about to spend the day with Chris and Megan at their home, closer to Worcester than Boston, but as it was a weekend, Chris volunteered to pick us up and return us.  We could have caught a train for most of the trip, but it ran only every two hours and no one wanted to be on a schedule.

 

That drive, much of it on the Mass. Turnpike, brought me back to the days when I used to go to an office we had in Portsmouth, NH, usually staying  over a night or two, but once I remember leaving before dawn in CT and returning around Midnight the same day, a round trip of some 400 miles.  It was easy to be young.

 

 

Ann had visited a dog boutique store in Boston as we were about to meet our “grand-dog,” Lily, who Chris and Megan recently adopted, a rescue dog: toys, chewable bones, and a collar monogrammed bandana which she had previously ordered.  She’s already spoiled enough by the love of Chris and Megan, a mature puppy with more pup than maturity.  Lovable, indeed.  As we haven’t had a dog in our lives since our beloved Treat passed about 20 years ago, we could hardly keep our hands off of her.

 

Megan had prepared a mid afternoon feast, all home-made, with yummy appetizers of hummus and tzatziki and pita bread, then chicken souvlaki, spanakopita, and a Greek salad. 

 

 

We met Megan’s father, John, and his husband, Victor, who live nearby.  John made a delicious lemon meringue dessert to round out a perfect meal.  It was a pleasant afternoon, getting to know one another, sipping wine, and enjoying a fabulous luncheon.

 

We sat outside and although it was a higher humidity late afternoon, there was also a light breeze, shade, and if I closed my eyes it had the sound and redolence of when we lived in Weston, CT so many years ago.  Being at their home we felt transported, until it was time to return to our hotel, and to pack for an early morning flight.  As this was on a Sunday, the trip which had taken us nearly an hour from Logan was a mere five minutes to return.

 

I love the location of the Seaport in relation to Logan and that area itself.  We’ll be back!  At least that’s the hope.


 

BE MINE -- A Valentine from the Heart of Richard Ford

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Here is an unforgettable Valentine’s card of a novel, particularly affecting for those of us from the boomer years or earlier.  I suppose there are spoilers in what follows, but they wouldn’t deter me from reading this novel if I came across this personal analysis.  At least that is my hope in writing this.

 

Richard Ford does not tilt the windmill into fantasy, but into the realities of aging and dying, the father/son relationship, and the carnival of American culture in, yet, another novel whose main character is his alter ego, Frank Bascombe.  I originally thought his novel, Canada,  marked the passing of Frank Bascombe.  But Frank was not yet down and out.  He came back with Let Me Be Frank With You   so I thought the latter, four novellas, loosely held together by Hurricane Sandy and the theme of aging, might be the last we hear from Frank.  That was followed by his intimate memoir about his parents, Between Them;Remembering My Parents.  Surely that meant Ford was moving on to new pastures.

 

But, no, Frank had more to say through Ford, although Frank is now older, burdened by his own health issues.  More significantly, there is now the major health issue of his sole surviving son, Paul, who at 47 is suffering from ALS, and Frank has chosen to be his caretaker.  This is the same Frank as I described in Let Me Be Frank With You: “it is Frank’s voice, the way he thinks, that connects with me -- plaintive, sardonic, ironic, perplexed, now somewhat resigned, and with a wry wit.”

 

I say “tilting the windmill” into life purposely, as the novel has elements of Don Quixote.  The literary critic Harold Bloom says “Don Quixote is the first modern novel, and that the protagonist is at war with Freud's reality principle, which accepts the necessity of dying…. [A] recurring theme is the human need to withstand suffering.”

 

And there is abundant suffering in Be Mine.  Dostoevsky said once "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."  Frank and his son prove to be worthy.  Ford even indulges in a piece of metafiction to make his point; Dying makes the non-dying feel excluded and shabby, since dying’s struggle is like no other. Long ago, when I was a doomed-to-fail scribbler of mid-century American short stories of the sort that showed up in The New Yorker, written by John Cheever and John Updike (mine never did even once), I practiced the “rule” taught me in my writing course at Michigan, which stipulated that inserting a death into a fragile short story was never permitted, since death must have importance proportional to the life that’s ended, and short stories, my teacher believed, weren’t good at relating the vastness of human life.  (Ford, in my mind, belongs in the company of Cheever and Updike as being astute observers of American life.)

 

Imagine caring for a 47 year old son who has ALS.  Frank’s solution, with the help of Dr. Catherine Flaherty, who we meet at the beginning of the book and whose presence later provides a satisfying denouement, is to get his son into an experimental program at Mayo in Rochester MN.  She had recently stepped down as head of endocrinology at Scripps La Jolla.  Catherine. Light of my life, fire of my loins.  Here was a long story, as there is for everything if you survive.  Since 1983, Catherine (who’s 60) and I have never totally been out of touch.  And since Sally’s departure, she and I have spoken a time or two with a circling, half-suppressed fragrance of possibility scent-able down the cyberlines.  But Catherine had other suitors she never took seriously, a “big doctor” career, and a divorce.  And yet she has never left Frank’s psyche.

 

And so begins the journey, but most of the distance is covered between the 600 mile trek between Mayo and Mount Rushmore, culminating on Valentine’s Day.  Here is a canvas for Ford to paint his themes.

 

I must digress to what I wrote about his deeply affecting memoir Between Them; Remembering My Parents.  I quoted something which I think profoundly influences this novel:  But hardly an hour goes by on any day that I do not think something about my father. Much of these things I've written here. Some men have their fathers all their lives, grow up and become men within their fathers' orbit and sight. My father did not experience this. And I can imagine such a life, but only imagine it. The novelist Michael Ondaatje wrote about his father that ‘... my loss was that I never spoke to him as an adult.’ Mine is the same - and also different - inasmuch as had my father lived beyond his appointed time, I would likely never have written anything, so extensive would his influence over me have soon become. And while not to have written anything would be a bearable loss - we must all make the most of the lives we find - there would, however, not now be this slender record of my father, of his otherwise invisible joys and travails and of his virtue - qualities that merit notice in us all. For his son, not to have left this record would be a sad loss indeed.

 

Be Mine fills in those emotional blanks.  The voice of Frank is clear; you could say being on a quixotic journey.  Paul could be a stand in for the author himself; “making the life” he is found.  I just had an aching feeling that in Be Mine Ford is working out the emotional pain of the absent father. And, as so much of the novel is about aging and dying, what does one value in the decreasing moments left in a long life? 

 

Yet how we chose to deal with our suffering is book-ended by two chapters with the same title: “Happiness.”  Thus, purely on average, I would say I’ve been happy. Happy enough, at least, to be Frank Bascombe and not someone else. Ford’s acerbic sense of humor comes through: It’s widely acknowledged that people live longer and stay happier the more stuff they can forget or ignore. That was at the start of the emotional and literal journey with his son.   

 

And “happiness” at end is another piece of metafiction:  I’d once read in a book about writing that in good novels, anything can follow anything, and nothing ever necessarily follows anything else. To me this was an invaluable revelation and relief, as it is precisely like life—ants scrabbling on a cupcake. I didn’t see I had to speculate about what caused what. And truthfully, I believe it to this day. Witness my son’s relentless assault by ALS, which as far as the best medical science understands, poses a near complete mystery. Yes, we see it happening. But nothing specifically causes it or specifically doesn’t cause it. It just happens.  Happiness = Acceptance.  We are dealt the cards; how we play them is more important that what we are dealt.

 

The journey itself and his observations about the America we are left with is reminiscent of another novel I read which is even more transparently modeled after Don Quixote, Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte 

 

A key issue in my reading of that book was the following: “There are pastiches of popular culture the sum of which point the way to the vapid disintegration of values and truth, making it a hallmark work of dystopian literature…. As a picaresque novel it savagely satires the entire America of now, a society gone wild with the self indulgent consumption of popular culture, conspiracy theories, xenophobia, opioid addition, and political polarization. 

 

Ford’s observations go further into the funhouse of today’s eerie reality; a cartoonish view of what this nation has become, but in black humor lays the truth.

 

While Paul is at the Mayo clinic, Frank has sought out the services of Betty Tran, a Vietnamese masseuse in one of those shopping centers.  He thinks he’s in love with her. Diminutive, smiling, cheerful, with bobbed hair and darkly alert eyes. 4 feet, 10 inches, not a centimeter taller, with pert, friendly gestures that were welcoming yet confident, happy to look me in the eye and give me a slightly unsettling wink. …But sitting, talking two hours with pretty, exciting, vivid, immensely likeable Betty was like a fantasy (I’m told) men my age frequently indulge: the high school girl you should’ve loved but for a thousand reasons didn’t, yet dream you could still love.

 

Apparently she gave “happy endings.” As Frank arrives to give her a “Be Mine on Valentine’s Day” card she is being hauled off by the police, smiling, waving a dainty hand, her slender arm bare, bobbling her head of bright yellow hair in a gesture she’s performed for me other times. “Good-bye, good-bye. Come back, come back,” words I “hear” as if they were booming through a PA. “Good-bye, good-bye. Come back, come back.”

 

Paul wants to rent an RV and travel all over the southwest which given his condition would be challenging for them both.  Frank comes up with the idea of a shorter road trip to Mount Rushmore but rent the RV at the place he wants—A Fool’s Paradise—a roadside emporium we’ve visited once and where one finds for-sale-or-rent golf carts, septic tanks, porta-potties, snowmobiles, cherry pickers, enormous American flags, blank grave monuments, waterslide parts and an array of 25 used RVs set out in rows in the frozen snow. Paul can choose whichever RV rig he wants. And the minute his Medical Pioneer event’s over, we can load up and set off for Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, making stops at whatever loony sights we find.  The only one available is an old Dodge Windbreaker Camper, not really suitable to be lived in during the cold nights, obligating them to stay in hotels along the way.

 

I had to laugh as their first stop is at a Hilton Garden Inn, where we usually stay when traveling along the spider web of the Interstates and, as Frank, specifying a double not by the elevator, the ice machine or the pool, two free bottles of…Dasani water.

 

Then on to the “World’s Only Corn Palace” in Mitchell, SD, where my parents stopped off in our sole transcontinental junket in 1954… which is billed as “Everything in your wildest dreams made out of corn.”  This has elements up Paul’s alley—self-conscious inanity, latent juvenile sexual content and a “life in these United States” down-home garishness. Again, he is hard to predict—which can be good.

 

Frank has hit pay dirt with his son.  Like me, there’s nothing my son thrills to more than the anomalies of commerce….The “Place Corn Boutique” spreads over the entire arena/performance venue/polling place; a Macy’s of corn-themed crapola….All of it precisely what Paul Bascombe is put on the earth to seek, be deeply interested in and mesmerized by. I could not have been more prescient.

 

The banter between Frank and his son is a balance between contentious and affection.  The dialogue is poignant.

 

From there they go to the Fawning Buffalo Casino, Golf and Deluxe Convention Hotel.  Something for everyone!  Ford’s description constitutes hilarious realism:  There’s a “Rolling Stones All-Native” cover band in the Circle-the-Wagons supper club. Exotic Entertainment in the Counting Coup Lounge. Ugly sweater, wet T-shirt and best-butt contests every weekend. A “gigantic” indoor waterslide. A “world famous” Tahitian Buffet. Plus, “Lifestyle Enrichment” classes, a writers workshop, a mortuary science job fair, Tai Chi instruction, and a “How to Live in the Present” seminar taught by Native psychologists with degrees from South Dakota State. Plus, “Loose Slots” and Valentine’s room rates for lovers—which my son and I are not but might pass for. There’s also a free shuttle to the “The Monuments” every two hours, which appeals to me, since I’m not sure the Windbreaker makes the climb if the weather turns against us, which it could.

 

But the Fawning Buffalo is not an inspired choice.  Paul is irate, wheelchair bound, feeling remote from the possibilities the carnival-like atmosphere offers, Frank pressing to get a room, thinking of the buffet and secretly maybe a lapdance when his son goes to bed.  They argue in front of the room clerk  “But we can still get the Valentine’s suite. I’ll order you up exotic room service. I’m sure it’s available.” I mean this. “You’re an asshole.” “Why am I an asshole? Life’s a journey, son. You’re on it.” I’m willing to piss him off if I can’t make him happy. Though I wish I could. He is quite a conventional, unadventurous man when you come down to it. Like me. “It’s not a journey to here,” he says savagely…. Fatherhood is a battle in any language.

 

They leave, but as Valentine’s Day is such a big holiday there, they try every hotel/motel after leaving.  They’re all full. If I’d prevailed at the Fawning Buffalo, I’d right now be in the Tahitian Buffet, a couple of free Stolis to the good. Never let your son decide things.

 

At another Hilton, the clerk knows an out of the way motel where they could stay.  They have to double back to get there.  It is a broken down mostly abandoned place, with aging down to earth proprietors, relics of the past.  In a dank room Frank sleeps in his clothes next to his son.  And Frank thinks.

 

I have said little on the subject; but I am moved by whatever it is my son is at this drastic intersection of life. There should be a word for that—I wish I knew it—for what he is, a word that can be inserted in all obituaries to help them speak truth about human existence. Though whatever that word is, “courage” isn’t it.

 

Finally, the big day, Mount Rushmore, another circus to end their journey, but this time, despite the artificiality of it all, those faces on the mountain, the oohing and aahing, the selfies, etc., Frank and Paul, reconcile a lifetime.

 

“This is great. I love this,” Paul Bascombe—the Paul Bascombe—says. He is craned forward in his chair, fingering his silver ear stud, eyes riveted with all the others of us, upon the four chiseled visages. I cannot completely believe I’ve brought this unlikeliest of moments about, and can be here standing where I’m standing—with my son. How often do anyone’s best-laid plans work out?....I am happy to have done one seemingly right thing for one seemingly not wrong reason. Any trip can be perilous once you commit to the destination, as we have….“Do you know why it’s so great…Why I’ll never be able to thank you enough?” “Tell me.” “It’s completely pointless and ridiculous, and it’s great.” I’m merely happy to believe we see the same thing the same way for once—more or less. It is pointless and it is stupid.  “We’re bonded,” Paul says slyly, “It’s not really like any place else, is it? It’s monumental without being majestic.” There is no trace of disappointment, double or triple meaning.

 

The last chapter, again, “Happiness,” is perhaps the best piece of writing I’ve read in a long time, languid and elegant (Cheeveresque), philosophical but, even what Frank has endured and at his age, hopeful.  Paul would approve.  Now that I’ve read the work, taking notes, I can now go back and reread it simply for pleasure and Ford’s exquisite writing.  Maybe before Valentine’s Day?

 

Mountain Getaways; Asheville, Fairview, and Big Canoe

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I’ve always had a penchant for the mountains, the crisp air, the pristine beauty, the remoteness, all helping to temporarily disrupt the anxiety of our times.  As a consequence we began to occasionally rent a place in Asheville, NC, starting with condos and graduating to homes, all these rentals through a broker (this was pre AirBnB).  We also treated ourselves to a few stays at the iconic Grove Park Inn, its edifice shaped from the granite boulders that were hauled from a nearby mountain, mostly by mule wagon.  The original structure has been added to as time went on.  It is a history vault as well, it’s walls lined with plaques of the people who have stayed there, just about every luminary of the 20th and 21st century, including most of the US Presidents.

 

We used to visit the area driving back from CT after spending several months living aboard our boat.  Covid disrupted everything, as well as merely aging.  Also, the boat is now our son’s, so we are not driving to CT anymore.  But the mountains still beckoned. Having visited most of the sites in and around Asheville, this time we wanted to do something a little different.  That is mostly stay in one place where we have views and privacy and quiet.

 

 

So we joined the AirBnB site and began our search.  We wanted not only those spectacular views, but a remote mountain top as well.  We found one, a Chalet with three bedrooms, fully equipped kitchen, a hot tub, and fireplace with plenty of cordwood.  Naturally, the main attraction being glorious views of the mountains and quiet that only remoteness can offer.  The only immediate neighbors we were told might be a sighting of a bear or deer in Fairview, NC, a rural community bordering on Asheville, only 20 minutes from downtown.  The house boasted great reviews, so we said OK; bring on the quiet and the bears and the funky nearby places to eat with the locals.  Of course we didn’t really mean bears, but we read it was possible to occasionally spot one along the side of the road.

Dawn

 

We timed our arrival so could first shop at the local Food Fair and although the plan was to just get the essentials, we were early for our check-in and so we stocked up without really considering how loaded the car was already. 

 

At the appointed time, we began our climb up to our “home away from home” for the next two weeks and I mean, climb and more climbing along the curving mountain roads.  Lost except for the miraculous GPS (what did we do before??) which finally led us to (and we were warned about this from reviews), the final half mile of twisting road which is only one car width wide, with tumbling down the steep mountainside as one option if you got too close to one side, or getting stuck in a deep rocky culvert on the other, which I suppose a 4 wheel drive vehicle with good ground clearance could navigate.  Unfortunately for us our two wheel, rear drive SUV gave us only a little more road clearance than a sedan but no added traction.

 

The rule of the road is the vehicle going up has the right of way which means if you meet one as you are going down, you have to back up to the point you can pull into one of the few driveways (all at 45 degree angles) or back all the way to your house (ours, a 45 degree one as well).

 

Well, in our two weeks there we never saw another vehicle on this stretch.  Lucky us.  Crisis averted!

 

So, we arrived and unpacked like crazy, including groceries, and hauled everything into our halcyon hideaway.

Gound fog in the morning

 

The problem with any rental, no matter how ideal, is acclimating yourself to someone else’s idea of what constitutes comfort.  Our landlady, Brea, to her credit, must be OCD as copious instructions were everywhere.  Except in the entertainment department where she assumes that everyone was ROKU and DISH literate.  Hey, Brea, you are dealing with a couple of old fossils here!  Give us cable and a remote and we can survive.  The sad upshot was we couldn’t figure out how to watch the US Tennis open as we unpacked, missing Coco’s semi final match.  Exhausted out of our minds, we finally crawled to our bed. 

 

The next morning, though, we called and Brea patiently explained how to navigate the TV from the various on screen menus.  It was a day to relax.  Enjoy the mountain views, fit in some reading and watch a little tennis at night. Our mountain Chalet had a wrap around deck with table, chairs, grill, etc. for outdoor eating, relaxing, and viewing.

Our Bear Visitor

 

We were having a glass of wine with crackers and hummus early that evening.  Ann had just brought the food inside leaving me briefly while I sat quietly mesmerized by our view.  Suddenly I heard a sound behind me and when I turned I saw a black bear approaching me from behind, actually on the deck about 10-15 feet away.  I jumped up, we locked eyes but the bear jumped too, just as frightened, not realizing that the still figure sitting there was a dreaded human being!  He turned around on his hind legs and walked slowly back to the driveway, surveyed the car, and even stopped for a few photos.  Seeing him in relation to our car gives an idea of his size, maybe 250 lbs.

 

Brea reminded us the next morning about how totally unusual it was that a bear came so close, especially coming up on the deck.  People do have sightings but rarely like that one.

Troyer's Country Amish Blatz

 

We shopped that day at a very local store, half way down the mountain, Troyer's Country Amish Blatz (talk about farm to table and local).  We read that they made the most amazing sandwiches and decided to try this for ourselves.  There we overheard that they would be closing the following day to attend a Willie Nelson concert with friends, some 200 miles away.  Too bad I thought as our son and daughter in law would be visiting for the weekend and it would have been an ideal place to take them for a little local color.

 

In anticipation of their arrival, Ann bought and made “from scratch” a vegetable/bean soup, a nice snack for when their plane arrived at the local Asheville airport and so down the mountain we went the next day to pick up Jon and Tracie.

 

Asheville Regional Airport has its issues -- mostly commuter lines flying under the names of the larger carriers.  This necessitated their arriving on two different flights from LGA but they did get in pretty much on schedule, a half hour apart.  Leaving was a different story.  They were scheduled to leave together, but the flight was cancelled for no reason and was rescheduled for 8.00 am the following day.  We left the mountain top at 6.00 am to get them there in plenty of time.  They boarded the flight on time, ready to roll and then they were told to leave the plane because of mechanical problems.  Rerouting through Charlotte later in the afternoon resulted in flying or waiting around airports the entire day.  This made Ann say that she didn’t think they would ever come back to Asheville again!

At the Grove Park Inn

 

Nonetheless, that gave us an extra day to spend with them.  We toured the area and sampled some of the fun restaurants nearby for dinner, particularly Cooks Corner and Rendezvous.  And that allowed us time for lunch on the Grove Park Inn stone terrace with majestic views of the Blue Ridge mountain range as well as a tour of the Hotel itself which our daughter in law had never seen.

 

 

The botanical gardens offered up not only the local fauna, but during our walk in the forest we went past a momma and baby bear watching us.  VERY nearby.  As the mother bear is very protective we were told not to stop or make any motion that she might interpret as threatening, so we kept moving although Jonathan said to them, “That’s OK, nothing to see here” as we walked on.  They seemed to understand thankfully.  Bears can run up to 30 mph for short distances and were a short distance, so we really didn’t want to engage them in conversation!

At the Botanical Gardens

 

After the “kids” left we were on our own to enjoy the next week and a half.  One of Ann’s dearest friends, Joyce (soon to be 98 years old but acts and looks our age or younger!) now lives there with her daughter Terri and her husband Brian who built a beautiful year round house to their specifications and, wisely, only half way up a mountain.  When Joyce moved from Florida, they converted an en suite bedroom to an in-law quarter and Joyce now has the best of both worlds, the setting and family, as well as being near her other daughter, Pattie.  So we spent some time and had dinner with them later in the week.  I could easily trade our home in FL for theirs in Asheville, but not one other person involved would agree, especially Ann.

 

Joyce and Ann

 

 

No trip to the area would be complete without a visit to downtown Asheville proper.  It’s a funky city so much reminding me of my days in the East Village in NYC.  Most of the locals have tattoos and somewhere in this blog you’ll find a story of Paul Ortloff who was a friend of mine in high school and became a well known tattoo artist, living in Woodstock (think he still does).  Every time I’m in Asheville I think of him.

 

 

Asheville, like any city, has a homeless population and it is sad to see someone sleeping on the ground there or dumpster diving.  I managed to get a photograph of two young women in plain sight and the body expression of the one waiting tells a story of despair.

 

The main draw downtown for us is a great independent bookstore, Malaprop’s Bookstore / Café.  We could spend all day there.  And we sort of did, ending up buying several books.  I looked at their signed editions section and they had one I wanted, a hardcover of Richard Russo’s latest book, the final one in his “Sully” trilogy, Somebody’s Fool.  I already had the book on my iPad and that was to be my next read.  But it’s a signed Richard Russo! (I have a couple of others).  As I don’t like to mark up clothbound books anyhow, I rationalized that I would get this for my collection and read it on my iPad.  Ann loaded up on paperbacks on the advice of one of the knowledgeable managers there.

 

The next logical step after spending so much time there was to ask to use their bathroom.  No, those are for the staff only, and they suggested we go down the street to the public library which we did.  But, little did we know, within that public library is a used bookstore, another one of our favorite places to browse!  Most books were a buck and in perfect condition!  Had we known that first, we might have saved a lot of $$ so we loaded up there too, my finding a pristine hardcover copy of Joyce Carol Oats’ novel, Black Water as well as a hardcover book by Willie Nelson (more on that later). 

Asheville al Fresco

 

A word or two about Joyce Carol Oats, who, when I was younger, I would read, but as her fiction morphed into gothic, even horror, I rarely read her work anymore.  Shame on me.  She is such a fine writer and given the fact that she’s written more than 50 works, probably one of our best living novelists.  Well, Black Water didn’t disappoint, including its white knuckle terror moments.  Although she has denied it, it seems to be based on Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick tragedy when he left a party on Martha's Vineyard late on a Friday night with a young woman, Mary Jo Kopechne to drive to a ferry landing and his car went off the road into a pond drowning the young woman.   

Black Water by Joyce Carol Oats

 

Oates renames these characters for her 1991 novel, set in a different decade and in Maine.  It is the story of the main character’s death, Oats telling it over and over again from different perspectives and just when you think this is it, it is told yet again and with more retrospective narrative.  The rhythm of the novel alone, and its expectant buildup of terror, makes it worth reading and in part of a day, sitting on the porch, overlooking the mountains, waiting for the appearance of our bear again, I read the entire book.

 

Getting back to the Willie Nelson story.   Much earlier in this entry I mentioned that we had visited Troyer's Country Amish Blatz, and overheard the owners excitedly talking about taking the next day off to see their favorite singer, Willie Nelson.  Our thought was to drop off the book we bought at the library on our way back (and pick up more of their delicious offerings).  Serendipitous unexpected gifts are the best.  When Ann gave them the book, you would think she was offering a gold bar, the gal who runs the store running around the counter to give her a big hug. 

 

Visiting Smokey and the Pig

 

Although we were strangers, all the local places treated us as old friends. That also included visits to the BBQ ‘Smokey and the Pig’ and ‘The Local Joint” which is a diner attached to a gas station.

The Local Joint

 

Also, no trip in the area would be complete without a drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway.  Little did we know, the day we choose was “Heritage Day” and the Arts and Crafts center which we have visited many times in previous years was celebrating with local artisans displaying (and naturally selling) their crafts and in a small tent adjacent to a grassy area a Western North Carolina group would perform the music of the area, mostly ballads handed down from one generation to the next and bluegrass originals.  We enjoyed sitting in the little audience, being among the locals, and watching the families gather on the lawn, a little girl doing continuous cartwheels.  It was like being part of Our Town.

 

Heritage Day Blue Ridge Parkway

 

Alas, the time had come to leave our mountain retreat, pack and close up our Chalet putting it back together again the way we found it.  But that was not the end of the journey as we had promised to visit friends, Kyle and Joe, in their new home in Big Canoe, GA.  So down the mountain we went and on mostly local NC or GA highways we made our way to them, our GPS miraculously taking us to their door in the winding treacherous labyrinth which passes as a road to their home, deep within their mountain community.

Big Canoe Lake

 

It can be challenging staying with another couple, living in their space, under their rules, but their commodious home and easygoing attitude made for a pleasurable two night stay.  This community has it all, a pleasant clubhouse with good dining, golf (not for me), a health club, a lake with boats (very much for me), and that fine mountain air.  Joe and Kyle have fixed up their home since they bought it a year ago, into a real escape from the flatness of FL.  I loved being in the woods again, as we lived for 30 years in CT, and listening to the occasional song of cicadas.

 

 

We went out to dinner one night and once outside the community realized we were in MAGA country, someone actually paying to put up this billboard on a state road.

 

Leaving to go home finally was bittersweet, hating to leave on the one hand, but ready for our own bed.  Ironically, even though their home is closer to ours in FL than from Asheville, it takes even longer as you have to go through Atlanta and then cut across FL.

 

So leaving their house early Saturday morning, I set our GPS on home.  It got us to their front door and through their enormous community.  It’s only logical it would get us out.  Oops, not quite, much to our surprise!

 

Apparently, the GPS routes one to a gate exit which will not open for visitors and then keeps rerouting you to the top of a mountain.  We were hopelessly lost and we had wanted to get an early start.  We stopped several people for directions, and they were as vague as the GPS until FINALLY we found the main road out, but we can unequivocally say we saw more of Big Canoe, GA than most of its residents!

 

Finally underway, through Atlanta, most of the traffic consisting of those going to college football games, no real difficulties, and after Atlanta (unrecognizable, the place of Ann’s birth), as usual I set my speed control for 9 miles over the speed limit.  I’ve been driving for 62 years and have never had a ticket for anything and having driven up and down the coast to CT for twenty years to our boat, was not about to forfeit my record.

 

About ten miles from the FL state line, my doing 79 miles an hour in the 70 zone, I noted that everyone was passing me as I was in the left lane, so I settled behind a GA driver in the middle lane who was going 80.  Still traffic (all GA plates) was passing us in the left lane.  Suddenly a sheriff’s car, lights flashing, came up behind me and pulled me over.

 

We were caught in a local GA speed trap.  GA drivers were ok to go that speed or faster even, but the local police hand out these mementoes to anyone out of state (not really speeding tickets, but an income producing “breaking a local ordnance” scheme). 

 

Sort of ruins a great trip.  This officer was a good ole’boy if we ever saw one.  Pleasant but would not want to be Cool Hand Luke under his tutelage. 

 

Home safe and sound once again.  At our age, we wonder how many such trips we might have left in us.  Probably no more long distance drives.  We put 1, 892 miles and 40 hours in the car those two plus weeks.  That’s enough!

 

Troyer's Backyard





Kenneth Lonergan’s ‘Lobby Hero’ Exposes Uncomfortable Truths in Palm Beach Dramaworks' Production

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Although written more than twenty years ago, Lobby Hero is a highly relevant play for our post truth world.  It was Sir Walter Scott who penned "Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!" which is at the heart of this ensemble character-driven plot, leading to disturbing moral and ethical dilemmas.  Each character's actions and choices affect one another's lives.

 

The palette may be small, but Kenneth Lonergan creates major layers of meaning: class issues, racism, sexism, police cronyism, and workplace harassment, leavened by very humorous moments.  These themes clearly emerge in this thoughtful and entertaining production.

 

The stunning set was envisioned by Dramaworks’ award-winning Scenic Designer, Victor Becker, who died earlier this year and to whom the play is dedicated.  This realistic lobby in a Manhattan high rise apartment building is more than a space merely to be passed through.  It is a stoic observer, a fifth character, enabling the lives of the players to be challenged and changed before us.

Tim Altmeyer, Elisabeth Yancey, Britt Michael Gordon, Jovon Jacobs

 

Lonergan builds the play around a pair of parallel relationships, the action unfolding over four successive nights.  The first pair is Jeff, a uniformed nighttime security guard for the building and his captain William and the second is Bill, a uniformed policeman and Dawn, his rookie partner. 

 

Jeff is the antihero in the lobby, “an Everyman,” who views his situation in the world for what it is, having to live with his brother because of debt, hoping for a break, although not knowing what to do in life. Sometimes he feels that he was born to fail; a discernible Dreiserian undercurrent permeates all the characters.

Elisabeth Yancey and Britt Michael Gordon

 

Britt Michael Gordon plays Jeff with an affability which has you pulling for him, in spite of his unguarded casualness in dealing with others. Amusingly, but sometimes disastrously, he just says his private thoughts out loud, even blurting out the truth about others, leading to “the tangled web” of the characters’ enmeshment.  His demeanor makes him feel “safe” for the other characters to talk to, even confess to, and to lecture to as well. 

 

Gordon portrays him with a quirky innocence, belying some poor past choices and the estrangement from his late father of whom he is always reminded as being a “real hero” during the Korean War.  He uses humor as a defense mechanism, particularly to cope with personal insecurities in dealing with others.

 

His boss, William, a black man, is played with an ironclad moral implacability by Jovon Jacobs.  He espouses “living by the book,” especially for the edification of Jeff, but William is on the horns of a dilemma as he later confesses to Jeff -- his brother was arrested for a monstrous crime, one he’s almost certainly guilty of, but he is relying on William to provide an alibi. 

 

William now must weigh that against his equal certitude that his brother will not receive a fair trial particularly as the public defender is overburdened with other cases.  Will he do the right thing, or will he provide an alibi knowing the system, one that is blind to black men without resources, will fail to provide true justice?  Jacobs plays this moral seesaw to the hilt, the impossible choices, drawing Jeff into the details.

Tim Altmeyer and Jovon Jacobs

 

The second pair is headed by Bill, Tim Altmeyer delivering an exaggerated performance as a macho, intimidating cop, imbued by his own self-importance.  However, he certainly nails him as the most unlikable person in the play, who even Jeff in all his innocence calls a “scum bag.”

 

While carrying on an affair with a woman in the same building where Jeff and William are security guards (bristling at being called “doormen” by their police counterparts), Bill also is engineering a fling with his rookie partner Dawn, played by Elisabeth Yancey, her PBD debut who balances bravado, and later, betrayal.  She sees Bill as a love interest until Jeff innocently stirs the pot by blurting out the purpose of Bill’s visits to the building.  Yancey convincingly plays the gullible and then jilted rookie and delivers a lot of pathos in her role.

 

Jeff’s loose tongue provides for many laughs as well.  Gordon’s performance rises to a climatic high point when he is charged by Dawn to share William’s confidence.  He successfully renders this as an existential crisis of finally being able to do something meaningful in his life.  The denouncement hints at some future for Dawn and Jeff, an understanding of doing the right thing, a hopeful upbeat.

 

Director J. Barry Lewis extracts first-rate performances from his very skilled actors, including some fast sounding “New Yawkr tawk .”  Maybe it’s a little over the top along with the mannerisms of Altmeyer and Yancey in their police roles, but those in the audience who grew up in NYC (including myself) will identify.

 

Lewis magnifies some uncomfortable confrontations, such as William’s fury at Jeff for revealing confidences and especially when Bill mincingly and aggressively confronts Jeff for involving himself in Bill’s business, on the precipice of physical violence.  He has paced the play so the humor can land, elevating some laugh out loud moments, so necessary given the play’s themes.

 

The PBD technical staff supports the efforts with Roger Arnold’s sound designs, jazz interludes between scenes as well as the siren sounds of the city, the barking of a dog, the ding of the arriving elevator.  The lighting design is by Kirk Bookman perfectly capturing that glaring light of a lobby in the middle of the night, and PBD’s resident costume designer, Brian O’Keefe devises immaculate uniforms, badges and caps for the four characters, purposely disheveled at times, and street clothes for Dawn in the last scene.

 

Palm Beach Dramaworks production of Lobby Hero successfully deals with its large enigmatic moral dilemmas, with heart, humor and acumen.  

 

All photographs of the actors are by Tim Stepien

'My Destiny', by Holocaust survivor, Georgia Gabor

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This is not a book review per se as nothing I can write is adequate.  Before commenting, this background information:

 

After reading (in college and later in my career republishing) The Psychology of Dictatorship by Gustav Gilbert (he was the head of my psychology department), and then as an adult reading Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance as well as the Diary of Anne Frank (and later visiting the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam with Ann), I had, until this time, avoided Holocaust literature and films. There are other reasons as well.

 

As a child I found my father’s personal photograph collection from his days as a Signal Corps photographer during WW II. Among them were scenes from a concentration camp which led to thoughts, nightmares, which I couldn’t really discuss with my father as my access to those files in our basement was forbidden.  He also never talked about the war, something he just wanted to forget. I think those photos were from a satellite camp of Buchenwald, one not far from Cologne and the Rhine River where he was active during the closing months of the War.   They ultimately disappeared; either he or my mother disposed of them.  What remained of his war years was a detailed scrap book of primary sources which I gave to the WW II Museum in New Orleans after his death in 1984.

 

Gilbert was the prison psychologist at the Nuremberg Trial and the author of the Nuremberg Diary.  But his documentation in The Psychology of Dictatorship of how Rudolf Franz Hoess, who was the Colonel in charge of Auschwitz, described with scientific precision, and with some pride how efficiently they could “dispose of” some 10,000 people per day was unforgettable and horrifying.

 

When I read Herman Wouk’s War and Remembrance I had to prop tissues under my glasses to read those sections pertaining to the Ghettos that were temporary holding pens of Jews on their way to extermination camps.  The conditions of starvation and exposure simply resulted in fewer prisoners having to be transported to the death camps.  Wouk’s fictional characters made that horrid existence personal.

 

The normalization of genocide and the indescribable cruelty made me avoid such literature and now I feel, in these times in particular, guilty, and in preparation of seeing Palm Beach Dramaworks’ The Messenger, I felt compelled to read Georgia Gabor’s memoir, My Destiny. It is the work of a brilliant and passionate survivor of the Holocaust.

 

The driving force behind commissioning the play is PBD’s Producing Artistic Director Bill Hayes.  I owe him a debt of gratitude for leading me to Gabor’s story, to allow me, after all these years, to face these ugly facts and to make me and anyone who sees the play, a “messenger.” The play was written by the recently appointed Dramaworks' Resident Playwright, Jenny Connell Davis.  Silence is complicity and it is not an option, especially now in our chaotic world where hate can be found anywhere and everywhere and where there seems to be a slow slide into the unthinkable: fascism in America.

 

During WW II most Americans hardly believed that civilized German culture could possibly engage in genocide. The United States government was more aware of the extent of it, but failed to do much.  Deep antisemitism was well entrenched here as well.   And today one only has to look at the reaction on some college campuses to Israel trying to defend itself from Hamas terrorism to see it still.

 

But I am straying from the terrifying story of Georgia Gabor, her cunning ability to survive when there seemed to be no hope (as there were none for her entire family who died in concentration camps), and to witness atrocities, be subjected to unthinkable living conditions and the constant anxiety of being on the run, escaping the Nazis twice, sometimes posing as one to get by, all before she turned 16.

 

It is a high wire story, sickening in exposing man’s inhumanity to man.

 

Then there are several moments when everything seemed to be turning in her favor, such as when she and friends rejoiced hearing the Russians were pushing the Germans out of Hungary, surely they will save the Jews who managed to survive those years in bombed out buildings in unspeakable conditions.  But the Russians raped and pillaged and Gabor was on the run again.

 

She planned to go to Palestine with a Zionist group, but it was again a dangerous attempt, the likelihood she would be shot and even if she made it, she would not be able to pursue the education she wanted, and would become a laborer or farmer for the rest of her life.  Meanwhile the thought of life under communism was unthinkable to her.

 

She lived in orphanages and befriended a woman from the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration who after a labyrinth of obstacles finally was able to find a place for her in a US Congress passed bill that allowed 500 carefully selected orphan children to go to the US, becoming wards of the government until they turned 21, dispersing them in state and charitable agencies for foster care.

 

Imagine how her heart leapt at this opportunity, and when she first saw the Statue of Liberty she finally felt safe.  But that would be a nice ending for “the movie.”  Real life interceded, more terrible living conditions and finally two failed marriages to abusive men, losing custody of her two children, but finding education as her way out of a hell hole of a life (she was a brilliant mathematician) and finally resolving to be a teacher so she could gain custody of her children, find and marry the childhood friend she loved in Budapest, and secure a teaching position.

 

Again, if that was only the end of the story and indeed My Destiny, published in 1981, concludes with her happy marriage. But after that she was subjected to virulent antisemitism and harassment, and her life was again miserable because she told her story.  She was fired from her teaching job, sued the school system, and would die only two years later.  This LA Times article, ‘A Long Lesson in Hate : Holocaust Survivor Sues School District Over Harassment,’ summarizes the consequences of telling the inconvenient truth.  The world premiere of the play, which opens on Dec. 8, focuses on Gabor’s story but interacting with three different generations (1967, 1993, and 2020) all with their own reactions to her and their own stories of hate and complicity.  The audience is left to connect the dots.

 

 

World Premiere of ‘The Messenger’ Boldly Probes the Complicity of Silence

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Attention must be paid as one enters the Palm Beach Dramaworks theatre.  A stark white angular platform is set atop the stage with one sharp corner pointing directly towards the audience.  The entire set is bathed in white, a tabula rasa on which will be written the message of The Messenger.  PBD’s new Resident Stage Designer, Anne Mundell, has populated a corner with books and files, randomly placed and chaotically spilling onto the floor.  It is edgy, perplexing, inviting. 

 



PBD has always been known as a home for serious classic works, but Producing Artistic Director William Hayes has been moving the theatre towards innovative new plays with the logic that if regional theatres don’t produce such works, who will?  The Messenger was incubated in its Dramaworkshop.  Hayes has said he believes this is the “most important play ever produced at PBD and at the most appropriate time.”

 

Indeed, what transpires in the intermission-less 90 minutes bears out that statement, from the opening moment when a monolithic section of the wall opens bathed in bright light with ominous, deep musical tones (perhaps a hat tip to Kubrick’s 2001?) as the characters emerge representing the past, present, and possibilities of the future.

 

Although this is not a holocaust play per se, it finds its gravitas from the life of Georgia Gabor, a holocaust survivor, who immigrated to the US and later taught math in the San Marino Unified School District for two decades.  The persecution she suffered in her adopted community was a terrible addendum to her life, as well as its implications for society.  The Messenger pulls us into the central overarching issue, man’s inhumanity to man.  It is a play about persecution and how history seems destined to repeat itself.  It is about the consequences of being silent, especially in this social-network polluted world where those who “scream” loudest are generally those who perpetuate ethnic and racial persecution.

 

While it is a four-character play, Gabor’s story, played by PBD veteran Margery Lowe, is the only one based on a real person, with much of her dialogue coming from Gabor’s memoir My Destiny.  

 

Jenny Connell Davis, PBD new Resident Playwright imaginatively creates the other three characters from facts of different eras and designates years as their names to clarify where they place in the panoptic vision of the play.  All are women.  It is remarkable that she has been able to create characters that grow more and more real, ones the audience empathizes with, in a play which is essentially surreal and symbolic.

 

They are 1969, a curator at The Huntington Library and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California; 1993, the mother of one of Gabor’s students; and 2020, a high school student and former volunteer at The Huntington.  Off stage character, Miley, a friend of 2020’s, shares this story as well.

 

Their episodic stories materialize out of time sequence and are kaleidoscopically woven into the fabric of Gabor’s experience. The actors pour their hearts into these stories, making poignant connections between then and now.

 

Angela Gulner, Gracie Winchester, Margery Lowe, Annie Fang; Photo by Alicia Donelan

The success of this world premiere is in large part due to Margery Lowe’s experience in appearing in new plays, especially at PBD.  It takes a special sensibility playing the lead where no one has gone before, to make the character interpretation one’s own.  Lowe has a special advantage playing Georgia Gabor as both are diminutive in stature but lions in spirit.  Lowe also had the advantage of being able to study Gabor when she was interviewed in 1984 by The 1939 Society. 

 


Lowe perfectly captures her character, and triumphs with Gabor’s words from her memoir although her Hungarian accent takes some acclimation to clearly understand.  Nevertheless, Lowe has reincarnated Georgia Gabor with her flirtatious mannerisms, her dynamic personality and stalwart resolve to tell her painful story over and over.

 

But it is what she experienced afterwards – again becoming a victim of anti Semitism in the wealthy community of San Marino CA. -- where Lowe’s performance provides a strong catalyst in moving the arc of the story.  The other characters’ develop into real people under her watchful eye, the ripple effects washing over the audience. 

 

Bill Hayes directs The Messenger.  His vision and his labor of love underscore his belief in the play and are borne out by this production.  His talented assistant director, Jessica Chen, whose background is in dance brings her eye for fluidity to the stage.  

 

Gracie Winchester plays 1969, capturing youth’s wide eyed wonder of working in the august Huntington Library, where possibly becoming a curator comes into conflict with her discovery that the Library harbors a dark secret, the original copy of the Nuremberg Laws, which was designed to deprive Jews of basic rights, signed by Hitler himself.  How did they come to the Huntington and why were they filed away, never displayed, forgotten?  1969 has to make a choice to reveal the facts, but perhaps at the expense of a cherished career.  Winchester makes you feel her character’s dilemma as well as her outrage, and sad capitulation, the playwright connecting the dots with 1969 appearing as a regretful old lady with a parasol in 2020’s era at “the Hunt.”

 

Angela Gulner makes her PBD debut as 1993, and gives a bravura performance of someone thinking she is doing the right thing as the antagonist, organizing a partition objecting to Gabor’s teaching.  As a parent we all know how we will go to extremes to guard one’s child.  But did she cross a line when she is the one that takes action to stop Gabor for inviting children to hear her survivorship stories after school (not a requirement)?  Gulner protests (“her history is not OUR history”).  She’s a math teacher!  She has no right to teach what should be left to historians!  Yet her moving performance elicits sympathy as well as being reminded of current events in our schools right now. 

 

Annie Fang, also making her PBD debut as 2020, deals with some of the emotional highlights of the play, particularly her relationship with the off stage Miley, who is a math genius, is certainly destined for a top school (the community’s raison d’être), and yet is more interested in art.  They are Asian Americans and during Covid were called “Chinks” while volunteering at the Huntington by the same kind of people who might hurl Jewish invectives at Gabor.

 

The incident blows up in social media, today’s ubiquitous Petri dish for scapegoating and persecution and 2020 tries to distance herself from the widely circulated video of Miley confronting her tormentor. Ultimately Miley suffers the ultimate consequence of silence.  As we can only see and feel Miley through 2020, Fang’s performance is particularly noteworthy.

 

It is an ingeniously written play by Jenny Connell Davis and director William Hayes manages the actors on the stage as they tell their overlapping stories, moving from shadows to light.  Portions reminded me of a Sondheim duet where counterpoint is featured.

 

As an abstract play, where characters may be moving from point A to B, more along a surrealistic path, Resident Lighting Designer, Kirk Bookman has challenging transitions, essential ones to keep the audience engaged.  Much of the time shadows are as important as lights up, as all characters are on stage throughout even if not engaged in their own particular part.

 

Bookman works in concert with Video Designer Adam J. Thompson.  Parts of the play are filled with projected videos, some falling on the actors themselves but mostly on the white walls, in particular videos of artistic compositions by Miley, and very moving to see them being created in real time.  Other projected images are disturbing though, such as the bombed out Ghettos which Gabor “lived in,” and symbols of hate that both Gabor and 2020 had to endure.  Overall, the video and the lighting of the show are even more integral than the typical play and kudos to Mr. Thompson and Mr. Bookman.

 

Sound design by Roger Arnold is portending, even startling at times (gunshots), boot steps of the Hungarian Nazi sympathetic Arrow Cross Party, all in keeping with the dystopian theme of what Gabor endured, during the war.

 

Against a white-washed stage Costume Designer Brian O’Keefe’s choices were endless (except white!) and here he creates costumes not only appropriate for the different eras of the characters, clearly distinguishing each, while still sharing certain earth tone palettes. O’Keefe is a stickler for the details.  They are award winning visions, and I loved 1993’s wide legged pants and sunglasses pushed up in her blond hair.  It tells a lot about the sought after community where helicopter parents landed with their kids.

 

O’Keefe brilliantly designed the swirling dress with the ubiquitous stretchy belt cinching in Ms. Lowe’s tiny waist which not only showed off her diminutive figure to perfection but allowed the actress to swish about in her more flirtatious moments.  The dirt-red sweater thrown about her shoulders added the final perfect touch.

 

The execution of the complex staging of this play warrants kudos to PBD’s Stage Manager, Kent James Collins.  Opening night went as smoothly as if the play had been in previews for weeks (vs. the reality of two days).

 

The Messenger is not only a world premiere, it is also the first production in a National New Play Network Rolling World Premiere series and regional theatres in Texas and Minneapolis are already committed to producing it.  Fittingly Mrs. Roberta Golub, Georgia Gabor’s daughter, is the executive producer of The Messenger. 

 

At the end, Fang, who plays 2020, has the temerity to begin to “step outside the box” (full lighting for this dramatic effect).  Can the future learn from the past?  Isn’t it incumbent on all to become activists, to become messengers of The Messenger?  That is the ultimate question of this imaginative new play.

 

“Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any spectre I have seen”

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I borrow from Dickens to express a foreboding, in particular one that will culminate with this year’s Presidential election.

 

The December 5, 2023 New York Times carried a front-page article, “Second Term Could Unleash Darker Trump.”  I fired off a brief letter to the Editor to add my opinion and was surprised it was immediately published online and then in print under the rubric “Trump Unbound: An Autocrat in Waiting?

 

To the Editor:

 

A second Trump presidency not only would be more radical, but also seems inevitable. Donald Trump and his handlers have learned to exploit every weakness in our democratic system of government.

 

Our founders must have assumed that those who gravitate to government service would essentially be people of good faith, and the rotten apples would be winnowed by our system of checks and balances. But here we are less than a year away from the election, and while Mr. Trump’s transgressions have drawn 91 criminal charges, there has been no justice yet.

 

He has proved to have a serpentine instinct to capitalize on weak links ranging from the Electoral College to our justice system, gathering strength every time he flouts the rule of law.

 

Perhaps the Times published my laconic letter as it encapsulates a sad truth: our form of government was never designed for the unthinkable. The greatest existential threat to us is, well, us. 

 

It’s simplistic to blame Trump for all of this, but he taps into popular discontent like none other before.  His brand of anti-intellectualism and affinity for reality TV and social media are in perfect sync with his minions.  Those "attributes," and his ability to exploit the weakness of our justice system, are a perfect storm for 2024.

 

Since I wrote that letter there have been further key developments, with certain States trying to keep him off the primary ballots, citing the 14th amendment (lots of luck with that) and SCOTUS rebuffing special counsel Jack Smith’s request for an expedited ruling on whether Trump can claim presidential immunity from prosecution for crimes “allegedly” committed on January 6.

 


We all saw it -- suggested, aided and abetted by him --  and here it is three years later!  It should not be a presidential immunity issue but one of special presidential culpability.

 

A handful of States will again determine the 2024 Presidential election and Democrats are still making arguments about what has been accomplished, as if that reality will decide the forthcoming election.  President Biden, who has done what he intended, deserves our gratitude, should now be thinking of the greater good, and recognize his age and undeserved lack of popularity should be major factors in deciding whether he should run.  He could be the first incumbent president to substantially win the popular vote but lose the election by a few Electoral College votes (yet another seriously flawed factor in our Democratic system). 

 

Can democracy survive while Justice is further postponed?  Or will Justice be foregone by fiat in 2024?

 

This is not my first New Year’s message of cheer.  It is remarkable to read the New Years’ entries from 2021 and 2022 while we were all mostly COVID bound. It’s like mirrors in mirrors in mirrors: 

 

Saturday, January 9, 2021

The Revoltingly Horrid Year Continues….

 

Wednesday, January 5, 2022

A Ground Hog Day New Year

 

And so, with a little editing, as Tiny Tim observed, “God HELP Us, Every One!”

 


An Ovation for the 2024 Perlberg Festival of New Plays at Palm Beach Dramaworks

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It was nearly ten years ago that Palm Beach Dramaworks’ Producing Artistic Director, Bill Hayes, implemented their visionary Dramaworkshop, dedicated to providing resources and support for playwrights to develop scripts.  The logic was if not-for-profit theatres don’t do it, who will?  Broadway no longer takes such chances.  It was a bold move as regional theatres typically suffer under some economic adversity and Dramaworks had just settled into their new theatre on Clematis Street in West Palm Beach.

 

Then came Covid, yet another strong headwind.  Fortunately, PBD had the financial reserves to wait out the storm, and has come back stronger than ever and, with an endowment gift from Diane and Mark Perlberg, their commitment to new plays has been secured for years to come.  The Dramaworkshop is under direction of PBD’s Bruce Linser, a gifted actor and director, and his enthusiasm for the program is infectious.  He and his committee sift through hundreds of submissions each year, winnow them down to five, workshop them, and those become dramatic readings as part of the renamed Perlberg Festival of New Plays.

 

It is hoped that one or two of the plays presented in the festival will make it to the main stage to join the classic plays presented each season.  Last month’s production of the highly acclaimed The Messengerby Jenny Connell Davis emerged from last year’s festival.  2024’s festival just successfully concluded and because of the Perlbergs’ gift the five new plays were also prefaced by interviews with two theatre luminaries, actor Estelle Parsons and playwright Mark St. Germain.  


Parsons appeared at PBD in My Old Lady (2014) and has originated numerous roles in new plays over her decades-long career.  PBD helped develop St. Germain’s script for Freud’s Last Sessionand produced its Southeastern premiere (2011).  A feature film based on the play, starring Anthony Hopkins, was recently released.

 

Parsons was interviewed by Bill Hayes on Jan 3, a great kick off to the festival.  They are not only theatre colleagues, but are now old friends and it was amusing to watch how Parsons, a veteran of six decades in the theatre, now 96 years old but feisty, sharp, and a take charge kind of person, just go her way with the interview, while Hayes was left holding his interview outline (although he did manage to hit his high points).  It was a friendly, even loving, give and take.  Parsons is also a director and when asked the question of what is the main role of the director, it was “to find the truth.”  Hopefully the video that was being taken of the interview will be made available in the future.  It was a “don’t miss” beginning to the festival and Parsons attended each and every performance in the ensuing days.

 

The following day Hayes interviewed Mark St. Germain.  Again, both have a long association.  This time, Hayes was on script and like his plays, St. Germain was thoughtful and passionate about ideas.  Many of his plays are a form of historical fiction and focus on single characters, or small casts.  They are intimate and cerebral.  He talked to an extent about bringing his material to film but with some regret because of the loss of control.  It was a memorable interview and St. Germain was also in attendance for all the new plays that followed.

 

So the first two days were these landmark interviews, then five new plays in three days (brief descriptions provided by PBD):

 

PROXIMITY

by Harrison David Rivers 

Newly divorced and sheltering at home with her two children at the height of the pandemic, Ezra hasn't been touched by another adult in eight months. At a virtual PTA meeting, she is introduced to the charismatic Irie, another single parent, and their immediate attraction causes Ezra to reconsider the limits of her Covid bubble.

 

STOCKADE

by Andrew Rosendorf  

Five years after the end of WWII, a group of gay soldiers gathers for a reunion on Fire Island. They are met by an outsider with a surprise that will cause them to question whether history is best left in the past. At a time when “security risk” is government code for “homosexual,” it will take courage for them to step out of the shadows and confront their present and future.

 

COLOR BLIND

by Oren Safdie   

In 2009, a jury was tasked with selecting an architect to design the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. This play is a fictionalized account of how that panel of diverse people and ideas may have come together – or been pulled apart – in making its decision, and in so doing, challenges the audience to consider the state of our current civil discord.

 

EVERYTHING BEAUTIFUL HAPPENS AT NIGHT

by Ted Malawer  

Ezra is a successful children’s book writer. Nancy is his longtime editor. They are always on the same page, until someone new threatens to disrupt their friendship and influence Ezra’s next book. Set in 1980s Manhattan, this play explores the legacy of an artist, the meaning of intimacy, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.

 

LITTLE ROW BOAT

by Kirsten Greenidge  

When 14-year-old Sally Hemings travels to Paris as nursemaid to her half-sister’s young daughter, the world appears to have opened much wider than Thomas Jefferson’s post-revolutionary Virginia plantation on which she was born. It is not until Sally’s brother James, also in France as he trains to be a chef de cuisine, points out the peculiarities of their circumstances that Sally begins to question the kindnesses their “master” has extended to them.

 

These are rehearsed presentations by professional actors, most Actors Equity members.  Although they have a podium for their scripts, there is no scenery, special lighting, movement, all the elements endemic to theatre.  Yet, the actors are emotive and draw the audience into the production; we, in our imagination, supply the rest.  While we are watching the playwrights’ work, they are watching the audience as these readings provide valuable clues as to what further developmental work might be needed, clarity, cutting, or maybe more humor, or laughter at the wrong spot?  After the play, there is a Q&A skillfully managed by Linser, encouraging the audience to give their true reactions. 

 

No doubt one of these, at least, will appear on a fully developed main stage production in the future.  I would hate to be on the “jury” to make those decisions as all have merit and as their descriptions indicate a special relevancy to our present times.  The arts are not a competition and to make such decisions more difficult is the fact that a reading is threadbare of staging.

 

Each of the plays presented touched me in some way but I’ll mention a few; and these are very personal observations, unique to my own theatre experiences and background.  So no intended judgment of the ones I fail to mention.

 

Color Blind reminded me in some ways of Tracey Letts’ The Minutes.  Although the latter is about a bickering City Council meeting turning into something very ugly about the town secret, Oren Safdie’s Color Blind uses a similar technique, projecting architectural designs as kind of Rorschach test for bringing out societal issues and the personalities of the jury.

 

Because I have a background in publishing, the relationship between editor and author as portrayed in Everything Beautiful Happens at Night rang true, playwright Ted Malawer exploring larger themes of loneliness, shame, and love.  That reading had two of South Florida’s premier actors, Tom Wahl and Laura Turnbull, which helped make it especially touching.

 

Although entitled “Little” Row Boat, it made a big impression on me because it was so challenging, with lots of symbolism and dramatic contrivances that could be highly effective in a fully realized stage production.  In a narrow sense the story is about Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings, but the macrocosm is about slavery leaving an indelible imprint on our nation.  I can imagine if Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia was workshopped, there would have been similar difficulties (in my mind, Kirsten Greenidge’s Little Row Boat has a similar feeling and complexity).  It is certainly theatre to think about.

 

After the festival there was a Champagne toast to all who made the festival possible.  The collective energy that goes into staging this festival is monumental by very talented people.  Hopefully, it’s success represents an emphatic statement that theatre is back!  And maybe some mighty oaks will grow from these readings.

 

 

Covid Blues

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I was hoping my next entry would be about the joys and details of the 2024 Jazz Cruise.  Until….

 


Up until this point, Ann and I had avoided coming down with Covid.  Mostly everyone we know has had the virus in spite of, like us, having the full arsenal of seven shots.  Feeling invincible, we boldly resumed our normal social lives, wearing no masks, although we were about to go on the one cruise we treasure above all, The Jazz Cruise. We went to the theater several times before departure and Ann participated in not one but two Mah Jongg tournaments.  It was inevitable I suppose but the timing couldn’t have been worse, Ann coming down with Covid exactly one week before our departure. 

 

We had a devil of a time getting Paxlovid which was unavailable at the nearest two drug stores and then getting a voucher (for Medicare recipients) from Pfizer to cover the new $1,300 price tag on the prescription.  So within two days she was on medication but still it was a bad bout, the worst being three days of an extremely painful sore throat.  Yet, naively we still waited to pull the trigger on canceling the cruise, hoping, hoping, but two days before departure we had to throw in the towel.  Another experience lost to this pandemic, although luckily, never feeling her life was in danger.

 

Our first Jazz Cruise was right before Covid hit in 2020.  One wasn’t even planned for 2021 as we were all in the nadir of the pandemic. We booked the 2022 cruise as it looked feasible with certain precautions, but then the CDC suddenly advised against cruises because of a new Covid surge at the time. We patiently, no anxiously, awaited 2023 and by then it was considered safe and we had the time of our lives.


So we were looking forward to this year’s festivities until Covid came to visit.  Not living in NYC any longer, and now being only an infrequent visitor, the Jazz Cruise is our only opportunity to see some of our favorite jazz performers live.  My other entries in the links above mention the names of some of the jazz artists we closely follow.  Most are on the present cruise, with the exception of Bill Charlap (he will be on the 2025 Cruise which we have already booked).

 

Still another experience missed, three years out of five, not a very good grade, 40%.  At our age, how many more opportunities?  Besides not seeing family, Covid also canceled our 50th wedding anniversary, one we expected to celebrate, possibly, in the presence of the great man himself, Stephen Sondheim.

 

Being marooned at home again, gave me more time for my own piano.  Bill Mays, a great jazz pianist who I met a few months ago when I was playing for a Christmas party (talk about being outside one’s comfort zone, playing with one of the greats listening), was nice enough to send me some lead sheets of his music and one by Johnny Mandel who he worked with and we mutually admire although he recently passed.  I thought I had most of Mandel’s music but I did not have the one he sent, “The Shining Sea,” such a plaintive, Mandel signature song.  I love it and will eventually try to record it.

 

Mays’ own “Gemma’s Eyes” is challenging for me, both rhythmically and harmonically and I’ve been practicing it.  I like challenges such as that as it helps one keep moving forward.

 

He also sent me Quincy Jones’ “Pawnbroker,” again a song I had never heard before, the theme from the film of the same title, which more easily fits into in my playing style and is a haunting melody.  From our brief encounter, Mays certainly put his finger on what I would respond to and I’m grateful to him, especially this week as I feel cut loose in a space we had reserved for non-stop jazz. 

 

This leads me another musical observation, a very unlikely one for me.  I just “discovered” Taylor Swift.  I’m not sure what led me to her other than having this void of a week of great music lost.   Whenever I’ve seen her it’s been in the context of her world tour concert, with music blasting, back up bands, strobe lights pulsating, hoards of screaming fans, and, well, essentially the way popular music is presented now, everything geared to overwhelm the senses (“deadening” might be a better word).  Maybe that’s what we need in this chaotic world but I’ve always avoided that scene.  But I’ve also seen her briefly televised at Kansas City football games, cheering on her man, the outstanding tight end, Travis Kelce.  Except for her exclusive seats in the owner’s suite, she seems like just another football fan.

 

As I never really heard her sing, I tried to find her in a more intimate setting without all the over the top fireworks of her concerts and I came across Taylor Swift’s NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert.  It is 28 minutes of her performing four of her well-known (well, not to me) songs "The Man", "Lover", "Death by a Thousand Cuts" and "All Too Well" at the Tiny Desk, indeed an intimate setting where it’s just her and the guitar or piano and a handful, maybe a hundred, standing, adoring fans.  It was so enjoyable to hear her singing solo. 

 

 

It's as if Paul Simon was reincarnated more than 50 plus years after I first heard him.  There are eerie comparisons.   I can see the attraction of today's youth to what she has to say.  (I first heard Paul Simon -- who lived in my neighborhood --in 1957 when he performed “Hey Schoolgirl” with his partner Art Garfunkel. They were then known as “Tom and Jerry,” that recording making it to the national charts at the time.)

 

Swift is a cross over country and folk, a little rock and a lot of pop.  Yet every generation has its troubadour (or in this case a “trobairitz” -- in my generation there were Carole King and Joan Baez).  My generation also had Bob Dylan as our troubadour, singing his songs of despair and political activism.  But most of all, Paul Simon is more relevant to Swift’s music, with his songs of lost love, sadness, nostalgia and of course, loss in general (“hello darkness my old friend”  “and we walked off to look for America”).  When I was going through my divorce in the 1960s, his songs spoke directly to me the way Taylor Swift’s speak to her generation now magnified by social media.

 

Just listen to her sing “All Too Well.” I was touched by her ability to evoke a certain kind of emotion like Paul Simon did with a guitar (or in this NPR concert, her playing the chords on the piano as she sang).  It’s a song about autumn and lost love, a sense of the same emotion in Simon’s “Leaves That Are Green” (albeit, different rhythm, styles, one contemporary and the other vintage 1960’s).

  

In “All Too Well” she writes about a boy who was her love.  She sings:

 

Autumn leaves falling down like pieces into place

And I can picture it after all these days

And I know it's long gone and that magic's not here no more

And I might be okay but I'm not fine at all

 

Some of the lyrics from Simon’s “Leaves That Are Green” could be that boy answering:

 

Once my heart was filled with the love of a girl

I held her close, but she faded in the night

Like a poem I meant to write

And the leaves that are green turn to brown

And they wither with the wind

And they crumble in your hand

 

She's the real deal and this intimate NPR setting helped me to fully understand her popularity.   Maybe in these Covid infested times I’ll become a Swifty!  I certainly respect her values, encouraging her generation to vote.  So many of those in their 20s and even 30s haven’t the slightest interest in voting, not caring (or even being conscious of) that my generation is handing off a world where the existential threats are far greater than when I was of that generation.  Shame on my generation, but shame on them to eschew the only possible route to change.  Maybe she will continue to be a force to set that right.

 

So we beat on.

 

The World Premiere of ‘The Cancellation of Lauren Fein’ Portrays the New American Tragedy

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Must meritocracy be sacrificed at the altar of Diversity-Equity-Inclusion initiatives (DEI) and what is the cost to society when it becomes cancel culture?  That is at the heart of this gripping and disturbing World Premiere of Christopher Demos-Brown’s The Cancellation of Lauren Fein at Palm Beach Dramaworks.  His play pays homage to Arthur Miller’s The Crucible which, although about the Salem Witch trials, is an allegory steeped in McCarthyism and the hysteria over communism.  As Mark Twain remarked, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”  Higher education’s commitment to DEI is giving rise to a kind of vigilante justice with unintended consequences.  It is the next rhyming verse in history, and the playwright and PBD’s production powerfully capture the repercussions. 

 

A liberal university’s “Anonymous Reporting System” (and therefore no accountability, a kind of Orwellian big brother watching you) along with vociferous DEI proponents, aided and abetted by the ubiquity of social media, take aim at a lesbian couple, both college professors, Lauren Fein and her wife, Paola Moreno, impacting not only their lives, but that of Dylan, their 16-year-old African American foster son.  Like a stone thrown in a pond, the ripple effects wash far beyond this one story.  Much of Demos-Brown’s play is a moving suspense-filled court-room style drama in Academia, with Kafkaesque twists and turns, building to a startling conclusion and a highly effective double ending with a truly tragic twist of the knife, the imagined alternative reality in a world of truth and scientific reasoning.  It is unforgettable.

 

The play is an invective of modern academic woke life.  Nothing escapes the playwright’s scathing eye, as his drama examines a liberal university’s killing of the goose and, along with it, the golden egg of truth and academic freedom.  Universities’ core values of intellectual inquiry and research seem to be taking a back seat to values that work against their very mission.  The play is exciting, suspenseful, painful, making you want to shake your fist at good intentions gone unhinged.

 

Demos-Brown pushes the play to the borders of metadrama.  Paola’s academic specialty is the playwright’s spiritual mentor, Arthur Miller, and her colleague, Evan’s, is David Mamet.  The latter playwright wrote Oleanna to which this play finds some commonality, although Mamet’s play was for an earlier time focusing “merely” on sexual harassment.  DEI moves well beyond yesterday’s critical-race-theory outrage and its roots in Title IX.  One only has to consider the recent crisis at Harvard University which morphed into questions concerning the prevalence of anti-Semitism.

 

Yet, the playwright lands his punches with great pathos and humor, the cost to the Fein- Moreno household being just the microcosm to that of society and academic life.  His play is so contemporary, it actually anticipated developments as it was being written even the innuendo of there being positive values to being a slave, shades of Florida’s Governor’s pronouncement.   It is an example of life imitating art, and it is written meticulously to capture the way people really speak and react to one another in love and under unimaginable stress.

 

Niki Fridh plays Professor Lauren Fein the brilliant, indefatigable genetic biologist, on a fast track for the Nobel Prize.  Yet, she is the good academic soldier, agreeing to teach a basic biology course (laughingly nicknamed “Holes and Poles”).  Fridh nails her character’s breezy open manner and her brilliance, neither of which count for much as the cancel-culture hammer comes down on her.  She captures both the tragic side of her fallen character, a victim of her own hubris, and yet delivers lots of the humor in the play, but with a contemptuousness so fitting the nightmare that evolves.  As the play is a tragedy, the seeds are sown in her personality, with off ramps from the crisis readily available, but knowing that she is not guilty she refuses to avail herself of those reputation-saving alternatives.   

 

Diana Garle and Niki Fridh Photo by Alicia Donelan

Diana Garle is Paola Moreno, Lauren’s wife, a professor of theatre and film studies who freely admits that her status as Fein’s wife and being queer and Latina didn’t hurt her future for advancement in their liberal university.  It is a co-leading role, a key one as she breaks the fourth wall, keeping the audience apprised of the back-story. Garle slips in and out of being a truth teller to the audience and a character in the play with ease.  She has the most impactful role in the play, a bravura performance by an actor who is new to Palm Beach Dramaworks.  Paola lives with the consequences of Lauren’s tragedy and Garle’s collapsing resignation at the end is heartbreaking.

 

Malcolm Callender (PBD debut) is very effective as Dylan Fein-Moreno, the troubled 16 year old foster child confused by the world, his place in it, and such is easily manipulated by the nightmarish circumstances.

 

Odera Adimorah and Malcolm Callender Photo by Alicia Donelan

Odera Adimorah (PBD debut) is the kindly Professor Chikezie Nweze “Chi”, Lauren’s Nigerian research partner with a comforting basso profundo voice.  In a way he’s also a soul father to Dylan, trying to help him make sense of the world.  His unease about homosexuality is overshadowed by his dedication to Lauren as he is convinced that her research on sickle-cell anemia will save untold lives in Africa.

 

Lindsey Corey plays the prosecuting attorney, Melanie Jones, with a fervency befitting her nickname “’Melanin’ Jones” who Paola describes as “the DEI movement’s Che Guevara.”  Being a “loser” is not in her character’s DNA and Corey goes on a fresh attack with every push back.  She is also Lauren’s academic adversary as Jones’ field is Gender Studies for which Lauren has contempt as being a phony made-up major, one which siphons off needed funds for her research, a field which can actually publish papers “about how penises cause climate change.” 

 

Karen Stephens, a veteran of many PBD plays Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences, Marilyn Whitney, heretofore a friend of Lauren’s.  Stephens projects her character’s pain at having to move from friendship to becoming almost a “tag team” with Jones.  She knows that her new and rarified position of being appointed Dean depends on her appearing to disapprove of Fein’s actions and explanations (“as a woman of color, I’m really under the microscope here”).  Lauren feels betrayed by her once-upon-a-time friend.

 

Lindsey Corey, Diana Garle, Niki Fridh, Barbara Sloan and Karen Stephens Photo by Alicia Donelan

Barbara Sloan makes a mighty effort to stay impartial as Judge Lorraine Miller, and keep order at one point saying “we are academics with PhD’s” (amusingly implying that should ensure decorum in the proceedings).  She marks her territory to Lauren’s defender’s question about her law experience with the acerbic reply “I’d prefer ‘Judge Miller’ in these proceedings.  And, yes – I have a law degree from Duke.”  She also delivers one of the more profound truths attached to the proceedings, the “rules of civil law do not apply here.”  Precisely the problem!

 

Stephen Trovillion plays the voice of reason in the role of Professor “Buddy” McGovern, which I suspect is a stand in for the views of the playwright, who also is a practicing attorney.  He is the only straight white male in the play, and amusingly is a progressive from the old south, complete with a southern drawl which adds to the abundant humor of the play.  Trovillion projects his character’s bewilderment of the proceeding’s disregard for the rules of law to the point that Judge Miller nearly removes him from the kangaroo court.   

 

PBD veteran actor Bruce Linser is perfect as Evan Reynolds, a white, gay film / theatre scholar who has probably been passed over for tenure because of those facts.  He is best friends with Paola and knows the dangers to Lauren saying to Paola “I stopped teaching a long time ago. I just lecture now directly from my pre-vetted notes. But I know Lauren has standards. His feelings of betrayal by Paola are palpable.  He is also the ominous voice of Judge Howard in a real court at the play’s sad, disturbing conclusion

 

Kaelyn Ambert-Gonzalez (PBD debut), plays Zoe, a PhD graduate student who once studied under Lauren, had an affair with her, and enacts an incident as a drunk at a party, the final nail in the case against Lauren Fein.

 

Margaret M. Ledford directs this world premiere production with pace and crispness.  She elevates the verbal sparring of the proceedings, even when they are overlapping.  The director and the Palm Beach Dramaworks team have transported the play to a level of hyperrealism with the video design seamlessly integrated into the performance.  Clearly, she commands the respect of the actors and flawlessly choreographs the action as intended by the playwright, with the help of Nicole Perry (PBD debut), the intimacy choreographer for a number of such scenes.

 

Scenic design is by Anne Mundell who has created an area supporting the other technical designers.  The worn pragmatic benches and tables serve a multiplicity of purposes and could be the setting for Salem in 1692 or appropriately a stage for a modern day Greek chorus.

 


Video design is by Adam J. Thompson.  The visual projection enhances the architecture of the set, identifying different locations and creates a canvas for the brilliant montage of social media at work.  There we can sense the voyeurism of people stepping into private space.  The play is cinematic and so are the visuals.

 

Costume design is by Brian O’Keefe, for real time, extended time, flash backs of each character with his/her own color pallets.  They range from pant suits worn by the professionals, with Dean Whitney’s costume design having military connotations and Buddy McGovern amusingly dressed in attire resembling something Tom Wolfe would wear as the style of a Southern gentlemen.

 

Lighting design is by Kirk Bookman who in Act I has multiple lighting challenges for many different locations whereas Act II is mostly the courtroom with full lights up.  At the denouement there is a ghostly white spot on Lauren and a life like spot on Paola.  It is highly effective and moving

 

Sound design is by Roger Arnold with an emphasis on transitions between spaces.

 

What Paulo says about “Uncivil Rights,” a student’s play she advocated can be said about this play: “In my writing classes, I teach my students: ‘Dazzle, delight, and derange. Find the sacred cow and kill it.’ This kid...located the most tender spot in American political culture and probed it with merciless beauty. The play was everything art should be: Poetic. Painful. Hilarious.”

 

But the future is encapsulated by Buddy McGovern’s impassioned concluding argument: “Is this truly the goal of your so-called revolution? A post-modern world with ad hoc rules at every turn? A world where innuendo kills reputations and rumor ends careers? A world devoid of any semblance of due process? Where subjective slight trumps objective truth? Is that what you really want?”

 

The Cancellation of Lauren Fein is sure to enter the canon of important contemporary drama and it can be seen here, first, at Palm Beach Dramaworks. 

 





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