The Great(est) Pumpkin

Happy Halloween! This monstrosity is a 1,051-pound pumpkin we spotted at a farmer's market in western Pennsylvania two weeks ago. Just think of the pumpkin pie possibilities ...

Girl Gumshoe

The Ateh Theater Group has revived its production of The Girl Detective for the Crown Point Festival on the Lower East Side. An adaptation of a surreal short story by Kelly Link, the production follows the Girl Detective as she does a bit of sleuthing--but this time, instead of tracking down criminals, she's on the hunt for her own mother, who disappeared years before.

offoffonline review: "Glamour in a Gumshoe": The Girl Detective

I found the story confusing at times; Bridgette Dunlap (the talented adapter and director) doesn't always clearly denote time or setting, and the Girl Detective's journeys often feel like the elliptical, nonsensical pathways of a murky dream. Still, Dunlap has a gift for throwing splashy style onto the stage, from tap-dancing bank robbers to saucy flashlight sequences. She paints in wild, bright colors, but--as in her equally impressionistic adaptation of Aimee Bender's The Girl in the Flammable Skirt--the flimsy substance of the story is tinted in faint pastel shades.

Leaving a more potent impression was the short film that preceded the production: Brazilian director Kleber Mendonça Filho's aptly named Eletrodomestica, in which the everyday domestic tasks of a Brazilian housewife ultimately give way (and abet) a thrilling climax. Filho uses banal household appliances (microwave, TV, vacuum cleaner, washer & dryer) to anchor the story, then uses them in surprising--and scintillating--ways.

Jumping into Fall

The Korean-born martial arts/theater/acrobatic extravaganza Jump recently smashed onto the stage of the Union Square Theatre. With its distinctive, irresistible mix of farce, low-brow comedy, slapstick physical drama, and phenomenal athleticism, this production is a sheer delight. By the performance's conclusion, my mouth hurt from smiling and my stomach hurt from laughing.

Show Business Weekly review: Jump

If anything, Jump suffers from a lack of pacing--the actor/athletes leap through a veritable mountain range of climaxes, so by the show's curtain call, when I expected thunderous applause, the cheering was noticeably lackluster. In fact, the audience seemed almost exhausted by its own responsive performance throughout the show. I wonder if the same thing happened with the MTV performance of Legally Blonde (see blog below)? Maybe, in certain cases (and in certain shows), you can really have too much of a good thing.

TV or not TV

In a bold and enterprising move, the Broadway musical Legally Blonde was recently taped for broadcast on MTV. The producers are obviously aiming to capture the Wicked teenybopper crowd, and tickets to the taping were given out for free with the following stipulations: You must be young (in your teens or early 20s) and dressed in pink. I saw the show live this summer (I loved it for its zest and spirit, despite its unevenness elsewhere), and I caught the first half of the televised performance, which pulled in millions of viewers (yet to be seen: whether they actually pay to see the show live after TiVo-ing it, playing it, and replaying it to excess).

Watching Blonde prepackaged for TV made me ponder the virtues of live performance. Every so often, I despair over the state of theater--the lack of artistic integrity, risk, or profound statement--but I sometimes forget the interpretive freedom fairly heaped on a theater viewer that is unwittingly snatched from a TV watcher.

1. ADHD viewing. LB features some snazzy camera work, but it also takes away your ability to choose where to look at any given moment. Sure, in a theater a good director will guide your viewing experience, but you always have the choice to look elsewhere--as I often do--at a particularly striking member of the ensemble, at a flash of lighting, or at the detail on a prop or piece of scenery. Watching LB, I felt manipulated--visual angles and perspectives changed without my consent, and often at the expense of the performers (were the dramatic up-the-nose camera shots supposed to replicate the experience of sitting in the front row?).

2. Snooty commentary. Watching a new Broadway show, we often hear voices in our heads--critics' reviews, friends' opinions, our own preconceptions--but any of these are less intrusive than the uninterested, too-cool-for-you, apathetic, more-bored-than-thou commentary provided by the adolescent veejays that narrated LB. Before and after each commercial break (another distinctly un-theater-ish oddity) these stone-faced stick girls stared blandly into the camera to sum up the plot and, ostensibly, stir up interest in its evolution. Is this the new hip MTV female prototype? I certainly hope not--these girls exhibited about as much enthusiasm as a crumpled-up Playbill.

3. Studio audience effect. Each cast member's entrance (even minor characters) was greeted with unbridled squeals, screams, and applause. Notable performers (and especially legendary actors and celebrities) often receive entrance applause, but this was more like a boy band concert. I'm guessing that the audience was prompted to erupt into an avalanche of sound, and it was enormously distracting (and, ironically, now that I think of it, diametrically opposed to the VJs' parched commentary). Sitting in a theater, it's easy to get caught up in a cascade of laughter or applause, but sitting at home, the hawhaws of a studio audience sounds not only canned, but forced and fake.

So thank you, Legally Blonde and MTV, for reminding me, even during my most banal viewing moments, of the superior virtues of live performance. And yes, I will finish watching the taped performance--the curtain call response promises to be unlike (and mightier than) anything I've ever seen (or heard) on stage.

Musicalizing Jane

I've seen plenty of film adaptations of Jane Austen novels (Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Sense and Sensibility, etc.)--and, yes, I've watched many of them more than once--but I had never seen Austen animated on stage. As part of the New York Musical Theater Festival, Joel Alden (book, music, lyrics) has cleverly adapted Emma for the stage. Unlike Austen, it gets a bit exhausting and long-winded, especially when untangling plot elements in the second act, but, happily, like Austen, it often deals in wit, spirit, smarts, and the pure pleasure of watching intelligent characters define and refine themselves anew.

"Poise and Prejudice": offoffonline review: Emma

The film incarnations of Austen's material often skew toward the gauzy and hyper-romanticized; on stage, I found something much more cutting in the social dimensions of Austen's ideas and, particularly, in the budding friendship between Emma (the excellent Leah Horowitz) and the lower-class, underprivileged, rough-around-the-edges Harriet (the fantastic scene-stealing Kara Boyer). There's something truly unsettling about watching Emma attempting to refine and transform Harriet into a "gentleman's lady"--it's truly proprietary, controlling behavior, and a dismal look at the possible roots of Emma's celebrated benevolence. In this setting, it appears that Emma's "helping" of others only helps her to feel more superior.

The hackneyed plot of the avuncular male transforming the ugly duckling into a swan has found its way from nineteenth century novels to contemporary reality TV. For a woman to chisel another woman in her own image feels fresh and a bit daring, but also dangerous--and not altogether removed from contemporary feminist debates on the ways in which women can often become each other's worst, and most limiting, enemies. Food for thought.

And on a side note, I love this fantastic promotional photo of Emma standing juxtaposed with the New York City skyline. This anachronism finds its way into the costumes as well--the women wear white dresses cut from white material that looks to be the same cotton as that used in T-shirts. The men, more unfortunately, wear jeans with their long, period jackets and boots. For some, their tight black jeans are hardly noticeable; for others, the obvious denim origins of their duds are distracting, making them look more like lumberjacks than lords of luxury.

Photo 1: Harriet (Kara Boyer), Mr. Knightley (John Patrick Moore), and Emma (Leah Horowitz) [Photo by Ken Howard]

Photo 2: Promotional photo by Steven Rosen