Theater Roundup: Sondheim's 'Merrily We Roll Along'; McKinley's 'CQ/CX'; Fugard's 'Blood Knot'

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 22 February 2012 10:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Merrily We Roll Along
Starring Colin Donnell, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Elizabeth Stanley, Betsy Wolfe
Book by George Furth; music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Directed by James Lapine

CQ/CX
Starring Larry Bryggman, Peter Jay Fernandez, Tim Hopper, Arliss Howard, Kobi Libii, David Pittu, Steve Rosen, Sheila Tapia
Written by Gabe McKinley; directed by David Leveaux

Blood Knot
Starring Colman Domingo, Scott Shepherd
Written and directed by Athol Fugard

The 1981 Broadway flop Merrily We Roll Along, a huge failure for Stephen Sondheim after a string of hits like Follies, Company and Sweeney Todd, got an agreeably merry Encores! staging. The storyline--which follows composer Frank Shepard’s troubled relationships with his lyricist partner Charley Kringas and their needy writer friend Mary Flynn backward 20 years until their first meeting in 1957--is the main reason why the musical never caught on with audiences.

At Encores!, James Lapine’s zippy directing--bolstered by Wendall K. Harrington’s savvy projections, giving a sense of the eras the show spans--streamlined some (not all) plot holes; the gimmicky reverse timeline is far from inspired, and the musical theater world is too jokily handled in George Furth’s book. Sondheim’s songs, while not his best, include such gems as “Old Friends,” “Not a Day Goes By” and the patter classic “Franklin Shepard, Inc.” Unfortunately, they all appear in the first act, making Merry much lopsided (“Day” returns in Act II).

Rob Berman’s Encores! Orchestra’s splendid playing gave a full, lush sound to Jonathan Tunick’s excellent orchestrations. Colin Donnell’s charming Frank, Celia Keenan-Bolger’s irritant Mary and Lin-Manuel Miranda’s caustic Charley are the satisfying  leads;  a famously bumpy ride, this Merrily eventually does roll along.

CQ/CX, named for newspaper editors’ terms for fact checking and correction, is Gabe McKinley’s thinly veiled fiction of the Jayson Blair plagiarism case, which embarrassed the New York Times several years ago.

The play, though intelligent and well-paced, tries to do too much: it shows Jay Bennett at his job as a Times intern (later reporter), spending leisure time with fellow interns Jacob and Monica, dealing with his increasingly skeptical editor Ben and Times elder statesman Frank and being mentored by Gerald, long-time Times editor who’s the right-hand man of new editor-in-chief Hal Martin, whose regime and the paper’s reputation are destroyed when Jay’s plagiarism comes to light.

McKinley writes precisely about the culture that enabled Jay’s plagiarism, but for those who remember the real case’s details--and who in New York doesn’t?--there’s little that’s new or fresh. Still, under David Leveaux’s fast-paced direction--greatly helped by David Rockwell’s dazzling sets and Ben Stanton’s shrewd lighting, which slyly evoke the Times’ workplace--a persuasive ensemble of eight is led by Arliss Howard’s smart, scenery-chewing Hal and Tim Hopper’s professionally leery Ben.

There’s no doubting the sincerity of Athol Fugard’s plays, which dramatize how the evils of South Africa’s racist Apartheid system affected the citizens of his beloved country. In his 1961 two-hander Blood Knot (which had its New York premiere three years later), two brothers--one light-skinned, one much darker--deal with the ramifications of their mixed blood and their dissimilar physical appearance.

In his adept staging at the Signature Theatre’s new three-theater complex, Fugard channels Beckett’s Endgame as the brothers constantly banter on a post-nuclear apocalyptic set (by Christopher H. Barreca) that stands in for their shack in “colored” section of Port Elizabeth. With their lives stuck in neutral, Morris offers to write a letter to Zachariah’s new pen pal--who turns out to be an 18-year-old white girl who wants to meet him--and the impossibility of happiness for the brothers is thrown into sharp relief.

Exceedingly pale Scott Shepherd and dark-skinned Colman Domingo don’t physically convince as brothers with different fathers, but Shepherd’s strong, sturdy Morris complements Domingo’s shrill Zachariah. The actors click convincingly in the final scenes, when the brothers’ fantasy role-playing comes to a powerfully racially-charged head, giving Fugard’s character study a much needed catharsis.

Merrily We Roll Along
Performances February 8-19, 2012
City Center, 151 West 55th Street, New York, NY
http://nycitycenter.org

CQ/CX
Previews began January 25, 2012; opened February 15; closes March 11
The New Group @ the Acorn Theatre, 261 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
http://atlantictheater.org

Blood Knot
Previews began January 31, 2012; opened February 16; closes March 11
Signature Theater, 480 West 42nd Street, New York, NY
http://signaturetheatre.org

February '12 Digital Week III

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 19 February 2012 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
America in Primetime
(PBS)
This informative four-part PBS series comprises episodes that deal with archetypal characters that have been part and parcel of television sitcoms and dramas since the beginning: Man of the House, The Independent Woman, The Misfit and The Crusader.

Alongside classic clips from seminal shows like The Honeymooners and The Mary Tyler Moore Show to more recent specimens of supposed TV ingenuity like The Sopranos and Nurse Jackie, this thorough series includes interviews with show creators like Tom Fontana, Diane English, Norman Lear and Carl Reiner to the stars like Edie Falco, Julianna Margulies, Larry David and Felicity Huffman. The hi-def image, consisting of new interviews and vintage footage, is quite good; no extras.

The Dead
(Anchor Bay)
This zombie movie distinguishes itself by setting an apocalyptic story in a new place: equatorial Africa, where the hot sun, endless deserts and dangerous landscapes are as difficult to navigate as the hordes of the undead.

The Ford Brothers, who wrote and directed, inventively place new obstacles in front of their targeted human protagonists, including a pulse-pounding pair of finales set among craggy rocks and inside the humans’ last resort of survival. The extremes of sun and nighttime are beautifully accentuated on Blu-ray; extras include a deleted scenes and making-of featurette.

The Human Centipede II: Full Sequence
(IFC Midnight)
Beware, for auteur Tom Six returns with an even grosser gross-out about a copy-cat sicko that makes the original seem like The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We must thank the inept and turgid Six for shooting II in black and white, a simple act of human mercy that prevents it from being the most repellent movie ever made.

As it stands, II is an unnecessary horror/gore contraption, even for the undiscriminating teens who groove on its ilk. The Blu-ray image is, unfortunately, excellent; extras include Six’s commentary and interview, deleted scenes and making-of featurette.

The Interrupters
(PBS)
A year in the life of gang violence-ridden Chicago is chronicled in Steve James’ principled and idealistic documentary, which follows people who join forces in a concerted effort to rid the city of gang-related violence and present more positive values as an alternative to such a fatalistic mind-set.

There are shocking moments of real-life killings, but these are justified by the context of showing what these good--but not sainted!--individuals are up against. The Blu-ray image is good; extras include an hour of deleted scenes and featurette on the musical score.

Nude Nuns with Big Guns
(Image)
With a fantastic title like this, who cares if the movie’s a botch? And that’s pretty much what we get here, as the provocative--but misleading--title (there’s a lone nude nun) masks a series of dull set pieces that combine sexual exploitation and extreme violence to no discernable end.

At the beginning, the eye-filling rape scenes are unexpected, but soon a pall spreads over the proceedings, as the filmmakers have obviously run out of meager ideas and resort to the kitchen sink. There’s a certain visual panache in hi-def; the original four-minute short of the same name (the lone extra) has it all over the movie.

Three Outlaw Samurai
(Criterion)
Hideo Gosha’s samurai spectacular, which quickly builds to a fantastic climax, is 93 minutes of purely economical plotting and characterization alongside superbly paced and choreographed sword fighting.

Even though he is no Kurosawa or Kobayashi, Gosha is a superior craftsman whose sense of visual proportion (and B&W camerawork) is often dazzling. The Criterion Collection, which presents this as one of its barebones titles--there are no supplements--gets the hi-def transfer right, as always.

Tiny Furniture
(Criterion)
One of the most polarizing of all of the Criterion Collection titles is this bland, shallow and unfunny “comic” portrait of a college graduate drifting through life with an unspoken sense of upper-class entitlement, who returns home to live with her mom and teen sister.

Lena Dunham, who wrote, directed and stars, has little talent for writing, directing or acting; the few decent one-liners are swallowed up by her derivative mocking of and affection for entitled 20-somethings. Criterion’s hi-def transfer is fine; extras include a Dunham interview with Nora Ephron and Paul Schrader appreciation (talk about gilding by association), four Dunham shorts and her first feature, Creative Nonfiction.

DVDs of the Week
The Debt
(MPI)
The original 2007 Israeli thriller is more tense and gripping than the 2011 remake--a solid action flick with Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain--helped by a tighter, tauter pace. In a fleet 97 minutes, parallel storylines are kept spinning, action percolate and moral dilemmas unwind.

It doesn’t hurt Assaf Bernstein’s film that authentic Germans and Israelis speak their own languages, and an accomplished cast’s anonymity greatly contributes to its plausibility. An intriguing 24-minute making-of featurette is the lone extra.

Ethos
(Cinema Libre)
Woody Harrelson narrates Pete McGrain’s diffuse documentary about making meaningful--and positive--change in a corrupt society led by government machinery that’s complicit in letting the one percent rule us economically.

Interview snippets include the usual suspects from Noam Chomsky to Howard Zinn; if the finished product is less than the sum of its “make a difference” parts, moments of true insight about how the process has been ruined are numerous. Too bad those who would benefit from watching this--namely, the titans in industry and their enablers in Washington--won’t bother.

Far from the Madding Crowd
(PBS)
This 1998 British television adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s classic romantic novel isn’t as visually memorable as John Schlesinger’s 1967 film, since it lacks both Nicolas Roeg's splendid cinematography and Julie Christie’s unique beauty.

Still, at 3-½ hours, Nicholas Renton’s version is far more faithful to Hardy’s story of a woman who chooses wrongly among a trio of men, and has a solid cast: Paloma Baeza as Bathsheba and Nathaniel Parker, Nigel Terry and Jonathan Firth as the men in her life.

Take Shelter
(Sony)
Although Michael Shannon received deserved accolades for his forceful performance as a man who feels that his world is literally crumbling around him, Jessica Chastain, in an affecting portrayal of his sad and confused wife, is the emotional anchor of Jeff Nichols’ incisive character study.

Although the movie crumbles at the end by literalizing the metaphorical horror, it remains the rare American movie that handles an adult subject with, for the most part, maturity and tact. Extras include Nichols and Shannon’s commentary, interviews, making-of featurette and deleted scenes.

CDs of the Week
Danielle De Niese, Beauty of the Baroque
(Decca)
The Australian-by-way-of-New Jersey soprano scintillatingly sings a set of baroque arias ranging from John Dowland and Monteverdi to Bach and Handel. Throughout, De Niese sings with dramatic purpose and a beguiling clarity: Henry Purcell’s mournful Dido’s Lament has rarely been sung with such emotional directness.

There are a few cameo appearances by countertenor Andreas Scholl, while conductor Harry Bicket and the musicians of The English Concert are the accompanying calm to De Niese’s vocal storm.

Nicola Benedetti, Italia!
(Decca)
It’s no surprise Nicola Benedetti decided to record Italian baroque pieces since so many of them (Vivaldi, Tartini) are already violin showstoppers. She utilizes her formidable technique to bow brilliantly through show-off showcases like Tartini’s Devil’s Trill and Vivaldi’s Summer section from The Four Seasons.

Now that she’s gotten it out of her immensely talented system, let’s hope she performs 20th century Italian works that need advocacy like those by Respighi, Casella and Rota. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra and conductor Christian Curnyn are up to the task of following Benedetti’s shimmering lead.

February '12 Digital Week II

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 11 February 2012 15:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
Anonymous
(Sony)
Roland Emmerich’s preposterous “Shakespeare was too dumb to write plays” fantasia is a train wreck that keeps on giving: idiocies to history or common sense occur frequently. That respectable names enact screenwriter John Orloff’s ludicrous tale of Edward de Vere (real author) and the Bard (mere Beard) stems from the fact that some--like Derek Jacobi and Mark Rylance--are rabid anti-Stratfordians.

Despite stylish sets and costumes, this risible foolishness will entertain only if you turn your brain off. The Blu-ray image is top-notch; extras are Emmerich and Orloff’s commentary, deleted scenes and featurettes that twist director, writer and cast into pretzels trying (and failing) to legitimize de Vere.

The Big Year
(Fox)
David Frankel’s comedy about obsessive bird-watchers is a pleasant surprise, although how much is due to lowered expectations, I can’t say. But getting Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson to underplay is a feat in itself; adding a dry John Cleese as our narrator, solid support from Rashida Jones, Brian Dennehy, Dianne Wiest and JoBeth Williams and beguiling (if often digitized) feathered friends only helps.

The movie lopes along, if uneventfully, at least agreeably. On Blu-ray, the birds look especially dazzling; extras include deleted scenes, gag reel and making-of featurette.

Downton Abbey, Season 2
(PBS)
This series’ dramatic first season is surpassed by the latest installments--still showing on PBS--with compelling storylines and vivid characterizations underscored by the First World War, which touches everyone, male or female, servant or master/mistress.

Maggie Smith, Hugh Bonneville, Elizabeth McGovern, Maria Doyle Kennedy, Iain Glen and Michelle Dockery--among many others--are even more marvelous than they were previously. The stunning physical production looks flawless on the stellar hi-def release. Extras include a full-length Christmas at Downton Abbey, and on-set featurettes.

Fernando Di Leo Crime Collection
(Raro Video)
Italian crime master Fernando Di Leo, a huge influence on Quentin Tarantino, can be forgiven for that: this quartet of exciting, action-packed, unsubtle flicks is a real treat to watch. Caliber 9, The Italian Connection, The Boss (which make up a trilogy) and Rulers of the City show the seamy underbelly of organized crime, as crooks and cops alike end up bullet-riddled or blown apart (lots of car explosions throughout).

On Blu-ray, the films’ images vary, from copious amounts of detail to a softness that probably stems from the source material. Hours of extras include a host of featurettes about Di Leo’s directing style and reminiscences from his casts and crew.

La Jetee/Sans Soleil
(Criterion)
Chris Marker, cinema’s most valuable essayist, sees his best-known and most fully-realized films in hi-def thanks to the Criterion Collection. 1963’s La Jetee--vastly influential on films like 12 Monkeys and even music videos--is a tragic sci-fi tale told entirely through still photographs; 1983’s Sans Soleil, by contrast, is a wide-ranging travelogue of our simultaneously vast and small world. 

Both films’ hi-def transfers are magnificent; the extras--culled from the original 2005 DVD release--include interviews and featurettes that discuss Marker’s influence and legacy as a singular film artist.

The Phantom of the Opera: 25th Anniversary Concert
(Universal)
Andrew Lloyd Webber’s smash hit musical, based on Gaston Leroux’s classic novel, celebrates its 25th anniversary at London’s storied Royal Albert Hall with a lavish staging based on the original production (still running on Broadway). The excellent cast is led by Sierra Boggess, who with Laura Osnes proves that young, talented American stage performers are alive and well.

Webber himself appears for a well-deserved curtain call, as do his original stars, Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman, the latter performing an encore. The Blu-ray transfer is good, the music impressive in surround sound; no extras.

The Rebound
(Fox)
This rote romantic comedy about a middle-aged woman who divorces a cheating husband and finds true love with a younger “manny” babysitting her kids is DOA thanks to a complete lack of chemistry between stolid Catherine Zeta-Jones and game Justin Bartha.

Writer/director Bart Freundlich can’t flesh out his couple with any originality; the result is a dull replay of other rom-coms of years past. The hi-def transfer is decent; extras comprise interviews with Zeta-Jones, Freundlich, Bartha and costars Art Garfunkel and Joanna Gleason (they play Bartha’s parents).

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas
(Warner Bros)
Another unnecessary sequel in what’s become a comic franchise places our dopey heroes in increasingly ridiculous--and unfunny--situations, including a Russian mobster’s teenage daughter’s party and a Christmas tree store run by stereotypical ghetto dudes.

Director Todd Strauss-Schulson desperately ramps up the farcical elements by turning the movie briefly into claymation and dragging in an always fun Neil Patrick Harris for brutally obvious gay jokes. But it’s all for naught. The movie looks fine on Blu-ray even without 3D effects; extras include deleted/extended scenes and a claymation featurette.

DVDs of the Week
Janie Jones
(Tribeca)
This low-key character study, filled with heartbreaking scenes between an estranged dad and the teenage daughter he never knew about--he’s a fading rock star, she’s the offspring of a trysts--benefits from the honest interplay between Alessandro Nivola (dad) and Abigail Breslin (daughter), well on her way to becoming a major actress.

Wonderful support from Elisabeth Shue (mom), Peter Stormare, Frances Fisher and Frank Whaley helps writer-director David M. Rosenthal keep things percolating between moments of musical and personal intimacy that brim with truth. This small-scale gem has extras comprising interviews and an audio commentary.

The Jazz Singer
(Inception)
Here’s a real curio: Jerry Lewis takes the Al Jolson role in this hour-long adaptation seen only once on TV in 1959. Lewis clowns around too much (no surprise), but he’s quite strong in the dramatic showdown between father and estranged son.

The actors surrounding Lewis are even better: Alan Reed as his dad the Cantor, Molly Picon as his heartbroken mother and sexy Anna Maria Alberghetti as a famous singer who asks Jerry to join her entourage, exacerbating the rift between him and his family. The film can be watched in B&W or color; the lone extra is a look at the restoration by Jerry’s son Chris.

Karen Cries on the Bus (Film Movement)
With an exceptionally moving performance by Colombian actress Angela Carrizosa at its center, Gabriel Rojas Vera’s chronicle of a woman escaping a failed marriage transcends its familiar territory.

The director allows Karen the dignity of beginning a new life and developing a new romance without pity or condescension, and Carrizosa’s amazing performance is shot through with emotion and inner strength. An Australian documentary short, Lessons from the Night, is included.

3
(Strand)
Tom Tykwer’s sprawling melodrama bounces around its characters’ complicated relationships with one another: a woman, her boyfriend, and the man they are each seeing, unbeknownst to the other. To be sure, she becomes pregnant (twins!) and doesn’t know who’s the father: her one-ball beau (he had testicular cancer) or her new stud.

Tykwer’s split screens, multiple narrators and other sleight of hand obscure that 3, while fancy to watch, is pretty superficial underneath; the solid cast can’t overcome the ludicrous roles.

CD of the Week
Paul McCartney, Kisses on the Bottom
(Concord)
Now nearly 70, Paul McCartney pays homage to the songs he grew up with; unlike Run Devil Run, his energetic look back at 50s rock’n’roll, the new CD plumbs even further, to songs his father played that were Paul’s introduction to memorable tunesmiths. Songs by Irving Berlin, Frank Loesser and Harold Arlen bump up against one another in deliberately casual but playful arrangements that might be incorrectly labeled “light jazz”: that pianist Diana Krall and her crack band appear throughout seconds that notion.

But McCartney isn’t merely playing it safe: he’s in exemplary voice, whether in the opening “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” (which gives the album its cheeky title), the daringly languid “Bye Bye Blackbird” or the straightforward “Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive.” Paul’s own contributions--”My Valentine” (with Eric Clapton on guitar) and the closing “Only Our Hearts” (with Stevie Wonder on harmonica)--are of such a piece with the rest that I had to check the liner notes to see which are the originals.

Paul has always had a soft spot for this kind of old-fashioned music, from the Beatles‘ “Your Mother Should Know” and “Honey Pie” to Wings’ “You Gave Me the Answer” and “Baby’s Request,” so it was inevitable he’d make an album of this material. If he was simply coasting like Rod Stewart, I’d be worried; but he’s so natural, unaffected and convincing that it’s just Paul being Paul. Now on to that real rock album he’s promising.