Theater Review: Her Name Is "Carson"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Tuesday, 10 May 2011 20:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Carson McCullers Talks About Love
Written and performed by Suzanne Vega
Music by Suzanne Vega and Duncan Sheik
Directed by Kay Matschullat

In her concert performances, singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega tells amusingly deadpan tales that are as illuminating as the direct, durable songs she sings in her conversational voice.

Those tough-as-nails songs, often written from the point of view of a detached narrator, would seem to make her the ideal interpreter of the life of Southern author Carson McCullers, best known for The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Member of the Wedding and Reflections in a Golden Eye. But the resulting Carson McCullers Talks About Love is an awkward hybrid (part nightclub act, part concert, part solo performance piece, part musical) which never coalesces into a uniform and satisfying whole.

Vega begins the show by recounting how she "discovered" McCullers by reading a story of hers at age 17 and assuming "Carson" was a man until she saw the grim female face on the cover of one of the books. This, of course, made her want to know more about the sad-looking woman who wrote uncompromising tragicomic stories about her characters‛ desperate emotional struggles. Following this intro, Vega puts on a wig, picks up a drink and a cigarette and acts as McCullers for the next 80 minutes.

Carson McCullers Talks About Love, which comprises anecdotes about the author -- and a dozen songs with music by Vega and Duncan Sheik, and Vega’s own alternating biting and hackneyed lyrics -- attempts to paint a well-rounded portrait of the artist as a bisexual alcoholic.

And there are times when Vega’s vaguely Southern drawl and atmospheric blues or torch songs like "Song of Annemarie" and "Harper Lee" give a clear snapshot of McCullers‛ complicated relationships with both men and women, but those moments are fleeting.

More often, songs like "Me of We" and "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud" fade completely after they’re heard, despite referencing McCullers’ own writings in the lyrics.

And why director Kay Matschullat thought it clever to have Vega step out of character to banter with onstage pianist Joe Iconis, whose interjections become more annoying as the play continues, is baffling. More successful are guitarist Andy Stack’s hard-edged riffs that become the voice of McCullers’ husband Reeves during several "conversations."

Vega’s own musical sketches of loners and survivors have always carried a sardonic edge, which has been blunted in her first theatrical foray. In attempting to use her own voice as her heroine’s equally powerful one, Vega seems overwhelmed for the first time onstage, and the result is a show that will probably dissatisfy fans of both of these talented women.

Carson McCullers Talks About Love
Rattlestick Theater
224 Waverly Place
New York City
212-627-2556
www.rattlestick.org
Performances through June 4, 2011

Cinefantastique Spotlight: Thor

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 09 May 2011 14:39

Written by Daniel Persons

Most Mother’s Days, loving children show their gratitude with flowers and breakfast in bed. This Mother’s Day, the kids had the option of taking Mom to the multiplex, where she could drool over the handsomely chiseled Thor in the newest, big-screen adventure out of the Marvel stable. Is Thor — directed by Kenneth Branagh, starring Chris Hemsworth as the mighty-thewed (thewed?) God of Thunder,  Natalie Portman as his potential love-interest, and Anthony Hopkins as Big Daddy Odin, with a special guest appearance by Gort’s younger, more ambitious brother — the film that will bring a Shakespearean gravitas to comic book drama, or is it just so much table setting for the impending The Avengers movie? Join The Chronic Rift’s John Drew and Cinefantastique Online’s Dan Persons as they discuss the movie behind the myth.

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Theater Review: Unkingly "Lear"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 09 May 2011 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

King Lear
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Michael Grandage
Starring Derek Jacobi, Gina McKee, Justine Mitchell, Pippa Bennett-Warner, Ron Cook, Alec Newman, Paul Jesson, Gwilym Lee, Gideon Turner, Tom Beard, Michael Hadley

King Lear, probably William Shakespeare’s greatest, most towering tragedy, has minefields galore for a director and actor hardy (or heedless) enough to undertake it.

First and foremost, it needs absolute balance between high drama and low comedy to become the unbearably moving tragedy that the playwright’s psychologically penetrating poetry points toward.

That Michael Grandage’s production, imported from London’s Donmar Warehouse to Brooklyn, is only intermittently satisfying is due to many things, but mainly because of Derek Jacobi’s Lear.

Obviously an accomplished Shakespearean, Jacobi curiously plays the king in an off-puttingly over-the-top manner, as if he can't believe that he lucked into this gig and so uses every trick at his disposal to show that he’s worthy of enacting Shakespeare’s most indelible tragic character.

From the start, when Lear enters pitting his daughters against one another in an egomaniacal bit of game-playing that foreshadows his madness, Jacobi makes odd acting choices. His exaggerated, cutesy mannerisms -- like pointing to his cheek to make sure eldest daughter Goneril (Gina McKee) plants a kiss there before saying how much she loves him -- grate from the get-go.

He puts inappropriate emphases while speaking famous lines. After saying "Let me wipe it first" as an obvious laugh line, he follows with, "It smells....of mortality`," his ill-timed pause ruining the overwhelming emotion of the scene. He also uses a weirdly high-pitched voice, and never physically degenerates when madness starts to unwind the king. 

Other lesser Lears I've seen (Christopher Plummer, Kevin Kline and F. Murray Abraham, to name three who also came a cropper in this role) managed to allow Lear's physical state to mirror his lost grasp of sanity.

By contrast, Jacobi, except for torn stockings and a crown made of twigs, remains refined and with no hair out of place, seeming singularly unaffected by the experience.

Jacobi does speak Shakespeare's language with clarity. He manages to howl with rage in the final scene, finding beautiful-sounding music in those five shattering "nevers" with which he climaxes his strangulated mourning over the body of his youngest and most beloved daughter Cordelia (Pippa Bennett-Warner). And in Lear’s final breath, he gives the most horrifying exhalation of air I’ve heard. Jacobi isn't a bad Lear, but that he's not a great one is maddening.

Jacobi's frustrating portrayal throws into sharp relief the rest of the cast. Gina McKee's Goneril and Justine Mitchell's Regan make formidable adversaries who look smashing in their elegant finery. Pippa Bennett-Warner‛s Cordelia is unimpressive.

Ron Cook's delightful Fool is perfectly situated between wisdom and lunacy, and Alec Newman's Edmund, though a tad obvious as the bastard villain, dashingly dispatches his devilishness against his father Gloucester, played by Paul Jesson with weighty world-weariness, and half-brother Edgar, played by a strong, articulate Gwilym Lee. If Gideon Turner’s Cornwall doesn't inspire much passion, Tom Beard's Albany and Michael Hadley’s Kent exude true goodness without resorting to clichés.

Brandage's direction of this swift-moving tragedy of broken families and psychological and physical casualties does nothing particularly egregious or outstanding. Hampered by Christopher Oram's unit set of whitewashed wooden planks that stand in for everything from Lear's and his daughter’s castles to the stormy heath and bloody battlefields, along with Oram’s monochromatic costumes of black, grey and white, the director makes Shakespeare’s all-encompassing tragedy a simple domestic melodrama.

Although we do get to hear Shakespeare's glorious language -- which becomes knottier and more labyrinthine as the play continues -- by superb-sounding British actors, it’s ultimately not enough to make this Lear more dynamic and compelling.

King Lear
BAM Harvey Theater
651 Fulton Street
Brooklyn, NY
718-636-4100
www.bam.org
Opened May 4, 2011; closes June 5, 2011