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Off-Broadway Review: "Colin Quinn—Small Talk"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Sunday, 29 January 2023 21:24; Written by Kevin Filipski

Colin Quinn—Small Talk

Written and performed by Colin Quinn; directed by James Fauvell

Performances through February 11, 2023

Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, New York, NY

colinquinnshow.com

Colin Quinn—Small Talk (photo: Monique Carboni)

For several years, sharp-witted comedian Colin Quinn—probably best-known to comedy fans for his stint as "Weekend Update" anchor on Saturday Night Live from 1998 to 2000—has been performing regularly both on and off Broadway. After his show The Last Best Hope in fall 2021 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, the fast-talking Brooklyn comic returns there for his latest, Colin Quinn—Small Talk, in which he amusingly discusses the seemingly lost art of people introducing themselves to and engaging with others through innocuous patter. As always with Quinn, there are more misses than hits, but his sardonic approach does yield some comic insights.

Although Quinn trods a lot of ground in his 70-minute routine—which encompasses his maxim that, “between phones, air pods and self-checkout, small talk is down 87 percent”—it’s on the periphery that he finds his cleverest material. In one routine, he affirms that Human Resources is the “law enforcement arm of the office” and soon there will be no more series like Law and Order or CSI on TV; instead, “every cop show is going to be H.R.: ‘There are two separate but very important groups in every office—the sexist pigs and those who are assigned to stop them. These are their stories.’”

There’s also his offbeat spins on things we all take for granted. Discussing social media, he notes that schizophrenics suffer their whole lives with imaginary voices in their heads and now all of us have our own “voices,” all on our devices: “You carry two billion peoples’ personalities with you at all times.” His solution? “If you post more than 5 times a day you should be in a 72-hour psychiatric hold.”

He has quick fixes for our country’s various ills, including immigration (those who want to live here must pick someone already here no one likes and send them to their old country as a one-for-one trade), abortion (“the only people that should weigh in on abortion are mothers disappointed in how their adult children turned out—they’ve seen the agony and the ecstasy”) and gun control (“When people come in to buy a gun, no waiting period but first give us three references. Then we FaceTime those people and go, ‘Hey, your friend Joe Schmo wants to buy a gun,’ and if they go, ‘Really?!’ They’re not getting a gun.”)

Quinn also, somewhat halfheartedly, equates the right and the left as cultish, the wingnuts as a “combination David Koresh compound meets Jimmy Buffett concert” and liberals as the Manson family. But he doesn’t push the comparison too far and drops it after an obvious punch line about killing “the pigs.”

For all his Bushwick bravado, Quinn saves his best bit for the end, when he humorously eulogizes the great Norm MacDonald as the ultimate small talker—it’s a bit sanctimonious but also humanizing in a way that Quinn usually doesn’t allow himself. It’s also the best kind of small talk.

The Sound of "Surge"

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 26 January 2023 15:19; Written by Jack Angstreich

Dalia Stasevska conducts the New York Philharmonic performing world premiere of Wang Lu's "Surge". Photo by Chris Lee

At Lincoln Center’s superb David Geffen Hall, on the evening of Saturday, January 21st, I had the great privilege to attend a terrific concert presented by the New York Philharmonic—continuing an unusually strong season—under the splendid direction of Ukrainian conductor Dalia Stasevska, who leads the Lahti Symphony Orchestra.

The program began auspiciously with contemporary Chinese composer Wang Lu’s impressively orchestrated, compelling Surge, heard here in a fully realized account, and receiving its world premiere with these performances. Wang, in a program note in the score, wrote:

With alarming new environmental and political challenges emerging all the time, there is an overwhelming sense of unforeseen surges of the unknown that permeate our lives. Yet there is also an irresistible sense of collective urgency to build on more complex perspectives that, though sometimes tumultuous, would tolerate bold and unique innovations.

With these thoughts in mind,Surgefrequently features full orchestral tutti moments, transforming them into colossal textures, shifting and mixing tone colors while amplifying a single theme throughout. Momentous rhythmic motives insistently drive the inexorable waves of orchestral layers forward towards abrupt shifts.

Program annotator Rebecca Winzenried provides some useful background on the work:

Surge was commissioned by the League of American Orchestras Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commission Program, a consortium of 30 orchestras ranging from the New York Philharmonic and Philadelphia Orchestra to the Quad City Symphony in Iowa and the Portland Columbia Symphony in Oregon. Works by the six women composers engaged to contribute (who also include Anna Clyne, Sarah Gibson, Angel Lam, Gity Razaz, and Arlene Sierra) will each be performed by four consortium member orchestras, repeat performances that guarantee greater exposure than is often afforded to new works. Following the World Premiere by the NY Phil, Surge will be performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Des Moines Symphony, and at the Aspen Music Festival.

The beautiful and brilliant Georgian soloist, Lisa Batiashvili—who wore a fabulous, lacy, black gown—then entered the stage for a dazzling rendition of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s amazing Violin Concerto, which was inspired by Edouard Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole.The first movement is tuneful, bewitching and song-like but acquires a more dramatic character, although with incredibly stirring passages, reaching an exhilarating conclusion that elicited the audience’s applause. The ensuing slow movement is even more Russian in its melodies and it too is lyrical but with more melancholy inflections while the ebullient and dance-likefinaleis especially virtuosic, although with some subdued moments, but also closes thrillingly.

The second half of the evening was even stronger, consisting in a fully assured performance of Jean Sibelius’s magnificent Symphony No. 2. The suspenseful and turbulent initial movement is thoroughly Romantic with majestic climaxes. The evocative and mysterious slow movement is more restrained but ends forcefully and the third movement opens excitingly but its propulsion is arrested by quieter passages. The complex and moodyfinalebuilds to an exalting conclusion. The musicians received an enthusiastic ovation.

Cleveland Orchestra Presents the Music of Vienna

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 25 January 2023 15:22; Written by Jack Angstreich

Franz Welser-Möst conducts Cleveland Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra Chorus. Photo by Chris Lee

At Carnegie Hall, on the evening of Wednesday, January 18th, I had the enormous privilege to attend a magnificent concert of Viennese music—continuing an unusually strong season at this venue—performed by the extraordinary musicians of the Cleveland Orchestra, under the exceptional direction of Franz Welser-Möst, one of the finest contemporary conductors.

The marvelous first half of the program interwove movements from two outstanding works masterfully played: Alban Berg’s indelible Three Pieces from the Lyric Suite—originally scored for string quartet and rearranged for string orchestra—and Franz Schubert’s incomparable Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, D. 759, the “Unfinished.” (Playing movements of works out of sequence is a violation of their artistic integrity but as the music was consistently thrilling, it was not difficult to overlook this.) The opening Andante amoroso from the Lyric Suite was compelling and intricate while the ensuing, brief, less accessible Allegro misterioso functions structurally as ascherzo—replete with a Trio section—but is not especially playful in character. The piece concluded arrestingly with the Adagio appassionata.The Allegro moderato from the Symphony No. 8 was enchanting, although also solemn and dramatic, even with several portentous moments; the often charming Andante con moto is strangely Mendelssohnian at times—lyrical passages alternate with both majestic and more serious ones.

Also exhilarating was a brilliant realization of Schubert’s too infrequently heard but awe-inspiring Mass No. 6 in E-flat Major which featured the wonderful Cleveland Orchestra Chorus and a slate of superb soloists: soprano Joélle Harvey, mezzo-soprano Daryl Freedman, tenors Julian Prégardien and Martin Mitterrutzner, and bass Dashon Burton. The Kyrie was exalting while the Gloria that followed was intensely joyous with the Domine Deus section in a more subdued register, although with some overpowering moments; the movement concludes with an astonishing fugue. The Credo was more introspective—its Et Incarnatus was especially moving. After a forceful Sanctus and an ineffably beautiful Benedictus, the Agnus Dei is deeply emotional but acquires a more affirmative character in the amazing Dona Nobis section. The artists deservedly received an enthusiastic ovation.

January '23 Digital Week III

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 25 January 2023 13:45; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater/Streaming Releases of the Week

Saint Omer

(Super)

French documentarian Alice Diop’s powerful debut feature dramatizes a stunning story based on the real-life trial of a Senegalese woman who killed her infant daughter, and its complex layers of morality, culture, politics, sexism and racism make this one of the most provocative and disturbing films in recent memory. Diop drops us into the courtroom alongside her protagonist—a stand-in, of sorts, for herself—who must take in the young defendant’s reasoning for an inexplicably horrific occurrence in this claustrophobic location, further accentuated by the nearly still camera.

Diop’s film is nearly all talk, but that talk is always compelling and challenging, much more so than something like Sarah Polley’s mediocre Women Talking, which of course did receive an Oscar nomination for Best Picture. (Saint Omer was stupidly shut out of any nominations.)

All Eyes Off Me

(Film Movement)

Young adults’ sexual and social exploits are explored in Hadas Ben Aroya’s physically and emotionally naked drama, which follows Avisheg who, after having energetic bouts of intercourse with her new boyfriend Max (who has unknowingly impregnated another woman, Danny), has an unexpected flirtation with a middle-aged man.

Ben Aroya knowingly shows how intimacy intersects with mundanity, although occasionally that banality creeps into the movie itself. Still, the director has cast several daring performers, particularly Elisheva Weil, who is particularly astonishing as the always intriguing Avisheg.

Chess Story

(Film Movement)

Based on the final novella of the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, Philipp Stölzl’s intelligent adaptation follows Josef Bartok, a Hungarian Jewish accountant who nearly escapes with his wife to North America in 1938 but is taken away right before boarding the ship and is constantly tortured by his Nazi captors to get him to share information about wealthy Jews’ bank accounts that he denies having.

Stölzl’s visually striking embodiment of mental stress, a book of great chess matches, is found by Bartok, who memorizes and relives those moves to try and outlast his fascist torturers. This indomitable tribute to the human spirit in the most perilous of times is highlighted by Oliver Masucci’s splendid performance in the lead role.

Only in Theaters

(Wishing Well Entertainment)

Raphael Sbarge’s timely documentary explores the Laemmle family, longtime proprietors of the one of the most adventurous movie-theater chains in California, part of the cinematic education of generations of filmmakers, scholars and movie fans. What starts as an engaging chronicle of the family’s longtime business—focusing on Greg Laemmle, current head of the theaters—soon becomes something else entirely when COVID-19 enters the picture and shuts everything down.

The urgency of a family-owned business in an entertainment industry seeing the massive popularity of streaming and further changes in audience’s moviegoing habits makes the film a cautionary tale about the survival of the fittest. Cameos by filmmakers Allison Anders, Cameron Crowe, Ava DuVernay, Nicole Holofcener, James Ivory and Bruce Joel Rubin provide further gravitas to the Laemmle theaters’ place in cinema history.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Voodoo Macbeth

(Lightyear Entertainment)

The fascinating true story of how actress Rose McClendon (Inger Tudor) shepherded a Black-cast version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the Depression-era New York stage through producer John Houseman and 20-year-old wunderkind director Orson Welles (Jewell Wilson Bridges, in his film debut), who gets the idea for a “Voodoo Macbeth” set on a Caribbean island—it could either be a masterstroke or a laughing stock.

A conglomerate of 10 directors, 8 writers and 3 producers as part of the USC Originals project shepherds this dramatization effectively if unsurprisingly: it’s a credible reenactment with fine performances but not as earthshattering as what Welles and company created onstage (sadly, McClendon never played her dream role of Lady Macbeth, dying of pneumonia soon after the production opened). The Blu-ray image looks excellent; extras comprise footage from the original 1936 play as well as a commentary by Bridges, Tudor, one of the directors and writers along with two producers.

Reviews

Off-Broadway Review: "Colin Quinn—Small Talk"

The Sound of "Surge"

Cleveland Orchestra Presents the Music of Vienna

January '23 Digital Week III

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