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NYC Theater Roundup: “The Master Builder,” “The Weir,” “Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Saturday, 25 May 2013 22:41
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Master Builder
Written by Henrik Ibsen; adapted by David Edgar; directed by Andrei Belgrader
Performances through June 9, 2013
The Weir
Written by Conor McPherson; directed by Ciaran O’Reilly
Performances through July 7, 2013
Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional
Written and performed by Colin Quinn; directed by Rebecca A. Trent
Performances through June 3, 2013
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| Turturro and Schmidt in The Master Builder (photo: Stephanie Berger) |
Henrik Ibsen’s plays have had it tough in New York recently: last season’s Enemy of the People with Richard Thomas and the Pearl Theatre’s Rosmersholm were both so-so stagings. But The Master Builder, one of the Norwegian master’s towering final works, seems to get it worst. This warts and all autobiographical portrait of a great architect who’s fatally misunderstood and fatally flawed, is difficult going for even the best theater companies. Tony Randall’s floundering National Actors Theatre 1992 production came to grief, as did the Irish Rep’s 2008 version, even with an actor of the stature of James Naughton in the title role.
Now at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Romanian director Andrei Belgrader’s The Master Builder, from playwright David Edgar’s crudely overexplicit adaptation, features John Turturro as the brilliant Halvard Solness, whose yearning for artistic perfection has destroyed his own life and those around him. Unfortunately, this production fails on nearly every level, as if no one associated with it has grasped—or, indeed, was even aware of—Ibsen’s profundity.
Turturro, always (for better or worse) contemporary in aspect, is all wrong for Halvard: he has no gravitas or tragic nobility. His real-life spouse Katherine Borowitz plays Halvard’s wife Aline as a Stepford zombie, while Wrenn Schmidt turns Hilde, whose animated and irresistible presence perks up Halvard and his art, into a squeaky-voiced Kristin Chenoweth sound-alike who’s very resistible. The others can do nothing in their supporting parts.
Belgrader makes little sense of the complexities of Ibsen’s strained relationships, missing the humor and, ultimately, tragedy at the expense of blatant symbolism. Santo Loquasto’s ludicrously slanted jungle gym set dominates the stage throughout; Belgrader’s final image of Halvard approaching his destiny by climbing a leaning tower raises a question (not “begs the question,” as adapter Edgar mistakenly has it): did Ibsen set his play in Pisa? That might explain Turturro’s presence, but not much else.
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| Keating, Butler and Gormley in The Weir (photo: Carol Rosegg) |
Conor McPherson’s The Weir—despite winning the Olivier Award for Best Play in 1997—isn’t much of a play. Ninety minutes of eerie yarns told by visitors to an Irish countryside bar: if their gift of gab is enough, then you may enjoy it. If you want more, you may find The Weir wanting.
The supernatural stories these people tell involve ghosts and fairies, but despite Ciaran O’Reilly’s fluid staging on Charlie Corcoran’s wonderfully lived-in bar set, none of it coheres or builds to any dramatic climax. Their tales are told, they leave the bar and the play ends. It is, however, amusing to listen to these Irish men and lady, played exemplarily by Dan Butler, Billy Carter, Sean Gormley, John Keating and Tessa Klein.
McPherson’s habit of presenting the supernatural in his plays came to a head the lone time he told a real story, Shining City, where he desperately dragged in a frightful spirit to give the audience a final scream. While The Weir (which refers to a barrier across a nearby river, seen in a photo on the bar wall) doesn’t revert to such a stratagem, its weirdness is all too transparent.
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| Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional (photo: Mike Lavoie) |
A few years ago, comedian Colin Quinn performed Long Story Short on Broadway, a quick trip through world history. The fast-talking Brooklyn comic, off Broadway this time, now presents Colin Quinn—Unconstitutional, in which he discusses American political history from the Founding Fathers to today. As always with Quinn, there are as more misses than hits, but his approach does yield occasional comic insights.
Although Quinn trods a lot of ground in his 70-minute routine—likening US history to a drunken binge in a local tavern, from which citizens are only shaking off the inevitable hangover—it’s on the periphery that he finds his cleverest material. Such asides include his rebuke to Bruce Springsteen as “champion of the working man” while playing concerts that drag on so long that many audience members might get in trouble with their real bosses for getting to work late the next day. There’s also his unique take on hunting, saying it shouldn’t be called a sport because one side has no idea what’s going on.
Quinn takes mild shots at presidents past and present, while describing himself as “pro-choice, pro-gun, pro-gay marriage and pro-death penalty”—in other words, he’s “anti-overcrowding.” While his jokes are rarely trenchant, at least he tackles politics from left of center, which in a sane country would be the center.
The Master Builder
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Harvey Theatre, Brooklyn, NY
The Weir
Irish Repertory Theatre, 132 West 22nd Street, New York, NY
Colin Quinn: Unconstitutional
Barrow Street Theatre, 27 Barrow Street, New York, NY
Art Reviews: Met Museum, Frick Collection, Whitney Museum
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 20 May 2013 00:35
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity
Through May 27, 2013
Velázquez’s Portrait of Duke Francesco I d'Este—A Masterpiece from the Galleria Estense, Modena
Through July 14, 2013
The Frick Collection
Piero della Francesca in America
Through May 19, 2013
The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark
Through June 16, 2013
Whitney Museum of American Art
American Legends: From Calder to O’Keeffe
Ongoing
The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s big blockbusters are the Costume Institute’s fashion
shows—Punk: Chaos to Couture is the latest—so it’s no surprise that curators conjured a hybrid exhibit of fashion and art. Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity is a canny exploration of how artists from Manet, Renoir and Monet to Cezanne, Corot and Cassatt were influenced by then-contemporary styles. By combining dozens of canvases, familiar and obscure, with complementary clothing from dresses and suits to hats and footwear, the exhibition visualizes how the seminal years from 1860-1890 evolved for the Impressionists. This new angle from which to explore these artists is also a chance to look at stunning fashions.
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| Monet's Women in the Garden |
Another Met exhibit, Velázquez’s Portrait of Duke Francesco I d'Este—A Masterpiece from the Galleria Estense, Modena, shows off the Spanish master’s exquisite jewel of a portrait, now on loan from an Italian museum heavily damaged in an earthquake last year. It’s not only a must-see painting, but a must-learn lesson in the fragility of out artistic treasures when Mother Nature decides to intervene.
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| Renoir's Pinning the Hat |
The Frick Collection’s current exhibits include Piero della Francesca in America, which brings together seven paintings from the renowned Renaissance artist, including six panels from his Sant’Agostino alterpiece: four of them already make the Frick their home; the others hail from Washington’s National Gallery of Art and Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga. These radiant panels, reunited for the first time since 1555, show the painstaking detail of Piero’s artistry. A seventh Piero work, a refined Virgin and Child from the Clark Institute in the Berkshires, rounds out the exhibit.
Another Frick show, The Impressionist Line from Degas to Toulouse-Lautrec: Drawings and Prints from the Clark, which comprises 58 drawings, watercolors and prints from that venerable museum, is a veritable riot of colorful, balanced figures and locales. Highlights are Millet’s finely etched The Sower; Manet’s delightful At the Café; several splendid Degas animals; and Renoir’s voluptuous Pinning the Hat.
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| Hopper's Early Sunday Morning |
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY
http://metmuseum.org
The Frick Collection
1 East 70th Street
New York, NY
http://frick.org
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue, New York, NY
http://whitney.org
May '13 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 17 May 2013 20:55
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Blu-rays of the Week
(Warner Brothers)
This pretty-looking but dramatically languid hybrid of Twilight and The Witches of Eastwick is caught between Scylla and Charybdis by trying to appeal to young females who made the vampire franchise a megahit and mature audiences that want their supernatural movies less Generation Y-ish.
Writer-director Richard LaGravenese does a decent balancing act for awhile, but when plot mechanisms clash with the obstreperous characters haunting the old mansion, something has to give, and the movie falls apart, despite able performers (Emma Thompson, Viola Davis, Emmy Rossum) doing what they can. The hi-def image is enticing; extras include featurettes and deleted scenes.
Cloud Atlas
(Warner Brothers)
David Mitchell’s mind-bending novel, thought unfilmable thanks to dozens of characters cross-cut among many centuries and to tell an epic series of stories of immortality, has been brought to the screen by Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, with daring but middling results. Now that they’ve come to grief distilling it into a two-hour, fifty-minute movie, it’s obvious that the book should remain just that.
There are incidental pleasures like gleaming photography and the chutzpah of Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent, Susan Sarandon and even Hugh Grant to hide behind tons of makeup in multiple roles, but nothing builds to a climax or even a point, and the end result lies there, however beautifully The Blu-ray image looks marvelous; extras include interviews and featurettes about film and novel.
Full Frontal
A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III
Jersey Girl
DVDs of the Week
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
She Cat and Female Teacher Hunting
Full Frontal
(Echo Bridge)
One of Steven Soderbergh’s “experimental” films—made after the slick blockbuster Oceans Eleven—this 2002 drama follows several Hollywoodites through their alternately boring and exciting lives until they meet at a mutual friend’s birthday party.
The movie, while largely scripted, has an offhand and improvised feel, not necessarily a good thing, since some actors can do it better than others: whenever Mary McCormack, David Hyde Pierce or—I can’t believe I’m writing this—Julia Roberts is onscreen, the movie perks up. The Blu-ray transfer isn’t bad by Echo Bridge standards; extras include deleted scenes, cast/Soderbergh interviews, and an alternate cut with Soderbergh’s commentary.
(Lionsgate)
Roman Coppola’s shallow look at an obnoxious actor tries—and fails—to laugh at and with its protagonist (boorishly played by Charlie Sheen); sensing this, Coppola indulges himself with dull set pieces that do little but pad a (still thankfully) short running time.
The appealing Katheryn Winnick, as Swan’s erstwhile lover, sticks out in a suffocating, insular world that even makes the usually indestructible Bill Murray look embarrassed. The movie looks fine on Blu-ray; extras include Coppola’s commentary and featurettes.
Iphigenie en Aulide/Iphigenie en Tauride
(Opus Arte)
Christoph Gluck’s tragic operas depicting Greek King Agamemnon’s ill-fated daughter Iphigenie are rarely staged (let alone together), and this disc has recent productions from the enterprising Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam.
I’m no fan of baroque music, but the compactness of these short works ups the dramatic quotient, especially when the title roles are sung so powerfully by Veronique Gens (Aulide) and Mireille Delunsch (Tauride). Marc Jankowski conducts forcefully, and Pierre Audi’s directing is riveting. The hi-def image and surround sound are strong without being overpowering.
(Echo Bridge)
After making a career out of scatology—Clerks is best, Chasing Amy worst and Mallrats and Dogma in the middle—Kevin Smith went wimpy in 2004 with this soggy rom-com starring Ben Affleck as a widower (Jennifer Lopez dies early on) who falls for local gal Liv Tyler. Presence of the first “Bennifer” notwithstanding, this watchably forgettable movie is stolen by George Carlin, of all people.
The Blu-ray image is OK; extras include Smith and Affleck’s commentary, another commentary with Smith and Jason Mewes (“Jay” from other Smith movies, but not this one), making-of and interview featurettes.
The Oranges
(Fox)
A tale of two suburban Jersey clans—the title is an in-joke—Julian Farino’s film gets mileage out of Ian Helfer and Jay Weiss’s script about friendships and family ties breaking down when one family’s daughter has an affair with the other’s father. The movie deals persuasively if comedically with the shocking revelation’s fallout: at least until the wronged wife runs over Christmas lawn decorations in her car.
Throughout, Hugh Lurie, Leighton Meester, Allison Janney, Oliver Platt and even Catherine Keener are superb, as is the Blu-ray image; extras include making-of featurettes.
Clandestine Childhood
(Film Movement)
Benjamin Avila’s gripping account of the terror Argentines lived under during military junta rule is through the eyes of a teenager who must keep his parents’ secret that they are part of a guerrilla group.
The cast of unknowns is splendid from top to bottom, the daily fright of not knowing what or whom is around every corner is unnerving present, and even becoming a teenager—especially in such trying times—is explored sensitively. The lone extra is Avila’s shattering short, Veo Veo, a run-through for the feature.
Liz and Dick
(e one)
Lindsay Lohan as Elizabeth Taylor is nowhere near the unmitigated disaster everyone was hoping she would be—she’s no Liz, to be sure, but neither is she that laughably bad in the role (which would have made her closer to Liz’s own acting).
Still, there’s no denying that Lohan and Grant Bowler (her Richard Burton) are bland together, only giving an approximation of the great movie couple of the 60s and 70s. Extras include interviews with the cast and crew.
(Warner Archive)
Tony Richardson’s 1962 film, from screenwriter Alan Sillitoe’s own short story, concerns a young man (a magnificent Tom Courtenay) who finds running a great release from his troubled life.
The last word in kitchen-sink realism, this psychologically nuanced portrait occasionally lays things on a bit too thickly, but all of the acting and Walter Lassally’s gritty B&W photography are unimpeachable. Too bad a restoration isn’t available yet.
The Secret Garden
(Warner Archive)
Fred M. Wilcox’s 1949 adaptation of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved childrens’ novel smartly cast Margaret O’Brien—from the earlier Meet Me in St. Louis—as the headstrong girl who discovers the magical title place which helps heal all wounds, physical and psychological.
The movie cleverly borrows from The Wizard of Oz by having its garden sequences in Technicolor, with the rest of the film in stark black and white.
(Impulse Pictures)
These are the latest entries in the Nikkatsu Erotic Films Collection. She Cat follows a woman in the crosshairs of hired killers who want her erased because of her sordid past (which she is desperately trying to outrun)—if lesbian shower scenes are your thing, then check this out.
Female Teacher Hunting traces a bizarre relationship between a naïve teacher and a brutal male student: it’s still amusing to see blurred-out shots that block the movie’s most sordid couplings, but your mileage may vary on how erotic they are.
CD of the Week
Kaija Saariaho—La Passion de Simone
(Ondine)
This is by far Finnish composer Kaija Sarriaho’s most trenchant work: I’ve been cold to much of her other music, which combines electronics and acoustic instruments in less than compelling, often gimmicky ways.
But this oratorio about Jewish freedom fighter Simone Weil (who died in 1943)—which was recorded live last fall in Helsinki—features impassioned singing by soprano Dawn Upshaw and the Tapiola Chamber Choir and blazing support from the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra under Esa-Pekka Salonen’s baton, all clearly articulating Saariaho’s most emotionally direct piece.
Comic Review: Bikini Cowboy
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 17 May 2013 15:14
- Written by Renzo Adler
It’s time for a history lesson, kids. According to the information zeitgeist that is Wikipedia, the bikini was invented in 1946 by Louis Réard. Monsieur Réard named the two-piece after the Bikini Atoll, home to the world changing nuclear bomb tests. So what is a woman doing wearing a bikini and carrying a surfboard in the American west in 1812?
Bikini Cowboy by Fresherluke initially grabbed me because its title and premise sounded like cheap schlock, but I stuck with it because it was funny, charming, and has some genuine pathos. Whisky Jill is the titular Cowboy that wanders the desert with her anachronistic clothes and surfboard. Hints are dropped that Jill is not of this era, but thankfully, the story never drags out tired tropes from time traveling tales. Jill rescues a young boy named Rod that is wanted by some dangerous men because he possesses a strange power. Together the two evade Rod’s greedy pursuers, while Jill is dogged by a viscous Marshall with a predilection for quoting Bible verse.
One of the great things about this story is that there are all sorts of little touches of the strange and fantastic, but the story doesn’t feel the need to explain them, they just are. Some might complain that this gives the story an anything goes set of rules, but really it keeps things fun and charming.
Weber’s art has a great sense of motion, so it’s no surprise that he also works in the animation industry. The character’s expressions flow from panel to panel, everyone is very elastic, and Jill in particular is posed like a coiled spring. The sketch like quality of the art helps to give the western locales and characters a sense of grit, though there are few parts where I felt like the line-work could be a bit more refined.
The characters of Whisky Jill and Rod are not extremely complex, but that’s okay because they’re very charming and the way they help each other and get to know one another doesn’t feel forced. Rod never feels like just some kid that follows the hero and Jill isn’t simply talking eye-candy. The dangers the two face, and the joys they discover bring them closer in a way that feels natural.
The story also frequently touches upon themes related to faith, what with the Bible quoting villain, and Jill’s quest. There is a potential for someone to have a knee-jerk reaction and think that the story is saying “Christianity bad, animism good,” but that aspect of the story is more nuanced. I don’t want to get into spoilers, so I’ll just say that the story makes a distinction between having a character be guided by faith, and having a character use faith as a justification for their actions.
Bikini Cowboy is the sort of story that could have just been some cheap thrills, but turned out to have, fun characters, tense action, and genuine charm. It is definitely worth checking out. Bikini Cowboy is currently available from Comixology for a pittance as part of their Comixology Submit program, which allows indie creators to self publish their works through Comixology's online service.
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