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Film and the Arts

Broadway Play Review—“Eureka Day” with Bill Irwin and Amber Gray

Eureka Day
Written by Jonathan Spector
Directed by Anna D. Shapiro
Through February 2, 2025
Friedman Theatre, 261 West 47th Street, New York, NY
manhattantheatreclub.com
 
The cast of Eureka Day (photo: Jeremy Daniel)


Homing in on California antivax parents isn’t Swiftian satire, Jonathan Spector’s play Eureka Day proves despite moments of inspired hilarity. 
 
The setting is the Eureka Day private school in Berkeley, where the school board is dealing with a student’s case of the mumps. The meeting is led by the 60ish Don and includes 30ish parents Eli and Meiko—who are having an affair they think is masked by their children’s playdates—along with longtime board member Suzanne and the newest member, Carina, whose son attends the school.
 
As the group’s discussions start civilly but turn more argumentative, Spector raises the specter of ultraliberal parents acting selfishly under the guise of “protecting the kids” as well as dangling the threat of fascism due to stringent school rules. While funny, the play often resorts to obviousness, underlined in its most celebrated scene, an online town hall meeting in which the board members—and especially the bumbling Don—try but fail to preserve decorum as comments from parents keep popping up, exploding from mild disagreement to nastiness and conspiracy theories, even dropping the “n” word (Nazi) amid pointing out others’ ignorance.
 
In Anna D. Shapiro’s lively production, set on Todd Rosenthal’s skillfully decorated school library set, we read the comments scrolling by on a large screen above the five board members, who talk among themselves. It’s certainly amusing, like a decent Saturday Night Live sketch, but goes on too long as Spector tries to one up himself to diminishing returns. (Audiences don’t agree—they were practically falling out of their seats, as if the ushers had passed out laughing gas.) It also points up the fact that these five characters are bland stereotypes who literally fade into the background during this sequence. 
 
A couple of scenes do help humanize them. The first has Eli and Meiko at his son’s hospital room after contracting a severe case of the mumps, likely from Meiko’s daughter, which lays bare the adults’ tangled relationship, as when Meiko shows Eli texts his wife sent her: the word “whore,” over and over. (“She probably just like cut and pasted,” he weakly retorts.) In the second, Suzanne tells Carina about a long-ago family tragedy that forever colored her view of vaccines. It’s a commendable attempt by Spector to give Suzanne—fast becoming the play’s villain—a reason for her rejection of science, but it comes off as too neat and pat.
 
Shapiro’s savvy direction couches the increasingly surreal lunacy over vaccines in a much needed reality, and she stages Spector’s final, easy jokes—one visual, one verbal—with an economy that helps them land effectively. Too bad the overacting of Bill Irwin (Don), Thomas Middleditch (Eli) and especially Jessica Hecht (Suzanne) undermines the jokes, although it’s always fun seeing Irwin’s physical adroitness get a laugh when Don hesitantly follows Meiko after she storms out of a meeting. 
 
Happily, Chelsea Yakura-Kurtz (Meiko) and especially Amber Gray (Carina) give focused, grounded performances that serve the comedy instead of themselves, keeping Eureka Day afloat.

December '24 Digital Week III

CD Releases of the Week 
Jon Batiste—Beethoven Blues 
(Verve/Interscope)
For his latest release, Jon Batiste utilizes his prodigious talent for improvisation with an album filled with mostly short piano pieces that take as their start various works by Beethoven, from the piano sonatas to the mighty symphonies (5, 7 and 9, of course). Batiste takes the seeds of Beethoven’s melodies and over the course of several minutes transforms them through his own unique stylings—as Batiste says in his liner note, Beethoven would have been playing the blues if that was a genre 200 years ago.
 
 
The disc’s closing work, Für Elise—Reverie—15 imaginative and always invigorating minutes—is a master class of improv that reminds me of Batiste’s 2022 Carnegie Hall concert I attended where he played exhilarating piano improvisations for 90 thrilling minutes.
 
 
 
Ludwig van Beethoven—The Piano Concertos 
(ECM New Series)
In the increasingly crowded pool of complete Beethoven piano concerto recordings, German pianist and conductor Alexander Lonquich dives right in by doing double duty at the keyboard and on the podium, leading the Munich Chamber Orchestra in an impressive traversal of the most imposing concerto cycles ever composed.
 
 
In addition to the sensitive orchestral accompaniment, Lonquich also displays his pianistic eloquence throughout, most memorably in the second and fifth (“Emperor”) concertos, which sound urgent and immediate in these fresh-sounding performances.
 
 
 
Benjamin Britten—The Prince of the Pagodas 
(Hallé)
Benjamin Britten’s lone full-length ballet score was commissioned by the Royal Ballet and premiered in 1962; it might be the only ballet inspired by both King Lear and Beauty and the Beast in its story of an Asian ruler who gives his kingdom to his bad daughter instead of the good one, with typically unsurprising results.
 
 
Britten’s score is endlessly inventive, especially in the use of the Balinese gamelan, an instrument that provides authentic Eastern flavor. This first-rate recording, by the Hallé orchestra, is under the steady baton of conductor Kahchun Wong.
 
 
 
Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra—Contemporary Landscapes 
(Beau Fleuve)
JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra (BPO) give more proof—if any were needed—that they are one of the most versatile orchestral ensembles around; this disc’s four premieres, all written in the past five years, were commissioned by the BPO.
 
 
The wide-ranging works are Kenneth Fuchs’ Point of Tranquility (2020), inspired by a Morris Louis painting; Russell Platt’s Symphony in Three Movements (2019-20), dedicated to artist Clyfford Still, many of whose works are in the Buffalo AKG Museum; Randall Svane’s Oboe Concerto (2023), featuring the BPO’s excellent principal oboist Henry Ward; and Wang Jie’s The Winter That United Us (2022), which celebrates the city of Buffalo. They’re all performed with authority by Falletta and the orchestra. 
 
 
 
Simone Dinnerstein—The Eye Is the First Circle 
(Supertrain)
For her latest scintillating solo disc, Simone Dinnerstein tackles a true Everest of the piano repertoire, Charles Ives’ Concord Sonata—45 minutes of impressionistic portraits of four towering American thinkers (Emerson, Hawthorne, the Alcotts, and Thoreau)—in her usual inimitable fashion.
 
The sonata was recorded in 2021 as part of an installation that paired her father Simon’s painting (reproduced in the disc’s jacket) with the music, as Dinnerstein plays with intense concentration throughout, giving Ives’ remarkably dichotomic work clarity and coherence.

Off-Broadway Play Review—“The Blood Quilt” by Katori Hall

The Blood Quilt
Written by Katori Hall
Directed by Lileana Blaine-Cruz
Performances through December 29, 2024
Mitzi Newhouse Theatre, 150 West 65th Street, New York, NY
lct.org
 
The cast of The Blood Quilt (photo: Julieta Cervantes)
 
Family get-togethers have a way of reopening old wounds and spurring surprising revelations in plays like Long Day’s Journey Into Night and August: Osage County. Although it has a few loose stitches, Katori Hall’s The Blood Quilt is a welcome addition to this storied canon.
 
On Kwemera Island, off the coast of Georgia, the four Jernigan half-sisters—each has a different father—with their physical and emotional baggage in tow get together in the house where they all lived on the anniversary of the death of Mama, the matriarch, to create the latest of the family’s memory quilts. Clementine, the oldest sister, still lives there, having taken care of Mama until her final breath. Second oldest is Gio, a police officer, who’s in the middle of a nasty divorce. The third daughter, Cassan, an army nurse, brings along her teenage daughter Zambia, who’s an advertisement for TMI. The youngest—and Mama’s favorite, the others sneeringly intone—is Amber, attorney to Hollywood stars, who arrives from Southern California. 
 
Over a long weekend, the Jernigan women face down their own demons, confronting each other’s jaundiced memories and knocking the chips off the others’ shoulders. If their revelations sometimes have a contrived quality—Amber admitting that she has HIV at the close of the first act puts the play’s title in a very different light—Hall admirably never shies away from showing the resulting emotional fallout. 
 
The quilts are central to Hall’s play both as metaphor and as a living part of this family’s history. On Adam Rigg’s astonishing two-tiered set of the family home on the water, gorgeous multicolored quilts hang from every conceivable surface, visualizing the very complex fabric of the sisters’ relationships. The quilts also trigger the most dramatic subplot: after Mama’s will is read, Cassan and especially Gio are upset that Amber—the least deserving sister, in their eyes—has inherited the priceless set of these painstakingly handwoven quilts. 
 
But Clementine—who stayed next to their dying Mama while the others stayed away—has had enough, and she cuts to the chase about what being present or absent in others’ lives means; it’s Hall’s best monologue in a play filled with pregnant dialogue among this distaff quintet: 
 
Amber didn’t need to see mama like that. Nobody needed to see mama like that. I didn’t need to see mama like that. So don’t sit up there on that bull riding high and mighty thanking that just cause yo ass showed up at the funeral and cried and did yo little performance that you was a good daughter. No, unh, unh, nosiree. When folks living that’s when you need to see ‘em. Not when they DEAD. Not when they beginning to turn and whither in they graves. Y’all all left mama to die alone in this house.
 
If Hall provides one too many endings as more secrets are revealed (including a disturbing but essential scene describing statutory rape), through the mixture of tears and laughs, the real warmth of her generous portrait becomes clear. Director Lileana Blaine-Cruz, who understands the many textures of Hall’s poignant canvas, guides her marvelous cast to get to the nakedly honest emotional truth. Crystal Dickinson (Clementine), Adrienne C. Moore (Gio), Susan Kelechi Watson (Cassan), Lauren E. Banks (Amber) and Mirirai (Zambia) do extraordinarily affecting work separately and together—the most important stitches in this intricately woven Blood Quilt.

December '24 Digital Week II

4K/UHD Releases of the Week 
Joker— Folie à Deux 
(Warner Bros)
Apparently, one self-important Joker movie wasn’t enough for Todd Phillips, who returns with a farrago that brings back Joaquin Phoenix as the most sullen Joker ever—and adds, pointlessly, Lady Gaga as an equally lunatic character who meets Joker cutely in prison (don’t ask) then becomes his biggest supporter when he’s on trial for the crimes of the previous movie. 
 
 
Phillips’ oppressively dark, often risible film bursts into song interludes of mostly old pop and showtunes warbled by Phoenix and Gaga that rarely further the narrative or comment on the duo’s psyches—Woody Allen’s 1996 musical Everyone Says I Love You did this sort of thing far more shrewdly. The film looks impressive in UHD; extras comprise the making-of documentary Everything Must Go and several featurettes. 
 
 
 
Rolling Stones—Welcome to Shepherd’s Bush 
(Mercury Studios)
On their 1999 world tour, the Stones played mainly arenas and stadiums—with a notable exception for this 90-minute sprint through 35 years of hits at the relatively intimate Shepherd’s Bush in London.
 
 
Everyone is in peak form, with Mick Jagger prancing around the stage and Keith Richards and Ron Wood playing those indelible guitar licks, except, weirdly, the opener “Shattered,” whose famous guitar riff never seems to be correctly duplicated live. Sheryl Crow joins for an energetic “Honky Tonk Women.” There’s superior UHD video and audio.
 
 
 
Stir of Echoes 
(Lionsgate)
In David Koepp’s 1999 horror entry—based on a novel by Richard Matheson—a working-class dad’s life is turned upside down after being hypnotized by his sister-in-law; he’s soon seeing visions of a local teenage girl who recently disappeared.
 
 
The story is quite sturdy, thanks to Matheson’s original, but Koepp teases out the most unpleasant details, and after awhile it becomes rather dumbing to watch, despite good work from Kevin Bacon (dad), Kathryn Erbe (wife), Ileana Douglas (sister-in-law) and Zachary David Cope (young son). There’s an excellent 4K transfer; the special edition steelbook contains the film on Blu-ray and extras including new and vintage featurettes and interviews.
 
 
 
In-Theater Releases of the Week
Endless Summer Syndrome 
(Altered Innocence)
Attorney Delphine gets an anonymous phone call from a colleague of her husband Antoine who says he’s having an affair with one of their adopted children, Adia and Aslan—taken aback, Delphine tries to discover if it’s true.
 
 
It is, of course, but writer-director Kaveh Daneshmand has nowhere to go once it’s discovered, and what began as a compelling study structured as a whodunit ends up trivializing a serious subject. Still, strong performances, led by Sophie Colon (Delphine) and Frédérika Milano (Adia), give this more gravitas than Daneshmand’s writing and direction deserve.
 
 
 
 
The Man in the White Van 
(Relativity Media)
Based on a true story, Warren Skeels’ unsettling drama homes in on Annie, a Florida teenager who keeps seeing a suspicious van parked near school and home, but others scoff at her—even though other young women have been abducted and murdered in the past few years.
 
 
After a tense and compelling first half, Skeels’ film turns into a rote slasher flick, with fake scares and people in movies doing dumb things. But Madison Wolfe, a winning young actress, makes this underbaked study steadily watchable.
 
 
 
Theater of Thought 
(Argot Pictures)
For my taste, omnivorous director Werner Herzog’s off-kilter documentaries are far more fascinating than his off-kilter features, and his latest doc is another intriguingly obsessive exploration—this time of neuroscience, a field laden with ethical and moral roadblocks that are ripe to be skirted.
 
 
Herzog and Rafael Yuste (a professor at Columbia and the film’s advisor) travel around the U.S. for a typically refreshing look at another complex subject—complete with alternately bemusing and amusing interviews—made even more enjoyable by Herzog’s inimitable onscreen persona, endlessly curious and seeming unserious and ultra-serious simultaneously.
 
 
 
Streaming Release of the Week 
Her Body 
(Omnibus Entertainment)
The excruciatingly sad story of Andrea Absolonová—a talented Czech diver whose career was cut short when she was injured training for the Olympics, so she began a successful career making porn films until dying of a brain tumor at age 27—has been made into a frustratingly inert biopic by Natálie Císařovská.
 
 
The director seems to be content with checking off events in Andrea’s life instead of diving more deeply—that Andrea starts her X-rated career as Lea De Mae after seeing porn tapes and magazines in her photographer lover’s apartment might be true, but in this context it’s presented as a dramatic shortcut. But there is a towering performance by Natalia Germani, intensely physical but also brittle and natural, making up for blurry storytelling.
 
 
 
Blu-ray Releases of the Week
Conclave 
(Focus/Universal)
Based on Robert Harris’ page-turning thriller about the political and moral machinations among a group of cardinals electing a new pope, Edward Berger’s adaptation is hampered by its structure—lots of voting in the Sistine Chapel and arguing in the cardinals’ private rooms for much of its two-hour length—but Harris’ wit and ability to enliven routine situations is much in evidence.
 
 
Of course, there’s also a starry cast: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow, Sergio Castellitto, and Stanley Tucci have enormous fun playing various liberal or conservative, pious or impious cardinals—it’s too bad Isabella Rossellini can’t do much with the lone female speaking role. Berger directs a little too close to the vest; a less literal director might have made this cracklingly good, not merely diverting. The Blu-ray transfer is fine; extras are Berger’s commentary and a making-of featurette.
 
 
 
Hard Wood 
(Severin)
Ed Wood was the inept filmmaker who made Plan 9 From Outer Space and Glen or Glenda?, two of the worst pictures ever—but at the end of his career, in the 1970s, he made a few X-rated sex flicks that this three-disc set collects.
 
 
Straightforward and explicit, Necromania, The Only House in Town and The Young Marrieds show that maybe Wood missed out on his calling; he’s a competent pornographer, at least. The transfers are OK but nothing special; extras include softcore versions of the features, several porn loops, a non-sex feature, Shotgun Wedding, audio commentaries and interviews. 
 
 
 
Piece by Piece 
(Focus/Universal)
The eclectic career of music entrepreneur Pharrell Williams is recounted through animated Lego bricks by director Morgan Neville, who brings style and humor to this unique way of showcasing Williams’ own artistic path, of what Williams calls creating something new out of preexisting forms.
 
 
There are beguiling sequences with cheeky voice actors playing themselves (among them Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, Gwen Stefani, Williams himself and even Neville) and if it never strays from the surface, the movie works as a fresh hybrid of biopic and documentary. The hi-def transfer is colorfully eye-popping; lone extra is a featurette of Williams and Neville interviews.
 
 
 
Scala! 
(Severin)
Scala, a beloved London repertory cinema from 1978 to 1993, showed films others didn’t—like an unauthorized screening of A Clockwork Orange, banned in England at the time—and Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s loving documentary portrait is a wistful but lively reminiscence for so many of the place’s employees and guests, people like directors John Waters and Mary Harron as well as artist Isaac Julien and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.
 
 
Giles, who worked at the Scala, has access to a lot of memorabilia and other vintage footage that helps tell its long, winding and absorbing story. Two extra Blu-ray discs house several short films that were shown at Scala along with the documentary Splatterfest Exhumed as well as interviews and audio commentaries. 

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