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Broadway Play Review—“English” by Sanaz Toossi

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Thursday, 20 February 2025 02:20; Written by Kevin Filipski

English

Written by Sanaz Toossi

Directed by Knud Adams

Performances through March 2, 2025

Todd Haimes Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

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The cast of Sanaz Toossi's English (photo: Joan Marcus)

Set in the Iranian city of Karaj in 2008, Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer-winning English follows four students with varying degrees of proficiency in the eponymous language and how they interact with their teacher as well as one another. Structured as several episodes that play off the characters’ shifting dynamics, English has moments of ringing insight but is hampered by the very constraints it’s made for itself inside the four walls of an English as a Foreign Language classroom.

The students range from idealistic 18-year-old Goli; 28-year-old Elham, frustrated at already failing the test; 29-year-old Omid, surprisingly fluent already; and 54-year-old Roya, desperate to learn English so she can converse with her American grandchildren. Marjan, their 40ish teacher, spent nine years living in the U.K. after learning American English at home.

Toossi throws this quintet together for a clever 90-minute sitcom with humor stemming from basic misunderstandings as well as malapropisms of tentative speakers. The play shrewdly works in two languages and cultures side by side, as the actors speak both Farsi and English, but with a twist: when they converse in their native language, they speak perfect, unaccented English; when they speak English, it’s with various accents. The terrific cast of five expertly masters the linguistic back and forth so that, even early on, it’s easy to follow what language they’re supposed to be speaking.

But even more impressive is how the entire cast—Tala Ashe (Elham), Ava Lalezarzadeh (Goli), Pooya Mohseni (Roya), Marjan Neshat (Marjan) and Hadi Tabbal (Omid)—meshes with remarkable skill and humanity. Knud Adams directs resourcefully for the most part, although the choppiness stemming from English’s episodic nature—putting a drag on its dramatic momentum—isn’t completely solved.

Finally, there’s the issue of some of the blocking: there are several chairs strewn about Marsha Ginsberg’s revolving classroom set that block some audience members’ view (including mine) of the actors at times. Perhaps it worked better on the small Atlantic Theater stage, where English debuted in 2022.

February '25 Digital Week I

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 12 February 2025 19:17; Written by Kevin Filipski

In-Theater Releases of the Week

A Complete Unknown

(Searchlight Pictures)

James Mangold’s by-the-numbers biopic of Bob Dylan, which follows him from his arrival in New York in 1961 to his legendary appearance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival where he scandalized some with his electric set, shrewdly puts the actors front and center, which allows the audience to ignore that Mangold and Jay Cocks’ script hits familiar dramatic beats and biopic tropes.

Monica Barbaro is a real find as Joan Baez, Edward Norton makes a splendid Pete Seeger, and Timothee Chalamet illuminates Dylan as a cocksure young genius who balances respect for his forebears with a yearning to break free of folk’s strictures; and his singing voice approaches Dylan’s own without the usual tongue-in-cheek mockery.

I’m Still Here

(Sony Classics)

Based on a memoir by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, Walter Salles’ emotionally shattering drama follows Paiva’s mother, Eunice, wife of liberal politician Rubens who is taken by the military in 1971 and disappeared (and his remains never found): she must navigate an impossible situation of learning what happened to her husband and keep her family—they have five children—together during a fraught time in Brazil.

Salles takes material that could have easily become sentimentalized and keeps it direct and honest; he is immeasurably aided by Fernanda Torres’ subtle portrait of Eunice, an understated performance for the ages.

The Fishing Place

(Cinema Parallel)

Rob Tregenza was one of the cinematographers on Bela Tarr’s Werckmeister Harmonies, among other visually striking films—his latest directorial effort, which follows Anna, a middle-aged Norwegian housekeeper who must spy on a priest’s activities in exchange for her release from prison by the occupying Nazis, is a snail’s-paced drama that’s less than the sum of its parts.

Although Tregenza’s camera is always moving, it rarely takes the interior measure of these characters, leaving Ellen Dorrit Petersen’s portrayal of Anna adrift; then there’s the final third of the film, taken over by a literal making-of section that seems more desperate than organic.

Paint Me a Road Out of Here

(Aubin Pictures)

Pioneering Black artist Faith Ringgold (who died last year at age 93) is the main focus of Catherine Gund’s ardent portrait of the history and legacy of one of her most valuable and important paintings, For the Women’s House, a huge canvas she painted for the women’s house of detention on Rikers Island.

In addition to following the ups and downs of the painting’s journey—it was almost destroyed by an uncaring bureaucracy until finally being rescued—Gund has also made a fascinating meditation on art, activism and prison reform that also introduces Mary Enoch Elizabeth Baxter, whose own life after incarceration provides the necessary connection to Ringgold’s mighty work of art.

A Woman Is a Woman

(Rialto)

One of Jean-Luc Godard’s least memorable films, this paper-thin 1961 entry stars Anna Karina as free-spirited heroine Angela, who wants a child with reluctant boyfriend Émile (Jean-Claude Brialy), so enter the tongue-in-cheekly named Alfred Lubitsch (Jean-Paul Belmondo), who may just give her what she wants.

For 85 minutes, this trio circles in an enervating roundelay, and Godard’s attempts to lighten the mood—obvious nods to classic Hollywood musicals, Michel Legrand’s soupy score—end in weirdly glossy failure. Our three stars are far less charming than they’ve been in other movies (including Godard’s own), while Raoul Coutard’s glistening color photography is the film’s lone successful facade.

4K Release of the Week

Wicked

(Universal)

It starts with an ugly, CGI-drenched opening and ends more than two and a half hours later with the showstopper “Defying Gravity”—and that’s only the end of the first act of Steven Schwartz’s blockbuster Broadway musical. That means we have to sit through another two-plus hours next holiday season to finish this thing. Too bad it’s a mighty slog to get through, with mostly negligible songs and a story not as clever as it thinks—only Cynthia Erivo has the requisite vocal chops and acting prowess that makes Elphaba soar into the stratosphere.

Ariana Grande also has a powerhouse voice, but her acting is laughably inadequate. Bowen Tang, Jeff Goldblum and Michelle Yeoh are wincingly hammy under Jon M. Chu’s direction, which consists of making things bigger, louder and more garish without settling on a consistent tone or style. The 4K images look fine overall; extras include theatrical and sing-along versions of the movie, Chu’s, Erivo’s and Grande’s commentaries, deleted and extended scenes and a making-of featurette.

Blu-ray Release of the Week

Juror #2

(Warner Bros)

In Clint Eastwood’s latest straightforward drama, Nicholas Hoult plays Justin, a recovering alcoholic picked to serve on a jury in a murder case and who realizes he may have been involved with the events leading up to the victim’s death.

As always, Eastwood’s direction is unadorned, but Jonathan Abrams’ heavily plotted script needs more swagger in the telling; despite fine acting by Hoult and Zoey Deutsch (Justin’s pregnant wife Ally), the subtext and twists remain superficial—and Toni Colette’s scenery chewing as the aggressive DA doesn’t help. The film looks quite good on Blu; there are no extras.

CD Releases of the Week

Sergei Prokofiev—Ivan the Terrible

(Vox)

Although he composed only a handful of film scores, Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953) is one of the most important film composers in history—his collaborations with fellow Russian, director Sergei Eisenstein, are indelible marriages of music and image.

Alexander Nevsky (1938) is by far the most famous, but the multipart Ivan the Terrible (1947) is also nothing to sneeze at; his formidable score was arranged as an oratorio in 1961 by Abram Stasevich. This excellent 1981 recording, by the St. Louis Symphony Chorus and Orchestra under the steady baton of Leonard Slatkin, features tremendous contributions by narrator Arnold Voketaitis, mezzo-soprano Claudine Carlson and bass Samuel Timberlake.

Kurt Weill—The Seven Deadly Sins

(LSO Live)

The vocal works of German composer Kurt Weill (1900-50) remain relevant thanks to their stinging, often bitter wit and universal themes. Case in point: The Seven Deadly Sins, the final collaboration between Weill and writer Bertolt Brecht, a sardonic “sung ballet” that follows a young woman, Anna, who tries but fails to always behave morally. Simon Rattle conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in a vivid reading of this memorable music, with Magdalena Kožená in top form as Anna.

The rest of the disc comprises The Little Threepenny Music—a suite of instrumental pieces from the best-known Weill-Brecht collab, The Threepenny Opera—as well as excerpts from a couple of Weill’s “American” works, two of the lovely Four Whitman Songs and the song “Lonely House” from the opera Street Scene: all handled beautifully by Rattle, the LSO and several vocalists.

MET Orchestra Presents Brahms at Carnegie Hall

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 05 February 2025 15:21; Written by Jack Angstreich

Photo by Chris Lee

At the outstanding Stern Auditorium—on the night of Thursday, January 30th—I had the exceptional privilege to attend a magnificent concert—presented by Carnegie Hall and continuing a memorable season—of music by Johannes Brahms performed by the extraordinary MET Orchestra under the superb direction of Myung-Whun Chung.

The event opened brilliantly with a marvelous realization of the masterly Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, from 1878, featuring the celebrated virtuoso Maxim Vengerov—for whom, according to the program, “This season marks the start of his three-year tenure as a Carnegie Hall Perspectives artist, which sees him headline more than a dozen concerts, beginning with all of Mozart’s violin concertos in the fall of 2024 and culminating with all of Beethoven’s violin sonatas in 2027.” After the stately introduction to the complex and ambitious, Allegro non troppo initial movement, with the entry of the soloist the music turns emotional but with song-like passages of extraordinary beauty—the movement concludes forcefully and here drew applause. (Vengerov played his own cadenza.) The ensuing, melodious Adagiobegins with an exquisite theme played by the oboe, then recapitulated by the violin, and ends softly. The finale—marked Allegro giocoso, ma non troppo vivace—is ebullient, dynamic and virtuosic and closes triumphantly. An enthusiastic audience response elicited a wonderful encore from Vengerov: Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sarabande from his Partita No. 2 for solo violin.

The second half of the evening was maybe even stronger: a terrific account of the glorious Symphony No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 98. Much of the graceful and Romantic, Allegro non troppo first movement has a pastoral quality but it does not lack for intensity; it finishes powerfully and again here the musicians were rewarded by applause. The tuneful Andante moderato that follows is enchanting but not without dramatic interludes, and ends celestially. The succeeding, exuberant and cheerful Allegro giocoso has some subdued moments but builds to a jubilant close and the Allegro energico e passionato finale, is a chaconne dazzling in its range and intricacy—it concludes affirmatively.

The artists deservedly received a standing ovation.

"Kintsugi" & "The Planets" Shine With The Juilliard Orchestra

Details: Parent Category: Film and the Arts; Category: Reviews; Published on Wednesday, 05 February 2025 15:05; Written by Jack Angstreich

At Lincoln Center’s wonderful Alice Tully Hall, on the night of Saturday, December 14th, I had the considerable pleasure to attend a superb concert presented by the extraordinary musicians of the Juilliard Orchestra under the exceptional direction of the fabulous Gemma New.

The event started auspiciously with a marvelous rendition of Salina Fisher’s compelling, beautifully orchestrated Kintsugi. In useful notes for the program, Georgeanne Banker—who holds a Master of Music degree in Historical Performance from Juilliard—provides some background on the work:

In mid 16th-century Japan, Zen Buddhist monk Sen-no-Rikyū cultivated a tea room that was “the quintessence of a space of peaceful meditation against the turbulence of the age,” ceramicist and scholar Kumiko Jacolin writes. The tenor of Rikyū's tea ceremony took cues from Zen philosophies including wabi-sabi—seeing beauty in the imperfect and incomplete—and assumed the spirit of ichigo-ichie, or treasuring each encounter, says Jacolin, a tenet that for the tea master was “symbolized by the time shared between the host and guests of the tea room.” Over time, the hand-built tea bowls would naturally chip or crack, yet in Rikyū's room, broken items were treasured rather than discarded: The wear was simply a part of a story, intrinsic to each vessel's essence. Repairs were carefully realized according to a 15th-century technique and “mended by lacquer with gold decoration as ‘kintsugi' (金継ぎ),” Jacolin writes. Literally meaning “gold joining,” kintsugi emerged as a contemplative art and process that not only embodied the beauty of imperfection but made the shattered whole: transfigured, radiant, and resilient.

“Kintsugi is such a striking visual representation of a metaphor that we can all relate to in our own way—the idea of celebrating ‘cracks' or flaws as beautiful parts of ourselves, and finding ways to heal,” composer Salina Fisher said in a recent interview with Pacific Northwest Ballet. “This concept felt particularly relevant in 2020 when I wrote my piano trio Kintsugi.” Commissioned by New Zealand's NZTrio, the work was expanded by the composer for Auckland's Manukau Symphony Orchestra, in 2022. While composing this piece, Fisher met Jacolin to learn more about this beautiful ceramic process: “Rather than hiding the damage, kintsugi celebrates all the cracks or ‘scars' for the unique history that they represent. The object is more beautiful for having been broken,” Fisher notes. “I am personally drawn to kintsugi as a metaphor for embracing ‘brokenness' and imperfection as a source of strength. This piece is my expression and exploration of kintsugi, and involves musical fragmentation, fragility, mending, and finding beauty in the ‘cracks'.”

The annotator adds the following about the composer:

The youngest composer to win New Zealand's SOUNZ Contemporary Award, Fisher studied both composition and violin at the New Zealand School of Music—Te Kōkī before receiving a Fulbright scholar-ship to study at the Manhattan School of Music. Her powerful creative work includes koto improvisations and collaborations with players of taonga pūoro, or traditional Māori instruments, and ranges to prismatic, full-scale compositions for symphony orchestra.

The composer ascended to the stage to receive the audience’s acclaim.

A remarkable soloist, Hankyoung Linda Chang, then joined the artists for an amazing account of William Walton’s underrated Violin Concerto from 1939. The initial, Andante tranquillo movement opens soulfully and then increases in intensity, becoming almost frenetic in tempo, then reverts to a passionate Romanticism, closing very quietly. The virtuosic second movement, marked Presto capriccioso alla napolitana, begins propulsively and agitatedly, preceding an enchanting tarantella—the movement alternates between these modes, ending abruptly. The Vivace finale is ebullient, at times insistent and forceful, but with lyrical moments, concluding triumphantly.

The second half of the evening was even stronger, consisting of a magnificent realization of Gustav Holst’s brilliant, enormously popular The Planets from 1916. The first movement, Mars, the Bringer of War, is menacing, enthralling and rhythmic, while the second, Venus, the Bringer of Peace, is lovely and affirmative, at times Impressionistic and almost pastoral in quality. Mercury, the Winged Messenger, is eccentric and jocular but with expansive passages and Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity, is stirring and ultimately exultant. Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age, is portentous but also exalting, finishing gently. Uranus, the Magician, is playful and comic but becomes more serious, closing unexpectedly. Lastly, Neptune, the Mystic—which features the splendid Musica Sacra chorus led by the eminent Kent Tritle—is uncanny and numinous, ending ethereally.

The musicians were—deservedly—enthusiastically applauded.

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