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Film and the Arts
Broadway Play Review—Tracy Letts’ “The Minutes”
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 27 April 2022 02:28
- Written by Kevin Filipski
The Minutes
Written by Tracy Letts; directed by Anna D. Shapiro
Opened on April 17, 2022
Studio 54, 254 West 54th Street, New York, NY
theminutesbroadway.com
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| The cast of Tracy Letts' The Minutes (photo: Jeremy Daniel) |
Tracy Letts, our most adventurous playwright, has written everything from his early, creepily incisive character studies Bug and Killer Joe and his Tony-winning dysfunctional family epic August: Osage County to his most recent Broadway play, the lacerating midlife crisis comedy Linda Vista. Through his plays, Letts demonstrates his facility for a wide range of subject matter as well as a cutting sense of humor and a sympathy for all of his characters, however flawed.
And now there is, also on Broadway, The Minutes, Letts’ most political play yet. Although it doesn’t start out that way—at first, members of a small city council engage in amiable pre-meeting chit-chat and their meeting begins fairly innocuously—soon it devolves into in-fighting, backbiting, conspiracy theorizing and closeminded speechifying. In other words, it’s a microcosm of the sad state of democracy in America today.
When Big Cherry council newcomer Mr. Peel (Noah Reid) asks about the mysterious absence of fellow council member Mr. Carp (Ian Barford) from the evening’s meeting—Peel, away the previous week for his mother’s funeral, missed what happened to precipitate Carp’s leaving—the battle lines are drawn and, as Peel further complicates matters by requesting that the minutes from the last meeting be read to the council, the corruption, the graft and the whitewashing of the town’s history move front and center. With every succeeding comment by one of the council members, the meeting goes further off the rails, especially for those hoping to remain in power.
That summary might make The Minutes sound pretentious, but Letts’ playwriting strength is that he doesn’t telegraph anything, instead letting events occur organically from the council’s discussions to the crucial history he’s given the town of Big Cherry (whose very name, we learn, comes from a racial slur). Only at the play’s climax—when The Minutes goes from nasty but necessary political satire to an overobvious metaphor—does Letts make a slight misstep, but even in its overblown ickiness, the unsettling finale perfectly encapsulates the cultification of America in 2022 (and even 2017, when the play premiered).
As always, Letts’ writing perceptively differentiates among his characters: the nine council members and the town clerk are all individualized as much from his sharp dialogue as from the exceptional acting, which director Anna D. Shapiro astutely shepherds on David Zinn’s impressively detailed set. The production also boasts marvelous lighting by Brian MacDevitt, purposeful sound design by Andre Pluess and on-target costumes by Ana Kuzmanić.
Letts himself plays the haughty mayor, Superba, with gusto, but he allows the other cast members to shine as well. (Letts has given each character either a blatantly descriptive name or a dull, ordinary one.) The best in the polished veteran cast are the amusingly bemused Austin Pendleton as Mr. Oldfield, the much too senior member of the council; the hilariously deadpan Jessie Mueller as Ms. Johnson, the ultra-efficient town clerk; and the intense Ian Harford, who was also terrific in Linda Vista, and who as Carp makes the most of his short onstage time to thoughtfully focus the themes of the play, which brilliantly paves the way for Letts and Shapiro’s final, disturbing coup de théâtre.
Philadelphia Orchestra & Philadelphia Symphonic Choir Create an Evening of Aural Beauty
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Monday, 25 April 2022 13:01
- Written by Jack Angstreich
Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducts. Photo by Pete Checchia
At Carnegie Hall on the evening of Friday, April 8th, I was privileged to attend a magnificent concert presented by the outstanding musicians of the Philadelphia Orchestra under the extraordinary direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and featuring also the terrific Philadelphia Symphonic Choir led by Amanda Quist, in a thrilling performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s incomparable Missa solemnis, which served as an exquisite coda to the ensemble’s superb cycle this season of the composer’s complete symphonies. A slate of impressive soloists added immeasurably to the success of the event—soprano, Jennifer Rowley; mezzo-soprano, Karen Cargill; tenor, Rodrick Dixon; and bass-baritone, Eric Owens—I was especially enthralled by Rowley and Cargill.
The opening of the Kyrie conveys a religious affirmation over and above its imprecatory character but becomes more impassioned with the “Christe eleison”—this tendency informs the concluding section of the movement which ends quietly. The beginning of the ensuing Gloria is appropriately exultant but transforms into something less declamatory with the “Gratias agimus tibi,” and builds to an even more triumphant conclusion in the “Gloria in excelsis Deo”—it’s splendorous and almost baroque in its complexities in the fugue-like passages.
The Credo that follows also is initially fervent but turns more introspective with the “Et incarnatus est” but it regains its celebratory dynamism in the “Et resurrexit”; the movement reaches its apotheosis with its fugue-like section, the “Et vitam venturi.” The start of the Sanctus is more subdued but abruptly intensifies; the relatively quiet, instrumental “Praeludium” ushers in the irenic Benedictus. And finally, the opening of the Agnus Dei is the most plaintive sequence in the work but unexpectedly acquires a martial character before achieving its most serene expression. The artists received an enthusiastic ovation.
Broadway Play Review—“Birthday Candles” with Debra Messing
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Friday, 22 April 2022 19:09
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Birthday Candles
Written by Noah Haidle
Directed by Vivienne Benesch
Opened on April 10, 2022
American Airlines Theatre, 227 West 42nd Street, NYC
roundabouttheatre.org
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| Debra Messing in Birthday Candles (photo: Joan Marcus) |
We meet Ernestine as she turns 17—then 18, 39, and so on, up to 107. That’s the conceit of Noah Haidle’s Birthday Candles, which in 90 minutes whizzes through 90 years of Ernestine’s life, all on her birthdays, and all while she makes a birthday cake from a recipe which has been handed down in her family as an annual birthday rite.
So it's surprising that the play isn't titled Birthday Cakes. After all, there’s a running thread throughout the play that Ernestine is always in the kitchen making her own cake, whatever else is happening in her life and who is part of her life at the time—there’s her mom Alice (who dies before her daughter turns 18); Kenneth, a neighbor who keeps dropping in to remind her of his lifelong crush; Matt, whom she marries instead (then divorces); her two children, Billy and Madeleine; grandchildren; and a daughter-in-law.
The gimmickry is all around: in the play itself, from the repetition of Ernestine’s birthdays, of the dialogue, of the actions (annual pin the tail in the donkey, anyone?) to the same actors playing different people in Ernestine’s life; in Vivienne Benesch’s staging, which is always busy—all those characters flitting through Ernestine’s life, moving on and offstage, and that insistently repeated ringing bell that signals another birthday; and in several of the performances, which are pitched too high and too broadly as they all but nudge audience members in their ribcages to remind them of how sweet, substantial, and profound it all is.
Too bad that it’s mostly sentimental and treacly, much closer to soap opera than it wants to be, and if a stray tear might form while one watches, it’s likely because one or more of the big life events shown or alluded to—a child’s suicide, an ex-husband’s stroke, an senile old woman’s return to the house that used to be her home—hits close to home.
Standing tall throughout there is, at least, Debra Messing. For 90 minutes, she is at center stage, with no makeup to easily assist in showing her quickly accelerating age, and she almost manages to make Ernestine into a living, breathing person. She even nearly manages to wring a grain of truth and dignity from the play’s final images, even though she should be the focus, not—as writer and director have it—her mother cradling the baby Ernestine, the final of many missteps in Birthday Candles.
April '22 Digital Week III
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Reviews
- Published on Wednesday, 20 April 2022 19:38
- Written by Kevin Filipski
Streaming/In-Theater Releases of the Week
Vinyl Nation
(1091 Pictures)
When CDs were ubiquitous, vinyl record sales fell off to nearly nothing; when streaming became ascendant, CD sales died—but then vinyl took off again, at least for some music lovers. Directors Kevin Smokler and Christopher Boone entertainingly explore why the vinyl niche continues to chug along, interviewing both artists and others in the business alongside fans whose record collections rival those of the biggest collectors in vinyl’s heyday.
Even with insane pricing—records cost $30 today, double that of CDs and far more than the cost of streaming—the lovers of vinyl show no signs of slowing down, and, as Vinyl Nation shows, the popularity of the annual Record Store Day is another example of its resilience.
(Dekanalog)
Serbian director Srdan Golubović’s depressing drama is based on a real-life story of a man who, after his wife has a breakdown, loses his two kids to social services; after much stonewalling from local authorities, he decides his only option is to walk hundreds of miles from his village to Serbia’s capital, Belgrade, to plead his case directly to those in charge.
Golubović’s skillful direction makes us believe we’re watching a documentary, so despairingly real is the subject and so truthful is Goran Bogdan’s performance as a loving father who, however imperfect, shines with genuineness and humanity.
4K/UHD Release of the Week
Scream
(Paramount)
Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, along with writers James Vanderbilt and Guy Busick, have successfully rebooted the cult-like Scream series, even though I wasn’t a fan of any of the other four jokey slasher flicks, which were made between 1996 and 2011. I’m
also fairly cold toward the returning original cast members (Neve Campbell, Courtney Cox and especially David Arquette), but here they decently balance the innate silliness with a stern sense of purpose. Then there’s Jenna Ortega and Melissa Barrera (the latter stealing the In the Heights movie), giving this version a needed transfusion of youthful liveliness. The 4K transfer is excellent; extras are filmmakers’ commentary, deleted scenes and on-set featurettes.
Jenufa
(C Major)
The first of Czech composer Leoš Janáček’s great operas centered around tragic heroines, Jenufa was followed by Kata Kabanova and The Makropulos Case, and they are as triumphant a trio of insightful music dramas as are the Mozart de Ponte works.
And in Damiano Micheieletto’s 2021 Berlin staging, Finnish soprano Camilla Nylund plays Jenufa with sensitivity and intelligence, and conductor Simon Rattle leads the orchestra and chorus in an intense account of Janáček’s gripping score. The hi-def video and audio are first-rate.
My Afternoons with Margueritte
(Cohen Media Group)
At age 77 in 2010, director Jean Becker created this affecting portrait of enduring friendship in this sweetly sentimental tale of two lonely people—a middle-aged, barely literate laborer and an elderly but vigorous woman—who bond over the glories of discovering new worlds through reading.
As the mismatched pair, an appropriately downtrodden Gerard Depardieu and Gisele Casadesus are wonderful, with a radiant assist by Belgain singer Maurane as Depardieu’s loving but confused girlfriend. The film gets a first-rate hi-def transfer.
(C Major)
Richard Wagner’s final opera—a long, solemn, quasi-religious processional composed for his own theater at Bayreuth in Germany—is now seen in opera houses worldwide, including in Palermo, Italy, where Graham Vick’s 2020 staging flouts the composer’s own stage directions by setting the story in a desert where soldiers in fatigues meander around.
Despite Vick’s trendy directorial “improvements,” a fine cast, led by tenor Julian Hubbard’s Parsifal and Catherin Hunold’s temptress Kundry, and a capable orchestra and chorus, conducted by Omer Wir Wellber, provide the musical gravitas Wagner’s stately score demands. Hi-def audio and video are first-rate.
CD Release of the Week
Rautavaara—Lost Landscapes
(Ondine)
Finnish master Einojuhani Rautavaara—who died in 2016 at age 87—nearly died a dozen years previously when a blood vessel ruptured. The four violin works on this disc all date from after that life-changing event, and they make up a lovely autumnal phase of the great composer’s career.
Although the three violin works were written for other soloists—Fantasia for Anne Akiko Meyers, Deux Serenades for Hilary Hahn and Lost Landscapes for Midori—Dutch violinist Simone Lamsma displays so much sheer emotional power in her playing that she makes each her own. Lamsma is beautifully accompanied by the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Robert Trevino; the orchestra and Trevino also give a robust reading of In the Beginning. Lamsma and Trevino have given Rautavaara a radiant musical epitaph.
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