I Got Soul

Last night was one of the most enjoyable theatrical experiences I've had in a long time.  I admit, when an old friend of mine told me she was in The Mysteries at the Flea theater, my stomach sank a little.  I knew that play was five and a half hours long.  I knew it was about the Bible.  And although it had gotten incredible reviews, I just wasn't sure if I was up for the marathon of Jesus stories.  So I made a deal with myself.  Not willing to shell out the $75 dollar ticket price, I decided to rush tickets.  If I got in, I'd go.  So yesterday I took the 6 train all the way down to SoHo to the tiny, nondescript, Flea theater and waited an hour for rush tickets.  And I'm so glad I did.                

Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Eden

The Mysteries is modeled after the famed York Mystery Cycle, a tradition dating back to Medieval England.  In those days, performers would enact short scenes from the Bible on moving wagons.  The audience would travel from wagon to wagon, experiencing each play separately and in different orders.  By the end of the festival (which could last for days) they audience was supposed to have experienced the story of the entire salvation of man, from the Fall of Adam and Eve to the foundation of the  Catholic Church.  The traditional Mystery Cycle is still performed once every four years, a massive undertaking that is one of the last remaining vestiges of the medieval world.

The Flea's take on the tradition is, to put it lightly, a bit different.  This delightfully blasphemous fantasia of music, myth, and mayhem features 48 plays by 48 playwrights, including names such as Jose Rivera and Craig Lucas.  Each play is distinct in style.  Some of them rhyme, some take place in modern day Brooklyn, some present the angel Gabriel as a pin-striped corporate lackey, and some are downright ridiculous.  Many feature sex, drugs, and rock and roll.  Nevertheless, thanks to the impressive work by dramaturge Jill Rafson, all the the plays fused together to form a more or less cohesive piece, leaving a few key elements for the audience to track throughout the night.

When the show works, it is thought-provoking, shocking, and immensely entertaining.  Director Ed Sylvanus Iskandar does an excellent job of keeping the night alive with surprises.  The music, most of it sung A-Capella by an "angel choir" of twenty-something punk-rockers, was beautiful.  Aside from a few moments where the harmonies were off (the play is in re-mount and many of the cast is new) the music greatly elevated the show.  My favorite number was the blue-grass/A-Capella rendition of the Killers' "All These Things that I've Done" that had the entire audience singing "I've got soul, but I'm not a solider..." as Jesus ascended into Heaven.  The lyrics took on a new meaning as Jesus sang, "...over and in, last call for sin.  While everyone's lost, the battle is won, with all these things that I've done."

And when the show doesn't work, the audience is comforted to know that each individual play only lasts fifteen minutes.  So if there's something you don't like... well, it will be over with shortly.  Personally, I was less of a fan of some of the more politically-bent numbers. (Although the Massacre of the Innocents was a major exception.)  Someone else whose interest lies in these areas may feel differently though, and the great thing is, there's really something here for everyone.


Jesus baptized in the River Jordan

As a believer myself, I was pleased to see that the play asked all the right questions.  What does it mean to say that Jesus Redeemed the world? What is redemption?  What is free will?  What is sin?  At no point did I find my religion reviled, although a more conservative theater-goer may be offended by some things in the play. (Jesus in a bi-sexual poly-amorous relationship/ Mary refusing to ascend into Heaven.)  It is not a religious play, per se, but it uses the archetypal stories of faith to ask questions that are important to all human beings.  This makes it accessible, in my opinion, to persons of all belief systems.

While I simply don't have time or space to say everything I want about this play (it was almost six hours long!) the two stand-out performances (out of about 50 actors) that I must mention were the Virgin Mary, played by Allison Buck and Lucifer, played by Asia Kate Dillon.  The violent and erotic scene in which the terrified Mary is forcibly impregnated by the Angel Gabriel  made me view Mary's plight in an entirely new way.  Lucifer's constant questioning, based in love at first, but gradually morphing into resentment, then hatred, and, ultimately, back to love, mirrored the emotional journey of many in the audience.


Allison Buck as the Virgin Mary

But what ultimately makes The Mysteries a great experience is structure of the event itself.  It has truly earned its rep as "the best party in SoHo."  The audience is wined and dined throughout.  (Dinner, snacks, and dessert are included.  Drinks are inexpensive and available throughout.)  Between acts, actors wander through the audience, making sure everyone is having a good time and refilling beer and wine.  I must have been thanked for coming about twenty times by actors, when all I wanted to say was "This is amazing- thank you."  By the end of the night, you really feel as if you are participating in a wild party, and, after a few drinks, you have no qualms about joining in with the song and dance.

Overall, The Mysteries reawakens the sense of wonder and awe that is the basis of all religious faiths.  It is an enchanted work of imagination and love.  In the final transcendent moments, when the cast thanks God for everything from square roots, to curve-balls, to blondes, everyone is truly connected to something divine.


Jesus is crowned with thorns.

The Mysteries, at the Flea Theater (41 White Street) have been extended through July 14th.
Tickets are available at www.theflea.org

(Although it is about the Bible, this is not Sunday school. I highly recommend leaving the kids at home.)

The Meaning of Broadway Part II: Machinal

“I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves! … The helpless- the degraded position of women is the presumption of my mind.”   -                                                      Sophie Treadwell, 1921

In my last post I asked, “Is murder the only way out of an unhappy marriage?”

 Well, obviously not.  Phew!  But when Sophie Treadwell wrote Machinal in 1928 things were a bit different.  And her question was not so much about the relative feasibility of divorce, but about what would drive a woman to do such a thing. 

The play was inspired by the sensational murder trial of Ruth Snyder, who conspired with her lover to murder her husband, whom she detested.  Apparently the husband was still in love with his late fiancé, calling her “the finest woman he had ever met.”  Snyder made several weak attempts to murder her husband before finally succeeding.  When she finally did, she claimed burglars had done it, only to have detectives discover the apparently stolen property still in the house.  Popular reporter Damon Runyon famously coined it “the dumbbell murder,” because of the perfect stupidity of the crime.  Snyder was the first woman to be executed at Sing-Sing prison.  Her death by electric chair caused a mass sensation when a photograph was released showing her body as electric currents ran through it.  (The photograph is quite tame by today’s standards.  For those interested, a link is here.)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/40/Snyder_chair.jpg 

But Treadwell was not interested in sensation.  She was interested in the underlying human drama.  What motivated an apparently simple woman to commit a crime so obviously not in her nature?  And what made her feel that divorce was not an option?  By all accounts, the husband was not abusive.  He did not threaten her.  She was not imprisoned in a physical sense.  And yet she was trapped. 

In her adaption of the story, Treadwell changed the circumstances of the crime, as well as the identities of the characters.  The play centers around a Young Woman (referred to as Helen by other characters but given no name by Treadwell) who is struggling to make ends meet working as a secretary.  She has an aging mother to support.  She is not very bright.  Fortunately, the owner of the company, Mr. J, thinks she has pretty hands and asks her to marry him.  Unfortunately, he makes her skin crawl.  The heart-breaking exchange she has with her mother indicates the circumstances of this union.

MOTHER: I’ll tell you what you can count on! You can count that you’ve got to eat and sleep and get up and put clothes on your back and take ‘em off again- that you got to get old- and that you got to die. That’s what you can count on!  All the rest is in your head!

YOUNG WOMAN: But Ma- Didn’t you love Pa?

MOTHER: I suppose I did- I don’t know- I’ve forgotten.  What difference does it make?

The title of the play Machinal, refers to the machine-like quality of life that this young woman lives.  Like a lifeless part on an endless assembly-line, she is pushed from one stage of life to another.  She goes through the movements of her wedding like an automobile through a drive-through car wash.  What is so fabulous about Treadwell’s depiction of the story is her use of expressionism to capture this robotic mode of living.  While one’s first instinct would probably be the use of realism to capture a historical event, Treadwell opted for a highly stylized manner of both speech and atmosphere, capturing a more emotionally realistic world for the characters to inhabit.  We see and hear the world onstage not as it looks on the outside, but as the young woman experiences it. 

My boyfriend, who was experiencing the play for the first time, observed that the dialogue sounded like a sort of spoken-word rap to him. While that didn’t exist at the time Machinal was written, I thought that was a pretty accurate description.  The staccato arrhythmic dialogue imitates the hard whirring of turning gears.  When done well, it is both hypnotic and disconcerting.

In Roundabout’s production, the Young Woman was portrayed by the magnificent Rebecca Hall (Vicky Christina Barcelona, The Prestige.)  Hall was uncharacteristically unsexy in the part: naive, awkward, out-of-place, and sweet.  In the first moments of the play, we see her ducking between bodies in a crowded subway full of identical-looking men in gray suits.  She is unable to keep pace with the world around her; she only barely seems to understand what her coworkers are talking about.  Hall had the difficult job of carrying the weight if the unusual text without making her character especially unique or original:  the essential quality of the Young Woman is her ordinariness.  But Hall demonstrated her mastery of Treadwall’s text in her adept handling of the difficult first monologue.  After Mr. J’s proposal, the world around her stalls to a grinding slowness and a single light shines on the Young Woman.  In Treadwall’s strange poetry, we hear the gears of her mind turning.

YOUNG WOMAN : Marry me- wants to marry me- George H Jones- George H Jones and Company- Mrs. George H Jones- Mrs. George H Jones. Dear Madame.- marry- do you take this man to be your wedded husband- I do- to love honor and to love- kisses- no I can’t…. fat hands- flabby hands- don’t touch me please- fat hands are never weary… no rest- must rest- no rest… alarm clock- alarm clock- alarm clock…

                                         

                                                      Hall completes the possibility of married life

Hall resisted the temptation to overact these monologues, rather she trusted the audience to understand what it was she was talking about.  She captured a stillness that was almost paralysis, an attempt at decision-making where no choices were presented.

Other notable performances in the cast included Michael Cumpsty ( Flags of Our Fathers) as the unbearable Husband. (Aka Mr. J.)  He managed to be repulsive without being mean.  Overbearing, offish, stupid, and simply an impossible person to have around.  His self-congratulatory manner was never rude, but nevertheless obnoxious.  So when he bragged, for the hundredth time, “Well, I put it over- Yeah, I swung it- surely, they came through- did they sign? On the dotted line!”  I was pretty okay with the thought of him getting his brains bashed in with a bottle.  Even if he didn’t deserve it.

Ashley Bell as the sleazy Telephone Girl brought a fresh note of humor to the play, and Morgan Spector was mysterious and distant as the Lover.  

    

           "Did you swing it?"  "I swung it!"

The most exciting aspect of Roundabout’s production was their set design, a brilliant piece of inventiveness by Es Devlin.  In keeping with the style of the play, the set was an enormous piece of machinery.  This four-sided turn-table allowed for actors to walk out of one scene and into another as the stage moved.  Each of the four sides could be transformed into several sets, so while one scene was being showed on stage, each of the three hidden sides were being changed.  Of course, the Roundabout Theatre's plentiful funds helped to make this level of production possible, and there were a couple times when the design flirted with gratuitous "show-offishness." Also, from where I was sitting there were some sight-line problems in that I could see a couple of the changeovers taking place backstage and had to deal with a beam in my way on two occasions, but overall the effect was still magical.  At the turn of a wheel, the set transformed from a crowded subway car to an office, to a hotel room, to a speakeasy, to a dark alley, to a prison cell, and, finally an execution chamber. 

                                   

                                            "I will not be submitted- this indignity!"

The most effective use of the set was in the final scene of the play, when the Young Woman is being led to her death.  The script calls for a seemingly never-ending litany of saint’s being evoked for prayers. (Saint Joseph, pray for us, Saint Teresa pray for us, Saint Stephen…) When reading the script, I remember thinking there was no way this could work on stage.  But by allowing the set to endlessly turn as the characters walked, Devlin created the impression of a long road to death.  The walk from her prison cell to the chair must have seemed eternal to her, and in true expressionistic style, it seemed eternal to us.  And as she walked further and further on an endless wheel, the atmosphere of inevitable doom weighed heavier and heavier on her and on all of us.  The final image of the play, the sparks of the electric chair flashing through a glass window, left the audience in a shocked silence.

So how did this sweet, unassuming woman end up in an electric chair?  As she desperately confesses at her trial:

JUDGE: Why?

YOUNG WOMAN: To be free.

JUDGE: To be free?  Is that the only reason?

YOUNG WOMAN: Yes.

JUDGE: But if you wanted to be free- why didn't you divorce him?

YOUNG WOMAN: Oh I couldn't do that! I couldn't hurt him like that!

Unlike Bronx Bombers, not everyone in the audience stood at the end.  Perhaps it’s because they were too busy thinking…

The Meaning of Broadway

Or: How did Bronx Bombers and Machinal end up in the same place?

Part I

“And what are you studying in grad school?” The kind, well-intentioned family friend asks.

“I’m getting my MFA in playwriting.”

Cue this:

“I can’t wait to see your name IN LIGHTS,”  “When you’re FAMOUS, I’ll be able to say I KNEW YOU WHEN.” “You’re going to be such a STAR!”

 Now, I know these people are only trying to be nice, but I can’t prevent the sick, sinking feeling in my stomach whenever I hear these words. Which is, inevitably, every time I tell someone about my personal goals.  Whether out of forced politeness or a sincerely naïve conception of the world of theater, everyone wants to believe I'm going to be famous. I normally brush off these remarks with a casual reminder that playwrights aren't generally famous.  (How many playwrights can the average person name?  Three?)  But the conversation never stops there. 

“But you at least want to be on BROADWAY, right?”  At this point, I normally nod politely and move on.  Sure, I want to be on Broadway.  Right? 

This pattern culminated in a negative way one day last summer when I snapped at my poor, unsuspecting mother over Sunday brunch.  “No.  I don’t want to be on Broadway,” I hissed.  “I hate Broadway.  I hate it.  I hate it.”  She looked at me, rather crushed, and certainly shocked, and responded, in a small voice.  “All right.  I get it.  You hate Broadway.”

Now, to be clear, I don’t hate Broadway.  Who does?  But what caused me to have this adverse reaction to the quintessential symbol of success in the American theater? Meditating upon this question, it dawned on me that my frustration has to do specifically with that word: success.  And then it really hit me, why all those questions touch such an uncomfortable place: all of them imply that success in the theater means being famous.  Lights, stars, being known… yes even the word Broadway hints that the end goal of making art is admittance into the sparkly universe where confetti rains from the ceiling and everyone breaks into spontaneous jazz squares.  I want to be a star.  I think of Hairspray, and I shudder.  Actually I want to make art that will move people and affect the world.  Am I opposed to monetary success? Absolutely not.  I have no illusions about the romance of the starving artist.  But fame is shallow, puerile, goal, and it frightens me when people think I have it.  Whether conscious or not, the assumption hurts.

                                  

A simple look at some of the junk being produced on the Broadway stage right now demonstrates that fame is the name of the game.  Motown the Musical? First Date? Cinderella starring Carly Rae Jepson? (Seriously?) These are the things being given to the American people because it is believed that they do not wish or are not able to think at the theater.  Is this not insulting?  This is not what I want to do with my life.  And you can bet that’s why it hurts me when people ask if I want to be on Broadway.  Because I desperately and passionately do not want that.  But Broadway itself is not the culprit.  It’s all about intention.  What is the intention of a company producing a piece of theater? Is it there to make money or is it there to challenge us, to help us grow, and to shape us into a freer, more daring society.  Both exist.  Only one is art.  Two recent Broadway productions represent this dichotomy perfectly. 

Bronx Bombers, by Eric Simonson is, frankly, a shameless attempt to capitalize on the uncritical market of Yankees fans who will gladly sit for two hours admiring the authenticity of the uniforms.  (The only positive review I found of the show made a great deal of this.)  The story, from what I could understand, involved Yogi Berra trying to mend the relationship between Reggie Jackson and Billy Martin.  Apparently they didn’t get along too well.  Which is obviously of critical importance because… well I’m not sure.  I suppose if they don’t get along, the Yankees don’t win.  So Yogi Berra is really worked up about this.  (I could tell he was upset, because there was a lot of shouting.)  Fortunately, that night he has a dream in which Joe DiMaggio, Elston Howard, Mickey Mantle, Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth, and Derek Jeter show up and give him advice.  I’m not sure what that advice was exactly.  Something about sticking together as a team.  Mostly they shared beloved Yankee anecdotes, which were beloved only if you already knew them.  Really, it was a parade in which people dressed up like Yankees and recited some famous quotes attributed to said Yankees. 

But the most appalling part of the whole experience was the standing ovation.  The entire audience except myself was on their feet.  This includes the woman who was fast asleep in the front row the entire time.  She woke up and gave a standing ovation.  (Was her dream really that good?)  It didn’t matter that the story was almost incomprehensible, that the acting was so bad I thought the characters were telling jokes when they were supposed to be upset, or that the set was downright bizarre.  (Is that supposed to be a chandelier?  I think it’s a chandelier with tiny baseballs hanging down.)  No one in the theater could distinguish between this play and the thing they did love.  This audience loved the Yankees, and they were applauding the Yankees.  You could have placed cardboard cutouts of them onstage for all the difference it would have made. 

A weird chandelier and cheesy fog grace the Bronx Bombers set. 

I guess what offends me most about this type of show is the way it takes advantage of the theater audience.  Give them something we know they’ll buy by re-packaging theater as something they are guaranteed to like, based on what they are already buying.  You like baseball?  Here are the Yankees onstage.  Motown your thing?  Let’s dress up like the Supremes and sing their songs to you.  Rock of Ages.  The Beatles.  Mama Mia.  You get the idea.  We know you, the audience, don't want to be challenged. You haven't been given good theater in so long, you won't know the difference anyway. You don’t want to leave the theater with anything to think about.  If you talk, let it be about how much you “liked” the play.  And tell your friends to go as well.  They’ll really enjoy it.

There was a time when people were so aware of theater’s capacity to change society that a simple play could inspire riots.  How did we end up with a theater of mutual back-patting?  What is gained by singing the praises of that which we already adore?

But just when I was starting to wonder if perhaps all was lost, I received the opportunity to see Roundabout Theatre’s magnificent revival of Sophie Treadwell’s expressionistic masterpiece Machinal.  Perhaps it was just because the last play I had seen was so incredibly disappointing, but it actually felt like an honor to be sitting in the theater during the final moments of the production.  When I set out to write this blog post, I intended to include my reaction to both plays, but even as I write this I'm realizing that I lack the space to do this production justice.  It deserves a post of its own, which is why I will write a full review of Machinal, tomorrow.  For now, suffice it to say that this play was devastating, shocking, and transformative when it was first produced in 1928, and it retains all of those qualities today.  It is only a shame that it has taken this long for it to be revived.

In conclusion, it is not Broadway itself that is the problem.  It is not money, or success, or even the unlikely prospect of fame that turns me off to the idea of Broadway.  It is, perhaps, us.  What are we asking for when we go to the theater?  Is it merely a means of escape from the struggles of our daily lives? Is it a way to congratulate ourselves and our heroes? Is it a way to forget?  If so, I want no part of it.  I’ll quit writing right now, because I’m not interested.  

But maybe it's a way to look inside of ourselves and discover what is hidden.  Maybe it is a way to wake ourselves up to what isn’t pretty, to what needs fixing, to what can still be done.  When Sophie Treadwell read about Ruth Snyder’s sensational murder conviction and asked herself if murder was the only way for a woman to escape an unhappy marriage, I bet that question terrified her.  And yet she thought the theater was the best place to pose that question. That's how you write a masterpiece.

If being a playwright means doing that, I’m in. 

(Maybe I do want to be famous, after all.)




Stay tuned for part II....

Comedy of Menace: Pinter's No Man's Land

  “Listen. You know what it's like when you're in a room with the light on and then suddenly the light goes out? I'll show you. It's like this."

He turns out the light.
BLACKOUT” 

― Harold Pinter, No Man's Land        

             

             The first time I witnessed a production of Theater of the Absurd was Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, at the Cincinnati Shakespeare Festival.  Although I have great respect for the talented actors who trained me during my teenage years, I remember leaving bored, confused, and frustrated.  While it is certainly possible that my sixteen-year-old self, completely unfamiliar with Beckett, was ill-prepared to give a fair assessment to this play I had never heard of (now one of my favorites), I’m fairly certain I wasn’t the whole problem.  I distinctly remember the theater being half empty before the show was over.  As my education continued, I grew to love and understand the work of authors such as Beckett, Albee, and Pinter, but I still believed that, without adequate preparation, it was difficult for mainstream audiences to enjoy productions of these plays.  The current production of Harold Pinter’s No Man’s Land, directed by Sean Mathias, proved me wrong.  The production, which is running in rep with Beckett’s classic Waiting for Godot, demonstrates how a strong production can make even the most difficult texts accessible and powerful for large numbers of people.  After all, these plays are classics for a reason.

Hirst informs Spooner that he slept with his late wife

            The difficult-to-define term comedy of menace, used to describe Pinter’s unique style, came into clear focus as I watched this production.  The failure of human beings to communicate with each other, the interplay between sex and violence, and the blurred lines between truth and deception became humorous in their absurdity.  I found myself laughing in order to avoid discomfort, exactly what Pinter would have wanted.  No Man’s Land tells the story of two old men, Spooner and Hirst, who apparently meet at a bar and go back to Hirst’s mansion for drinks.  Spooner is a self-proclaimed poet and Hirst is a wealthy older gentleman consumed with regret over the missed opportunities of his life.  During the first act, Hirst becomes progressively intoxicated to the point of incoherence, while Spooner makes piercing psychological insights into his companion’s psyche, giving us the impression that Spooner is the far more competent of the two of them.  In the second act, we learn that Hirst is a highly successful novelist, poet, and essayist, while Spooner is out of work.  Furthermore, they seem to have a shared history, knowing many of the same people and sharing many of the same women.  As if often the case with Pinter, it is impossible to determine the facts of the story.  Indeed, the characters themselves seem uncertain.  But this is not what is important.  Mathias’ expert direction highlights what is universal in these people: their frustrations, anger, and confusion.  As my friend, who was having his first Pinter experience, observed at intermission: “I know nothing is happening, but it feels like we’re building to something huge.”

            Of course, it’s not direction alone that makes these plays work.  It takes truly skillful actors to capture the subtle humor of Pinter’s language.  It is no surprise that Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart were up for the challenge.  The X-Men costars are familiar with working together, and their deep relationship is vital to making pieces such as No Man’s Land and Godot successful.  While both plays use casts of four, they are heavily dominated by a primary relationship between two men, who I would guess hold approximately seventy-five perfect of the lines in both plays.  These are stories about the complexities of a single, troubled, human relationship and it’s links to universal relationshps. In No Man’s Land, as in Godot, the characters move between an intense connection to an intense dislike of each other in a matter of seconds.  While this may seem like a difficult switch to make convincingly, the truth is that it is vitally true to human relationships.  The two stars never forgot the realism of this aspect of their relationship, no matter how convoluted the story between them became.

            As Hirst, Stewart demonstrated incredible emotional control.  The sickly millionaire, being cared for by his son and a man who is probably his son’s lover, fought valiantly to maintain his dignity despite being so intoxicated he is unable to walk, as well as so apparently disappointed with his life that he is unable to stop drinking.  His repeated demands to “Give me the bottle” are the only hint as to what is going on in his interior, with the exception of the one line of his that is certainly true.  “There are places in my heart” he confesses, “where no living soul...has...or can ever...trespass.” Near the end of the first act, when, unable to stand, he is forced to crawl out of the room, it is as if he is crawling towards his looming death.  For this reason, it is all the more surprising when he returns, fully functional, in Act Two to take the power back from Spooner.  Although he is now able to lord his wealth and success over his rival, the image of who he was the night before remains with us, tarnishing his victory.

            McKellen’s Spooner is a perfect foil for the repressed Hirst.  Insightful and emotionally available in the first act, he gloats about his identity as a poet.  When the next act opens, we find him in a vulnerable position, having been locked in the room overnight.  When he is offered breakfast, he coyly declines at first, only to devour it in hunger.  This moment was, in my opinion, the most powerful acting moment of the play.  McKellen refrained from playing the starving man, but rather embodied the man who doesn’t want his companion to observe his hunger, but is unable to conceal it.  When Hirst enters again, he appears to recognize Spooner from his younger days.  They swap stories about wives and conquests and it becomes clear that Hirst has been a successful writer.  Their statuses are reversed.  In an incredibly moving speech, Spooner offers himself to Hirst as a personal servant, declaring his unending devotion for the privilege of being able to copy down Hirst’s dictation.

            The Broadway production of No Man’s Land was everything a Pinter play should be: taut, foreboding, sinister, and funny.  The specificity of the performances allowed for the ambiguity of the texts, leaving the audience curious but not confused:  a difficult task.  The rich relationship between the actors left me wanting to see more.  Fortunately, there is more.  I have no doubt that I will be returning to the Cort Theatre to see Waiting for Godot, and I trust that the experience will be far more satisfying that my first Beckett production. 

            

Cyndi Lauper, Drag Queens, and My Dad

A Review of Kinky Boots

"It’s not just a factory. This is my family.
No one’s gonna shut us down.
Not  while Charlie Price is around."

I’m going to be completely honest: Kinky Boots was not the top of my list of must-see musicals.  In fact, it wasn’t on the list at all.  I had virtually no plans to see Kinky Boots, even after its Tony Award, and I wouldn’t have if it wasn’t for my mother’s love of all things sparkly and pop-infused.  I didn’t really have a good reason to stick my nose up at the show.  I admit I was initially turned off by the weird name.  Then I was further turned off when I learned that the score was written by Cyndi Lauper. I have nothing against Lauper, but with all of the disastrous concert musicals on Broadway I was fearful that this would be another example of a pop icon’s music being turned into a horrible parody of itself.  (Rock of Ages?  Seriously?) I guess I just didn’t have enough faith in the iconic creator of pre-teen anthems such as Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.  But, as it turns out, girls no longer just want to have fun.  Girls (under which I am including all those who self-identify as women) want to have fun, own their identity, and run a successful small business.  All while looking great.  Men, understandably, want the same.  And this is what Kinky Boots is all about.

I’m obviously way behind the times when it comes to Kinky Boots.  The show has been out forever, and I’m certain a million reviews have been written celebrating what is probably the most queer-friendly Broadway musical since RENT. I 'm also very happy about this, but I’d like to discuss an aspect of this play that perhaps hasn’t been explored as in depth.  As my father gleefully proclaimed at intermission: “I can’t believe it.  They made a manufacturing musical!” And indeed they did. 

Kinky Boots is inspired by the true story of Steve Pateman’s shoe factory WJ Brooks, in Northampton, England. (In the play, the company is Price and Son and Steve Pateman is the young Charlie Price.) Pateman inherited the factory from his father in 1978, becoming the fourth generation in his family to run the company.  In 1990, WJ Brooks began to struggle and lose money as buyers opted for cheaper shoes imported from overseas.  Shoe factories in the surrounding area began to close, and Pateman was forced to let a majority of his workers go, cutting his employees from 80 to 30.   Fortunately, Patemen discovered that a nearby woman’s clothing store was looking for a company to manufacture a new type of shoe for drag queens.  Patemen took on the project, and managed to save the company and bring back the jobs, with the “kinky boots” line bringing in a full 50% of the company’s revenue.   Of course, in the musical, Charlie forms a close bond with a drag queen named Lola, learns about how everyone is really the same at heart, and takes the company’s new line of kinky boots to the Milan Fashion Week. Oh, and he falls in love with a cute blond. Fine.  But the essential manufacturing story is still there, and that’s what really tugged at my heartstrings.

The cast dancing on a conveyor belt.

My dad owns a small manufacturing business in Cincinnati, OH.  They make metal parts for metal things.  I wish I could be more specific but 1) I am ashamedly ignorant of that which has supported me my whole life and 2) what they make constantly changes.  What Dad has always taught, and what Charlie learns, is that if you want to have a successful business, you have to make what the customer is buying.  You have to be smart, innovative, creative, and you have to take risks.  If you’re a theater person reading this, you may think I’m a bit confused.  Creative?  Risk-taking?  Those are the traits required to be an artist, not a business person.  Business people play it safe and they only care about money.  I’ve heard it all before, and at the risk of outing myself as a panderer to The Man, I have to say this conception is completely and utterly false.  Creativity and the willingness to push the envelope and take risks are prerequisites to success in all fields, regardless of whether you're writing plays or making metal lids for trash cans. Artists like to think of ourselves as having a monopoly on emotional investment in our work, but I’ve witnessed the passion my father feels for running his company and it is in no way less valid, sincere, or honorable than my own passions.  Not to mention the fact that I’d never be able to pursue my passion if it wasn’t for his.

 Charlie took a huge risk when he agreed to manufacture a stiletto that could support the weight of a full grown man.  First of all, he didn’t know if it was possible, and if he failed he would lose all the money he spent trying.  Second, he ran the risk of looking ridiculous in front of the fashion industry and the shoe industry of Northampton.  Third, he felt the weight and responsibility of other people’s livelihoods depending on his making a good decision.  Faced with competition from foreign markets, a decline in demand, and a rise in their own costs, both Charlie and my father have had to make tough choices.  Both Charlie and my father have gone through times when they truly didn’t know if their little idea would work out or whether they would end up losing everything, both for themselves and for the people that work for them.

What leaders in all fields have in common is a certain feeling of isolation.  Whether you're the President of the United States, the owner of a shoe factory, or the director of your high school theater club’s fall play, the buck stops with you.  Sure, if you’re successful you get the most credit, but if you’re unsuccessful you take all the blame.  And with good enough reason: that’s your job.  You’re the guy who's responsible if things don’t work out.  Personally, I could never cope with this sort of pressure.  But if we didn’t have people who could, we wouldn’t have jobs or an economy at all.

Only a few days before the company’s pivotal trip to Milan, Charlie realizes that his assistant has miscalculated the price of travel.  They can no longer afford the flight, they are behind on hiring models and, worst of all, the boots are not being made correctly.  Although someone else had done the miscalculation and the workers are the ones messing up the boots, it's Charlie’s responsibility to solve these problems, and time is short.  Added to all this is the fact that, as 8:00 pm rolls around, the workers throw in the towel and head home.  Charlie is left completely alone, hopeless, and faced with the impending threat of moral and financial failure.  This moment is a given for anyone who owns a company.  It’s the standard existential crisis when a man or woman looks in the mirror and asks “Seriously?  What was I thinking?  Who am I to run a small business?”

Charlie sums up the feeling perfectly in Soul of a  Man when he sings “Stupid Hubris, no excuses/ I blew my fuses, I guess I'm just a ruse in my father’s shoes/ Not amusing, no confusing this streak of losing/ Totally brutal and useless too.”  At the end of the number my dad simply turned to me and said “I feel bad for the guy.”  Of course, almost immediately after, Charlie’s employees return to the factory, full of support and passion for kinky boots.  What a nice ending for a musical, I thought. 

But, as often happens, I was wrong.

After the show, Dad told me this story: 

A couple years ago, one of his major customers told him they needed an entire shipment of a product by the end of the day.  Dad’s company hadn’t even ordered the parts they needed to make the project.  They ordered the materials immediately, and they came in around 5:00 pm.  Well, not surprisingly, it was time for the guys in the shop to go home.  And they did.  So my dad, with a customer breathing down his neck, went out into the plant, turned on the laser, and starting making the parts himself. Gradually, employees started trickling back in of their own free will and working alongside him.  They got the product delivered on time.  Now, I’ll admit to being biased, but I’m willing to wager that strong yet humble leadership is what pulled the company through on this day.  So it doesn’t just happen in musicals.

Now, I’m in no way trying to undermine or ignore the importance that sexual politics and gender diversity had in this story.  And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the best song of the show by far was Lola’s heart-wrenching “I’m Not My Father’s Son.”  The heart of Kinky Boots is a story about embracing one’s true identity, accepting others for who they are, and rocking out to 80’s-style pop music.  But it touched my family in a slightly different way.  For my dad, it validated his experience as a small business owner.  It’s a difficult, emotional, labor of love that requires the willingness to make tough decisions, be creative, risky, and persevere.  After seeing Kinky Boots, I think he finally felt like those theater people get him.  And I guess that’s why he loved the show so much.

Love and Friendship: Just an Opinion

To a Dear Friend.

I tried to respond to your comment in the reply box, but I quickly realized that I had so much to say that my comment was going to be about as long as a blog post.  So I may as well go ahead and give you a full answer, because insightful comments deserve full answers.  As do friends who take the time to read my little blog as many times as you have.  I want to start off by saying, that I’m no expert on the subject of love and relationships, obviously.  But anxiety has prompted me to become a bit of an obsessive, so over the past six months I've been reading everything I can get my hands on, talking extensively with a rather well-known therapist who specializes in the subject, and maniacally interviewing happily married couples, such as my parents and grandparents.  So what I can give you now is only an opinion.  The opinion of an anxious 23-year-old who has never been married.  And of course this opinion is filtered through the lens of my religion (because of course I had to talk to priests), my life in theater (grilling married classmates until they avoided me in the halls) and all my personal isms.  But I’ll go ahead and share it, for what it’s worth.

“There was something kind of unsettling to me about what you wrote here when I first read it.”

First of all, I'm glad this post unsettled you a bit.  What I mean is, it’s often unsettling when our unconscious beliefs and expectations are challenged, as you've so rightly observed.   And what is anxiety if it’s not a deep sense of being unsettled, a sort of perpetual state of “I’m not sure if this is right”?

 I want to respond to your comment about love verses in-love, because this idea has given me so much anxiety over the past months.   And when I say anxiety I mean literally calling my partner up in the middle of the night because “my heart is beating so fast I can’t sleep, I’m so scared, how do I know we’re meant to be.” To which my good man would sleepily respond that he loved me and I loved him so would I please go back to bed and stop calling for the love of God.  Easy for him to say.  And yet for a while the question lingered, and with this question came a lot of shame, which triggered more panic.  And while I've been doing a lot better, even your comment was enough to trigger me.  But then I took a deep breath and thought… actually I can respond to this.  I've been there before.  I know the answer I've come to for myself, which possibly will help you.  (But I’m not sure.)  And underneath it, I think I hear a more universal question that so many people ask, which is “what has been keeping me from finding something that works?” 

“I think there's a difference between just love and being in-love... the difference between how I feel towards my friends and how I would feel toward the person I want to spend the rest of my life with. Not necessarily something perfect, but definitely something deeper.”

I want to share with you a beautiful quote from Jungian analyst Robert Johnson’s book We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love.    Johnson writes “When two people are ‘in-love’ people commonly say that they are ‘more than just friends.’ But in the long run, they seem to treat each other as less than friends.  Most people think that being ‘in-love’ is a much more intimate, much more meaningful relationship than ‘mere’ friendship.  Why then do couples refuse each other the selfless love, the kindness, the good will, that they readily give to their friends?  People can’t ask their friends to carry all their projections, be scapegoats for their moods, keep them feeling happy, and make life complete for them.  Why do couples impose these demands on each other?”

So in a sense, you’re certainly right, but on the other hand there are certain aspects of friendship that we would do so well to integrate into our romantic relationships.  I’ll list a few here.

1)      Friendships grow over time.  We don’t expect to be best friends with someone the moment we meet them.  We don’t expect to just see them and “know” they are our friend.  Sure, sometimes this does happen, which is awesome, but more often than not it’s a gradual thing, and that doesn't make the friendship any less strong.  But with our partner, we expect the connection to be instant.  We want to know right away, and if it’s not there that second, why even bother trying? 

2)      We go out and make friends.  We actively seek out friendships, because they are necessary to our lives.  There is no shame involved in trying to make friends, in fact if a person doesn't try to make friends its pretty darn strange.  In contrast, actively seeking out a partner is seen as desperate or just pathetic.  If it’s meant to be it will “just happen,” right?  Logically, though, if we’re searching for something deeper than friendship, and it’s universally accepted that friendship takes some work to form, we may want to reconsider the idea that love relationships are ready-made.  If anything, deeper connection should require an even deeper effort.

3)     We forgive AND forget.  If your roommate pisses you off, you’re over it by the next morning, because ultimately you know he’s a good guy and… whatever you can’t stay mad at him for long.  But if it’s your girlfriend, well, you have to reconsider the whole relationship, right?  Because whatever it is she did could be a sign that deep down she’s not even the person you thought she was, and maybe you shouldn't be together, because you can’t be with someone who does that, right?  Right?  Well, actually… the loving thing to do would be to treat her like your friend in this case.

4)      We don’t expect them to solve our problems, just listen.  This is so essential to the myth of romance in our culture, I almost didn't list it, for fear of turning you off to my opinion. But I'd rather you deeply disagree with me than not give you my full thoughts, because this is so important.  We expect our relationships to complete us, to make us happy.  To fulfill us.  But the truth is, if you admit that no matter how great your partner is, she is still a human being, we basically have to admit that she can’t save our soul.  So to speak.  We are still responsible for our own happiness.  A partner can half your sorrow and double your joy, but she can’t eliminate your sorrow and create your joy.  She just can’t.  So if you’re in a relationship and you’re dissatisfied with life, it doesn't automatically mean the relationship is wrong.  There are a million things that could be wrong, and ending the relationship will help your work struggles about as much as ending a friendship would.  That is, not at all.

5)      We go through periods where we don’t hang out as much.  Sometimes we get busy, we don’t have the same classes, or we just get sick of each other and need a break.  But this is okay, because we know the person is our friend and when the time comes, we’ll be two peas in a pod again.  When it comes to relationships, we expect a great deal more consistency.  And this makes sense, because we’re talking partnership here.  But relationships, like friendships, do ebb and flow.  You’re not always going to feel as passionate towards your partner.  But unlike friendships, we too often take the natural ebb and flow of relationships as a sign that they are over.  We don’t realize that, with trust and time, our feelings will reappear.  Like the moon which goes through cycles of fullness and eclipse, or the tide of the ocean, feelings move in and out, but we trust in their return.  Feelings come with love, but they are not identical to love.  Love, like the moon, is always there.

I don’t want to over-share in regards to my own relationship.  As you know, we are unmarried and have no immediate plans to be married, so we’re not the best example of real lovingness.  (And if we never end up married, everything I’m saying still holds true for me.) But I will say that the fact that he is my best friend is one of the essential things that makes our relationship romantic.  Once, in one of my highest anxiety states, I called my mother in tears saying “But we’re best friends.  Do I need to break up with someone because we’re best friends? What about love?”  My mother basically laughed in my face and said, “Being best friends is the best case scenario.  You can always get back to loving someone if at the core he is your best friend.”  This is coming from someone who has been happily married for almost thirty years.  And I will say that my parents have a highly romantic relationship, nothing like those platonic-friends-pretending-to-be-in-love sort of couples that give me so much fear and you’re probably imagining on some level.

The last thing I will say relates to that something deeper that we all yearn for.  I’m going to make a bold statement and say that that something deeper has nothing to do with the initial spark that our culture holds as tantamount in relationships.  That initial spark fades and is no indication of whether or not that something deeper will arrive.  There is a beautiful quote about soul-mates that I heard somewhere along the mess of my frantic research.  I’m going to paraphrase and probably butcher it, but let me go ahead.

“Anyone who says they will know their soul-mate right when they see them has no idea what they are talking about.  You only become soul-mates by becoming.  By struggling, and learning, and living together over time, that is how you become soul-mates.”

Of course, being an anxious person, as soon as I learned that friendship was an essential aspect of love, I began to obsess that my mate and I weren't good enough friends.  I said to my mother “But we don’t like the same things!  We can’t even agree on a movie to see.  He doesn't even like sushi.  Oh my god, he doesn't like sushi!” 

To which my mother replied, “Well Emily, that’s what your friends are for…”