Blue Jasmine and Living With Anxiety

I hesitated when setting up to write this, because it would be so easy not to get personal with this blog.  I could write a pretty sharp essay about the similarities between this film and A Streetcar Named Desire.  A huge part of my psyche is screaming "For God's sake, Emily, don't talk about anxiety.  No one wants to read about anxiety.  This is a blog for reviews, so you can show people how much potential you have as a playwright."  But of course, the primary job of a playwright is to reveal herself on a personal level. 

So I'm going to write about anxiety.

In Blue Jasmine, Cate Blanchett plays the title character, the former trophy wife of a brilliantly wealthy financial genius - who turns out to be a brilliantly wealthy financial criminal.  And a cheat.

 After the FBI confiscates all her money, Jasmine finds herself heartbroken, broke, disillusioned, and on the verge of a mental breakdown.  As she explains, “There’s only so many traumas a person can withstand until they take to the streets and start screaming.” She returns, out of necessity, to the dilapidated home of her sister, Ginger, played by the delightfully sunny Sally Hawkins. (Happy-Go-Lucky, Made in Dagenham).  The two sisters, despite each having gone through their share of difficulties, have utterly divergent outlooks on life. 

Ginger, who worked bagging groceries while her wealthy sister ignored her for years, is generous enough to open her home to Jasmine, despite the fact that this prevents her fiance from moving in with her. Jasmine cannot stop comparing the run-down house to the mansion she lived in before.   Ginger, who also went through a nasty divorce, has opened her heart to a new man and is ready to move on.  Jasmine sees no one wealthy enough, successful enough, classy enough, educated enough, good looking enough… you get it.  She is constantly criticizing Ginger’s admittedly imperfect fiance, even to the point where Ginger starts to have her own doubts.

But Jasmine isn't really a nasty person.  Jasmine is living with acute anxiety.  Living with anxiety feels like the layer of skin just below the surface is constantly vibrating.  You wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning with your heart pounding and a million frightening thoughts running through your mind.  “Is my neighborhood safe enough?  Do my friends really like me?  Am I doing well enough at my job/school? Is my relationship on stable grounds?” And then there are the really frightening thoughts.  “Is the world around me one great lie?  Am I lying to myself?  Am I really happy?  Do my loved ones really love me, or are they just pretending?  Am I just pretending to love them?”

We live in an unstable world.  As Blue Jasmine portrays, we’re in an economic crisis caused, in part, by unethical business practices.  Politicians, financial institutions, and other powers we trusted have deceived us on numerous occasions.  Our climate is changing, and no one really knows what to do about it. On the personal level, the people we love sometimes don’t love us back.    To top it all off, our culture’s expectations for quality of life are going up and up, to the point where many find it difficult to be satisfied with what earlier generations would have deemed enough.

I don’t know about you, but I see this especially played out in our relationships.   This is where my anxiety has recently settled.  (It hasn't always settled there.)  My grandparents, both sets, married very young by today’s standards. They were not necessarily financially stable by today’s standards.  I can’t say for certain, but I’m guessing they probably weren't Hollywood good-looking at the time. I’m also guessing - and this is just a guess so please correct me if you happen to be my grandparent reading this - that they weren't passionately “in-love” by today’s standards.  What I mean by that is they probably weren't running-through-an-airport-quoting- the-Notebook-never-had-a-doubt-you’re-my-soulmate-you’re-perfect-no-work-involved-the-end “in love.” I’m certain they don’t feel that way now.  But my grandparents, both sets, still seem like each other’s best friends.  They still seem to like each other a lot.  They still seem to love each other in a quiet way, which is more than I can say for most other couples I've seen.  So how does this relate to Blue Jasmine? 

At the top of the film, we hear Jasmine describing to a stranger on a flight the way she felt when she first met her husband, Hal. (Played by the ever-more-impressive Alec Baldwin.) Hal, she describes “swept her off her feet.”  They have a song together.  She just knew.  He was The One.  To top it off, he also happened to be filthy rich and good looking.  He buys her all kinds of crazy presents.  He is the perfect guy.  Except that it turns out he never stopped cheating on her and most of his money was stolen.  So it would seem that all of Jasmine’s initial instincts were, maybe, wrong.  She picked the wrong guy.  She made a mistake. 

Or did she? 

Is the problem actually not the man at all, but the criteria by which she judged him?  For myself, I feel a great pressure to judge my mates by Hollywood standards.  I feel like we should have a song.  I feel like I should look across the room and “just know.”  This pressure comes partly from society, but I also largely from myself.  I find myself looking at perfectly good relationships my friends have and thinking “oh he is so quiet/loud/skinny/fat/whatever.  She could totally do better.”  This is the root of anxiety.  Good is never enough.  Reasonable advice such as “don’t settle for someone who doesn't treat you well or who you don’t love,” has morphed into “don’t settle for anyone that isn't perfect in every way and who you’re not so in love with that you will chase them through an airport to keep them from leaving.”  Note that I am contrasting love and “in-love” in this statement.  Feel free to disagree with me in the comments.

The modern, anxious, mind, has a tough time being happy.  It has a tough time knowing when it truly loves another person.  It just has a tough time connecting with people.  What makes Blue Jasmine a great film, in my opinion, is that is challenges society’s deeply help value of “never enough.”  The movie isn't about how Jasmine fell for the wrong guy and moved on until she found the “right” guy.  It’s about how her conception of right and wrong so drastically contrasts with that of her sister.

In one of the most telling lines of the movie, Jasmine  shouts at Ginger “You choose losers because that’s what you think you deserve and that’s why you’ll never have a better life.”  This sounds reasonable, but what do we consider a “loser” by today’s standards?  Flawed human being?  Average job?  Average looking?  Not the guy from The Notebook? (Or the original fiance from The Notebook, who actually was a pretty good guy, right?)

 SPOILER ALERT (not major)

 Ginger doesn't choose losers because she doesn't think she can do better, she chooses the best of the average guys that come her way and make her happy.  As Ginger describes, the better guys just aren't beating down her door.  And when a guy does come along that seems like a step up, he turns out to be a liar as well.  Rather than wallowing in self-pity, Ginger returns to her fiance, happier again to have him back.

Hal may be highly romantic, and he may have made Jasmine feel madly in-love, but he ultimately did not care about her or any of the people he came in contact with.  In contrast, the most romantic thing Chili says in the entire film is probably “Some of the stuff she said made me really mad, but I kept it on the inside.”  It might not seem like much, but this means he cares enough about Ginger to try to improve himself and his temper.  So I’ll take it.  And she seems comfortable enough with herself to realize that a mate isn't a status symbol and how much you laugh with someone may be just as important, if not more, than how many butterflies he gives you. 

I get Jasmine.  I've spend a lot of time in high anxiety worried about whether I have the perfect relationship.  It’s hard not to, looking at the divorce rate in our society.  Look at what Hollywood teaches us about love.  (They are probably connected.) But then I look at my grandparents and I look at Ginger, and I think...

I’m so lucky that my guy took me to see Blue Jasmine.

It’s probably okay if I don’t marry that dude from The Notebook.              

Out, damned spot!

Shakespeare's Macbeth, perhaps more than any other play, bears with it a sense of darkness, mysticism, and the occult.  Legend has it that the infamous "double double toil and trouble" was lifted from an actual book of spells, casting an eternal curse on the play.  The effects of this curse have been felt from the first performance, where it is said an actual death took place onstage, right up to my own high school appearance as a witch where a brazen stagehand fell headfirst into the cauldron after daring to speak the name of the play in the theater.  (Not normally the superstitious type, I have been a true believer ever since.)

A passionate lover of Shakespeare, I have seen more productions of Macbeth than I care to admit.  Worse, I've liked most of them, demonstrating how difficult it is for me to separate a bad production from a brilliant text.  I just like Shakespeare, and I'll be the first to admit it.  But it is rare for any production to show me anything new when it comes to The Scottish Play.  Sure, you may have put the witches on stilts this time, but it's still the same basic thing.  You can set it in the future or the past or make everyone wear fuzzy suits, but its the same story.  In fact, I had started to pretty much think there was no way to do the play differently if one is to stick to the text.  (In an earlier blog, I wrote about Punchdrunk's adaptation "Sleep No More," a highly creative production, but completely divergent from Shakespeare's text.)  

Last Friday, at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, much to my delight, I was proven wrong.  Alan Cumming, who won a Tony for his performance in Cabaret and is currently appearing on the popular television program The Good Wife, performs almost the entire text alone.  Let me repeat that, Alan Cumming plays every character in Macbeth by himself.  I can safely stop and say this is something I've never seen.  And in the matter of stage spectacle alone, it certainly blows any stilted witches out of the water.  Cumming approaches the Herculean task with energy, commitment, and a complete lack of inhibition.  Performed in an hour and forty-five minutes without an intermission, I personally felt like I had ran about three laps around Central Park's reservoir and then been hit by a truck, and I was only observing. For a good twenty minutes afterwards, my boyfriend and I were unable to speak.  Complete spellbound amazement: something you simply don't find often in the theater. 

But was it good?  Cumming was quite conspicuously not nominated for a Tony for this performance, despite the boldness of the endeavor.  Most of the reviews I read after the show were lukewarm to negative, some even accusing Cumming of being pompous and egocentric to attempt such a thing.  More importantly, they accuse him of not bringing anything new to the text.  After meditating for some time on what I saw, I have to pipe up and say I vehemently disagree. 

Cumming's Macbeth takes place within the frame of a lunatic asylum.  He is brought on during a silent pre-show in which it becomes apparent that he has murdered someone, most likely his entire family.  Before long, the patient is enacting his own version of Macbeth, as the doctors periodically peer in through observation windows and take notes.  The Scottish Play, a story of vast scope and many divergent characters, is now the story of one man's infected mind, one man's torment.  For me, this is where the play really is taken somewhere new.  In past productions that I have seen, the emphasis has always been on the magical elements.  Yes, Macbeth may have a killer instinct somewhere within him, but it never would have been brought out if it wasn't for the witches.  The idea of becoming king is planted in his mind and he becomes evil, while he was noble before.  In this version, any magic that exists is entirely in the patient's mind.  The killer instinct comes from inside of him, from his own madness.  This is a frightening but true aspect of the play that is brought glaringly to the forefront.  He may get the idea from the witches, pressure from his wife, and help from hired hit men, but no one really kills but Macbeth.

For this reason, some of the weaker aspects of the play bothered me less than other critics. Cumming has received much flack for his comedic portrayal of Duncan as an idiotic fop and Malcolm as a talking baby doll.  (Although I daresay the audience loved it.)  The criticism is that these characters were trivialized and he never really bothered to penetrate their psyches.  To this I say:  bah, you missed the point!  Cumming never actually played any of the characters in Macbeth, he only played the patient playing all the characters.  He was not Duncan or Malcolm or even Macbeth, but the patient painstakingly unraveling all of the divergent characters in his mind.  Duncan represents the part of himself that was silly and playful, forever buried by his terrible deeds.  

I will admit that at times during the performance I was bored.  Even with cutting a third of the text, it seemed incredibly long.  Possibly watching one person do all of those parts was simply sensory overload.  I will also admit that anyone who didn't already have a good grasp of the story would probably be irredeemably lost, as there was really no way to keep track of who was talking to who or where the characters were.  But the action was punctuated by some wonderful stage effects, which allowed the pressure to be taken off Cumming for a moment and shake up any boredom by giving us something else to look at.  The use of three screens projecting Cumming's distorted face as the three witches was highly effective and super creepy, as was the tearing open of a bird's entrails during the cauldron scene. Another great moment was Macbeth's death, where the patient attempts to drown himself in the onstage bathtub.  Screens allow us to see Cumming's face underwater, and I daresay the length of time he was under there made the audience gleefully uncomfortable.  (He's been under there for a long time.  Are the lights going to go out?  Is he coming back up?  Is this supposed to happen?  God please let him come back up soon!)

Despite Cumming's impressive breath-holding, the best moment of the play by far was Lady Mac's mad scene.  As doctors observe, the patient steadily loses control of his emotions, as memories of his terrible deeds haunt him.  As Lady Mac laments the inability to rid herself of her guilt, so does the patient, and in this scene the overlap between the two stories is perfect.  Even though we know what he has done, we empathize with him in a deep and painful way.  We know there is no escape, and when the lights go on and we realize he has attempted to slash his wrists, we understand.  This is no longer a play about the occult, about magic, this is a play about regret.  

As he desperately tries to rid himself of the all-encompassing guilt, the foul spot, our own guilts, however small, are remembered.  And I think this is what Shakespeare would have wanted.  

Summer in the City

Yes... yes... I know... I know.  It's been months.  It's been forever.  And I'm sorry.  I really, truly am sorry.  I could talk about how busy I've been, how stressed I've been from school but 1) that's not and excuse and 2) you probably don't want to hear it. So I'm going to skip that part and just say that I am sorry for not posting for basically an entire semester.

I thought a lot about what to write about in this new post, and I considered going through all the plays that I have seen and giving quick responses to all of them, but I don't think I could do any of them justice anyway and, besides, most of them are closed by now so what's the point?  Instead, I'm simply going to celebrate that it is indeed finally summer in New York City.  And I have time and energy to write a blog. And it's beautiful.

I never thought that I'd think New York was beautiful.  I mean, sure, it's cool.  And there are awesome buildings and stuff, but it's dirty and, let's just admit it now: it smells terrible.  But there's something almost mystical about a city that has been dark and freezing suddenly becoming bright.  The buildings and the sidewalks somehow seem less hard, like maybe they are taking deep breathes.  I think the people might actually be nicer in the summer. Well, maybe not.  I'm probably just projecting.  I'm certainly nicer.

And I'm not just talking about the places in the city that we know are beautiful: central park, the highline, those places where nature has been stuffed in among the concrete and garbage bags, in an effort to preserve our sanity.  I'm talking about when you come out from the subway at Brooklyn Bridge and you see the flowing, watery edges of the Beekman Tower touching the sky and you think "Huh, who came up with that?"  Everywhere I look, it's something I've never seen before.  Everywhere I look its creativity and innovation and... awesome.

Okay, pulling myself back down to Earth.  Why do I feel the need to write this?  Well, recently, due to a cancelled flight, I was forced to take the eight-hour train to Buffalo from NYC.  And, as is often the case when random people are stuck together, I had dinner with two really interesting people and one really annoying person.  This man insisted on blabbing on about how much he hates NYC.  So many people!  So much greed!  It's so dirty! And, most importantly: it's ugly!  Now, this is not the first person that I've heard express this opinion, or the similar opinion that "New York is a nice place to visit, but God I'd NEVER live there,"  but he was the first one to really irritate me.  And I think I've figured out the reason.  

Flowers, trees, rivers, and all that are great, but they don't think.  They don't have imaginations.  People do.  People may curse at you when you walk too slow and their cars may send fumes up into the atmosphere, but people create art, and theater, and business.  I love living around all these people.  People are the most beautiful part of summer in the city.  And, while I may hate them when they are slammed up against me in the subway, I'm so grateful to be a part of this place that is constantly generating new ideas and new stories for the world.  

Do I miss the roses growing in my Mom's huge backyard in Cincinnati?  Sure I do.  But I just saw Monet's Waterlilies at the Museum of Modern Art, so I'll live.

Beekman Tower

How not to Rewrite Brecht

I'm going to keep this short because I don't like writing bad reviews.  But there are times when one must come out and say the painful truth: Clive, by Jonathan Marc Sherman is not worth seeing.  Unless you have a crush on Ethan Hawke or Zoe Kazan.  But even then, I really wouldn't.

This is how the play is described on the Acorn Theatre Website:

Inspired by Bertolt Brecht's inflammatory play Baal, Clive tracks a dissipated songwriter in 1990s New York City from the hedonistic heights of seduction and consumption into an ecstasy of self-destruction.

If that description leaves you thinking "WTF," the play itself will not enlighten you.  From the first moment, when Hawke sings a mumbling piano-bar version of "You Must Come in at the Door,"  the play is self-consciously lyrical, trite, and melodramatic. 

I'm not saying that every play has to have a traditional character arch or even a coherent story-line.  I'm fascinated by the avant-garde.... when it's good.  This was more like a play that sort of pretended to be cutting-edge, but in an emo sort of way.  Clive came across as an angsty rapist who its hard to feel sympathy for, because he really doesn't have a positive side.  The female characters are shallow and for some reason easily seduced by Hawke's winy pubescent take on rock-star.  I was in no way convinced that a 17 year old virgin would find this man fascinating enough to sleep with, or that she would kill herself after he rejected her.  Sorry.  Just no dice.

Also, I'm a bit confused on what the interpretation of Brecht is in this play.  In on very telling line, Clive "philosophizes" : "Art is meant to be felt, not understood."  Brecht is turning over in his grave.  This is exactly the opposite of what this politically-minded playwright stood for.  His plays often interrupt the flow of action right at critical moments so that characters might directly tell the audience what they ought to think or do as a result of what they see.  Brecht hoped to stop the action in order to limit the amount of emotional investment that audience took in the story, in favor of the message.  So, either Sherman didn't understand Brecht, or he thought he knew better than Brecht.  He didn't.

Happy New Year!

Better Late than Never.  I realize February is almost over... but anytime is a good time to blog about New Years Eve in NYC.  So for those of you who want to know: Here's how I spent the night of December 31st.
New Years Eve in New York City is a celebration of the city itself.  Sure, another year has passed, and sure, we're a bit older, but it's really a chance for Manhattan to strut her stuff.  And there's a lot to show off.  Yes, we're all familiar with the yearly Times Square bash, but this really only begins to scratch the surface of what is going on in the city on this night to end all nights.  I was fortunate over New Years Eve to have my family come to visit, but they, of course, wanted to stay on the square and watch the ball drop.  From what I know, though, there are several practical reasons to opt out of Times Square.
1) No bathrooms.  You have to get there early that morning if you want any type of view.  And there are no...erm... provisions made for bodily functions.  So bear this in mind when making your plans.
2) No drinks.  You can't drink in the streets in New York, and while I'm sure that rule isn't particularly enforced, good luck bringing enough libations to last you throughout the day.  Also, see #1.
3)  No choice of music.  I mean, if you really love Taylor Swift, this year would be wonderful for you.  If not, I'm not sure.  Just not sure.

So what did I do on my first NYE in NYC?  Joe and I opted to dance the night away at historic Webster Hall in the Village.  Webster Hall boasts itself the oldest nightclub in the United States.  It was a favorite stomping ground for iconic figures from Frank Sinatra to Ray Charles to Jefferson Airplane.  The club is situated in what feels like an aging mansion in Greenwich village.  The building was recently restored, but all of the old charm was preserved.  We may have been listening to techno, but one could easily imagine a jazz band lighting up the stage.  There are two main dance halls, one that played mostly pop music and one that leaned towards electric music.  Joe and I mostly stayed in the pop area, but we braved the massive, two-story techno room for the fabled midnight balloon drop.  Forget the ball drop.  This was the single most exciting New Years countdown I have ever experienced.  Never mind that I was a little nervous I was going to get trampled in the mosh-life mob beforehand.  Once the balloons feel from he ceiling I literally felt there was a layer of balloons above me, covering a layer of wildly dancing young people. Swimming through balloons while dancing in the New Year is a memory I will never forget. It was beyond exhilarating. Too bad I lost my feather hat. :-(

Here are the cons of Webster Hall New Years:
1) It took a long time to get drinks.
2) Way too much dub step for those of us who don't do drugs.
3) Douchy people. Like the guy who called my boyfriend a rather choice name when he was simply trying to keep me from being trampled.

Here are the pros:
1) Unlimited drinks, which were quite strong, once you got them.
2) Lots of people and dancing.
3) Pizza for sale
4). Free party favors.
5.) A no-cover membership card for the entire year of 2013.  (Which Joe and I will absolutely use.)
6.) Breakfast if you make it late enough.

So, as you can see, its really no contest.  Next year, though, I'm sure we won't be there.  We'll be somewhere else awesome.  I love this city.

"You're a Live Cat, Maggie."

First off, I apologize for my almost three-month absence from my blog.  I would say I have been really busy, but when has that ever been an excuse?  I could say I haven't seen any shows, but as my father informed me, there is a lot more that all of you want to hear about.  So, it make it up to you, I will try to write two blogs in a very short period of time: first, my review of the new Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and then I'll go back in time and give a super fun account of my first New York City New Years Eve.

I'll make you sit through the intellectual stuff first :-)

"Living with someone you love can be lonelier- than living entirely alone!- if the one that y'love doesn't love you..."

This is my favorite line from Tennessee Williams' powerful masterpiece Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.   It also serves excellently to demonstrate the overall theme of this play, as well as many of his other works.  For those of you not as familiar with Tennessee Williams, he is considered to be one of the greatest American playwrights. He was born in Mississippi, grew up in Saint Louis, and started his writing career as a young man in New Orleans.  Many of his greatest plays are distinctly Southern family tragedies, often dealing with the lies that human beings tell themselves in order to cope with their own failures.  He was fascinated with the quiet, very private disappointments of people whose lives never amount to what they expected, and in this way he creates what seem like epic tragedies onstage out of the quiet struggles that go on behind closed doors.  His most successful plays were written in the late 40's and 50's, although he continued to write until his death in 1983.

Although I have always loved A Streetcar Named Desire, it took me until college to really appreciate what is now my favorite Williams drama, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.  While Streetcar is highly emotional and dramatic, Cat is subtle and realistic in a way that I'm not sure I was able to appreciate when I was in high school.  This story, while encompassing the whole of the main character's emotional life, takes place in the smallest, most invisible of worlds: in her a bedroom behind a locked door.  Or I should say somewhat locked, because people just can't seem to stop invading her privacy.

In Broadway's recent revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Rob Ashford, Scarlett Johansson portrays Maggie the Cat as desperate and unraveling, yet restrained.  Maggie, whose husband has been refusing to have to sleep with her for years, is too-often portrayed as overly sexual or needy.  Johansson, to her credit, was able to deliver such emotionally charged lines as "if I really believed you'd never sleep with me again I'd go to the kitchen, take out the biggest knife, and drive it into my heart," not as a neurotic, but as someone who has simply had this conversation over and over again.  Someone for whom this has become the routine.  Johansson's Maggie just said the words, and I believed her.  When this play first appeared, the idea that a woman could actually be sexually frustrated was, to say the least shocking.  Women do not need sexual intimacy... or so we'd like to think.  I am not convinced that this mentality has entirely changed, contributing to an interpretation of Maggie as ultra-seductive or even sex-addicted.  The reality is that Williams understood that women have longings just as men do, but the expression is often even more dangerous and rejection more shameful.  This is what makes the role of Maggie such a vulnerable and difficult one for an actress to play.  Imagine dressing up in lingerie and being rejected over and over again in front of a live audience...
 I also appreciated how Johansson embraced the side of Maggie that is more than a little annoying.  This is a woman who, in many ways, I would not want to be around.   The play opens with Maggie openly mocking children, calling her nieces and nephews "no-neck monsters."  She is crude in conversation and can be bitterly mean.  And she knows it.  Johansson understood that when Maggie says, "Why am I so catty?  'Cause I'm consumed with envy and eaten up with longing."  It is not a joke, but a very blunt admission of a fact about herself.  Johansson's is a bitter and envious Maggie, deeply concerned with wealth, beauty, and popularity.  She is even  determined to lie and cheat her way into earning what she needs to survive.  And she is delicious.

I will say, though, that little annoys me more than when an actor walks onstage and is instantly applauded.  At the risk of sounding like a snob, I can't help but think: congratulations, tourists, you just saw a famous person.   But they haven't done anything yet, and while I know we're so impressed that she memorized all those lines (as the man behind me pointed out)  the celebrity in question has yet to actually act and therefore, lets not just assume they are going to do anything like a good job. So, it's possible that the compulsory applause as (gasp) Scarlett walked onstage unfairly pitted me against her, but I feel obligated as a reviewer to actually criticize her performance.  Honestly, there were moment's in the first act that really dragged. Yes, every night she begs him to sleep with her, and yes, every night he refuses... but why is this night any different?  Why is this night the night that Williams put in the play.  Some might argue that the reason for that comes later, but the reality is that roughly 80 percent of the lines in act one are Maggie the Cat's (Brick is in a state of alcoholic detachment.) And too much matter-of-fact isn't necessarily the way to go.  Because Johansson played it as "this is what this character's life is like now,"  I did not believe that she was really trying to get Brick to sleep with her that night.  She was saying she was trying, but in order to try the character has to believe that it is possible to achieve her goal.  I didn't think Maggie saw this night as any different.  A concrete example of this was when Maggie was trying to clean a stain out of her dress.  Scarlet Johannon was not cleaning that stain.  She was barely dabbing at the thing.  Because she knew she was going to end up picking up a new dress.  (Everyone who knows the play knows that Maggie spends all of Act One in lingerie, so we also know that she is going to end up taking off the dress.)  But Maggie doesn't know this... so scrub the darn thing.  Try to get the stain out.  Please, Scarlett.  Thank you. Now, keep in mind, I truly enjoyed her performance.  I think she did the role great justice.  But I also love the play.  It is alarming that the girl next to me, at the end of the show, said "That's three hours I wish I had back."  Granted, some people will always feel that way about a Williams play. They are dialogue-heavy, action-light, and, frankly, depressing as all Hell.  But it's the actor's job to make it exciting for everyone.  That is the actor's job.

 Also, I took a slight issue with her voice.  Rather then a Southern drawl, this Maggie seemed to have acquired the raspy voice of a life-time smoker. (Is this Johansson's voice?)  Now, this makes perfect sense, because Maggie is a life-time smoker. No one is saying the Johansson's Maggie has to sound just like Liz Taylor's Maggie, for example, but this play is taking place on "The richest plantation this side of the Mississippi."  So this ought to be born in mind.  Maggie is a Southern woman.  She needs a good Southern accent.

Of course, Scarlett Johansson was not the only part of this play worth commenting on.  Ciaran Hinds as Big Daddy was by far the most delightful performance of the night.  Big Daddy, the wealthy patriarch who is dying of cancer but believes himself to be cured, is probably one of theater's most memorable and difficult roles.  He is simultaneously so admirable and so cruel, that one barely has time to catch one's breath before he shocks you again in a new direction.  And Hinds' portrayal was deeply effective, especially in his long Act Two scene with Brick where he forces Brick to come clean about the reasons for his alcoholism.  I both hate Big Daddy and love him for his crude declarations such as " I'm going to pick me a choice one, I don't care how much she costs... I'll strip her naked and choke her with diamonds and smother her with minks and hump her from hell to breakfast" and Hinds made no apology for the ambiguity of his character.  This is a man who hates his wife, but loves his son.  And he is not ashamed to bribe Brick with alcohol in order to find out why Brick drinks.  And, unlike in Johannson's long scene, I was on the edge of my seat every moment.  Of course, I know how it ends... but I wanted to see how Hinds made it end that way.  And he did it moment-by-moment and beat-by-beat. We learn that Brick, who claims to be refusing Maggie as punishment for cheating on him, is really blaming himself for the suicide of the "other man," who was actually in love with Brick.  Brick may or may not be a homosexual himself.  (This is an interpretive question for another day.)

Finally, I really loved the set design, by acclaimed designer Christopher Oram.  The giant bed center stage seemed to posses a sort of gravitational pull, so that every aspect of the surrounding room was sucked in my it.  The floorboards pointed to the bed, the windows surrounded the bed, even the trees outside seemed to lean into the bed.  This was a brilliant creative nod to the original Broadway design, which was extremely abstract with the bed as basically the only set element.  In Oram's version, we got the feel of a realistic set, but at the same time, it was clear that something was off balance... something not right.  Also, the massive doors and windows were merely frames, which worked wonderfully at creating a space where privacy isn't really possible.  The characters could "shut the door,"  but if the walls are transparent, it really doesn't matter.  In a play with eavesdropping as such a vital element, it helped give the sense of complete vulnerability.  I also appreciated the surrealistic use of sound: every sound effect had some believable justification within the world of the play, but they were crafted in such as way as to be obviously intended for underscoring a scene or punctuating a line.  For example:
Brick: How about these birthday congratulations, these many, many happy returns of the day, when ev'rybody buy you knows there won't be any!
(Firecracker goes off outside.)

This is an excellent use of atmosphere to punctuate meaning.

Directorially, there is one important choice I'd like to mention.  In an earlier blog, I talked about the relevance of certain aspects of darkness in the theater, and this play is a prime example.  Its rare to see a play where literally every scene reminded me of something that has happened in my family.  For this reason I highly commend director Rob Ashford's decision to use Williams' original ending in this revival, as opposed to the altered ending requested by famed director Elia Kazan in the first Broadway production.
Time for a little history lesson:
In the original script, William's wrote the closing lines this way:

Maggie: I really love you, Brick.
Brick: Wouldn't it be funny if that were true.

In this version, there is no doubt that Maggie's advances have been futile, and Brick does not believe she loves him.

Director Elia Kazan felt that this ending was too definitive.  He believed endings should be ambiguous, and the audience should be left to decide for themselves what to think about what the future holds for Maggie and Brick.  Williams could have chosen another director, but Kazan had directed his previous plays with great success, and Williams wanted him, so he made the changes.  The original Broadway script, and the version most commonly read and performed, ends this way.

Brick: I admire you, Maggie.
Maggie: Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give up with such grace.  What you need is someone to take hold of you- gently, with love, and hand your life back to you, like something gold you let go of- and I can!  I'm determined to do it- and nothing's more determined than a cat on a tin roof- is there? Is there, baby?

Keep in mind, that these lines are in the first script, but a few moments earlier.

There is also a third script that sort of jumbles the two endings together. I'm not exactly sure how this script goes, nor have I ever really heard of it being used.

THEN THERE IS THE MOVIE.... oh, the movie. Oh, Hollywood.
The movie ends like this:
Brick: Come here, Maggie.
(They kiss passionately.)

 Don't get me wrong, this is a fantastic film.  It's beautiful, touching, and dramatic.  Elizabeth Taylor is mesmerizing as Maggie the Cat.  By all means, go ahead and watch it.  But keep in mind that the movie Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Richard Brooks, is an excellent film that has nothing to do with the play by the same title.

Okay, that's an exaggeration.  But there are three fatal flaws:

1) A really long and wordy second scene between Brick and Big Daddy that, unlike the scene derived from the play, really has nothing to do with the plot.  It is an extended  opportunity for popular actor Burl Ives to get more screen time.  It essentially amounts to the message that "Money can't buy happiness," which is already dealt with in a better manner in the regular script.
2) Censorship.  Why did Brick's friend Scipper drink himself to death in the play? Because he was a homosexual and Brick said he was disgusted by him.  Why does he throw himself out a window in the movie?  (Well first of all, because drinking oneself to death was "too vague" and audiences wouldn't get that it was a suicide.)  But as to the motive...not really sure.  It's unclear.  Why is it unclear? Because the censors at the time couldn't allow mention of homosexuality.  So... it's kind of just a weird sort of depression mixed with guilt thing.... I guess.  Who really can tell? He just kind of did it and Brick kind of blames himself.  Major plot hole, to say the least.
3)The ending. This is possibly one of the most heinous butcheries of a playwrights's intentions in the history of American theater.  As a result of this line, Williams completely washed his hands of the film.He even claimed in one interview that he refused to see the film.  (This is confirmed to be untrue, but the sentiment is very important to note.)

Given all the possible endings of the play, I am thrilled that the revival is using the original.  The intention of Williams was not to show a marriage in healing, but a marriage in crisis.  Sure, marriages can heal, but Williams didn't know that world.  His parents had a bitter relationship and his relationships were always tumultuous at best.  He was writing the world he knew.

The natural desire of directors and audience members to be happy has brought the play progressively closer and closer to a "feel good" ending. But this is not a feel good play.  That is my opinion.  But it is not the ultimate opinion. (This is the fun part of opinions.)

So we have three different directors opting for three different endings.  They were all talented artists with their own vision and their own interpretation of Williams' script.  (Theater, a collaborative art form  is never entirely one person's voice.)

So: Original ending, Broadway ending, or movie ending?

Which would you chose?
Please comment :-)

The Sacred and the Profane

Before Thanksgiving, I had the great privilege of seeing two fantastic yet drastically different pieces of theater.  Fortuitously (for this blog) they both dealt with the themes of faith, losing faith, and using humor to battle such a crisis.  This got me thinking, naturally, about what role spirituality does play in the world of theater currently.  Now, make no mistake, theater is a secular community, and that is how it should be.  Theater does not exist to tell inspiring stories about faith overcoming obstacles (although it certainly can do that.) Few people today would claim that it does. What theater does exist to do, in my opinion, is serve as some representation of the lived human experience.  This can be on a wonderfully exaggerated, riotous and obnoxious level, such as in The Book of Mormon, or a much smaller, intimate, and quietly tragic level, such as in Deanna Jent's Falling.

Falling, now playing Off-Broadway at the Minetta Lane Theater, is the story of a mother's search for the best manner of loving her severally autistic son, Josh.  Josh, now a grown man, still obsesses over The Jungle Book and puzzles.  More than anything, he enjoys watching feathers fall to the ground out of a box on a shelf.  When his estranged grandmother comes to visit for the first time in years, she cannot abide his inability to obey requests, his violent outbursts of anger, and his tendency to masturbate in public.  Like so much of society, she can only go so far with feeling sympathy for Josh, but then he crosses a line and she writes him off.  The mother, as she so beautifully and simply explains, doesn't have a choice.  "A mother just loves her child."  The play takes us through a rather turbulent family dinner, in which Josh attacks his mother, their other child threatens to move out, and the two parents realize their marriage is going less than well.  There is a constant push-and-pull between ideas of divine power and the ineffectiveness of prayer.  The characters in the play are not atheists  but they are removed from their church, something that upsets the grandmother deeply.  When the grandmother suggests that they should pray for a cure, because anything is possible, the father reacts with one of my favorite lines of the play.  "God said no to that prayer a long time ago.  Pray she gets accepted into a group home.  Pray that our marriage doesn't fall apart.  Pray for that." There are some things in the play that do not work, such as the rather strange "dream sequence" which isn't quite explained.  The mother has a fantasy in which Josh dies, but she thinks its real.  Was she sleeping? Was it a daydream? Why was she so convinced it happened?  I understood the function, but not the structure.

 

Some of the acting is less than magnificent, but all the actors are competent. Daniel Everidge as Josh brings the performance to the level of the sublime.  Aside from the meticulous research he underwent in order to convincingly portray an autistic man, (so much so that I wondered if the actor was disabled)  he went the extra level to make Josh a human being.  This was not a "sweet and lovable" disabled child the fills you with sympathy and love.  This was a human being who was frustrating, volatile, and multi-dimensional.  His performance brings to mind a conversation I had with a fellow playwright whose sister has cerebral palsy.  He told me, "Everyone just looks and sees a poor disabled angel.  They don't realize that my sister can be a real b****."  Now, this is not to say that the character of Josh could ever really be judged or held accountable for his actions, but the actor understood his completeness.  He did not pity him, he just represented him.

And that really goes for the entire performance.  Falling is not a feel-good drama.  There is no happy ending.  But its not a tragedy either.  It's messy and complicated, just like life.  Another friend of mine, who has a daughter with autism, felt that the play was the closest thing to her life she has ever seen on stage.  Finally, someone understood what she's been going through.  And that's what art should be.

IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SEE ANY PROFANITY STOP READING HERE.

Okay, family members, I warned you.

The very next day I saw The Book of Mormon.  You cannot get a more different piece of theater. (Or so I thought.) As opposed to an intimate family drama, this is a wild, outrageous, brouhaha of a pop musical playing in the elaborate and beautiful Eugene O'Neil theater.  The most important thing I've got to say about Mormon is... it's funny as Hell.  Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, set about to do what they always do so well: point out how F***ing ridiculous a cultural phenomena is and laugh at it.   And they do it well.  And thoroughly.   That being said.... I think they also succeeded in doing something else.

Now, maybe I'm giving the writers too much credit, and you can call me crazy, but I felt that aside from all the delicious blasphemy, the play hit on some serious issues.  Granted, I feel that way about South Park as well.  Namely, who decides what is "acceptable" religious belief.  When does a religion cease to be a cult and start becoming a faith?  And does it matter if its made up?  Rather surprisingly, the play seems to make the argument that it doesn't really matter if what people believe is objectively true, what matters is how it inspires them to live their lives.  Come on, one character says, It's a metaphor. You didn't really think he f****d a frog, did you?  Take from that what you will.  Unbelievably, this seemingly silly musical was dealing with some very heavy social issues.  AIDS, rape, starvation in Africa, and, just like in Falling, the characters are undergoing a serious test and a crisis of faith.  Their relationship with and understanding of faith is vastly different at the end of the play than it was at the beginning. 

The music: great.  The story: coherent.  The acting: delightful.  My favorite number, personally, was the "creepy Mormon Hell dream," which apparently is something that happens to all Mormons after they've been naughty.  Devils in sparkly onesies dance around with infamous characters from history, and the devil rocks out to electric guitar.  (OMG is he really giving Hitler a bj??) Maybe this was extra funny for me because, as a Catholic, I have also had the creepy Hell dream a time or two.  It was very cathartic. The most shocking number in the show was the second one.  This was a happy-sounding parody of the Lion King's 'Hakuna Matata," but rather than singing "no worries for the rest of your days," the Africans were happily responding to their AIDS crisis and their genocidal war lord with a resounding "F*** you God."  I think the writers placed this song second so that anyone who was going to walk out on the show would leave early and not disturb the rest of us later on.  That's just a theory. 

Now, something I would really like to discuss is the value of profane and "dirty" theater.  I know I don't have to make this argument to my theater colleagues, but some of you who chose to read on, despite my warning, may be thinking "This sounds terrible.  I can't believe they are showing that onstage." I've also had some rather upsetting conversations with people who thought Spring Awakening was pornographic. So because this is my blog, and because I am a theater professional, I would like to take this time to defend R-rated (and even X-rated) theater.  Because I might write some one day.  And I want you to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing, even if you don't like it.

First off: the fuzzy musical is a very recent development in theater.  In fact, its very American.  Theater from its inception has been an examination of the lived human experience, and that means even the ugly parts.  The ancient Greeks were not writing Mama Mia.  In fact, Aristotle would have thrown that out with disgust.  The first plays were tragedies.  Hard core, wrench your guts out, tragedies.  And by the way, Oedipus had sex with his mother.  Never forget that.  When comedy did start to arise, it was all political.  Aristophanes mocked civic leaders of his day, and commented on the futility of war, much like the makers of South Park.  There was no room for meaningless romantic comedies in the theater.  Why? Because theater is POWERFUL and it can do things.  The power of art should not be wasted on fluff.

Second: Sex and profanity in the the theater is nothing new.  Once again, in ancient Greece, the comedies were dirty.  Dirty.  Dirty.  The whole premise of Lysistrata is that the women withhold sex in order to end the war.  That play has more words for a man's member than I know in English.  And there is a long, drawn out, scene in which a man prepares to have sex with his wife.  On stage.  Oh, and they had wooden boners.  So if you think Spring Awakening is offensive, don't go see the classics.  (Note: Spring Awakening is a classic play by Frank Wedekind written in 1890.  The recent musical is an adaptation.)  Also, the greatest playwright of all times, in my opinion, William Shakespeare was no stranger to making a dirty joke.  Get a good annotated copy of Romeo and Juliet and take a good look at... everything the nurse says.  It's not subtle, and it wouldn't have been so in his time.  People loved that stuff then, and they still do.  And he uses every equivalent to the f-bomb that existed in his time.  And he challenged God, often. And he let those characters rage at God, if the situation called for it, which it often does. So if you can't see blasphemy onstage, you can't see Shakespeare.  And if you don't see Shakespeare.... well, there's no remedy for that, unfortunately. 

Finally: As I've said before, theater represents life.  Sex, violence, humor, joy, and sadness are all parts of that life.  So please, don't say that some things shouldn't exist on stage.  If you don't like it, that's one thing.  But its important to understand that theater as purely entertainment is not the point of the art form.  It is not the rule, but rather the exception to the rule.  And when I say I like serious theater it is not because I am a pessimist but because I love theater for what it is. I love theater passionately for what it is. I love representing life as it is, and I did not enter this career in order to be escapist.  The life of a theater artist is too valuable to waste on escapism.    

Actually, I think life is too valuable to waste on escapism.  That's my opinion. 

 Now go out and see a great play!