Can we turn this brain off?!?! (TMI alert)

No wonder I'm not dreaming--I can barely sleep.  My brain is swirling, swirling, with a thousand things.  It's always like this, this time of year; I worry about work and our big annual event.  Will it be a nice evening?  Will our winners feel celebrated?  Will all the plans I made go well?  Will we make ANY money?  Arghhhh.  I also worry about the holidays, for some dumb reason.  I guess because I put such high expectations on them.  I want to make sure I get just the right gifts and for everyone to like their gifts, plus I want our time together to be stress-free and special.  How stupid to put stress on yourself over trying to be stress-free!!!  To add to the anxiety, I haven't been home all year, so I start to cry when I think about flying home and finally seeing my darling dad.

I also have yet another surgery coming up.  I know it's not complicated and that it's more cosmetic than health-related, but I'm still anxious.  I don't want to have more problems with the anesthetic, and I'm still unsure I want to have the nipple replacement.  I never loved my nipples to begin with, to be frank, so I just figured I wouldn't get new ones.  Or, if I did, I would just get the tattoos and be done with it.  Since Dr Vera Wang told me I'd need to get an adjustment to my right side, which is sagging and will apparently continue to drop further until she tightens the 'hammock' underneath, I wrapped my brain around having that done (not so much because it looks uneven, but because it's getting more and more uncomfortable), even though I'm afraid to have another surgery, but I haven't been able to wrap my brain around getting the nipples, too.  When I was trolling the message boards (yeah, yeah, I know I said I wouldn't do it anymore), I saw that normally a doctor takes tissue from another part of your body and uses it to construct the nipple.  Blech.  Unappealing for so many reasons.  Staph, anyone??  But I was just talking to Dr Vera Wang's office assistant and she seemed really shocked I wouldn't want to have the nipples replaceed.  "That's like getting a new Christmas tree but not putting the ornaments on!" she said.  Well, using a Christmas tree analogy is one way to get my attention.  Plus, she told me, Dr Vera Wang doesn't do the procedure with other tissue, she apparently saved some under my scars and will be using that.  So...more to think about.  The surgery is scheduled for three weeks from now, so I still have some time to decide.  I've never really been about how I look naked, but I suppose it makes sense to look as much like I did before as medically possible. 

I'm also kinda thinking about how I look more lately because I got a strange letter in the mail.  It isn't signed, but seems to be from someone who knows me.  It says they've long admired me and wish they had made a better effort to get together, and would I be amenable to trying now?  Even though they're now married?  A couple of pals thought it was just a sort of chain letter, since it's typed and had used an address label on the envelope.  But I don't know.  The letter mentions tennis (even my Roger), travel, red wine and theater.  It also mentions using a code word on Facebook.  So I feel vaguely uneasy that someone out there is waiting for something from me.  Something I don't think I'm able to give, for many reasons.  I have an idea who the letter-writer might be.  Putting the married part aside (and I really do actually only have one rule, no married men, learned that lesson the hard way),  even though I thought I was trying to open myself up to the possibility of being with someone eventually, the reality keeps me awake at night.   I had a therapist once tell me that I keep myself overweight and hide behind long hair and glasses because I'm afraid of intimacy.  OK, maybe.  Probably.  Still true, probably.  And now I REALLY have an excuse!  Why would anyone want to look at fake boobs??  Sigh.  I know a gentleman worth waiting for won't care, but I need to stop having doubts.  Put away the wall.  And probably stop reading Persuasion or watching the Hallmark Movie Channel...

But is this anonymous letter-writer the answer?  A step in the right direction?  Or will I feel even worse?  Yet more to keep me from sleeping.

Review - King Lear

I went last weekend to a preview of King Lear, starring Sam Waterston, at the Public Theater.  My, the renovations at the Public are amazing!  Having more than three bathroom stalls was almost a religious experience!!  J

Anyway, the show.  I’m a bit at a loss about how to describe it.  I reasonably enjoyed myself and think it’s a perfectly fine production of Lear.  I thought most of the actors were quite good, and the action was quickly-paced and very clear.  But there wasn’t much resonance for me and I’m struggling to figure out why.

Maybe it was the space—the show is in the Martinson, which is the really long theater downstairs with a very shallow playing area.  It seemed like there was never enough room and everyone was on the stage at the same time, whether they were in the same scene or not.

Maybe it was the set (such as it was)—I didn’t enjoy, in the extreme, the chain link curtain that was used as the prominent set piece.  It looked cool at first, but as each scene was played, after the actor came in and out through the curtain, it would rock back and forth and continue to ‘clink clink clink’ throughout the scene.  It started to become very distracting.  The curtain was on a track and would move forward or back, depending on how much playing space was needed at the front.  Clink clink clink.  Then (and here comes a staging spoiler), during the storm scene, it all came crashing down.  Well, ok, that was pretty interesting, for a minute, but I don’t think it justified all the annoyance throughout the first act.

Maybe it was the placement of the intermission—I don’t remember seeing a Lear with the intermission after the blinding of Gloucester.  That seems really late in the game to me.  The first act was a tad over two hours, then we had a little over an hour left in the second act.  I didn’t really think the show felt too long, but…I don’t know.  And if that’s where the intermission usually is, well, perhaps it just didn’t work for me this time.

Maybe it was the direction:  I think maybe the first act was paced TOO quickly.  Everything kept racing along and it was hard to develop a relationship or even any feeling about anything, it was all happening so fast.  I realize that when you have a two hour plus first act, things need to move, but this really sped by.  It almost became comic (and the audience did start laughing at pretty inappropriate moments).  The second act was a bit more leisurely, and I could start to empathize with all the horrible things that happen, but I think by then, I hadn’t been engaged enough to REALLY feel.

I did think Sam Waterston was terrific.  His first entrance is wonderful and sets up the character beautifully.  His gradual diminishment as the play progresses is done very well.  Michael McKean, as Gloucester, was also grand.  I would say the one very moving moment for me was between Waterston and McKean, towards the end of the play.  Really lovely.  I wish there were more such moments.  John Douglas Thompson was wise and warm as Kent, Arian Moayed (who I loved in Bengal Tiger) was very good as Edgar, though he had some wacky staging to contend with.  I thought all three ladies were fine, but the young gal playing Cordelia has some posture issues (what IS it with young actresses and slouching?!?!), so it made her opening costume look quite unfortunate.  I think there’s a fine Fool in Bill Irwin, but I had a really hard time understanding what he was saying.  He seemed to be mumbling and swallowing his words a lot, so it became difficult to catch his dialogue.  I will say he had wonderful chemistry with Sam Waterston, so they had some nice moments together.  I just wish I could’ve understood him more.  The Fool does have some wonderful dialogue.  Oh well.

I feel like I complained a lot, and I honestly did enjoy myself.  I just wish I had liked it more.  Is it possible to enjoy a production but not really like it?  If so, I think that’s what happened here.  Maybe after more performances, it will take off.  I hope so.

Review - Lemon Sky

I was very fortunate to get a ticket to the Keen Company’s production of Lanford Wilson’s Lemon Sky.  It’s being done at the Clurman (and really, they need to work on temperature control there), and closes this weekend.

I thought the production was fantastic.  Wilson’s autobiographical piece about spending six months as a teen with his estranged father, is really stunningly theatrical, with flashbacks and repetition and flash forwards and breaking of the fourth wall.  It’s amazingly fluid but you always know where we are in time.  Hats off to the director for keeping everything so clear.  Actor Keith Nobbs, as our narrator, Alan, is spectacular.  He is not only telling the story as a rueful adult, but he is also charmingly befuddled and questioning as his teen self.  Kevin Kilner is brutal and charming at the same time as the father.  You can see why Alan is so conflicted about his memories and feelings—you see the possibility, and weep for the shattered reality.  Kellie Overbey is also terrific as the stepmother.  Warm and maternal, yet hard-headedly practical.  It’s a rather tough line to walk. 

The gal playing the troubled Carol is a tad less successful—I just think she’s not a seasoned enough actress to mine all the layers.  The gal playing the repressed Penny was terrific—she reminded me of Jennifer Jason Leigh; so much simmering underneath the surface.  And very very funny.  Oh, and the little guys playing the stepbrothers were adorable and heartbreaking at the same time.

A memory play, the scenes are almost scrapbook-like.  It IS like memory—remembering bits and pieces of things, with flashes of insight, then adding and subtracting once you feel like the memory has achieved perfection.  It’s achingly poignant, and builds beautifully to a devastating finish.  I was audibly sobbing through the end, and actually kept crying and had to go to the restroom after the show to stop. 

The language is gorgeous, as per usual in a Lanford Wilson play.  You listen, almost reveling in the everyday beauty of the dialogue, then suddenly you’re hit with a haunting image that is so perfect, your breath stops.  Plus, it’s all so authentic.  There was one line where I laughed out loud, because I could just hear Lanford saying it.  

Hardly anyone writes anymore in the beautifully poetic way that Lanford did.  I hope we get to see many revivals of his work in the near future—it’s just sad that he won’t get to see them, too.  If you’re not doing anything tonight or tomorrow, you should head to the Clurman.

Reviews and a weekend report

I was very fortunate to join a friend at MTC a couple of weeks ago to see Zoe Kazan’s new play We Live Here.  I wasn’t going to review it because I thought it was really early in the preview process, but it actually opened soon after, so…review away.  Also, I actually saw Kazan's first play, Absalom, at Humana Fest a couple of years ago, and did wonder what she would bring us next.

This will sound mean, but I will say it anyway—I don’t think this play would’ve been produced on MTC’s mainstage if it had been written by someone with a different last name.  There, I said it.  Oh, ew, I kinda hate to be so mean about it.  But there was nothing special about this piece.  Nothing.  Like her other play, it’s a rather dull view of an artistic upper-middle-class family.  They just talk and talk and talk, in circles, then it ends.  Nothing really happens, there’s no drama (there's plot, but no drama), just a lot of unpleasant people who do stupid things.  The previous play was about a family of writers, this one is about a family of musicians.  Same unpleasant/stupid ratio. 

I will say that the play has some reasonably entertaining dialogue and it is cast very well.  God love my boyfriend, Mark Blum, who very nearly makes a fully-rounded character out of practically nothing.  He has a lovely monologue in the first act, and I thought, oh, that’s an interesting idea.  Went nowhere.  In fact, most of the actors have a monologue with an vaguely interesting idea that goes nowhere (though, because I love Mark Blum so much, I’ll say he did the best job with his J ).  Oh, and the set is gorgeous.  My main memory of the piece is wanting to live on the set.  With Mark Blum.

Unfortunately, I think I feel the same way about Zoe Kazan’s writing that I do about her acting—it’s all surface and posing, with no depth.  I’ll just have to learn to live with the fact that I’m mean and be done with it.

Last night, I caught a preview of David Henry Hwang’s new play, Chinglish.  The play was quite a hit at the Goodman in Chicago earlier this year and I have my fingers crossed it will be a hit here.

I really had a grand time at the play.  It’s so funny, yet says a lot.  As usual, David is commenting on East vs West/Old China vs New China, and how we hear what we want to hear, or understand what we want to understand.  All’s fair in love and war, and politics and business and relationships…very interesting stuff.  Fear and suspicion, adaptability and resignation.  Lots of meaty, meaty stuff.

The script is in English and Mandarin, with supertitles up above on the ingenious set.  All of the actors, except for the American protagonist, speak fluent Mandarin, and all of the easy chatter in that language adds to the multi-layered effect of the script.

The plot deals with an American businessman going to China to drum up some business.  It all seems pretty straightforward, with hysterical scenes dealing with bad translators during business meetings, but as we get further into the story, there are some startling revelations and everyone’s motivations come into question.  I liked how I didn’t know where in the heck this story was going to go.

The actors are terrific.  Gary Wilmes, as the American businessman, has just the right balance of American arrogance and naiveté.  Jennifer Lim, as the vice minister, is fantastic.  She strikes so many levels in her performance, yet always seems inscrutable yet likable.  She walks quite a tightrope, and we still end up on her side.  Stephen Pucci as the consultant is quite good, with an interesting arc, and so are the other actors who play multiple roles.

The first act does seem a tad long to me, but other than that, I think this is a first-rate play getting a first-rate production.  I hope it’s here for awhile, because I’d love to see it again.  I think it opens next week—fingers crossed it gets good notices.  David is such a nice guy, so it would be nice for him to have a hit for a change.  ;)

Last weekend, I went with a beloved gal pal to see our other beloved gal pal in a play at the Provincetown Theater.  It was my first trip to P-town and it certainly won't be my last.  Even though it's a schlep to get out there, the charms far outweigh the annoyance.  As geography is not my strong suit, I had no idea that P-town was all the way out to the ocean!  Looking at the map on my phone's GPS made me worry we were going to drive straight into the water!  :)

We made really good time until we were just outside of Wellfleet, where there apparently was some sort of oyster fest.  Since there seems to be only one road in or out of Wellfleet, with only one or two traffic lights on it, traffic crawled for miles.  We must've been in the traffic for nearly an hour.  Once we finally got to our hotel, the Harbor Hotel, we were so relieved to get out of the car.  And we were very happy with the beautiful view of the cape in front of the hotel.  The hotel has recently been renovated, and it has a nice, cheery, relaxing atmosphere.  With very comfortable pillows.

We went straight into town and wandered around.  It was lovely.  The weather was perfect, we got a lobster roll and strolled over to a beach.  The architecture is lovely and there is a lot of charm all around.  And pedestrians rule the streets!  Hooray!  Before heading to my gal pal's show, my other gal pal and I wandered to the Pilgrim Monument.  We got there too late to tour the museum, but we got some gorgeous photos nonetheless.  Actually, most of my pictures are gorgeous, if I do say so myself.  Everything just popped into beautiful view for my camera lens (and my iPhone's Hipstamatic).

My gal pal was of course brilliant in the play (no need to review it--no perspective on brilliant gal pals), then we went out with some of the cast for dinner at another quaint restaurant.  I ate more fish.  I don't think I've ever had fish for two meals in one day, ever.  It sure was tasty, though!

Sunday, we slept in, then went back into town to check out the houses and shops we missed on Saturday.  I bought several gifts for my family (Christmas shopping is almost done!!), and one of my lovelies bought ME a gift!  A beautiful piece of Portuguese handpainted ceramics.  So beautiful--I love it.  I have the best friends ever.  We also drove over to the ocean at Race Point and Herring Cove.  It was another gorgeous day (although really windy) and it was the perfect end to our brief vacation to be together at such a beautiful place.  And we'll have to go back, not only because it's spectactular there (this was truly one of my top two or three vacation experiences), but also because we were denied fried dough and pumpkin ice cream.  Next trip.  Enjoy the photos!

Dreams.

In the old days, I used to have really wacky dreams.  A friend gave me a notebook, so I could jot down the best of the best and I would share them with people.  Who can forget my dreams about Oompa Loompas in Christmas Carol?  Or the one featuring Richard Gere, the Dalai Lama and Amtrak?  The Coterie Players?  Anyway, the point is, I don't seem to be dreaming anymore.  Or, if I am, I don't remember them.  And the memory of the dreams seems to have stopped sometime around my surgery.  Is this something to think about?  Something to tell my doctors?  Am I getting good sleep?  Too much?  Not enough?

I really started thinking about this last night/this morning, after attending the memorial service for Doric Wilson.  I didn't know Doric for very long, and I didn't know him all that well, but we enjoyed each other (I think).  We appreciated that we loved a lot of the same people, and I think our cheerleading was complementary to each other.  I respected his place in theater history and he appreciated that.  Plus, I was always a good audience for his glorious stories!  Oh, and I was the lucky recipient of one of those Street Theater DVDs...

I'm so glad I took him up on an invitation from late last year, to go see Jean-Claude van Itallie's new piece at La Mama.  It was the first (and only) time we spent together outside of TOSOS.  I had a great time, just chatting with him, and watching him enjoy the company of so many like-minded theater people.  Plus, he introduced me to Jean-Claude, which was fantastic.  I also ran into Doric at Charles Busch's holiday offering Times Square Angel, and we had a giggle together at my being practically the only gal in line to get in.  He was also more than kind to me the last time I saw him--at darling Robert's cabaret show, the night everyone generously donated money to help me out after my surgery and the fire.  My memory is that we said "love you" as we parted.  It makes me happy to remember it that way.

I was doing the stage directions for the reading of Joshua Conkel's play I Wanna Destroy You the night we found out that Doric had died.  It was such a surreal experience--all of us were worried, because we knew Doric wouldn't just not show up for a reading.  But we got started, since we had a packed house.  We kept going, yet looked up every time someone darted into, then out of, the room.  It seemed so unfair that we didn't get to say goodbye, but I don't know.  Maybe it's better that way.  This way, he's always present, always vital, and we can imagine he'll be at the next reading for sure. 

The memorial service last night was lovely, filled with touching stories about Doric by his friends from the old days, and also really heartwrenching memories from young playwrights whose lives were touched by Doric.  To hear from someone "yes, you are a writer, and what you write matters" is so important.  All of these kids were so moved and choked up by their memories of Doric's validating them--it was sad and hopeful at the same time.  The scenes from Doric's last play, The Boy Next Door, were really terrific and it's so unfair I won't get to watch Doric watch a production of it.  I'll admit to wishing the house had been more full; he paved the way for so many who don't even know it.  It's up to those of us left behind to get the word out.

As I was on the subway home, the tribute that touched me the most and that swirled in my brain, was the one from Jean-Claude van Itallie.  He ended his speech by (I'm paraphrasing now) telling us how he asked Doric why they had never gotten together in the past.  Doric said he didn't know.  Jean-Claude said well, what about now?  And Doric refused, saying something like that time has passed.  That struck me like a slap on the face.  It's so sad that Jean-Claude was so brave to put himself out there, and it's so sad that Doric didn't think it could happen.  Doric was so brave, yet, here, maybe he wasn't.  (I can't know for sure, of course, but I'm projecting).  How many times have I told people 'oh, that ship has passed' when I'm asked why I'm not seeing anyone?  I've resigned myself to staying single and not getting together with anyone, mainly because I'm not brave enough.  And, well, hell, that's just stupid.  So all these thoughts are just flying on the subway ride home, then I get home and go to sleep.  And, to bring the post full-circle, I dream.  About a man.  One that I probably shouldn't be dreaming about, but still.  I think it's a start, an opening to something I had previously shut out, so I have yet another thing to thank Doric for...

Magic Moments

I was thinking about doing a "reviews hall of fame" post or a "my favorite food photos" post, but then...Steve Jobs died.  I'm not much of a techno geek and the only Apple product I own is an iPhone (and not because of any ideology, but because my nephew and I can do Facetime), but I was struck by how sad so many people seem to be.  People who didn't know him personally.  I also have been struck by all of the lovely quotes by Jobs that are making the rounds on the 'web, especially the ones that came after his cancer diagnosis.  He seems to have taken a real 'live life to the fullest' approach, which is beautiful.  I frequently think that I could grab life by the throat a little more fully and stop getting bogged down in the day-to-day minutiae of living in NY.

On top of thinking these thoughts, I also caught a rerun of the movie French Kiss last night.  French Kiss is by no means a great movie, but it has a spectacular moment in it that always just takes my breath away, no matter how many times I've seen it.  So I decided to do a brief(ish) post about moments.  And maybe I'll be even more encouraged to make my every moment count.

Movie-wise, moments that strike me breathless every time include the scene in Sense and Sensibility when Alan Rickman comes into Kate Winslet's sick room and she thanks him.  The stricken yet relieved look on his face is heartbreaking--you see a whole life flit across his face in that one moment.  Gorgeous.  Of course, I could probably do a post on all-Alan Rickman moments, since he's a god, but that can wait... :)

In French Kiss, it's all silly and goofy and Meg Ryan is annoying, but suddenly there's a moment on a train, where Kevin Kline realizes what he feels for her.  The look on his face--love, passion, disbelief, fear--is astounding.  It always makes me wonder what that movie could've been, with someone other than Meg Ryan as the female lead...

Oh, another Kate Winslet movie:  Titanic.  Yes, Titanic.  And my favorite moment has nothing to do with Jack or Rose (btw, has anyone ever counted how many times the names Jack and Rose are mentioned?  The sheer volume is an indicator of how unfinished the screenplay must've been when they started filming).  It's all about Victor Garber for me.  He is so incredibly real and moving in that film--I would much rather have seen a movie about his character, starring him.  The most-sparkling moment for me is the look on Victor's face after Kate asks him if he's going to make a try to get off the boat.  Chilling.  That moment is followed closely by the mini-scene dramatizing the affection he shows the previously-unseen maid who isn't wearing her life vest.  Jeeminy.  He should've been nominated for maybe five Oscars for that flick...

Courage Under Fire.  Denzel Washington should've been nominated for an Oscar for his performance in this movie.  I think he's incredible here.  Glorious moment for me is when Denzel is talking to the soldier in the hospital and he realizes the soldier is giving himself a morphine overdose because the episode they're discussing is just so painful.  Sometimes I find Washington to be an actor commenting on his characters, like he's much smarter than the character, and isn't he a good actor to be playing him?  But in this movie, I feel like we're all on the journey together, and Denzel is a little rough, a little unfinished, a lot sad and he allows us inside during all the discoveries.  I like that.

Theater-wise, it's harder for me to remember moments, because the experience is so ephemeral anyway, but I do have images that are imblazoned on my brain.  Some of my very favorite moments include when Spalding Gray said 'god bless you' to me when I sneezed during Morning, Noon and Night; the finale of The Scottsboro Boys, when the boys turn around and they're in black-face--it's horrifying and chilling and scary and theatrical and wonderful, all at the same time.  I saw the show three or four times and every time, I found this moment to be so thrilling.

I enjoyed Triumph of Love well enough--I thought the cast was grand, the music was fine and the production was well-done.  But all of a sudden, Betty Buckley came downstage and sang "Serenity," and the production came to electric life.  I just wanted the production I was watching to stop time, and I wanted to see a new play, about that woman, and where that song came from.  It was amazing.

Same with the song "In Lily's Eyes" in The Secret Garden.  I was enjoying the production (it's one of my favorite childhood books), but then Mandy Patinkin and Robert Westenberg came downstage center and sang that song.  It was thrilling and raised the bar so high.  I could barely breathe throughout the song. 

Tom Stoppard has a couple of my moments--the beginning of Coast of Utopia, with one of the actors as an old man, sitting in a chair high above the stage, and suddenly there's swirling music and swirling cloth, and the chair turns and descends into the cloth.  Then the cloth is pulled off-stage and you see a mirrored stage with seemingly hundreds of people onstage.  I can't describe it very well, but it was stunning.  Then, in Rock n Roll, there is a moment between Rufus Sewell and Sinead Cusack where they realize they've missed out on so much over the course of 25 years.  Heartwrenching and it's just a look between them.

The end tableau of Journey's End.  The lights come up and the cast is standing in a line, each in a spotlight.  Then the scrim comes down, with names of the dead reaching as far as you can see, all the while, the sounds of bombs get louder and louder.  It was devastating.  In the best theatrical way.

Too many moments in Sondheim shows to list now, maybe someday I'll do a 'oh my god, I love Sondheim' post, but for now I'll just say one word:  "Epiphany."

And the moment that always makes me cry and the one that made me want to be in the theater--in Gypsy, when the strobe lights start blinking and the young kids go off stage, and the older kids come on stage.  So simple, so magical.  It makes me cry every.single.time.  I'm easy.  :)