Dress Codes

Dress Codes (October 2, 2009 – January 17, 2010), the International Center of Photography’s third triennial of photography and video, was a fantastic exhibition exploring fashion, in the broadest sense. It exhibited the works of 34 photographers from around the world; many of them live and work in New York. Here are a few of my favorite pieces.

• German artist Thorsten Brinkmann photographed himself in strange costumes with his head always covered by an object: a flower pot, a leather bag, a tennis racket cover. There’s something about a masked face that’s unsettling—bank robbers with balaclavas or stockings on their heads—but Brinkmann’s photographs have an eeriness that’s alluring.

• In his photographic series Shanghai Living, Hu Yang, who was born in Shanghai in 1951, captured ordinary Shanghainese, from unemployed people to professors, in their own homes. He also asked them about their current living situation and greatest ambition and fear. The photographs offer such insight into their lives. There’s an artist who’s content with her simple life; she has no goals and dreams. There’s a vendor who’s doing it tough—his family lives on battercakes, pickles, and water, and when the children crave meat, he gives them an egg. There’s a university professor who’s financially pressured but enjoys his life—jade vessels, seeing friends, painting, writing, and calligraphy. And a couple who have tried to save money on wallpaper by covering their apartment’s walls with newspaper.

• Milagros de la Torre’s photographs of designer bullet-proof clothing hanging on coat hangers—jackets, as well as loose, white shirts—are intriguing. The clothing, which looks deceptively “normal,” is sold in luxury boutique stores in Bogotá and Mexico City, and worn by politicians (including Barack Obama, reportedly, on Inauguration Day), and the rich and famous.

• I loved David Rosetzky’s video portrait of Cate Blanchett, which he created for the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. In this somewhat hypnotic video, filmed in the Sydney Theatre Company’s lofty rehearsal space, Cate, in cargo pants, a tank top, and no makeup,  plays with her hands, does a pokey, understated dance, moves a chair around, puts a loose shirt on and takes it off, and talks (“who I am, it’s constantly shifting,” “people are wildly inconsistent and contradictory,” “you have to know that something can be interpreted in a million ways”).

International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street, New York

From the series Shanghai Living (2005) by Hu Yang

Il Mondo Della Luna

Review published by Show Business Weekly.
Issue 577, February 3 – February 9, 2010.

Il Mondo Della Luna
An opera by Joseph Haydn
Artistic Director / Conductor Neal Goren
Director Diane Paulus
Gotham Chamber Opera
Hayden Planetarium, American Museum of Natural History
www.gothamchamberopera.org

Review by Lucy Butcher

An opera set on the moon, staged under the stars — makes sense, right? Two years ago, Gotham Chamber Opera’s conductor and artistic director, Neal Goren, conceived the idea to present Il Mondo Della Luna, Joseph Haydn’s 1777 comic opera about the world on the moon, at the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium — and this month, audiences experienced the result.

A tidy 90 minutes without an intermission, Diane Paulus’s production of Il Mondo Della Luna features the best parts of Haydn’s score. It’s a rarely performed opera that contains some invigorating music that deserves to be heard. In this sound and light show, we can keep an eye on the performers — the action takes place on a small stage, and the orchestra is elevated — while gazing up at starry displays on the spherical top of the intimate 350-seat Space Theater.

The opera tells the story of nobleman Buonafede who’s not keen on the idea of his daughters, Clarice and Flaminia, marrying their lovers — fake astronomer Ecclitico and cavalier Ernesto — or his maid Lisetta marrying the servant Cecco. But all is resolved in a pseudo lunar world. With the help of a sleeping potion, Buonafede is tricked into thinking he’s been transported to the moon; there, he allows the three young couples to marry.

Philip Bussmann’s video and production design is stellar; we’re immersed in planets and galaxies and satellites, black and pink and green skies, and even swirling, snaking psychedelic patterns. Anka Lupes’s costumes are also a joy. In the opera’s first half, the performers are smartly clothed — Ecclitico looks quite the mad scientist in a white coat and black stockings, Ernesto is gorgeous in a ruffle-front white shirt and shimmery blue coat, and the ladies wear frilly, puffy dresses. When the action moves to the moon, the performers appear in outlandish white costumes, embedded with tubes of lighting, and sparkly headpieces. Three dancers wielding brightly lit hula-hoops add to the spectacle.

Some of Gotham’s singers are clearly stronger than others. The star of this production is soprano Hanan Alattar, as Clarice, who sings a beautiful love duet with Nicholas Coppolo, as Ecclitico, in the final act. The two seem to have an electric connection. Gotham’s fairly average orchestra is compensated by an excellent harpsichordist.

The lunar spell of Il Mondo Della Luna is sometimes broken: the production sags in one or two places, the ladies’ contemporary dance routines become a little tiring, and some harsh stage lighting streams over the audience early in the show. Also, the subtitles are positioned too high on the sphere (and, even more awkwardly for those sitting in the center, only on the sides). But the idea to stage this opera in a planetarium is clever, and, overall, the production makes for a dreamy and memorable experience.

Crater Land: Nicholas Coppolo and Hanan Alattar in Il Mondo Della Luna. Photo: Richard Termine

Lear

Review published by Show Business Weekly.
Issue 576, January 27 – February 2, 2010.

Lear
Written and directed by Young Jean Lee
Young Lean Lee’s Theater Company
Soho Rep
86 Franklin Street
www.sohorep.org

Review by Lucy Butcher

Young Jean Lee’s Lear is billed as a heartbreaking tragedy that explores the concept of adult children turning their backs on their aging fathers’ suffering, but this intriguing idea gets lost in the play’s disjointed array of threads.

The five-actor musing on Shakespeare’s King Lear centers on old Lear’s daughters — Goneril (Okwui Okpokwasili), Regan (April Matthis) and Cordelia (Amelia Workman) — and Gloucester’s sons — Edmund (Pete Simpson) and Edgar (Paul Lazar). The actors, dressed in lavish Elizabethan costumes, sit in an ornate candlelit parlor, indifferent to the fact that their fathers are out in the storm. Using distinctly un-Shakespearean language, they chatter in pairs and groups, and give monologues that are impossible to extract any meaning from. Edmund complains that anyone who isn’t skeletal looks fat to him; he splutters, “I suck! Everything sucks!” He and Edgar agree that garter belts are “like the hottest thing ever.” Cordelia explains to Goneril that she broke up with France because “one day he just grossed me out.”

Towards the end of the play, the actors step out of character. Lazar, in an uninspiring appeal, asks the audience to consider what they are doing with their lives and to “please enjoy this time.” Okpokwasili delivers the King Lear scene in which the title character cries out at the sight of Cordelia, dead: “This feather stirs; she lives!” Then, the actors play out the famous “Sesame Street” episode where Big Bird tries to come to terms with the death of Mr. Hooper. Finally, in the play’s most affecting moment, Simpson gives a heart-wrenching address about his relationship with his dying father. “Nobody loves you like your father does,” he says, describing how he sees his father struggle, yet finds it hard to spend time with him. Rock music and blazing lights symbolize the passage of time, and the play ends.

Lear is extremely well acted, but a bit of a disorganized mess; it doesn’t serve up anything important to consider until it’s nearly over. Apart from the final scene, the most coherent moments in the show are the readings from King Lear and “Sesame Street,” which, rather than strengthening Lee’s mix of ideas, remind us of more captivating storytelling.

The Offspring: Okwui Okpokwasili and April Matthis in Young Jean Lee's Lear (photo: Blaine Davis).

Rough Sketch

Review published by Show Business Weekly.
Issue 576, January 27 – February 2, 2010.

Rough Sketch
Written by Shawn Nacol
Directed by Ian Morgan
Rude Mechanicals Theater Company
59E59 Theaters
59 East 59th Street
www.59e59.org

Review by Lucy Butcher

In Shawn Nacol’s Rough Sketch, two animators, holed up at Doodle Ranch Studios between Christmas and New Year, try to make progress on an overdue picture called “Coffee Beanies.” The two-actor play starts off promisingly, with an engaging opening scene. Barbara arrives at the office — which is cluttered with posters, mugs, toys, action figures, and drawings — and proceeds to turn on her computer and unpack water bottles, protein bars, and pills from her bag. She thinks she’s alone and bristles when she notices someone in the next cubicle: Dex, a colleague she’s never spoken to before. There’s some sharp dialogue as they come to terms with each other: Barbara: “I work poorly in groups.” Dex: “I’m not a group.” Barbara: “I meant other people.” Soon, Barbara proposes they have sex, and, after some matter-of-fact discussion about the pros and cons, they do, against the office snack machine.

Unfortunately, there’s nowhere to go from here. The rest of the play, which tries a little too hard to be a “deranged comedy,” moves at a very slow pace as Barbara and Dex bicker and banter, engaged in a creative war. In between exchanges about relationships, careers and goals, which are peppered with a couple of witty remarks, there are attempts to be deep — Barbara wants to make an important and artistic film that empowers children, while Dex believes animation should be fun and optimistic — but these insights are hollow and leave us with little to ponder. Although the dialogue is constant — in fact, it allows barely a moment to breathe — we never really get to know the characters.

The play is well acted, however. Tina Benko is excellent as the uptight, awkward, over-literal Barbara, a self-confessed hater of snuggles and hugs. Matthew Lawler makes a competent Dex, an ex-drunk, ex-husband, whose life is consumed by digital animation. But at nearly two hours with an intermission, the play needs some significant editing to hold our attention. Rough Sketch might have worked as, well, a sketch, but instead it’s an overdrawn narrative, which says too much while saying very little.

Stop Motion: Matthew Lawler and Tina Benko in Rough Sketch. Photo: J. Cherrae Photography

The Barber of Seville

Review published by Show Business Weekly.
Issue 574, January 13 – January 19, 2010.

The Barber of Seville
Written by Gioacchino Rossini
Directed by Teresa K. Pond
Conductor David Rosenmeyer
Bleecker Street Opera
45 Bleecker Street
212-239-6200
www.bleeckerstreetopera.org

Review by Lucy Butcher

At a time when many theater companies are closing their doors, the Bleecker Street Opera is just beginning its life. And judging by its second production, a lively rendition of The Barber of Seville, Gioacchino Rossini’s much-loved 1816 Italian comic opera, the future looks bright.

In Seville, Spain, the city’s factotum, Figaro, advises Count Almaviva to disguise himself to win the love of Rosina, who’s trapped by her controlling guardian, Dr. Bartolo. It’s a 200-year-old love triangle that’s as relevant as ever, with clandestine love letters rather than text messages flying around. Without lavish costumes or sets, just a flimsy house façade chaotically erected by Fiorello and friends in the opening scene, the Bleecker Street troupe carries off the production with its energy, fiery singing, and comedic sensibilities, taking the audience on a rollicking ride.

An incarnation of Amato Opera, which closed last year, the Bleecker Street Opera gives singers of varying skill and experience the opportunity to perform. Baritone William Browning makes a strong entrance as the cocky Figaro. In the popular aria “Largo al factotum,” which has been parodied in many animated cartoons, he sings about the joys of being a barber of quality, and what a merry life he has.

Soprano Jordan Wentworth Farrar brings an extra dimension to the demanding role of Rosina, a hysterical woman teetering on the edge: She warns that “if you touch my weak spot, I become a viper.” Bass-baritone Ivan Amaro makes a possessive Dr. Bartolo, who works himself up into a babbling mess as he threatens to lock up Rosina for good.

Tenor Anthony Daino, the hopelessly lovelorn Count Almaviva, shows off his comic talents in various disguises designed to fool Bartolo. But perhaps the star of the production is lanky bass Nathan Baer as the dubious-looking, black-clothed Basilio, who fuels Bartolo’s suspicions about the Count in “La calunnia è un venticello,” which he sings with great nuance, flexibility and vigor.

With so much gusto exuded by the performers, the Bleecker Street Opera’s Barber of Seville seems to have more of an Italian flavor than a Spanish one. And though Rossini’s well-known score was performed a little shakily at times by the orchestra, and a few singers lost their lines, this production is fun and engaging, and offers a spirited take on a timeless opera.

The Barber of Seville

Fourteen angels watch do keep

Hansel and Gretel was one of my favorite childhood stories, and I remember every page of the book clearly. So, I was very excited to see The Metropolitan Opera’s special holiday presentation of Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel (1893) on Christmas Eve. And doubly excited when I spotted Grace Coddington, the creative director of U.S. Vogue, entering the Opera House (the December 2009 issue features a beautiful Hansel and Gretel-inspired spread, “Little Girl and Boy Lost”).

Richard Jones’s Met production keeps the fairytale’s dark themes dark. It seems to unfold more like a play than an opera, but does justice to the beauty of Humperdinck’s score, with its fantastic overture and distinctive melodies, and Adelheid Wette’s libretto, in every way. Costumes are quirky and surreal, and backdrops are painted with fiery mouths and bloodied dinner plates.

The opera, sung in English, opens with Hansel (mezzo-soprano Angelika Kirchschlager) and Gretel (played excellently by soprano Miah Persson) squabbling in a tiny, grimy kitchen, complaining about their hunger, when their frazzled mother Gertrude (Rosalind Plowright) bursts  in and demands, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”. She scolds the children for mucking around and sends them out to pick strawberries (Wette softened the original Brothers Grimm fairytale, in which the stepmother convinces the children’s father to abandon them in the woods). Gertrude sings about the family’s poverty; there’s “no stock in the stock pot, no crust in the bin”. Her husband, played with gusto by baritone Dwayne Croft, returns home drunk, singing jovially from a distance.

Act II, set in the woods (represented by men in black suits, with tree roots on their heads), was magical. Mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson gave an outstanding performance as The Sandman, who sings a moving lullaby to the lost children. Hansel and Gretel together say a solemn and heartfelt evening prayer, which moved me to tears: “When at night I go to sleep, Fourteen angels watch do keep…” In an enchanting spectacle, the angels appear in the form of fat, clown-like chefs who stride in dreamily and set a long table with a white table cloth and silver dishes of food, with a fish-headed maître d’ looking on.

In Act III, things get truly dark as we enter the gingerbread house of the evil witch, played by tenor Philip Langridge in heavy costume. He’s been called a wacky version of Julia Child, and the gentleman next to me described him as Mrs. Doubtfire. He was a suitably nasty character, deserving of being pushed into the oven, but it was a little disturbing to see a body later brought out on a tray, black and baked to a crisp, by the triumphant siblings. The dead bodies of the witch’s previous victims come back to life, and all the children, with Hansel and Gretel’s parents, dance and live happily ever after.

The Metropolitan Opera’s Hansel and Gretel, December 14 – January 2
Metropolitan Opera House

From U.S. Vogue's "Little Girl and Boy Lost"

Sunny days on the big screen

This post is a little late, but…I met Bob from Sesame Street! Yes, Bob, Sesame Street’s resident music teacher and singer of that great song “People in Your Neighborhood”. He was introducing a film at “Sesame Street: A Celebration!”, a weekend film festival at BAMcinematek (December 11-12, 2009), and my friend and I ambushed him later. Bob McGrath seems like a genuine all-round nice guy, and it’s hard to believe he’s now 77, looking so good and still going strong after 40 years on the Street. Asked how it feels to age on television, he replied that he’s been married for 51 years, has 5 children, 8 grandchildren, and “life doesn’t get much better than that”. The festival screened classic films like “Big Bird in China” and “The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland”, and, most importantly, new films and documentaries celebrating the life of Sesame Street, with question and answer sessions with the films’ directors, puppeteers, and actors. I saw two films—the first was “Sesame Street at 40: Milestones on the Street”, a well-edited compilation of some of the show’s best moments, from the series’ first episode featuring an orange Oscar and a wacky Big Bird (it took Caroll Spinney some time to hone the character we know today), to clips from the most recent season, which included an appearance by the First Lady. And in between: Big Bird trying to understand the death of Mr Hooper; the moment when Snuffleupagus is revealed to be real, not imaginary; a hurricane on Sesame Street; little John John chatting to Herry Monster; Fat Blue complaining to Grover the Waiter that his alphabet soup is incomplete; recent parodies like “Meal or No Meal”, where the ultimate prize is a meal, not $1 million (a baker—not a banker—tempts the contestant with snacks along the way); and so much more. Sesame Street is one of the few television shows that has always been produced with real music, with real singers and musicians. The other film, “Sing! Sesame Musical Moments”, relived classics, parodies, and special guest appearances by artists such as Diana Ross, Paul Simon, R.E.M., Stevie Wonder, and Madeline Kahn, who sang an astoundingly good echo song with Grover in 1977. Ernie’s “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon”, Kermit’s “On My Pond”, The Beetles’ “Hey Food”, “Put Down the Ducky” with Hoots the Owl, Ernie’s “Dance Myself to Sleep”, and Grover’s “Wubba Wubba” are a few of the other classic musical numbers that were packed into this 80-minute compilation edited by Stephanie D’Abruzzo. All these Sesame Street videos are, thankfully, easy to find on the internet, but it was great to see them roll one after the other on the big screen—and meet Bob!

Sesame Street Film Festival

And He shall reign for ever and ever…

Saturday night’s performance of a seemingly sold out Messiah was sublime, though the chaotic queue at the Avery Fisher Hall box office that preceded it was rather un-joyous. A couple was arguing with a security guard who wouldn’t let them buy tickets for a future performance, an anxious woman in front of me kept saying “I NEED to get into that concert”, and the news at the ticket window that the cheapest seats were $70 was unhappy for many. But inside the hall, all that was forgotten as the music transported the audience to a much higher plane. George Frideric Handel composed his oratorio on the life of Christ in London  in 1741, and Charles Jennens assembled the text from passages in The Bible. The Messiah quickly became a success following its world premiere in Dublin 1742; The Dublin News Letter declared it to be a work that “far surpasses anything of that Nature, which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom”. Under the baton of Helmuth Rilling, the New York Philharmonic and the Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart gave a formidable performance of this truly affecting and uplifting composition. All the choruses were invigorating, particularly “For Unto Us a Child is Born” (which includes the contrasting “Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace!” passage), “Glory to God”, “His Yoke is Easy, His Burden is Light”, and, of course, “Hallelujah”, which the audience rose for in the standing tradition started by King George II at the performance of the Messiah at Covent Garden in 1743. The soloists were also fantastic, particularly countertenor Daniel Taylor, whose clear, angelic and perfectly bell-like voice shone in the Air “But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming”. And trumpeter Philip Smith gave an excellent solo in “The Trumpet Shall Sound”. I was swept up by this performance, and entered the blizzard raging outside the Lincoln Center on a high.

Handel’s Messiah, 15-19 December 2009
New York Philharmonic, Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center

Handel

Broken Embraces

Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos), the new Spanish-language film by Pedro Almodovar (Volver, Talk To Her, All About My Mother), is a bit of everything: a love story, thriller, comedy, and drama. Harry Caine (Lluís Homar) is a blind writer and filmmaker who abandoned his real name, Mateo Blanco, over a decade earlier when he lost his sight in a car crash. Hearing that Ernesto Martel (José Luis Gómez), a millionaire financier, has died, he recalls events in the past. Cut to the early nineties, and we meet Lena (Penelope Cruz), who, just for the money, is mistress to the aging Martel. Blanco and Lena fall for each other when she auditions for his film, and things get messy when Martel becomes jealous. Among other things, he gets his son to film Blanco and Lena’s liaisons, and hires a lipreader to interpret their conversations. The film is visually stunning: aerial shots of Blanco and Lena’s red car traveling the windy roads on the island of Lanzarote, the darkly-lit spiral staircase which Lena artfully tumbles down, and closeups of blinking eyes and photographs scattered in a drawer. Penelope Cruz is fantastic to watch, as always, and she takes on many roles in this film: actress, mistress, lover, dutiful daughter, and oppressed secretary. In one of the most entertaining moments of the film, she quietly registers her confusion, surprise, and then indifference at the sight of a motionless and dead-looking Martel. But despite Cruz’s performance and the beautiful art direction, I found this film, with all its twists and turns, hard to be drawn into; the busy plot, mix of genres, and host of characters distanced me from the drama and Lena’s ultimate fate. The complicated details and cleverness of it all got in the way of the story. For a thrilling love triangle done simply, give me Match Point any day. 3.5 stars out of 5.

Broken Embraces

La Bonne Soupe

I recently dined at La Bonne Soupe (thanks, Ros, for the recommendation!). One look at the website, with its nicely organized menu of quiches, soups, salads, omelettes, hamburgers, and crepes, all at reasonable prices, and I was on the subway, making my way uptown. I was pleased to be ushered through the downstairs dining area, which was a bit noisy (the tables, set quite close together, were packed with jovial diners), to a quieter table upstairs. There, I had difficulty selecting from the variety of options—should I have the Salade Niçoise ($12.95), a hamburger with pomme frites and salad ($13.95), or a soup, served with bread, salad, dessert, and a beverage ($17.95)? I settled on the Quiche Lorraine with salad ($11.95), and I was not disappointed. The circular quiche—just right for a light lunch—was creamy and perfectly seasoned on the inside, and golden around the edges. The salad was nicely dressed, and the fresh bread was delicious. La Bonne Soupe makes for a pleasant dining experience, with its informal ambiance, attentive waiters, colorful artwork on the walls, and charming, leafy outdoor terrace for the warmer months. Simple, value-for-money bistro fare—what could be better?

48 West 55th Street
New York, NY 10019

La Bonne Soupe