The clouds were shifting in those churning opening bars of the first piano concerto in D minor, and by the time pianist Peter Serkin made his entrance, tender and mysterious, they were parting to reveal snatches of stars. I felt the cool summer night’s breeze and the murmur of the tree next to me as the melody, romantic but never sappy (no pun intended), radiated out from the shed and filled up the darkness. The Romantics communed with nature and tried to capture it — the Pastoral Symphony is the result of Beethoven’s walks in the countryside — and Brahms could have easily been imagining a forest after sunset when he composed the music.

He did love grass, or at least its symbolism, setting part of his German Requiem to this text from the Old Testament: “For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away.” In the piano concerto’s expansive opening movement, I nearly cried at the beauty of the circle of fifths, which communicate the circle of life so honestly; green grass now, dead grass later, green grass again, and on it goes. After the intermission was more Brahms, his fourth symphony.

Everyone should take a trip to Tanglewood to experience the great composers, horizontally, under the stars.

Charlotte Bydwell

Woman of Leisure and Panic

soloNOVA Arts Festival

By Lucy Butcher

It’s hard not to be endeared by the silvery-eyed, golden-haired, and statuesque Charlotte Bydwell as she freaks out over her life in her delightful, autobiographical one-woman show, Woman of Leisure and Panic, which made its world premiere at the soloNOVA Arts Festival.

A Canadian-born choreographer, dancer, and actress, and a dance graduate of the Juilliard School, Bydwell is captivating on stage as she portrays her struggle, in New York City, to be creative, pursue her performing arts career, make enough money to pay the rent, eat right and stay trim, spend time with family, and maintain some hint of a love life.

In the opening scene, to the strains of “Tara’s Theme” from Gone With the Wind, Bydwell, wearing a leotard, sneakers, and an enormous pale pink ball gown, sits with a wistful smile on her face and a dreamy look in her eyes. She floats over to her laptop, where she starts thinking out loud and comes to the conclusion that you can go from nobody to somebody with a single phone call. Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind” kicks in, and she’s all pumped, dancing energetically like no one’s watching.

From there, Bydwell sweeps us up into her chaotic world where she’s at the mercy of her iPhone and her calendar for the month, which is laid out on a giant piece of butcher’s paper. Every time her phone rings, her planned creative and leisure time gets eroded as she frantically schedules in waitressing shifts, auditions, rehearsals, performances, and more workout sessions, until her calendar looks every bit as panicked as she does.

She accidentally ends a phone call with her boss by saying “love you,” does some frenzied mathematical calculations as she tries to figure out if she has any spare cash, and goes out on a dinner date where she obsesses over what to order, finally deciding on the lamb (“I’m a sucker for some braised meat”). Alarm bells ring, and she’s dragging herself across the floor and doing urgent sit-ups; she’s up late texting her date when she should be getting her nine hours’ beauty sleep.

In Leisure and Panic, Bydwell proves that she’s as much an actress and comedian as she is a dancer. In one of the most brilliant scenes, she’s feeling all motivated as she heads home on the train to the beat of the Jay-Z song. When a train delay announcement is made, her body language changes completely. With slouched shoulders, she shuffles along with a miserable look on her face, clearly not feeling the lyrics: “These streets will make you feel brand new; the lights will inspire you.” It’s funny stuff.

Bydwell is a natural, compelling storyteller and a very personable, genuine, all-around performer. Her portrayed quest for a balanced, or at least somewhat sane, existence is easy to relate to — and it’s always entertaining. After 40 minutes of highs and lows, she’s eventually consumed, quite literally, by her schedule as she makes a rushed trip to the beach, her calendar following her like a wedding gown train. Leisure and Panic is an impressive first full-length solo creation, and Bydwell is one to watch.

Woman of Leisure and Panic; Created, choreographed and performed by Charlotte Bydwell; Dramaturgy by Carlyle Eckert; Costume design by Erica Evans; 9th Space, 150 First Avenue. www.9thspace.org.

— Review published by Show Business.

Work: A Play

Work: A Play

Horse Trade Theater Group / No Tea Productions

by Lucy Butcher

There’s no shortage of comedic material in that brightly lit, colorless thing called the office, as anyone who has ever feebly decorated his or her very own cubicle — or has, at least, watched an episode of The Office — can tell you. The Horse Trade Theater Group explores the “PowerPointlessness” of office life in its new multimedia comedy, Work: A Play, which centers on a large, not-to-be-trusted corporation named Ouroboros (“Riding you into the future!”).

A fantastically talented cast of nine actors — Jeremy Banks, Alicia Barnatchez, Jesse Bernath, Sabrina Farhi, Jeremy Mather, Michele McNally, Alexis Robbins, Jeff Sproul, and D. Robert Wolcheck — brings almost 30 characters to life on stage, and over a dozen other actors appear in the digital video shorts that pepper the play. There’s the highly strung manager who declares a presentation to be “too PowerPointy,” the frumpy trainer who finds flaw after flaw in a new hire’s phone manner, and the nameless temp whose death has gone unnoticed for hours.

One of the best segments is a corporate training video concerning workplace restroom etiquette; it’s tightly written, laugh-out-loud material concerning the specific dos and don’ts of peeing and pooping at work. For example, always “respect the flush” — when two people in the restroom are both, clearly, doing number twos, whoever flushes first gets to leave first, and should do so quickly, so that the other person can come out of his or her stall. Know that until you leave, the other person is trapped. The identity of the other pooper must never be known, to save embarrassment.

The action is not restricted to the training room. Work also takes an entertaining, if slightly disturbing, look at Ouroboros’s corporate conscious through a series of TV ads. One cheery, airbrushed ad is for Ouroboros Pharmaceuticals’ “Infantilyde” products for expectant mothers. Does your fetus seem subdued? Choose our Zoloft-infused Infantilyde pills. If your unborn baby is kicking too much, choose Infantilyde enriched with Ritalin. The ad promoting Ouroboros Financial is also a treat: “Give us your money, and dare to dream.”

The Horse Trade Theater Group has created a corporation you don’t want to be a part of — as an employee, or as a consumer. Work: A Play is fun stuff, and it’d probably be even more fun if it didn’t feel so frighteningly true. If you’re in a job that feels “PowerPointless,” escape the fluorescent lights and retreat into the comforting darkness of UNDER St. Marks. The basement theater’s future is uncertain, so consider donating to help keep this important East Village performance space alive.

Work: A Play; Written by Jeremy Mather, Lindsey Moore & Jeff Sproul; Directed by Lindsey Moore; UNDER St. Marks; 94 St. Marks Place. www.horsetrade.info.

— Review published by Show Business.

Michael Fassbender and Mia Wasikowska in Jane Eyre

21-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska stars in the latest screen adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Wasikowska makes a perfectly “plain” and “obscure” Jane; she’s thin, pale, with severely parted hair, and she does look as if she’s fresh out of school.

There’s some flashing back and forward in the first part of director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 120-minute film; when we do arrive at the beginning, we find an adorable Amelia Clarkson as 10-year-old Jane, who’s living with her abusive aunt, played by Sally Hawkins, and her cousins. Jane spends the next few years at the equally-harsh Lowood boarding school, and then leaves to take up a job as governess at Thornfield Hall.

In this new Jane Eyre, Wasikowska captures all the qualities that we admire in Jane. She carries the pain of her childhood, but she doesn’t burden anyone with it; she’s brave, honest, and composed. She’s hardworking, quick-witted, and perceptive; she sizes up people and things clearly. Despite being raised by uncaring guardians who never encouraged her, she has confidence in herself, and she’s not incapable of loving — quite the opposite, in fact.

Jane Eyre is, at its heart, a timeless love story between an impoverished young woman and her employer, the handsome and wealthy Edward Rochester. Jane quickly falls in love with Rochester, and when she sees him courting a pretty socialite, she’s devastated. She announces that she is leaving Thornfied because she can’t bear to witness him with another woman, but he asks her to stay. She replies:

“Do you think I can stay to become nothing to you? Do you think I am an automaton? A machine without feelings?… Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless? You think wrong! — I have as much soul as you, — and full as much heart!…”

But then he asks her to marry him, telling Jane that she is his equal, his likeness. It’s fairytale stuff.

But this is where Fukunaga’s film falls down. A smoldering chemistry exists between Jane and Rochester, but Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender don’t manifest it. When they finally kiss and embrace, they look awkward. They carry off their individual characters perfectly well — although Fassbender’s Rochester is a bit superficial — but together, they don’t work. The lead actors in the BBC’s 2006 four-part miniseries, on the other hand, looked like a genuine match made in heaven.

As we all know, Jane doesn’t marry Rochester after he first proposes because it turns out he’s already married (to a crazy woman). Jane flees Thornfield, gets another job, and discovers she has family. But she can’t forget about Rochester, and she returns to Thornfield to find it in blackened ruins.

Bertha has set the house alight and committed suicide, and Rochester has lost his sight. But he still loves Jane, and Jane loves him, and now they can finally be together. It’s fairytale stuff, once again — except without the chemistry, in this latest adaptation.

Nixon in China at the Met

Nixon in China
By John Adams
Directed by Peter Sellars
The Metropolitan Opera
Lincoln Center
www.metopera.org

Review by Lucy Butcher

John Adams’s famous opera about President Nixon’s momentous encounter with Mao and Communist China in February 1972 features an innovative score that’s big and bold, but also understated.  In the opening scenes, brassy, percussive, and raw rhythms pulsate as Air Force One taxis over to the red carpet, where Chinese officials await. When the president disembarks and shakes hands with Premier Zhou Enlai — “I hope your flight was smooth? / Oh, yes; smoother than usual” — minimalism takes over, and flutes waver quickly and triangle bells ding intermittently.

At the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of Nixon in China in February, nearly 25 years after the opera debuted in Houston, Adams himself conducted the performance, receiving cheers from the audience as he took his place on the podium. The opera illustrates key events from the iconic diplomatic journey — which was thoroughly documented by the media — including the leaders’ meeting in Mao’s study (“Founders come first. Then profiteers,” says Mao, as his advisers echo his sentiments) and the welcome banquet at the Great Hall of the People. Poet Alice Goodman meticulously researched American and Chinese sources to write the elegant libretto.

In one of the most moving — and comical — sections of the opera, Mrs. Nixon is out and about, meeting the people of China. Her carefully constructed itinerary takes her to a glass factory, where the workers give her a glass elephant. She continues on to a pig farm, a hospital, and a school, where her enthusiastic Chinese guide presents her with “children having fun.” There, she wistfully remembers the days when she was a schoolteacher. The soprano Janis Kelly is wonderfully warm and playful as Pat Nixon, looking every bit the part in a red coat with a head of curly red hair and singing with an undeniable American twang.

The English-language opera, clearly written for an American audience, also delves behind the scenes and explores a non-official narrative of the presidential visit. On their last night in Beijing, the Nixons retire to the solitude of their bedroom and reflect on the early days of their marriage; here, baritone James Maddalena, whose voice is rich and powerful, brings out a softer side to the usually stiff president. With striking set design by Adrianne Lobel and inspired costumes by Dunya Ramicova, the Met’s Nixon in China stylishly captures the theatrics of diplomacy and makes small talk sound good.

— Review published by Show Business.

CRAWL OR NOTHING: Michelle David and Ronan Babbitt in 40 Weeks. (Photo: Michael Mallard.)

40 Weeks
Written by Michael Henry Harris
Directed by Danton Stone
InViolet Repertory Theater Company
Fourth Street Theater
83 East 4th Street
invioletrep.com

Review by Lucy Butcher

In 40 Weeks, we first meet Angie sitting dejected and alone on a park bench in New York City, smoking a cigarette in the pouring rain. A tall, handsome stranger, Mark, jogs over, bums a cigarette, and strikes up a conversation, much to her dismay. He proposes that they go to a bar around the corner and drink all day; she agrees, under the condition that they don’t have to talk about what’s troubling her. Five years later, they’re married — and the cracks begin to show when Angie discovers she is pregnant.

Angie, played by Megan Hart, is one of those high-achievers with perfect hair — she’s a doctor working at a non-profit clinic — while her husband, played by Jorge Cordova, is a not-yet-published writer who makes cold calls for cash. Anxious to be the father as provider, Mark tries to get a “real” job; when that fails, he decides to sell his novel direct to readers for $20 — on the subway. Time for Angie to rekindle an old flame? Oh, yes.  The sassy, opinionated Molly, played by Michelle David, blows into town — there’s a real connection between her and Angie, who parted ways, painfully, on that rainy day, years ago.

For a play about relationships, it’s not surprising that 40 Weeks contains lots of talking, talking and more talking. Mark and Angie argue about whether their child should go to church; Angie and Molly reminisce about old times and get intimate; Mark admits his fears about becoming a father to his friend Scott, played by Ronan Babbitt; Molly starts dating Scott, who’s considered to be a player. To add to the conversation, there’s Kelly, played by Deanna Sidoti, who does her best to offer relationship advice to both Mark and Scott.

Michael Henry Harris has crafted a very relevant first play, capturing the mind-boggling delicacies and complications of human bonds, but with the psychological analyses and sharing of feelings clocking in at around two hours, his baby is a little overcooked. Still, 40 Weeks is a nicely presented package under the direction of Danton Stone, especially with sound designer Josh Liebert’s perfect choice of moody pop song sound bites. And there’s plenty to laugh at — particularly Mark’s valiant readings of his doomed manuscript, “Afternoons in Albany,” to subway commuters, who, as we know, just aren’t paying attention.

— Review published by Show Business Weekly, Issue 632.

True Grit

True Grit, a remake of the old Western, is not as gritty as some of my favorite films by the Coen brothers (No Country For Old Men and Fargo), but I thought it was pretty good all the same. Especially thanks to the straight-talking, no-nonsense Mattie Ross, played by 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld, who’s awesomely talented and striking-looking with her mixed white, black, and Filipino ancestry.

Mattie’s dogged determination astonishes everyone she encounters. After her father is murdered and his horses and gold are stolen, Mattie takes charge of finding someone to help her capture and bring the offender, Chaney, to justice.  Needing money for the job, she goes to her father’s horse trader, armed with a full grasp of legal terms and a firm belief in what’s right. Her negotiations are a delight to watch: She secures the compensation she desires by easily outtalking the man’s attempts to bargain her down and by frequently threatening to involve her lawyer. Mattie leaves him flabbergasted — and she gets a pony, Little Blackie, at a nice price, too.

Whenever Mattie’s on screen, she commands every bit of our attention with her serious face flanked by two tightly-woven braids, and her complete focus on the task at hand — and utter indifference to her doubters. And her southern twang is alluring; her speech is poetic. You don’t want to miss a line. When Texas ranger LaBoeuf, played by Matt Damon, tells Mattie that he’s been on the trail of her father’s murderer, she inquires: “Why have you been ineffectually pursuing Chaney? I am sorry you have been eluded by a halfwit.” And after she hires the aging Rooster Cogburn, played by Jeff Bridges, to track down Chaney, she turns up at his doorstep, addressing him like this: “Marshal Cogburn, it is I, Mattie Ross, your employer.”

And so the pursuit of Chaney in the wilds begins. Rooster and LaBoeuf try to leave without Mattie, but she catches up, even if it means getting soaking wet riding Little Blackie across a not-that-shallow river. Blackie is completely submerged, apart from his head, and he paddles hard, fighting off a strong current that threatens to carry him and Mattie downstream. When the pair finally emerge from the water, all Mattie’s stunned employee can say is, “That’s quite a horse,” in one of the best lines of the film.  Mattie might think Rooster Cogburn has “true grit,” but so does she.

I dislike the comma splice (see above). It happens when independent clauses are joined by a comma instead of a more appropriate punctuation mark like a dash, colon, semi colon, or period (or conjunction). It’s hot outside, make sure you wear a hat. Or, Their soups are delicious, I must try to make them at home. A comma splice is an ugly thing: It has the power to turn what should be clear, straightforward statements into rambling, sludgy messes. Equally bad is the run-on sentence which ditches punctuation entirely: They have no whole wheat bread why are they always out of it.

A spliced sentence is like a Forever 21 garment with seams that could unravel at any moment. There may be a stitch there, but it’s weak. On the other hand, a sentence that is punctuated with a dash or a colon, if it needs one, is more like an Armani sweater: it’s well crafted, nicely shaped, and designed to stand the test of time. It’s a solid construction that won’t crumble: it’s secured in all the right places.

Sometimes, however, the fusion of independent clauses can be effective. A sentence like this one is elegant and poetic: “The door opened, the vase tipped over, the flowers crashed to the floor.” The comma splice appears in works by writers from Somerset Maugham to Elizabeth Jolley, so it can’t be all bad. As Lynne Truss, author of “Eats, Shoots and Leaves,” says, it’s okay to splice, but only if you’re famous and can pull it off. “Done ignorantly by ignorant people, it is awful,” she says.

Why the rise of the splice? In this age of social media, speed is everything: In your rush to be the first to comment or tweet, maybe you throw down the first words that pop into your head, separate those thoughts with or without your punctuation mark of choice, and call it a sentence. Or maybe a dash or a semi colon or a period seems too formal when you’re remarking on a Facebook pic of your friend having a blast in the snow. All I know is, the comma splice is catching. You’re exposed to it in your news feed every day; before you know it, you’re splicing up phrases, too.

What to do? The MTA‘s “Courtesy is contagious. And it starts with you” message springs into my mind. Full stops, semi colons, dashes, and periods can be contagious, too. Instead of writing on your friend’s wall “Was good to see you, don’t forget to email me, I’m counting on you,” maybe you could use a dash or an ellipsis or something, and maybe others will subconsciously absorb the formula and start applying it, too. Am I asking too much? Am I getting worked up over nothing? I’m spliced out.

Sustainable TreeHouse by Benjamin Jones

Tree houses are wonderful things. For a kid, a tree house is like your very own apartment, a child-sized space which you can retreat to and do whatever you like to do — read, tie knots, meditate — out of reach of adults. I’m just guessing though, because although I grew up among trees, I never had my own leafy abode. I was envious of other people’s tree houses, and lusted after ones I saw on TV and in movies. In “Home Alone”, Kevin impressed me by zip-lining from the top window of his burgled house into the safety of his tree house. In “The Witches,” Luke was high up in his tree house when he was approached by a witch on the street, who tried unsuccessfully to tempt him to come down. Yes, tree houses are the best places to be when bad guys are after you. And they’re just nice, peaceful, happy places in general. If you love tree houses and want more of them in the world, donate to Kickstarter so that Benjamin Jones can build a Sustainable TreeHouse on Governors Island in New York Harbor, for everyone to enjoy in summer 2011.

Trenton, NJ

What do you get when you take New York City, then take away the newsstands, the culture, the people, the parks? Trenton, New Jersey, which was briefly the nation’s capital for a couple of months in 1784. It’s so close to New York, yet so far, according to the film Average Community, in which the Zara brothers revisit the post-industrial, decaying city, where they grew up in the 1980s.

Fred Zara, a 30-something who now lives with his young family in Orlando, Florida, and his brothers Joe, a Seattle musician, and Chris, the managing editor at New York’s Show Business Weekly, were in a punk rock band, Prisoners of War, in Trenton back in the 80s, long after the city was a thriving manufacturing center for wire, rubber, and steel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (“Trenton Makes, The World Takes”). Vaguely aware of  Trenton’s industrial glory days, they used the abandoned factories as cool backdrops for band pics. Back then, Trenton didn’t have a ballet or a Philharmonic, but it had City Gardens, a dive club which attracted up-and-coming punk rockers from all over.

The brothers, with their friends and family, reunite in Trenton and reflect on their angst-ridden teen years, and how they survived them, and explore what it was like to grow up in a dying city. They chat to their chilled out father, who gave them the freedom to do as they wished; try to track down an old band member who’s homeless in Philadelphia; and visit the mother of a close childhood friend, who died from a drug overdose. Average Community is a fascinating, witty, and at times heartbreaking film that makes you think about how you’re shaped by place, about how it feels to go home.