Lady Gaga: The Monster Ball

I sort of didn’t want to write up Lady Gaga’s Monster Ball tour for the simple reason that everything there is to be said about her has already been said. Beyond that, it’s the third time I’ve seen her and the second time I saw this same tour and, y’know…it didn’t really hold up.

Gaga is, unsurprisingly, a hell of a performer, and she does put on a great show. Two solid hours of music, crazy dancing, and crazier costumes, there’s plenty of eye candy, and the sheer stamina required to go all out for as long as she does is in itself fairly dazzling. But here are two things that bother me:

1-There are only so many times you can be told that the freaks shall inherit the earth before you really start to look around at the 14K other people around you who have spent time putting together outfits that are direct replicas of the star’s and start thinking…we all know there’s a dearth of real individuality in the crowd here, right? She’s a massive popular success coasting on the notion that she’s a serious outsider, and eventually (concert number 3 in my case) it begins to feel really hollow.

2-The more seriously she starts to take herself, the thinner Gaga’s act seems to get. Remember when all she cared about was dancing? I love that she’s supportive of inclusion and makes efforts to be politically engaged, but this sort of open yearning to become a mother figure to her fans and lead them to an age free of prejudice is at best naïve, but perhaps a touch delusional.

Okay, there’s a #3: for all the bells and whistles, she’s actually at her best when she plops down at a piano and bangs the crap out of it. Gaga is, to me, very Elton John: lots of flash AND lots of talent. And both are at their best when they just let the music be the star of the show. I’ll always love a rubber nun costume or a giant pair of rhinestoned pink sunglasses. Seriously. But sometimes an act can get so loud that it drowns out actual talent.

Yes, I still had fun. But this time through, Mother Monster left me a little cold.

Raul Esparza: The American Songbook

I don’t think I’m the only person who prefers Broadway’s leading ladies to the leading men. Everybody loves a good diva. The boys typically have to settle for lesser roles. It’s like Hollywood gone backwards. But if there’s one male performer who I find consistently as exciting as the big voiced grandes dames of the stage, it’s Raul Esparza. I remember seeing him in Company and actually thinking, Holy shit. Men’s voices can be amazing!

It doesn’t hurt that Esparza’s an exceptional actor (who really should have beaten David Hyde Pierce for that Tony…). Or that he gave the most crazily honest interview ever a few years ago to the Times. Or that he radiates a charming neuroses and seems always to have a little kernel of sadness about him. It makes it seem like he’s always striving, always needing. And what can I say? I find that absurdly appealing.

So I went to the Allen Room for Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series to see his concert. Before talking about that, let me just say that everything should be performed there. It’s a relatively intimate space with a stage set against two –story windows overlooking Central Park and Columbus Circle. It was beauuuuutiful.



As for the concert, it was beauuuuutiful. No, seriously, he has the greatest voice on earth. The show was about half Cuban music and half show tunes. He explained that he wanted to do a night of all international music but worried that folks wouldn’t like it, so her threw in some numbers from shows he’s been in: Company; Taboo; tick…tick…BOOM. He even did a ridiculously wonderful cover of The Beatles’ “Something.”

It was an incredible night. Whether dancing it up for his take on Celia Cruz’ “Quimbara” or nailing every ounce of pathos (it’s his special gift) in “Petrified” from the Boy George musical Taboo, he was in impeccable voice and seemed to be having a lot of fun with the crowd. There were still notes of that slight keening desire to be liked and to live up to the standards of others. Which is what, to me, puts him in line with performers like Patti LuPone or (yeah, I’m going there) Judy Garland.

This exchange between my friend and I on the way out pretty much summarizes exactly how we felt about the show:

Her: I’m gonna marry that man.

Me: Me too.

Neal & Bridget Are Fuckin'...and Adam is Watching

Nobody's perfect. Something I was so disappointingly reminded of by Neal Medlyn and Bridget Everett's show at Le Poisson Rouge on Thursday. I've seen both performers a dozen or so times, and I really love watching them. Usually. Both crass and outrageous and envelope-obliterating, it seemed like a show of dirty songs performed together would be their ace in the hole. So what the hell happened?

I wrote here a few weeks ago that Bridget is a force of nature that happens to be one of my absolute favorite performers. She's fearless and funny, and in Neal Medlyn she usually has a match in commitment to the outre and offensive. But this show, in spite of some inspired moments, never came together. They seemed to be enjoying themselves enough that it never became painful, but the whole thing just...floundered.

The thinnest of concepts was that Bridget went over to Neal's place for some fuckin'. Hey, it's right there in the title. Neal's roommate is Adam Horowitz of the Beastie Boys, no, really, it was actually Adam Horowitz, who DJ'ed and took part in some of he random skits. From there, it bascially turned into a sketch comedy show about sexual extremity. And while they seemed to have an overall storyline they were working through, I'm not sure if there was an actual script so much as a handful of ideas that they attempted to hit on over the course of an hour.

Rather than being boundary pushing or uncomfortably hysterical, it devolved quickly into shock comedy for its own sake where the risks felt lower than ever and the targets depressingly easy. Sometimes it's just not about how far you push something, but whether you actually get anywhere. So yes, a few days later, I still have the song "Creepy Fuckin'" stuck in my head. But one catchy tune and a few cute set pieces just can't sustain an hour of showtime. The only real upside is that I know they'll be better the next time I see them.

Compulsion

It has been some time since I’ve hated something as thoroughly and completely as the new play Compulsion playing at the Public Theater. I don’t even want to bother summarizing this play, so I’ll crib from the Public’s website.

“It is 1951 and Sid Silver is on a mission to be the guardian of one of the most moving and provocative accounts of the 20th century. Deeply moved by Anne Frank's diary, he is driven to bring her story to the American masses by promoting the book's publication and adapting the diary into a work of theater. Inspired by the story of Meyer Levin, COMPULSION…is part historical fiction, part investigation into what makes a man obsess, and part exploration of an untold dimension of Anne Frank's powerful and enduring legacy.”

What the synopsis doesn’t tell you is that Silver/Levin is a gigantic asshole whose actions become increasingly erratic and unforgiveable. He’s a man who started with the best of intentions but after he was forced off of writing the theatrical version of The Diary of Anne Frank, he becomes singularly obsessed with the ways in which he was wronged, eventually leading to wholly unforgiveable behavior like telling Otto Frank that he was Silver’s, “personal Nazi” intent on destroying him.

How a man turns evil is potentially compelling. But if you’re asking an audience to spend over two hours with someone so loathsome, you better have some pretty keen insight to share. And you damned well better work around to a stronger point than, “Well…he really believed in something.” Because you know who else believed in something really strongly? Hitler. And while one douchebag’s actions cannot be considered on the same level as the penultimate tyrant of the 20th Century, it’s the same sort of overblown comparison the playwright keeps making throughout the show.

It doesn’t help that Mandy Patinkin is playing Silver. The king of histrionics, he has two modes here: barely concealed rage and not at all concealed rage. He bellows. A lot. Soooooo much. Which isn’t necessarily his fault. The character is one note. Rounding out the three person cast are one man and one woman who inadequately portray a variety of characters. The man is pretty solid in one of his four roles. The woman…well, she’s a terrible actress with a voice made for educational children’s videos.

But I haven’t gotten to the puppets! Holy crap—the puppets!! There are a ton of them, but the only one that really matters is the Anne Frank one. And let’s just talk about one scene. I almost left at intermission but didn’t. If there’s one reason I’m glad I stayed, it’s because if I hadn’t I literally never would have been able to imagine the horrors of watching Mandy and his wife in bed with the Anne puppet. It’s his wife’s dream sequence, and she’s conversing with Anne. Since she’s also the voice of Anne, that presents a problem. Mandy to the rescue. So WITH MANDY PATINKIN AS THE VOICE OF ANNE FRANK (I’m sorry to get all capsy, but that really needs to sink in), the wife has a conversation with her puppet about whether Anne’s ghost might benefit from therapy. After all, it’s totally hard to HAVE DIED IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP!

I got all capsy again. I apologize. But it was such a truly horrifying moment that I ended up head in hands, trying not to laugh out loud and the blisteringly misguided, ham-handed, ridiculous, and borderline offensive nonsense on stage that I actually couldn’t look anymore.

I loathed this show. The author is working with fascinating stories that show how several people react when pressed to the extreme. But anything thoughtful or curiosity-piquing seems at best accidental as the play itself is written almost completely tangentially to anything involving clearer or deeper thinking. The only words that resonate in the show are Anne’s own, and even there, repetition and misuse wears you down. Bottom line: no matter how interesting the story, you can fuck it up by not having any actual insight into what makes people tick. And no one wants to be hollered at for more than two hours. Not just the worst thing I’ve seen recently. One of the worst I’ve seen ever.

La Cage aux Folles

I’ve seen La Cage (mumble) times already. Part of me thought, I can’t see this again. The magic will be gone. But with Harvey Fierstein taking over the lead role in the drag musical that he wrote? I am not strong enough to resist this, people! So when a friend said we should grab balcony seats for his first show, there was only one thing I could do…go get even better seats and pay the difference. And what seats they were! I managed to land cabaret table seats up against the stage for, really, not that much more than the balcony tickets. Yaaay discounts! So when I say that late in the first act Harvey was talking right to me, I mean he was actually talking to ME. Specifically. And I learned a lesson: you can get stage fright even when you’re not on stage.

Harvey: “Have you ever wanted an older woman to take care of you?”

Me: “Pehhhh?”

Harvey: “I mean, have you ever wanted a RICH older woman to take care of you?”

Me: “Buhhhh…”

Harvey: “Yes? Well, then…I’ll introduce you to my mother.”

In any case, I was equal parts nervous and excited about seeing Harvey in the role of Zaza, the French Riviera’s most famous transvestite. He wrote the part. He’s a genius comedic performer. And…he can’t sing. His big old foghorn of a voice is one of the most distinctive on the planet. But imagining him trying to rasp his way through some iconic songs was tough. I shouldn’t have worried. The songs are rearranged a bit, some lines are changed, and there’s a whole new set of costumes all intended to swallow Harvey comfortably into the show. And you know what? If you wrote the damn thing, I say you can make them change whatever you want. The bottom line is that he looked fabulous, was significant more convincing as a drag star than anyone I’ve seen in the show before, nailed every laugh with his unrivaled timing, and did it all without sacrificing a moment of tenderness, heart, or hurt that drives the character forward. His performance is enormously different than his predecessor, Douglas Hodge, but every bit as brilliant.

More…troublesome, is Jeffrey Tambor. I didn’t worry about him taking over for Kelsey Grammer at all. I loved Grammer in the show, but it seemed effortless, and it wasn’t as if he had a good singing voice, so if the part doesn’t demand a great voice, Tambor should have this in a cakewalk. To quote myself: Pehhh? Turns out Grammer was doing some heavy lifting up there and making it look much, much easier than it was. It was his first performance, so I forgive Tambor some flubbed lines and awkward timing. But where Grammer sparkled with showmanship, Tambor fades into the background. Grammer’s love is replaced by Tambor’s…complacency? And Grammer’s thin, yet appealing voice is replaced by a hesistant warble that approaches the right notes so tentatively that you can literally HEAR his nerves.

Also a little lacking (and this makes me so sad!) is Wilson Jermaine Heredia, the original Angel in Rent. I always thought Wilson had trouble getting more roles after Rent because he was a straight man whose biggest credit was as a drag queen. Now I think…maybe his exceptional performance in Rent was more a stroke of perfect casting than brilliant talent? Cause he reallllly reached last night for a performance that just didn’t come together. Again, again, maybe he’ll get better. I’d love for that to happen. But he seems to be going for a more naturalistic performance in a role (and with direction) that defies the laws of normal behavior. He’s not playing a character, he’s playing a CHARACTER. Girlfriend’s gonna need to either crank the dial or convince the director to let him drop the crazy affectations and accent.

But whatever! Happy note! Harvey Fierstein is a national treasure. A.J. Shively is still adorable as his son, even if the character is a schmuck. And the Cagelles, those glorious chorus girls with a little something extra, are as volcanic and amazing as ever. But I’m only going to see it AT MOST one more time. I swear.

Prince: Welcome 2 America

When I started this blog last month, I was going to write about every show AND concert I saw. Then I didn't write about Wanda Jackson at the Music Hall of Williamsburg because it felt so off-topic. And because I left halfway through the show because I didn't feel well. Then I DID write about Lauryn Hill. So now it's deciding time. Do I write about Prince? Well...why not?

Especially because on the heels of seeing Lauryn Hill, it was nice to see someone I think of as fairly reclusive and a little crazy hit the stage and prove they've still got it! And man, that little man's still got it.

Playing for roughly two and a half hours, tearing through hits from "Raspberry Beret" to "1999" to "Nothing Compares 2 U" before ending the concert in his third encore with covers of some Sly and the Family Stone songs, he was never less than electrifying. Not because he was playing the old stuff. And not just because he still sounds amazing. But because he was clearly have so. Much. Fun.

The setlist, if anyone's curious, is here: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/prince/2011/madison-square-garden-new-york-ny-23d23873.html

Rather than go through song by song, just a few things I found myself dwelling on. First, I don't understand how such a teeny little man with a penchant for sequined pants and high heels never seems to have his sexuality called into question. It seems curiously open-minded of people that it's never really been an issue (at least in my memory). Second, I don't understand how such a teeny tiny man who isn't particularly physically attractive (to my eye) manages to actually be so sexy. I think it must be the combination of those things RuPaul looks for in her drag queen competitors: Charisma. Uniqueness. Nerve. Talent. Also, yes, I was just looking for an excuse to quote Ru on my blog.

Third: so many celebrities in the audience. Well, some celebrities and some "celebrities." Ice-T's wife Coco, Al Sharpton, Austin Scarlett, Chris Rock, Mike Ruiz, ?uestlove, Kim Kardashian. And that's just who I spotted on the big screens!

Lastly, my one quibble is that I realized my favorite Prince era might have been...no one else's. It was about an hour and a half in before I really accepted that the chances I'd hear my favorite Prince songs--7, Gett Off, Sexy MF, Diamonds and Pearls--were incredibly slim. How do more people not love 7?! Regardless, it's not like hearing Purple Rain, Let's Go Crazy, If I Was Your Girlfriend, and Kiss was a downer.

The Wooster Group's Version of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carre

he Wooster Group is the preeminent experimental theater company in New York. Or, well, that's what I've heard, but I'd never actually seen one of their productions. It's been a few years since they put something on in New York, so when their production of Tennessee Williams' Vieux Carre was announced, I knew I wanted to check it out. So last night, I headed to the Baryshnikov Arts Center, took my wildly uncomfortable seat, looked around and thought, "Fuck. This does NOT look promising."

I like to think I have an open mind about all performance. But there's a certain brand of (usually highly praised) experimental theater that mashes up technology and stage-craft--film projections, distorted audio, and and anything goes stage design that typically leaves me really cold. It's Richard Foreman syndrome. I try to convince myself behind it, but I can never quite get there. So looking at several screens, a visible sound board manned by three people upstage, and two wheeled platforms covered in detritus, I prepared myself for a sonic assault on the senses and braced myself to be ready to try to understand anything.

My fears were and were not realized. After a cacophonous opening with two characters lipsynching to their own voices as things clanged and banged around them, the action settled into a highly stylized but surprisingly straightforward story of a young writer who leaves home to find himself in New Orleans and ends up in a flophouse full of characters that ultimately inspire his writing. Along the way he has to contend with discovering his own homosexuality. So basically, Tennessee ran out of ways to use the stories he gathered and wrote a stage memoir.

Vieux Carre isn't a terribly well respected Williams play, and the Wooster Group does actually do a really interesting reshuffle of the material, taking pieces in and out of context, bunching story lines, expanding and contracting others to showcase this as the story of one writer's process of self-discovery above all else. All the rest in its hyper-stylized insanity is just what he spies on and, in turn, creates, as a means to give meaning to the lives he drifts in and out of. Their kitchen sink approach lends to some fascinating moments. I wouldn't have thought having an Asian woman play the older black servant with a Valley Girl accent would be anything other than silly and potentially offensive, but it's remarkably effective, showing just how much the character's outward behavior is performed for the company she keeps. Video projections play a particularly significant role in the writer's sexual discoveries. He is filmed onstage and the images are overlapped on video screens with those of other men in ways that are hauntingly effective in evoking the strangeness of imagination and the confusion of desire.

But for everything that works, there's at least one element that doesn't. The two virile male characters who are secure in their opposing sexualities are played by the same actor, each time with a dildo strapped to the outside of his pants. The character who keeps hiding how sick he is literally sprays the stage with fake blood constantly to remind us how aware he is that no one is fooled by his attempts to claim to be anything other than consumptive. Each nicely played moment is followed by one of these where you're bashed over the head with increasingly obvious symbolism. You feel like at any point, someone might turn to you and ask, "Get it? Did you get it? Did you see what we just did?" It's wearying after awhile. And at over two hours with no intermission and staged in one of the least comfortable theaters in New York, I just wanted it to end much, much sooner than it did. Especially since the last half hour, where the writer decides whether or not to leave New Orleans (which, HELLO, we all know he does!) is barren of suspense and shifts focus to the least interesting story in the play, or at least in this version of the play.

I figured it would be a love it or hate it experience. What I didn't expect was to find so much to love and hate myself. In the end, there was too much good to hate it but too much bad to love it. I appreciate the ambition of the piece, but I felt like someone needed to be able to step in and do some thoughtful pruning--do we need those four TV's playing random shit for two hours? Can we strip out about 60% of the props without actually losing anything? Is the lipsynching affecting or just pretentious? Not every idea someone has needs to be thrown onstage. Someone should tell the Wooster Group. And then they can relay the message to Julie Taymor...nah. Her show's way beyond fixing.

Ms. Lauryn Hill

Being a fan of Lauryn Hill is kind of a lose/lose proposition. You know there's probably no chance that she'll ever record more material, so even though you don't expect any rewards, you keep on hoping that the woman behind one of the best albums ever (yeah, I said ever) eventually comes back from the brink and reminds you what she's capable of. Sure, it's been over a decade since Miseducation, and no, you never actually made it through both discs of Unplugged, but dammit, she could maybe possibly be worth it someday again. Right? Right?

Here's the thing. Lauryn Hill gave the best concert I've ever seen. Outkast opened for her in Upper Darby, PA in 1998 or 9. She was electric and electrifying. I then saw he in 2003/4 on the Up in Smoke tour where she opened for Outkast and The Roots. She was, let's say...not very good. Her Wikipedia page is a stroll through fascinating messiness. She apparently keeps recording new music. Millions have been dropped by labels on her next studio album. Music pops up here and there. Every once in awhile she seems ready to tour again, but she usually manages one or two dates before canceling the rest of her shows.

So she announces she's touring again in 2011. What can I say? I got tickets. But I got sold out of her NY concerts, so I snagged them for a date in New Jersey. Complications: all of her shows have ticket times of 8:00. I have yet to hear of one show where she's taken the stage before midnight. There is no way to get back to Manhattan from Montclair, NJ by public transportation at 2:00 in the morning. I try to sell the tickets and fail. Fuck it. I rent a car. I haven't driven in two years, but based on reports of her New York dates, this will AT LEAST be compelling.

And it was.

Taking the stage at 12:15 (we smartly didn't aim to arrive until about 11:30), Lauryn--I'm sorry, Ms. Lauryn Hill as she now bills herself--opened with a ten or so minute version of Bob Marley's "Loving Jah." Her voice sounded solid, even if she looked a little worse for the wear. Not so much appearance wise as her actual behavior and physicality. She started mopping herself off about 30 seconds into the concert and continued to do so all the way through. She looked frantic as she spastically directed the band and angry as she gestured repeatedly at the sound technician. It was like sound check as performance art. And it was...uncomfortable.

Before launching into her second song, "Lost Ones," she announced that she would be performing classics. Loud applause. But she'd be doing totally new versions of them. "Let's see if you can recognize them." Crickets. Since she's been singing the same songs forever, she told us, she needed to keep them fresh so she could feel the music. Girlfriend, please. You've been mostly off the scene for 12 years. When's the last time you performed these songs as they were written? The 90's?

Fidgety, temperamental, and possessing enough diva attitude to keep Aretha Franklin AND Barbra Streisand on their toes, Lauryn played seemingly endless versions of her hits with a massive band offering an almost rock music background sound. By the end of song 2, people were in coats and on their way out the door. The exodus would continue throughout the night.

Hill's fascinating as the megastar who was broken by fame. She radiates a toughness so huge that it seems impossible that it's not covering a serious fragility or, less optimistically, a drug problem. I only saw her for an hour or two, but she's either really crazy or coked to the gills. I actually suspect the former, that she's someone who lost her shit when she got super-famous and wanted nothing more than to take it all back. Certainly, her performance indicated that she was in this series of shows for the money, not for the joy. Because the only time she managed to crack a smile was when she stood back and let her band take some solos.

I confess: I didn't make it to the end of the show. I lasted longer than about a third of the audience, but by quarter to 2:00 and only six or seven songs in, I wanted to hop back in the car and make the trek back to Manhattan. After a 10 or 12 minute version of "Ex-Factor" finally wound down, she said, "Let's do it again." And did. In a slower, more appealing version. 20 minutes is an awfully long time to dwell on one pop song.

When it comes down to it, if Lauryn wanted her fans back AND wanted to feel the music, she could have compromised and done a few songs the old way, a few the new way, and then some new material. Compromise was NOT on the menu. Hell, she could have just announced that she was doing rearranged versions of her old songs so people knew what to expect. If this tour did anything for her career, it simply drove another nail in the coffin. She will always have an audience, but she needs to settle on what kind of music she actually wants to do and stop riding her hits for cash if she hates them as much as it seems.

I'm still rooting for Lauryn Hill after this concert, but instead of rooting for her to come back strong, I'm more simply hopeful that she can find some peace.

Lost in the Stars

Encores puts on staged concert versions of old musicals that aren't likely to have a chance in a commercial production these days. At their best, it's a chance to hear music that you wouldn't get a chance to experience live otherwise. At their worst, they're two or three hours of material that likely should have stayed forgotten. And occasionally, they're shows like On the Town that have been produced fairly recently, and there's no understandable reason they were chosen for the program at all.

I've been burned by Encores before. I wish I could forget a flu-ish Christine Ebersole squawking her way through the misbegotten Applause, a musical version of All about Eve that never should have been. Or the woefully "star" cast The Wiz in which Ashanti managed to spend two hours on stage and never once exhibit signs of personality. But I've also loved their Gypsy with Patti LuPone (which I saw at City Center three times) and Donna Murphy and Raul Esparza knocking the crap out of Anyone Can Whistle.

The more obscure the material, the less I've enjoyed the experience. So when I found out they were doing Lost in the Stars, a musical version of Cry, the Beloved Country, I was not especially enthusiastic. But I still got tickets! Because I'm way too easy to win over with a $20 seat, even at City Center where $20 lands you up about 20 flights of stairs, bobbing and weaving to see the stage between railings and the heads of other people who bought tickets before you. Pretty much the worst sight lines in Manhattan, but hey, you're there to listen really, aren't you?

Before heading to the show, I heard some negative word of mouth from the dress rehearsal. My expectations were Death Valley low. And maybe that's why I was really delighted by the material, if that's what you can call the feeling given that it's about a man who goes to Johannesburg top find his son, only to arrive too late and for his son to end up sentenced to death for the murder of a white man. It's pretty bleak stuff, and the writing is deeply unusual. The songs are often didactic and less rise out of the material than they do serve as narratives about what is happening, often in choral form, headed by the stoic "Leader" played by Quentin Earl Darrington who I loved in Ragtime.

While a lot of the material is counterintuitive (why this song? why this song now?), the music is rich, and the show is fabulously complicated. Tackling guilt and responsibility and the uncomfortable relativity of morality, it damns the apartheid system without negating the underwhelming fear and humanity of the people trapped in its admittedly repugnant spell. It's too easy to simply say that all white South Africans of the time were evil. So it doesn't. Just as it would be too simple to say that Absalom Kumalo, the convicted murderer, was all good or all bad. He is instead, truly shaken by what he has done, but never entirely forgivable.

Reviews of the show have been fairly unkind, and I understand why, though I choose to disagree. I was all too happy to forgive the scarce emotions of the piece and its strange anachronisms in order to appreciate the stunning performances of Chuck Cooper (who has a voice to rich you want to live inside of it), Patina Miller, Daniel Breaker, and the many, many other actors in small but substantial roles. It's a dream cast for a flawed piece whose riches outweigh its downfalls heavily, at least in my mind.