The House of Blue Leaves

I’ve only been doing this for a few months, but I still find it interesting (and telling) that for the first time yet, I completely barreled past a show I had seen and totally forgot to write about it. It was like it hadn’t even happened. So, sure, there are lots of forgettable shows, but how many disappear within days? And of those, how many involve nuns climbing through windows, a deaf actress exploding, and a soldier disguising himself as an altar boy to attempt to kill the pope?

The House of Blue Leaves shouldn’t slip from the mind as easily as the current production does. It’s a wild farce imbued with incredible sadness, and though it’s 40 years old, it’s as timely as ever in its consideration of how people long for fame as a way to legitimize themselves when really, they might not actually be that talented or special.

But as played by Ben Stiller and Jennifer Jason Leigh, two-thirds of the main characters in the show go out with more of a whimper than a shout. Edie Falco is predictably fantastic as sullen crazy lady Bananas, but as her husband Artie, Stiller is kind of just a sad sack who lacks the kinetic energy that would make you believe he was really that determined to make it as a songwriter. And Jennifer Jason Leigh is just no good at comedy. I happen to think she’s a pretty bad actress who occasionally trundles into the perfect part. The movie Georgia, for example. Or Single White Female. As Sally Bowles in Cabaret back in ’99, she gave one of the worst musical performances I have ever seen. And as Bunny Flingus in this show, she’s shrill and shouty without ever seeming as funny OR as pathetic as she should. How do you make a woman named Bunny Flingus NOT funny??

When I started this blog, I expected that I’d derive more joy from writing about the bad shows than about the good. It certainly seems easier to enumerate the ways in which something fails than try to distinguish what makes a wonderful show gel. But writing about this one right now, I just feel kind of bummed about it. It’s a great play. It’s just such a flat production. Things come temporarily to life when three nuns climb off the roof into Artie’s apartment to watch the Pope on TV; the exploding actress is a pretty great gag; and Christopher Abbott is weirdly charming as Bananas and Artie’s son Ronnie (“weirdly charming” might just mean adorable), but all in all, it’s a flat evening punctuated by flashes of brilliance from the indomitable Edie Falco who should probably star in everything ever.

Peter and the Starcatcher

Reviewers were practically pooping themselves to talk about how genius the Peter Pan prequel Peter and the Starcatcher was. I continued to resist the show for literally as long as possible. When I finally broke down and decided to go, I went online and got the single last ticket that wasn’t sold out. So what cause the ruckus and excitement? Well…I’m not totally sure.

This is a totally cute show that offers up a fun possible backstory for Peter Pan. It’s Wicked-lite. By which I mean less original than Wicked but also less shrieky and annoying. It’s also staged for about .1% of what that megamusical probably cost—it’s all ropes and ladders and “theater magic” instead of big set pieces and lame effects. I expected that part of things to be thoroughly charming, but it was all just less fresh and exciting than I expected.

None of this is the cast’s fault. As the boy who would be Peter Pan, Adam Chanler-Berat is adorable and innocent. As the girl who led him to become Peter, saving his life and bringing him to Neverland, Celia Keenan-Bolger is wonderfully sweet with just the right amount of preteen sass. And as the pirate who becomes Captain Hook, Christian Borle was delightfully slapstick and over-the-top. So what went wrong?

Here’s one thing: I would be happy to never again see a show with wildly anachronistic jokes awkwardly and cheaply shoved in. It’s really a children’s show (even if it’s likely a children’s show for adults). We did not need a Tea Party joke. Too easy, folks. Too easy. And too out of place in terms of time period, in terms of tone, and in terms of taste. Which is the sort of thing that continues to pop up throughout the show, preventing me from ever feeling like I truly engaged. A joke that I was much more entertained by was the line, “He’s more elusive than the melody in a Phillip Glass opera.” But that’s a great line…for a different show.

The writers had source material to work from, and there’s a great story there. It’s just disguised by a lot of cheap jokes and lame sight-gags. Did we need the whole cast in drag as mermaids at the beginning of the second act? Not really.

I’m all for low-humor, bad drag, and all-out silliness, but it never gelled with the story that was actually being presented, so I felt curiously short-changed by a show that had a lot of potential. I couldn’t love this just because I wanted to, but I really DID want to. Ah well! I’ve been on a great streak, so one disappointment is hardly the end of the world. It’s just a pain when it’s so hugely hyped.

Jerusalem

I lucked into some free seats at the opening night of Jerusalem through a friend of a friend. At the second intermission (it’s a long show), someone came along with bags of flowers for us to toss at the stage during curtain call. The person I was with turned to me and asked, “Why the hell would you live anywhere else?” I have to say: it warmed the cockles. As did Jerusalem, the totally divisive play just imported from London about a retired daredevil named Rooster whose trailer in the woods is a landing ground for all sorts of local misfits, drug users, and aimless teens.

At first intermission, some crotchety old dude behind me croaked, “Is it ABOUT anything other than being druuuunk?!” Browsing through some message boards and other blog reviews, this is something that came up fairly often. People somehow read the show as three hours of watching drunk people mess about. I will just say this: people are stupid.

Jerusalem is about one man clutching onto his ratted, dirty corner of the world in the face of oncoming land development. It’s also about the adolescent anarchy that he so fully embodies, its vibrancy and necessity, but also the way we turn away from things we embraced in younger years. It’s a celebration of childlike qualities that get squashed not only by bad real estate development, but by the soul-deadening nature of some more mature, responsible decisions people make in life. However, it’s not as simple as a love poem to anarchy because as embodied by Mark Rylance, Rooster is no one’s idea of a hero. He’s slovenly, emotionally and physically crippled, and yet still commands a vaguely mythic air about him, one that is echoed in the plays references to giants and Stonehenge and fairies and saints.

I was worried about understanding the play when I first went in because I had heard much made about it being a “state of the nation” play about England, but I also think that’s a pretty narrow read. While there are definitely things about it that are very specifically British (the whole thing happens on St. George’s Day, which I had never even heard of before), it’s a more universal story than that. The Times review seemed curiously accurate in pointing out that it’s the sort of play that could have been written anytime after 1920. The drugs change and the clothes change, but when you get right down to it, this is a railing against the sprawling mess of modernity.

Bottom line: it’s a play that I liked very, very much, but what lifts it above just being a damn good play is the fact that Mark Rylance is probably the most charismatic, enigmatic, and generally damned talented actors I’ve ever seen. A lot of review have been calling his performance things like “one for the ages,” or “the best in years,” and blah, blah, blah. The crazy thing is that even though I had heard all that going in, I still was shocked by how fucking great he was, how repulsive and loveable and funny and scary he managed to be all at once. It’s a huge performance—extremely physical, highly emotive, and all that jazz, but it never feels actorly. It just…is. I was completely mesmerized by him in La Bete, but I think he actually improved upon himself. I’m ever more disappointed that I didn’t go see him in Boeing-Boeing. But given the great stuff I HAVE seen, I try not to dwell too, too much on what I missed.

Black Watch

Here's the thing about Black Watch, currently playing at St. Ann's Warehouse in Dumbo: it has played New York twice before. The first time I couldn't afford as many shows as I do now and didn't prioritize it. The second time, I didn't realize how short the run was, and I got sold out. When they announced a third and (presumably final) engagement, I snatched those tickets super fast. Before the show started, I read a piece in the program about a journalist (I think) who went to the opening of the show in LA with three American servicemen who didn't particularly know what to expect, only that it was a play about a branch of the Scottish military in Iraq. They expected an anti-war message and were heartened by the show which turned out to be more a history of a single military organization and the story of comradery in the troop when deployed in Iraq in 2004-ish.

I felt ready to take in the show. I consider myself a virulent pacifist, but I do have enough appreciation for the particular fascinations of the specific psyche of the soldier. I found The Hurt Locker mesmerizing. I think All Quiet on the Western Front is fascinating. While I can't understand what would make someone join the armed forces, I can be engaged by their stories. As the show got under way, mixing video, reenacted interviews between the show's creators and the troops, and choreographed movement (that I would not define as dance), I started to feel more and more uncomfortable. The soldiers were often brash, violent off the battlefield, and distressingly homophobic and sexist. I started to dislike them more and more and was (if I'm being honest) angry with the show for glamorizing and legitimizing them. This, it turns out, was reactionary on my part. I'll explain:

What really was bothering me wasn't the depiction of the behavior. It WAS the behavior. It all rang a little too true. I was annoyed with the play, it seems, for being so honest. This was not a realization I had all of a sudden but slowly gained over time. Because what's dazzling about the show (and it's really the whole show, not just the play itself) was that while it portrayed these characters more and more specifically, it was also leading us to a place where the stakes became high enough that the soldiers were acting on instinct, emotion, and trust. So we got to know them more and more, and maybe we disliked some of them or were angry with them, but then the war became more dangerous and we watched them cohere into a unit under pressure whose unity made them easier to respect and admire and, dare I suggest, understand.

My annoyance registered clearly about 30 minutes in, and there was some time there that I was outside of the action, regarding it at a distance. Giving myself back over to the performance happened more gradually. I didn't notice it until the end. And the end... The wordless last few minutes of the show were among the most astonishing that I've ever seen. The squad groups up. Bagpipes play. The soldiers march. Back and forth on parade grounds, changing directions, coming apart and regrouping as the music became louder and louder. I can't explain what was so amazing about it. And I don't have the ability to accurately capture of what was happening physically or emotionally on stage. But as it built and built, I noticed that I was actually trembling in the face of a theatrical moment so perfect that it cut through preconceived notions while dazzling the senses and holding the audience as its own singular entity, unifying them in the act of witnessing. I wept for these characters I had so disliked, and as corny as it sounds, it's those sort of moments of transcendent humanity that keep me going to plays. When something cuts through the bullshit so effectively and challenges me so particularly, all I can do is be thankful for the opportunity to have seen it.

And hey! After getting off track when I went out of town, I'm all caught up on shows I've seen! Happily for my six or seven dedicated readers, I have tickets for something new tomorrow!

The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures

Spending three and a half hours watching a new Tony Kushner play was enervating, provocative, and left me feeling like a little bit of an idiot. There's something about watching the work of someone who is clearly brilliant that inspires me to learn and know more but also makes me feel a little bad about some of my...less thoughtful entertainment options. You don't want to leave The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures and want to pop in the headphones for the new Britney album is all I'm saying. You DO want to go home and do some reading on the labor history of the United States. Which I did! And THEN I listened to some Britney...I couldn't help myself!

Regardless, let me try to quickly explain several hours of dense, character heavy show. Gus is an elderly father of three who has long had close ties with the Communist party in America. Now 72, he is preparing to kill himself, but before he does so wants the approval of his three children (because he's a twisted fuck--more later)--Pill, a middle aged gay man who can't stop cheating on his partner with a hustler; Empty, a lesbian whose partner is expecting their first child perhaps against Empty's real wishes; and V, the least academic of the three children, the one straight one, and the only child who keeps particularly close to Gus these days. Setting things in motion, more or less, is Clio, Gus's ex-nun sister who requests a unanimous vote to either give Gus the blessing to kill himself or to force him not to.

To get all literary on you for a second, if Angels in America is Kushner's The Corrections, iHo is his Freedom--still expansive and brilliant but less forgiving of its characters incredibly deep flaws. I always wondered why one particular character in Angels seemed to bear the brunt of Kushner's ire, earning the least happy ending in that particular play when I felt he deserved better. In iHo (note: I didn't come up with the nickname), no one gets an especially happy ending, and frankly, none of them really earns it. These are selfish people. Complicated, yes. Believable as well. Ultimately, though, they grow less and less likeable throughout the show, inciting pity more than caring. That's not a complaint. When after three hours I realized that I deeply hated a character I had loved at the beginning but still felt bad for him, I was mostly impressed by Kushner's willingness to take the audience to such dark places, but also still held deeply in the thrall of the play's incredible thoughtfulness. Because while I might not like these people, I was still invested in them. It's a hugely tricky balance--free of sentimentality and easy choices. It doesn't make it an easy show to watch, but it does make it fascinating.

But dwelling on suicide and the more distressing aspects of the play makes this sound more somber than it is. And the narrative is shot through with quite a bit of humor. Secondary characters like Empty's partner Maeve (perfectly played by Danielle Skraastad) and V's wife Sooze are wonderfully funny. Aunt Clio as well has hysterical moments though hers are balanced with others of sheer pathos by the incomparable Kathleen Chalfant who delivers a performance that is hugely quiet yet leaves a resounding impression. Not a single movement is wasted. Not a moment is missed. She's wonderful. Not everyone is loathsome. I quite enjoyed Yale-educated hustler Eli who Michael Esper plays as terribly sweet and almost heroically lost. And in a single scene, Molly Price plays Shelle (the less revealed about her, the better) and brings a crushing humanity and bareness of emotion that nearly splits the play wide open.

Most thrilling for me was seeing Stephen Spinella who created the role of Prior in Angels in America create a new Kushner role. As oldest son Pill, he's a devastating mess. His father notes that he is the child most likely (and willing and fated) to "break things." I didn't like him, and I didn't understand why his partner would stay with him, but pieces of him, I felt I understood, deeply and uncomfortably. That contrast between what I felt and what I knew--how I reacted to characters vs. how I understood them--that's what was ultimately so wonderful and eye-opening about the show. It lacks the humanity and sheer overwhelming power of Angels in America, but when you've created one of the most substantial masterpieces of contemporary theater, I think it's fair to say you're still prett great when you don't quite equal your earlier work. This is at once darker, more restrained, and less accessible than Angels, so it's less enjoyable, but damned if it isn't still pretty amazing.

Burn This

I even managed to catch a play a week ago when I was in LA. Admirable commitment? Or I have a problem? Hard to decide. But the point is, Lanford Wilson died a few weeks back, and when I was reading his obit, I realized that while I had read a few of his plays, I had never actually seen one. So when presented the opportunity to check out Burn This at the Mark Taper Forum, I jumped at it. And I really, really liked the play. Sadly, it all hung on a central performance that was lacking, so the audience had to fill in some blanks that probably wouldn't have been present if the main actor had been (or been directed to be) a more convincing and complete character.

Long story short: news has arrived that Anna's best friend Robbie has died. She lived in a loft with him, a fellow dancer who happened to be gay, and mutual friend Larry. Off to the funeral she goes where she learns that not only did no one in Robbie's family know he was gay, none of them had ever seen him dance, a fact that Anna finds almost unbearably tragic. A month after the funeral, Robbie's brother Pale shows up at the loft in the middle of the night to pick up his dead brother's belongings. And that's when shit gets really complicated.

Burn This is a play about the depths of our passions, the lengths we go to keep our secrets, and the moments when we allow all our walls to come crashing down. It feels as though it's meant to be performed at a fevered pitch, but as Anna, Zabryna Guevara treads so lightly over the emotions of the play, portraying Anna as lightly sad throughout the entire performance. It becomes up to the other three members of the cast to recalibrate and try to balance the deep sadness and incredible comedy of the piece. They do an admirable job, but you never lose sight of the fact that it seems to be a show without a center.

Brooks Ashmanskas gives a deliriously funny and camp performance as ad-man Larry. Ken Barnett is wonderful as love-interest Burton. And Adam Rothenberg is almost wonderful in the challenging role of Pale. It did make me wish I could go back in time and see the show with Joan Allen and John Malkovich who were in the original cast. Or not as far back to 2002 when it was Edward Norton and Catherine Keener. Nevertheless, I enjoyed myself and the play which is one of those things that makes me wish I had things in life I was as passionate about as the characters. Well...maybe I do. But there was still something intoxicating and a bit melancholy about the incredible dedication of dancers to the art of dance as explained in the show. And people's dedication to each other--revealing itself most strongly in times of duress. It was a beautiful play. And maybe just because I was in Los Angeles, I couldn't help but be surprised that no one had turned it into a movie yet!

Good People

It's often uncomfortable to watch a show about the contemporary poor on Broadway. There you are, having spent a significant amount of money to watch a play, indicating your own expendable income. And on stage are people just scraping by, presentationally at least. You might be asked to feel bad for them, worse you might be asked to pity them, or worst you might be asked to deify them for their spirit. Any of the options tends to leave you (me) feeling like an asshole who spent a family's food budget for the week for the opportunity to sit in a dark theater and watch people perform for you.

Happily, Good People is a show about people scraping by that very nearly dares you to pass judgment based on the main character Margie (hard G) played by Frances McDormand. You might want to judge her for being so aggressive, but the next scene will significantly soften your attitude toward her. And then another scene comes along and makes you think she might be a bitch after all. Eventually you settle in and accept that you're not being asked to look at Margie as a stand-in for all the downtrodden people of South Boston. She's an individual character brought fully and remarkably to life by Frances McDormand.What becomes satisfying is that while Good People deals in issues of money and class, it is not a play about being poor. It's a play about one woman's very complicated life and is driven by her need to find gainful employment. She's not going to be arrested for stealing a loaf of bread, and you know she won't tumble head over feet into a life on the streets selling her hair for money, but the stakes are still high enough that her urgency is well-placed and sets the plot in beautiful motion.

Margie's friend and landlord (the exceptional and hysterical Becky Ann Baker and Estelle Parsons) lead her to consider approaching her high school ex-boyfriend (a wonderful Tate Donovan) to see about getting a job. He has escaped Southie and become a doctor, and Margie thinks he might owe her just enough favor to let her answer phones or point her towards someone who might have work open.

What follows is a play that gently expands to encompass larger and larger issues and develop more and more momentum. It's a well-formed, old fashioned play in the best of sense. All the pieces will fit. All the scenes play out at a realistic, almost leisurely pace, and every time you think you know what the play is "about," something comes along to gently confound your expectations.

It also helps that the play is very, very funny. For a show that opens with the main character losing her job and is centrally concerned with her inability to provide for her developmentally disabled daughter, there are a lot of jokes, and they all land. Credit to the ridiculously well-balanced ensemble that resists the urge to showboat even though each has ample opportunity to do so.

At play's end, I didn't feel I had seen anything revolutionary or utterly new, but I was left with the incredibly satisfying feeling of seeing a perfectly constructed play beautifully performed. As the seasons winds down, it is to me the best new play that's arrived. I still need to see Jerusalem (next week), but given the outpouring of love for the remedial War Horse, I'm sure that's going to win the Tony. Well...it was better than High.

The People in the Picture

The Holocaust and comedy were integrated pretty well in Life Is Beautiful. The Holocaust and comedy AND musical theater? Shit got even trickier. But you know what? I totally dug The People in the Picture.

Musical theater's most versatile diva, Donna Murphy, is rocking every inch of said ability to move between comedy and drama, playing ugly and beautiful, young and old, vibrant and afflicted with Alzheimers. Because the people who wrote this show had the balls to have a single person play a character at the ages of roughly 30 and 80. Murphy is Raisel, an elderly grandmother in New York trying to pass along the history of the Yiddish theater troupe she was the star of to her granddaughter Jenny played by the wonderful 10 year old Rachel Resheff. Raisel's daughter, Red (played by Nicole Parker) complicates matters by being intentionally distant from her heritage.

As Raisel spins her stories of her troupe, the titular folks from the past come to vibrant life. So back and forth we go between 1977 and the late 30s/early '40s. From comedy to drama. And from Yiddish vaudeville to contemporary Broadway ballads. It probably shouldn't work. And for many, it probably won't. But what I enjoyed about this was that it presented a story rooted in the Holocaust without being "a Holocaust story." Without denying the tragedy of what happened, it manages to celebrate the persistence of storytelling and the resilience of the human spirit.

To do so, it traffics in some cliches, and some of the old-time troupe gets short shrift really just standing in as representatives of the tragedy to come. Chip Zien is wonderful in a small part even though you just sort of wait for him to get killed. Joyce Van Patten gets explosive laughs on a few lines, which might actually be her only lines. Then there's Andie Mechanic who looks to be about seven or eight and has a shockingly adult, booming, clarion voice.

Some of the numbers are expendable, notably a number called "Hollywood Blondes" that doesn't move the story forward OR provide much insight into the particular moment it represents. That said, whether the vaudevillean "The Dybbuk" and "Ich, Uch, Feh" or the contempo "Bread and Theatre" or " We Were Here," the majority of numbers score.

I worry that this show will be easy for some to dismiss because it's a little messy and walks a number of tightropes. It would be a shame if people weren't led to it. It's probably the least buzzed about musical of the year, but it (to me) is better than most--whether Priscilla, Catch Me If You Can, or even Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson (which I quite liked...before I started blogging).

Really, though, if nothing else, it's a glorious opportunity to see Donna Murphy work her magic. She gets to do character work as the grandmother slowly losing her mind, show of her laser precise comedic timing in the theater numbers, and put over super emotional material like the songs "Child of My Child" in ways so clean and so specific that the whole enterprise looks effortless in spite of whiplash changes from old to young character in front of our eyes.

There's a real warmth to this show and enough genuinely pleasing about it that I was happy to forgive any quibbles, ignore any schmaltz, and just embrace it. I hope others will as well.

High

The opportunity to watch Kathleen Turner play a recovering alcoholic nun/therapist with a foul mouth? Yes, please! That was basically my entire decision making process for going to see the new play High which has made it to Broadway by way of a baffling decision making process. The playwright's last show tanked. This show got pretty bad reviews out of town. There are roughly ten million other new shows opening in the next month, so there's no reason to believe that there's a wide open audience ready to buy tickets to this. Yes, there are those out there (me) who assume that if the play was good that would be lovely, but if it was bad that would be even lovelier. Kathleen Turner as a recovering alcoholic nun, people!

This show's gonna tank. I think that's a pretty safe assumption. Sister Kathleen Turner is asked by her priest superior to counsel a super-addict gay teen hooker. She totally doesn't want to, but she does. Things go badly. Addiction is hard! Therapy is also hard! Writing a play, it seems, is harder yet.

High is just too poorly conceived and clunky to ever get off the ground. At times, I tried to figure out whether there were bad acting choices being made or whether there was simply no way for some lines to be rendered realistic. I suspect the latter. Which is especially unfortunate given that the author's bio included a thank you to his sponsor for "saving his life." When a recovering addict makes addiction and recovery look totally fake, you know you're in less than skilled writerly hands. People should start out by writing what they know, yes. But some people just shouldn't write.

In the end, there's enough camp about the show to make it relatively entertaining. The show is at least relatively quick moving and coherent, so there's a likeability there in spite of the larger ineptitude. So yeah...I'm glad I went. But I wouldn't recommend that anyone else should.

LCD Soundsystem

I'm always so afraid of missing something amazing that if you tell me it's my last chance to see or do something, I'll be there. So it was with LCD Soundsystem's "LAST SHOW EVER" at Madison Square Garden. Was I a fan of the band? No. Did I love one of their songs? Yeah. Was the fact that tickets were affordable and the event felt "important" the only reason I went? You betcha.

Sadly for me, this was a concert for the superfans. I left after three hours of increasingly dull show. We hadn't even gotten to the encores yet. That one song I love? I didn't hear it. I had reached my fill of electronica, self-satisfaction, and being surrounded by the species Douchebaggus Fraternicus.

The show opened with the one-two punch of "Dance Yrself Clean" and "Drunk Girls," and I was super-excited for the ride. Yes, I found it silly that the band requested everyone show up to their last concert dressed in black and white. Yes, I was disconcerted by the number of glow sticks being thrown from the many levels of MSG. Yes, someone had already spilled beer on me. But it felt special. Exciting even. And "Daft Punk Is Playing at My House" can never not be good times. After about an hour of fun, we were told it was going to be a long show, so there would be some breaks mixed in. I do love a good intermission.

The band returned for the second set and played almost the entire song 45:33 which (and this REALLY bothers me) is actually 46 minutes long. The beginning of it was great. Comedian/musician Reggie Watts guested on it and was wonderful. No one around me had any idea who he was. Many asked. A bit later, Arcade Fire put in a guest appearance. Unpopular opinion alert: I hate Arcade Fire's music. But not as much as I hate the lead singer's hair. All they did was scream along "North American" whenever it came up in the song "North American Scum." It was...pointless.

If the second set hadn't happened, I probably would have enjoyed the third set. It's just...for me, repetitive dance music only works in limited doses. And while a lot of magazines have made the claim of late that LCD is basically the most important band ever, I'd argue that their sound is quite familiar and is really only elevated by clever lyrics. See: "New York I Live You, But You're Bringing Me Down." So when you're at Madison Square Garden with its hideously muddled sound and you can't really make out any of said lyrics or any of the between song banter. And when you add in the massive dose of self-congratulation that a "retirement concert" is all about...well, that's kind of deadly. So I ran for the hills. I didn't even make the balloon drop. But at least I can say I saw LCD Soundsystem's last show before their comeback. Because is any "last show" ever really a last show? And how does a one man band break up? I should have let a superfan have the seat. Ah well. Their loss. And...mine too. Hmm.

War Horse

Oh, kids. We have some catching up to do. A weekend of marathon madness left me woefully behind, so I'm a step ahead of you in knowing when the good reviews are coming. And there is one coming. But not yet!

Let me start this off that by saying on Thursday, I was basically dead on my feet and the last thing I wanted to do was go see a three hour play about horses. Was I prepared then to give War Horse the benefit of the doubt? Not especially. Do I think that really affected how I feel about it in the end? Also not especially. It's a tough question though because the people around me LOVED this show. We're talking rapturous response. Endless ovation upon the conclusion. Palpable excitement. And me Scrooge-ing it up in the middle of the crowd.

As a man behind me helpfully stated as we were walking out of the theater, "It's about the horse, but it's so much bigger than that. It's about the war." Yes, sir, thank you for your penetrative consideration of War Horse. Now that you've said that, I can see that it is about both horses and wars. And really folks, that's about all it's about.

Kid with cantankerous drunk father ends up with a horse. He loves the horse. And I mean, he LOVES this horse. Was there a subtext there? Probably not. Did pretending there was and following along with it give me more pleasure than the play itself? Absotutely. So the horse is raised, and lo, it is a wondrous horse. Then comically alcoholic father almost loses it in a bet, but son is able to save it. Phew! Then cliched sad sack father sells the horse to the war effort. Oh noes! Son, loving this horse sooooo much goes off to war to find his horse. Son is, I'm guessing, autistic, as he seems to love ONLY his horse and not be able to manage any actual human compassion. Then again, this is a really, really awesome horse.

Cut to hours of the horse and the son in the war. Will hey find each other? Will they be reunited? Do you even have to ask? In a melodrama as trite and predictable as this, conclusions are pretty much foregone. Son and horse will reunite and live magically ever after. It's like a Nicholas Sparks novel if Miley Cyrus was played by a horse. (Insert your own jokes here).

Listen, the puppets are undeniably amazing. Even though you can see through them to the people literally inside manipulating them, there is a vitality and lifelike quality that can't be denied. So when the horses gallop across the stage or stand and shiver or slowly approach someone they don't trust, there is something deeply believable about them. And you will have ample opportunity to stare at them and to believe.

All the humans die, more or less. Tons of horses die too. Tragic. A small child is trotted out to exploit audience emotions because war is sooooo much worse when kids are involved. Especially little French girls named Sophie who also love horses. And oh, just wait until everyone on stage is supposed to be speaking different languages, indicated by incredibly bad French, German, and British accents. I'm convinced the script actually looks like this: "Zees ees terr-ee-bluh." "Bollocks!" "Gesundheit!" And the random Irish-y folk songs that happen throughout? I. Can't. Even.

I resisted from the beginning, and I found it easier and easier to resist as the show went on. This is one of those silly "boy and his dog" stories you can find in some easy-reader children's book, but it's blown up to epic stature. There are some mighty thin bones holding this up. For me, the whole thing fell down about 20 minutes in. But what do I know? Everyone else was gasping at the pretty.

The Mountain Goats

I first encountered The Mountain Goats at a bit of a remove. At Kiki and Herb’s Carnegie Hall goodbye show, they performed “No Children,” a song that it is quite easy to fall instantly in love with. I tracked down the original and was surprised to learn that unlike how they performed it, it wasn’t a dialogue between two people, but sung by one man with a kind of nasal voice and flat affect. What was immediately funny as sung by a drag queen and accompanist made up to look like two elderly performers became a more haunting and angrier song when delivered as intended by John Darnielle who for all intents and purposes IS The Mountain Goats. I was intrigued.

Over the years, I’ve come to buy more and more of the seemingly infinite back-catalogue of MG albums. From the intensely personal The Sunset Tree to the bizarrely brilliant All Hail West Texas (recorded by Darnielle by himself on some really low-tech equipment) to the Biblically inspired The Life of the World to Come, the sounds have varied, but many things have remained constant: the output is prolific, the songwriting is sharply intelligent, and everything seems to be tinged with equal parts brilliance and madness. At least, that’s my take.

Though I’ve seen the band four or five times and have seven or eight of their albums, I cannot begin to compete with real Mountain Goats fans who seem to see every show and know every word to every song. It’s like they’re the favorite band of every autistic savant ever. It’s an impressive site to behold. And because among those fans, there are so many die-hard enthusiasts, the crowd at every show is reverent and wonderful.

All of that said, I didn’t have the BEST time at their show on Wednesday. It felt like a lot of it was focused on some of the group’s more moribund material, and while I do enjoy some sad-ass songs, there’s something anachronistic about standing around in a rock club listening to one man on a guitar sing quietly about someone dying. That is I-need-a-chair music. At least for me it is. But when he hit on songs with a rockier vibe or happier lyrics, the spirit soared. I can’t imagine it will ever not be thrilling to hear songs like “Love, Love, Love,” the aforementioned divorce anthem “No Children,” “The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton,” or the incredibly beautiful “This Year,” a song about friendship and survival. “There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year//I am gonna make it through this year if it kills me.”

Darnielle just has this wonderful openness that seems to invite anyone who has ever felt like an outsider (so…everyone) to revisit that moment while celebrating having moved on from it. It’s a strange sort of dwelling in the past as a celebration of the present, and everything seems rooted in such a deeply personal place for him that it’s absurdly easy to give yourself over to it.

I’ll close this by just quoting my favorite lyrics from “No Children.” The video’s above. It’s really worth checking out.

I hope I cut myself shaving tomorrow
I hope it bleeds all day long
Our friends say it's darkest before the sun rises
We're pretty sure they're all wrong
I hope it stays dark forever
I hope the worst isn't over
And I hope you blink before I do
Yeah I hope I never get sober