December Catch Up!

This is so lame, but as I approach the end of the year and go into holiday hyperdrive, I just haven't had that much time to sit down and write (hence the two weeks silence). So I'm going to smash the last four things I saw into one post because there isn't a TON to say about the majority of them as it's some stuff I've seen before and some stuff I wasn't inspired by. Which is gonna make a fascinating read!

I WILL be back to individual posts for the last few shows of the year, and more excitingly (to me at least), I'm working on my Best of 2011 lists. I live for lists, so I'm terribly excited. Keep an eye out for that VERY soon.

So let's kick it off with a Rufus Wainwright concert for the New York City Opera. They're doing his opera in the Spring, so it's not as totally out of left field as it could have been. But the decision to have four pro opera singers perform his album "Songs for Lulu" as a song cycle yielded incredibly odd results. Not bad. But probably not good either.

The man himself took the stage in a second act and performed some of his bigger hits (such as they are) which really drove home how much his plaintive whine sells his songs. The opera singers weren't necessarily helped by the fact that his most recent album isn't his best work--convincing me that some people really just are more interesting before recovery.

All in all, it felt like half a night of the weirdest covers ever and half any average Rufus concert which I always love.

Speaking of unusual concerts: Liza Minnelli and Sam Harris joined forces at Birdland for Schmoolie and Minnooli, a delightful evening more for the banter and the strangeness than for the song choices themselves. (Mis)guided into thinking that going for some Borscht Belt style yuks was right in their comfort zone, the two sang and chatted about their long friendship and then took some solo moments in the spotlight.

I've never been the hugest Sam Harris fan. His voice is a little too crisp and his image a little too cookie cutter. Even when talking about drug binges and getting his life back on track, he has this vague blandness about him. Liza, of course, is Liza. Carried out by two buff men in tank tops with a bedazzled cast on because she broke her leg, she was as on as she was off. By which I mean, she's the sort of person who might stand up to emphasize a point in a song even when she's got a broken leg, but whether she'll remember the lyrics at that moment is questionable. Bottom line: I watched Liza from ten feet away in a tiny room, and she was a glorious mess. Sparkle, baby. Sparkle.

From concerts back to plays, I hit the revival of Private Lives with Kim Cattrall. And you know what? No more Noel Coward plays for me. I don't care how charming and witty I'm supposed to find him. His stuff bores me to tears. It didn't help that this production was pretty solidly one note, especially in the performances. And it certainly didn't help that Act 2 featured what I am nearly positive was the ugliest set I have ever seen on stage. It wasn't even just ugly. It was distractingly ugly. I spent a solid half of the play thinking, "Christ, who approved THAT aquarium" or "Why is this all happening in a circular apartment?" or "Why must they assault my eyes like this? Do they hate me?" (little bits of the set viewable in the photo above) Suffice to say: I don't recommend Private Lives. Which seems to be on point since it announced yesterday that it's closing early.

Lastly and most excitingly, I saw Venus in Fur again. I caught it Off-Broadway last year and just flipped for it. Not even for the play itself, though I do very much enjoy it, but for Nina Arianda's performance in it. This lady has gotten such a ridiculous amount of press for this part and the crazy thing is: she deserves ALL OF IT. Here's what I said about her in May: When I saw Nina Arianda in David Ives' Venus in Fur last year at the Classic Stage Company, I was convinced it was one of the best performances I had ever seen. Crazy, then, that it was also her first major production. If there is such a thing in the theater anymore, it felt like a star-making performance. With her striking features, biting humor, and capacity for stunning (but controlled) rage, she tore the stage up. You can throw any cliched adjective at the performance she gave: breathtaking, incandescent, stunning... Basically, she was fucking brilliant, and I couldn't rip my eyes away from her.

And that's all still true. She's now more happily matched by Hugh Dancy than she was by Wes Bentley although, to be honest, the male role is pretty much just set decoration. I love the play in spite of it being admittedly a bit thin and predictable, but it's incredibly dun nonetheless, and it's just the sort of performance you get to see maybe once or twice a year. And the sort of debut that you see maybe...once.