(Hey. Go see No Room for Wishing. It's in Brooklyn Oct. 18, Boston Oct. 19, and Manhattan Oct. 22. More info at the bottom of this post.)
I have been a neglectful theater blogger again. I apologize to you and to myself. I know I get more out of the experience when I pause to reflect on the performance in the way that blogging about it requires. I have seen plenty of theater lately (well, never enough, but certainly more than many do), but I talk about it mostly in person with my theater wife, Lisa.
And I've connected with so many brilliant and funny theater fans on Twitter, so I've been discussing shows there. The immediacy and interactivity is quite fulfilling, but there's only so much you can say in a series of 140-character posts.
Also, my grandmother has needed more caregiving lately, which I have been happy to provide. I'm so lucky, as a 37-year-old, to have the opportunity to still have her in my life and so nearby. Her stories are amazing, and I just feel blessed to have the opportunity to get to know her better and better. But I hate that at 92 her eyesight and sense of balance are failing and that she's losing some of her independence.
On an entirely positive note, I have begun a part-time gig as the communications coordinator at the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition. I'm working on the e-newsletter and a website revamp, which is pretty exciting. (HTML, my old friend. WordPress, my new friend!) You may recall that I left my position as a book editor partly because of my reaction to seeing The Normal Heart. Academic publishing is worthwhile and very important, but I was aching to do something to more directly effect positive change in the world. And I believe MTPC is a great place to do that.
I don't have time to make an elegant transition to this, but I really highly recommend that you go see the fantastic actor Danny Bryck in his one-man documentary play about the Occupy movement. No Room for Wishing is an insightful look at the passion and conflicts within and around Occupy. His performance is stunning, as always. The characters (definitely unreliable narrators) are at times inspiring, funny, and embarrassing. Bryck is mostly a Boston-based actor, so if you're in New York, definitely take this opportunity to see him. He is one of the most exciting actors I've seen, and I make it a point to see every show he's in. (He was the best Hedwig since John Cameron Mitchell and great in Caryl Churchill's A Number.)
I'm working on an interview with Danny Bryck, but it seems unlikely that I'll have that ready by tomorrow. Sorry about that. In the meantime, just go see No Room for Wishing, please. You're welcome.
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Friday, July 6, 2012
NYMF plans for the overly ambitious
At NYMF 2011, I endured Fucking Hipsters! because I love Heather Robb of the band The Spring Standards. She was charming and sounded lovely, as usual, but the show was a mess and not really much fun. At NYMF 2010, Shine! really impressed me. It was a well-developed, full-scale musical (with a huge cast for such a small space) based on Horatio Alger's Ragged Dick stories and set in 1876. The staging was minimal and resourceful, reminding me a bit of Peter and the Starcatcher in that way. And Andy Mientus was really good.
So for NYMF 2012, I am cramming in as many shows as I can while I'm in town. Unfortunately, the scheduling means I'll miss one of the productions I was most looking forward to, Re-Animator The Musical (there's some punctuation missing in that title, no?).
Other shows that look promising but don't fit my calendar: Rio (set in a Brazilian favela), Stuck (strangers on public transportation), and Sidekicks! (about superheroes' lesser halves, starring Alex Brightman, recently of Nobody Loves You at San Diego's Old Globe, which it crushed me to miss).
In happier news, I have tickets to all the shows below. Please cross your fingers for me that the timing works out so that I can get to them all on time (and that I can crash the opening night party and Part of It All a bit late).
In chronological order:
* Himself and Nora (about James Joyce and Nora Barnacle)
* A Letter to Harvey Milk (as stated on tin?)
* Shelter (about a counselor at a Philadelphia women's shelter)
* Zelda (about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald)
* Prisoner Dancer (Filipino maximum-security prisoners in a dance-based rehabilitation program)
* ZAPATA! (Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata steps out of the past to show a member of Occupy Wall Street how to fight for the 99%)
* Le Cabaret Grimm (punk cabaret)
* Stand Tall (a David and Goliath story ... with a Guitar Hero battle--and with the not-particularly-tall Gerard Canonico, of Spring Awakening and American Idiot, as Goliath)
* Swing State (click the link to read the description--I'm worried about the rampant stereotyping that will probably be included)
Monday, July 2, 2012
Dogboy and Justine workshop production
http://dogboyandjustine.com
I was a Kickstarter supporter for this show, and then my friend Hilary was cast as Justine. Add grains of salt as needed to suit your own tastes.
Right, so ... this is a musical about dominatrixes (dominatrices?) and their clients. It centers on down-on-her-luck Justine, who resorts to sex-related work when she fails to find another job, and Danny, one of her clients who happens to consider himself to be a friendly and loyal dog. The show includes a duel with dildos (or dildoes, if you prefer). It also has tons of musical-theater in-jokes. It's as though they intended to write it just for me.
The concept is ace and the songs are interesting and hella listenable. The production is very funny but also depicts a diverse, often-misunderstood--or even completely unknown--community. (Ugh, don't get me started on the travesty that is Fifty Shades ofPorn for Misinformed, Twilight-Obsessed Middle-Aged Women Grey). Underneath the titillation and humor is an interesting examination of loneliness and unexpected opportunities for connection along with commentary on the crappy economy and accidental discoveries of one's own talents. In well-orchestrated song.
This was a short-run, bare-bones developmental production in the worse-for-wear American Theater of Actors. I hear Racheline Maltese (book) and Erica Kudisch (music and lyrics) will be retooling it before an expanded production, which I look forward to seeing.
This show gets so many things right (especially the musical-theater references) and shows tons of promise. Below are my notes on what I hope will be improved before Dogboy and Justine's next production.
* The show is a bit short, and the relationship between the titular Dogboy and Justine needs fleshing out. It jumps to their closeness at the end without earning it. As I mentioned to Hilary after the show, one way to address this without taking much stage time would be to have them speak to each other on the phone inaudibly during scene changes, to highlight the frequency and duration of their interactions. The audience doesn't need to be privy to the entirety of their growing connection, but they do have to believe it happened.
* Considering that he is supposedly the main character--and arguably the most interesting one--Danny (Dogboy) is given suprisingly little stage time. Also, as Jonathan Kline is a freaking amazing singer giving a fantastically nuanced performance, this is a musical-theater crime.
* Dogboy's mother and her relationship with him is underdeveloped. She needs to be more than a plot device if the ending is going to achieve an emotional impact.
* The show is much more negative about the clientele than I expected, and this disappointed me. I'm fine with the doms looking down on their clients and being in it just for the money, but that should be tempered by sympathetic portrayals of at least some clients beyond Dogboy.
* There are some cheap laughs. This is true of most musical comedies, but it disappoints me here even more because there's enough situational comedy that the jokes could be much more complex and unexpected.
As I said, I like the production. It shows a great deal of promise. Even though it's uneven and perhaps isn't as good yet, I enjoyed it more than I did the Broadway drag-queen musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
I was a Kickstarter supporter for this show, and then my friend Hilary was cast as Justine. Add grains of salt as needed to suit your own tastes.
Right, so ... this is a musical about dominatrixes (dominatrices?) and their clients. It centers on down-on-her-luck Justine, who resorts to sex-related work when she fails to find another job, and Danny, one of her clients who happens to consider himself to be a friendly and loyal dog. The show includes a duel with dildos (or dildoes, if you prefer). It also has tons of musical-theater in-jokes. It's as though they intended to write it just for me.
The concept is ace and the songs are interesting and hella listenable. The production is very funny but also depicts a diverse, often-misunderstood--or even completely unknown--community. (Ugh, don't get me started on the travesty that is Fifty Shades of
This was a short-run, bare-bones developmental production in the worse-for-wear American Theater of Actors. I hear Racheline Maltese (book) and Erica Kudisch (music and lyrics) will be retooling it before an expanded production, which I look forward to seeing.
This show gets so many things right (especially the musical-theater references) and shows tons of promise. Below are my notes on what I hope will be improved before Dogboy and Justine's next production.
* The show is a bit short, and the relationship between the titular Dogboy and Justine needs fleshing out. It jumps to their closeness at the end without earning it. As I mentioned to Hilary after the show, one way to address this without taking much stage time would be to have them speak to each other on the phone inaudibly during scene changes, to highlight the frequency and duration of their interactions. The audience doesn't need to be privy to the entirety of their growing connection, but they do have to believe it happened.
* Considering that he is supposedly the main character--and arguably the most interesting one--Danny (Dogboy) is given suprisingly little stage time. Also, as Jonathan Kline is a freaking amazing singer giving a fantastically nuanced performance, this is a musical-theater crime.
* Dogboy's mother and her relationship with him is underdeveloped. She needs to be more than a plot device if the ending is going to achieve an emotional impact.
* The show is much more negative about the clientele than I expected, and this disappointed me. I'm fine with the doms looking down on their clients and being in it just for the money, but that should be tempered by sympathetic portrayals of at least some clients beyond Dogboy.
* There are some cheap laughs. This is true of most musical comedies, but it disappoints me here even more because there's enough situational comedy that the jokes could be much more complex and unexpected.
As I said, I like the production. It shows a great deal of promise. Even though it's uneven and perhaps isn't as good yet, I enjoyed it more than I did the Broadway drag-queen musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Perversely excited: Xanadu tonight
http://www.speakeasystage.com/doc.php?section=showpage&page=xanadu
Lisa and I are headed to the Boston Center for the Arts tonight to experience what I hope will be a fantastically cheesy musical: Xanadu. I've seen the original movie (seriously, WTF was that mess?), but I've never seen the stage adaptation. I hear it's very campy and probably involves hotpants* and rollerskates. I love things that are intentionally cheesy as long as they're clever. So I have my fingers crossed!
* Alas, this production contains no Cheyenne Jackson.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Too tired for a three-show day
I'm tired, y'all. I hate the summer heat. I feel gross all the time and have trouble sleeping. So forgive me if this post makes even less sense than usual. Also I'm writing it out on my phone using Swype, so there are sure to be embarrassing errors. I just hope they're funny ones.
Anyway, I'm up early (for me) and hadn't posted in forever, and my already questionable judgment is compromised, so it seemed like a good time to say things on the Internet for everyone (or maybe five people) to see.
Today is day three of a four-day, seven-show weekend in New York with Lisa. Thursday I almost got a migraine laughing my head off at James Corden in One Man, Two Guvnors. I'm not a huge fan of that kind of farce in general, so extra kudos to Corden and his crew for the thoroughly delightful evening.
Yesterday was a two-movies-and-a-musical day. I saw The Avengers movie again followed by watching Cabin in the Woods again. I really love them both, and not just because I'm a Joss Whedon fangirl. (What, Swype didn't have "fangirl" in its standard dictionary? Disappointing.)
Then we saw Newsies. Finally. So that happened. And won't be happening again.
This afternoon we're seeing Topher Grace in Lonely, I'm Not at Second Stage. (Really, Swype? You give me "fecund" and "devine" before "second"?) Then we're catching the early evening performance of Potted Potter before splitting up so Lisa can see The Lyons, which I already saw recently (alas, not decadently, Swype!). (Don't worry, Nicky Silver, I'm sure she'll love it. You can stop pacing.) I'm going to Chimichangas and Zoloft at the Atlantic. (So, Swype knew "Zoloft" but not "chimichangas"? That's very disturbing.)
Tomorrow we're getting our lit-nerd on with the musical February House at the Public. I'm predisposed to like it.
To wrap up the weekend, we're going to try to get tickets FOR (not "fir," you stupid tiny portable generally awesome pocket computer) Rapture, Blister, Burn* at Playwrights Horizons. (I'm really looking forward to seeing Virginia Kull, whom I loved in Assistance.)
So, anyway, it's time for about seven frigid showers to wake me up for this long (awesome) day.
See you on the flip side. (See? Dementia from overheating!)
* Update: We ended up paying $25 to see Cock (what a bargain!) instead of rushing Rapture, Blister, Burn. We'll catch Kull's show in June instead. Also, you can bet your ass I'll be paying more money for Cock in the future. ;)
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