About Elly (Asghar Farhadi)

Asghar Farhadi's A Separation (2011) ranks among my favorite films. When The Past appeared in the US two years later, we were not disappointed.  Finally, Farhadi's 2009 film, About Elly, was released this spring, and we made certain not to miss it.  Our efforts were supremely rewarded.
The film features a 8 or so minute seaside episode featuring small children and a young schoolteacher that is one of the most excruciating scenes I've ever witnessed on film.  The rest of the film carefully parses that scene, revealing small lies, one by one, until compounded they create a story that can no longer be sustained.  More broadly, it is an allegory of living in a restricted regime.

Highly recommended.  Should not be missed.

Good People (David Lindsay-Abaire)

Set in South Boston, Good People deals with class issues that most of us want to ignore: why do some people get out of Southie and why are others stuck there?  The play, with good humor (that is never condescending or mean) carefully examines each reason or justification that we might carelessly toss out as an answer.  Turning over the excuses, turning them inside out, and bringing the hidden into focus, it forces us to rethink easy platitudes and self-righteousness. 

TheaterWorks' director Rob Ruggiero began with a strong script, and he didn't let it down.  His excellent cast delivered us with characters and a story that was pitch perfect and perfectly timed.  Erika Rolfrud as Margaret, the single mother who cannot even hold down a cashier's job at the local dollar store, is by turns infuriating and selfless.

It's productions such as this that make us subscribers to this fine local theater.

Highly recommended.

A Human Being Died That Night (Nicholas Wright)

I admit that I was late coming to more than a passing interest in the anti-apartheid movement and the ANC, not really becoming aware of what was happening in South Africa until Nelson Mandela's release from prison in 1990.  In many ways, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established later that decade should have included non-South Africans like me who, for whatever reason, failed to prevent human rights violations.  Because it dealt with a collective guilt that included my own, I found the TRC fascinating and therapeutic from afar.

Nicholas Wright based his play on a book by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, a psychologist who served on the TRC.  It spans several years of interviews she conducted with Eugene de Kock, known in the South African press as Prime Evil, while he served two life sentences plus 212 years in Pretoria Central Prison for crimes committed when he was head of a police unit charged with covertly countering terroism (aka ANC). 

As presented in the play, de Kock's imprisonment gave him a freedom to speak the truth that those who sought amnesty or forgiveness were unable to quite grasp.  Beyond regretting the atrocities committed by himself and under his leadership, he spoke of the guilt of others who never fully admitted the truth of their complicity.

Neither maudlin nor glib, the performances by Noma Dumezweni and Matthew Marsh are impeccable in their timing and subtle.

Must see, highly recommended.

Alejandro Escovedo with Warren Hood

A surprising evening from musicians associated with cowpunk and Chicano rock. 

Highly recommended

Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Vinterberg)

I've read most of Thomas Hardy's novels, including (I thought) Far From the Madding Crowd. I find his plot twists excruciating, but they pull me along in my desire for a happy resolution that never materializes.  Imagine my surprise when Far From the Madding Crowd closes with a happy ending--and the plot summary in my handy Oxford companion confirms it's not a Hollywood fabrication. Happy, that is, if you're Bathsheba Everdene and Gabriel Oak, and not poor Boldwood.

Lovely to watch. Carey Mulligan was very fine, and the men in her life conveyed their thoughts and feelings with ever so subtle glances and twitches. 

The subdued and restrained musical score was much welcomed.

Highly recommend.

The Liar (David Ives)

David Ives' verse "transadaptation" of Pierre Corneille's 17th romp is pitch perfect.  Coupled with the cast's impeccable timing and dynamic performance, the play was all we could have hoped for a Friday evening's reprieve after a particularly difficult week. I groaned when I realized it would be in rhyme, but I should have known that Ives' rhyming would not get tedious; instead, he uses it to set up unexpected relationships, combining, for instance,  "pont neuf," "e-neuf [enough]," and "leuf [love]" to create humor and pointed commentary.  The valet, Cliton, sets the tone with his witty and dynamic opening meta-commentary that provides just the right amount of exposition to get the play off to a rollicking start. Excellent direction by Penny Metropulos and scenic design by Kristen Robinson.

Highly recommended

The Two Gentlemen of Verona (Shakespeare)

A few years back, we made a mad dash to New York, landing in a small off-off-Broadway venue—perhaps a former bank lobby turned performance area.  Mike had managed to snag two of the season’s hottest tickets, Fiasco Theater’s 7-actor production of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline.  Because I hadn’t read the reviews, I expect some sort of corny, madcap confusion closer to Shakespeare, Reduced than serious theater.  Instead, we encountered the most lucid and most moving full-production of the Shakespearean romance we had ever seen.

Fiasco’s newest production, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, originated at Washington D.C.’s Folger Theater, and it is now at Theater for a New Audience’s Polonsky Center in Brooklyn.  Our expectations were very high, and Fiasco exceeded them. No exceptions.

From that spectacular production, I will mention a few notable moments: Julia’s tearing up of Proteus’ love letter and then piecing it back together (her delivery was a pitch perfect blend of comedy and realism); Zachary Fine’s embodiment of Crab the dog (so much work done with a black clown nose, his barely parted lips, and lively eyes); Emily Young’s saucy and justly righteous Sylvia; Valentine's closing forgiveness of Proteus (unironic and deeply plausible); and the 60+ minute talkback wherein the actors showed themselves to be as thoughtful and articulate as the production itself. 

Sculpture in the Age of Donatello (Museum of Biblical Art)

The first time I walked past (and noticed) the Museum of  Biblical Art on Broadway in the Lincoln Center district, I paused and allowed myself to imagine what “art” such an institution would house and who would wander its galleries.  I imagined a refuge for the midwestern tourist overwhelmed by Times Square a few blocks south, filled with artwork somewhere between the creationist museum dioramas tossing Brontosauri and humans into the same line of vision and the Vatican’s never-ending galleries of nineteenth-century sentimental schlock

I broke with my long-held prejudices when I read about the museum’s current exhibit, Sculpture in the Age of Donatello.  This exhibit comprises not plaster copies of “Renaissance Masterpieces from Florence Cathedral,” but the the marble statuary and reliefs removed in the nineteenth century from the Duomo in order to save them from the deteriorations of weather and pollution and preserved  in its museum. A century and a half later, they have been removed from the museum while it is renovated, and its only non-Italian venue during this period is the MoBiA.

While the exhibit fills only one, rather small, gallery, the artwork held our attention for over an hour.  The exhibit was predominately sculpture by Donatello, Nanni di Banco, and Luca della Robbia, that was commissioned during the final years of the cathedral’s construction.  The most moving pieces were the monumental six—two that sat on either side of the front doors, and four that stood inside.  My favorite of these was Nanni di Banco's St. Luke, the contemplative, purposeful intellectual whose mien felt more reassuring than the near-mad ecstasy of the adjacent St. John.

It was odd to see in New York works that I did not see when I was in Florence in 2010.  It was odder to be allowed so close to them, to see how narrow front to back the imposing large pieces were.  The depth provided by the high relief of folded robes and muscular arms and torso belied the small piece of cathedral real estate granted the sculptors, speaking material terms to the  transformation they helped effect in art.  

Highly Recommended: show ends 14 June 2015, and the museum itself closes soon thereafter.

An Octoroon (Branden Jacobs-Jenkins)

An important exploration of race in the United States, this appropriation of Dion Boucicault's The Octoroon scandalous 19th-century play never lets the audience ease into high-minded superiority over our slave-owning ancestors (even if we don't have those ancestors).

Highly recommended.

Lives of the Saints (David Ives)

David Ives is one of our favorite playwrights, so it made perfect sense to head to Manhanttan for this series of short plays: "The Goodness of Your Heart," "Soap Opera," "Enigma Variations," "Life Signs," "It's All Good," and "Lives of the Saints." While these lighthearted and sweet comedies poke fun at human foibles, they also provoke our sympathies for characters much closer to us than might initially appear.

Highly recommended.

Macbeth (Shakespeare)

Another energetic and lively Elm Shakespeare production in Edgerton Park. I saw one with T&K my first summer in New Haven, and I've tried to ensure that I've seen each one since then.

Highly recommended.

Dido and Aeneas (Mark Morris after Henry Purcell)

My fourth immersion in this glorious fusion of music and dance, and once again, I see and hear what I've missed before.

Highly Recommended

Killer Joe (William Friedkin)

I remember when--it must be close to a dozen years ago--Mike saw Tracey Lett's play, Killer Joe, in New York with a friend. I hadn't been able to go, and on his return said it was just as well. As much as he had liked the play, he was certain I would not have.

He was right. I wouldn't have liked it then.

Though I don't believe I become desensitized to violence in the subsequent years, I have learned to disassociate from what's happening on the screen. And in this particular film, that's a good trick to be able to play.

Like so many Lett's dramatic works, Killer Joe is a psychological study, this time in crime-ridden, drug-addled, intelligence-challenged trailer park in Texas. Though he sometimes overplays the stereotypes, by and large he hits the target.

Fantastic performances by Emile Hirsch, Juno Temple, Thomas Haden Church, and Gina Gorshen. And Matthew McConaughey owes the role if Texas lawman.

The scene with the fried chicken leg is a bizarre as any on screen.

Highly recommended: with the caveat that the NC-17 rating is for the graphic violence and explicit rape.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Superb film whose primary trope is the red herring.

Highly recommended.

Ben Allison Band with Robert Pinsky

I loved, loved this performance...and I usually do not like jazz.

Highly recommend.

Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson)

Funny, charming movie without an ounce of cynicism or saccharine. I enjoyed every moment of this love story between two misfits who find each other on the Island of New Penzance and, using the Sam's skills as a Khaki Scout, establish a makeshift hideaway they call Moonrise Kingdom. Their short escape doesn't last long, and yet their strong bonds of affection eventually help them return to family and friends.

Fine, nearly flawless film.

Highly recommend.

The Intouchables (Nakache & Toledano)

Fine French film that uses pathos and humor to dispel many stereotypes about wealth and disability while exploiting other stereotypes about race and poverty.

Highly recommended.

Title and Deed (Eno)

This fascinating production is the result of a close collaboration between Will Eno and Gare St Lazare, the theatrical company energized by Conor Lovett and Judy Hegarty Lovett. 

Conor Lovett plays an unnamed someone "not from here."  The not-quite bare stage, the man's uncertain posture, and his hesitant delivery place the audience in an ambivalent position that wavers between sympathy and amusement. 

The talk-back with Lovett and Eno was intimate and revealing.

Highly recommend.

My Children! My Africa! (Athol Fugard)

(We sat next to Allie Gallerani's family.)

Highly Recommended.

Bernie (Richard Linklater)

This film is often called "darkly comic," but from my perspective--I recognized everyone in the film--it is a sober-eyed look at life in small-town Texas, where everyone knows everything about everyone and yet everyone tries (unnecessarily--see the previous clause) to hide a (well-known) secret.  If the Carthage, Texas citizens weren't played by themselves, outsiders might deem them parodies.  They are not.

Great performances by Jack Black and Matthew McConaughey.

New Times Review.

Highly recommended.