Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
…Rules needn’t be understood/Follow the path as you should…
Bacha bazi, an ancient Middle Eastern tradition in which men purchase young boys for entertainment and sexual purposes, is illegal (against both sharia law and the civil code), but largely ignored by authorities. The public part of this practice often manifests as boys taught to dance for the pleasure and seduction of so-called owners and their friends. In this play, a righteous Afghan explains that men have needs which by law cannot be met by a woman other than a wife. “Dancing boys allow us to keep our sacred relationships.” Without them, he declares, moral order would topple.
Inspired by Frontline’s 2011 documentary The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan, the musical’s authors, Charlie Sohne and Tim Rosser, parallel a stirring love story between two emotionally different Bacha bazi boys with the social and political behavior of equally dissimilar masters. We’re given four points of view representative of a torn country. No mean feat.
Shadows
An unobtrusive storyteller, the “Unknown Man” (Deven Kolluri) with a later named role, looks back at this tale. Behind a scrim, shadows describe Jahandar’s (Jonathan Raviv) purchase of Paiman (Troy Iwata). The innocent child is informed of his future and taught to dance. (Well conceived.) … Night by night in the master’s embrace/the boy learns his place… Jahandar is kind. His boy will not be sold to others. A curtain opens.
Paiman becomes a popular artist. Jahandar is proud and affectionate. Years pass. One day, he touches the boy’s cheek and whips his hand away. Peach fuzz. When a man is capable of making decisions for himself, he must stop ‘dancing,’ banished from the only life he’s known. “You don’t want me anymore?!” To keep a boy is natural, to keep a man is wrong. The master will, if regretfully, find his charge a wife. Paiman never questions the way things must be.…. I’ll dance away the fear…
Troy Iwata
Jahandar’s cousin Zemar (Osh Ghanimah) purchases his dancer, Feda, at a discount. (Nikhil Saboo) He’s a provocative performer …I could be your dream/I could be your idol/ I could be the words you never speak… but old for the art. Unlike Paiman, Feda has dreams of escaping to the city. At first, he mocks his tender peer. Through a haunting song, however, the two inadvertently grow close…I never feel lonely with him around me…(His love? His God?) Feda chips away at Paiman’s singular docility.
Meanwhile, Jahandar plans sabotage, potentially exposing a political/industrial lie to Americans aiding the country. Afghanistan for the Afghans he demands in the name of self rule, like every colonially bound citizen before him. Freedom. Progress. Jahandar is an articulate, forward thinking businessman with nationalist plans. He tries to enlist the crass, joke-telling Zemar (imagine the Catskills), but is strongly advised to let things be. Then they make a bet.
Troy Iwata, Jonathan Raviv
Most of Tim Rosser’s songs are meandering, tuneless. There are 4-5 in the show with accessible, appealing melodies out of 17. Because these are well crafted, the others feel diminished. Lyrics tend to be less specific and evocative without some structure. Well researched, and insightful phrases pepper even less successful efforts.
Charlie Sohne’s Book, however, is deft, illuminating, strong, and in the end carries one past musical weakness. Characters are credible and heady. With Jahandar, the writer manages to create a good man in context, found reprehensible outside it. Despite yearning for freedom, Paiman and Feda sing …when I have a boy of my own…never considering foregoing the ritual. Relationships evolve. Betrayal is accepted. The play ends cleverly, imbued with theatrical hope, but tempered by truth. Custom, brutality, morality, free will, and love all play parts.
Nihil Saboo, Troy Iwata
Jonathan Raviv makes a riveting Jahandar. Dignity, rectitude, and devotion contrast casual cruelty with a visceral jolt. The Afghan chooses incomprehensible tradition over entropy. Raviv is intense and masculine with focus that makes things appear to be happening in real time. Warmth, tension and wretched pain are empathetic.
Troy Iwata (Paiman) and Nikhil Saboo (Feda) are well cast opposite each other. Iwata inhabits naïveté as if he came to the theater with it. He exudes fragility and instills Paiman with a tenuous quality affecting every scene. Trust comes no sooner than time dictates. Courage is strikingly credible. His physique is soft.
Nikhil Saboo’s expansive portrayal of Feda makes the cocky rebel as persuasive to us as he is to Paiman. When the façade cracks, we too are surprised. (When he reverts, we wonder at forgiveness.) Exuberant dancing simulates flight. The actor’s song enchants. His physique is ripped.
Troy Iwata
I found Osh Ghanimah’s New York accent off putting but believed Zemar’s irresponsible, cold-blooded nature. Deven Kolluri effectively projects gravitas, coming into his own at the end.
Tony Speciale’s direction and Nejla Yatkin’s integrated choreography are inspired. Simply to have Paiman walk around a wall while Feda jumps down from it is telling. Both Iwata and Saboo move like dancers throughout. Actual performances utilize each actor’s strengths and reflect the namesake’s character. Diaphanous fabric is made poetic.
Desire and affection are portrayed with tact and delicacy. Feda showing Paiman what to expect at his wedding ceremony will take your breath away. Paiman’s attempted dance with a debilitating wound is poignant. Manhandling is palpable. Despite the single set, we know where we are.
Scenic Design by Christopher Swader and Justin Swader is minimal and effective. Draped fabric and intermittent colored lights extend over audience heads, while dirt and garbage butt the theater floor and stage adding atmosphere. Lighting Design surreptitiously affects mood and attention. (Wen-Ling-Liao) Justin Graziani does magical things with Sound Design.
Violence – in particular a wrestling scene – is startlingly real. Kudos to Fight Director Dan Renkin.
A group of musicians playing for a dancing boy (Library of Congress)
Production Photos by Maria Baranova Opening: Troy Iwata, Jonathan Raviv
Abingdon Theatre Company presents The Boy Who Danced On Air Music -Tim Rosser Book & Lyrics – Charlie Sohne Directed by Tony Speciale Music Direction – David Gardos June Havoc Theatre 312 West 36th Street Through June 11, 2017
Founded by Molly Ryan and Bria Skonberg in 2015, The NY Hot Jazz Camp, held not in tents or bunks, but at Greenwich House Music School, presents an opportunity for both young people and adults (separately) to learn from some of the best artists in the community, to meet like-minded musicians, and to be broadly exposed to a genre epitomized by such as Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, and Jelly Roll Morton. This year’s session ends with a knock-out two hour concert at Birdland. If you want to feel better about the world, listen to these performers. (Personnel below)
“Royal Garden Blues” (Spencer Williams) sounds like anything but. Jesse Gelber’s stylish piano has clarity and clout, surprising power in curved fingering; Jim Fryer bends forward from the knees, back from the waist, then swivels (like the music), his trombone an extra limb; Randy Reinhart takes curves on cornet like a luge; Nick Russo’s guitar is layered, resonant; Jared Engel almost lays his head on the cherished bass communing; Dan Levinson’s clarinet gleefully gambles; on drums, Kevin Dorn is upright, deadpan, arms with a life of their own…
Molly Ryan and the Band-Bria Skonberg trumpet
Portions of the band have played together for 28 years, but until tonight have never all shared a stage and are we lucky! There isn’t a weak link. Mutual admiration is palpable, symbiosis exuberant.
“What Can I Say After I Say I’m Sorry?” (Walter Donaldson/Abe Lyman) arrives not with regret, but rather a shrug and an amble to the next adventure. Levinson’s sax is smoooth, Russo pats, plucks and strokes guitar, Engel’s bass and Fryer’s trombone converse, Reinhart’s sound zig-zags.
Vocalist Queen Esther offers Alberta Hunter’s lively “My Castle’s Rockin” and a honeyed “Your Jelly Roll is Good” …but it ain’t as good as mine…like a true storyteller with unerring attitude and silent film eyes. Later, Bessie Smith’s “Gimme a Pigfoot” (the lady should do a Smith show) and a bottle of beer…sashays in with sinuous clarinet, rear wiggling banjo, chortling trombone, and the singer’s use of subtle wrist and hip action. Her alto is clear and strapping. Fryer’s trombone makes sarcastic comments. It’s perceptibly a voice.
Queen Esther and the Band
We’re treated to an early Tin Pan Alley number vocalist Molly Ryan calls her current mantra. “Save Your Sorrow” for tomorrow/Smile awhile today…(Buddy De Silva/Al Sherman) is the single ballad in the show. Ryan’s creamy phrasing leaves understated, vibrating trails that disappear down her throat. She makes it look effortless. Gelber’s piano scintillates with companionable appreciation.
Bria Skonberg replaces Reinhart on trumpet for Leo Wood’s “Somebody Stole My Gal.” The foot tapping, head bobbing rendition isn’t at all mournful. Skonberg’s contribution is bright, lucid and wide-stroked. Denouement is sweet, exit emphatic. “I’m going to play second trumpet to my King Oliver, she then announces referring to Oliver’s mentoring of Louis Armstrong. Face to face, or rather horn to horn, Skonberg and Reinhart joyously play (think jungle gym, seesaw, and slides) Lew Pollack’s “That’s A Plenty”. Horns are sassy, banjo stunt skates, bass draws rhythm like breath.
The evening closes with “Blues My Naughty Sweetie” featuring the mastery of nimble-fingered Levinson (also our appealingly wry MC) and Dorn’s impressive drum turn during which both Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich must be smiling. (Dorn never does.)
These consummate musicians make me want more hot jazz in my life. The audience leaves energized, beaming. What more could one ask?
Guest Banjo: Cynthia Sayers
“Our goal is to provide instruction to musicians of all skill levels, who want to further their knowledge in the styles of traditional/classic jazz in a positive and supportive environment. The curriculum pulls from jazz’s inception in New Orleans through its journey to New York and Chicago in the 1920s and ’30s and subsequent West Coast stylings.”
Peter Beston doesn’t remember a time he didn’t have a pencil, crayon or brush in his hand. His parents, one musical, the other an architectural draftsman and surveyor, sent him to weekly art class starting at 12. There were no museums or exhibitions in Purley, England. A family trip to Spain offered first exposure at the Prado. “I was totally stunned by the light, realism, and composition, but too young for the psychology of the work.”
Other interests included movies, the natural world, and English (language and literature). Beston decided to pursue a career as a film director. He couldn’t wait to get to London. A semester at art college followed. “I loved the romantic Pre-Raphaelites then, the every-blade-of-grass-approach, Art Nouveau, and John Singer Sargent.” The world was Pop/Op/Psychedelic Art mad. Excited by it, the young man dabbled, but never made the genre his own. Nor did he get sidetracked.
Young Peter; The Lighthouse
Instead he secured a job in the mailroom at the BBC. When a director’s course attracted 2,700 applicants, however, he moved on, rising through the ranks of production companies. He worked on commercials, features and documentaries, becoming a respected film editor of forty years, accruing multiple awards. Art and art classes were intermittent. “Every time I wanted to paint again, I had to start from square one. There was no build.” It wasn’t until he was 40 that, “desperate to get technique,” he found a private tutor with whom to study oil painting. His teacher straddled realism and surrealism.
“I always painted something in front of me. Landscapes didn’t attract. Plein Air is torture. The light changes all the time, there are bugs flying all over…I like a calm, stable, uniform atmosphere.” The artist takes numerous ‘reference’ photographs.
Still Restless
In 2009, Beston emigrated. He and his husband moved into their dream house in East Quogue, Long Island. At last he would paint full time. Still very insecure about himself as a professional, he joined East End Arts (a nonprofit arts support organization) and took some work to gallery director Jane Kirkwood. “Well, you can certainly paint,” she commented, “but the subject matter is a bit boring.” Three Adirondack chairs in striking color and some David Hockney-like work is indicative of the period. “That put me on the road to where I am now.”
Swimming Lessons
Participation in exhibitions began shortly thereafter. In 2015, Beston toyed with the idea of doing heavily textural work in order to be marketable. Gallerist Peter Marcelle disabused him of that idea in no uncertain terms. Beston was taken on, he was told, because he was original. That was the last time the artist considered painting anything outside the personal. (Beston is now represented in Long Island by Sara De Luca at ILLE Arts Gallery in Amagansett, NY.)
The Birds
“When I was about 22, I did a little sketch of a Magpie on the seat of a red chair. I grew up with Magpies in the countryside. There was something about the color and something about a wild bird in a sophisticated, domestic interior, not its natural habitat; the juxtaposition. Finding the drawing again, a whole painting came to mind.
I read a book called The Thing with Feathers: The Surprising Lives of Birds and What They Reveal About Being Human by Noah Strycker. Birds are the direct descendants of dinosaurs, yet so common, they’re mostly invisible to people. One chapter said that there are only five species of animal who can look in the mirror and know they’re looking at themselves: humans from about 2 ½ years on, elephants, dolphins, orangutans and magpies.”
The original sketch; Mirror Recognition in the Eurasian Magpie
The painting is called Mirror Recognition in the Eurasian Magpie. “When you look at it, you’re naturally going to see the eye first. The bird’s looking at you and at himself in the mirror. The print in the corner is Audubon’s Magpie, so there’s a connection from here to here (he gestures) showing the original inspiration. The chair is my grandfather’s. We have it downstairs.”
Beston has a heightened sense of the dimensional world and of one’s place in it. He relates to spatial positioning and literally grows uncomfortable when he doesn’t know where north is. Years as a film editor have fine tuned faculties that make the artist what he calls a noticer. “Just as in editing film, I look at everything 16 times over and choose the best one.” Composition and light are equally meticulous.
Indigo Buntings Consider the Meaning of Wallpaper
Another in this series, Indigo Buntings Consider the Meaning of Wallpaper (awarded First Place at East End Arts’ juried exhibition March 2017), is meant to present contrast. Beston’s work is compelling. The birds exist in, and reflect upon an unfamiliar room. He’s putting himself both in their heads and those of observers. Integrated decorative elements are unusual for a realist. His fastidious patterns neither take over nor retreat to background, they contribute.
A pelican stands at the bottom of a graceful Art Deco staircase staring across at a big, similarly colored chair. (Brown Pelican Confronts Yellow Chair.) A grackle is found atop a stack of books painted from life. The books are: The Birds by Daphne du Maurier, Poems and Prophecies by William Blake, The Complete Works of Shakespeare, The Nude by Kenneth Clark, and Audubon’s Birds of America. (The Pursuit of Knowledge.)
The Pursuit of Knowledge
This is a literary painter. ‘Not because of the aforementioned book titles, but because there’s an eloquence to his work that might easily translate to words; intellectual and psychological aspects to choices.
Palm Beach Stories
Beston’s most recent effort is an evocative, large scale series (3’6” x 6’) called Palm Beach Stories. Harking back to his career, each painting is titled after a film, but indicates the genre, not content. Like the rest of his oeuvre, each also considers aspects of the human condition. “That wasn’t my plan, but that’s what it’s become.” Scenarios are wryly unsettling. Color is so delicious it’s difficult to take note of the fact he limits his palette to variations on three to four colors a painting.
An important part of this series is the architecture to which Beston is drawn. He’s fascinated by the way structures impose on a space, changes that occur as one reacts to them from up close or far away.
Snapping pictures out a car window over 30 miles of Palm Beach, he accrued 350 images. Each painting began with a single element garnered from one of these shots. An idea formed, concepts were sketched. Beston then eliminated anything unessential to his vision on Photoshop (paring down is a signature approach) and looked for or created whatever else the picture demanded. Immensely skilled in the medium, he might use pieces of 20 photos. Scrolling through an evolutionary series on the monitor, one marvels at the homogeneous finale.
When Worlds Collide
When a montage is complete (subject to change elicited by size and color), Beston prints it out to the right proportions and grids it. The grid is then transferred to canvas much like the practice of Renaissance artists. This is accomplished in pastel which wipes away when he’s finished drawing on the surface. “The placing of every line and object is vital.”
When Worlds Collide (genre-Science Fiction) began with a geometrical house Beston took out of its suburban setting and isolated among lush greenery. Palm tree trunks are simplified so as not to catch one’s eye. Grass looks manicured. The street is stark, clean, deserted. Nothing smaller than a tree grows. In the top right hand corner, the scene is reflected in a sphere he conceives as a UFO. Which, Beston asks, is more alien, the visitors or this austere structure in situ?
Follow where your eye travels. It enters the painting top right, moves down the road, and takes the horizontal path. Instead of moving off the image, however, one naturally looks vertically along the edge of the house, above trees, to clouds moving right. Aria da capo, back to where you started. Beston’s intention is to keep a viewer contained in the loop.
Every design is worked out to occupy the eye within borders. “Otherwise the brain disengages,” he comments. “The longer someone is there, the more stuff goes on unconsciously. I plot an entry that will take you to a focal point. Unless the composition is satisfactory, it could be the most brilliant piece of art, but a failure.”
Deep Impact
Controlling light is also important. The artist recollects working with filmmaker Ridley Scott whose constant experimentation with it was extraordinary. This brightly lit work also relates back to Velasquez, Goya and De La Tour. Source, time of day, and mood are taken into consideration. Shadows are as precise as perspective. “It’s the unconscious building of a real world… millions of clues and signals we unconsciously get all the time describe what people believe to be real.”
For Deep Impact. (Disaster) Beston used only the café from a photo. Greyhounds were made of a compilation of images. Reflected in the window, a meteor plunges earthward with only the canines to witness. Look closely and you’ll also see almost ghostly empty chairs inside. An architectural column is beautifully ornamented. The street light shadow is graphic. A large blank wall “suggests impending oblivion.” Not incidentally, it holds the scene together. And oh, the color!
In Out of The Past (Noir) an intense woman in a blue dress beside a yellow house at the corner of Mimosa and Primrose may be hiding a gun in the hand behind her skirt. Atmosphere is forbidding. Odd details include a tiny curb drain and a manhole cover. In While You Were Sleeping (Romance), we see the back of a man gazing longingly at a large house behind impenetrable hedges “touching on the complexity of desire and the imagined ideal.” Above floats a cloud formation that resembles a reclining nude woman. Who, Beston asks, is the sleeper, the inamorata inside or her hopeful suitor? (Or the observer.)
The Studio
The painting in this article’s opening is called The Awful Truth (Farce/Black Comedy.) Beston photographed a conventional fast food joint changing its signage to Gator Gabe’s Bar and Grill—All You Can Eat. The “stupid little cartoon alligator” indicates futile attempt to civilize subtropical environs. A condo community is reflected in the front glass.
At right we see an actual alligator “the reality” making its way back to a swamp apparently beyond the establishment. At left, one of the city’s ubiquitous yellow Cameros, door open, passenger, Beston tells me, having fled. Contemporary versus ancient species occupying the same space. Though again, unsettling, it’s a hoot.
The Exhibition: Palm Beach Stories – Peconic Landing Auditorium, Greenport New York June 2-September 29, 2017
Paris Air
Peter Beston paints almost every day when he’s not in his garden. He loves it. “I paint realistically, but try to keep it on the side of painting. Otherwise you might as well take a photograph.” The work is skilled, imaginative, unconventional, scrupulous, captivating.
All quotes are Peter Beston. Photos courtesy of Peter Beston
Opening Photo: Beter Beston with The Awful Truth (in process)
Young Peter; The Lighthouse Still Restless
The original sketch; Mirror Recognition in the Eurasian Magpie Indigo Buntings Consider the Meaning of Wallpaper The Pursuit of Knowledge When Worlds Collide Deep Impact
The Studio Paris Air
Author of the beloved Winnie the Pooh Books, Alan Alexander Milne also wrote verse, essays and two dozen plays. The Lucky One had little success on Broadway in 1922, but retitled Let’s All Talk About Gerald, fared better on The West End six years later. Skill in depicting societal expectations, relationships, and moral quandaries later embodied by forest creatures is here showcased with insight.
Michael Frederic, Wynn Harmon, Robert David Grant, Mia Hutchinson-Shaw, Andrew Fallaize, Cynthia Harris
This weekend’s house party at Sir James Farringdon’s country estate consists of favored son Gerald (Robert David Grant) and his newly minted, family-loved fiancé, Pamela (Paton Ashbrook), friends Henry Wentworth, a lawyer (Michael Frederic), public school mate Thomas Todd (Andrew Fallaize) and Todd’s ever chipper girlfriend Letty Herbert (Mia Hutchinson-Shaw). Hosting the group’s endless golf before a local tournament are stolid, conservative Sir James (Wynn Harmon), his status conscious wife, Lady Farringdon (Deanne Lorette) and Sir James’s patrician aunt (Cynthia Harris): “I don’t know anything about golf, but I think doing anything in-one is marvelous!”
Gerald Farringdon, who’s a rising star at the foreign office, excels at simply everything; encouraged and celebrated throughout a charmed life. His older brother, universally referred to as “poor old Bob (Ari Brand), runs a perpetual second place. “Whatever the elder one does, the younger one does a jolly sight better.” An unhappy banker, Bob has a chip on his shoulder the size of Trafalgar Square.
Robert David Grant and Ari Brand
“What’s the family creed? I believe in Gerald. I believe in Gerald the Brother. I believe in Gerald the Son. I believe in Gerald the Nephew. I believe in Gerald the Friend, the Lover, Gerald the Holy Marvel.” Bob
The pastoral weekend is interrupted by Bob’s frenzied appearance. Taking Gerald aside, he admits that being “helpless with figures” has allowed his partner to embezzle funds and flee. The young man is sure of prosecution and scared out of his wits. In the predictable manner of someone who’s never known difficulty, Gerald assures him that “people don’t get thrown into prison if they’re innocent.” Unfortunately, he can’t make it to town to help his brother for 4-5 days because of the golf tournament. Not to worry.
Robert David Grant and Paton Ashbrook; Paton Ashbrook and Ari Brand
Bob is arrested, convicted and sentenced. Everyone seems more concerned about reputations than the incipient convict. Before he goes to prison, we learn that Pamela was his friend, “my only friend,” when introduced to, then courted by Gerald. Clearly jealous and enamored, he begs her not to marry until he’s released so that he doesn’t have to return to Gerald’s wife. She agrees to wait. Two month pass. And then…
There you have it. Except nothing’s as cut and dry as it seems. Brakes screech, people rethink, things change.
In addition to spot-on golf repartee, wonderful pieces of dialogue include Gerald’s cheery, obtuse suggestions for Bob’s productively occupying himself in prison – learning French or to stand on his head, for example, and the brothers’ eventual confrontation. The latter contains the lucky one’s unexpected and illuminating rebuttal to Bob’s grievances.
Most secondary characters, though credible, act as wallpaper. Thomas Todd and Letty Herbert are sheer, drawing room clichés. (Nonetheless well manifest by Andrew Fallaize and Mia-Hutchinson-Shaw.) Only the family Aunt, here a thoughtful, patrician Cynthia Harris, has her own distinct character. Still the piece holds one’s attention, not the least because of actor Robert David Grant’s vivid performance.
Robert David Grant and Cynthia Harris
As Gerald, Robert David Grant conjures unflagging ego and blithe insensitivity. He vibrates with energy and good will. When the character’s internal ballast is shaken, difficulty in processing is evident. Testimony to suffering then arrives with incredulous strain but no real explosion. A believable portrait.
Ari Brand seems almost as nervous as Bob, an unfortunate observation. The actor plays his character too one-note and doesn’t come into his own until a final scene. With glimpses of skill, one hopes this will iron itself out.
Paton Ashbrook lacks grounding, as if she hasn’t decided what Pamela is thinking and feeling. Both the character’s lack of sureness about Gerald and decisions that subsequently arise from it read as surface display. Only when Ashbrook is dealing with friends and family does she come across as whole.
Pamela Ashbrook and Robert David Grant
Director Jesse Marchese uses her stage with aesthetic and dramatic skill. Pacing is good. It would have served the piece to find some personal definition in minor characters.
Vicki R. Davis offers a minimal, yet evocative set build around a fabulous, double stairway. Young photos of the boys – perhaps of Milne and his brother – are a redolent touch.
Martha Hally’s pale Costumes are flattering and accurate to class and period. Love the golf clothes. Wigs and Hair by Robert-Charles Vallance are enviably attractive.
Also featuring an excellent Peggy J. Scott as Mason, the boys’ old nurse.
Photos by Richard Termine Opening: Robert David Grant and Ari Brand
The Lucky One by A. A. Milne Directed by Jesse Marchese Mint Theater Company Beckett Theatre 410 West 42nd Street Through June 25, 2017
Fifteen years ago, stifled and condescended to, Nora Helmer walked out on husband Torvald and her three children in search of self respect and self knowledge. She entered a world that would have been hostile to her. The heroine that marches back through a forbiddingly enormous portal is wealthy, independent, creative, self confident and sexually liberated. Though actors wear appropriate period costumes (well designed by David Zinn) and legal constraints are accurate, language is contemporary. Go with it; it works.
Nora (Laurie Metcalf) now writes women’s books – under a pseudonym. Her cry for freedom is so convincing that numbers of readers have left their husbands. One abandoned, bitter spouse, a powerful judge, tracks down the author and discovers that she’s still married. (Nora was sure Torvald had, as agreed, divorced her.) Conducting business as a single woman is illegal, misrepresenting herself in print will mean ruin, her behavior if married, has been blatantly immoral. The official threatens exposure unless she publicly apologizes assuring the loss of everything she’s built.
Jayne Houdyshell and Laurie Metcalf
Apparently a one-step request for men, divorce saddles women with an endless burden of reasonable proof. Nora has returned to secure a decree to which she’s sure there can be no objection. If she’s forced to bring suit, both party’s reputations will irreparably suffer. Still, Torvald flatly refuses.
Revolving around the character in lesser and greater orbits are housekeeper Anne Marie (Jayne Houdyshell), a sympathetic confidant in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House who’s stayed on to raise the children and take care of Torvald; grown-up, admirably well adjusted daughter Emmy (Condola Rashad), appealed to as a last resort in hopes of convincing her father to cooperate, and Torvald himself (Chris Cooper) who, still wounded, finds Nora unfathomable.
Chris Cooper and Laurie Metcalf
Playwright Lucas Hnath has utilized the Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House as a starting point/inspiration and spun it into an entertaining tale with social context in two contrasting eras. Nora finds herself caught between a rock and a hard place. Disagreement with Emily about the nature of a woman’s role in marriage puts each choice in context. Characters have no filters. What they think and feel comes out of their mouths with directness that belies the period, but makes whopping good theater. Everyone is multidimensional. Allegiances are complicated. Unpredictable changes become seismic before our eyes. The ending is a shock.
Jayne Houdyshell’s Anne Marie is a whole human being. The character organically shifts from welcoming to protective. She’s watchful, sympathetic, innately funny with opinion and observance, and bone tired. In the hands of a lesser actress, the role could have been played for laughs or subjugated judgment. This artist has understanding and finesse.
Laurie Metcalf and Condola Rashad
As Emmy, Condola Rashad represents a girl raised in the atmosphere Nora has fled, yet securely flowering. Her femininity – she’s quite graceful, soft voice, and exhaled thoughts tumbling together in a rush – effectively differ from that of her mother. Rashad brings youthful brightness and optimism to an otherwise dour stage.
Torvald is a challenge to illuminate, as repressed, he expresses himself less. (Body language is eloquent.) Chris Cooper allows us to see the agonized husband host a wrestling match between unresolved feelings and lifelong thinking. Anger, stress, puzzlement, and longing color controlled, patrician behavior.
Laurie Metcalf’s Nora is extremely masculine in the way she moves and sits. Wild, emphatically punctuating gestures indicate physicality inappropriate to the 1900s, but fitting to this libertarian. Metcalf spits fire. Determination, then resolve are both palpable. The actress is especially fine when speaking out at the stage apron without breaking a fourth wall.
Laurie Metcalf and Chris Cooper
I hated what Sam Gold did with The Glass Menagerie and was hesitant to check out this next effort, but am decidedly glad I did. The director utilizes every bit of his empty stage without causing characters to appear unnatural as they circle or unspool. With only four chairs, where each is dragged and the level at which a character sits (including the floor) becomes telling. A hand on a knee and one reaching across the floor both resonate without advertising. We clock visible differences between thinking and instinct. (At one exquisite point, Nora crawls to Torvald.)
Keeping with Gold’s less is more vision, Miriam Buether’s Scenery has been kept to a few chairs and large, title lights naming each character’s turn. It’s gimmicky, but the play more than makes up for it.
Photos by Brigitte Lacombe Opening: Laurie Metcalf; Jayne Houdyshell
A Doll’s House-Part 2 by Lucas Hnath Directed by Sam Gold Golden Theatre 252 West 54th Street Through July 23, 2017
The New York Public Library for The Performing Arts is currently host to a small, gem of an exhibition featuring the art/design of nonagenarian artist, Hilary Knight. Those of you aware only of Knight’s most iconic creation, the irrepressible Eloise (authored by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Knight) should treat yourselves to this glimpse into his utterly stylish and inventive world. Meticulously designed and constructed by the honoree himself, the show unfortunately lacks documentation. I recommend the two recordings offered through earphones for illumination.
“What’s amazing to me is that I still do it. Most people my age are playing golf or under ground.”
Hilary Knight
Hilary Knight’s parents, Clayton Knight and Katherine Sturges, were successful illustrators/designers across diverse fields. Surrounded by taste, talent, and pleasure in craft, he never thought of doing anything else. A sampling of the couple’s work includes Sturge’s charming circus murals painted in the boy’s childhood room. “At four or five,” Knight drew over his mother’s own circus drawings in one of her sketchbooks. A lifelong enchantment with the big top ensued. Pristine, accomplished silhouettes in his oeuvre are inspired by her work for Oneida Silver. (Second floor)
The Circus is Coming by Hilary Knight
Movies – especially musicals and theater – enthralled him. “I never paid attention to the plots, just the sets and costumes.” The elaborate production of Billy Rose’s Jumbo at The Hippodrome, Adrian’s costumes for The Great Ziegfeld, Gertrude Lawrence in Lady in the Dark – “The dream sequence was so beautiful I can see it now” – and Sabu films were particular favorites. “…This kid my age who was riding almost naked on an elephant – I thought, that’s a good idea…” (A fantasy achieved later in life.)
The young man studied with Reginald Marsh at The Art Students League then enlisted in the navy, preferring its uniform to that of the army. Irreverence showed itself with his painted mural of naked Geishas in an officer’s Okinowa Quonset hut.
Prestigious theater designer Jo Mielziner facilitated a season as assistant at the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine. Knight found scenic design “too big.” He’s always striven for control. “With books I could do exactly what I wanted.” The New York School of Interior Design added to multifaceted awareness and skill. He painted murals, built packaging maquettes and illustrated. No aptitude went to waste.
Two Vitrines – Vanity Fair Drawings; Portraits – Note Julie Wilson, upper right
Knight credits watercolor drawings of misbehaving children in Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel’s 1887 book of children’s manners La Civilité as very early inspiration. (He pored over it as a child.) Later, he was taken with Ronald Searle’s St. Trinian’s girls in British satirical magazines. (St. Trinian’s was a popular series featuring uncontrollable boarding school inhabitants.) Other influences include Lautrec, Mucha, Erte, Rockwell, and Hirschfeld.
In 1952, inspired by Searle’s pen and ink art, Knight drew “a strange little girl” with her mother for an article on bad little children in Mademoiselle Magazine. Its caption was “I think I’ll throw a tantrum.” (First floor). Eloise by any other name.
The artist lived in a bohemian brownstone filled with people “on their way to becoming important in their fields.” DD Dixon, an editor at Harper’s Bazaar under Diana Vreeland occupied the top floor. While doing a photo shoot with MGM vocal coach and nightclub performer Kay Thompson, Dixon overheard and was addressed in what Knight calls Thompson’s “funny little girl voice,” conjuring a character in the third person. This, the editor thought, should be a book…and I know just the right illustrator. Kismet. “DD is completely responsible for Eloise.”
The original Eloise book
Eloise’s appearance was based, in part, on Knight family friend, Eloise Davison, food writer for the Herald Tribune. “…a funny, pudgy little woman with messy hair I pictured as a child.” Thompson had definite ideas about her charge’s life. Like the author, she would live at The Plaza Hotel. There would be no interfering father (she had hated her own) or even a male dog (Weenie has no weenie). “With all her brilliance and sophistication, Kay was curiously prudish…”
Thompson also insisted the girl’s mother should be perpetually absent, therefore never aging. The only drawing of mother and child and Knight’s favorite Eloise art is an unpublished depiction of our favorite mischievous girl choosing her puppy at “an elegant pugery.” Her elegant mother sits, legs crossed, wearing an enormous Audrey Hepburn chapeau and classic sheath. She watches the proceedings with, of course, her back to us. Knight says her body represents that of Uma Thurman.
Three sequels followed before Kay Thompson lost interest and pulled everything but the original book from print. “She wanted to do it all herself and couldn’t.” The incalculable loss to Knight is compounded by ours.
Hilary Knight’s silhouette self portrait with theater posters
“I was going to the theater a great deal.” Knight started designing theater posters with Harry Rigby’s production of Half a Sixpence in 1965. Some of those that followed were No, No Nanette, Good News, I Love My Wife, Ain’t Misbehavin’, Makin’ Whoopee, Mame and Sugar Babies. These and more are on display. Many were tailored to a particular, always identifiable star. Julie Wilson looks as if she might step out of the page, Ray Bolger as if he’ll dance off it.
Some of Knight’s theater poster designs
The artist apparently created endless designs for Timbuktu and La Cage aux Folles securing neither commission. His interpretation of La Cage, however, was rejected by Alan Carr “for showing drag queens instead of a relationship.” (Ironically the final choice, by another illustrator, emulated Knight’s viewpoint.) Knight also enjoyed working with dance companies. The array of styles, each befitting its vehicle is marvelous.
Portraits are showcased in carefully arranged vitrines: Lena Horne and Billy Strayhorn as Dr. Ferway de la Fer and Her Assistant Sweepa Truehorn stand in frame. (Horne played de la Fer in the film Broadway Rhythm.) Knight purchased some beaded, French Victorian leaves at a Doyle auction of the vocalist’s possessions. The two figures are bead leaf hunters. She holds a tiny trowel. Like many of the portraits, the piece is a contained diorama, part photography, part collage, part assemblage.
Billy Strayhorn and Lena Horne
We see Sabu; Martha Raye (on an ersatz bootleg album cover); Kaye Ballard;, a 5’ Kay Thompson; full page appreciation of Liliane Montevecchi; Isabella Blow; Barry Humphries, with whom Knight collaborated on years of priceless Etiquette Pages in Vanity Fair Magazine; and Ann Miller with Stephen Sondheim. “Ann was doing Follies and couldn’t get the lyric …An imitation Hitler/But with littler charm… so Stephen was in the booth helping her.” (“Can That Boy Foxtrot!”) Knight can’t wait to start a portrait of his friend, Gloria Vanderbilt.
Feathers, Fur Fins and Fans: Isabella Blow “Birds” portrait under glass – wearing Philip Treacy’s Andy Warhol feather hat; above her, the original drawing for a MAC LIPSTICK carton; top right- 1946 oil painting ”the SEA NYMPH”; Righthand photo includes a costume for the film Frog and Nymph worn by Knight’s assistant Wilson Lopez. Performance artist Phoebe Legere played the sprite. (A frog falls in love with a water nymph).
Upstairs, there are costume sketches for one of the artist’s significant dreams Tail’s : An “Exotic, Erotic Revue” inspired by The Crazy Horse and Sugar Babies. He’s even designed a theater for it. (Music, he tells me, would be that of Cole Porter and Stephen Sondheim.)
Hilary Knight has illustrated more than 50 books and authored nine. He’s designed theater posters, costumes and sets, makes props, furniture and décor, illustrates for magazines and special projects, and is a collage/assemblage portrait artist. I’m sure I’ve left something out. He rises between four and five a.m., feeds his guppies (no kidding), and works almost every day. Energy, enthusiasm, and warmth are palpable.
Barry Humphries ‘A Moon Bed for Dame Edna’
“To me the most interesting thing is what I’m working on now.”
All exhibition photos and those of Hilary Knight courtesy of Hilary Knight All quotes are Hilary Knight
Hilary Knight’s Stage Struck World The New York Public Library for The Performing Arts – First and Second Floor 40 Lincoln Plaza (between 64 and 65 Streets) Through September 1. 2017 WATCH FOR: Eloise at The Museum at The New York Historical Society June 30-October 9, 2017
Hilary Knight with his niece, Lily Knight
Publishers are slated for: Hilary Knight: Drawn from Life, a Memoir and Olive and Olivier, a graphic novel about eccentric twins separated at birth – Olive will be written by Hilary Knight’s twin nieces, Olivier by Knight.
Lena Dunham’s appreciative 2015 documentary It’s Me, Hilary: The Man Who Drew Eloise is available online.
Cassandra has dreams of porcupines. It’s bitter cold. The rodents huddle together for warmth, prick/hurt one another, separate, grow cold again, and huddle. So it is with many of us.
Jessica Kuhne and Jean Brassard; Sofi Lambert
Noami (Jessica Kuhne) and Theodore (Jean Brassard) are a couple. After admiration, the thing she desperately wants is a baby. Her bored partner makes it clear he’s more concerned with what color he’ll die his hair. One gets the feeling neither has friends.
It’s Cassandra’s birthday. (Sofi Lambert) Celebrating so thoroughly she’s fraught, the young woman decorates, bakes a cake (resembling a porcupine) in a magic oven, sings, squeaks, squeals, dances, and chirps to party guests who aren’t there. Every word and move is wildly exaggerated. Photocopied invitations are disseminated to most everyone she meets. Will anyone come to her party?
Sofi Lambert and Yeauxlanda Kay; Vincent D’Arbouze
The hugely pregnant Suzanne (Yeauxlanda Kay) is minding the counter at Phil’s Corner Store. (She hasn’t had sex in 15 years. It’s immaculate, or in this case, surrealist conception.) To say the woman is bad tempered is to minimize her sour response to anyone in her path. Life stinks and, if prodded, she’ll tell you why.
Her brother Phil (Vincent D’Arbouze) is a bundle of ambulatory neuroses, the greatest insecurity stemming from a preadolescent rejection. He’s secretly in love with Cassandra. When a change of gravy at an habitual restaurant shakes one’s life, balance is precarious. Oh, Phil’s second profession is hairdresser.
Jessica Kuhne, Yeauxlanda Kay, Sofi Lambert
Suzanne’s unborn baby is passed from belly to belly by violent means, Theodore falls for Cassandra and is cruel to Noami, Noami and Suzanne accidentally meet at Cassandra’s party which causes a change in both, Phil musters the courage to declare himself…Very little ends well. There’s a wounded duck (a great puppet by Jean Marie Keevins), odd employment of a ski mask, a great deal of French pop music, and a truly romantic, unique birthday gift.
Porcupine is kind of a kitchen sink piece. Every unedited idea the playwright had is tossed in the mix. As a result, it’s a bit heavy handed in its quirkiness and over long. Still, the characters’ crossovers are telling and ultimate isolation is crystal clear.
Sofi Lambert and Jean Brassard
As Theodore, Jean Brassard must rise above dorky wigs (possibly intentional) and the vacillation of his director. The actor does create a markedly selfish beginning, a credibly smitten and disappointed center, and a defeated finish.
Between parentheses of over the top manic behavior, Jessica Kuhne gives us palpable fury and a later sea change.
Sofi Lambert’s theatrical skills are buried by direction.
Vincent D’Arbouze’s Philip is sweet and sympathetic, his anxiety realistic, depression weighing. In one passage, the actor appeals to audience members with empathetic success.
Yeauxlanda Kay is excellent throughout. She provides ballast, inhabits a solid character, and appears to think (as Suzanne) before she acts. An artist to watch.
Director Leta Tremblay has sculpted a Cassandra so abrasive and hysterical (not funny), it’s difficult to feel appropriate compassion. She also forces Noami into excessive expression where words and behavior would’ve been sufficient. These two tip the piece in a way that affects everything to the detriment of the writing. Nor can Tremblay decide whether to make Theodore innately callous or just fickle. Physical staging is effective.
This theater of the absurd piece spools out in vignettes. Three separate areas, defined by Lighting Designer Chelsie McPhilmy, present separate lives from which people “venture forth.” Loopy use of balloons, confetti and a metallic strip curtain work well in a friendly handmade way that suits the show – as does minimal furniture. Scenic Designer Angelica Borrero.
Photos by Audobon McKeown
Opening: Yeauxlanda Kay, Jean Brassard, Sofi Lambert, Vincent D’Arbouze, Jessica Kuhne
Porcupine by David Paquet
Translated by Maureen Labonte
Directed by Leta Tremblay
Through May 20, 2017
Actors Fund Art Center
160 Schermerhorn St. Brooklyn
The title: In Greek Mythology, when Agamemnon accidentally kills a deer in a grove sacred to Artemis,, he must sacrifice his eldest daughter, Iphigenia. The story has many iterations. In some, she meets her death, in others the girl is turned into a goddess, in still others, she’s rescued. Splott is a district in Cardiff.
“…See I know what you think
When you see me pissed first thing wandering around. You think –
Stupid slag. Nasty skank.
But guess what? Tonight
You all are here to give thanks
To me.
Yeah I know it’s a shock.
But you lot, every single one
You’re in my debt…”
Effie (Sophie Melville) is a contemporary young hellion with a working class Welsh accent (for the most part, you’ll acclimate), a seriously foul mouth, and enough hair-trigger fury to face down a detainee at Riker’s Island Prison. Living off her Nan and probably welfare, she parties, gets wasted, sleeps around like an animal in heat (lately, it’s Kevin), recovers and begins again.
One night, at a disco, Effie sends Kevin to wait for her in a bathroom stall and commandeers a disabled soldier. She finds everything about the experience unexpected, from his buddies’ gentlemanly behavior to Tom’s own pain, self defense, discretion, and mutilated form. Her behavior, in turn, is completely surprising. For the first time in Effie’s hardscrabble life, she no longer feels alone. Love floods into her as if a dam busted. Days and nights assume new shape. Familiar consequences and shocking redemption = sacrifice follow.
Because the play is compressed into 80 jam packed minutes (and this actress is electric), every minute takes on urgency. We have neither time nor space to ask why or whether. Tension is maintained, yet never static. Author Gary Owen knows his suibject backwards. The piece contains neither false word nor move. Effie’s alterations are oddly realistic after kickstarted. Speed of turnaround causes whiplash, but we take the trip. Owen’s bookended “theme” is inspired.
Sophie Melville is hypnotic. Wincing and appalled, our audience is riveted. The theater drops away. All we see and hear is this wounded, unrepentant, debauchee going nowhere on a hamster wheel. When sympathy is finally evoked it almost blindsides. Melville has knowledge and control of her utterly flexible instrument from voice to expression to physicality. She gives from the gut, dares greatly with this role, and succeeds.
Director Rachel O’Riordan displays Effie’s volatility with as much variation as bite. What gets under the heroine’s skin, gets under ours. With only chairs and the light sculpture off which to play, physical moves border on choreography. Timing is pitch perfect. Change surreptitious. Masterfully executed.
Hayley Grindle’s Neon Light Design, a busted sculpture of narrow tubes, strewn, and irregularly lit, works wonderfully to punctuate the start/stop of the heroine’s emotions. Lighting Designer Rachel Mortimer’s contributions symbiotically feature and abort vignettes.
Sound Designer Sam Jones offers an insidious underscore of tone.
Photos by Mark Douet
Sherman Theatre, Cardiff presents Iphigenia in Splott by Gary Owen Featuring Sophie Melville Directed by Rachel O’Riordan 59E59 Theaters 59 East 59th Street Through June 4, 2017
