The CALL of the WILD - Save Your Bucks Don't Go

Jack London's classic "The Call of the Wild" captures the majestic exploration of the Alaskan Yukon in the 1890s through the eyes & mindset of a 4 year old Saint Bernard/Scottish Shepard dog named Buck.  Buck is the alpha dog who can do & will do everything for his beloved male companion John Thornton (Harrison Ford) & fellow sleigh dogs.  London's literary marvel of the beauty and harshness of Alaskan wilderness & the struggles of the sleigh harness is morphed into a marvel cartoon steered towards 8-12 year olds.  Ford comes off as a buffoon and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) is a dastardly villain straight out of a cartoon.  Poor, unflappable Buck, his admirable & empathetic leanings are blanketed in mush.  Don't waste your bucks to see this mawkish mess.  London would lash against this travesty to his literary novel.  I call this mild adaptation not worthwhile. Read the book.

Celine Sciamma's "A Portrait of a Lady on Fire"

In a quiet coastal town in France 1770, a wealthy matriarch hires a portraitist to capture her daughter's likeness to send for approval from a wealthy marriage prospect.  This would be done via on-line 21st C or by photographs 20th C.   In the 18th C painting was the premiere means for capturing images. The social norms were even more archaic and restrictive.  The film is a sensual & visual stunning depiction of forbidden love between two women, Heloise (Adele Haenel) and Marianne (Naemi Merlant).  Heloise is the young women whose mother wishes to marry into aristocracy and Marianne is hired to capture her image on canvas.  The prior artist was unsuccessful in his attempt as it was destroyed by Heloise.  Heloise's mother asks Marianne to feign companionship rather than have her daughter formally pose to which Heloise is vehemently opposed.  The ruse transforms into a subterfuge for the burning forbidden love that consumes both the subject & the artist.  These women are both exquisite to watch on screen.  Their passion ignites sparks and a multi-colored palette of pathos.  The most haunting imageries reference the unattainable love between Eurydice and Orpheus.  Dir./screenwriter Celine Sciamma (b France 1941) paints majestic vistas of cliffs overlooking the waves, stark candlelit interiors and sparking embers from an outdoor fire.  The fire was for a gathering of the town's women.  Heloise and Marianne eyes speak volumes across the fire and through their smoldering looks.  The film is sumptuous to behold at but unsatisfying in its stillness.   While there's plenty to visually admire in "A Portrait of Lady on Fire" it feels like watching paint dry on a canvas.

BLUE 13 DANCE CO. Blasts Dance Across the Universe

BLUE 13 DANCE Co. performed at the Wallis Theater in Beverly Hills and up on the stage sprung a bubbling crew; golden dancers, phenomenal choreography, musical artistry and a majestic presence that comes round rarely.  Artistic Dir/Choreographer Achinta McDaniel is shaking up the dance world with a bold & beautiful blend of diverse rhythms & pageantry.  The performance aptly titled TERPSICHORE; delight in dancing & music, resounded joyously with live percussionists & ghungroons.  McDaniel's influential contemporary Indian dance takes main stage in the first half of the program "F"ck Fusion - How to/not to be Adequately Indian."  The tongue in cheek mystique is fueled with fierce energy, elegance & fun.  An homage to Indian dance with a conspiratorial, contemporary wink blending heritage with what's happening on the forefront of dance.  The talented & mesmerizing dancers' musicality and graceful accentuations reverberated from their delicately choreographed hand gestures to their intricate & exciting steps.  All the artistic elements combined to create ingenious works of choreographic excellence.  The stunning costumes were at times exotic & vibrant, ephemeral & smartly androgynous.  The lighting & projection designs were affecting and potent.  The music pulsating and penetrating.  Original musical composition by 2 time Grammy winner Paul Livingstone was performed by a live string quartet.  The hauntingly beautiful music provided melodies underpinning the world premiere of "Terpsichore in Ghungroos."  Corset shaped cages floated down entrapping a dancer.  Her contained movements from within the enclosure invoked terror combined with strength.  The malleable, white corsets shapes floated seamlessly between dancers dressed in black/red unitards.  The elegiac imageries of enslavement were poignant, the transference of support & empowerment inspiring.  BLUE 13 DANCE covered new & astounding ground.  Y'all want to come back for more.  BRAVO!

Lone Schurfig's "The Kindness of Strangers" with Zoe Kazan and Andrea Riseborough

"The Kindness of Strangers" is a topical film set in NYC which follows a battered wife Clara (an excellent Zoe Kazan) fleeing an abusive husband with her 2 young sons.  She finds herself homeless while navigating  Manhattan desperate & determined to protect her boys.  Making matters more treacherous, Zoe's husband is a police officer able to track his wife and cover his abusive attacks.  The film is written & directed by Lone Scherfig (b. Denmark 1959).  Scherfig skillfully maps the streets of Manhattan while shifting between the homeless and the affluent.   Scherfig doesn't shy away from topics of homelessness, domestic violence and the world in which one can all too easily find themselves without shelter; dependent on support & compassion from strangers.  While having a meal with her sons in a soup kitchen, a homeless man returns the younger boy to Clara who clutches him while closing her eyes to the homeless person who cared for her child.  Clara's slight irates the man & he becomes volatile "She won't even look at me.  You're no better than me," he yells.  This is one of many indelible scenes that occur ubiquitously though many choose not see. Clara finds refuge from Alice, an angelic nurse (Andrea Riseborough).  Alice seems to take on the burdens of the world.  She also runs a support group for people seeking permission to forgive themselves.  Defense atty. John (Jay Baruchel) and his former client Mark (Tahar Rabin) who served jail time attend these weekly sessions.  This is a gift of the magi storyline where both Mark & John believe they're providing solace for the other. The film is a mixture of magical encounters dispersed amongst the underbelly of the city's misbegotten.  Bill Nighy who is always magnificent has a small but pivotal role.  His Russian restaurant is the hairpin connecting the happenstance characters.  Alice loses her composure while counseling her support group and snaps, "What gives you the right to be unkind."   "The Kindness of Strangers" is a curious & provocative film.  It behooves us to give help for those in need and teaches us to be forgiving of others and ourselves.

BUFFALOED - A Load of Fun Starring Zoey Deutch

"Buffaloed" is a fast pace con movie with a formidable female foe.  Peg (a tour-de-force Zoey Deutch) a Buffalo born & bred broad knows early on she's meant for making money.   Peg knew how to bamboozle as kid.  Her power point pitch to her widowed mother and bigger, not brighter brother falls on deaf ears.  Her loving mother (Judy Greer) would loan Peg $1,000 for her daughter's capital venture except the family is deeply in debt and dodging debt collectors.  Undeterred Peg plans to attend an Ivy League school as a pathway to a profitable future.  There's no doubt Peg can achieve whatever she sets her mind to and her acceptance to a prestigious university is no surprise.  Unfortunately, there's no feasible way to pay tuition.  The city of Buffalo features in the film as much as buffalo wings, a buffalo head and the beloved Buffalo Bills.  Peg prints phony Bills tickets and sells them to easy marks and rakes in the cash.  This plan ends up landing Peg in the brink where she wastes no time plodding how to turn things around when she gets out.  Peg's fast talking, unflappable persona gets her a job as a debt collector.   Not taking no for an answer there's no way Peg is going to be outdone by her slimy boss (Jai Courtney) who skims off her earnings.  Peg hatches a plan to get rid of the middle-man and assembles her own posse of fast talkers including her former inmates.  "Buffaloed" is a load of fun starting with Peg fleeting through the squalid streets of run down Buffalo.  The sleaziness of squeezing out a buck is checked and balanced with humor, tenderness and a dynamo heroine.  Peg's romantic interest is the attorney who first prosecuted her.  Peg's mother & brother's cantankerous relationship is founded on unconditional love.  The zany work crew Peg pits together adds a piquant flavor to the dish.  The potpourri of cunning & colorful characters orchestrated by Peg makes a satisfying & enigmatic casserole served up for an acquired taste.  I recommend sampling this surprisingly clever picadillo picture with its recipe of uncommonly comical ingredients.  

Sam Mendes' 1917 - WWI an Impossible Mission Relentlessly Driven

Sam Mendes' Golden Globe winning film "1917" is a WWI movie that follow 2 British soldiers assigned to cross over the frontlines into Nazi war zones.  The men are ordered to deliver a message to prevent an allied military launch ascertained as doomed to fail.  Soldiers, Schofield (George MacKay) & Blake (Dean-Charles Chapman)  orders are to carry a written message from the General (Colin Firth) to the Colonel (Benedict Cumberbatch) in charge of a cadre 1,600 soldiers about to be slaughtered in an assured, deadly ambush.  One of the men in this regiment is the Blake's brother making the mission personal and similar to the premise in "Saving Pvt. Ryan."  Mendes wrote & directed this WWI film which is an unrelenting race against time & countless deadly hurdles in order to save thousands of lives.  I don't readily choose to mitigate the power of the film's authenticity and harrowing action.  This is an exceptional war film that puts you in the trenches of WWI and onto the corpse riddled battlefields with affecting tension & horror.  Both Schofield and Blake are exceptional in their demanding roles.  Firth, Cumberbatch along with Andrew Scott as commanding officers have little time on screen but take full charge of their parts.  Again, I don't wish to battle with this astounding & affecting war movie but Mendes' set some minor booby traps that did a disservice to full immersion into the film's impactful intensity.  The editing was remarkable but its overriding or over hyped visual techniques ambushed the viewer into trying to discern flaws.  The musical score landed like a grenade in the terrain of credibility.  And, the tender interaction between Schofield and a French woman & infant, though beautiful, was too heavy handed.  War is hell.  "1917" takes the audience to hell and back.  It's exceptional storytelling with indelible imagery and just a few minor drawbacks.

2020 Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts

The 5 documentary shorts are eye-opening, revelatory and impactful.  The most painful doc.  "In the Absence" is a disturbing  reminder of the S. Korean ferry that sank in 2014 killing more than 300 people; most were school children.  All aboard were instructed to remain in place despite the vessel tipping at an alarming angle.  This heartrending & upsetting doc. shows how this tragedy should've been circumvented and these lives saved.  The cowardly captain vacated the ship on the 1st of few rescue boats that approached. Footage of the deadly debacle & voice recordings testify to the incredulous dismissal of the distressed vessel.  Pres. Park was removed from office for her flagrant failure to respond & fraudulent pretense.  The interviews from parents whose children drowned were excruciating.  A candid interview from a student who survived is distressing.  This is an indelible expose of a horrific, preventable tragedy that never should have occurred and its profound aftermath.  "Life Overtakes Me" was a shocking revelatory look at Resignation Syndrome (RS); a comatose state that more than 400 children have succumbed without a medical explanation.  RS has afflicted children whose families fled the former USSR & Balkan countries seeking asylum in Sweden. Viewing the families whose daughter & son have been non-responsive & completely dependent on caregivers stunned & baffled me.  RS has been met with skepticism.  However, seeing the girl in the remain in this state for more than 6 months & the male teen who has remained in a coma-like state for nearly 2 years is deeply troubling and mystifying.  How does a part of the brain disconnect itself from being conscious?  "St. Louis Superman" a doc. of Bruce Franks Jr., a Ferguson activist.  His w persistence won him a seat in the predominately white House of Rep. in MO.   Franks Jr., succeeded in passing a bill calling youth violence a public health issue.  Unfortunately, the doc. fails to clarify how this bill impacts the community or what measures Franks Jr., wanted the bill to achieve.  "Walk Run Cha-Cha" made in the US, is a pleasing love story of two Vietnamese refugees who found each other & together found expressive freedom in dancing.  It's a delightful & elegant look into this long-time married couple's life and the liberating joy found in dance.  The winner for Best Short Doc. (deservedly) is "Learning to Skateboard in a War-zone (if You're a Girl)"" shot in Afghanistan. The film hovers about young girls with limited opportunities in life for education & athletics.  The Afghani women who are shaking things by teaching them to read, write & ride skateboards are heroic.  A great doc. like this one, takes you into a world unbeknownst, connects you with people and ties you to humanity.  Bravo to the women who are expanding these young girls lives and to the young women taking these changes in stride with pride.

HADESTOWN A Hell of a Spin on Greek Myths

HADESTOWN on Broadway won the Tony for Best Musical ('19) and Best Original Score.  Anais Mitchell wrote the music, lyric and book for the show which is the hottest ticket in town.  Mitchell twirls the mythological tales of King Hades & his wife Persephone with the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice and sets it to a musical score of New Orleans Voodoo Jazz for a captivating  performance that will transport you willingly with every outstanding musical number.  Hermes (Andre De Shields in his Tony winning role) is the messenger who delivers with smooth & glossy style.  Hermes guides us through the intertwining tales of love & woe & hell below.  Orpheus (Reeve Carney) son of the muse of epic poetry and Eurydice (Eva Nobleza) are smitten with love.  Their unfailing love is besieged with dire hardships.  The vulnerable Eurydice succumbs to a pact with Hades (Patrick Page) that drags her down to Hell.  Page as Hades conjures up Leonard Cohen in a performance that ripples your soul.  Orpheus failed to protect Eurydice but vows he'll go to the ends of the earth or to hell & back to save her. Hermes directs Eurydice on his macabre journey through the inferno.  As fate will have it, 3 Fates play a heavy hand casting doubt particularly "When the Chips are Down."  Eurydice's epiphany of the cost of bargaining with Hades comes too late.   She's slated as a minion among the mindless Company toiling ceaselessly constructing the wall.  Choreographer David Neumann creates a chilling & stupefying work for the Company that melds Eurydice into their isolating, never ending cycle of labor.  Hades rhetorically queries his "children," "Why We Build the Wall."  Satan's evil chants strike clarion blows on an anvil.  The obvious metaphors penetrate to your core.  The devilishly shrewd referencing proves deeply affecting as "Word to the Wise."  Both Persephone (Amber Gray) and Hades' romantic wrangling and Eurydice & Orpheus' odyssey are tender yet infused with tension.  Under the brilliant direction of Rachel Chavkin and the ingenious scenic, costume & lighting design, the Olympian impact of this astonishing production is eternal.  Hermes delivers as does the entire ensemble cast, a superior musical & sovereign dramatic opus.  HADESTOWN earned its well deserved Tony for Best Musical and Original Score.  There's doubt cast to some clandestine bargain derailing HADESTOWN from bringing home a Pulitzer Prize.

A SOLDIERS PLAY on Broadway with Blair Underwood

Charles Fuller's Pulitzer Prize Winning Play is making its Broadway debut at the American Airlines Theater.  The play first appeared off-Broadway in 1981 & made into the movie "A Soldiers Story" starring Denzel Washington which earned an Acad. Award nom.  Fuller's play is set in 1944 at Fort Neal, LA.  A Negro's only squadron, under the command of Capt. Waters (an astounding David Alan Grier) is eager to be called to serve overseas. The first Negro battalion to encounter combat was Oct. '44.  The army was segregated, Negro officers were rare & vicious racial hatred prevailed over the Jim Crow south.  Fuller's play calls out racial injustice & the hypocrisy of American morals fighting in WWII.  Capt. Davenport, (an electrifying Blair Underwood) is a black officer & atty. assigned to Fort Neal to investigate the murder of Capt. Waters assumed murdered by the KKK.  Davenport is met with disrespectful & reluctant co-operation by Capt. Taylor (a miscast Jerry O'Connell).  This storyline mirrors "In the Heat of the Night" with a diminished bite.  Davenport is unflappable & methodically proceeds to interview all the men in the regiment and several white officers.  The Black soldiers have unfettered astonishment for a Black captain & mostly contempt from white army officers.  There's cageyness from some & startling revelations from others uncovered during investigation.  Life for these men on the base, their dynamics & relationships to Capt.Waters and others begin to emerge.  All the privates paint a similar but varying & insightful view of their Capt. and one another.  Knowing who done it hampers the suspense of the mystery, still the play packs a painful punch.  Regardless, the impact of racial hatred & systemic injustice during this time period reverberates boldly today.  The intentional conspiring to create an elitist race resounds with putrid irony.  The ensemble cast is terrific.  Stand out performances were from Pvt. C. J. (J. Alphonse Nicholson) and Pvt. Tony Smalls (Jared Grimes).  Grimes' short tap dance was terrific and fell into step as did the regiment's drill.  The uncredited choreography may be Grimes' gift to the play.  A SOLDIER'S PLAY was well staged and engaging.  The audiences' outburst & catcalls for Blair's shirtless moment was an amusing distraction.  The smattering of hoots & laughter may signify mitigating gravitas to the heavy undertow of racial hatred.  Still, Fuller's plays maintains a significant place in theatrical & American history; past & present.

MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON Starring Laura Linney

Elizabeth Strout's novel "My Name Is Lucy Barton" is a 1 one, 1 woman show starring Laura Linney;  reason enough to go.  Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Stout informs us in all her novels "We all have one story to tell we just need to learn to tell it over and over well."  Well, Lucy Barton (an astounding Laura Linney) manages to bring her story to life while addressing the audience directly.  Lucy also manages to morph into her mom  while conversing with her.  Mom has several stories to regale her daughter.  I have to stop here because the production was halted due to an elderly person in the orchestra who neither cared or knew to turn off her phone.  Lucy (a marvelous Linney) took the disruption in stride and started over from the beginning of the play.  Strout's novel is adroitly adapted by Rona Munro but it's Linney who brings life & angst to both Lucy & her mother.  Lucy fills the desolate set with a vortex of loneliness and stifling regrets.  Lucy wakes in the hospital to her mother whom she hasn't seen in almost a decade standing at the foot of her bed.  Lucy has come a long way from the small town in IL where she & her siblings were derided by classmates for living in squalor & for their malodorous stench.  Even Lucy's father goes to great measure to humiliate his effeminate son and then is filled with remorse for his behavior.  Lucy finds a warm haven in the school's library & solace in books.  Her diligence to schoolwork earns Lucy a college scholarship which leads to a writing career in NYC launching her journey navigating her way in the world.  This journey takes her from her lonely life at home and into a troubled marriage.  Lucy's mom just sees things & she tells them as she sees 'em.  She tells Lucy she'll have problems in her marriage but her girls will be fine.  Lucy's mom is astounded people make a living writing tales. She's plenty of her own tales to regale her daughter during her hospitalization of the quirky, unhappy people back home.  Lucy is all too aware how momentous this trip is for her mom.  What Lucy longs for most but never hears is she's loved.  Adults hold on tightly to the pain they felt as children.  Pangs of depressive loneliness & regret resonate from Lucy for what she never received nor proffered.  The stark set echoes a sense of isolation which is the story Lucy mournfully recounts time & time again.   Linney's return to Broadway is to be heralded but "My Name Is Lucy Barton" would suffice as an off-Broadway production.

BROCADE-17thC Venetian Comedy at Theater for the New City

The premiere of The Xoregos Performing Co.'s BROCADE, a 17th C Venetian comedy is playing at the Theater for the New City.  It's an original production by playwright/lyricist Robert DiNardo.   The play began on an interesting premise but with a convoluted & confusing plot.  It's not right to call it a musical comedy despite a little violin playing, ditties and alluding to seeing some diddies. The beguiling preamble in the program stated in Venice early 17 C "The city fathers believed that the sight of women's breasts could change the huge number of homosexuals living in Venice into becoming heterosexual. Therefore, they ordered whores to stand on a bridge, topless, now known as the Bridge of Tits."  Along with the warning to turn off cell phones was a notification there would be brief nudity on-stage.  Act I constructed a clever premise. A former whorehouse had been transformed into an orphanage accepting abandoned infants left (provided they were small enough to fit into the {drop-off} box.  A stealth talking Countess Felicita (Carla Lewis, who stumbled her lines) ran the orphanage with the aid of a young Novice (Sarah Kebede-Fiedler) who ubiquitously eave dropped (but little else).  A young man Orazio (Bennett Saltzman) adorned in a florescent, bejeweled gown carries an infant with him to the orphanage. Orazio was raised in the orphanage and now works as a seamstress for Felicita's sister Countess Bianca (Ethelyn Friend) creating garments for the town's harlots.  The 2 sisters love to gossip (regardless of being overheard).  There's startling news of the suspected return of Agostino (Gene Santarelli) Felicita's former lover.  Act I's most tender & distressing scene involves Orazio & his lover Mustat.  Mustat tells Orazio he was sold as a child by his father in Africa to his Venetian Aristocrat owner.  Mustat feared the facial/body scaring rituals and  at first was relieved to have saved his face not realizing he had given away his body and his soul.  The tenderness between the 2 lovers heightens the atrocities & indignities Mustat has born.  The play starts to unravel in Act II.   The play becomes a farcical love triangle but is strewn out of sorts with Act I.  BROCADE turns tarnished and jumbled and failed to adorn us with a well constructed period piece, comedy or drama.   Playwright DiNardo had several glimmering threads interwoven but the assembled getup was garbled.  Audience members became restless and ready to toss rotted vegetables at the troubadour and the pack of Pantaloons.

Hunter Theater's Mac Beth - Take the Trouble to Go

Theater Hunter Project MAC  BETH adapted & directed by Erica Schmidt shakes up Shakespeare's play Macbeth and spears out a fierce, contemporary & captivating production.  While maintaining the lyricism of Shakespeare's immortal writing, the all women Hunter student cast blasts Macbeth into the 21st C.  This is not your girlie girl (I regret the term) show.  It is one for the record books.  Can you improve on Shakespeare?  No - but Theater Hunter enhances the play's relevancy, if not sparks new life-interest for todays clever audiences.  This Scottish tragedy is darkly portrayed with tantalizing energy mixed with a fair measure of ferocious emotional toll. And, fair to say, it's also a fun romp.  Dare Hunter women defy gender roles?  Yes, they do an about face on Shakespeare's all male casts; back in the day.  The clever Hogwarts school attire is especially bewitching when long, hooded capes sheath the 3 witches.  This 90 minute One Act production is relentless, swift and sleek.  Umbrellas, bathtubs and sofas are shrewdly utilized in the skillful & hydrous staging by Andrea Miller.  Lady Macbeth (Ismenia Mendes) and her malleable husband (Camila Cano-Flavia) emit angst with scorching indelibility.  "Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break." The entire cast inhabit their roles with exuberance & galvanizing abhorrence.  Come what come may, if thou has't not seen MAC  BETH at Hunter, I beseech ye to attend tomorrow, or tomorrow

Unmaking Toulouse-Lautrec at Madame X-seXy Cabaret

Enter Madame X Theater on Houston and be transformed to the Belle Epoch era and into an authentic looking salon replete with French coquettes who certainly can - can can.  The Bated Breath Theater Co., under its artistic dir. Mara Lieberman has created an immersive, provocative performance that's titilating. informative, intoxicating (literally) and completely captivating.  The atmosphere is raging with Moulin Rouge magnifique'.  The stunning & tres chic hostess escorts you into a smokey salon, candlelit lumiere and cast in amber hues. The charmingly curmudgeon bar tender will card you (yes!) while smoking hot femme fatales flitter hither & thither.  These showgirls appear to have stepped off the pages of gay Paris; late 19th C.  The women deign to entertain you, or not, while continuing their stretching routines disregarding your presence.  Their presence is undeniably sensual and conspiratorially engaging.  The art on the walls are works by Henri Toulouse-Lautrec of the Moulin Rouge & its dancers whom he drew and immortalized through his drawings, posters and paintings.  A portrait of Henri's life takes shape through his body of work.  Paintings are brought to life seen through Henri's eyes what he admired most from near & afar.  His muse Jane Avril is his most ardent supporter and his beautiful but aloof mother are both pitched in the spotlight.  Henri's makes his inebriated presence doesn't go unbeknownst at the club or at his mother's feet for tea.  Even Henri's doppelgänger father (1st cousins with his mother) makes a heartless & hapless appearance.  The highlight, amongst plenty, is the remarkable, choreographed staging & dancing that includes a rousing & risqué can can.  (NYC Rockettes - eat your hearts out.)  There's a playful wink to contemporary music & dance lest we forget where these art forms originated.  The life size posters are enlivened with actors' posing alongside offering an added layer of artistry.  I tip my chapeau to the combination of historic storytelling awash in creativity and appealing mystique.  I recommend ordering either house drink:  The Moulin Rogue or the Toulouse - when in Paris.  I urge everyone to experience this immersive, intoxicating performance that is seductive (& educational) entertainment.