The Bluest Eye

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On Sunday we saw The Bluest Eye at Hartford Stage. This is a stage adaptation of Toni Morrison’s novel of the same name. It was a tremendously powerful production, had a great cast, and obviously a very good director as well as a creative set designer. I recommend it to anyone. Looking around the nearly filled theater on Sunday (not usually not a prime time for attendance at Hartford Stage) it was obvious that the play has great appeal to African American audiences, but all of us who seek to understand racism in our country will benefit into this look at the psyche of African American folk in a white world. The protagonists are children, honest in their expression of their feelings and experience.

Their ways of dealing with a white world are very different, Claudia tears up and destroys her blue eyed and blond hair doll, while Percola wants to be that doll, someone no longer looked at as ugly and invisible.

Go to the Hartford Stage website to view two reviews, both excellent and far more descriptive than anything I could write, or better still run out and get tickets and see this outstanding performance yourself.

Saturday we went to a matinee performance of Eve Ensler’s new play, “The Good Body”. This production at Hartford Stage does not feature Eve herself as an actor, but instead Brigitte Viellieu-Davis plays Ensler, with two other actresses - Erica Bradshaw and Judith Delgado - taking on multiple parts. It was a sparsely attended performance, although having never attended a Saturday Matinee I don’t know if this is typical or not. I did note that as a man I was in a definite minority. For a long time I was the only man in the theater; by the time the play began there were still less than three dozen of us. This was probably more men than I saw at the production of “The Vagina Monologues” in the much larger Belding Theater at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts.

Both Kathleen and I enjoyed the play immensely, it is about women’s body image from the point of view of Eve whose problem is her stomach which is not as flat as she wants, and dozens of other women from across the world who tell her their stories about their own special body part (or parts) with which they are unsatisfied and what they are doing about it. I particularly loved the Indian woman who finally kicked Eve off the treadmill. She told her she did not use the machine to loose her “jolly” (that is her fat) but because it gave her so much more energy for living. She tells Eve “We are all trees, be your own tree.” Eve seems to embrace this advice and tells her husband who travels half way around the world to be with her that she is a tree. He tells her he loves her tree and tells her several good things he loves about her tree, including that it is “sturdy.” “What do you mean, are you saying I’m fat”, and she is off again; he gives up and goes home.

I guess I can identify with her problem with her stomach since I have an issue with mine. My wife does not completely love and embrace this part of my tree. Sturdy is not the word she uses, rather she has said on several occasions that I look pregnant. Anyway it was fun, enjoyable, and hopefully good for every one who sees it.

Read a review of this production in the Hartford Courant or from the New York Times where it was published just last Sunday in the Connecticut Section.

Nightingale sang a disappointing song.

The last time I saw a drama at Hartford Stage I said that it exceeded my expectations because I usually have low expectations for one actor plays. Last Sunday I reverted to my normal opinion of one actor plays. My reaction to Lynn Redgrave’s play was to fall asleep. Repeatedly. Kathleen was vigilant to wake me before I started snoring (I think).

The play, Nightingale, which was written and performed by Lynn Redgrave, is the story of her grandmother’s life, or more accurately Lynn’s imagination of what her grandmother’s life must have like. The story was at least moderately interesting and does reflect “what challenges an English woman born at the end of the nineteenth century might face.” (from Stage notes by Christopher Baker.) Unfortunately it was a very ordinary and sheltered life, and just not that very interesting.

The critic in the Hartfort Courant thought that the acting was stronger than the play. Click here for review. I thought the opposite, I thought that Lynn’s acting was abasmyl. Her voice droned on and on with very little variation, this is what I found most deadly. James Lecesne in I am My Own Wife was a master of dozens of voices, it seemed like there was a cast of several dozen playing out the drama, but Sunday night it was only Lynn droning on and on.

Of course that is only my opinion, Kathleen enjoyed the play greatly, and a lot of people were quickly on their feet for a standing ovation when the play was over. Needless to say I was not one of them. I also noticed several people who left in the middle of the 90 minute performance. There were no intermissions.

They did have a “High Tea” and Jewelry exposition/sale in the upstairs lobby before the show. I thought the difference between High Tea and just Tea was that High Tea had more substantial food, well I was glad that we had eaten a late lunch before the theater, although everything that I ate was quite tasty, just very dainty. I don’t know if this was a one night event by invitation to theater goers on this particular night, or if it also happened for other performances. We did see some interesting work and met one of the artisans who was quite talkative and we discovered that we had a mutual friend. Kathleen asked the price on one of her pieces because the little price tag was hard to read. Kathleen thought it said $65, but discovered that it said $650. Needless to say she did not get it as a belated anniversary present.

I Am My Own Wife

My expectations were not particularly high when I went to Hartford Stage last Sunday night to see Doug Wright’s play, I Am My Own Wife. I have seen a number of plays with only a single actor or actress, and most have been disappointing. Not so with this play. Kathleen and I were both on the edge of our seats during the whole production, simply fascinated by the story of Charlotte von Mahlsdorf. I gather that the author did indeed interview her extensively, and what is portrayed is largely her self reports of her life as a transvestite; a man who dressed and lived as a woman and was openly the center of Gay and Lesbian life in Berlin during both the Nazi and the Soviet rule. The author enters into a brief discussion of the difference between her self accounts and official records as well as press reports, and leaves unanswered the question of how one might resolve these conflicts.

James Lecesne plays almost three dozen characters in the course of the play using little besides his voice, movement and gestures to convey who is speaking. His skill is unbelievable, and you believe you have met all these different people. Costuming is no more than a skirt, blouse, shoes and a string of pearls donned early in the first act, and a similar but slightly different outfit for the briefer second act. The staging is very minimal, although the skillful use of perspective makes the stage seem much deeper than it is. All of the extensive furniture is added only by Charlotte’s description of the unseen pieces.

We had seen Lecesne before is the fast paced farce The Mystery of Irma Vep. In I Am My Own Wife he displays an entirely different repertoire of skills. It is a play well worth seeing.

I am looking forward to the summer season when Hartford Stage will present The Good Body by Eve Ensler, and Mahalia, A Gospel Musical.

Wedding Anniversary

Last Friday, April 20, 2007 Kathleen and I celebrated our 38th Wedding Anniversary (that is her pictured above). We had dinner at the Gelston House and then went next door to the Goodspeed Opera House where we saw the opening night of Singing in The Rain. It was a wonderful experience, the first time we had been to the Goodspeed (or the Gelston House) since coming to Connecticut nearly 10 years ago.

I did not expect to enjoy the play as much as I did. Broadway Musicals are a form of entertainment for which I have less appreciation than Kathleen does. However it was a very different experience seeing the production in a very small and intimate house (about 300 seats). It was an excellent performance, and made even more fun by the fact that the production started before you got into the Theater. I don't know if this will happen every night, but for opening night they had spotlights and a red carpet lined with actresses contumed as reporters with flash cameras and big microphones contucting interviews with play goers as we entered.

I also noted with some satisfaction that people really dressed for the theater. Coming from the south I have been shocked to see people come so casual to plays at both the Bushnell and Hartford stage. In Louisville you would see men in tuxedos for opening night at Actors Theatre, and the director always appeared on stage in Tux for the opening remarks. I didn't see a tux at this opening night, but I certainly didn't see cut off jeans either. Almost all the women had on fancy dresses, most of the men coats and ties.

I guess I am old fashioned, but I appreciate that!

Last night we saw the play Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. I laughed myself silly. Luis Alfaro has taken a hilarious look at some heavy subjects such as obesity and family/personal relationships. His dialog is excellent, at one and the same time it sounds like real people talking, and also like poetry. The play, with its all Latino cast of four excellent actors/actresses continues through April 1 at Hartford Stage.

A review in the Courant called the play a work in progress. I would agree with this. This is the first full scale production of the play, and the development director who came out and gave a pre-play talk said that is the course of rehearsals and even the preview performances that Alfaro continued to change lines, even some whole scenes were rewritten.

By the way, I really appreciate that a real person comes out on stage before the performance. This is live theater for crying out loud, it seems totally inappropriate that a disembodied voice does the opening announcements, even if those announcements are only reminders not to take pictures and to turn off your cell phones. Jon Jory, the long time director of Actors Theatre Louisville often did this opening monologue himself, at least on opening night. It is part of getting to know the people who ARE the theater, especially important in a residential theater.

The one disturbing thing was the very last scene, Minnie drifts away higher and higher, out of sight, then there is an explosion – debris like large confetti falls down on the stage and the stage goes dark. Kathleen didn’t like the ending because it wasn’t a neat or happy ending. I thought it was all right to end with the explosion like a giant balloon which Minnie had become by the end of the play. What bothered me was that for the curtain call Minnie (who just exploded) came drifting down from overhead, still of course in her fat suit. I would have liked to have her appear for curtain call either as herself without the fat suit, or at least reduced to the size she was when the play began.