A REAL BROADWAY TRAGEDY

I was really saddened to hear of the sudden closing of BRIGHTON BEACH ME MOIRS as it was a rare bright spot in a mostly dismal Broadway season so far. The direction of David Cromer deserved the kudos he got for the revival OUR TOWN, which, frankly, left me cold. Cromer’s acting of the Stage Manager was too intrusively hectoring, giving an unwonted “edge” to the play which robbed it of its existential soulfulness and quiet beauty, and there were serious aesthetic issues, like having the mothers wearing pantsuits at the wedding of Emily and George, as well as casting missteps, like an off-putting, much too mature actress as Emily. (Martha Scott, who originated the role on Broadway in 1938, was also too old by the time she made the film of it in 1940, but did manage to retain a certain authentic starry-eyed fervor.)

With BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS, however, Cromer’s intent digging into the text really paid off in emotional terms. I was frankly rather dreading an evening of Neil Simon, but found myself completely involved in the economically strapped travails of the Jerome family and even shed a tear or two during the wrenching leave=taking scene between older brother Stanley (Santino Fontana, a piercingly real, smashing find of a young actor) and young Eugene (Noah Robbins, who managed to be really funny, natural and touching, besides completely ridding his cliched narrator/commentator role of any rote, noxious urban precocity). I doubt that there will be a more magically moving onstage moment this year than when Eugene takes Stanley’s old sports medal as a departing keepsake.

Santino Fontana and Noah Robbins

Ben Brantley’s dismissal of Laurie Metcalf’s performance as Mrs. Jerome in the New York Times was doubtlessly a definite coffin nail for this production (although some have even surmised that it was Neil Simon himself who pulled the plug, not liking it as being too dark and not funny enough). Once more, Brantley misses the boat, besides possibly needing glasses, or a stronger prescription if he already wears them, as witness two off-the-wall recent observations of his, the first in his review of THE ROYAL FAMILY in which he described Catherine Zuber’s abysmal costumes, which included a pashmina shawl for Rosemary Harris that looked as if it had been picked up from a Times Square street vendor, as “mouth-watering.” In his review of BYE BYE BIRDIE, he actually cited a physical resemblance between Gina Gershon and Ava Gardner, the most gorgeous white woman who ever lived. Gershon maybe recalls Yvonne DeCarlo, at best, Gardner, never.

Metcalf, always a forthright, vivid actress, played her part with an unsentimental toughness; her anger and exasperation gave a fresh spin to her dominating, eternally wrongheaded Yiddische mama lines and the sympathy she assuredloy evoked from tthe audience was as admirably hard-won as it was genuine. Dennis Boutsikaris was blessedly handsome (thereby making his wife’s jealousy believable) and understated as Papa Jerome, avoiding the eyeball-rolling corn inherent in this all-wise paterfamilias role right out of Andy Hardy’s never-wrong, sage Judge of a father. Jessica Hecht, that intelligent actress, made her strongest, most poignant impression to date as the spinster aunt possessed of an endearingly annoying wheezy laugh and sudden terror when her sister decides to lend her a special necklace for an all-important date. The gawky, terrified way Hecht ran away from the bauble as if it was a brandished gun was but one of the myriad behavorial felicities of Cromer’s direction.

The closing of this show is not only a shame but an outright indictment of producer lack of faith as well as the Broadway audience, itself, who crave movie stars in idiotic plays (see A STEADY RAIN) or the lowest form of musicals (see MAMMA MIA!) over a play which, although set during the Depression, addresses the current economic situation and its devastating impact on a family with heart and humor in a way that could speak to everyone, even those clueless tourists currently crowding Times Square, impeding true New Yorkers’ progress and avidly dropping bucks at the Hershey’s store. BRIGHTON BEACH MEMOIRS was the kind of a show that might have built up a special word of mouth, but, obviously, nobody cared enough.

Onward to (shudder) SPIDERMAN!

COPYRIGHT: nohwaymail2009

FISHER’S FABULOUS FAMILY TREE

In the infamous metal bikini

Thank God for Carrie Fisher, whose WISHFUL DRINKING, which, although not exactly earth-shattering, has all the savvy, balls, fun, wit and glamour (if a tad second-hand) so sorely missing from all recent Broadway openings. Fisher has truly found her metier in this live performance which is really no different from an elaborate stand-up – or, in her case, often sitting – routine. Her dry observations and epigrams flow more trippingly off her ever wry tongue than they do on the pages of her books which can seem contrived, stilted and obnoxiously precocious.

Opening the show is a splendid big screen montage of the tabloid headlines which have stalked her from birth, detailing her life from the very beginning, when Dad Eddie Fisher dumped Mom Debbie Reynolds for Liz Taylor to her failed marriage to Paul Simon to her desertion by husband Bryan Lourd for a man, to her discovery of the dead body of her friend R. Gregory Stevens in bed beside her, not to mention a vicious John Simon review in which he called her “bovine.”

The centerpiece is her delineation of her own family tree of celebrity which, of course, began with that unholy trinity of Debbie-Eddie-Liz, (with Mike Todd and Richard Burton thrown in for good measure). If you grew up in the 1960s, their story was even more familiar to you than your own family history from the incessant, rabid media coverage, which made the Aniston-Pitt-Jolie menage (and Fisher is quick to point out the paralleling personalities) look the merest teapot tempest. This became part of everyone’s (low) cultural heritage, a fact made clear to me when I interviewed Debbie Reynolds a few years ago and within minutes achieved instant intimacy with her as, like your favorite aunt, she happily began dishing Eddie to filth and saying how she and Liz are buddies now, who just laugh at his sorry ass. Which, I suppose, is to be expected, if, as his daughter states, he brought his drug dealer to a recent performance of hers.

Fisher’s inspiration for this bit came from a question posed to her by her daughter by Lourd, Billie, who was dating Elizabeth Taylor’s grandson, and asked if they were possibly related. I probably would have been content if Fisher had just talked about her extended family all night, which included her father’s subsequent wife, Connie Stevens (“Also blonde and perky – do we see a pattern here?”), and sexpot Marie McDonald (“known as ‘The Body,’ she was an actress-ish”) who married Reynold’s second ex-husband, Harry Karl, and also had affairs with Fisher and Liz’s ex-husband, Michael Wilding. Eddie Fisher also married a Chinese woman (Betty Lin), who died in 2001, and, according to Carrie, he has had so much plastic surgery, he now looks Chinese, himself.

Next to these revelations, everything else in the show – her account of her addictive, bi-polar personality, and, oh yeah, STAR WARS – however funny, paled by comparison. Suffice it to say that if you go, you’ll have a rollicking good time. Fisher has also inherited her mother’s deftness with audience interaction (although I’m glad I wasn’t in the front row and subject to her lavish baptismal glitter anointing). When I saw Debbie at Lehman College a few years ago, she was met onstage by an old woman’s crying out – in the middle of a ballad, “My husband Morris played drums for you!,” and Reynolds, completely unfazed, used this as schtick for the rest of her act (“Do you think Morris woulda liked that song?”)

And, when it comes to cleverly turning a phrase, Fisher is pretty non-pareil. I’ll give you but one example, so as not to spoil the show for you: “If religion is the opiate of the masses, I took masses of opiates religiously.” The fact that she is performing at her old stomping ground, Studio 54, ground zero for legendary intake and excess, where Margaux Hemingway passed out on opening night, Halston would puff angel dust joints with then reigning drag queen Poutassa de Lafayette, Liza would party until just a few hours before her Broadway matinees of THE ACT, I once looked long and hard into the unseeing, completely sloshed eyes of Truman Capote, and a friend swore he did coke with Liz Taylor in a stall of the infamously ambisexual powder room where she showed him how to disguise the sound by stepping on the toilet pedal flush just as she inhaled, is a kinda crazy, beautiful thing.

Carrie and Dad, Eddie

AND OTHERS WHO HAVE BECOME CHINESE THROUGH THE YEARS

Joan Rivers, the Mask of Fu Manchu

Faye Dunaway

Jessica Lange

Jerry Lewis

Mary Tyler Moore

Bruce Jenner, who became a Chinese LADY

Patrick Stewart

Dancer Jacques D’Amboise

Noel Coward (with Elaine Stritch), who once described himself in later years as looking like a “Chinese dowager empress”

MOVIE PERFORMANCE OF THE YEAR

(Anne Marie Fox)

“Mo’Nique has GOT to win the Oscar!” enthused Tina Brown after a screening of Lee Daniels’ PRECIOUS last Friday afternoon, an opinion with which I can only concur. As Mary, the most mesmerizingly abusive mother in film history (forget Gladys Cooper in NOW, VOYAGER, Piper Laurie in CARRIE or even Faye Dunaway in MOMMIE DEAREST), Mo’Nique gives one of those rare performances which seductively hypnotizes even as it totally repels. Forever planted in front of the TV, watching inane game shows, smoking, scarfing down food and hurling obscenities and orders at her beset, obese daughter, the ironically named Precious (Gabourey Sidibe), the actress possesses a terrifying operatic power, with furiously angry arias which, instead of gorgeous high notes, are laced with “muthafuckas” and “goddamns.” The film itself is absorbing and grittily real, even with its cinematic flights into the glamorous fantasies Precious imagines as an escape from her miserable life, but Mo’nique, with her scary, lullingly husky voice, hypes it with an intensity that invests her scenes with a dark, unholy power that surpasses everything else. You find yourself anticipating her every onscreen appearance, even as you dread what she’ll inevitably do in them. (Perhaps the actress’ stand-up appearances in women’s prison in her devastating TV concert I COULD BE YOUR CELLMATE have further informed her uncanny understanding of the darker sides of human experience.)

Daniels is clearly also in thrall to the performance, even giving her one moment of transcendent “glamour,” as she rocks out alone in her living room to Jean Carne’s great, shimmering 1979 song, “Was That All There Was,” as transfixed in the moment, despite her pimples and unshaven armpits, as Precious is in her imaginings of red carpet arrivals or triumphant stage performances. (Daniels is at his flamboyant best during these sequences, which usually occur during Precious’ darkest moments; I’d love to see him try his hand at a musical.) The funniest, most apalling movie scene of the year has got to be when the welfare worker comes to visit, with Mary pulling on a wig and Precious’ retarded baby onto her lap, putting out a cigarette and suddenly assuming a motherly sweetness, a scene which had me gasping at its multi-layered audacity. Mo’Nique also doesn’t stint from the suggestions of the incestuous sex Mary also forces Precious into with herself.

The movie, based on the novel PUSH by Sapphire, is riveting, even with its worthy truckload of “triumph of the female human spirit” qualities which have attracted no less than Oprah as an executive producer. It deals with many of the same issues as THE COLOR PURPLE, the film of which is like a lovely Disneyfied fantasy compared to Daniels’ empathic, street-wise evocation of these forgotten women’s lives. He leavens the grimness of Precious’ story with piquant touches of magic realism, as well as a gallery of other, highly ingratiating females, like the girls in Precious’ Special Ed class, who range from an amusingly officious, thickly accented West Indian to a a louche Puerto Rican mami, all of them in thrall to a comely male nurse (Lenny Kravitz, sexily relaxed), who administers to Precious after she has borne her second baby by her own father; Sherri Shepherd as a savvy school receptionist; Mariah Carey, drabbing herself down as a social worker (with even a hint of upper lip hirsuteness), and lovely Paula Patton who manages to avoid being cloying as Precious’ devotedly supportive teacher, who happens to be lesbian. Daniels also has a vital gay man’s prescient attention to telling details, like the choice of that Jean Carne song and the poster of Ntozake Shange’s landmark FOR COLORED GIRLS hanging in Patton’s home.

In her all-demanding screen debut, Sidibe is never less than convincing and admirably never stoops to easy heart string-tugging. She bears her many woes with an awesome stoicism, making her eventual emotional breakdown all the more affecting. A more trained actresss in the role might not have worked, and Sidibe’s naturalness is a considerable asset, with her somewhat limited expressiveness adding overall credibility. Yet even her big final scene is trumped by Mo’Nique’s ensuing confessional, with her fury and sadness elementally mounting to Greek tragic proportions. I only wish Daniels had kept his busy camera (mostly effective throughout) at rest during this scene. He pans down to her hands nervously fidgeting with her purse and it’s an unnecessary distraction when all we want tois see her fraught face. There’s simply no following this moment, and Daniels wisely doesn’t prolong things, giving Precious a mercifully pithy happy ending.

BTW, before the film, the Tribeca Screening Room was absolute celebrity sighting central that afternoon, which, besides Tina Brown, had a low wattage start with the appearance of Joy Behar (with partner, Steve Janowitz) who, when told it might be as much as an hour wait for the delayed screening to start (wrong!), said, “I’m not waitin’ for an hour. Let’s go have lunch!” (She returned and saw her THE VIEW co-star, Shepherd do her onscreen thing.) Shortly thereafter, Josh Brolin left the building, hopping into a chauffeured SUV, and then Harvey Weinstein and e’er-present entourage came off the elevator.

OTHER FILMS:

Carey Mulligan in AN EDUCATION, and her American twin sister

Katie Holmes

AN EDUCATION: I can’t understand the critical praise for this. Are people that starved for another period coming-of-age story with pretensions to intelligence and feminism?

The central role of pretentious schoolgirl Jenny (Carey Mulligan), with her superior air and habit of employing French phraseology is the kind of part that demands a special kind of actress to carry off. The young Katharine Hepburn, with her unique charm – equal parts joyously innate innocence and resolute eccentricity – in MORNING GLORY, STAGE DOOR, THE PHILADELPHIA STORY and, especially, ALICE ADAMS, was able to make her obnoxious, wrong-about-everything heroines enchanting, but Mulligan (a dead ringer, with her elfin baby face and long, slim body, for Katie Holmes) is far too knowing and actress-y to be either convincing or appealing. Her trained dramatic voice, with its calculatedly husky notes, is disconcertingly mature and she seems too brashly convinced of her own irresistibility. I couldn’t warm to her at all, and when she cruelly dismissed Graham (Matthew Beard), the sweetly callow, perfectly presentable fellow student with an aching crush on her, all possible sympathy for her vanished.

This enterprise is marred by overall miscasting. Jenny is taken out of her suburban existence by a suave, shady older Jewish man, David. He is played by the American Peter Sarsgaard, with his exquisite Nordic features, oh-so careful Brit accent and diffident, eternally squishy presence: they have zero sexual chemistry. David is harboring a secret or two; Sarsgaard always seems to be, as well, but with him it often comes off, for some reason, as closet homosexuality. As Jenny’s father, we have Alfred Molina, so dark and ethnic-looking, bt also essentially a sweetheart, railing against David’s Jewishness with empty bluster, and, overall, none-too-believable as a frighteningly domineering Dad. (He’s almost as strenuously unsympathetic and misguided as he was as Kenneth Halliwell, Joe Orton’s lover/killer in PRICK UP YOUR EARS.) Cara Seymour as Jenny’s mother is merely a wan dishrag, tiresomely subservient and emblematic of failed dreams. Danish director Lone Scherfig’s touch seems too alien to truly capture London in the early ’60s (there’s nary a hint of The Beatles or any counter-cultural clues preceding them, and she’s no great shakes when it comes to romance, either. When Jenny and David go to Paris to finally consummate their relationship, Scherfig goes all cliche: couples dancing along the Seine, having champagne by the Seine, strolling along the Seine, but their sex is merely suggested by a post-coital scene in which Jenny muses along the lines of “Is That All There Is?” as if Scherfig were still operating under the Hays Code. We’re thankfully spared a pair of bodies entwining to some pop ditty in careful soft focus, but Scherfig surely missed out on some sensual and/or comic opportunities here.

The charismatic glamour of David’s world (and how Sarsgaard lacks those atrributes!) is raffishly represented by Rosamund Pike, who fitfully enlivens things as an elegantly dumb blonde moll and Dominic Cooper as her man. Cooper was irresistible onstage in THE ALTAR BOYS, as a prep school studmuffin, causing him to be immediately thrown into high profile films, but his teeny-faced features don’t photograph well and, apart from a flashy, shallow bravado, he never brings much to the party.

Emma Thompson needs to play Mags Thatcher

It’s left to a pair of accomplished Brit ladies to provide some spine here, and Emma Thompson and Olivia Williams (channeling two Maggies, Thatcher and Smith in THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE, respectively) as dragon-ish school doyennes, effectively make the most of their moments – I was far more interested in their lives than Jenny’s – but it’s not enough to make this misguided, woefully tone-deaf effort worth your while.promising

Olivia Williams

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE is, most assuredly, where a good film is not. It starts off well enough, with Spike Jonze’s frenetically loose direction, music savvy and attention to detail promising an edgy, fun time for the entire family. With intelligent, appealing actors like Catherine Keener playing the harried mother of the kid hero, Max (Max Records), and Mark Rufalo as her boyfriend, you feel that these are folk you don’t mind spending time with. Records is admirably natural: spunky, energetic and very touching, vividly capturing that childhood angst we all recall when he is left alone by his older sister and her uncaring friends, weeping over his destroyed igloo.

But then, Max has to “fall through the looking glass,” and the film becomes a noisy, droning bore, populated by author Maurice Sendak’s off-putting shaggy beasts. (I must confess: I am not a fan.) With voices provided by James Gandolfini, Catherine O’Hara, Forest Whitaker, Chris Cooper, Lauren Amrbose and Paul Dano, they depressingly sound like sitcom suburbanites, wrily wisecracking and sniping at each other, and entirely unfunny. Despite the ear-shattering crashes and mid-air tumbles, I could barely keep my eyes open from the general mindlessness, which, while hipper-than-thou, proved monotonous and utterly uninvolving.

Max Records, interminably running with the beasts of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

COPYRIGHT:davidnoh2009