FILM REVIEW: GOOD KILL By: Faiz No comments

Major Tom Egan (Ethan Hawke) in Good Kill.

Assassins to ashes

By Ed Rampell

In 2013 this reporter interviewed CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, author of Drone Warfare, Killing by Remote Control, who asserted: “There were between 46 and 52 drone strikes under the Bush administration. And now there are over 400 -- that’s not counting Afghanistan.

Now a feature film has been made with major Hollywood talents dramatizing the dubious Unmanned Aerial Vehicle program and the controversies surrounding it. New Zealand writer-director-producer Andrew Niccol’s Good Kill is a hard hitting, thought provoking movie exposing and opposing drone warfare in Afghanistan and Yemen. Fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in Boyhood, Ethan Hawke portrays pilot Major Tom Egan, who, after repeat combat tours flying over the Iraq and Afghan theaters of conflict, is now stationed outside of Las Vegas, where he is deeply conflicted by his role in the UAV liquidation-by-remote-control project.

From the relative comfort of an air conditioned trailer in a military base at the Nevada desert the droners wreak Hellfire havoc on targets in deserts half a world away. The fetching if kvetching Zoe Kravitz (Mad Max: Fury Road, Insurgent, X Men: First Class), daughter of Lenny Kravitz and Lisa Bonet, plays fiery Vera Suarez, a Latina Air Force officer who has qualms after she joins the UAV team at the Nevada air base.

What Suarez bellyaches about are the moral implications (or lack of) of droning, which according to the movie (and Medea) is an imprecise method of murder which inevitably results in “collateral damage” -- including the deaths of unarmed civilians, among them, alas, children, women and the aged. According to the film, this killing of casualties, whose only crimes are being at the wrong places at the wrong times, is acceptable to the CIA. You know, that U.S. organization (your tax dollars at work, my Fellow Americans!) that LBJ called “Murder Incorporated” (hey, it takes one mass murderer to know another!), which has overthrown democratically-elected governments from Iran to Guatemala to Chile, etc., tortured more dissidents than the Spanish Inquisition, and so on.

Suarez denounces the CIA-directed droning of non-combatants, as U.S. "terrorism" and a "factory creating terrorists," because of the widespread anger and blowback these killings provoke and spread. During one testy trailer exchange with her commanding officer, Lt. Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood) Suarez cheekily asks: “Was that a war crime, Sir?” To which Johns replies: “Shut the fuck up, Suarez!”

His conscience troubled, Major Egan can no longer “keep compartmentalizing,” as Lt. Colonel Johns advises. He has a drinking problem and his marriage to Molly (January Jones) is, like his liquor, on the rocks. Like Jeremy Renner’s lead character in 2010’s Best Picture Oscar winner, The Hurt Locker (co-produced by Nicolas Chartier and Zev Forman, who also co-produced the far superior war film, Good Kill), Egan has difficulty making the transition from the combat zone to the home front, although he is still at war, “taking potshots” at people across the globe being surveilled by remotely piloted aircraft with their lethal payloads.

But unlike The Hurt Locker’s PTSD-ed, traumatized psychopath, Egan finds a path back to his sanity. It’s a similar route blazed by veterans such as the courageous Ron Kovic, whom Tom Cruise depicted in Oliver Stone’s 1989 anti-war classic, Born on the Fourth of July: Taking a stand against orders to shoot Hellfire missiles from a drone at civilians.

Meanwhile, the gung ho Specialist Zimmer (Jake Abel) is the troop’s trailer trash, who represents the jingoistic dregs of military madness. Zim derides Suarez as “Jane Fonda” and quips about putting “warheads on foreheads.”

Perhaps Zim is one of the “gamers” whom the Pentagon recruits for its UAV program, which appears to play out like a videogame (albeit one with extraordinarily high stakes involving life and death). The Las Vegas vibe and backdrop enhances the sense of the inherently risky nature of drone warfare. Good Kill’s aerial footage, apparently shot in Morocco, has the look and feel of a videogame as it simulates what the Nevada-based airmen-turned-chairmen see on their computer screens as these not-so-Big Brothers watch Afghans and Yemenis from seats in their air conned trailer. This cinematic technique has a Brechtian alienation feel, as it distances film viewers from the actions, and Good Kill’s combat isn’t as viscerally exciting as that depicted in more conventional, pro-war flicks, like American Sniper or John Wayne’s Sands of Iwo Jima.

But that’s because Good Kill is an anti-war work of art that wants audiences to use logic and reason, not just emotion, when assessing the story onscreen.

 

SEEFEST 2015: OPENING NIGHT WITH JAPANESE DOG By: Faiz No comments

Costache (Victor Rebengiuc) in Japanese Dog.

The bite and the bark

By Ed Rampell

From April 30 through May 7, the 10th annual South East European Film Festival is putting features, shorts, animation and documentaries that are primarily shot and/or set in Southeastern Europe in the limelight. As such, SEEFest provides a beachhead for cinema from this part of the world, giving foreign films entrée to moviedom’s world capital, Hollywood. It also presents avid filmgoers undaunted by subtitles with the opportunity to view works they may not otherwise get the opportunity to see, especially on the big screen. In addition to screenings at several L.A. venues , SEEFest co-presented its 7^th Annual Business of Film Conference, “Connecting South East Europe and Hollywood,” on May 2 at the Goethe-Institut, which, among other things, dealt with the complex issue of distribution in the lucrative, if insular, U.S. marketplace, followed by a networking luncheon.

The April 30^th gala at the Writers Guild Theater in Beverly Hills was well-attended by filmmakers, moviegoers and dignitaries, such as a representative of the L.A. City Council and the Swiss Consul-General, Jean-Francois Lichtenstern. The office of L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and L.A. City Council presented proclamations expressing appreciation to SEEFest and its artistic director, Vera Mijojlic, plus to actor-dancer George Chakiris, who scored a Best Actor Oscar for 1961’s West Side Story. Mijojlic also presented Chakiris, who is of Greek ancestry, with SEEFest’s inaugural Legacy Award. 82-year-old Romanian actor Victor Rebengiuc was given SEEFest’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in absentia.

However, Tudor Cristian Jurgiu flew to L.A. for SEEFest, accepting the award on behalf of Rebengiuc. Their film, the oddly named The Japanese Dog, then kicked off the Festival’s screenings, followed by a Q&A with Jurgiu conducted on the stage of the Writers Guild Theater by Mijojlic, along with questions from the audience, which then enjoyed a feast of Eastern European cuisine in the lobby festooned with posters of classic movies, many of them with texts in various languages.

No Reservoir Dogs, The Japanese Dog could also be entitled “The Anti-Avengers Film.” Typical Tinseltown escapist mass entertainment equates drama with action -- the more violent, the more “dramatic”, rendered through head spinning rapid cutting by no talent, harebrained sociopathic dimwits like Michael Bay appears to be. Of course, this is an expression of a sick society suffused with and suffocating in violence, where youths get their necks broken for the new thought crime of “looking while black”; the national pastime is a sport causing concussions, brain damage, etc.; and far away countries get shocked, awed, droned and attacked at the drop of a hat. Hollywood’s over-reliance on violence to peddle tickets is also a reflection of extremely bad writing by screenwriters incapable of subtlety and expressing conflict without bombardments, AK-47s, vehicular homicide, ad nauseam.

These screenwriters, directors, producers, et al, are unable to express deep human truths, whereas films such as the enigmatically named The Japanese Dog do, represent the drama of everyday life -- all without a single, solitary screeching car chase, explosion, shooting and the like. (There is, however, a sort of robot -- so maybe there’s hope for transforming Bay after all?)

The protagonist of The Japanese Dog is the antithesis of the Hollywood hero -- 80-year-old widower Costache (Rebengiuc) lives alone in a flood ravaged, dirt poor Romanian village. Costache’s estranged son, Ticu (Serban Pavlu), who has emigrated overseas, returns to Romania, along with his foreign wife, Hiroku (Kana Hashimoto), and their young son, Koji (Toma Hashimoto).

Costache and Ticu are faced with the conflict of resolving their estrangement and reestablishing that Turgenev-ian relationship between fathers and sons. And Costache must decide whether familial or national bonds are more important to him.

By La-La-Land escapist standards, Romania's latest Oscar-entry for Best Film in a Foreign Language (it did not make the cut) is excruciatingly slow moving (a pejorative in Hollywood), thoughtful and always deeply human, with heartfelt acting by an Eastern European master and the supporting cast. But Jurgiu’s 85-minute directorial debut feature has more humanity than all those dreadful Transformers movies put together. And The Japanese Dog does it without firing a single shot. Imagine that! 

As for why this Romanian movie is mysteriously named The Japanese Dog -- well, you’ll just have to see it yourself, Dear Reader. And thanks to SEEFest, American audiences got that opportunity -- as well as a shot at breaking into the American movie market. It may not be as action-packed as Marvel’s The Avengers, but The Japanese Dog is marvelous in its own way.

 

 

The 2015 South East European Film Festival takes place through May 7 with works from Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Moldova, Montenegro, Turkey, Kosovo, Georgia, Germany, Macedonia, Spain, Albania, France, USA, Denmark, Italy, Bosnia Herzegovina, Belgium, Greece, Azerbaijan, etc. These screenings mark the North American and/or West Coast premieres for many of the works. For more info see: seefilmla.org.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

FILM REVIEW: 24 DAYS By: Faiz No comments

Ruth (Zabou Breitman) in 24 Days.

Poor Jew

By Ed Rampell

Director Alexandre Arcady’s taut, suspenseful new film, 24 Days, is like the similarly monikered now-defunct Fox TV series, 24, in that it deals with torture within a set period of time.

However, 24 Days is based on a real life tragedy: The January 2006 abduction in Paris of French Jew Ilan Halimi (portrayed by Syrus Shahidi), a cell phone salesman of Morrocan ancestry. Arcady shares the screenwriting credits with Antoine Lacomblez and Emilie Freche, who co-wrote with Ruth Halimi (played by Zabou Breitman in the movie) a book called 24 Days, The Truth on Ilan Halimi’s Death.

Using a very realistic style, Arcady’s probing camera takes us inside the kidnapping, from Sub-Saharan Africa to France. In addition to being a policier, 24 Days is also an intense family drama. The Halimis seem like a very close knit family, although Ruth (Zabou Breitman) and Didier Halimi (Pascal Elbe) are actually divorced, which adds to the already considerable amount of tension. This leads towards the acting being occasionally overwrought in a few scenes: How many crying babies and screaming sisters, mother, etc., can a viewer stand?

The film is gripping with a political subtext and reminiscent of Costa-Gavras. 24 Days implies that the bungling police were extremely incompetent in carrying out their investigation and attempts to rescue Halimi. Most importantly, the movie explores the big question as to whether Ilan's kidnapping and abuse while being held prisoner was an act of anti-Semitism? The authorities try long and hard to deny this -- but others thought differently, including Ruth.

Arcady has a North-African background similar to Ilan's -- the director was born in Algeria and is also Jewish. He moved from Algiers to France when he was 15 and many of his movies have focused on Jewish issues and subjects, hence his interest in l’affaire Halimi. However, if 24 Days is indeed asserting that Ilan's hijacking was because of anti-Semitism, Arcady’s dramatization does not make a very convincing, strong case.

In terms of motive, there is only a very quick specific Islamicist reference and the inept kidnappers appear to be acting more on the basis of greed than on hatred per se for Jews. Yes, they targeted Ilan because he was Jewish, but not out of contempt for the Chosen People, but due to their foolish belief that all Jews are rich. So while Ilan's abductors did indeed act under the impression of a false stereotype of Jews, they did not seem to be motivated by a deep seated hatred per se of Jews, unlike inquisitors, Nazis, Islamicist extremists and other fanatics since Biblical days. The movie does not suggest that overzealous Zionist militaristic policies vis-à-vis the  Palestinians and the like provoked the body snatchers. They just wanted to make a fast, easy buck but stupidly chose a wrong target because they ignorantly believed an incorrect, idiotic caricature of Jews.

Of course, France has a history of persecution of the Jews, notably the notorious Dreyfus affair and the roundup of Jews and collaboration with the Nazis during the German occupation and the Holocaust.  As said, the Ilan events played out in 2006 and they indicate the ongoing precarious position of French Jews -- and, perhaps, of members of this long despised minority group everywhere. The resulting roundup of alleged abductors -- mostly or all non-white, in French ghettoes -- can also be seen in a different context in 2015.
 

 

 

STAGE REVIEW: OCCUPATION By: Faiz No comments

Florian (Brandon Bales) and Bets (Hall Chareton) in Occupation.

Buy, bye

By Ed Rampell

Playwright Ken Ferrigni’s outrageous Occupation appears to possess the hallmarks of Sacred Fools’ productions such as Bill & Joan, Jon Bastian’s Beat Generation play about scrivener William S. Burroughs; Stoneface about comedian Buster Keaton; and the company’s two Sherlock Holmes parodies. Occupation has originality.

In the not-too-distant future an indebted USA sells Florida to the Peoples Republic of China. This leads to an Everglades insurgency fought in the swamps, pitting the South Florida Christian Militia against the People’s Liberation America (PLA).

This is a pretty hilarious notion. Montages of faux news clips with a Jon Stewart panache appear on the stage’s three flat screen TVs. The Chinese consul’s name, Zedong (Robert Paterno), riffs on Chairman Mao Zedong’s moniker. Redbook aficionados are pitted against Bible-thumpers -- one of those Jimmy Swaggart Southern televangelist types, Bay Ray (Bruno Oliver), and his son, Florian (Brandon Bales). Florian and Zedong also cleverly appear in stagecraft stretching videos shot in-house that are played on the playhouse’s screens live (kudos to video designer Anthony Backman). It seems as if all’s well on the satirical frontlines and we’re off and running to the races.

Alas, while the preposterous premise is far out, Occupation’s problem is in its execution. Instead of playing the Sunshine Patriots in the Sunshine State versus socialists saga for laughs as a farce, the Reds vs. Rednecks storyline veers towards tragedy. By taking itself too seriously, as if the credulity-stretching plot was plausible, this dystopian drama loses credibility. At times the acting becomes histrionic.

Sacred Fools is a bold theater company, and in productions such as it s version of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal, it hasn’t flinched from presenting onstage nudity and/or violence, but Occupation arguably becomes too bloody, while the plot’s harrowing denouement is pregnant with mass extermination of biblical proportions. Meanwhile, director Ben Rock’s staged love is, for some reason, less graphic: It’s a case of make war, not love.

Setting the mood, scenic designer DeAnne Millais does yeoman’s (yeowoman’s?) work in conjuring up a set which convincingly evinces three or four different locales: The office where the corrupt, married Zedong makes out with mistress Mei Mei (willowy Rebecca Larsen); the Everglades where the Swamp Foxes led by Gare (K.J. Middlebrooks) are based and launch their sneak attacks on the PLA invaders from; and the campsite of the pregnant Bets’ (Halle Charleton), who comes across like a female counterpart to Deliverance’s demented hillbillies.

Unfortunately, by buying into its unbelievable hypothesis the satire retires at Florida and is a misfire. Well, they can’t all be Louis and KeelyLive at the Sahara -- the much extended hit that premiered at Sacred Fools and found its way to a larger theatrical venue.


Occupation runs through April 23 at the Sacred Fools Theater, 660 N. Heliotrope Dr., L.A., CA 90004. For more info: 310-281-8337; www.sacredfools.org/.

FILM REVIEW: SAGRADA By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Sagrada.

From The Circle to the steeple

By Ed Rampell

Fresh off The Circle, writer-director Stefan Haupt’s documentary Sagrada, El Misteri de la Creacio (Sacred, The Mystery of Creation) is about one of the world’s most enigmatic, unique, celebrated churches.

In 1882 a then-30 year-old architect Antoni Gaudí took over the process of creating and guiding Sagrada Família (Holy Family) in Barcelona. Although the Catalan architect died in 1926, almost 90 years later his minor basilica remains a major construction site still being built.

Gaudí’s eye-popping, imaginative architecture is iconic, sort-of-gothic aesthetics colliding with Art Nouveau, a cross between the surrealistic paintings of his fellow Catalan, Salvador Dali, and the Watts Towers. The Spaniards’ spires reach for the sky, soaring towards the heavens with curvy topsy-turvy towers and facades melting like Dali’s watches. Woody Allen used it to great effect as a setting for 2008’s Vicky Christina Barcelona.

Sagrada Família really has to be seen to be believed and Haupt’s nonfiction film does a good job in revealing it, as well as the controversies, mysteries and mystique surrounding this unfinished monument to God and Gaudí. The filmmaker also explores the subterranean depths of the creative process.

Haupt, a gifted director, tells his tale through spiritual, sweeping cinematography -- interior, exterior and often aerial -- and with usually subtitled interviews plus narration, which Haupt co-wrote with Martin Witz. The English version is narrated by Trevor Roling.

Sagrada’s cast of characters includes a number of unusual eccentrics who have found meaning in what would otherwise likely be drab existences by attaching their personal fates to that of fulfilling the unfolding of Gaudí’s visionary edifice. The talking head who seems most striking is stonecutter Etsuro Sotoo, a Japanese Zen Buddhist who, while sculpting Sagrada Família, converted to Catholicism in order to understand and pursue what he imagines Gaudí was trying to achieve.

Watching Sagrada may make a true believer out of you. This documentary is especially for those interested in architecture, religion, travel and creativity. Haupt’s latest film proves, once again, that Swiss cinema is a force to be reckoned with on the international stage - or rather screen.

 

 

STAGE REVIEW: THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO By: Faiz No comments

 A scene from The Marriage of Figaro.

Flesh class-ical

By Ed Rampell

The Overture to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1786 masterpiece, The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), is among the most popular in opera, while the glorious music overall is among the best in the entire operatic and classical canon. Wearing an open black shirt and his white hair flying, maestro James Conlon went all Lenny Bernstein exuberantlyconducting The Marriage of Figaro with flair, from first to final note.

It’s interesting to see The Marriage of Figaro this season with its cornucopia of Figaro-themed productions based on Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais’ original 18^thcentury plays, onstage at not only the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but at A Noise Within’s theater. I had just seen the latter’s rather freewheeling version of Figaro, which is basically the same story as The Marriage of Figaro sans Mozart’s sublime score, so this made it easier for me to follow the action.

As the lascivious, devious Count Almaviva’s (bass-baritone Ryan McKinny) servants, Figaro (bass-baritone Roberto Tagliavini) and Susanna (soprano Pretty Yende), prepare for their nuptials the newlyweds-to-be must contend with aristocracy’s despicable droit du seigneur. This ancient feudal law allowed the lord to deflower proletarianbrides before they consummated their weddings with their commoner husbands. So the ever resourceful Figaro and Susanna must scheme to thwart their “master’s” marital rape of the bewitching bride-to-be.

At the same time, the aristocrat’s scorned, forlorn wife, Countess Almaviva (soprano Guanqun Yu), seeks to reign in her adulterous husband’s serial philandering and to be reunited with him. (As depicted in Rossini’s 1816 The Barber of Seville, which LA Op presented earlier this season, the fickle Count Almaviva had ardently pursued Rosina to make her his Countess, but years later, when Marriage takes place, he has become bored by his now-downcast wife.)

As the plot thickens the randy cross-dressing male Cherubino (mezzo-soprano Renee Rapier), his adolescent hormones raging out of control, lusts for Rosina, Susanna and Barbarina (portrayed at the premiere by soprano So Young Park and on April 9 & 12 by soprano Vanessa Becerra). Cherubino, who dresses up in women’s clothing, becomes a soldier who’d prefer by far to make love, not war. Further complicating matters, Marcellina (mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer) has her own designs on Figaro, and it is one of the opera’s biggest surprises when we find out why she really loves Figaro. Bass Kristinn Sigmundsson, who recently played Don Basilio (depicted here by tenor Robert Brubaker) in The Barber of Seville, portrays The Marriage of Figaro's Doctor Bartolo with the same comic panache he displayed in The Barber of Seville.

In other words, this opera is mostly about love. Although the Count and lowly servant have a war of wits, pitting the patrician against the plebian, Mozart mostly plays this class struggle for laughs. There are also lots of war-between-the-love jokes and jibes.

However, as the issue of diversity and show biz has been much in the news of late, it’s worth noting that what’s called “non-traditional casting” actually enhances this production. The aptly named Pretty Yende is black, which adds another layer (no pun intended) to the cum-plexity of the plot, wherein the aristo seeks to assert his reprehensible droit du seigneur. The casting of an African woman as Susanna is redolent and reminiscent of those loathsome slave masters who coerced their female “chattel” to have love with them at Southern plantations. While the casting of Yu as the Countess may be a reference to how some Westerners view Asian women as “trophy” wives and/or lovers (although Yu’s Rosina is no stereotypical lotus blossom).

The casting of these talented non-white women in roles portrayed since the 18^th century by mostly European performers demonstrates what “affirmative action” really is in action: opening up the doors so individuals possessing god-given gifts can use them to their fullest expression. And in doing so, enriching the overall theatergoing experience, while giving jobs to deserving artists and others. From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

Yu’s rendition of the Countess’ arias “Porgi amor” (“Love, thou holy purest impulse”) and “Dovo sono” (“They are over”) are as lovely as anything a Westerner could warble, and we are all the better for it when inclusion, rather than exclusion, is the watchword of the day, on- and offstage.

This is also true for the transgender role playing. Rapier’s rendition of the (purportedly) male Cherubino’s aria “Voi che sapete” (“What is this feeling?”) about adolescent love is utterly beguiling and charming. Sigmundsson’s mock malevolent interpretation of the aria, “La vendetta, oh, la vendetta” (“Revenge, oh, sweet revenge”) is likewise excellent.

As I wrote circa 2010 when LA Opera last presented The Marriage of Figaro, Ian Judge again deftly directs the players, but scenery designer Tim Goodchild’s humdrum sets still only come alive in the gorgeous garden scene, with its full moon -- although I don’t quite understand how chandeliers could be suspended outdoors. (Unfortunately, we are beset by the same sets - apparently Goodchild didn’t read my review. Bad child!) And once again this production also unnecessarily inserts modern references, such as telephones and flashlights, into the 18^th century milieu, which only serve to distract from what is otherwise a period piece. These intrusions do not enhance the work but are only 20^th century distractions that really don’t belong here. But these are mere quibbles. The choreography by Sergio Trujillo and Chad Everett Allen, plus chorus directed by Grant Gershon, however, are all grand.

The production clocked in at three and a half hours-plus. For that period of time one is transported from Earth to Planet Mozart. Wolfgang’s vision of love reigning supreme is a sublime splendor, with music to match. A splendid time was had by all.


The Marriage of Figaro runs through April 12 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213-972-8001; www.laopera.com.

STAGE REVIEW: FIGARO By: Faiz No comments

Countess Almaviva (Elyse Mirto) and Suzanne (Angela Sauer) in Figaro. Photo Credit: Craig Schwartz.

The revolution will be staged

By Ed Rampell

This noisy A Noise Within production of Figaro is playwright Charles Morey’s freewheeling adaptation of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ 1784 play The Marriage of Figaro (which inspired Mozart’s 1786 opera of the same name). Like the original, Morey borrows freely and whimsically from the Comedie-Francaise, Italian commedia dell’arte and French farce.

Figaro’s storyline lends itself to high tragedy or low comedy: The no account Count Almaviva’s (Andrew Ross Wynn, who projects a Harvey Korman vibe) young, saucy servant Suzanne (the red wig-wearing Angela Sauer, who plays this part with all the comic subtlety of an I Love Lucyepisode) is about to wed the Count’s wisecracking manservant Figaro (Jeremy Guskin). Beaumarchais and Mozart have the Count assert droit du seigneur -- the feudal privilege of a nobleman to deflower/consummate the impending marriages of young women within their dominions on the wedding night.

Some may find Michael Michetti’s direction and this often frenetically paced two-acter to be witty, with dazzling word play, expertly acted and roguishly charming. Others may consider it to be half-witty, broad, loud and over the top.

Angela Balogh Calin’s colorful costumes certainly enhance the buffoonish ambiance of this production, which at times resembles a clownfest. As Almaviva, Wynn is not garbed as much as upholstered and embroidered into his rather ridiculous raiment. And as Countess Almaviva, Elyse Mirto is quite fetching while kvetching and prancing about in her lingerie type outfit. (Fun fact of the day: Marie-Antoinette actually portrayed this character, also known as Rosine or Rosina, in a 1785 production staged at Versailles.)

As the title character, Guskin plays the work’s central scheming scoundrel as a trickster with whom -- nod, nod, wink, wink -- the audience is in on the joke, if not in cahoots. But it is this knee-slapper that is at the core of the play, because the joke is on the aristocrats.

While there are a number of  witticisms (usually at males’ expenses) in Figaro about the supposed natures of the genders, what’s most at play in this play is the “uppity” servant’s critique of the ruling class. For  both Beaumarchais and Mozart's Figaros are among the Western stage’s very first working class heroes.

During the American Revolution, our man Beaumarchais was a gunrunner for the revolutionary cause. And it’s not for nothing that the French revolutionary leader, George Jacques Danton, opined: “The Marriage of Figaro caused the French Revolution.” Of course, this inevitably led to Beaumarchais’ run-ins with the court’s censors, who were royal pains in the derriere. So the best part of Figaro is its class consciousness and use of humor to ridicule the servants’ “betters.” (Think of a satirical version of Downton Abbey, with Daisy grabbing a pitchfork to jab her pompous overlords.)

Figaro has some choice, politically astute, funny bon mots, catapulted off of Guskin’s tongue with snarky aplomb. For example, there is a good riff on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, where our wag Figaro -- his tongue dipped in acid -- waxes poetic and splenetic about “Government of the cartels,” and so on. And there’s a good guillotine riposte as Figaro, the former title character of The Barber of Seville, shaves the Count who would violate his wife-to-be with a sharpened razor. Take one guess what song he hums or whistles while Almaviva experiences his close shave?

Morey’s adaptation of Beaumarchais’ Figaro premiered Off-Broadway in 2012 and is here part of A Noise Within’s “REVOLUTIONary” season, which in turn is part of the “Figaro Unbound: Culture, Power and Revolution at Play” program. This includes LA Opera’s presentation this season of the Figaro trilogy: The Ghosts of Versailles, Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), which opens March 21 at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Figaro Unbound L.A. partners include ArcLight Cinemas, the Hammer Museum, Opera UCLA, A Noise Within, LA Theatre Works, FIDM Museum, the Huntington Library, LACMA, the Norton Simon Museum, the Getty Museum, the Opera League of Los Angeles, etc.

Figaro runs through May 10 at A Noise Within, 3352 East Foothill Blvd., Pasadena, CA 91107. For more info: 636-356-3100, ext. 1; Figaro. For more info on the “Figaro Unbound”: Figaro Unbound.

        

STAGE REVIEW: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE By: Faiz No comments

Rosina (Elisabeth DeShong) in The Barber of Seville. Photo Credit: Craig T. Mathew.

 

 

Sum it up to style

By Ed Rampell

Daily existence is full of a cornucopia of soul-sapping vexations marring our felicity. They run the gamut, dammit -- from eternal, infernal traffic jams to pesky bill collectors to life threatening plagues to wars to global warming, ad nauseam. But LA Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is one of those things that can make you feel glad to be alive, rendering those ceaseless slings and arrows of our outrageous misfortunes bearable and even making living a worthwhile undertaking.

Debuting in Rome in 1816, The Barber of Seville has become one of the most performed (it last graced the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s stage in 2009), best loved opera’s ever. There are several reasons why, but Rossini’s music certainly has pride of place. The score is bubbly, buoyant, vibrant, frothy.

In addition, James Conlon is so animated. His baton seems like more of a magic wand, conjuring Rossini’s intoxicating, enchanting score out of the strings, woodwinds, fortepiano, brass and percussion instruments like a symphonic sorcerer.

Another reason for The Barber of Seville's perennial popularity is its plot - this comedy is, after all, an ebullient romance. As the maid Berta (mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer) sings: “What on earth is all this love which makes everyone go mad?” (Or, as Freddie Mercury put it 163 years later: that “Crazy little thing called love”.) Of course, there is Count Almaviva’s (tenor Rene Barbera) light-hearted, lusty pursuit of Rosina (mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong), which provides the comical backbone for this opera that adapts the first of the trilogy of 18^th century plays by French playwright Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais about the title character.

However, in this libretto by Cesare Sterbini, there is no greater love than the one the eponymous haircutter, Figaro (Moscow-born baritone Rodion Pogossov), has for himself. This supremely self-confident beautician apparently has a higher quotient of self-esteem than The Donald does. In his rapidly sung “Largo al factotum” aria, basking in the beauty of (who else?) himself, the highly self-regarding, self-ballyhooing barber sings the name of his true love - “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” - don’tchaknow? Pogossov is a hoot (and a holler) in the title role: Not even Kryptonite could stop this Muscovite.

Another outstanding thing about this LA Opera and Emilio Sagi production is that it slyly uses a cinematic technique rarely seen onscreen in movies such as 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Spanish scenic designer Llorenc Corbella, Argentine costume designer Renata Schussheim, Spanish lighting designer Eduardo Bravo and American director Trevore Ross have quite cleverly collaborated to visualize the emergence of love onstage.

There are other shrewd stage effects -- as in LA Op’s 2009 production there is a likewise sharp-witted visualization of the “slander” concocted by Rosina’s thwarted, would-be lover, Doctor Bartolo (Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli, who alternates in the role on March 22 with bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos, who performed the role at the Dorothy Chandler in 2009) and Don Basilio, portrayed with great comic panache by the crowd pleasing Icelandic bass, Kristinn Sigmundsson. His hulking presence and humorous depiction added to the show’s general merriment, even as Basilio and his partner in crime, Bartolo, conspired to make Almaviva sing a la Simon and Garfunkel: “I get slandered, libeled, I hear words I never heard in the bible” as he tries to keep Rosina satisfied.

Kudos to the entire cast and crew, including chorus director Grant Gershon and Spanish choreographer Nuria Castejon.

The Barber of Seville runs through March 22 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. For more info: 213-972-8001; Barber.

 

 

STAGE REVIEW: FUGUE By: Faiz No comments

Arnold Schoenberg (Jesse Fair) and Mathilde Schoenberg (Amanda Lovejoy Street) in Fugue. Photo Credit: Darrett Sanders.

Softcore theater

By Ed Rampell

Do you have a guilty pleasure? Your galavanting reviewer confesses to one that whiles away the hours during long haul flights: Reading booksthat stick their big noses into the private lives of geniuses. While soaring through the stratosphere over the Pacific Islands or aboard trans-Atlantic flights tell-all biographies of Pablo Picasso, John Lennon and Marlon Brando have been eagerly consumed. These prying eyes can’t get enough of those salacious details! It may be poor manners but there’s nothing like reading the personal letters, etc., of others to pass the time away (as our three amigos, N, S, & A well know!).

So it was with great interest that your curious critic attended the world premiere of the cleverly titled Fugue. In it, playwright Tommy Smith delves into the sex lives of not one, not two, but three -- count ’em three!!! -- musical geniuses! It’s a veritable tabloid-apalooza of invasions of privacy which Smith lays bare (but not bare enough, as you’ll soon see), exposing the purported behind-closed-doors peccadilloes of a trio of composers and their, uh, consorts and cohorts.

The musicians are: The brilliant Piotr Tchaikovsky (Christopher Shaw), who gave the world such supreme pleasure, with wonderful works such as “Swan Lake”, “The Nutcracker Suite”, etc., in the 19^thcentury. But bestowing such splendor upon his fellow humans wasn’t quite enough for patriarchal Czarist society, which stipulated that the gay composer also live up to its strict heterosexual code of behavior. To say the least, complications ensue when Tchaikovsky weds Antonina (Alana Dietze), and his long suffering bride/beard decides to, shall we say, shave. Ah, sMother Russia, land of pussy riots! (Astute cinephiles may recall a sort of comical reenactment of Tchaikovsky’s mock marriage in Ken Russell’s 1969 film, Women in Love, based on D. H. Lawrence’s novel -- and, BTW, one of the best cinematic adaptations of literature in screen history.)

Our next troubled talent is Arnold Schoenberg (Troy Blendell), the 20^th century Austrian innovator of atonal music and the twelve-tone technique (no, that doesn’t refer to a series of Kama Sutra positions, but to a type of music). Arnie’s wife, Mathilde (Amanda Lovejoy Street), takes up with the younger painter Richard Gerstl (Jesse Fair), who cuckolds his friend and sometime benefactor, the far more successful Schoenberg. (Hey, what are friends for?) Further complications ensue, as the threesome careens down a sexual skid row.

Our final tortured composer is somebody this writer had never heard of, the genuinely creepy Carlo Gesualdo (Karl Herlinger), a 16^th century Italian musician who, according to press notes, was of noble rank and wrote intense chromatic music. Gesualdo gives new meaning to the term “Renaissance Man,” as he was also something of a genius when it came to hanky-spanky sex. The musical sadomasochist’s practices would make Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey blush 50 shades of red. Jeanne Syquia plays his partner-in-slime Donna Maria, and Justin Huen has a double role, as Fabrizio and the priest Gesualdo “confesses” to in this confessional play.

Smith’s script is interesting and Chris Fields’ direction skillful, with a cinematic touch. Fugue sort of uses a split screen technique and we sometimes have three sets of actors performing onstage at the same time, albeit in different times and places. This method of presentation is not only filmic, but also, musically, fugue-like. Michael Mullen’s period costumes are a good fit. The thesps all acquit themselves well -- but, alas, your erstwhile scribbler has one quibble.

One imagines that the dramatist, director, company, et al, fancy themselves as being “daring” for presenting sex acts performed on the boards - albeit underneath blankets. Well, here’s a newsflash, and as Chuck Berry would say, “Tell Tchaikovsky the news”: Nudity has been legal onstage and onscreen since the 1960s in the United States. This reviewer refers you to the Living Theatre, Hair, etc., as well as to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed’s wrestling romp au natural onscreen in the aforementioned Women in Love. Unlike Julian Beck and company, performers today don’t have to worry about being busted for indecent exposure and the like.

Depicting undercover sex acts onstage and onscreen veiled by beach blanket bingos is not only a sexual cop out, but an attempt to have your cake and eat it too: The production wants to titillate the audience with bawdiness without delivering the goods, while collaborating with America’s still puritanical norms and constraints. For example, just consider the fact that Showtime airs Masters of Sex, an entire fact-based series about those pioneering sex researchers Masters and Johnson, wherein not since 2013 has a single strand of pubic hair made its debut on this “shocking” series - although it is perfectly legal nowadays to do so on cable television. What sheer cowardice!

Artists went to jail, to court, etc., to win the right for free expression and to now have the legal right but for today’s talents to not make use of this hard fought for First Amendment protection is pretty spineless. If stage and screen productions are unwilling to depict people having sex the way they usually do in real life -- you know, partially or completely unclothed -- then they should keep sex acts relegated to offstage/ offscreen inferred action. Quit trying to have it both ways -- or go fugue yourselves.

Other than that, Fugue is a thought-provoking, well-acted two act play with an intermission. However, it will likely not be the cup of tea for ticket buyers who are offended, upset, etc., by violence onstage and/or simulated (even if hidden) sex acts. 

In any case, the next time this ranter and raver jet sets off to parts unknown he may read a copy of Fugue’sscript to make the hours slip more swiftly by while munching a bag of airline peanuts.


The Echo Theater Company’s production of Fugueruns through March 22 at Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village, CA 90039. For more information: 310-307-3753; Fugue It!.