STAGE REVIEW: THE VORTEX By: Faiz No comments

Nicky (Craig Robert Young) and Florence (Shannon Holt) in The Vortex.

 
Windbag of goodies

By Ed Rampell

Methinks that in much of the public’s mind, Noël Coward is mainly considered to be the consummate sophisticate, a Britty witty wordsmith and wag able to sling lyrics and bon mots along with the best playwrights and songwriters with Cole Porter-esque ease. While all this is quite true, Coward’s groundbreaking hit, The Vortex-- which he not only wrote but co-starred in as Nicky Lancaster and made him an overnight sensation in 1924 -- proves that there was much more to Coward than the ability to render droll repartee and songs. Indeed, he also created superb anti-Nazi plays and movies.

While The Vortex certainly has more than its fair share of sharp banter, it is also a powerful dramedy about vanity, adultery, repressed homosexuality, substance abuse and more among an upper class milieu, with its hangers-on. The interactions of Nicky (Craig Robert Young) with his emasculated father, David (John Mawson), and clashes with his mother, Florence (Shannon Holt), may call to mind Eugene O’Neill’s tragedies and James Dean’s tortured relationships with his onscreen 1950s’ fathers. Nicky’s confrontation with the vapid materialism of his pretentious mother and most of her crowd could even be said to presage Benjamin’s (Dustin Hoffman) predicament in 1967’s countercultural classic, The Graduate (“Plastics” indeed!).

Florence is a fading beauty whose obsession with her looks and age overshadows all else in her life, which is full of pretensions. This single-minded fixation on eternal youth and attractiveness greatly impacts upon her family and friends. Daniel Jimenez plays Florence’s gigolo Tom Veryan as a bland bloke whose main virtues are his relative youthfulness and generic handsomeness. In a bit of nontraditional casting, Skye LaFontaine plays the English “lady” Bunty Mainwaring whom Nicky is courting (perhaps, subconsciously, to be his beard). Cameron Mitchell, Jr. plays the effeminate Paunceforth “Pawnie” Quentin, who favors maroon and kerchiefs. As the savvy Helen Saville, Florence’s best friend, Victoria Hoffman has the unenviable task of being a truth teller amidst this not-so-rarefied realm of gossamer glitter, glitz and artifice.

In Matrix Theatre’s reprise of last spring’s Malibu Playhouse production (with much of the same cast), the action -- which Coward set during the post-World War I Jazz Age -- has been reset to London during the swinging sixties. As readers of this reviewer’s oeuvre (talk about “pretentiousness”!) may recall, this critic often looks askance at updating and relocating plays, such as all those Greek classics staged without a toga in sight. But here the transition of Coward’s original text works well. England during that period of the Beatles, Cream, Stones, etc., was extremely interesting, and The Vortex’s themes of promiscuity, drugs and the breakdown of classes provides a natural background for Coward’s piece de resistance. And this iconic era gives director Gene Franklin Smith, sound designer Joe Calarco and choreographer Anna Safar a legitimate excuse to play snippets of those fab sixties tunes listeners still love to hum along and tap their tootsies to.

Scenic designer Erin Walley also captures the mod spirit of the times in acts one and two, although the third and final act is aptly universal and ageless, as its overriding theme can be traced right back to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex (with or without togas). Smith’s direction of his ensemble of gifted thespians is spot on, and Young’s depiction of Nicky’s struggle to rise above being just a callow upper class lad in the role that made Sir Noël famous (and rightfully so) is moving to watch. However, during the denouement his declamation of the title word was hard to hear, so this critic had to look up Nicky’s line vis-à-vis his mother and her infidelity: “We swirl around in a vortex of beastliness.” But this is a mere quibble as the Matrix’s three-acter is well worth seeing and eminently worthy of its creator.


The Vortex runs through Dec. 14 at the Matrix Theatre, 7657 Melrose Avenue, L.A., California, 90048. For info: 323-960-7735. For tickets: www.plays411.com/vortex.

 

     

 

STAGE REVIEW: THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THOMAS JEFFERSON, CHARLES DICKENS AND COUNT LEO TOLSTOY: DISCORD By: Faiz No comments

A scene from The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord. Photo by Michael Lamont.

Word up

By Ed Rampell

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that a play featuring three characters known for being writers -- and philosophical ones, at that -- is bound to be talky. As its rather longwinded title indicates, The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord has many words. Scott Carter’s play’s premise is reminiscent of Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, in that in the hereafter the three title characters are eternally confined to quarters with one another. But instead of, as Sartre’s cowardly character Joseph Garcin put it, “hell is other people," Hades is hearing self-important blowhards hold forth for all eternity.

 

Or, perhaps heaven, as we’re never entirely sure where our titular trio of chatterboxes wind up. (Albeit for only 85 straight minutes, not, thankfully, perpetuity -- although when they discuss Jesus it does begin to feel like time without end). Fortunately, the three thesps who bring the idealistic scribblers to life are all accomplished actors of stage and screen who often succeed in making Carter’s philosopho-palooza engaging, entertaining, and dare I say, at times enlightening.

 

David Melville, a Shakespearean actor of English origins, hams it up as his fellow countryman Charles Dickens. In fact, Melville’s scenery chewing and scene stealing kinetic kleptomania may have fans of the author of Oliver Twist shouting: “What the Dickens?” One wonders if Dickens acted so boorishly and buffoonishly. Melville’s comical performance reminded this spectator of the zany Alan Seus, on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In. In any case, Melville’s hammy performance injects a needed note of hilarity into what could otherwise have been a very dull play. Indeed, Ralph Fiennes’ preternaturally boring 2013 film, The Invisible Woman, which trod some of the same territory as The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord, was the stinkeroo of last year’s AFI filmfest. (Speaking of the afterlife, when this writer dies he’ll ask St. Peter to give him back the three hours he wasted at that screening the fiendish Fiennes was late for, by taking them away from Fiennes and returning the lost time to him in order to enjoy a few more hours on Earth.)

 

This Melvillean take on Dickens is in sharp contrast to Larry Cedar’s Jefferson (who appeared in 1776 -- although not as Jefferson -- and in HBO’s Deadwood series, as well as the one-man show Orwellian). Whereas Melville’s Dickens is daffy, Cedar is dour; Melville is wild, Cedar is wry. As Leo “Don’t Call Me Count!” Tolstoy Armin Shimerman shimmers as an over the top novelist (he portrayed Star Trek, Deep Space Nine’s Quark and appeared on Broadway in Three Penny Opera). Racing around the stage in his peasant getup, fright wig and stagey beard Shimerman seemed to this reviewer more like Rasputin than the author War and Peace, but what does your humble scribe know?

 

This production helmed by veteran director Matt August makes deft use of stagecraft and special effects to break up the characters’ interminable prattle, trying to figure out why they are thrown together and then pondering the meaning of life. This creative team includes lighting designer Luke Moyer, sound designer Cricket Myers, projection designer Jeffrey Elias Teeter and to a lesser extent scenic designer Takeshita, as the set per se is pretty minimal.

 

Since 1993, playwright Carter has been Bill Maher’s executive producer, from the comic’s Politically Incorrect days on Comedy Central and then ABC, to HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher. Carter tries to replicate Maher’s formula of mixing punditry, patter and pleasantries in Discord, hence Melville’s -- and to a lesser extent Shimerman’s -- comic relief. When the one-acter descends into dissertations on the New Testament it reminded this critic of Kevin Smith’s obscure, doctrinal asides on Catholicism in his film, Dogma, and is strictly snoresville for this secular humanist atheist (like Maher!) and non-Christian. Seriously dude, this ain’t a passion play and if this scribe wanted to listen to tedious New Testament dissertations, on Sundays he’d head for the nearest steeple -- where this biblical blather belongs -- not the stage, where it doesn’t (at least, not since the Dark Ages).

 

But when Jefferson and company muse upon other matters The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord comes alive and is philosophically engaging. In meditating out loud about why the three of them have been thrown together their flaws are discussed. Interestingly, their libidos have gotten the better of them (in terms of the patriarchal monogamy conventions of their eras). When it comes to sex, Tolstoy was a no account Count, Dickens a dickens of an adulterer and Jefferson the worst of all. Indeed, The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discordbecomes most interesting when the author of The Declaration of Independence’s slave owning is questioned.

 

But the answer is really quite simple: It’s not just that Jefferson was a hypocrite of gargantuan proportions (which, of course, he was). In fact, he was very simply pursuing his own class interests. If pursuing his happiness meant getting rid of an English king or coercing Africans to do all his labor for him so he could drink fine wine, read rarified texts, invent do-hickeys and have sex with his late wife’s darker skinned half-sister, so be it. And you can be damned sure that to secure their rights, Jefferson and his fellow ruling class ilk instituted a Government that did not derive their unjust powers from the consent of the governed -- and enslaved. Jefferson and those other slave owning Founding Fathers were just pursuing their unalienable rights -- even if it came at the expense of denying hundreds of others their human rights and pursuit of happiness. And while we’re at it, how many Native Americans signed the Louisiana Purchase? So even the “Emperor of Liberty” wears no clothes. (Too bad Carter didn’t write a play featuring Nat Turner, John Brown and Geronimo instead. LOL!)

 

Be that as it may, theatergoers should not discard The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discord. This onstage rambling rumination is at its best when dramatizing and presenting these and related ideological issues. And that is what makes this philosophical theatrical treatise worth watching, along with a grand finale that is a well-staged, rapturous ode to the art of the written (not spoken!) word.

 

So to sum up, and to paraphrase Mssr. Dickens, perhaps ticket buyers can reach accord: The Gospel According to Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Count Leo Tolstoy: Discordis both “the best of times and the worst of times.”  

 

 

Discord runs through Nov. 23  at the ​Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For tickets: 310-208-5454; for more info: www.GeffenPlayhouse.com.

 

 

THEATER REVIEW: EUGENE ONEGIN By: Faiz No comments

Despina  (Roxana Constantinescu) in Eugene Onegin. 

In Russia with love

By Ed Rampell

L.A. Opera has launched its new season with two operas that have a single, controversial theme: Infidelity. Both works are conducted by James Conlon. One, Eugene Onegin, is a Russian tragedy composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, based on Alexander Pushkin’s novel in verse. The other, Così Fan Tutte, is an Opera buffa, an Italian comedy composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte.

Sung almost entirely in Russian, in Eugene Onegin’s Act I Tatiana (Ukrainian soprano Oksana Dyka) is a virginal, repressed young woman living in Russia’s countryside. Tatiana throws herself at the dashing newcomer from Petrograd, Onegin (Slovakian baritone Dalibor Jenis), the friend of her sister Olga’s (Russian mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Semenchuk) fiancée, the poet Lensky (Russian tenor Vsevolod Grivnov). However, for some reason -- unlike the Beatles – “well, the Ukraine girls don’t really knock Onegin out, Moscow girls don’t make him sing and shout and Georgia’s apparently not always on his mind.” Onegin declines Tatiana’s impulsive proposal, declaring their marriage would never work due to certain unspecified characteristics he possesses which would inflict misery upon her.

At a party in Act II Onegin dances with and ogles Olga, prompting his jealous best friend Lensky to challenge him to a duel. The outcome propels Onegin to embark upon a self-imposed exile; in Act III Onegin is back in the pre-U.S.S.R. He’s been away so long he hardly knows the place; gee, it’s good to be back home. At Saint Petersburg he stumbles upon a ball being thrown by elderly Prince Gremin (American bass James Creswell), who has wed a now radiantly beautiful and worldly Tatiana. In a moment of lucidity, Onegin realizes his woes were triggered by snubbing Tatiana, and pursues the now married sophisticated beauty. Although she still has the hots for Onegin, Tatiana won’t come and keep her comrade warm; the tables are turned and now it’s Tanya’s doing the rejecting. You don’t know how unlucky you are, boy! (My sincere apologies to Lenin and Lennon/McCartney.)

Eugene Onegin’s sets are co-stars in L.A. Opera productions, and while scenic designer Antony McDonald’s ho-hum interiors are serviceable, his glowing exteriors are glorious. In the first act McDonald brings alive Mother Russia’s vast steppes, as reapers rhapsodize about the harvest in a great ensemble number with about 40 performers onstage. Old McDonald’s farm is truly beautiful. As at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, lighting designer Peter Mumford creates a sense of the natural passage of time with his colorful, lovely lights. A pond of water makes a big splash and is imaginatively put to good use; it later serves as a skating rink as winter sports are enacted in the third act, wherein McDonald provides a sumptuous, panoramic view of Petrograd (which I recognized from all of those Eisenstein and Pudovkin films about the storming of the Winter Palace). McDonald also acquits himself well with the cast’s 1820s costumes, but those Russian exteriors are eye popping. Bravo1

The score is sonorous and well-conducted; director Francesca Gilpin’s mise-en-scene and choreographer Linda Dobell’s dances are on point. There is, however, a gremlin in the Kremlin. Gremin is played by a performer who is much younger than the prince is supposed to be – and his age is an important plot point obscured by this casting of 30-something Creswell. But this is a mere quibble that should not deter opera lovers from experiencing Tchaikovsky’s lamentation of love loss. 

Eugene Onegin runs through Oct. 9 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.