STAGE REVIEW: CHOIR BOY By: Faiz No comments

(Michael Shepperd) in Choir Boy. Photo by Michael Lamont.

 

Hit that perfect beat boy

 

By Ed Rampell

 

Choir Boy’s setting -- Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys -- is, for this reviewer, the most interesting, unique aspect of Tarell Alvin McCraney’s gay-themed drama. Historically-black educational institutions have, on occasion, been featured in productions, such as Denzel Washington’s superb 2007 movie, The Great Debaters. But for your Caucasian critic this milieu is relatively untraveled terrain and of keen interest, especially as his father taught in Boys High High School, an all-black and Latino facility in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn.

 

But Drew is very different from Boys High, a public school that’s part of the New York City school system. In addition to being private, Drew is also a religious school. So, just as, say, New York is a character in Woody Allen’s 1979 Manhattan, Drew’s ambiance hovers over Choir Boy -- although institutionally, not so much geographically.

 

The title character is Pharus Jonathan Young (Jeremy Pope), who aspires to becoming the prestigious choir master of Drew, which seems largely dependent for its economic survival on an annual fundraiser featuring the all male singers. Pharus must chart a tricky, precarious path as a gay youth completely surrounded by boys and men (alas, no female characters trod the boards in this play). This includes not only in the classroom, but in his dormitory in general, dorm room in particular, locker room and showers. Scenic designer David Zinn’s understated sets go with the flow, morphing from one scene to another depending upon their location requirements.

 

The play focuses on five young men attending the school, Headmaster Marrow (Michael Shepperd) and Mr. Pendleton (Leonard Kelly-Young has the role which was played by Austin Pendleton at Choir Boy’s Broadway premiere last year). He is this one-acter’s token white character. Pendleton is one of those archetypal (or stereotypical -- take your pick), rumpled Caucasians who has picked up the proverbial “white man’s burden” and is dedicated to educating minorities and Civil Rights. When he’s introduced, Pendleton goes verbally overboard, trying to impress the lads by getting down with the homies (or at least trying to). But later, with an impassioned speech about the “N” word which the homophobic, diffident Bobby Marrow (Donovan Mitchell) insists on using in full, Pendleton reveals his true colors as a Civil Rights crusader who’d marched with Dr. King.

 

(BTW, according to urban mythology, the physician and researcher Charles R. Drew helped invent the process of blood transfusions and died, when the hospital he was taken to after a car accident supposedly refused to give him a blood transfusion because they only had plasma from white people on hand. In any case, Drew did resist racial segregation when it came to donating blood. About a dozen schools are named after this medical pioneer, including a prep school, but none seem to be named the Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys.)

 

The playwright does a good job providing back stories for the five young men, especially through their long distance phone calls back home. These provide insights into their characters, what makes them tick and why these scholarship or full-tuition-paying students are attending this private prep school. For most, it is perceived as their ticket to advancing on to university and achieving in modern America.

 

Against this complicated background, Pharus is trying to come of age. As the eponymous choir boy strives to become a choir man, the effeminate Pharus must navigate his emerging sexuality and the strict code of conduct of the prep school, with its official school song of “Trust and Obey” --Presbyterian hymn. There is some full frontal (and back) nudity in Choir Boy, and McCraney takes on the stereotypes relating to the anatomy of black males. If you listen closely to the dialogue, he may be trying to debunk that myth, not simply reinforcing it. As the well-endowed AJ, Pharus’ roommate, Grantham Coleman strikes the right tone as a big brother figure watching out for the confused Pharus as he strives to make and find his way in the moral universe of the religious school and beyond its presumably ivy covered walls. (Both Coleman and Pope reprise the roles they previously played on Broadway.)

 

The play ran for almost two hours without an intermission. Its ensemble is well-directed by Trip Cullman, who also helmed Choir Boy on the Great White Way.

 

 

 

Choir Boy runs through Oct. 26 at the Gil Gates Theater at the Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood Village, CA 90024. For tickets: 310208-5454; www.GeffenPlayhouse.com.

 

L.A.-based reviewer Ed Rampell co-authored The Hawaii Movie and Television Book. (See: http://hawaiimtvbook.weebly.com/.) Rampell and co-author Luis Reyes will be signing books at 7:30 p.m., Oct. 6 at the bookstore Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91105.  (See:Meet Ed..)     

 

LAFF 2014: JIMI ALL IS BY MY SIDE By: Faiz No comments

A scene from Jimi: All is By My Side. 

A walk with a maestro 

By Ed Rampell

John Ridley has followed up his 2014 Oscar-winning screenplay for 12 Years a Slave by writing and directing a must-see Jimi Hendrix biopic, one of LA Film Festival’s most highly enjoyable movies. As is befitting the screenwriter of Solomon Northup’s slavery saga, Ridley exposes how racism -- among other things -- affected and afflicted the virtuoso guitarist in Jimi: All is by My Side.

The feature follows Hendrix (rapper André Benjamin, aka André 3000)  from the time he is plucked from obscurity while performing backup in New York clubs and recording studios and brought to London, where he formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience and his astounding talent earns him the recognition Hendrix so richly deserved. The “plucker” from obscurity is Linda Keith (Imogen Poots), who is Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards (Ashley Charles, in one of the film’s numerous cameos portraying the era’s hottest rockers) “groupie” -- uh, I mean girlfriend. This mod London lass is sort of “slumming” across the pond while the Stones are on tour when she stumbles upon Hendrix at Manhattan dives. Believing in his talent Linda takes Hendrix under her wing and introduces him to Chas Chandler (amiably, ably played by Andrew Buckley), The Animals’ bassist who is in the process of leaving that group to become a manager of rock acts.

The subtle depiction of Hendrix, full of nuance, by Benjamin -- who, offscreen, is half of the hip-hop duo OutKast -- is nothing short of uncanny. (Can you say “Oscar nomination”?) He perfectly looks and acts the part. Benjamin’s delivery of a single line regarding Hendrix’s mother reveals much about what troubles him and his attitude towards women. A phone call to his father likewise provides insight into Hendrix’s back story. All this helps explain his turbulent relationship with English groupie Kathy Etchingham (Hayley Atwell), and why Linda remained the Foxy Lady who got away. Mr. “Peacey Lovey” had his inner demons and this “Voodoo Child” didn’t always practice the cosmic consciousness he preached.

As noted, Ridley’s script also reveals the prejudice that confronted Hendrix in the U.K., where he falls in with Black nationalists through Ida (Ruth Negga) and the wannabe Malcolm, Michael X.

The film is a sheer pleasure for Hendrix fans to watch as his talent ascends, A particularly enjoyable sequence is when the still unknown Hendrix guests with the Cream at a London gig and Eric Clapton (Danny McColgan) -- whom graffiti proclaims to be “god” -- storms off the stage, as Ginger Baker continues to pound the sharkskins and Jack Bruce wails on. In a delightfully revealing backstage scene sure to give Hendrix fans the proverbial smile of the day, Clapton discloses why he deserted the stage, mid-performance.

Unfortunately, the filmmakers were reportedly unable to secure the rights to some of Hendrix’s greatest hits. Nevertheless, with Jimi: All is by My Side Ridley reveals himself to be a true auteur, as talented a director as he is a screenwriter and novelist. This groovy movie perfectly captures that ’60s scene with a cinema verite documentary-like, fly-on-the-wall flair.

In addition to being a pure delight in the tradition of works about struggling Bohemian artistes (paging La Boheme!), along with the Simon Bolivar biopic The Liberator and Dear White People, which LAFF also screened, as well as the upcoming Civil Rights drama. Selma, Jimi: All is by My Side continues the cinematic surge of Black-themed movies that 12 Years a Slave has helped to spearhead.

  

DANCE REVIEW: ALVIN AILEY By: Faiz No comments

Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater's Antonio Douthit and Jacqueline Green.

Movement in parts

By Ed Rampell

What the Tuskegee Airmen did in aviation, the Harlem Globetrotters did in sports and Porgy and Bess did in opera, the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater accomplishes in choreography and dancing. Indeed, with the dancers’ aerial escapades which seem to defy gravity, propelled by a graceful athleticism with an operatic expressiveness, the ensemble combine elements of all three of these pioneering groups.

Founded in 1958 in Manhattan, this “all Negro” -- now primarily if not exclusively black -- troupe now numbering about 30 dancers has become synonymous with modern dance and expressing the African-American experience through movement. And, as the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater’s name indicates, there is a strong theatrical component to the artistic expression of this company, whose eponymous founder studied not only with Martha Graham, but with Stella Adler, that apostle of a version of Stanislavsky’s Method who, among many others, also taught Marlon Brando.

Ailey’s comets are soaring across the stage and illumining the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion through April 21 with three programs, all of them containing the iconic Revelations, created by Alvin Ailey himself in 1960. Drawing on his Southern roots, Ailey distilled Negro spirituals through the medium and rhythm of modern dance. Presented as part of Program A on opening night as the third and final act, Revelations opens like a freeze frame in a film, with amber-clad hoofers’ crouching, arms outstretched, spread to reveal their wingspan. The dancers then swing their extended arms like propellers, as if they are about to take off. Later in the piece women modestly attired in white ankle length gowns and broad brimmed bonnets twirl hand fans that appear to be woven from fronds and a parasol, as bare-chested males in ivory slacks join them. Somehow stools become part of the ensemble. The backdrops are simple yet effective, ranging from hellish flames to reddish and lavender sunrises to ribbons of bluish cloth suggesting a river in the piece set to Take Me to the Water, adapted and arranged by Howard A. Roberts. At times Revelationsreminded me of a baptism or church social, evoking what W.E.B. DuBois called “the souls of Black folks.” Gyrating across the stage these spiritually moved and moving dancers are literally holy rollers.

And rockers, as Act II’s Minus 16, choreographed in 1999 by kibbutz-born Ohad Naharin, demonstrated, with movements and music ranging from the throbbing surf beat to cha cha to techno to mambo to the Israeli folk song "Hava Nagila" to Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen’s "Over the Rainbow." At some point during Minus 16 the dancers leapt offstage into the Chandler Pavilion, returning to trod and foxtrot the boards with male and female members of the audience of various ages, who raucously, impishly improvised along with the professionals, much to the crowd’s delight.

A spirited grey-haired ticket buyer unwittingly became the evening’s star, dancing along with her young male partner, proving, as the Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky put it, “There’s no grey hair in my soul.” And, as that immortal philosopher Jimmy Durante astutely observed: “Everybody wants to get into the act!” I haven’t seen so much audience interaction at a public dance performance since my South Pacific days, when during their grand finales the Polynesian fire and hula dancers would grab spectators and refuse to let them go until they joined in on the hip shaking, hip-notizing merriment. The appreciative sold out crowd of Ailey fans at the Chandler was clearly predisposed to love the show and artistes.

The premiere opened on a more somber note with another religiously tinged composition called Grace, choreographed in 1999 by Ronald K. Brown. The score includes pieces by Duke Ellington and Fela Kuti’s Afro-Pop rhythms (the musical play Fela! makes a return engagement at the Ahmanson April 26). Spiritual yet sensuous, after the scrim lifts female dancers with white halter tops and bare midriffs, their gauzy material lit from above by bluish light, flow across the stage, kicking, splitting, leaping, twirling whirling dervishes, whirlwinds and windmills of poetry in motion.

Program A, Ailey Spirit, will be repeated on April 20 during the evening performance. Program B, 21^st Century Ailey, is being presented on April 18 and during the April 21 matinee, and includes: Another Night, Petite Mort and Strange Humors. Program C, Classic Ailey, takes place on the evening of April 19 and the April 20 matinee, consisting of selections from: Memoria, Night Creature, Phases, Opus McShann, Love Songs, For "Bird" - With Love, Hidden Rites and Cry, all choreographed by the namesake himself. The music may be taped but the choreo is always live, alive, lively and life affirming during Alvin Ailey’s extravaganzas.


The Alvin Ailey Dance Theater performs through April 21 at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave, Los Angeles. For tickets: (213)972-0711; www.musiccenter.org.