Contrition 2008

How much do I suck for being the lamest blogger of 2008? A lot.
The fact is, I've felt no desire to see theater, especially after the ordeal of getting oph3lia on its feet. I have, however, found myself in the theaters (and, as it happens, pretty commercial theaters for some reason) a handful of times this autumn, and before the year ends I wanted to (b)log them briefly here.


I'd never seen a production by Robert LePage so I felt almost obligated to go see his The Damnation of Faust at the Metropolitan Opera. The set consisted of 5 or so levels of scaffolding, on which both upstage and downstage there were opaque and translucent projection surfaces that sometimes were retractable. There were some acrobatic flying, big epic images (people falling into water, full stage sunset), and repetition of stage pictures (the scaffolding and partitions created a dense grid of cubicles in which the a "man at a table" could be repeated 20, 30 times. all in all, though, I was not moved or impressed.


I went to see the Builder's Association at BAM, also because I'd never seen their work before, and, from what I heard, the narrative and themes in their latest work Continuous City. Really cool technology (hydraulic? screens that pop open and closed with projections or LED or something) kind of hackneyed concept (social networking -- i.e. mediated communication -- cannot be a substitute for real interaction... or can it?), and pretty loose story that kind of didn't have a drive. Actually I might argue that the reason why it felt so flat was that so much of the acting was pre-recorded, and so the live actors, when having to interact with recorded media, were forced to flatten themselves out. But I did find the lead actor incredibly handsome. Is that a really sexist thing to say? Oh well.

Last night I went to see Billy Elliot on Broadway. Not my choice. My friend had an extra ticket. Cute story. I imagine the movie was better able to communicate the context of the story (coal-miners in England on strike in the 1980s). The young actor playing Billy that night was a technically skilled dancer... but... and I know that this is harsh or whatever and that you're not really allowed to have criticisms about someone who is still "a kid" or whatever but, I just felt that there were limitations to his emotional range, and that his dancing, although executed with finesse, rang empty.

So, what I'm really excited about is that tomorrow, I am going to see The Seagull on Broadway, starring MACKENZIE CROOK (Gareth from the BBC The Office) who I am totally in love with. I happen to love that play too, my favorite of all the Chekhovs. Hopefully I won't be (too) disappointed...

2008 was a hell of a year. I hope 2009 is a bit calmer and happier.

the river that separates the living from the dead

The River of Styx (no, not the band) is, in Western mythology, the river one must cross to reach the netherworld, after death. Also known as the river of hate, Styx winds around Hades (hell) nine times. You need a coin to pay the boatman Charon (usually portrayed as a reticent, creaky skeleton in a black hooded robe). Styx is the river Orpheus crossed in order to retrieve his wife Euridice from the land of the dead.

A similar river exists in Japanese Buddhist mythology; the dead must cross the Sanzu no Kawa (Sanzu River) to reach the underworld -- and one's karma determines where in the river he crosses: the jeweled bridge for the exceedingly good, a ford for the regular folk, or the serpent and demon-infested waters for the particularly sinful; and similarly, the dead are buried with six coins to pay the boatman. I don't know why water myths appeal to me so much, but they do -- love the boy-dragon in Spirited Away who turns out to be the river in which Chihiro played as a child -- and the Buddhist myths about the Naga dragon who lives in the Mekong River near the border of Laos and Thailand where purportedly, the creature is responsible for catapulting fireballs from the water into the air every October.

The 15th century noh play Sumidagawa (Sumida River) refers to the river that winds through Tokyo to the bay -- which you can still take a touristy water taxi on today -- it's smaller and slightly more exciting (and probably a lot dirtier) than the Hudson. In the noh play this local river becomes, like the River Styx, a metaphor for the body of water that separates the living and the dead: a crazed mother in search of her kidnapped son takes a boat across the river. On the opposite bank of the river, she finds a crowd of people gathered around a tomb to hold a chanting rite for a stray child who died there exactly a year ago. The mother realizes that the child was undoubtedly her lost son. She hears her son's voice among the chanting crowd and even sees his image behind the tomb, but when she reaches out to touch him, he disappears.

British composer Benjamin Britten was so moved by the original noh Sumidagawa when he saw the performance in Japan in 1956, he returned to his home country of England where, 8 years later, the first performance of his version, Curlew River took place. His was an opera, a parable for church performance, and Buddhist references are replaced by Christian ones, but the storyline follows the noh quite faithfully. The current production at my job, originally produced by Opera Rouen, feels surprisingly evocative of its original noh inspiration. Let me say right now that I am NOT an opera fan, in fact I would outright say that I rather dislike opera -- the singing style, though virtuosic, has never sunk in for me. But director Yoshi Oida, and conductor David Stern, made this work as palatable as it could have been, for me. The musicians and performers entered from the back of the house, deliberately, very much like the (excruciatingly slow) entrances of noh performers. Costume changes take place on stage, both acknowledging the presentational nature of the performance as well as respecting the theater as a place of transformation (of time, of space). There are no elaborate set changes, but in the simplicity of choices (lighting water effects - though artificial; a real pool of water downstage, and the monks floating candle offerings in it), Oida time and again evokes the austerity of the noh tradition. Except for the Spirit of the Boy who does not appear on stage, the cast was all-male; and Michael Bennett as The Madwoman gives a heartrending performance, especially pitted against the cocky Ferryman (Reuben Willcox). Britten's music is not easy to listen to -- it is not immediately catchy nor comfortably melodic -- but it is powerful. Like a noh play, the plot unfolds in a heavy (at times soporific) trundle; but the peaks and jagged edges of the musical composition (played by the Opera Rouen ensemble which filled the theater beautifully) kept me emotionally engaged.