Philosophy Out of Sorts


David Begelman
begelman33@gmail.com


In the realm of what we may casually reference as “voluntary action” it strikes me as wrongheaded to contrast “free decision-making” with compulsive, addictive, hypnotically induced, kleptomaniacal, unconsciously produced patterns or brainwashing. Philosophers, largely without exception, describe such behavioral patterns as those diminishing what in their view is the ordinary elasticity of human action. Thus, they insist, compulsive persons lack the “freedom” to make quite commonplace “choices” available to others. Is it high time to correct the record about the alleged restrictions such clinical patterns have on free decision-making? This does not speak to faulty reasoning in the higher reaches of the determinism/free will debate. It only amounts to choosing unfortunate examples with which to score philosophical points.


Take compulsions. What philosopher has not referred to what is termed “Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder” (coded 300.03 in DSM-IV) as seriously limiting “the freedom to act”?  The difficulty here is that compulsions (whatever the range of severity in their clinical presentations) cannot be contrasted with free acts should we construe these maladaptive patterns as “being beyond control” or “lacking a sense of alternative possibilities for choice.” Here it might be useful to distinguish “lacking a sense of alternative possibilities” as a belief on the part of the compulsive person from an actual feature of his or her behavioral repertoire or capacity. Thus, the conviction a patient so diagnosed has no choice—in the sense that he or she is incapable of exercising it—has little bearing on whether or not this is true.


The possibility of a freely undertaken act in the ordinary, not contra-causal, sense is the assumptive underbelly of chosen therapeutic programs, and not only of compulsions, but addictive patterns as well. OCD patients make remarkable progress in reducing their maladaptive patterns by undertaking voluntary decisions to resist impulses philosophers proclaim have them virtually straightjacketed in patterns over which they have no control! This remedial approach, dubbed “exposure and response prevention” strategies (supplemented in some, not all, cases by antidepressants or benzodiazepines to lower anxiety levels) is currently the effective treatment of choice. It replaces an ineffectual nostrum for the condition, psychoanalysis, of which we shall have more to say.


OCD patients are capable of stepping up to the plate in effecting what many philosophers believe is beyond the range of their capability, as though those academics assumed the maladaptive pattern in question is “coerced” in the manner of a falling body obeying the law of gravity. As an example, the compulsive checker or hand washer is encouraged to resist engaging in the very patterns in question. This is accomplished by scheduled sessions in which progress takes place in stages, each of which is marked by freely undertaken decisions to refrain from emitting the target behavior (Abramowitz, 1996, 1998; Emmelkamp et. al. 1994; Foa  & Kozak, 2004). In a very real sense, the compulsive person is troubled by a pattern that persists because he or she has never cottoned on to the advantage of voluntarily resisting urges. Because of this, the latter are perpetuated indefinitely. In instances of severely deteriorated OCD patterns, as in the case of Howard Hughes, his disadvantage was, inter alia, the dictatorial control he exercised over allowing alternative therapeutic approaches to his problem.


    
There are other clinical conditions which are said to restrict freedom. Take epilepsy. How, it may be asked, can we hold an individual responsible for a pattern which is, after all, one in which behavior is the consequence of electrical circuitry in the brain suddenly going haywire? Ironically enough, even here freedom and responsibility cannot be entirely preempted.



What about cases in which we hold persons responsible for their seizures when they are irresponsible in adhering to a prescribed regimen of anticonvulsive medication? In such cases, responsibility for one’s seizures seems justified, and grounded in the idea of voluntary action. The same applies when seizure activity itself is either created or exacerbated by alcohol abuse. Of course, such examples do not shed light on the larger philosophical debate; but is the hunch about compulsive and epileptic persons that, “They cannot help themselves” or “They are not free to act in any way other than the one they do” a bit hasty for the reasons outlined?



Another problem in fixing the boundaries of “freedom” in compulsive patterns is the difficulty in determining what areas of human behavior should be demarcated. For example, if a criterion of a compulsive pattern is its repetitive and strong motivational character, why are only maladaptive or treatable conditions accorded the mantle of lessened freedom? Is a tendency to overeat driven by a “coerced” pattern? What about a tendency to eat regularly simpliciter? If the anorexic patient is not “free” due to a compulsion not to eat, why are the rest of us accorded greater freedom to act, when we are only her counterparts on the other side of an appetitive pattern, i.e., a population of individuals who cannot stop eating? Perhaps the difference here is not one relating to different strains of “freedom,” but classifications of adaptive v. maladaptive patterns.



Addictions are another example of patterns sometimes relied on by philosophers to illustrate lessened “freedom of choice.” But commentary here is heavily influenced by pieties that are the stock and trade of rehabilitation programs like Alcoholics Anonymous (Pattison, Sobell & Sobell, 1977). These treatment programs have been more successful at generating sound bites than they are in relation to therapeutic successes. They also broadcast the view that persons with serious drinking problems have, mirabile dictu, “diseases” (Peele, 1989) that cannot be cured unless they face up to their “permanent condition,” rely on something called a “higher power,” and commit themselves to 12-step treatment programs involving supportive group discussions, sponsors and frequent meetings.



The research on the subject hands in a quite different verdict. There is a high recovery rate among addicted people, whether drinkers or druggies. Heroin addicts break their habit by themselves on the average after about a decade of using. Half of serious drinkers terminate their pattern, although only 10% of this population have committed to a treatment program of any kind. One study revealed that 80% of alcoholics who become abstinent for a year or more are cases of spontaneous remission: they do it on their own, some after unsuccessful treatment. Over half reported that a variety of factors led to the termination of their addictions: blackouts, health problems, family, financial and vocational problems, and the like (Harvard Mental Health Letter, 1995, p. 3). So much for bromides about “Everyone needs a support group” and “Nobody can do it alone.” The facts indicate otherwise, yet philosophers often reference addictive patterns as leaving little room for “freedom.” Again, this poses no serious challenge to incompatibilism; it’s just a batch of sorry examples with which to illustrate something about reduced freedom.



And what philosopher would pass up the chance to illustrate lessened freedom as instanced by the so-called hypnotic trance?  (In many of their discussions, they conceive of the trance state induced by the procedure supposedly saddling the hypnotized subject with acts over which he or she has no control.) But until experimental psychologists get a conclusive fix on just what hypnosis is—whether it amounts to something involving a “trance state,” as opposed to an elaborate form of role-playing—it may be premature to use it as another example of abridged “freedom.” A satisfactory theory of processes involved in so-called hypnotic “trances” has been long in coming, and nowadays there are too many contrasting formulations about its nature to justify citing it as a useful example of behavioral restriction in the determinism/free will debate.



In recent years, and with some exceptions, research on hypnosis is largely divided among “state theorists” (Hilgard, 1965, 1973, 1991) and “non-state theorists” (Barber, 1964, 1969a, 1969b; Sarbin, 1950, 1992; Spanos, 1982) who have debated such issues as to whether hypnosis actually consists in an altered state of consciousness like dissociation, or whether the suggestibility assumed to be one of its defining features differs appreciably from the same function in non-hypnotized controls.



When it comes to kleptomania and brainwashing other subtexts bearing on a presumed loss of freedom enter the picture. In kleptomania, one might distinguish between the psychiatric definition of the disorder (coded as 312.32 in the DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual of the American Psychiatric Association) and the expanded meaning of the term often employed in ordinary parlance. The latter is extended to a multitude of cases in which there is a pattern of stealing or shoplifting. However, on the technical definition of the term the disorder is a rare, uncommonly observed type of what clinicians call “Impulse Disorder.” On this definition of kleptomania, there is a build-up of tension before an act, and pleasure or gratification at the time of committing the theft. Here, objects stolen are not needed for personal or monetary value, and the act is a solitary one, without assistance from confederates. (Confederates or shills in shoplifting are a frequently documented pattern in cases mistakenly diagnosed as kleptomania.) With respect to the implications for “freedom” or “the inability to resist,” this alleged form of compulsion involves “overpowering impulses” that seem to disappear in the presence of authorities like police officers. So much for the hapless kleptomaniac saddled with irresistible impulses. Evidently the latter can be made to evaporate in the vicinity of uniformed officials. It’s irresistible impulses with riders!



Kleptomania is intriguing from yet another standpoint. The deployment of the diagnostic label is rich in exculpatory possibilities, especially for the socially prominent. For example, when celebrity actresses (13 shall go unmentioned) are caught stealing merchandise from shops, a diagnosis of “kleptomania” is at hand to characterize their venture, although such offenders may not meet strict criteria for the diagnosis. On the other hand, when a ghetto youth is apprehended filching trinkets from five-and-dime stores, the wisdom is that he or she is only a “shoplifter” or has an “antisocial pattern.” Evidently, the highly placed person is subject to urges that are overwhelming—not so the anonymous adolescent. The implication is clear. The well-placed are conveniently judged as persons with upstanding characters, were it not for being  unfortunately assailed by uncontrollable impulses. Unlike ghetto youngsters, they are supposedly not “free” to resist the urges they are subject to—arguably another example of the modern tendency to invent “illnesses” with alibi or exculpation as covert subtext (Szasz, 1961; Halleck, 1971). The legacy is a dependable one when it comes to the addictions.




So-called “brainwashing” is likewise another pattern rich in subtext. When one considers the most systematic attempts to brainwash individuals originally hostile or indifferent to the belief system forced upon them, the result must be counted a resounding failure. This was the verdict in the programs of the captors of American servicemen during the Korean War whose efforts to “brainwash” were largely futile (Schein, 1958). Yet the campaigns in question were pervasive: they sought to control every aspect of the thinking and living conditions of the servicemen.



Allegations of “brainwashing” most of the time subserve a moral/political aim. They represent covert judgments about what belief-systems or institutions should be negatively evaluated. As we might expect, the allegations are frequently coupled with terms like “cult,” the liberal use of which is close on the heels of inveighing against suspect programs of mind control. On closer consideration, the disparagement seems to verge on nothing less than indictments of religions or belief systems we find personally disagreeable.



When we attempt to distinguish what are commonly designated as “cults” from the belief systems of favored institutions, the effort is unavailing. One descriptor of “cults” might be insularity. But insularity is a distinguishing feature of orders within the major religions: cloisters, nunneries, yeshivas, mosques, etc. And running through a slew of other defining characteristics like torture, mind-control, social isolation or sexual improprieties, the baleful judgment about differences between them and accepted systems meets the same fate. We find similar traditions of torture within our own military and endorsed by both the Bush and Obama administrations, insularity within Amish and Hasidic communities, sequestered nunneries or monastic orders and sexual impropriety among the ranks of pedophiles in a major religion that has insulated them from prosecution. Yet no one characterizes Catholicism, Judaism, or the American presidency or military as “cults”—unless, of course, these curry disfavor on the other side of an ideological divide.



The term “cult” is consequently one with more of a polemical than descriptive tincture. In a recent tome on “strange and unusual” belief systems flourishing across the commonwealth, Stollznow (2013) targets groups ranging from fundamentalist Mormons to Quakers without, it should be noted, comparable reviews of darker strains within major religions. In this regard, why are Scientologists, Branch Davidians, or schismatic Mormon groups “brainwashed,” but not those in the thrall of the often fiery priests, rabbis, imams, or pastors dotting the broader American landscape? Of course, for talking heads in Ted Patrick’s now defunct Cult Awareness Network, it’s only the former groups that have the earmarks! What about toddlers in evangelical Sunday schools who announce their repudiation of Darwin’s evolutionary theory (without even understanding at a tender age what it is)? Why is the indoctrination called “education” by their fundamentalist tutors, not “brainwashing?”



Do cults entice impressionable and unsuspecting youngsters into their toxic folds? Or do many of these regretful prodigals turn out to be cases of sour grapes when fed up with their charismatic gurus? Do they need to be “deprogrammed” as though they were miswired computers? Or are their decisions to get out from under strategically morphed into a face-saving stance as harrowing escapes from wicked influence? There is no rigorous research evidence showing that belief stabilization or modification in so-called “cults” is mediated by psychological processes any different from those in mainstream religious or political groups.



Then we come to the unconscious, a hotbed of challenges to “freedom” by philosophers, on any accounting. However, commentary on the subject is a mixed picture, covering rubrics we might characterize as (1) contemporary neuroscience (2) a broader tradition of experimental research about the cognitive unconscious initiated in the nineteenth century, and (3) Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. Older memorable commentary about the last of these categories was authored by Hospers (1961) and Lazerowitz (1961). Maybe it’s a bit unfair to lay siege to the philosophy-cum-Freud fortress a half century after the fact, but the intellectual tradition represented by these two spokespersons is, unfortunately, still alive and well. It is brokered by a wider group of diehards parochially loath to consider that the snows of yesteryear have long since melted away.

(To be continued)

Domestic Dreams: Boleros for the Disenchanted at Yale Repertory Theatre

David Begelman

Jose Rivera has the distinction of being the first Puerto Rican author to be nominated for an Academy Award screenplay. The election was for The Motorcycle Diaries, a beautifully crafted 2004 film about the journey of Che Guevara and a friend, Alberto Granado, across South America in their youth. He has also authored Marisol and Cloud Tectonics, plays that made their debut on the island of his birth he left at the age of four.

 

According to Mr. Rivera, Puerto Rico has been called “The Enchanted Island,” although the playwright is the first to point out that the idea of enchantment has two meanings. It can signify a devotional aspect of love and excitement, or, conversely, a spell embracing false hopes and dreams. The latter experience is often the lot of islanders who come to America to realize the promise of another kind of future that quickly fades in the wake of disappointment.

 

Gary Perez as Eusebio and Adriana Sevan as Flora in Act II of Yale Repertory Theatre’s world premiere of Boleros for the Disenchanted by José Rivera, directed by Henry Godinez. Photo © Joan Marcus, 2008

A similar sentiment of disillusionment is also expressed in Anita’s ode to America in West Side Story: “Life can be bright in America/If you can fight in America/Life is all right in America/If you’re all white in America.” The pattern of bouncing back and forth between the island and the states as hopes for a better lot in life inevitably dwindle is registered in this most dazzling of Broadway musicals in another lament in the same song: “I think I go back to San Juan/ Everyone there will give big cheer/Everyone there will have moved here.”

 

Boleros for the Disenchanted concerns Puerto Rican family members whose lives are tracked across nearly a 40-year span. Its first act is set in the small town of Miraflores in 1953, whereas the second act opens in Daleville, Alabama in 1992, where transplanted family members have relocated from the island.

 

In the first act of the play, the parents of Flora (Sonia Tatoyan) anticipate the marriage of their daughter to her local boyfriend, Manuelo (Felix Solis). As chance would have it, Flora’s wedding date is set for two years hence, and she has stringent standards of sexual deportment until that time, while Manuelo has a case of raging hormones. She learns of his infidelities in the neighborhood, while he attempts to justify his behavior by declaring that “man is a creature of instinct,” and, being controlled by demonic forces, “must sin.” Flora, whose standard of love is “complete long-lasting fidelity,” will have none of it, and the relationship with Manuelo seems doomed.

 

Flora meets Eusebio (Joe Minoso), a local boy who has joined the National Guard, and who meets her through a friend of Flora’s, Petra (Lucia Brawley). The two are immediately attracted to one another even as Flora plays the coy virgin and Eusebio is given to such corny ploys as, “You’re words say one thing, but your eyes say something else.” Eusebio returns to Flora’s home to plead for her hand on a dependable knee, while Manuelo appears announcing that he has decided to change his philandering ways for purity out of love for Flora. It is not only too late for him, Flora’s father, Don Fermin (Gary Perez) chases Manuelo with a machete, whereupon the jilted suitor whips out a knife as the two pursue each other around the yard with blades flashing, Cavalleria Rusticana style. Flora’s mother, Dona Milla (Adriana Sevan), looks on in astonishment, her pieties about patience and restraint falling on deaf ears.

 

In the second act, the married couple, Flora (Adriana Sevan) and Eusebio (Gary Perez), have relocated to Alabama. Their lives have taken a turn for the worse, since Eusebio’s excessive drinking atop long-standing diabetes have led to amputations that keep him bedridden permanently. Flora tends to him lovingly, a largesse also illustrated in her becoming a church-sponsored counselor to young married couples like Monica (Lucia Brawley) and Oskar (Joe Minoso) Her faith in her disabled husband’s fidelity is momentarily shattered when he confesses to having more than one affair in the past. Yet even as she becomes unglued, her devotion is strong enough to cling to him through this crisis, not to mention a stroke limiting his power to communicate.

 

Bolero can’t quite convince that the foibles of its characters have anything to do with sociological plights in contrast to the ups and downs of a family’s history that would be the same wherever it unfolded. The hard edge of realities like unemployment and poverty are obliquely referenced, rather than affecting the dramatic action in a palpably immediate way. There are traces of ethnicity thrown in like machete wielding, allusions to witchcraft and love philtres, the ministrations of Catholic priests after presentiments of death, or relocating to America—just in case you make the mistake of thinking the goings on bore any resemblance to characters in, say, The Philadelphia Story (where the wealthy and waspish paterfamilias is also a philanderer without, it should be noted, making too much of it ).

 

The play is more than a tad distasteful in its stereotyping Puerto Rican men as drunken, machete wielding, and philandering suitors and husbands, as if such caricatures were sociological verities or else due to accidents of geography or happenstance. Nor is it quite believable that the play’s odes to enduring love and commitment are mirrored in real life quite so piously. The final tableau of Monica and Oskar walking off into the sunset, like much of the other overly sentimentalized versions of commitment in the play, smacks of soap opera.

 

The acting in Bolero for the Disenchanted ranges from good (Adrianna Sevan, Felix Solis, and Joe Minoso in Act I) to mediocre (Sona Tatoyan in Act I) to the overdrawn or farcical (Gary Perez’s drunken entrance in Act I). Double-casting led to some confusion, as actors were exchanged in differing roles across the time-span.

 

Director Henry Godinez handled the staging of Bolero capably, while composer Gustavo Leone and sound designer Veronika Vorel contributed beautifully to the musical score. Joe Appelt’s lighting creatively accentuated the tropical setting, especially in Act I.

 

Boleros for the Disenchanted had its world premiere at the Yale Repertory Theatre, 1120 Chapel Street, New Haven, on April 25. It runs until May 17. Performances are at 8:00 PM with matinees on Saturdays at 2:00 PM. Tickets are $35 to $58, and can be purchased by calling the box office at (203)-432-1234 or online at yalerep.org.

The Pavilion

David Begelman

Craig Wright’s three-person play The Pavilion is set on a stage that seems too large for the drama unfolding on it. There are several huge windowed doors the Narrator swivels around to set the action at the beginning of the first and second acts. Then there is a broad raked expanse that soars to the heavens upstage. The three performers sometimes appear to be diminutive figures in this setting.

 

On the other hand, the play dwells on ideas that seem to call for something grander to accommodate its characters. And that is precisely its problem. As one of them, the Narrator waxes poetical about ongoing events that are described in a fustian way, seemingly out of whack with what is happening on stage. Nonetheless, he has the magic touch, dimming house lights and even changing time itself with a flick of the wrist. He oversees the action of the other characters.

 

From left, Michael Laurence and Michael Milligan in “The Pavilion” by Craig Wright. Photo by Richard Termine.

The Narrator makes mountains out of molehills. His remarks, in the manner of a Greek chorus, dwell on the relationship between Peter and Kari. Peter is a part-time musician (he treats the audience at the Westport theater to a rendition of his newly composed ditty Down in the Ruined World on the guitar as though it were an assembled group within the play). He is also a therapist, while Kari is a past flame who had an abortion after Peter abandoned her. She is now in a loveless relationship with her husband, Hans.

 

When they reconnect, it is obvious Peter and Kari continue to have a thing for each other, although they come at it from very different perspectives while at the Pavilion, a dance-hall setting for the twenty-year reunion of their class of 1988. Peter is abjectly apologetic, regretting his past decision to abandon Kari, and wants her back. Kari refuses his overtures vehemently, as if her sentiments were recycled T. S. Eliot misgivings: After such knowledge, what forgiveness? (Gerontion), not to mention the Shavian lament: Do you suppose that…what is done can be undone by repentance? (Man and Superman).

 

The aura of a British literary thing is unmistakable. At the outset of the action, the Narrator declares imperiously: “This is the way the universe begins,” as if Mr. Wright were reprising Eliot’s This is the way the world ends (The Hollow Men), albeit with a reverse spin.

 

Kari cannot forgive Peter. More important, she cannot go back to being with him, as though her basis for this were somehow templated in the universe, rather than in the realm of personal decision-making. Mr. Wright’s Narrator seems partial to Kari’s fatalistic approach. Despite his comic bent, he is really a colossal bore. His bon mots are hugely disproportionate to what is going on around him. Addicted to highfalutin talk, his speeches cover the universe, consciousness, morality, love, and forgiveness (not to mention such mouthfuls as Alexander and his Macedonians, blood and knowledge, and the birth of Christ). A bit over the top compared to such remarks of Kari as “I really hate golf.”

 

Sometimes the Narrator is given to tautologies that seem to embody an elusive wisdom: “In the middle of life we find ourselves alive.” At other times, he lapses into incoherence, as when he reminds us that reality is “An infinite number of centers in an infinite number of worlds.” Come again? The comment sounds like someone accidentally wandered into a physics seminar and got the heady palaver about parallel universes all bollixed up.

 

Pavilion smacks of a strain that possibly hearkens back to Craig Wright’s stint at a Minnesota seminary. The dialogue hints at a bias for predestination, the idea that the end is already stamped into everything at the outset. Hence, Kari’s conviction that reuniting in a love relationship with Peter would go against some kind of cosmic blueprint: “For you and I to start over, the whole universe would have to start over.”

 

This just doesn’t ring true. After all, is it the universe or only personal inclination that makes our love relationships possible or not? Is it cosmic time that breaks one’s heart, or is it one’s free decision to have it that way? The playwright’s conviction that he has authored a drama “about a problem that was unsolvable” speaks volumes about the spin he elects to put on the world his characters inhabit.

 

As the Narrator, Peter, and Kari, Michael Milligan, Michael Laurence, and Tracy Middendorf all put in engaging performances. The scene between Peter and Kari at the opening of the second act was well crafted by the playwright, and both performers did a credible job of transitioning from Kari’s aloofness to another, more intimate level of her relationship to Peter. Ms. Middendorf tended to be a bit screechy at the higher vocal register, although there is no denying her talent in depicting a damaged and ambivalent lover.

 

Chad Rabinovitz’s direction was intelligent and accomplished, and the pacing of the show was just right for many of the nuances of interactions among the three characters. Hugh Landwehr’s scenic design was in sync with the playwright’s broader panorama of meanings (as well as being richly endowed with stars and Pavilion lights), while Clifton Taylor’s lighting accentuated marvelously the magic touch of the Narrator managing stage effects across time.

 

Pavilion was previewed at the well-appointed Westport Country Playhouse on May 13th, and officially opened on May 17th. Performances are on Tuesdays at 8 PM, Wednesdays at 2 and 8 PM, Thursdays and Fridays at 8 PM, Saturdays at 4 and 8 PM and Sundays at 3 PM. Single tickets range from $30 to $55, while subscriptions for the remainder of the 2008 season start at $105. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at (203)-227-4177, or on the Internet at www.WestportPlayhouse.org.

Romping in the Fifties: Happy Days: A New Musical at Goodspeed Opera House

David Begelman

To put you in the mood for a trip to yesteryear’s hopping decade, Goodspeed Opera House warms you up aplenty. It pipes in fifties ballads over an outside sound system even before you enter its stately theater in East Haddam, CT. Connie Francis is heard warbling Where the Boys Are, as well as Dion and the Belmonts singing Teenager in Love. Its only the beginning of a trip down memory lane for many of us. In the event you’re not completely swallowed up in the time-warp, there is an enormous sign displayed over the front door welcoming you to a 1959 class reunion.

 

And then there is the show itself, a bouncy musical romp based on the television series Happy Days, with its cast of lovables: Richie, Chachie, Potsie, Ralph, Joanie, and, of course, Fonzie, coolest of the leathered set, idol of his peers, and one of a rare, if not virtually non-existent breed: the adorable narcissist. His usual accouterments are Dolores and another indispensable companion. These turn out to be a motorcycle and a pocket comb.

 

With a book by Garry Marshall (the original author of the series) and music and lyrics by Paul Williams, Happy Days involves efforts on the part of its cast of characters to save their local hangout, Arnold’s Drive-In, from closing to make way for a parking lot. Fonzie is chosen to wrestle the intimidating Malachi brothers, a brace of bullies by the improbable names of Jumpy and Myron. Any contest of the ferocious pair with our hero is a sure bet to raise the funds necessary to rescue Arnold’s from condemnation. But Fonzie, unknown to everyone, has a bum knee that puts him on the endangered list in any contest with opponents as fracturing as the Malachis. Fonzie’s initial failure of nerve gives way unsurprisingly to something else in the end, as the audience comes to appreciate.

 

Does it matter much whether some feel this production is flawed? Granted, it is. For starters, it is either overshadowed by, or too reminiscent of its predecessor, Grease. Its musical numbers follow each other too rapidly to allow breathing time for serious character development beyond caricature, and the music, while lively, is not especially memorable. No one walks out of Goodspeed after seeing this show whistling a tune from it that strikes a responsive ear. There is much broad and tasteless humor in the remarks of some of its characters, and cheap one-liners are tossed out like confetti over a bridal twosome.

 

But when it comes to carping too fiercely, you lose the forest for the trees. There is much in this batch of fluff you can savor—mightily. Your wagon should be hitched to what is really enjoyable about the confection. The most notable of its treats is the spectacle of talented triple-threat performers doing their thing in group numbers, many of which are thrilling to watch.

 

Some characterizations are polished ones. Topping the list is the charismatic personality of Fonzie himself (played by Joey Sorge, who, as the strutting yet vulnerable greaser, compares favorably to Henry Winkler, the original Fonz, on a scale of dashing).

 

On the female side, delightful portrayals are turned in by performers who strike unique notes in a gang of luscious hangers-on who, while comely, seem to be along only for the ride. These include Cynthia Ferrer playing Marion Cunningham, the endearing but by now anachronistic housewife, whose driving ambition is to bake pies and otherwise dote on her hard-working husband, Howard, played by Kevin Carolan. (Not for long, however. Marion’s ingenuity in devising colored toilet plungers that could be marketed commercially exhibits all the signs of a nascent feminism, unbeknownst even to her.)

 

Then there is the delightful and energetic Savannah Wise as Joanie, the only character in whom we see a coming of age transition from reticent teenager to an exuberance matching, when not exceeding, the élan of the rest of the whole Milwaukee gang.

 

On the vocal side, you couldn’t ask for a more talented belter than Sandra DeNise, playing Pinky Tuscadero, the estranged girl friend of Fonzie, who comes back to town for a reprise of her romance with him. Ms. DeNise could take on a leading role in Cats, Aida, Rent, Witches, or South Pacific without any of these shows being any the worse for wear vocally.

 

Gordon Greenberg’s face-paced direction added luster to the action, while Michele Lynch’s choreography, especially in the group numbers, was exhilarating and innovative. Special mention should be made of Walt Spangler’s scenic design. Not only imaginatively conceived, it had the advantage of rapid set changes that did not impede the continuity of action, a virtue sorely missing in many productions elsewhere.

 

All in all, and on balance, a fun time despite the flaws. If you can’t get past them, Scrooge you.

 

Happy Days has extended its run to July 4, 2008. Performances run on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 2:00 PM and 7:30 PM, Fridays at 8:00 PM, Saturdays at 3:00 PM and 8:00 PM, and Sundays at 2:00 PM and 6:30 PM on Select Weeks. Tickets are $26 to $63 through the Goodspeed Box Office at 860.873.8668 or online at www.goodspeed.org.

Slapstick with the Office Staff: Scramble! at the Westport Country Playhouse

David Begelman

David Wiltse, author of the peppy two-act, Scramble!, has a lot going for him. He is a virtuoso playwright of the snappy comeback, the mordant quip, the riotous one-liner, the hilarious riposte, the well-timed gag. What he isn’t is a playwright who in this case delivers memorable drama. But so what? Audiences who come away from this comedy shouldn’t have their hopes pitched so high that Scramble! at the Westport Country Playhouse is bound to disappoint expectations for something loftier.  Scramble! is simply a hugely entertaining play about office politics that director Tracy Brigden moves along at such furious and accelerating pace, you have to catch your breath from one waggish moment to the next.  The play is in the honored tradition of farce, not to mention a lineage of comedy that goes back to Plautus, Commedia, Feydeau, and—oh yes, to a playwright of some promise who couldn’t resist installing Mr. Wiltse’s species of humor even in his most serious works: Shakespeare.  The office gang in Scramble! are all played by a talented cast with an accomplished set of techniques. Characters are all over each other trying to save their jobs from being downsized, arranging late night encounters with each other that turn out to be a comedy of errors, and playing one-upsmanship as though there were no end in sight.
Of course, saying that Mr. Wiltse’s brand of comedy has an older provenance is hardly a basis for showering accolades on Scramble!; one has to judge the play on its own merits.
Even so, this comedy, with its bouncy musical score, doesn’t come off badly at all. Audience members who may have emerged from the theater grumbling that it wasn’t a Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Odd Couple, or The Cherry Orchard, probably had to muffle their sniggers lest anyone discover they were actually having a good time of it—or on occasion rolling in the aisles, as the case may be.
The six characters in Scramble! come together in two small offices of a golf magazine. There is discernable tension in the air, either because some of them doubt their writing abilities, like Carter (played frenetically by Matthew Rauch) who frets, “What other magazine would hire a writer who can’t write?”, or speak in an unintelligible babble when put on the spot, like Jane (played with spastic élan by Rebecca Harris who, as office klutz, manages to get her foot stuck in a basket and bump into walls without her glasses).
Carter has taken a shine to the comely Temple (played deliciously by Jennifer Mudge), an office worker who hankers for becoming managing editor. She also uses her feminine wiles to flirt with, only to rebuff Carter, as well as lord over Jane in a continually lopsided relationship. Allergic to flowers, Temple is always on the verge of a sneezing jag when bouquets are brought into the office.
Otis, the son of the founder of the magazine (played with a hilarious flair for one-liners by Colin McPhillamy) is a Brit who takes a shine to the office staff, and has a penchant for forgetting a crucial word in any remark he consistently fails to complete.
All three office workers cower before Sam, the managing director (played with a hard-nosed and bullying mien by Candy Buckley), who keeps everyone on their toes. At one point in the first act, she indicates that a message about downsizing has come from above, and weeding out the unfit will have to be the order of the day in the near future. If the staff was not a batch of nervous Nellies before, Sam’s alarming message raises their anxiety to a new level.
Into this mélange of jittery folks, steps Johnson (played with unassuming perfection by Tom Beckett), the quintessential nerd down to the way he dresses, parts his hair, or stammers his words. He also has a habit of taking notes he records in a carefully guarded memo book. Others interpret this as his being the ax man who is getting the goods on all for the bosses upstairs.
Then the action takes off, especially in the second act, when characters go in and out of doors to a storeroom, noisily upsetting golfing supplies, or move on and off stage in a well timed sequence of entrances and exits choreographed by Mark Olsen. They also arrange to meet in secret rendezvouses at 9:00 PM in which the unexpected person invariably turns up just to illustrate how often things go wrong with best laid plans. It is all delirious confusion, and about as slapstick as director Tracy Brigden can get. Then again, you’ve got to have a deft handle on the action to organize confusion as skillfully as this director.
Johnson, of course, turns out not to be the real ax man. When the latter’s true identity is revealed, everyone is enormously relieved to discover that the corporate executioner has taken such a shine to the office staff, no one will be cashiered, and the entire group exits singing “The Continental.” Silly, to be sure. But, what the hell, does it have to be anything other than silly for you to have some fun and a gaggle of belly laughs?
Scramble! Opened at the Westport Country Playhouse on July 9, and perfomances continue to July 26, 2008. Performances on Tuesday are at 8 PM, Wednesday at 2 and 8 PM, Thursday and Friday at 8 PM, Saturday at 4 and 8 PM, and Sunday at 3 PM. Reservations may be made by calling the box office at 203.227.4177, or online at www.westportplayhouse.org

The Full Monty at TriArts Sharon Playhouse

David Begelman

The 1997 British film The Full Monty, like countless movies turned into musicals, was one in which everything came together in the most delightful way. My hunch is that its production team had no idea of what a resounding success it would become. Of course, it had the advantage of an talented English cast, including Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson, and Mark Addy. But their obvious abilities only enhanced what was already a damn good script. And then there was the sound track, including the incomparable Tom Jones with his rendition of numbers like You Can Leave Your Hat On.

 

The film tells the story of a group of unemployed steel workers in Sheffield, Yorkshire, who hit upon the idea of becoming strippers—with a difference. Their attraction would be to titillate female audiences with a final display of stark nudity (“the Full Monty”), rather than only suggestive strip-tease, as popularized by such American groups as The Chippendales.

 

David Yazbek’s and Terrence McNally’s musical adaptation of the film is one that sticks remarkably close to the story line of the film, except its characters are unemployed Americans in Buffalo. The show broke box office records internationally, and was staged in Hong Kong, Iceland, Spain, Canada, Greece, and South Korea—not, understandably, always in English. It garnered nine Tony Award nominations, eleven Drama Desk Award nominations, and a Theatre World Award.

 

The TriArts production of the musical packs as dazzling a wallop as you’re likely to see this season in theaters around Connecticut. The Full Monty at Sharon Playhouse will have you bouncing out of your seat from the instant the curtain goes up. Except there is no curtain initially, only a stage adorned with rather drab and rusting steel beams that give no hint of what is to come: a rollicking, hilarious, and completely satisfying evening in the theater.

 

Not that the Yazbek/McNally musical is without drawbacks. The show tends to be overly long. Some of its scenes as written drag on or smack of redundancy, as when husbands and wives or the two gay members of the group sing duets dripping with more sentimentality than you’re ready to digest. Songs are clever, lilting, and well-suited to ongoing action, if not particularly memorable. All of which is beside the point when it comes to the TriArts production itself.

 

The performers deliver a smash, and they look so good on stage, it’s hard to believe that only two cast members are Actor’s Equity performers. These are Scott Laska as Jerry, reprising the Robert Carlyle role of “Gaz” in the film, and Richard Waits as Noah “Horse” T. Simmons, the only black member of the group. If other routines in the show were enjoyable to watch, Mr. Waits’s rendition of “Big Black Man” was as close to sensational as you get: a number in which Horse’s musicality and gift for movement break through the orthopedic problems forever plaguing his dance routines.

 

The show, like the movie (which forfeited an Academy Award to that lumbering and overfinanced pachyderm, Titanic), blends humor with poignancy. It actually covers a wide range of issues, including father rights, male bonding, unemployment, gender issues, depression, impotency, and suicide, although even this last theme is turned humorously on its head during the course of the action.

 

Mr. Laska’s Jerry is the central role in the show, and this performer is always a pleasure to watch on stage, as well as impressive in his vocal numbers, despite some difficulty in the higher register.

 

Jerry comes up with the idea of forming a male strip-tease group that will call itself “Hard Steel.” His plan is sparked by the need to make the money to redeem himself. He wants to show his wife Pam (played convincingly by Lori J. Belter) that he can be a provider, rather than being unemployed and shiftless. The reformation will also prevent him from getting distanced from his son, Nathan (played exceptionally well by 12 year old Jack C. DiFalco, and comparing favorably with young William Snape’s ingenuous portrayal in the film.)

 

Other members of the cast contribute solidly to the success of the TriArts production. Mention should be made of all the strippers, including Jason Winfield as Ethan (whose attempts to do somersaults off walls like Donald O’Connor in Singing in the Rain always end in bodily disaster short of concussion), Michael Dunn as a believable and thin-skinned Malcolm, Michael Britt as Harold, a husband who cannot bring himself to let his wife know he has been unemployed, but especially Andy Lindberg as Dave, a begrudging stripper who has a hard time getting past his impotence, obesity, and a temporary crisis with his adoring wife before his final one-night-only stand.

 

Glenda Lauten as Jeanette, the strippers’ accompanist, was a real presence on stage—when she wasn’t dimly visible as a pile of red hair behind her piano. Ms. Lauten is a terrific belter, and a pro at caustic quips that had the audience close to losing it. Accompanying the strippers on the keyboard she observes laconically: “Jeez, this is like working with Lawrence Welk!”

 

This reviewer was most impressed by Bob Durkin’s capable direction and choreography and Michael Berkeley’s musical direction. His offstage orchestra of seven other instrumentalists gave the show a shine that would have been sorely missed without it. Chris Dallos’s lighting design was tremendously effective in highlighting the action on stage. Erik D. Diaz’s scenic design was innovative, and only occasionally encumbered by shifting sets on a darkened stage with silhouetted extras moving things about, a sometime handicap of intricate sets in productions elsewhere.

 

The Full Monty opened on June 19, and continues through July 6, 2008 at Sharon’s TriArts Playhouse. Tickets can be purchased on the internet www.triarts.net or calling 860.364.SHOW

Over the Rainbow at Waterbury’s Palace Theater

 

David Begelman

 

Certain ground rules in the theater are so elementary, they are forgone conclusions. Among these is the axiom that any fresh adaptation of MGM’s 1939 treasure The Wizard of Oz is going to fall far short of the caliber of this American film masterpiece.

That being said, what is there to say about the NETworks Presentations production of L. Frank Baum’s classic story, newly adapted by John Kane and staged by Nigel West at the Palace Theater? The answer is: plenty.

 

Ushered to his seat in Waterbury’s palatial Palace Theater, this reviewer saw it jammed with over 800 audience members. Not the least of the eager crowd was a generous supply of tots, either scurrying about the aisles or else carried by doting parents to their seats munching candy (when not sucking thumbs), and decked out in their Sunday finery. One 3 year-old was dressed as Dorothy, ruby slippers and all. Awaiting the treat in store for them, they were not disappointed after the curtain went up. Nor was yours truly. Expecting another dreary show for kids, he marveled at what was delivered on stage.

 

The surprising thing about this traveling production was not only its array of capable non-equity actors and dancers, but the visually stunning scenic and sound effects engineered by Lighting Designer Bob Bonniol, Tim McQuillan-Wright’s set and costumes, Shannon Slaton’s sound design, Second Home Productions artful Projections, J & M’s Special Effects, Nate Patten’s musical direction, and others in a team of collaborators on production values who continually put their best foot forward.

As a case in point, the tornado scene at the beginning of Wizard, up to Dorothy’s landing in Munchkindland was an optical and sound delight. A bit scary, it compared favorably to its treatment in the Victor Fleming film. Projected onto a huge scrim, Dorothy’s cabin whirled around to the din of a tornado horrific in its intensity.

 

Cassie Okenka played Dorothy, and her Scene 2 rendition of Over the Rainbow was a heartfelt interpretation of one of the most celebrated songs in the American canon of music. (And, unlike a generation of rock stars, sung on pitch!)

 

There is not enough to say about the individual characterizations of the Scarecrow, the Tin man, and the Cowardly Lion by Noah Aberlin, Chris Kind, and Jason Simon (whose sturdy baritone might well have been the envy of Bert Lahr, were he still alive). While they for the most part reprised the dialogue and songs we are all familiar with in the film, their portrayals were accomplished and satisfying.

 

Kudos go to Pat Sibley in the dual roles of Elvira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West (Broadway has gone ape over witches lately, due no doubt to the inspired example of Margaret Hamilton in the 1939 film).

 

As the land-rich bitch murderously intent on dispatching Dorothy’s dog Toto (who quite appropriately took a bite out of her early on), Ms. Sibley was later suitably intimidating as the green-faced monster. She hurled bolts of fire at Scarecrow from thatched rooftops, cavorted with winged monkeys abjectly attentive to her every bidding, and met her dissolving demise in her castle at the hands of Dorothy wielding a mere pail of water.

 

Mention should also be made of the avuncular Professor Marvel and the Wizard of Oz, played by Robert John Biedermann, (reprising admirably the roles created by the unforgettable Frank Morgan), and performers Caitlin Maloney, Bruce Warren, and Bruce Warren as Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and the Emerald City Guard: all portrayals a sheer delight.

 

Caitlin Maloney also doubled as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, showering her kindness on Dorothy from a circular chariot that descended miraculously as if from the heavens—with, unlike Billie Burke in the original film, a solid singing voice to match!

The current version of Wizard added to the dialogue of the film. When Elvira Gulch makes off with Toto (a real trouper himself, and in this production always on cue when it comes to his darting entrances and exits), Dorothy berates all about her on the farm for causing her pet’s plight; and when Uncle Henry is informed about Elvira’s complaints to the county sheriff about Toto, he queries, “Was he sober?”

 

Sometimes the changes work, as in Scarecrow’s added number after Dorothy frees him in the cornfield. There is the addition of three singing crows, played with a jazzed-up élan by Robert Conte, Beau Hutchins, and Timothy McNeill. And the apple-tossing trees of the film are morphed into three leafy sirens, played by Lauryn Ciardullo, Jessa Rose, and Sara Ruzicka. The threesome goes on the make for Scarecrow with suggestive bumps and grinds, in preference to merely grousing in the forest.

 

At other times, the additions strike a discordant note, like the chorus of ballet dancers who appear when Dorothy and her friends are on the way to Emerald City (also a green delight in this production). Pirouettes and pas de deux around the drowsy foursome in poppy fields by couples seemingly recruited from a ballet corps seems oddly out of keeping with the intended atmosphere of bedevilment.

 

But make no mistake about it: this two and a half hour show is not to be missed, even if your exposure to the MGM film has been a repeated affair. And take your kids with you, ruby slippers and all.

 

The Wizard of Oz plays at the Palace Theater, 100 east Main Street, Waterbury, CT 06702, during the months of November and December. Matinees are at 1:00 PM, and evening performances at 6:30 PM. Reservations may be made by calling the box office at 203.755.8483.

Get Me To the Ark on Time: Children of Eden at Danbury’s Richter Park

David Begelman

 

Stephen Schwartz’s two-act musical Children of Eden (with a book by John Caird)is an enormously popular show in community productions. After a forgettable opening on the London stage, a Broadway debut seemed unlikely. The show has an enormous cast, and production costs in 1991 made it a risky gamble at that time, given its initial poor showing overseas.

All the same, the show has always been a popular one on the local level (including churches and synagogues), although its attraction probably springs from another source entirely. It only looks like an updated version of Old Testament themes. Actually, its musical spin on Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, and Noah and his brood strikes a more familiar chord than the elemental stuff of scripture, modernized or not. Its characters seem more like our own family members, than they do the archetypal figures of the Bible.

For starters, God is called simply “Father” by the errant Adam (played by Marc Fanning) and Eve (played by Lauren Romeo), while their expulsion from the Garden of Eden seems more like the product of a divine snit than it does a heavenly lesson for the sin of disobedience. And far from accepting Father’s payback in a duly remorseful way, Adam and Eve carry on as if they were indefinitely grounded from internet access by an arbitrary parent. When pressed for an explanation for their expulsion, Father lamely replies, “I have my reasons”—as if he were refusing to own up to actually not having any at all.

In Children of Eden then, Mr. Schwartz seems to be depicting the foibles of modern families, rather than the moral lessons of the stern God of the Old Testament.

The trope is even more apparent in the second act of the musical. When it comes to Noah (Ted Schwartz), his wife (Stacey Snyder), and their three sons, Shem (Stephen Papallo), Ham (Brian Bremmer), and Japheth (Jacob Eventoff), interactions not only become contentious flash-points, they approximate tantrums, as if biblical stories were being morphed into dysfunctional family dynamics.

Even God and Noah finally capitulate to the wishes of Japheth to marry Yonah (Katie Cummings), a woman cursed by the generational mark of Cain. The concession to Japheth seems no more weighty than a contemporary parent tolerating a son who wants to marry a woman with a disagreeable array of tattoos.

The production of the show in the 25th summer of Musicals at Richter had its strengths and weaknesses. Vocally, group numbers like “Generations” and “In the Beginning,” sung by leading characters and Storytellers (who functioned like a Greek chorus) were accomplished.
Walt Cramer as “Father” had a sturdy baritone voice which, while obviously fortified by operatic training, was a bit compromised by a noticeable vibrato. The outstanding vocal number was by Stacey Snyder in Mama Noah’s “Ain’t It Good,” a gospel-style song served well by Ms. Snyder’s belting and energetic style. Other soloists had a tendency to be off pitch, especially in the higher registers.

One of Choreographer Matthew Farina’s clever touches was to represent the evil snake in the Garden of Eden as an undulating line of five performers attired in black derbys and red vests (Annie Bryson, Allie Bukowski, Anna DeMasi, Caitlin Keeler, and Stephen Michaelsson). The device was imaginative, especially when actors synchronized their movements. Mr. Schwartz’s snake (the devil in reptilian form) was not above scoring some points still troubling theologians. He teasingly remarks, “If God made all this, who made God?” Snakes can get under your skin when not intent on shedding their own.

In this reviewer’s opinion, Director Minor and choreographer Farina both missed the opportunity to provide group staging with a more inventive touch than they did. Members of the Storyteller’s group of 26 performers and the 9 actors of the Children’s Ensemble seemed uncomfortably static most of the time. More attention to the creative movement of performers in large groups might have benefited the production.
 
It should be noted that the deluge around Noah’s ark may be a close second to Danbury, Connecticut, when it comes to the weather. “The rain it raineth every day,” said Shakespeare, and July, 2009 in our state is no exception. The area seems to be running neck and neck with the 40 days and 40 nights downpour in Noah’s era in Genesis. So area carpenters, get hopping to build the big vessel. And citizens, start rounding up animals in pairs in the event of the worst case scenario.
Children of Eden opened July 30 and runs until August 15, 2009 at Musicals at Richter, 100 Aunt Hack Road, Danbury, CT, 06811. Performances are on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays at 8:30 PM.  Tickets are $21 for adults, $16 for seniors, and $13 for Students and Children. Thet can be purchased by calling the box office at 203.748.6873, or online at info@MusicalsatRichter.org.     

 

Rabbit Hole at New Milford’s Theatre Works

 

David Begelman

 

“Rabbit hole,” according to the dictionary, is “a bizarre or difficult state or situation.” The phrase comes from the plight of Lewis Carroll’s character, Alice (of Wonderland and Looking Glass fame). After dropping down a hole, Alice describes her ensuing experiences as “curiouser and curiouser.”

 

The same might be said about David Lindsay-Abaire’s drama Rabbit Hole, currently being staged by Theatre Works. Winning the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for drama, it wasn’t even nominated for that award. It became a dark horse candidate for the prize only after judges were at a loss in selecting a winner among dramas actually nominated.

The playwright in personal interviews has downplayed differences among his plays. Yet Rabbit Hole is a cut apart from the others. Fuddy Meers (1999) is about a woman who can’t remember yesterdays; Wonder of the World (2000) is about a wife who has to radically reorganize her life after learning about a husband’s dark secret; and Kimberly Akimbo (2000) deals with a 16 year-old with a disorder causing her to age rapidly, a sort of reverse Benjamin Button.

 

Rabbit Hole is about ordinary people in an ordinary, yet tragic, situation: the accidental death of a child. The playwright considers it to be the result of a challenge to him to author a play about the thing that frightened him the most. One suspects the result was a fantasy spun around what most of us envision as a worse—if not the worst—case family scenario. Mr. Lindsay-Adaire is also a parent.

 

The drama has six characters, all of whose lives revolve around the sudden death of Danny, the 4 year-old son of Becca (played poignantly by Jackie Decho-Holm) and Howie (whose escalating emotion and conflicts over the event are impressively handled by Kevin Sosbe). The boy was accidentally run over by a car driven by Jason (a sorrowful and touchingly contrite Rob Onorato), who attempts to assuage his guilt by expressing his heartfelt sorrow to the parents.

 

Other characters in the drama in one way or another touch upon the same theme. Izzy (in a fetching and humorous portrayal by Heather Nicholson as the dysfunctional, and occasionally combative, but insightful sister), announces to Becca that she has recently become pregnant, news that is bound to underscore the latter’s sense of loss.

 

Little Danny’s grandmother, the sometime intrusive Nat (played with just the right cocktail of seeming insensitivity masking inner grief, by Sonnie Osborne) is a character who repeats the motif. She too has lost a son, Arthur, 11 years prior to her daughter’s loss, and her frequent asides to Becca, while ham-fisted on the surface, come from a sympathetic core. She feels that Becca will eventually recover from the tragedy—quicker, if she would only knuckle down in ways her mother recommends.

 

Ms. Decho-Holm and Mr. Hosbe are impressive in the mounting conflict they experience over things that remind each of them of their son Danny. Howie grows furious over what he interprets as Becca’s intention to erase Danny’s memory, an anger fueled by her withdrawing sexually from him since the accident. She wishes to place the home up for sale, get rid of the dog, and give away Danny’s toys and clothes. She also accidently erases a video of Danny, an act Howie feels is a like-minded effort to nullify the memory of their son.

 

Rabbit Hole, as a drama about a family becoming unglued, is constructed well. It develops dramatic conflict with an appropriately paced momentum, and has the virtue of reechoing different versions of the same theme of loss among its characters. Nonetheless, it tends to radiate a sense of the expectable in scenarios of grief and loss, as if the playwright was fashioning an embodiment of what we all would inevitably go through in similar situations. The play has a tendency to be formulaic in precisely this way, although there is no denying Mr. Lindsay-Abaire’s talent as a craftsman.

 

Director Susan Pettibone was the guiding and accomplished director of the production, while Erik D. Diaz’s scenic design (with the capable assistance Scott Wyshynski’s team) was perfectly suited to the single-set idea of Rabbit Hole. Richard Pettibone’s multi-tasking as producer, builder, light and sound designer, and photographer enhanced production values already in plentiful evidence. Incidental music by John Gromada was also the sound track in the Broadway production of the play.

 

Rabbit Hole opened on February 20, 2009, and continues until March 14, 2009 at New Milford’s Theatre Works, at 5 Brookside Avenue, New Milford, CT. Curtain time is 8:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, with a 2:00 PM matinee on March 8. Tickets for all shows are $20.00 for reserved seating. Reservations can be made online at www.theatreworks.us, or by calling the box office at (860)-350-6863.

Rolling in the Aisles with Ayckbourn: Season’s Greetings
at New Milford’s TheatreWorks

 

David Begelman

 

Playwrights aren’t usually as prolific as Alan Ayckbourn. Nor are many of them as successful at the box office. Witness the comedies that seem to tumble out of the Brit’s output of over seventy plays, including Absurd Person Singular (1975), the popular trilogy The Norman Conquests (1973), Woman in Mind (1985), or the more recent Private Fears in Public Places (2004).

Ayckbourn’s all over the place, from a being notable presence on the other side of the Atlantic in London, Scarborough, and the Royal Shakespeare Company, to Broadway (where he is in the habit of collecting Tony awards). He’s been translated into over 35 languages, and seems to be on a creative binge with no end in sight. In a word, he’s unstoppable.

Some of his comedies, like Season’s Greetings, are less attractive when read than when they are performed. So they’re on another level of enjoyment when seasoned troupers do their Ayckbourn thing in real time. Performances of other literature (Shakespeare comes to mind) are often judged by the way they rise to the majesty of the written drama, whereas many of Ayckbourn’s comedies are fully realized only when staged.

The current production of Season’s Greetings at TheatreWorks is no exception. You can read the script and come away convinced it’s exceedingly cornball—until you see how a cast of savvy performers does its thing. Then hilarity takes over, as if the really funny aspects of the show on paper had been playing hide and seek.

Director Glenn R. Couture’s production of the Ayckbourn comedy is a delight, and for several reasons. Its cast of capable performers work extremely well together. A highlight of their frenetic interactions are separate vignettes unfolding on the stage at the same time.

The disparate types gathering for an annual Christmas Eve’s celebration somewhere in England include Belinda (played by Tracy Hurd with a mounting sense of sexual longing and frustration at keeping her guests and husband in tow) and hubby Neville (played by Viv Berger with a composure oddly out of sync with the frantic goings on in his home). He’s obviously under the thumb of his spouse, preferring to disregard her compromising position with a young aspiring novelist, Clive.

Then there is Harvey (played by Matt McQuail with a swagger brash enough to let you know that the gladiator has not only arrived, he’s ready for bear with a gun and a 6-inch knife, to boot). Harvey’s an Archie Bunker type addicted to viewing shark attacks and homicides on T.V. He’s wary of Clive whom he suspects is out to burglarize the home. Bernard (played delightfully with nervous impatience by Philip Cook) undertakes to entertain family members with an annual puppet show that has too many fumbled moments for a smallish audience, including the bellowing and captious Harvey, to find  enjoyable.

Bernard’s puppet show is assisted by Pattie, the very pregnant wife of Eddy. She is played by Mikki Harkin, who is successful at portraying the put upon spouse. She irritates Bernard by handing him the wrong sequence of the Three Little Pigs who do battle with the Big Bad Wolf in his puppet show. Eddy (played hilariously by Tom Libonate) often seems astonished by the goings-on at the Christmas Eve party—when   he is not retreating into his X-Man comic book to escape his wife’s hectoring or the zaniness of the goings on swirling around him.

Phyllis (played uproariously by Janice Connor) becomes progressively inebriated after a series of accidents requiring first aid while cooking a leg of lamb in the kitchen. Coming on strong to Clive, a young novelist (played disarmingly by Nicholas Pollifrone), she leaves Christmas presents in disarray before collapsing on the stairs to the upper bedrooms of the home.

Lastly, Rachel (played with delicious vulnerability by Alison Bernhardt) has a hard time with the sexual challenges of her relationship with novelist Clive. He, in turn, is drawn amorously to Belinda, and the two are caught horizontal on a couch by others at the end of the First Act. But not before their dalliance is interrupted by blaring music and Christmas tree lights suddenly activated by a remote control.

The script reads like a farce or a less than polished soap opera that pulls out all stops. But the performance of a well integrated cast in the New Milford production delivers something more. Even the aptly simulated British accents of all actors enhance the humor of the show.
The backstage production crew of Renee Purdy, Scott Wyshynski, Richard Pettibone, John Bolster, and Jon Ross contributed to the success of the comedy, but the biggest accolades belong to Director Glenn R. Coutoure for bringing it all off with style. If the audience reaction on opening night is any indication, Season’s Greetings at TheatreWorks is a resounding success.

Season’s Greetings opened at New Milford’s TheatreWorks, 5 Brookside Avenue, New Milford, CT, just off Route 202, on December 4th and runs until January 2. Curtain time is 8:00 PM on Fridays and Saturdays, and Sunday matinees are at 2:00 PM. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at 860.360.6963 or online at WWW.THEATREWORKS.US.

 

* Contact Us * Designed

Locker Room Tales: That Championship Season at Westport Country Playhouse

 

David Begelman

 

In Jason Miller’s 1973 Pulitzer Prize winning drama, That Championship Season, five men have at each other like a swarm of furious bees too attached to avoid stinging each other relentlessly. Except the occasion is the reunion of four former basketball players and their coach. Their team won the 1957 Pennsylvania State championship twenty years earlier.

The four include the inept mayor of a small town, George (played by Robert Clohessy), whose notable achievement was to provide the local zoo with an elephant which promptly dies shortly after delivery. Then there is James (played by Lou Liberatore), a junior high school principal soured on his job, who has been George’s campaign manager. Phil (Skipp Sudduth) is a wheeler-dealer, a philandering strip-miner who lives in the fast lane, drives expensive cars, and who is secretly wavering in his support of George’s campaign, while Tom (played by Tom Nells), who has missed three reunions of the group in the past, is an inebriate with a flair for acerbic one-liners. Tom denies he has a drinking problem, observing, “I get all the booze I want.”

Finally, there is Coach (played by John Doman), the titular head of the group, a self-styled sage who goads the others into holding on to past glory that is the glue binding them together.
Coach is given to high sounding speeches about the value of aggressive manhood and dirty politics. He spews ethnic slurs with abandon, and extols the virtues of such figures as Senator Joseph McCarthy and Father Coughlin, a radio personality who railed against the Jewish influence in national affairs.

Ironically enough, basketball, among the most popular pastimes in suburban high schools of small communities of the era, was also a sport most resistant to integration at the time of the play’s action.

Although much older than the others, Coach is not above putting on a display of push-ups for them, despite the fact that he is occasionally wracked with the pain of stomach adhesions resulting from an operation. His advice to the others takes the form of pep-talks, pumped up as if he were back in the good old days of shouting orders to his team in play on the court.
Mr. Miller’s script may have enjoyed more popularity when it was originally produced at the Public Theater in 1972. Today, the macho swaggering of Coach and his underlings might well strike some of us as a bit over the top as stage-setting for the conflicts among its five characters. After all, the Archie Bunker mentality has long since forfeited any claim to a sympathetic hearing.

Broadsides in the play against Jews, Poles, Italians, African-Americans, and women, even while expressing the attitudes of fictional characters, are delivered like cannon shots. Audiences in all likelihood wince at these salvos, peppered as they are throughout the script. One example would be the fun George and Tom have recalling the “humping” of an epileptic girl in the former’s garage. George gleefully reminds Tom she was retarded, not epileptic. A hilarious moment for them; hardly one for any audience with a modicum of feeling for the less fortunate. 
When George, sick to his stomach at one point in the play, vomits into the trophy symbolizing the team’s past victory, a metaphor is born. Things are not what they seem to be under the surface of bravado and glory symbolized by the trophy; they are considerably worse than imagined.

Coach’s avuncular stance provides the cover under which the club hides its moral failings. His exhortations, never far from bullying, are seemingly the only antidote to the bickering and back-stabbing that breaks out among its members when freed from its seductive cloud of unknowing. Tom sees this better than the others, although through his alcoholic haze. As in the later O’Neill plays, it is the fiction that keeps the characters going.

Director Mark Lamos has his five performers take their respective roles head-on, and there is little in the way of repose between clashes that would serve to build up to them in a more nuanced way. As a result, all five characters are so broadly delineated, traces of caricature inevitably creep in. Yet it is often hard to determine how much of this lies in the script or individual portrayals. In the current production, action is perhaps a bit too fast-paced for comfort, while the show seems to lack the innovative touch we are accustomed to in Mr. Lamos’ previous projects.

There is also a lot of milling around when characters are not doing push-ups (Coach), falling down stairs (Tom), or being felled by a roundhouse punch (James). It’s as though dialogue had to be delivered standing up, despite there being some pretty comfortable furniture adorning David Gallo’s impressive set (and one faithful to original script).

Playwright Miller’s exposé of the American myth of rugged masculinity, sports mania, intolerance, and Vince Lombardi pieties may have a point. But it is old hat for most of us nowadays.

That Championship Season opened at the Westport Country Playhouse, 25 Powers Court, Westport, CT 06880 off Route 1, on August 25, 2009 and runs until September 12, 2009. Tickets range from $35 to $55. Students and educators are eligible for 50% discounts. Groups of 10 or more save up to 30%. Tickets may be purchased by calling the box office at (203)-227-4177, or toll-free at 1-888-927-7529 on the Internet at www.westportplayhouse.org

 

Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution

 

David Begelman

 

            Ang Lee’s most recent film Lust, Caution is a thriller about lives interwoven during the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in World War II. It was adapted from Eileen Chang’s short story by scriptwriters Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus, and the dialogue is in Mandarin, with English subtitles, like the director’s masterpiece, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Mr. Lee is not always an accomplished master of cinema; witness his comic book extravaganza gone amok, The Hulk, and the overrated Brokeback Mountain. (Substitute two straight people for lovers who take to the mountains to consummate their extramarital fling, and you have the ordinary effort the film is without the gay cachet glorifying it as far more.) 

Lust, Caution concerns a group of resistance fighters who target a Chinese collaborator, Mr. Yee, played by the popular Asian star, Tony Leung. Yee is also the resident chief of the secret police. The activists undertake the nerve-wracking business of dispatching him. Some of them are also members of a student theater group, and while they take orders from above, it is clear none of them is an old hand at the killing game. Putting Mr. Yee away not only promises to be a daunting challenge, it taxes their talent for undercover theatrics. To accomplish the mission, the group enlists the aid of Wong Chia Chi, played by the strikingly beautiful Tang Wei in her film debut. A master plan is hatched for her to seduce Yee in order to finish him off when he is at his most vulnerable. Having framed the premise of the film, how does it fare on balance?

Lust, Caution is overly long, principally because it is front-loaded with bootless narrative. Consequently, its first section idles mercilessly. There is little in scenes of women gathering in Yee’s home other than the “laughter that tinkles among the tea cups,” and Mah Jong. If Ang Lee imagined that the annoyingly protracted cloche was build up to what eventually ensues, he leaves us clueless. Then the film takes off, hitting you right between the eyes.

Tee corners Wong Chia Chi in a secret rendezvous and proceeds to rape her. The stone-faced official’s viciousness is fueled by the tensions of being a collaborator and being a secret police torturer. But most of all, it gets unleashed because of the loss of control he experiences in allowing this particular woman to unsettle him like no other, bringing down his defenses. But what is the cautionary tale told in Lust, Caution?

The gymnastic sex scenes between the two principal characters undergo  transformations in both directions. Lust morphs into something else entirely.  It is difficult to determine when, in the ongoing scenario of steamy sexuality, Wong Chia Chi stops acting or when Yee becomes enamored of her in another, more significant way. There are scenes in which this attachment is highlighted: Wong Chia Chi sings to Yee at a Geisha house on an occasion he has scheduled for more than sexual purposes. (Japanese Geishas cater to male sensibility on many more levels than the purely erotic.) He also arranges to give her a six carat diamond ring as a token of commitment he is unable to suppress. And Wong Chia Chi cannot bring herself to follow through on the plan to kill her lover. At the eleventh hour, she signals him that his life is in danger, permitting him to escape the assassination attempt. Her tender mercies result in all conspirators, herself included, being rounded up and sent to a quarry to be executed. Mr. Yee morosely returns to his official duties, only to learn that he too has been under suspicion because of the relationship with his activist lover.

The film won the Golden Lion Prize at the Venice Film Festival, and appears to have been better received by European than American critics. It received a NC-17 (no one under 17 admitted, even when accompanied by an adult) by The Motion Picture Association of America. This gatekeeper is ever ready to shield the youth of Athens from corruption—except for the insalubrious fare given a free pass when its theme is aggressive carnage and bloodletting, rather than sexuality.

There are stretches of the film that are wonderfully handled, both in terms of the acting, narrative lines, and Ang Lee’s skilled eye for the polished frame. Exquisite street scenes are an additional blessing, as they were in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and the acting in this film is uniformly accomplished. The director dodged questions about whether the sex scenes were or were not simulated, a wariness perhaps supplying an answer to the question. Parts of Lust, Caution may be late in coming; but they are far from too little when they finally arrive.   

      

“Amour:” Life, Love and the Unawarded Oscar

 

AT THE MOVIES

With

David Begelman

 

“Things will go on as they have done up until now. They’ll go from bad to worse. Things will go on, and then one day it will all be over.”

So intones Georges, played by Jean-Louis Trintignant, in the searing film about the ravages of old age, “Amour.” The actor looks much older than he did when his French star began to rise playing opposite Brigitte Bardot in Roger Vadim’s “And God Created Woman” or in other films by Bertolucci, Rohmer, Truffaut, not to mention Claude LeLouch’s art-house classic, “A Man and a Woman.” He plays one of the three central characters in Austrian filmmaker Michael Haneke’s 2012 movie.

The other two are Isabelle Huppert and Emmanuele Riva. We save the best for last.

Huppert, the brilliant actress who has appeared in over 90 film and T.V. productions since the early seventies, was one of four women who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes more than once, and one of two who accomplished the same feat at the Venice film festival. This reviewer was flattened in his seat by her performance in the 1978 “La Dentellière” (The Lacemaker), for which she received the 1978 César Award. The accolades keep coming. She took to the stage in Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” and has been designated by one critic as “arguably the world’s greatest screen actress.”

Emmanuele Riva has appeared in 18 films, including Alain Resnais’ “Hiroshima mon amour.” Her starring role in “Amour” is the most recent for her, the oldest woman (86 years) to have been nominated for an Oscar. That she didn’t receive it for her portrayal of Anne in this film may tell you more about the standards of tinseltown than it ever could about the actress’s performance. She plays the role of a woman stricken with a stroke and dementia, a characterization greeted with stony silence on the part of the audience attending the Bantam movie house the day this reviewer saw the film. The impact of the portrayal was evidently touching and profound.

Anne and Georges are retired pianists. Their story unfolds in an artfully designed series of flashbacks by director Haneke, starting with a scene of Anne lying deceased on a bed, her corpse adorned with flower petals.

Flashbacks involve a scene of both partners attending a concert by one of Anne’s former pupils, a visit to their Parisian apartment by the same student, visits by the couple’s daughter, Eva (Huppert), who remonstrates with Georges about the necessity of placing Anne in a hospital or nursing home given her deteriorating condition, and ministrations by two nurses hired by Georges to care for Anne. He fires the second one (Dinara Drukarova) for treating Anne is a less than acceptable manner, given her compromised condition.

Despite Eva’s entreaties, Georges has promised Anne he will never place her in an institution despite her illness, and his commitment to her as well as his undertaking the onerous responsibility for her care, is the haunting theme of the film.

Some of Haneke’s touches in “Amour” seem at first blush to be redundant, like scenes of Georges attempting to capture a pigeon which has accidentally flown into the apartment. But they symbolically highlight Georges’s feeble attempts to cope with more important challenges posed by Anne’s condition. In a second attempt to corner the pigeon with a blanket, he is seen struggling to rise up clutching the wrapped up bird to his chest.  

“Amour” won the 2012 Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or, not to mention numerous other awards and nominations. If you are looking for astonishing performances by an actress, look no further. Emmanuelle Riva wins, hands down. Ironies in any case abound. Today it is an 86 year-old French actress. Yesterday it was a six year-old with no acting experience at all: Quvenzhane Wallis in “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Maybe some day Hollywood will prove to be other than clueless. But don’t bank on it. Unlike the heroine of “Amour,” it may need a nursing home—yesterday.

PITFALLS OF MEMORY

To the Editors:

In Oliver Sacks’s otherwise beneficial essay on the ways our memory of the past may mislead us [NYR, February 21], he maintains that such phenomena as “source confusions,” “autoplagiarisms” and “cryptomnesias” document its frailties. What we sometimes consider to be veridical memories of events may be no such thing and may, in fact, be false. He references the disastrous legacy of the so-called “recovered memory” movement in psychology, aimed at uncovering repressed memories of early sexual abuse. Unfortunately, it is still with us. Assuring us that we possess no cortical mechanisms for determining the truth or accuracy of our recollections, Sacks goes on to underscore the often elusive character of “historical” as opposed to “narrative” truth: what we deem to be past realities may be constructions of our imagination. But then he avers that such aberrations are “relatively rare” and that our memories are for the most part “solid and reliable.”

            You cannot have it both ways. If we lack inborn mechanisms to determine the truth or falsity of our memories, on what basis can we be sure that most of them are, as Sacks insists, reliable? He takes pains to illustrate the vagaries of memory by referring to Freud’s contribution to the subject, indicating that the father of psychoanalysis uncovered “grosser distortions” of memory when he realized that patient accounts of early sexual abuse were “fantasies.” Commentary on the subject in recent years has raised doubts over whether Freud really obtained “reports” or was actually confusing patient memories with interpretations he forced upon them. If the latter, then memory distortion can even assail investigators pioneering the study of the subject. Accordingly, if false memories can infiltrate hallowed corridors of received wisdom, maybe sometimes it’s not better to let sleeping dogmatists lie.

 

D. A. Begelman

New Milford, Connecticut 

‘Master Class’ is riveting drama at Shakespeare & Company

 

By David Begelman

Theater Critic

 

Word has it that Terrence McNally’s play about Maria Callas was inspired both by his love of opera and the classes she scheduled at the Juilliard School in New York City in the early 1970s. But during those appearances, well after her days of glory in leading opera houses, the diva did sing passages from arias in order to demonstrate their proper interpretation.

In McNally’s play, however, the actress who takes the role usually talks around the subject—for obvious reasons. Any simulation of one of the great sopranos of our time doing her thing is bound to result in invidious comparisons between the real diva and the performers who take on the role.

“Master Class” at any rate doesn’t depend on depictions of Callas singing. The play is about her as a person, someone who is portrayed in the drama as intolerant of the artistry of rivals including Zinka Milanov and Joan Sutherland, merciless when it comes to training three aspiring singers at Juilliard, and a survivor of some ravaging personal experiences in her ascent to the pinnacle of fame.

The show opened in 1995, with Zoe Caldwell in the lead and the stunning soprano Audra McDonald as Sharon Graham, one of her students. In Shakespeare & Company’s current production, the veteran actress Annette Miller is Callas, while Deborah Grausman is Sharon.

In the show, Callas’ approach to operatic interpretation involves a near fanatical emphasis on emotional preparation. She stops Sophie (Nora Menken) from singing an aria from Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” before the soprano barely opens her mouth. As far as the diva is concerned, the student has no conception of the emotional work demanded of her.

Maybe McNally’s Callas is a bit too hard on her performers. Although emotional preparation (a.k.a. acting) has improved over the years, the acting abilities of singers with glorious voices like Gigli, Melchior, Tucker and Bjoerling were often less than commanding.

But “Master Class” is only partially about singing, however much the lead character’s part is devoted to its technical aspects. When she pulls back from vocal coaching, McNally’s drama becomes a memory play in which Callas reprises vulnerable moments in her life. These include her youthful days as an “ugly duckling,” being savaged by critics earlier in her career, her marriage and separation from her first husband, her later triumphs at opera houses like La Scala, and her relationship with Aristotle Onassis, as well as the abortion he forced her to have.

As in previous productions, the Director Daniel Gidron’s Shakespeare & Company’s staging includes actual recordings of the real Callas singing signature roles from her repertoire.

Miller’s portrayal of Callas tugs at the heartstrings, although on rare occasions became a bit affected and declamatory. Nora Menken, Alec Donaldson and Deborah Grausman gave pleasing interpretations of students singing arias by Bellini, Puccini and Verdi, while Luke Reed as Manny the accompanist and Josephine Wilson as a blunt stagehand supplied some lighter moments in the production.

“Master Class” runs through August 18 at the Elayne P. Bernstein Theatre, Shakespeare & Company, 70 Kemble Street, Lenox, Mass. Performances are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday 8:30 p.m., Sunday matinees 3 p.m. Tickets are $15-$50 and may be purchased by calling the box office at 413-637-3353 or online at www.shakespeare.org.