Theater: Fela!

I discovered Fela Kuti the same week I discovered Midnite, thanks to another mix-CD from the same source. Months later, I saw posters all over downtown Manhattan announcing FELA! with the very special name Bill T. Jones at the bottom. I have been following Bill T.'s work for awhile, first having heard him speak when I was a dance student at Berkeley, up until reviewing Serenade/The Proposition nearly ten years later. He is one of the few artists I have ever encountered whose work is driven by an immense intellect, expressive of political rage, modulated by honest emotions, and sculpted by rigorous aesthetic standards. He is—and I say this without shame—the perfect artist.

How did Bill T. become Bill T.? Certain biographical facts are helpful, as are certain habits. While studying dance at the State University of New York at Binghamton in the 1970s, the big, black Bill T. met a little red haired theater student named Arnie Zane. They became lovers, then partners, forming Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane and Company. Their work played with their difference of shape, size, and color, and their sameness of gender—some of the first modern dance that addressed gay issues. In the late 1980s, AIDS took Arnie from Bill T. and the rest of the world, but the company still bears both names together. And yes, Bill T. is HIV-positive.

He is also a voracious reader, and an intellectual task-master. When he starts thinking about a new work, before stepping foot in the studio, he reads. For his last cycle of works—three pieces on Abraham Lincoln, of which Serenade/The Proposition was a part—he read over 100 books on Lincoln and the American Civil War. He made his dancers read, too. In fact, as if they were high school students, each had to choose an individual figure from the period to research, bringing their intellectual and emotional knowledge of that personage to the studio.

I am certain that during the creation of Fela!, he and his cast worked in the same way. Kuti was a performer, but he was, perhaps more importantly, a political figure. I don't doubt that Jones identifies with him in some ways—both artists whose intellects refuse to let them igore injustice, both black, both HIV-positive. The first half of Fela! is mostly fun: an introduction to the sounds that make up his Afrobeat music, a dance lesson that gets the audience up on its feet and ticking its collective pelvis around an imaginary clock. Toward the end of the first act, though, things get dark, as we see the Nigerian government becoming uncomfortable with Kuti's power. It is in the second act that we see Bill T. as we know him really come forth. Fela's personal compound, where he lived with his mother and many wives, was literally besieged by the police; his women were raped; his mother was killed. For this scene, mugshots of members of the female ensemble are projected above the stage, and the women, one-by-one, tell us—in one cool sentence each—what the police did to them. Here is Bill T. demanding heart and mind from his dancers, as well as body.

The show is as good as a two hour Broadway show about Fela Kuti can be. That is not to say that it is perfect; the confines of telling such a big story in such a short time make for a show that is a bit episodic, conveyed in one of my less-favorite formats: flashback. And oddly, Jones does not address Kuti's HIV-status, which I found strange, even disingenuous. That said, the scale of Broadway, in exchange for what it takes, offers quite a lot in exchange. Jones has long been integrating projection into his work, but it has never worked so seamlessly as it does here, bringing Fela's mother back from the dead when her portrait opens its eyes and turns to chide her boy on stage. In the past, Jones hasn't had the funding for production to match his imagination, but now that he is a Tony Award winner, he will continue to work on Broadway, and I have no doubt that he will carve greater and greater width down that strip of fluff and flashing lights for meaningful political and artistic discourse.

Theater: Measure for Measure

While I was quite the Shakespeare aficionado in middle school, playing such grand roles as Tranio (The Taming of the Shrew), King Claudius (Hamlet), and Lady Macbeth (Macbeth, duh) at the ages of 10, 13, and 11 respectively (can an 11 year old girl at all understand Lady Macbeth? I do believe I did), my appreciation for the bard fell off as I grew older. In high school, I was assigned Romeo & Juliet, Othello, and King Lear (one each year except junior year, which focused solely on American literature, giving a much enjoyed respite from all things crusty and opaque). In college, as an English major, I had one required Shakespeare course. For this, I had to purchase a hardcover tome resembling the old family dictionary—with crackling sheets of nearly translucent 8.5x11 paper, printed in two columns of 10 point text single-spaced—which contained every last of the storied playwright's works. We didn't read them all, but bulldozed through a good number of them, getting particularly bogged down in the Richards (which I'm certain nobody enjoys).

In all that time, though, I'd never come across Measure for Measure, so knew nothing about it when I sat down at the Duke Theatre for a Broadway production directed by Arin Arbus. I thought perhaps it was a tragedy. Please do not shudder at my ignorance. Expectations bind us, so that we cannot fully experience art; the bard's first audiences didn't know what to expect when sitting down for Measure for Measure, so why should I?

This is actually one of his best plots, filled with intricate twists enabled by one of his favorite devices: the masked identity. In the briefest sketch, the Duke of Vienna, displeased by the state of morals in his city, announces a trip abroad, leaving his deputy Angelo in full control. Rather than departing, though, the Duke merely takes on the disguise of a friar, enabling him to mingle with his people in the streets. Quickly, perhaps because the power has gone to his head, or perhaps simply because he's over concerned by the letter of the law, Angleo has a citizen—Claudio—arrested, for he has gotten his fiance with child and they are not yet married (though it is only by a technicality). Further, he has sentenced Angelo to death by beheading the next morning. Claudio's sister Isabella, so morally upright and chaste that she is about to enter a nunnery when we first meet her, is overcome with grief, and approaches Angelo on her brother's behalf. The deputy, either enamored of her beauty or intrigued by her chastity, offers to free her brother on the condition that she spend a night with him. While she laments her brother's certain death (for what brother would ask his sister to sacrifice her chastity for his life?!), the Duke-friar appears and suggests a plan involving another masked identity: Mariana, a woman who was once engaged to Angelo, whom he abandoned when her dowry was lost in a shipwreck, but who still loves him, should go to Angelo in the night under the guise of Isabella. Mariana agrees, but after their tryst in the middle of the dark night, though Angelo detects no foul play, he sends an order to the prison, demanding not only that Claudio be killed immediately, but that his head be delivered to him as proof. Luckily, the friar intervenes again, and a convenient death from illness in the prison that night provides an alternative head for Angelo's bloodlust. Soon, the Duke is ready to reveal himself, and in the final Act, all is restored to right. Angelo is unmasked as a cruel and unfit leader, and is made to marry Mariana. Claudio is revealed to be alive (for the Duke cruelly let Isabella think him dead in order for his plan to unfold more dramatically), and is at last able to marry his betrothed. Even the town player (for lack of a better term), who fathered a bastard by a whore nearly two years past, is forced to marry the woman and take ownership of the child. In the final moments, the Duke asks for Isabella's hand (in a comedy, no major character can go unmarried in the end), though she is quite surprised by this, and never agrees to marry him before the play is finished. That said, what 16th century gentlewoman can say no to a Duke and get away with it?

Arbus' staging is not quite as contemporized as Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet for the screen, of which I have fond high school memories, but neither is it a traditional, high Elizabethan affair of the Branagh school. The Duke and his deputies wear gray suits and ties, giving them a bit of a Law and Order air in the opening act. The whores wear what whores (literal and figurative) wear today: fishnets and fmbs and sequined mini-dresses. Isabella wears a narrow ankle-length skirt and high-collared white blouse with her hair in a bun, looking very much like a protestant school mistress in some undefined era—the amount of skin showing implies the Victorian (which suits her ethics), but the cuts are of the pre-war 1940s, and the fabrics clearly contemporary. And so, the stage is something of a Banana Republic-meets-Bebe affair, which doesn't jive all that well with the Elizabethan language. Costuming aside, Arbus' work is fine; the quality of the production comes organically from the quality of the script, bubbling up through the quality of the actors, who handle it very comfortably, playing easily with the language and timing themselves perfectly (for this is play that depends on banter and interjections).

The only real problem with pulling the text out of its historical context is that Isabella's character becomes far less sympathetic. In 16th century England, doubtless, it would be a cruel brother who would ask that his sister sacrifice her maidenhead to save his life (in fact, typically a brother would risk his life to save his sister's honor). But in 21st century New York, where strangers meet, exchange fluids, and part within a 24 hour span (or less!), never to see each other again or even recall the experience, Isabella seems awfully selfish; what is one sexual experience, even if it is one that one doesn't want to have, weighed against a family member's life? And so, Isabella, rather than echoing the wise and beautiful Portia (The Merchant of Venice, another legal drama that hinges on a woman's wisdom), appears naive, prudish, and spoiled.

But pulling away from Arbus' staging and observing Isabella's plight in the text alone, one can't help pitying the poor girl—she is the plaything of Angelo, cruelty incarnate, but equally of the "benevolent" Duke, whose ultimate designs on her aren't much different from his deputy's. Both are intrigued by her chastity, and if one seeks to possess it and the other to simply destroy it, neither acknowledges the girl's own true desire: to preserve it and enter a nunnery. A truly provocative production would double Shakespeare's own doubles, highlighting the lurking similarities between Angelo and the Duke.

Theater: The 39 Steps at the Court Theater

Though I took a college class on Hitchcock and watched more than half his movies, I never saw The 39 Steps, which perhaps made this production all the more fun: I had no idea what I was getting into, aside from some kind of mysterious comedy in which a mere four actors play 150 roles. Yes, a mere four actors play 150 roles.

This is even more impressive when the show starts and we see that one actor plays only one role, and one actress plays only three, leaving the other two to handle the remaining 146, often with the sparest of costume changes (the flip of a hat, say, or in one case, the turning of the body from right to left, to show one half clad in trenchcoat, the other in suit jacket).

The nail-biting hilarity begins when bored bachelor Richard Hanney goes out to the theatre one night and is followed home by a mysterious woman in a dark suit and hat, vamp-red lipstick, and an unplaceable Eastern European accent. That night, she's murdered in his apartment, and he sets off to complete her mission (she had disclosed to him before dying that she was a secret agent attempting to stop the export of military information, and that this would require a trip to Scotland to see The Professor). With little more information than this, Hanney sets off to save his country, chased all the while by the Scotland Yard as the murderer of the mysterious lady left in his apartment with a knife in her back. Madcap mayhem ensues, of course, as Hanney tries to escape the heat, find the Professor, and then escape from the Professor once he realizes said Professor is playing for the other team. The answer to the mystery ("What are the 39 Steps?") plays out back again in the theater, once Hanney has been in and out of police custody and picked up a nervous but lovely young blonde on the way.

What makes this production so fantastic (aside from the witty script and the positively brilliant performances by all four cast members, the protean pair in particular, with their special chemistry) is its whimsical candidness about the theater. The set is extremely spare, and the actors double as the crew, but they manage to use their bodies and costumes as props (lifting and shaking a jacket to demonstrate wind-flapping motion during a chase scene atop a "moving train"), and, when that won't do, they drop a backlit scrim and create a shadow tableau, with little puppets (complete with a Hitchcock cameo), flashing lights, and at one moment, descending whirly-propeller planes (a reference to North By Northwest! ((There's a Psycho shower shout-out, too, and tons others if you keep your eyes peeled (and ears: the line "The lady vanished!" references, of course, the Hitchcock flick The Lady Vanishes))).

Theater: Ensemble Studio Theatre's 30th Annual Marathon

I heard about this tiny theater's One Act Marathon (three sets of five one-acts each) through a random mention by an acquaintance, and, since my mom was visiting and needed to be entertained, I picked up a few cheap-o tickets and hoped it wouldn't be too dreadful. Luckily, it was totally brilliant, and we laughed our asses off. We saw program C, which consisted of the following:

In Piscary (Frank D. Gilroy), a co-habitating couple about to get married break their engagement over a fish tank and a game of scrabble, both which serve to focus the man's anxiety that he may be too good for his fiance, and both which serve to demonstrate that, in fact, she is actually too good for him. The play is well-written; the actors (particularly the woman) were perhaps over-doing it, but it was the first of the night, and we all needed the warm-up.

There's no question that In Between Songs (Lewis Black) is the main attraction of the show, and although my pop-cultural retardation means that I don't actually know who Lewis Black is, I have heard the name before, and I now know why. I fell not only into my mother's lap laughing, but almost out of my chair (no exaggeration). At the beginning of the play, two middle aged men sit on couches in suits and stocking feet, listening to Bob Dylan and smoking a joint. That's sort of hilarious already. The music dies, and their exclamations on Bob Dylan devolve into a bout of unstoppable laughter and a spiritual realization. A woman comes in from the kitchen (offstage), where she was making something, but can't remember what, having thrown the box out the window so that the contents could be "free." The conversation turns to distinguishing the 60s versus the 70s versus the 80s versus the 90s versus now, and then they realize the music has been stopped all this time (perhaps ten or fifteen minutes); something must be wrong with the stereo. . . but no, the next song comes on. Time expanded between songs to allow for the entire conversation to elapse. This is the perfect kind of one-act: the elucidation of small things in real time through plain characters. The three actors were pitch-perfect.

Flowers (José Rivera) is the strangest play of the evening, in which an adolescent girl wakes up one day with larger-than-ever zits which then begin to sprout leaves, and then flowers; she grows into a plant and her little brother is the only witness. Feminine teenage hysteria has never been so poignantly illustrated; the girl vacillates between thinking that she is being punished by God and that she has been chosen as a vessel for something amazing. Masculine teenage disinterest, too, is perfectly captured, as her brother continues playing video games and wondering why his sister thinks she's so special. . . until he realizes that she is, and keeps her from committing suicide with hedge clippers. At the play's end, she has elegantly twisted into a tree, and her brother tends to her with a watering can. The tone is less magical realism than simple metaphor, with a twist of ecological sensationalism. I think it's difficult for actors to play younger roles without being patronizing, and these two twenty-somethings did pretty well at playing their tween characters with tenderness.

My mom loved every play of the evening except Japanoir (Michael Feingold), but I didn't mind it terribly, though it was on the long side, and arguably not a genuine one-act (more like a very short 20-act). It was the only drama of the evening, consisting of an interview of a Japanese filmmaker by a caucasian woman intermixed with scenes from two movies (with seeming intertwining plots and doppelganger characters) he is filming: Love Movie and Money Movie. The filmic themes include family secrets, underhanded business dealings, illicit relationships, defiance, murder, cover-ups, prostitution, etc., and are far less interesting than the themes covered by the interview, including the nature of film, the filmmaker's relationship to other Japanese filmmakers, and Japanese versus Western film. His answers are, of course, semi-inscrutable (he is concerned about the air in his films; he proposes that film is darkness; he would like to make a film that consists merely of the sound of hot water being poured into a teapot), and the play thus manages to be amusing, valid, and offensive simultaneously. The actor who plays the filmmaker is perfect, as is his interviewer; the others—players in the films—have less to work with and therefore aren't quite as captivating.

A Very Very Short Play (Jacquelyn Reingold) isn't really that short, but it is hysterically funny, and is probably the most demanding (for the actors) of all the evening's plays. A man (with a giant basket) and a woman (reading a book) are seated in adjacent airline seats, and after he stares at her for quite a bit, he speaks to her; she tries to ignore him and focus on her book, but he goes on at poetic (Seuss, not Auden) length about her charm, eventually asking her just how small she is. She answers that she is one foot tall. He confesses to being more than twelve times her height. He produces a variety of foods from his basket and wins her over by feeding her a cream puff. They fall in love, and the pilot's voice (narrator's voice) over the intercom tells us that they exit to dance amongst the stars for a bit. Never was anything so inoffensively sweet.