Count Mee in

I cannot agree more with my colleague Adam Feldman's assessment of Charles Mee's latest play, Iphigenia 2.0, presented by the Signature Company. Mee's habitual Frankentechnique—grafting contemporary bits and bobs lifted from various sources onto a structure borrowed from classical theater—works wonders here. As usual, the text is up on Mee's website, but it acquires its full resonance onstage.

The production is off to a rocky start—I found Tom Nelis' delivery of Agamemnon's opening monologue stiff and lacking in power—but quickly recovers. Director Tina Landau totally gets the kinetic imperatives of a Mee play, and this one requires a no-holds-barred physicality that expresses itself both in violence and in dance/calisthenics numbers by the soldiers, echoing the actiony fun commercials suggest being in the army is all about.

Far from being a borderline-campy dragon lady, as a reviewer suggested, Kate Mulgrew is seethingly intense as Clytemnestra. The way she hisses the word insane is bone-chilling and her big warning/threat to Agamemnon may well go down as the scariest ten seconds of theater of the year: "If you kill your daughter, I will murder you. I will tear your hands from your arms and your arms from your shoulders. I will burn the flesh from your body, I will beat your bones to dust. What you have begun will not be finished until you are pounded back into the dirt." (I just don't think Victoria Clark, initially slated to play Clytemnestra, could have delivered this speech with the ferocity Mulgrew summons.)

It's also great to see Landau finally hit her stride. I deeply disliked the first shows by her I saw—Stonewall: Night Variations in 1994 and Floyd Collins in 1996—but her inventive, delicate staging of J.M. Barrie's Mary Rose at the Vineyard earlier this year and now this quick, light-on-its-feet Iphigenia 2.0 prove that she's in full control of the tools at her disposal. Few directors in this town can make that boast.

Mee fans rejoice: His Hotel Cassiopeia is at BAM in October, staged by Anne Bogart (I'd quite enjoyed their collaboration on bobrauschenbergamerica a few years back), and of course there are more installments coming in Mee's Signature series. Perhaps, at last, people will acknowledge Mee for what he is: Not just an avant-gardist hovering on the periphery, but one of the three best living American dramatists.

Knockout punchlines

While nobody was looking, at least in the US, Terry Castle has stealthily become one of the funniest contemporary American essayists. Yes, Terry Castle, the Stanford English professor and author of such rib-ticklers as The Female Thermometer: Eighteenth-Century Culture and the Invention of the Uncanny and Clarissa's Ciphers: Meaning and Disruption in Richardson's Clarissa. Fortunately, while The New Yorker continues to host the tired likes of Bruce McCall, Steve Martin and David Sedaris, Castle has found a home away from home at the London Review of Books, which regularly publish her long essays and reviews.

My belated introduction to Castle's humor (I had read her academic book The Apparitional Lesbian eons ago) came with Desperately Seeking Susan, about her friendship with Susan Sontag. Of course part of the point was Castle boasting about her acquaintance with Sontag, but this was shellacked by such a glossy coat of self-deprecation ("Sontag was the Supremo and I the obsequious gofer") that the piece became a goofy take on being a star intellectual's pet academic. And what set pieces! Sontag showing Castle how to evade sniper fire in the streets of Palo Alto. Sontag dragging Castle to a hilariously snotty dinner party hosted by Marina Abramovic ("As a non-artist and non-celebrity, I was so ‘not there’, it seemed – so cognitively unassimilable – I wasn’t even registered enough to be ignored. I sat at one end of the table like a piece of anti-matter.").

Castle's latest piece, Travels with My Mom, takes a hoary, well-trod subject (Castle, her girlfriend Blakey and Castle's 81-year-old mother's New Mexico vacation) and turns it into a dissection of how a middle-aged professor comes to terms with her own aesthetic choices (the Agnes Martin vs Georgia O'Keeffe frame is inspired). Castle is brilliant at suggesting how taste is formed and informed, and the scope of her references is deliciously wide. Droll lines pop up with a rather scary frequency, and Castle is a master of set-up. For instance at one point "Blakey rolls her eyes, sits down, pulls Richard Rorty out of her bag and prepares to wait for several hours." This is funny enough in itself (Rorty as light vacation reading) but it's made funnier by the fact that the sentence is the punchline to a set-up in which the mother-daughter team enters a rubber-stamp store called Stampa Fe.

And unlike the dreaded David Sedaris (who only pretends to be self-mocking), Castle is as jaundiced about herself as she is about her mother, O'Keeffe fans or cheesy New Mexico tourism. At Stampe Fe, she explains, "I try to pretend that the stamps I’m grabbing up are ‘cool’ – that my choices express my highly evolved if not Firbankian sense of camp." But then a horrible though dawns on her: "When we finish our sweep and I’m swaying groggily at the cash register – my mother slumped in her chair behind me like a satisfied pythoness – I’m forced to confront a terrible possibility: that Mavis and I may actually be more alike than I prefer to believe. (…) Is a lurching sumo wrestler in a loincloth really any less vulgar, aesthetically speaking, than my mother’s mermaids or kitty cats? Than a frog wearing a top hat? A poodle playing a tuba? An abyss seems to open up for a moment: I see, as if in Pisgah-vision, the appalling triteness of my sensibility."

Why this woman doesn't have a regular column in an American publication is beyond me. Oh sorry: American editors prefer their female essayists to write about things like dating or motherhood—or politics, as long as they are foaming-at-the-mouth conservative ranters or give the guys in charge nicknames like "Rummy."

I love the 70s

Purely coincidentally, I recently watched James Toback's Fingers (1978) and William Friedkin's Cruising (1980) back to back. The latter is being reissued in a director's cut while the former finally reached the top of my Netflix queue (I booked it after seeing its French remake, The Beat That My Heart Skipped). Both movies are essentially about men facing—or not—their own nature. By the end of Cruising, Al Pacino seems to have reached a point of no return; Fingers' Harvey Keitel loses himself in violence and Bach (not violence and Beethoven, that's Clockwork Orange) in order to avoid dealing with himself.

Cruising was swirling in controversy even before it came out—its shoot was disrupted by activists who protested what they said was a homophobic view of the gay community. Almost 30 years later, I have to admit I found their objections baseless. The cops, for instance, are almost (almost!) never dismissive of the S&M milieu that serves as background to their investigation, and they genuinely try to solve the murders of gay men. Pacino's character never shows any disgust or revulsion, just an increasing fascination, with the hardcore clubs he explores. (Compare with Hollywood's current infatuation with man-child characters stuck in perpetual adolescence and reflexive homo-panic.) In his commentary for the Fingers DVD, Toback explains that Keitel's character has homosexual leanings, and a lot of his permanent unease results from his trying to repress them.

Both movies have a deadpan matter-of-factness that serves them very well, though they come at it from different angles: Cruising from the unique combo of genre and artiness that Friedkin embodied in the 70s and 80s (Michael Mann owes a lot to Friedkin's 1985 To Live and Die in L.A., for instance) while Fingers represents Toback's attempt to pull off the seeming contradiction of neo-New Wave baroque. Everybody in Fingers, except for the father of Keitel's character, is opaque—you know very little about them, and there is very little explanation of their actions or, god forbid, motivations (how I hate that word!).

Both movies were also shot on location in New York, and look completely bewitching now. At one point, Keitel goes into John's Pizzeria on Bleecker St to collect money on behalf of his father. Toback doesn't even bother to change the place's name, and there's even a bit of a joke about the fact that John's doesn't sell slices. There's also a superb shot in Battery Park City, with the base of the then-new Twin Towers in the background.

It's also striking to note how underpopulated the city looks. Now, I know these are movies, but Toback and Friedkin obviously were concerned with a certain realistic depiction of the milieus, and the density in both Fingers' Soho and Cruising's West Village is impressively low: Where is everybody?!? The city is simultaneously teeming with anarchic life and sparsely populated, giving the characters room to breathe. As a backdrop, it suggests freedom and possibilities, something our current hive of activity actually stifles.

Queens shenanigans

It's incredibly difficult to pull off classic disco live, but Escort was up to the task at PS 1's Warm Up yesterday afternoon. The Brooklyn band has an intricate sound that incorporates both strings and horns, and I was wondering how it'd come across in a concrete courtyard. Sure enough the mix was rather muddy, but Escort overcame it to deliver a set whose old-school convinction made me teary at times. How they pull it off is obvious: They don't skimp. Not only were there 15 of them onstage, but the music sounded like something it really does require take 15 people to pull off.

Compare and contrast with sprawling indie-rock outfits like Architecture in Helsinki or I'm from Barcelona, who may have band members in the double digits but still produce a thin sound. It's as if they needed a separate person to play the triangle on one song—and then they'd absolutely need to bring that person along on tour as well, of course. It's an utter waste of resources.

Back to Warm Up for a sec: The crowd yesterday was the most mixed—in racial, gender, orientation and even age terms—I've seen in a long time, and it looked as if everybody was actually having fun. I wasn't overly impressed by the DJ (whose name I didn't catch) who was spinning right before Escort, however. Playing a rather long mix of "Supernature" is excusable if obvious, but Paul Simon's "Late in the Evening" is a bore, no matter how much you tart it up with a dance remix. Playing Hair's "Age of Aquarius" was fine but there was no need to follow it up with "Let the Sun Shine." Similarly, one ESG song is cool; two in a row is lazy. Come on, if you have an hour, don't waste our time by repeating acts!

The humble diva

Thanks to my colleague Steve Smith for passing on the link to a fantastic self-portrait of opera superstar Anna Netrebko. In this rambling monologue, Trebs digs deep and reveals herself to be a complex, troubled…oh, who am I kidding? Among my favorite quotes:

“Breakfast I am eating a hot sandwich, like with the cheese, toasted.”

“I have lots of girl friends but I’m definitely straight.” (This comes out of the blue and seems to be in response to the sapphic rumors swirling around her.)

“In St Petersburg I am living with a girl friend, Katya. Now she has a little baby, who lives with us too.” (Ah, okay then…)

“Though my voice has doubled in the past few years. It started suddenly to be bigger, because I was using the microphone between my tits!”

“I am not a vicious diva.”

“I sleep naked. When it is cold I am wearing the flannel pyjamas.”

Dear Dilettante readers: Be warned that from now on, I will always refer to love scenes in opera as “erotical.”

The horror, the horror

The Sheila and I went to the Jersey Shore for a couple of days and being contrarians, we stayed in the least hoppin' town of all. One word is enough to suggest the anomaly that is Ocean Grove: dry. Yep, you won't find any booze in that quaint little hamlet. You can't buy it in stores and you can't buy it in restaurants. Finding it is easy, mind you: You only have to follow the boardwalk north to Asbury Park or south to Bradley Beach. But the folks of Ocean Grove get their kicks out the Methodist way—by praying, eating a lot of ice cream (only $2 for a small sundae!), and buying scented candles and wooden ducks. The big event on Saturday night was a double bill of Air Supply and Little River Band at the Great Auditorium (the size of a football field and usually hosting preachers). The GA is surrounded by Ocean Grove's biggest oddity: a tent city of over 100 permanent, trailer home–size tents, passed down from generation to generation.

We stayed at a small inn so quaint that people were giving us dark looks when we were watching High School Musical 2 in the common room (no TVs in the guest rooms) on Sunday evening. But I was pretty happy with our rugged accommodations because the inn had a bookshelf of beach readings left behind by previous vacationers. I don't mind sharing a bathroom if I can get my mitts on old paperbacks by John Saul, Clive Cussler, Dean Koontz, Sidney Sheldon and—prize of prizes!—Judith Krantz. I finished the book I'd brought, Scott Smith's The Ruins (and left it behind, in true inn spirit) and got through Saul's Guardian. Add to these Joe Schreiber's upcoming Eat the Dark, which I recently polished off over a couple of subway rides, and a few thoughts about horror fiction surfaced. Okay, one thought: It's in a pretty sorry state, relying on clichés and skimpy psychological insights, and tying it all up with plain bad writing.

As a dedicated genre writer, Saul is easy to dismiss by most critics. He's one step above Dean Koontz, but not a very high step. If I recall correctly the handful of his books that I've read, Guardian is no better or worse. Suffice it to say that it hinges on a revelation of lycanthropy and a government experiment gone wild—and I'm not spoiling anything, as any reader with a tenth of a brain will figure it all out early on. But I got through it fairly painlessly. Eat the Dark, on the other hand, is plain embarrassing, like something written by a ten-year-old weaned on Z-grade serial-killer books and movies.

Smith's novel is the most "literary" of the three and it even got a rave from Laura Miller in Salon. But a lot of her assessment seems based on misreading. Miller writes that "The de facto leader, Jeff, is a medical student who probably keeps a copy of 'The Worst-Case Survival Manual' on his bedside table." Except I seem to remember that Jeff is going to enter med school after his Mexico vacation—he's not a med student yet. Miller also writes that he "is the closest any character comes in 'The Ruins' to a traditional hero: He's fairly resourceful, he makes plans, and when he decides that something nasty has to be done, he's got the nerve to do it." Perhaps, but half of his decisions are also wrong: He's the one who gets the group on the path to destruction to begin with; because he's convinced he's always right, he always dimisses his girlfriend's warnings. It's hard to find a a better symbol for the gung-ho American male than Jeff. Furthermore, the book entirely relies on the Idiot's Principle, ie the characters need to behave like total morons and do counterintuitive things for things to move along.

On the other hand (and I'm not sure whether this is entirely on purpose), The Ruins turns out to be a pretty fascinating indictment of young Americans: spoiled, brattish, obsessed with instant gratification and completely unable to think more than two minutes ahead—actions don't have consequences for these cretins. I suppose that is the real horror of the book.

Could Stephen King's 1970s and 1980s novels have represented a high point of modern horror writing, and we didn't even know it?

Ukraine stop the beat

Ouch, sorry for the painful pun but it's Friday. Just a quickie to say that my review of Marina Lewycka's novel Strawberry Fields is in this week's Time Out. Overall I really enjoyed the book and because I had limited space, I opted to focus on the positive. My main beef with Lewycka's rotating POVs is when she gets into a dog's head and writes from its perspective. Those passages are waaaay too cute, but fortunately they're also brief. I have very little patience for literary pets, and pretty much believe they shouldn't be either "authors" (I mean you, Rita Mae Brown, crediting a cat as coauthor) or even subjects (I mean you, Marley). Okay, maybe as subjects but only peripheral ones—not every writer is Jack London.

Polymorphous fun

My first trip to the Highline Ballroom (very nicely located next to a Western Beef emporium) yesterday evening was largely fun: excellent sightlines, excellent sound and two great party bands. It's hard to ask for more on a Monday night.

The albums of opener Gravy Train!!!! are as dispensable as the band's gigs are memorable. Basically dumbing down and amping up the early Peaches formula, the quartet launches a high-energy, potty-mouthed frontal attack on what makes up a show by a "normal" American rock band. Which means that during entire songs nobody on stage is playing any instrument (yay for backing tapes!) and the non-stop movement looks like the one juiced-up cheerleaders would stumble into. It's all sweaty, disheveled, frantic, horny. The highlight was when they invited a member of the audience to join them on stage during "Frat Party"—and what member! That huge bearded guy must have weighted 300 pounds and he wore only a skimpy red loincloth. He ended up making out with Gravy Trainer Hunx (the others are Chunx, Junx and Funx).

Junior Senior were like Yngwie Malmsteen by comparison, but their technical abilities didn't stand in the way of their good humor. They started off with their foot on the accelerator and left it there for the next hour. I'm not sure they needed two backup singers but hey, if it works for them…

What struck me most yesterday evening was the atmosphere of goofy, utopian polymorphousness: The crowd was mixed and happy and dancing, the bands embraced an all-accepting sexuality that felt not so much militant as matter of fact. It felt really far from the uptight masculinity of so many of the retro "punk-funk" bands. No wonder Junior Senior's most obvious influence is the B-52s, a band that created an alternative universe ruled by freaks and nerds, and that its new album features guest vocals from Kate Pierson and Cindy Wilson, along with all three Le Tigre members.

MP3 Gravy Train!!!! "Club Situation" (from All the Sweet Stuff, 2007)
MP3 Junior Senior "Dance, Chance, Romance" (from Hey Hey My My Yo Yo, 2007)

Amen to that

In the latest issue of The Believer, Nick Hornby interviews David Simon, cocreator of The Wire. I already loved that show, but now my admiration for Simon himself has grown even further. First of all, he points out that unlike The Sopranos and Deadwood, to which his show is usually compared, The Wire is not Shakespearean in inspiration but looks back to an older model: It's not about "the angst and machinations of the central characters" but about "doomed and fated protagonists who confront a rigged game and their own mortality. (…) The Wire is a Greek tragedy in which the postmodern institutions are the Olympian forces. (…) In much of television, and in a good deal of our stage drama, individuals are often portrayed as rising above institutions to achieve catharsis. In this drama, the institutions always prove larger, and those characters with hubris enough to challenge the postmodern construct of American empire are invariably mocked, marginalized, or crushed." The former member of the French Socialist Party in me cheered that one.

Another statement resonated with the current member of the media world in me: "Fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell." Simon then explains that he preferred "assuming the reader/viewer knew more than he did, or could, with a sensible amount of effort, hang around long enough to figure it out." What? Effort? You mean the reader has to work at something? Anathema in our world of easily digestible factoids!

So come on, fork out $8 for The Believer. There's more wisdom from Simon, plus goodies like Elizabeth Isadora Gold's essay on 1970s feminist novels (it actually made me want to reread Marilyn French's The Women's Room) and Victor Brand's introduction to the world of Boris Vian.

Le It man

Few contemporary French writers get translated in the US, and even fewer have any kind of name recognition. Michel Houellebecq is one of them. For better or for worse, he's been the It man of modern French lit for more than a decade now: His novels are best-sellers, he gets sued for racist language (he once famously stated that Islam is a stupid religion), he asks a NY Times reporter if she'll take off her clothes, etc. Not only did he record an album on which he sang/spoke some of his own poems, set to music by (him again!) Bertrand Burgalat, but he toured it on French beach resorts one summer.

For his latest project, Houellebecq is directing the film adaptation of his last book, 2005's The Possibility of an Island (one I wasn't crazy about initially, but which had won me over by the time it hit its desperate post-apocalyptic ending). Shooting is about to wrap up in Spain, where Houellebecq resides. Benoît Magimel plays the lead, and Arielle Dombasle is also on board, but I'm more intrigued by some of the behind-the-scenes contributors: Rem Koolhas is slated to design the remnants of a futuristic city, while conceptual artist Rosemarie Tröckel and curator Hans-Ulrich Obrist are working on made-to-measure dioramas—kinda like the ones at the Museum of Natural History, but, you know, arty. Also intriguing: Houellebecq claims that one of his visual influences is Kraftwerk circa Robots.

MP3 Michel Houellebecq "Paris-Dourdan" (from Présence Humaine, 2000)
Michel Houellebecq "Derniers Temps" (from Présence Humaine, 2000)

La pop-itude

Barbara Carlotti's show on Friday was even better than I expected: Her voice was incredibly…poised is the first word that comes to mind. The Sheila is still struggling a bit with her French and wasn't familiar with the songs, yet she said she immediately "got" them. It didn't hurt that Carlotti's backing band was ace, easily reproducing live not so much the letter as the spirit of the record's arrangements. We chatted a bit after the show and got around to talking about producer/songwriter extraordinaire Bertrand Burgalat, who's best known in the US for his work with April March and who produced Carlotti's first EP. Burgalat's most recent credits are on the hit of the spring in France: the debut album by Christophe Willem, who won Nouvelle Star (= French Idol) in 2006.

You may recall my post about the 2007 edition of that reality-TV show, but the amazing weirdness really started last year, when Willem—who was nicknamed la Tortue (the turtle) by one of the judges—won. Based on YouTube clips of the contest, I wasn't entirely convinced, but the album, which came out this April, is really, really good. Zazie, Bertrand Burgalat and Katerine took turns writing and arranging the songs and the result is the kind of record you would never expect from an American Idol: idiosyncratic, playful and unabashedly pop. On American Idol, the men who don't necessarily fit traditional standards of masculinity end up either like the butt of jokes (Sanjaya) or emasculated, unthreatening puppets (Clay Aiken—the new Johnny Mathis or Barry Manilow, without the talent). Willem's voice is very androgynous but he doesn't hide behind it and comes across as sexy in a likable, dorky way. I find that combination particularly interesting on his duet with comedian/director Valérie Lemercier because their voices sound so similar; the song doesn't differentiate their identities but melds them—it's the Persona of pop music. Whoa!

Here are two of the tracks Burgalat worked his magic on: the duet with Lemercier (who unfortunately doesn't sing enough—I think her only musical venture since her brilliant 1996 album, Chante, is last year's duet with ex-Mikado Pascale Borel, "J'ai un mari") and a song cowritten by Benoît de Villeneuve, who released a rather good album with ex–Nouvelle Vague siren Mélanie Pain a couple of years ago.

MP3 Christophe Willem and Valérie Lemercier "Pourquoi tu t'en vas?" (from Inventaire, 2007)
MP3 Christophe Willem "Demain" (from Inventaire, 2007)

Still reading

My review of Ana Castillo's novel, The Guardians, in the Los Angeles Times is up. Quite a good yarn that book is, too. Actually it's been slowish on the arts front lately so I've been doing quite a bit of reading, and I'll post an update on that as soon as possible. Scoop: None of that reading involves anything by Khaled Hosseini.

Island girl

I'm really looking forward to Barbara Carlotti's show at Joe's Pub tonight, which I previewed in TONY. To recap: Carlotti is a French singer-songwriter who sings with an amazing cleanness of tone; she's been compared to another Barbara (the one who goes without a last name) and while the two share a certain vocal color, Carlotti's referencing of 60s pop makes her a lot more accessible to non-French speakers.

Carlotti's debut album, Les lys brisés, has been a staple on my CD player lately. I particularly love its very French production style, in which the vocals are mixed way up and very crisply. No wonder her first EP was made with Bertrand Burgalat, who's a genius at taking 60s recording techniques and bringing them into the 00s without sounding gratuitously nostalgic; a remnant from those sessions, "Cannes," appears on the album. Tonight, Carlotti's backed by the band she'd brought to Montreal's Francofolies, where she just played, so we should get a nicely full sound.

And this is a double shout out since Carlotti is part Corsican, with family living about half an hour from mine on the island. Yay for the homegirl!

MP3 Barbara Carlotti "Les lys brisés" (from Les lys brisés, 2006)
MP3 Barbara Carlotti "Peu importe" (from Les lys brisés, 2006)

Two more

The Dilettante thanks her London correspondant for these two clips:

Martin Short as Jerry Lewis in Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from an Idiot's Marriage:



And SCTV's Monster Chiller Horror Theater presents Ingmar Burgman's Whispers of the Wolf:

Two less

Ingmar Bergman, who died today, was one of my favorite directors, both in film and theater. His movies are so well known that there's no point in even trying to explain why he was the last of the great. Even though I'm an atheist, his thorny relationship with god thrilled me—it remains rare to see an artist unafraid to tackle the metaphysical, and man's struggle to make sense of it all. I still vividly remember seeing Through a Glass Darkly while a student in Paris, and coming out of the theater with both a pounding headache and a knot in my stomach. And he was a perhaps even stage director: Seeing his King Lear at the Théâtre de l'Odéon in the mid-’80s was a shock to my personal system (I started uncontrollably sobbing just looking at the stage, before the actors had exchanged a single word!). Looking back on it, I think that's when my allegiance switched from film to theater. Let's send him off on a uncharacteristic note of levity—an utter lack of humor is one of the things I actually liked best about IB: no compromise—as French and Saunders lovingly send up the master here.

The other loss looks "minor" compared to Bergman, but Michel Serrault was the very definition of character actor, offering a series of memorable turns in that much neglected category. In France he achieved his legendary status when he starred in La Cage aux folles, written by and costarring his buddy Jean Poiret. (The two had formed a classic comedy team and had performed the original play version of La Cage more than 1,500 in the 1970s, before it was turned into a movie.) He was such a habitual, familiar presence that French cinema without him will be like a house from a which a beloved armchair has been removed, leaving a dustless imprint to mark the spot. Le Monde has a nice video tribute here.

Mind expansion

The 61st edition of the Avignon Festival has just ended—not that you'd know the three-week event had happened at all by reading the US press. That's okay I guess: Avignon is only one of the largest theater festivals in the world. That's probably why for the past several days the Times' chief critic, Ben Brantley, has been blogging about his theater marathon in London; typically, it started off with a show starring Orlando Bloom. Meanwhile, Avignon has presented productions staged by the likes of Frank Castorf, Ariane Mnouchkine, Rodrigo Garcia, Sasha Waltz and Romeo Castellucci. And that's only the ones who might ring a bell among NYC theater freaks. I mean, just look at the photo on the left: Doesn't it make you want to see more? At least you will be able to for this particular one: It's from Castellucci's show, Hey Girl!, which is coming to Montclair in February.

What's frustrates me is this lack of inquisitiveness about what's happening in the field you're meant to be covering. If you're going to spend some time across the Atlantic, wouldn't it make sense to also cross the Channel and poke around? Wouldn't you be the least bit curious? Wouldn't you want to experience theater that's completely different from what we see here, instead of just a more competent version of our regular fare? (For make no mistake, that's what London offers.) Reading the Times, you would never know that in the past 10, 15 years, an entire generation of directors has rethought European theater, and that a new generation is now coming up to scramble up the parameters all over again.

Compare this attitude with The New Yorker's Alex Ross, who regularly covers a wide geographical area. Typically, he just wrote a piece about a new opera titled Alice in Wonderland that just premiered in Munich (check out the mouth-watering video here). What's great about the article is how Ross translates the appeal of the production for the likes of me, someone with an interest in the field but who isn't a hardcore buff. He also makes it very clear why covering this type of show is important not only for American readers, but for the health of the American opera scene itself.

Screwball this!

Right after seeing Shaw's The Millionairess, I read David Denby's New Yorker piece on romantic and screwball comedies. It has already elicited quite a few reactions, including this one underlining a queer reading of the older movies and a lengthy back-and-forth on Emdashes (heh…though it did lead me to Katha Pollitt's blog post about Knocked Up).

What particularly rankled me in Denby's piece is his assertion that "Romantic comedy is entertainment in the service of the biological imperative. The world must be peopled." (This last line fished in Much Ado About Nothing.)

Say what? Denby must have drank quite a potent cocktail of crazy because this line of inquiry is nuts. In case we didn't get it the first time around, he quickly confirms it: "Romantic comedy civilizes desire, transforms lust into play and ritual—the celebration of union in marriage."

If there's one reason to like classic "romcoms," it's because the reproductive instinct never seemed to enter the equation, and lust never felt as if it depended on marriage. Marriage was something the characters seemed to enter on a whim, and they'd leave it just as quickly; it was a formality. This is one of the (many) reasons these movies are so popular among gays: They didn't treat the heterosexual institution like some semi-saintly, carved in stone, now and forever status. The best comedies of the 30s and 40s turned sex into wordplay and vice versa, and this liberation from the boring missionary impulses of the hinterlands was shown not only as a source of great fun, but as the right, enviable thing to do.

The hinterlands, by the way, were depicted, via the Ralph Bellamy characters, as embodying all-American squareness and dullness. Those were the days when it was okay to mock hicks from, say, Arkansas or Oklahoma, no matter how rich and well-meaning they were. They may have been carrying both cash and wedding rings, but they still had no clue. Now, the country is where urbanites go to find their true selves. I don't see current comedies (the ones created by a supposedly elitist Hollywood) treating either NASCAR fans or the owners of suburban McMansions with this kind of derision, although they should—it's high time someone sent up this dumbfounding inanity.

A Shaw thing

It is red-faced at my own tardiness that I finally get around to plugging Project Shaw, in which the Gingold Theatrical Group (named after Hermione, of course) and producer-director David Staller stage readings of every single one of George Bernard Shaw's plays, no matter how minor. This admirable endeavor started in January ’06 and Staller—the soul behind it all—has put on 18 plays so far, each for the humble ticket price of $15. Even better, some of New York's most formidable thespians are lending a hand—along with some of New York's most formidable theater scribes, including TONY's own David Cote and Adam Feldman.

It was Mr. Feldman's guest appearance as "the Manager" in 1935's The Millionairess (and the mouth-watering rumor that this was the playwright's attempt at screwball comedy) (and the fact that I finally remembered to write down the damn thing on my calendar) that prompted me to catch my first Project Shaw this past Monday.

Mr. Feldman was so magnetic in his brief scene, his (Irish?) accent so unerring that I blanked out the rest of the evening. Some of the other people crowding the stage included, if I remember correctly, Tyne Daly, her one-time Herbie (when she did Gypsy on Broadway) Jonathan Hadary, Rebecca Luker and Daniel Jenkins (the latter two on their night off from Mary Poppins, where they play the Bankses). The play itsef was little more than a period curio, but all the more precious for its delicious datedness. Now I have to go back for a show with Mr. Cote!

Project Shaw is taking a break in August, when its home, the Players on Gramercy Park South, closes. The next performance is Man and Superman on September 17—but are they going to do the lengthy "Don Juan in Hell" act? Note to David Staller: This might be a fine opportunity for TONY's dynamic duo. I'm just sayin'. In the meantime, check out their Sitemeter-busting vlog.

Speaking too soon

I really should have kept my big trap shut: The first three shows I saw at Lincoln Festival 2007 were excellent, but the next two…maybe I jinxed myself.

The nadir was De Monstruos y Prodigios. This Mexican production about the history of castrati was one of the worst things I've seen in the past few years. It was the worst combination possible: Jorge Kuri's amateurish text regurgitated facts and anecdotes, while director Claudio Valdès Kuri threw every pseudo-avant gimmick he had at us. Why was Napoleon riding circles on a horse (a real one)? The play's title obviously comes from Dr. Ambroise Paré 16th-century book Des monstres et prodiges, which dealt with "monsters" such as siamese twins, but was it a reason to make him half of the pair of siamese twins that narrates the story? Add to that a lead castrato played by what sounded suspiciously like a tenor singing in falsetto as opposed to a real countertenor, resulting in hideous screeching. (The fact that the woman sitting behind me had thought it'd be a great idea to cover her forearms with jingly-jangly bracelets added even more aggravation to the evening.) Life is just too short for this nonsense.

I did not care much for Heisei Nakamura-za's Hokaibo because the piece's broad humor felt at odd with kabuki aesthetics and formal vocabulary. The production felt jarring to me, but I'm far from being an expect in that theatrical particular tradition. I just don't find jokes about James Bond and ham-handed audience interaction that funny. Only at sporadic intervals (a pose frozen in cross-eyed ferocity, for instance) did the show hint at what could have been—and what was when Heisei Nakamura-za last hit town, three years ago.

Ah well, you can't win every time—something also demonstrated by my ongoing catching-up with The Wire on DVD. Contrary to the prevailing critical winds, the third season has failed to impress so far. Too many characters means that they don't get the kind of in-depth treatment the less-crowded first and second seasons allowed.

Uptown harvest

I've quite enjoyed the three shows I've seen so far at the Lincoln Center Festival. At this rate 2007 may be my favorite edition, and I've been in town for almost all of them.

The award for best surprise goes to Fables de La Fontaine. I had pretty much dismissed Robert Wilson (see my account of Quartett for the latest entry in an alarmingly long list of frustrating experiences) and went mainly to hear the classic text enunciated by actors from the Comédie-Française. The thing with Wilson is that at this point, he has a one-style-fits-all approach; when it doesn't fit the material, you're in for hours of stylish ennui, but when it does, the results are spectacular and completely unique—for better or for worse, you immediately know when you're watching a Wilson show. Miraculously, his style meshed perfectly with the wicked cruelty of La Fontaine's fables, in which animals act out short morality tales. (I won't soon forget Wolf's red, red tongue flicking out in gleeful anticipation at the sight of hapless Lamb.) For once, Wilson's hieratic, emotionless staging brought out subtext instead of flattening everything in sight. As an added bonus, I was lucky to attend one of the performances in which the Comédie-Française's big boss, Muriel Mayette, appeared (she was replacing the injured Madeleine Marion).

I was also impressed by Gemelos (pictured), brought to us by the Chilean Compañia Teatro Cinema. The play is based on Agota Kristof's The Notebook, the first in a trilogy (which I actually read about ten years ago) set in an unnamed post-WWII communist country, likely to be Kristof's own Hungary. While I was surprised at first by the production's warm visual tones (I tend to associate the Iron Curtain with a gray palette), the staging's inventiveness quickly became evident. The three actors evolved in what looked like a puppet theater and used stylized movement and perspective tricks to draw us into Kristof's increasingly sinister story. Shades of Shockheaded Peter and various other productions from the Improbable Company in the treatment, and I loved the way the show's darkness so gradually set in.

The most radical show so far was Un Hombre que se Ahoga, an adaptation of Chekhov's Three Sisters by a Buenos Aires company. Director Daniel Veronese (whose Women Dreamt Horses I kick myself for missing at PS 122 a few months ago) basically gave the play the kind of treatment people in cardiac arrest get on ER: two paddles to the chest and ZAP! His note in the program explains "It is a play without cuts in time or space; without music or light cues; with a summarized text; with modified scenes, their location shifted; and with characters wandering around, sometimes in improper situations."

Oh god…

But wait, that's not all! Veronese also effected a "change in gender of each one of Chekhov's characters. There are now three brothers confined in a house surrounded by military women."

It took me a little while to get used to the reversal—the men were not playing women in drag but men, ie Masha, Olga and Irina were dudes' names, while Andrei was a female character. Once you accepted the premise—and why not?—and the fact that this would be a radical jumble of Three Sisters, the production proved surprisingly enjoyable; it helped that the actors (wearing their regular street clothes) were superb throughout, with special kudos for Pablo Messiez' impetuously slackerish Natasha and Claudio Da Passano's hangdog, world-weary Olga.

Perhaps the prospect of extreme deconstruction—read: boring—scared off local theatergoers, since there were plenty of empty seats at the performance I attended. Too bad: Far from being a sterile, barren academic jerk-off, the show was gloriously physical and surprisingly accessible, and at 90 minutes, a quick and efficient punch. It made me ponder once again the sad state of experimentation when it comes to NYC companies.

Cherry on the cake: At the post-performance Q&A, the audience (mostly Spanish-speaking) fired off at the actors some of the most thoughtful, articulate questions I've ever heard at any of these events. You reap what you sow…

Letting me down gently

I'm finally getting to dealing with the long-awaited weekend, which has come and gone. Did it measure up to my expectations?

My colleague Steve Smith wrote about last Friday night's Immortal show on his blog, and I agree with pretty much everything, including the pungency of the air in the venue and the observation that "the band got the job done." To me, the show lacked that intengible bit of ooomph that would have made it transcendent. (It didn't help that after a while, Abbath starts sounding like a burping toad.) Let's put it this way: It was good, but it wasn't evil, the way 1349 was a few months ago.

The audience was also red-hot with eager anticipation—but easier on the nose—the following night at City Center. The subtitle of the evening might as well have been: The Best Musical Ever with the Star Who Was Born to Be in It. In other words, we were there to see Patti LuPone play Mama Rose in Gypsy.

My colleague Adam Feldman raves about the show in TONY, and I agree with quite a few of his observations (especially how great Laura Benanti is). But to me the production misses transformative transcendence by a mile. Some of it has to do with the insane level of expectation, something I was as guilty as everybody else. But there's no helping Arthur Laurents' perfunctory staging. It's a textbook illustration of the fact that being close to the material—and Laurents, who wrote Gypsy's book, is as close as can be—may not be a good thing when it comes to translating it to the stage.

Here's what I'd love to see but never will, or at least not while Laurents is alive, and not until New York producers grow some balls: Go dark on Gypsy. And I don't mean call Sam Mendes—no, go real dark and give the show to Ivo van Hove or Thomas Ostermeier. Let them dynamite Gypsy to reveal the negative force that sucks everything into its ashen vortex: Let Rose be a real monster, without sugarcoating her by unearthing flickering embers of warmth or suggesting that deep inside she does mean well.

When Baby June grows up and still does her same old kiddie number, Rose should be the selfish, manipulative creator of a creepy adult JonBenet. When the troupe ends up at the burlesque house, the strippers should be run-down hags shooting heroin, and when Rose pimps out Louise to a stripping career, it should look like a mother selling her daughter into white slavery.

Gypsy should be more than drama, for in that case drama is the spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down for wimpy theatergoers. No, Gypsy should be staged like the tragedy it really is. And I say, bring it on!

Old times' sake

A short review in Time Out of the reissue of early material by the wondrous Barbara Manning. Collecting Lately I Hear Scissors and One Perfect Green Blanket plus previously unreleased early songs, the new three-CD set is out on Rainfall, aka Pat Thomas (who used to run Heyday, the label that released these records to begin with). Listening to these CDs really brought me back to the late 80s/early 90s glory days of American indie rock—uncoincidentally, perhaps, also the time when I was settling in the US; the two remains inextricably linked for me. The difference between then and now isn't so much in the music per se (I hate it when people wax poetic about some glorified olden times when everything sounded better) as in the way we discovered it. The process required curiosity, determination, patience and a certain amount of detective skills. Perhaps it led to a different kind of identification with a band. It certainly made things more difficult for the bands themselves, at least in terms of pure logistics.

Elsewhere in TONY, you can peek at my slide show documenting the transformation of Avery Fisher Hall into a kabuki theater for performances by the Heisei Nakamura-za troupe. Their show three years ago was eye-opening (and eye-popping), so I'm looking forward to the new one. Especially since as far as what I've seen so far, Lincoln Center Festival 2007 is three for three. More on that in a further post.

Zany zounds of zummer

Every country has its parodic tradition, but in France this often results in monster hit songs. In 2002 for instance, comedian Michaël Youn scored with the fictitious Bratisla Boys, a spoof of Eastern European boy bands, and their megahit "Stach Stach." Last year, he created the hugely popular Fatal Bazooka, which mostly parodies rap and ragga, shooting them down with the subtlety of the titular weapon. One of Fatal Bazooka's best tricks is to dismantle its targets' vulgarity and/or self-importance by transposing their tropes to different settings—the French Alps seem to be a favorite—and displaying decidedly normal bodies.

In "Trankillement," for instance, Young and his crew underscore the fatuity of American hip-hop videos, from their casual sexism to their gross materialism, by moving the action to a rural and small-town set, using small Euro cars instead of bloated SUVs, and backyard wet slides instead of MTV beach-house glittering pools. And all on a ten-euro budget, of course.



In "J'aime trop ton boule" (the previous single from Fatal's 2006 album, T'as vu?), Youn sends up ragga's hypermasculinity and its tortured relationship with homosexuality—as in, a lot of these dudes are completely repulsed by it but they spend all their time preening for other guys like peacocks on parade. Youn just takes that attitude to its logical conclusion. Stick with it: The video looks like standard t&a (well, almost standard—the Weird Al vibe is pretty strong!) for the first minute. Then TV personality Magloire enters as the lust interest, the jackhammer comes out and…yeah, it goes downhill again.



Catchy, uh? Now you can sing along!

MP3 Fatal Bazooka "J'aime trop ton boule" (from T'as vu?, 2006)
MP3 Fatal Bazooka "Trankillement" (from T'as vu?, 2006)

Wavelength

Yes, it's that time of the year again: Bastille Day (aka le 14 juillet) approaches. I'll talk about trends in current French pop on WNYC's Soundcheck sometime after 2pm on Thursday 12. Alas, I probably won't have time to play many songs; depending on what makes it to the air, I'll post a few different ones here. Watch this space.

Name calling

In his NY Times column on Friday, Clyde Haberman discussed a new study showing that in seven states (but the trend is likely to be national), schools are (re)named "not for people but rather for animals, lakes, hills and other features of nature. (…) Historical figures have taken it on the chin, especially American presidents." In Fayetteville, Arkansas, for instance, Jefferson Elementary School became Owl Creek.

I'm already frustrated by the fact that too many American streets tend to be named after numbers, trees or a relatively small pool of people (JFK, MLK, Roosevelt, etc.), so it saddens me to see schools identified via ever-more bland monikers. Wouldn't it be a lot more fun to have Gertrude Stein High and George Kaufman Middle School? Here in New York, we do have many streets named after locals, but they tend to be honorary names, not the actual street names.

In France we of course have tons of middle and high schools named after various kings, generals, Jeanne d'Arc or De Gaulle. But plenty of others are named after writers (Corneille, Alexandre Dumas, Stéphane Mallarmé, Alphonse Daudet), scientists (Buffon, Pasteur), artists (Picasso, Ingres) and, this being France, philosophers (Michel Montaigne, Henri Bergson, Montesquieu, Jean-Jacques Rousseau). And let's not forget singers (Jacques Brel, Georges Brassens) and at least one comedian (Coluche)

And then there are the ones after regional figures: In Corsica, where I grew up, the local giants—Pascal Paoli and Napoléon—of course have schools named after them. Other choices dig deeper into local lore: I attended the Lycée Giocante de Casabianca, which is named after the son of 18th-century Corsican Navy officer (and representative to the Convention Assembly) Luce de Casabianca; both were killed by the British during the battle of Aboukir. Turns out there's even a British poem about Giocante's heroic death. I mean, WTF?!?

All this to say that naming a school after writers and poets and artists helps a nation remember what's important in life, and where it came from. Obviously it has the potential to be perceived by some as divisive but you build a country by rallying around its artists, writers and scientists. Of course, I realize I'm hopelessly old-school and old-world in thinking like this…

A cold wind blowing down

It's not that long since my last Swedish post but what can I say, it's Pavlovian: I'm drawn to Swedish music. Doesn't matter if it's mainstream or obscure—I love it all. And so in addition to gigabytes of new discoid acts, I end up with, say, a box set of Agnetha Fältskog solo albums or archival recordings of never-were proto-doom bands . The latest arrivals on my player are the two-CD set Svensk Postpunk (Klassiker) and the reissue of the one and only full-length by 1970s hard-rocking combo Solid Ground (Mellotronen). Sigh…

I have to admit I was initially disappointed by Svensk Postpunk because save for a few exceptions the overall vibe is closer to Echo and the Bunnymen, Joy Division and early Cold Wave than Kleenex or Gang of Four. But after getting back in touch with my inner goth, I was able to enjoy the music; even better, the only band I already knew in the batch was Leather Nun, and so the compilation is an ear-opening introduction to a specific little music niche.

Stockholm combo Kitchen and the Plastic Spoons certainly counts as a real discovery, for instance, and so I ordered the recent CD collection of its entire output from Aquarius. Göteborg's Camouflage really reminds me of Xymox, a band I hadn't really thought about in a while; relistening to its 4AD oeuvre, however, made me realize it has aged rather gracefully—like quite a bit of gothy stuff, come to think of it. Are we due for a revival? Fortunately, the Swedish Punk site helped with a crash course on some of the bands—turns out Tant Strul was one of the very few girl groups on the scene for instance.

MP3 Camouflage "Syster Sol" (1985)
MP3 Ståålfågel "En dag i varuhuset" (1980)
MP3 Kitchen and the Plastic Spoons "Liberty" (1981)
MP3 Tant Strul "Amason" (1983)

Solid Ground was a short-lived combo from Stockholm that released only one album, Made in Rock. Pretty typical mid-70s riffage here, though this being a Swedish band, they can't help being super-melodic as well. The CD's liner notes explain that in the studio the band used an Orchestron, a synth along the lines of the Mellotron—automatic extra bonus points for the use of an obscure instrument!

MP3 Solid Ground "Oh Lord" (from Made in Rock, 1976)
MP3 Solid Ground "Tombstone Kiss" (from Made in Rock, 1976)

Precision fun

The last time I was at Giants Stadium was to see Liverpool duke it out with AC Milan, and the time before that was for ’N Sync. I guess I just don't hang out in the Meadowlands that much. But on Saturday, I spent two of the best hours of the year in that godforsaken corner of New Jersey—at a drum & bugle competition!

The only surprise is that it took me so long to finally see this type of event—after all, I'm a huge fan of precision ensembles, from Busby Berkeley movies to the Rockettes, and I love high-school marching bands. And of course Saturday's event was also part of the ongoing "Americanization of Elisabeth" campaign; there sure aren't any drum contests in France, a highly individualistic country where the only successful synchronized events seem to be strikes.

Anyhoo, Saturday… We started off with the Jersey Surf, an endearing, scrappy category 2 corps that I enjoyed watching if only because I knew it'd help my untrained eyes to better appreciate the heady perfection that'd come later from the more accomplished ensembles. Drum & bugle has militaristic origins but they've been channeled, as if the case with pretty much everything in America, into pure entertainment. Uniforms, yes, but with sequins! Shakos, sure, but with lots of feathers! Rifles, absolutely, but thrown up high in the air like you just don't care! (If America exorcised its military jones through drum & bugle instead of ill-fated excursions to Iraq, we might be in a better place.) And of course, the metal fan in me was psyched by the sheer volume of it all: When a corps lets loose, it's gloriously loud.

My two favorites were Carolina Crown and Phantom Regiment. Carolina Crown's guard overcame silly outfits that made it look like a bunch of extras from Cats but then turned out to play a narrative purpose when the kids enacted a stylized horse race to the tune of the William Tell Overture played full speed ahead. (Compare with the Boston Crusaders, who lugged easels around during their entire Picasso-themed routine but didn't really use them.) No wonder the Crown got the biggest ovation, followed by boos when it finished in third place. As for Phantom Regiment, it came up with my favorite purely musical moment, making Philip Glass' 1000 Airplanes on the Roof sound like 1000 airplanes taking off.

Back home, the Sheila pointed out that she grew up watching Edinburgh's Military Tattoo, which was broadcast on prime time in Australia and which does seem to get close to what I'd just seen, albeit with a stronger international component. And lo and behold, a bit of poking around quickly unearthed an amazing Military Tattoo performance by the Top Secret Drum Corps from Basel—so secret, its bass drums are painted black. Just check out that stick action! I had no idea the Swiss had it in them.

Oh my fricking god

Forgive me for taking in vain the name of a superstitious conceit I don't believe in, but…wow! A seismic pop event is scheduled for July 21 in London, and suddenly flying there for two days looks like an imperative. I'm referring to a triple bill of BWO, Army of Lovers and Alcazar—that would be three of the greatest acts ever to come out of Sweden in the past 20 years. I choked a little when I saw that announcement, especially since both Army of Lovers and Alcazar are officially disbanded and are thus reuniting for the occasion.

All three, uncoincidentally, are linked by mastermind Alexander Bard—pop genius, essayist, breeder of racing horses and zoroastrian extraordinaire. It's hard to understimate the shock that Bard's project Army of Lovers (pictured) created in the early 90s: Imagine a group of flamboyant characters—and I really mean characters—looking like Prince's gay band and singing baroque disco. (For a good look at Bard himself, he takes the lead in this classic AoL video.) After AoL ended, he worked with Alcazar, cowriting a lot of its material without actually being in the band; I chose to post an Alcazar song that, like half of that group's catalogue, incorporates a Chic sample—it sometimes felt as if Alcazar was a perverse, pomo cover band. After Alcazar split, Bard started up Bodies Without Organs, which later shortened its name to BWO. Like Alcazar before, BWO tried to enter Eurovision but despite coming up with at least one fab, could-have-won-the-whole-enchilada monster (which was in my top ten of 2006), it didn't make it out of the Swedish national selection process. Pity.

The only major Bard project missing on the London bill is Vacuum, in which he reteamed with Army of Lovers' Anders Wollbeck for a pair of albums in the mid- to late 90s before leaving (the band still exists but sounds rather different). To make up for it I included Vacuum's biggest hit, "I Breathe," in my mini Bard tribute.

MP3 Army of Lovers "Crucified" from Massive Luxury Overdose (1993)
MP3 Vacuum "I Breathe" from The Plutonium Cathedral (1996)
MP3 Alcazar "I Go Shopping" from Alcazarized (2003)
MP3 BWO "Juggernaut" from Halcyon Days (2006)

To Lou Reed, with love

It's not so much that I enjoy Lou Reed's music these days: I enjoy reading about journalists trying to interview him. The latest in this long series comes from France, where Fabrice Pliskin detailed his own encounter in the weekly Le Nouvel Observateur. Or rather, his non-encounter: The article is titled "How I Did Not Interview Lou Reed." (The maestro was hitting Paris with his live version of Berlin.) Pliskin received by email a screening questionnaire that included the following:

- Have you already interviewed Lou Reed? (Pliskin answers yes, and of course the experience wasn't altogether pleasant.)
- Do you own a copy of Berlin?
- How long will the article be? 1, 2 or 3 pages?
- Will we have total control over the photos?
- Will Lou Reed be on the cover?
- What kind of questions will you ask Lou?
- Are you a freelancer or a staff writer?

Cheer up, Fabrice: It could have been worse—you could have interviewed Lou Reed.

My kind of dame

My interview with the awesome Harriet Harris is in the new TONY. I just love love love Harris, one of the funniest dames around. She truly belongs to the small circle of women (think Rosalind Russell, Carole Lombard) who can turn a single, innocuous-seeming word into a lethal weapon—and like the best of them, she's equally expert at physical comedy. I hope that Julie White winning a Tony for a full-on comic performance means that awards aren't just for tragedy anymore, and that performances like the one Harris regularly delivers will get acknowledged more, but I won't hold my breath. And while I'm on the subject: Enough with all this karaoke grimacing, ie biopic acting! Okay, Marion Cotillard as Piaf is fine. But after her, that's it, no more!

French Idol

Nouvelle Star pretty much is the French version of the Idol franchise: There are regional auditions, the remaining 15 candidates are progressively winnowed down, and there's a jury—made up of four, not three people, and including the divine Marianne James (with the big frizzy hair). But unlike American Idol, Nouvelle Star is more open to genuine oddballs, loves radically transformed covers, and offers addictive group sings with various combinations of contestants. On the other hand, the contestants are overall younger and less experienced than in the US; they tend to be less show-offy and less likely to have been formatted by years of kiddie performances, which also means they're more like real amateurs, in the original sense of the words.

The show recently selected its winner, Julien, who was my fave from the very beginning—I happened to be in France during the regional rounds and immediately noticed the scrawny dude playing the ukulele at the Marseille audition. Fortunately the Nouvelle Star site features plenty of excerpts, and I lovingly selected a handful for you, dear readers.

Among the highlights is this group cover of Indochine's brilliant 1985 single "3ème Sexe," which was made into a regular video and thus provides a good intro to the strongest candidates. That the overall mood is very pop need not be stressed, but note also that the sartorial style is much improved from American Idol. Winner Julien is the shaggy one who looks like he escaped from Williamsburg.




And now Gaétane, among of the last three standing, performs Britney Spears' "Toxic." Of all the candidates she had one of the best commands of English. English pronunciation usually is a disaster for us Frenchies, whereas candidates in the Scandinavian or Dutch Idol shows tend to be fluent.




More Britney with winner Julien, a 25-year-old art-school grad from Arles who goes for yaourt (yogurt English, ie speaking as if your mouth is full of potatoes) on his Ani DiFranco–style reading of "Baby One More Time." Technically it's off the map, but I find this cover perversely addictive.




Gaétane and Julie duet on Elli Medeiros' "Toi Mon Toit" while Julien and finalist Tigane play furniture. Does Gaétane look really annoyed by Tigane's antics?




Julien and Tigane (a 19-year-old student from Versailles) look soulfully into each others' eyes while dueting on Tété's "A la faveur de l'automne." The song is from two years ago—Nouvelle Star, unlike Idol, embraces current hits.




Group effort on a faithful cover of "Cherchez le garçon," a 1980 cult hit by Taxi Girl, the Parisian new-wave band that spawned Daniel Darc and Mirwais (later to produce Madonna). Note that Julien is wearing his trademark barrette.




And finally a great cover of a great song: Katerine's freak 2006 hit "Louxor j'adore," where Julien shines again.

Now we are here

Actually we are almost here—here being Xanadu, of course, or at least its Broadway version. I was supposed to see it tonight but alas the fateful date is now July 6: Lead James Carpinello (the Michael Beck role) broke his ankle and replacement Cheyenne Jackson needs a few days to get his rollerskating footing.

In the meantime, I'm anxiously reading the tea leaves and a strong endorsement has come down the pike: James Wolcott is going bananas over the show!

Coe dependent

I'm only halfway through Jonathan Coe wonderful novel The Rotters' Club but I feel the urge to post about it. The book, which is set in 1970s Birmingham, is so funny that I find myself laughing out loud—one of the teenage characters writes a spot-on review of Tales of Topographic Ocean for instance, and a dinner party drenched in a horrific-sounding cheap wine called Blue Nun is described with deadly accuracy.

But like many English filmmakers, Coe is at his best on class and sexual politics, especially since he's fully aware of the inconsistencies of lefties when it comes to gender issues (the portrayal of a philandering union steward is particularly good). The way he can mix moods, going from comic to pained in a sentence, is downright masterful.

The use of musical references is also impressive in that unlike in too many American novels, they are not used as either decorative props or lazy shorthand to describe characters. Instead, they're only one among the many elements that help shade personalities. One boy enjoys bombastic Yes-style prog; another, who seems to be the Coe stand-in, discovers English eccentrics like Henry Cow and the Canterbury-affiliated Hatfield & the North, whose 1975 album was titled…The Rotters' Club (Coe actually wrote an affectionate article about that hairy scene last year.) A third embraces punk (his trip down to the London office of NME, where he gawks at the cubicle shared by Tony Parsons and Julie Burchill, is a hoot). But Coe goes further—when that third boy, Doug, serendipitously attends an early Clash gig, the revelation isn't so much the feverish pogoing but his meeting with a posh girl who introduces him, a 16-year-old Brummie "prole," to the delights of upper-class life.

While I'm tearing through the book, I also don't want it to end. Fortunately there's more in store, since in 2004 Coe published a sequel, The Closed Circle, taking place in the Blair years.

Mercer Mercer me

My review of Glenn Mercer's debut solo album, Wheels in Motion, is in Time Out New York. You may remember Mercer from his days in the Feelies, a glorious Jersey band that practically lived at Maxwell's in the 80s. Like early Talking Heads (for the cleanly spastic attitude) and years before Weezer (for the look), the Feelies refined VU-influenced nerd rock starting with their 1980 debut, Crazy Rhythms. The new CD is a lot quieter, picking up where the band left off when it split in 1991.

MP3 Glenn Mercer "Two Rights" from Wheels in Motion (Pravda, 2007)

Quiet actually seems to be the operative word right now. Not much to report on the going-out front, as I take a break between the Broadway season and the various summer festivals. Making the most of this unusual abundance of free evenings, I've finally dived into the addictive pleasures of both The Wire and Guitar Hero. I rocked 84% of Kiss' "Strutter" on my first attempt but had a total meltdown on Sabbath's "War Pigs." My only regret is that the PlayStation version comes with a Gibson SG and I would have preferred the Flying V. Whatev': It's not as if I can really play either of them.

It's DeLaughable

It's a special kind of show-tune fan—the hardcore kind—who goes to the York Theater's Musicals in Mufti. The series debuted in 1994, the same year as Encores!, and has a similar goal: to revive forgotten musicals in concert versions and for very limited runs (usually a weekend each). But whereas Encores! takes place at the cavernous City Center and puts on increasingly lavish productions (some of which even transfer to Broadway) involving costumes, choreography and a large orchestra, Musicals in Mufti takes place in a church basement in front of a couple hundred people, and the singers, wearing street clothes, are backed by tiny ensembles.

And yet there's something undeniably fun about the Muftis. First of all, the shows tend to be obscure nuggets, often with stellar credits: Jule Styne and Yip Harburg's Darling of the Day (1968), Duke Ellington and John La Touche's Beggar's Holiday (1946) or Carolyn Leigh and Elmer Bernstein's How Now, Dow Jones (1967). Second, the casts are often quite good and you can test their mettle: When they can't fall back on amplification or intricate staging, you see what actors are really made of. I still remember a blisteringly funny performance by the then-unknown Kristin Chenoweth in Comden and Green's Billion Dollar Baby in 1998 for instance.

This weekend's Mufti, playing until tomorrow evening, is a doozy from 1966: Charles Strouse and Lee Adams's It's a Bird…It's a Plane…It's Superman. The show's vibe is very much along the campy, self-parodic lines of the Batman TV series, and even with a band consisting only of piano and drums, you could tell some of the songs are quite catchy. The cast gave its all—special mentions to Cheyenne Jackson as Supes, Shoshana Bean (in a part created by Linda Lavin) and Max Mencken (very funny as a blowhard columnist)—but I will focus on the one truly awful performance: Lea DeLaria's, which was mannered, incompetent and obnoxious all at the same time. It's actually rare to see something so howlingly wrong on stage.

DeLaria was given the plum role of the villain, Dr. Abner Segwick. Except the character's sex was changed and so DeLaria played a female doctor named CZ Sedgwick (couldn't figure out what the initials stood for—Catherine Zeta?). This made very little sense, especially since it wasn't immediately apparent that DeLaria was playing a woman—I thought this was a bit of blind casting, similar to the time she played Eddie in The Rocky Horror Show. But no, Dr. Sedgwick was meant to be a woman—which ended up not making any difference since DeLaria hammed it up in ways that made no sense, no matter the character's gender. (She pulled a similar stunt playing one of the sisters in Cinderella at City Opera.)

While almost all the actors flubbed some lines (Muftis are rehearsed for only a week and are performed book in hand), she made more mistakes than the others put together. But the worst part is that everytime she screwed up, she turned toward the rest of the cast, searching for…what? Sympathy? Approval? Connection? DeLaria played to her fellow actors, not to the audience. Not only was she selfishly—and ineptly—trying to hog the spotlight, constantly mugging when someone else was speaking or singing, but she kept breaking out of character and behaving as if she wasn't in front of a paying audience but at rehearsal, goofing off with her buddies. (When Jackson and Bean got caught in a giggling fit, they gamely tried to hide it, which made the crowd love them even more.) DeLaria gave a master class in what not to do as an actor, and became unwittingly interesting—if you like car crashes, that is.

So not a cheap pen

Who doesn't like an unexpected discovery? All right, so discoveries usually are unexpected, but there's something particularly satisfying to suddenly becoming infatuated with someone you had previously dismissed. New Zealander Bic Runga has been around for over ten years now, and never had I paid her any attention, summarily dumping her in the Lilith Fair bag (yes, she appeared at that time, which now seems impossibly remote in our era of precocious celebutantes famous at 18 and in rehab at 20). Or maybe it was her first name, which just made me think of the cheap pens and lighters to common in France when I was growing up.

In an attempt to clean up the mess on my desk, I was listening to CDs I'd never gotten around to playing. And there it was: Bic Runga's third and latest album, Birds. Barely a minute in and I was hooked. Quick look at the credits: Neil Finn plays the piano but it's Runga's show—she wrote the songs and handled the production. What I like best is that she is sligthly aloof, unwilling to resort to cheap cooing and trilling to seduce to the listener. That approach won't help her win American Idol but that's just fine. The second track, "Say After Me," is a perfect illustration of the contrast between the plain, conversational vocals and the gorgeous arrangements (which sound lifted from a Dusty Springfield album).

For some reason the atmosphere on "Winning Arrow" reminds me of Suzanne Vega (for the reserved attitude) and the Carpenters, which I've been listening to a bit recently, inspired by Justin Bond's interpretation of their entire second album at the Zipper a few weeks ago. (Note to prospective Carpenters interpreters: Many of these songs are hard to sing!).

So is Bic Richard and Karen rolled into one? Judge for yourself:
MP3 Bic Runga "Say After Me" from Birds, 2005
MP3 Bic Runga "Winning Arrow" from Birds, 2005

It's the context, stupid

Just finished reading two novels by Irène Némirovsky, written (obviously) before her posthumously published and megasuccessful Suite Française. "Reading" is a bit of an understatement, actually, as I tore through the books in a couple of days.

Quite a few Némirovsky books have been reprinted over the past two years, and not knowing which I should go for, I picked La Proie (1938) and Le Maître des Âmes (1940) solely based on their being affordable paperbacks. They turned out to have similar narrative arcs that describe the rise and fall of ambitious men. In La Proie, poor Jean-Luc Daguerne impregnates his girlfriend, the daughter of a rich banker; their marriage marks the beginning of his climb to a still-unsatisfying top. The portrayal of affairiste France in the 1930s is appropriately acidic, confirming Némirovsky's status as a clear-eyed social portraitist.

More problematic in light of the accusations of antisemitism that have plagued Némirovsky's oeuvre recently, Le Maître des Âmes is about a crook of a doctor, Dario Asfar, who happens to be a "métèque" (a common word in the 1930s for dark-skinned people) from some unspecified Eastern European country. While Némirovsky is entitled to the novelist's license to create morally ambiguous characters, she showed singular lack of judgment by publishing the novel in serial form in Gringoire, an antisemitic, anticommunist, pro-Franco, pro-Mussolini weekly magazine. She contributed pseudonymously to Gringoire through the 1930s and early ’40s, which strikes me as odd since after the success of her novel David Golder in 1929, she should not have had problems finding outlets, and the politics of Gringoire weren't a secret to anybody with two eyes and half a brain.

In their introduction, Némirovsky biographers Olivier Philipponnat and Patrick Lienhardt contort themselves to explain away her choices, both in terms of publishers and in terms of her depicting Dr. Asfar in ways that would feed French xenophobia and antisemitism—two unsavory traits that really did not need to be encouraged, particularly in the early 1940s. I mean, it's easy to say that Le Maître des Âmes isn't xenophobic compared to Céline's Bagatelles pour un massacre: What could possibly be? I do think Némirovsky's book works because it is uncompromising fiction, written by a masterful stylist (the descent into Asfar's tortured psyche is detailed with equal parts elegance and harshness). What trips me is the context in which it was published: Its first readers would have taken it not as a piece of art but as something reinforcing their worst prejudices.

To stay in the mood, here are a few French tunes from the late ’30–early ’40s. Suzy Solidor was a bodacious blonde, famous for her sailor/sea songs and (among those in the know) her sapphic conquests. Alas, her attitude during WWII wasn't beyond reproach, and she was said to be the mistress of a high-ranking Nazi officer. Perhaps she shared Arletty's attitude: When the actress was accused of bedding a German during the war, she is said to have replied "My heart is French but my ass is international!"

MP3 Suzy Solidor "Sous tes doigts" (1936, cowritten by regular Piaf collaborator Marguerite Monnot)

Though the Nazis thought jazz was a decadent art, it was never officially banned in occuppied France and so Irène de Trébert, aka Mademoiselle Swing, was able to have a thriving career singing in big bands, notably that of Raymond Legrand (who happened to be her lover). When the war ended she got a slap on the hand and was forbidden to perform for ten months; she tried to resume her career in 1946, but with little success. Legrand, who regularly played the collaborationist Radio-Paris and toured Germany in 1942 (bad idea!) was blacklisted; he's now mostly remembered, if at all, as the father of composer Michel Legrand.

MP3 Irène de Trébert "Je t'aime" (1942; written by Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grapelli). Backed by the Marius Coste Orchestra.
MP3 Irène de Trébert "Swing Reverie" (another Reinhardt tune, recorded in 1942). Backed by the Raymond Legrand Orchestra.

Full servile

Hooray for The Guardian, which a few days ago published one of the most entertainingly sycophantic pieces of music journalism I've ever seen!

I love the British paper but its obsessions with Lou Reed verges on the embarrassing. At regular intervals they attempt to interview Reed, and of course no matter the outcome, the article is hilarious. When it goes wrong, you read about a journalist's humiliation; when it goes right, the piece turns into a self-congratulatory orgy. Ed Pilkington probably thought it all went swimmingly, and his article is an inadvertent hoot. Come to think of it, even when it goes right, it ends up wrong.

First of all, Pilkington starts off with the lamest line possible: "I'm waiting for my man." Actually, it could have been worse, but then it would have been what The Guardian's Dave Simpson wrote in his Lou Reed interview, which ran exactly a year ago: "I'm Waiting for My Man, except I don't have $26 in my hand, this isn't Lexington, 125, nor do I feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive." My God, people, what are you lacking, shame or editors? At least Simon Hattenstone, going down in flames ("Reed makes me feel like an amoeba. I want to cry.") in his 2003 attempt to tame the beast, avoided the dreaded reference.

Anyway, back to Pilkington. As it slowly dawns on him that Reed is in a good mood, the writer can't help gloating: "I end up enjoying what has eluded countless past interviewers - a conversation with Lou Reed." The funny thing is that as anybody who goes out in New York knows—because he and Laurie Anderson can be seen at a lot of shows, from avant-theater at BAM to David Byrne's disco opera about Imelda Marcos at Carnegie Hall—Lou Reed is often in a good mood, looking like a cuddly grandpa in his Patagonia windbreakers. It's just that when faced with a slobbering idiot, he gets grumpy. Can you blame him?

Further on, Pilkington lets out another howler: "Feeling a little overconfident by now, I dare to suggest to Reed that there is one line in Berlin that dates it - the third line of the album: 'Candlelight and Dubonnet on ice.' When was the last time he drank, or even heard of, the spicy aperitif Dubonnet?" I suppose that using a city divided by a Wall as a metaphor for an entire album isn't dated then.

But this pales compared to the truly shameless ending. After Reed states that he doesn't think "Walk on the Wild Side" was such a big hit, Pilkington writes "This is getting too much. The world's most ungiving interviewee has just shared with me a poignant, almost mournful, insight into his thinking. I'm the one rendered speechless."

Is there a doctor on the plane? Ed Pilkington's tongue needs to be dislodged from Lou Reed's ass.