Countdown to ecstasy

My preview of tonight's installment of Our Hit Parade is in the New York Post.

Modelled after the old radio and TV show Your Hit Parade, this monthly cavalcade of stars performing current chart-toppers is a real hoot, and usually includes a countdown, games, dances, audience participation (willing or not) and a certain amount of nudity.

In addition to the core trio of Kenny Mellman, Bridget Everett and Neal Medlyn, tonight's guests include the Magnetic Fields' Stephin Merritt and Claudia Gonson, Randy Harrison, Jackie Hoffman and Molly Pope. See you at Joe's Pub!

Riding the carousel ot time

John Kelly's Paved Paradise Redux: The Art of Joni Mitchell at Abrons Arts Center, New York Post, June 22, 2009.

Every time I see John Kelly do his Joni Mitchell tribute, I rush back home afterwards and relisten to Joni's albums. And then I realize I'm not that big a fan--I like Kelly doing Mitchell a lot more. If I'm going to listen to a romantic, tortured singer-songwriter, I much prefer Laura Nyro and the perfect balance of pop, soul and Tin Pan Alley she achieved on her 60s albums.

A Wiz and a bang

Double-barrel attack in today's New York Post.

First, I tackled the Encores! revival of The Wiz. I heard through the grapevine that it's one of their most expensive efforts ever. Okaaaay. At least it's a lot better than Sidney Lumet's movie, which I had rented last week for the sake of research.

Then I caught the new LCT3 production, Stunning, at the Duke on 42nd St. David Adjmi's play had been getting a lot of buzz and yes, it's really that good. Plus, direction and cast rival anything on Broadway.

Revisiting Osage County

I've never been a huge fan of Phylicia Rashad, but she brings interesting nuances to Tracy Letts's August: Osage County, which I revisited on Wednesday afternoon. (My re-review hit the Post today.)

I absolutely adored the play when I first saw it a year and a half ago, and found myself sucked into it all over again. It's very easy to get half-price tickets so by all means, get yourself to the Music Box.

Our House

Theresa Rebeck's Our House at Playwrights Horizons, New York Post, June 10, 2009.

Of course, the Post's headline writers went for Madness on this one. I've had the song lodged in my head ever since seeing the show (though it's not used in it).

A lot of Machines

Machines, Machines, Machines, Machines, Machines, Machines, Machines at HERE, New York Post, June 8, 2009.

The first half hour of this show is as perfectly devised and executed as anything you'll see in NY right now. And even when the execution isn't perfect, the problems are part of the premise. A highly recommended way to spend $20.

Coraline

Stephin Merritt and David Greenspan's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, New York Post, June 2.

This is one instance where I felt really frustrated by the lack of space in the paper, as the show is (spoiler warning!) a failure for very interesting reasons. I'm not sure they're interesting enough to warrant a trip to Christopher Street, but still: food for though there.

Snakes eyes

Okay, not quite snake eyes but almost. I have two reviews in today's paper, rating one star and one and a half stars. It's an embarrassment of embarrassments.

Zakiyyah Alexander's 10 Things to Do Before I Die at the McGinn/Cazale Theatre, New York Post, June 1

Leslie Ayvazian's Make Me at the Atlantic 2, New York Post, June 1.

The failure of failure

Cynthia Hopkins' The Success of Failure (or, The Failure of Success) at St. Ann's Warehouse, New York Post, May 28, 2009.

I know Hopkins has her fans. Let's just say I'm not one of them.

Mayhem in New York

Yesterday Mr. Night After Night and I attended Blackenedfest at Irving Plaza. Let's start with the disappointments. The minor one is that I missed Lair of the Minotaur because they played from 7:30pm to 7:50 and I arrived at something like 7:51. The major one is that Marduk cancelled at the last minute "due to unforeseen circumstances." And I had spent part of the day rehearsing my growlalong to "Panzer Division Marduk"! Seriously, I'd been really looking forward to finally catching the kvlt Swedes live and I was foiled again.

But Mayhem more than made up for it. I admit going mostly out of curiosity because I may have seen Emperor and Immortal, but it's Mayhem that's the alpha and omega of first-wave Norwegian black metal. The book Lords of Chaos? It's about them.

As it turns out, Mayhem was much more than a curio. The main asset was Attila Csihar, who replaced Maniac in 2004 and is a completely magnetic frontman. Clad in black monk-like robes, he emitted a volley of terrifying, barely human sounds that ranged from pig-like grunts to hellish shrieks. He also moved in an odd, stylized manner halfway between Martha Graham and kabuki. Couldn't be a more different vibe from Maniac's, and an improvement it was. Csihar was avant-garde from Hades.

Musically I felt as if I had stuck my head in an oil drum on which people repeatedly stomped. Drummer Hellhammer and bassist Necrobutcher, two original members, got huge applause from the crowd, while it took two tour guitarists, Morfeus and Silmaeth, to replace Blasphemer, who left the band last year. The whole thing was one massive gurgle, part buzzy and part grumbling. It was awesome.

Also awesome: the banners, the shrunken heads on spears, the fog, the strobes. In a word: the show!

Here's a short excerpt from our vantage point at the balcony. (Tip of the hat to Brooklyn Vegan's Paul Birman for the pic of Attila Csihar.)

Old Hickory

Alex Timbers and Michael Friedman's Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson at the Public Theater, New York Post, May 20, 2009.

At last, the life of President Andrew Jackson has been turned into a musical, and a good one it is!

Out of South Africa

Ian Bruce's Groundswell at the Acorn/Theatre Row, New York Post, May 19, 2009. (Tip of the hat once again to the Post's headline writers. These guys have earned their rep, believe me.)

Let's put Bruce's South Africa-set drama behind us, shall we? The important news is that there's only two days to go before Blackenedfest featuring Mayhem and Marduk! I'm still pondering my corpsepaint design. Suggestions?

Legal debacle

Vern Thiessen's A More Perfect Union at the East 13th Street Theater, New York Post, May 14, 2009.

Two Supreme Court clerks duke it out in the library. Dear god…

Ukraine does it again

If Ukraine doesn't win Eurovision 2009, I'll eat my hat! Seriously, this song has it all: crazy inventive production, banging chorus, delirious lyrics, nutty video (though that won't help at the contest) and babes in skimpy outfits (which I trust will somehow pop up on the Moscow stage).

Added bonus: If Ukraine wins in Moscow, the Russians are going to freak out.

Electro schocks

In today's New York Post, I stray from the theater turf for something that won't surprise readers of this blog: a piece about four women doing the solo electro-thing.

I'm surprised the influence of Peaches on the new generation of women tinkering with Apple Logic hasn't been spelled out more. The likes of Little Boots, thecocknbullkid and VV Brown, whom I talked to for the piece, may not draw from Peaches' lyrical content, but they've sure borrowed a trick or two from her sound (mixed in with much more mainstream pop influences, to be sure).

I'll go see Peaches this Saturday night, when she plays Webster Hall, and on Monday may try to take a break from the Obies to drop by the Little Boots gig at (Le) Poisson Rouge.

Of the four in the article, multi-instrumentalist VV Brown is the least electro. Here's her new single, and oh that chorus!

Offices

Ethan Coen's triptych Offices at the Atlantic, New York Post, May 11, 2009.

After Almost an Evening, Joel's brother is doing the solo thing again. Is it worth the effort, not to mention your hard-earned bucks?

Cranked up

I had forgotten how good it feels to feel your innards melt, to get your eardrums pulverized. The rawk, it lives!

At least it did on Friday night, when my friend Mike took me to the Chrome Cranks reunion at Santos Party House. Now even though I followed the East Village/Lower East Side scum-noise scene pretty closely from the moment I moved to the NYC area in 1988, that band completely eluded me: I don't have any of their records and never saw them live. At least I had seen and heard the ferocious rhythm section in various other bands: drummer Bob Bert with Knoxville Girls, Bewitched and Action Swingers (not to mention late Pussy Galore and early Boss Hog, though I never caught him with Sonic Youth), bassist Jerry Teel with KG and Honeymoon Killers.

On Friday the time had come for my first encounter with the Cranks, 12 years after their last local show. As soon as the first song hit, I broke into a huge grin. A loud but sharp PA, a band in complete control of its sound, even a red strobe light: perfection.

As Mike put it elsewhere, there were quite a few bands doing the Chrome Cranks thing in the 90s, but there are close to none these days: intensely focused and controlled aggro rooted in a punk-blues groove.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of people putting on memorable rock shows these days, from Lightning Bolt to Monotonix, but they tend to go for a more spastic, all-over-the-place energy, whereas Chrome Cranks are rooted in songcraft and the aforementioned groove. They're playing Glasslands on Friday 15, and I may just go back for seconds.

A pound, give or take

The Propeller company's take on The Merchant of Venice at BAM, New York Post, May 8, 2009.

My third Shakespeare by these guys, and while it's not quite as good as The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night, from two years ago, it still wham-bam entertainment.

Next stop on the Bard Express: Twelfth Night (africkingain) at the Delacorte in a few weeks.

Benny and Björn are back!

Benny and Björn have a new song! I listened to "Second Best to None" four times in a row after discovering it this morning. Thanks to the Dilettante's Special London Correspondent and the almighty Pop Justice for the tip.

I'm particularly excited because the singers all work at Stockholm's Hotel Rival (owned by Benny), where the Sheila and I had lunch last summer. In fact you can see the vid on the homepage of the hotel's website. It's the best corporate commercial EVER.

On the radio

Sometime after 4pm today, I will discuss the Tony nominations and the New York Drama Critics Circle awards on All Things Considered. You can listen on WNYC (93.9 FM and AM 820) in New York, or on your local NPR affiliate, or on the web. And boy, is there a lot to talk about!

Oh Sherie

At last, Sherie Rene Scott gets a whole show to herself! I just loved Everyday Rapture (review in today's New York Post) and I hope it finds the audience it deserves. Scott is a musical-theater animal but projects a very different vibe than a Kristin Chenoweth, a Donna Murphy or even a Leslie Kritzer. She's well worth discovering if you aren't a fan yet.

It's a wrap

And we finally conclude the 2008-09 Broadway season with two shows: Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Dolly Parton's 9 t0 5. I like to think of them as one entity, Waiting from 9 to 5. Both reviews are in today's New York Post.

But just because Broadway is done for now doesn't mean I can rest: look out for Sherie Rene Scott's Everyday Rapture, Ethan Coen's Offices and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice next week.

Accent grave

A bilingual pun for a title!

Samson Raphaelson's Accent on Youth at the Samuel J. Friedman Theatre, New York Post, April 30, 2009.

Oooh that one irked me.

Lust in the dust

Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, St. James Theatre, New York Post, April 28, 2009.

Carla Gugino's back on stage—steamy!

The Philanthropist

Christopher Hampton's The Philanthropist at American Airlines Theatre, New York Post, April 27, 2009.

Run, run away from this one!

We had a fantastically sunny weekend here in New York. Not that I saw that much of it as I spent most of it at the theater, going to the theater or coming back from the theater. (That damn F line being all screwed up didn't help.)

The Norman Conquests

Alan Ayckbourn's The Norman Conquests at Circle in the Square, New York Post, April 24.

You can see any of the plays in this trilogy but I really recommend going for the trifecta. And if you can, catch them all in one day -- they do a marathon every Saturday. The first play starts at 11:30am, the second is at 3:30pm and the last at 8pm.

Eurovision coming...again!

Yep, it's almost that time of the year again. The dark horse this year is…the U.K. Don't laugh, it's true! I look at that country's entry over at the New York Post's blog. My fellow Eurofreaks, it's going to be a good vintage, I can just feel it.

The Gingerbread House

Mark Schultz's The Gingerbread House at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, New York Post, April 21, 2009.

Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulson take a break from their TV series, Cupid, to appear in this pretty nifty production. Actually I'm not even sure Cupid is still going on. These two just can't get a break on the small screen. I mean, how many cancelled series has Paulson alone been in? Thank god for theater, eh?

Mary quite contrary

Friedrich Schiller's Mary Stuart at the Broadhurst, New York Post, April 20, 2009.

Janet McTeer + Harriet Walter = ka-BOOM! Plus rain on stage, which never gets old in my book. Well, almost never.

Now blogging!

We've resolved a few kinks and I'm happy to announce I'm now also blogging on the New York Post's site. I'll stick to the stage there, though my definition of the stage is, of course, rather wide... Now go and bookmark that sucker!

Next to Normal

Next to Normal transfers from Second Stage to the Booth Theatre on Broadway, New York Post, April 16, 2009.

A musical bravely tries to explore terrain (mental illness) usually neglected by the genre. I really wish I had liked it more.

Rock on

Rock of Ages at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre, New York Post, April 8, 2009. More ’80s songs that you can shake a stick at—and I've played almost all them on Guitar Hero.

Durang Durang

Christopher Durang's Why Torture Is Wrong, and the People Who Love Them at the Public Theater, New York Post, April 7.

The past couple Durang plays were only half-successful, but this one is pretty much on target. Go.

Reasons to Be Pretty

Neil LaBute's Broadway debut, reasons to be pretty, at the Lyceum, New York Post, April 3, 2009.

Very mixed feelings about that one, to say the least. I'm actually supposed to start blogging at the Post very soon and I'm looking forward to developing some points I just didn't have space for in print. I hope they will help further illuminate my assessment of the play.

Long beautiful Hair

The revival of Hair hits the Al Hirshfeld Theatre, New York Post, April 1, 2009.

The show was extraordinary when it was presented at the Delacorte in Central Park last summer, and miraculously it still is on Broadway. And they're going to record it, so more good times ahead!

Director Diane Paulus goes full-on hippie, but I also enjoy more twisted versions of the material. Check out Army of Lovers' Swedish disco take on "Let the Sun Shine In":

Happiness is a lukewarm gun

A new musical, Happiness, opens at Lincoln Center Theater; New York Post, March 31, 2009.

The show has quite the pedigree: book by John Weidman, direction and choreography by Susan Stroman, lyrics and music by Michael Korie and Scott Frankel (the guys who did Grey Gardens, although that's not really a recommendation for me).

Tonight, I'm returning to see Neil LaBute's Reasons to be Pretty, which I'd caught Off Broadway last year.

Unwowed by Irena's Vow

Dan Gordon's Irena's Vow at the Walter Kerr Theatre, New York Post, March 30, 2009.

After Golda's Balcony, Tovah Feldshuh stars in Irena's Vow. Do I feel a trend?

Busy weekend for the Sheila and I, highlighted by our first trip to the (in)famous Burger Joint, where we had a pair of great cheeseburgers. The joint is just that, a joint, but the best part is that it's hidden inside the posh Parker Meridien hotel on W. 56th St. (We went before catching the Encores! version of Finian's Rainbow at City Center on Saturday evening.) Scratch one more item on the list of classic NYC experiences we've done.

There's a new king in town

Eugene Ionesco's Exit the King at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, New York Post, March 27.

How long has Geoffrey Rush been doing theater in Australia? Why did we have to wait all these decades to see him on stage in New York? Ah well, better late than never.

Unimpressed

Michael Jacobs's Impressionism at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, New York Post, March 25. (My second one-star review in a row. The timing is harsh.)

Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons: How could it suck, right? And yet…

Baby talk

Christina Anderson's Inked Baby at Playwrights Horizons, New York Post, March 24.

Thrilling actors rock Yasmina Reza

Yasmina Reza's God of Carnage at the Bernard P. Jacobs Theatre, New York Post, March 23.

If you want to see well-heeled fur fly, go see this play. Come to think of it, can well-heeled fur fly? No matter: The show is a nasty delight.

Keep cool, daddy-o

West Side Story at the Palace Theatre, New York Post, March 20.

Hard to believe, but it's been almost 30 years since the Jets and the Sharks have duked it out on their home turf. Arthur Laurents's revival of Gypsy last season was a triumph, and now he's tackled another of his books. Did lighting strike twice?

Boosting the Wooster

Okay, it's not a review this time but a preview, as I write about the new Wooster Group show, La Didone, at St. Ann's Warehouse, in the New York Post today.

You have about six weeks to see it down in Dumbo. Make sure to leave some time beforehand for a little nibble at Almondine, which is just down the block.

Rooms with a view

Paul Scott Goodman's ROOMS a rock romance at New World Stages, New York Post, March 17.

Leslie Kritzer is back!

Blitz Spirit

Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, New York Post, March 16.

Busy weekend it was: I returned to Room for Cream, the live soap opera run at LaMaMa by the Dyke Division of the Theatre of the Two-Headed Calf company; caught the next-to-last performance of Armitage Gone! Dance's Think Punk at the Kitchen; saw Paul Scott Goodman's Rooms at New World Stages.

The latter I'll review in the Post. As for Think Punk, it was uneven but the good parts were really, really good. Highlight: "Drastic Classicism," a 1981 piece set to music by Rhys Chatham. The score was performed at top volume (essential for Chatham) by a drummer and four guitarists, standing in the middle of the dancers. Oh man, what an absolutely visceral thrill!

Eurovision coming!

On Monday, March 16, I'll talk about the upcoming Eurovision Song Contest on WNYC's Soundcheck. I should be on around 2:20pm EST. You can listen on your radio thingamajig or online. Ain't technology grand?

How do you say?

I know that just like me, you've been wondering about this: How do you say “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” in Swedish?

Apparently it's “Superkaffiryteflanisötomaxigrafisk” in the production of Mary Poppins currently playing at the Göteborg Opera.

33 1/3 variations

Moises Kaufman's 33 Variations at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre, New York Post, March 10.

Jane Fonda's comeback vehicle skids to a stop...

Driven to Distracted

Lisa Loomer's Distracted at the Roundabout's Laura Pels Theatre, New York Post, March 4.

Next stop: Jane Fonda.

The Savannah Disputation

Evan Smith's The Savannah Disputation at Playwrights Horizons, New York Post, March 4.

Dana Ivey and Marylouise Burke sharing a stage? Go!

Guys are from Mars

Guys and Dolls lands on Broadway and I write my first review for the New York Post.

The greatest living actress

In these giddy post-Oscar days, it's important to keep things in perspective. Seeing Claude Autant-Lara's rare 1949 film Occupe-toi d'Amélie (left) a few days ago in Paris, for instance, I was reminded once again that Danielle Darrieux—who's turning 92 in May and was just the object of a 100-film retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française—is the greatest living actress.

American readers/viewers familiar with her most likely know Darrieux from her star turns in Max Ophüls's The Earrings of Madame de…, La Ronde and Le Plaisir, all from the 1950s, as well as from her appearance in Jacques Demy's Les Demoiselles de Rochefort, where she played Catherine Deneuve and Françoise Dorléac's mother. But she's so much more: She embodies both the very history of French cinema and a certain idea of the country itself—witty, elegant, alternately suggesting wounded melancholy and irrepressible grace. Few actors share her versatility. (Meryl Streep perhaps? Let's check back in 30 years.)

Oh, and Darrieux could sing, too. She started her career in a string of musicals in the 1930s and stayed faithful to the genre with Demy in the 1960s and all the way through François Ozon's 8 Women in 2002. She even made it to Broadway in 1970, when she replaced Katharine Hepburn in Coco.

In this clip from Norman Taurog's 1951 movie Rich, Young and Pretty, Darrieux performs "There's Danger in Your Eyes." (In the film she plays Jane Powell's mother despite being only 34; a few years later, she'd be Richard Burton's mom, even though he was only seven years older than she was.) And here she sings a setting of Aragon's "Il n'y a pas d'amour heureux" in 8 Femmes.

A quick note about Occupe-toi d'Amélie: The film, extremely rare for decades because the Feydeau estate thought it took liberties with the play, is an absolute jewel. Autant-Lara constantly plays off the porous border between stage and life by setting things up as a play within the film—and a play in which the spectators periodically interrupt the action, Purple Rose of Cairo–style. The pace is downright dizzying as well: This is how farce needs to be done, with speed but also absolute precision.

French film follies

A couple more days in Paris. The overcast sky gives the perfect excuse go to the movies and hit the museums. Sticking to localfare, so far I've seen Nicolas Saada's debut, Espion(s), and Danièle Thompson's latest, Le code a changé. Two fine, if very different, examples of quality filmmaking, French-style.

The former is a brooding thriller that's been embraced by the critics here--unsurprisingly, perhaps, as Saada is one of their own (he used to write for Cahiers du Cinéma). The movie's been compared to some of Hitchcock's best and most romantic flicks, like Notorious, but it reminded me more of the British series MI5. And while I liked the slow pace (we're very, very far from spy shenanigans à la Bourne), if you're going to do the classic set piece in which somebody transfers information from a computer onto a USB key while trying not to be caught by a bad guyelse coming up the elevator (cue closeup of screen with "copy" status bar moving maddeningly slowly), you'd better come up with a new twist; alas, Saada doesn't. Still, a lovely performance by Géraldine Pailhas lifts things up.

As for Thompson's movie, it's yet another "choral" on, a style the writer-director particularly loves. I admit going mostly for the splendid cast, which includes two of my favorite comediennes, Marina Fois and Karin Viard--together at last. A scene in which gynecologist Fois gives lawyer Viard an exam was the icing on the religieuse.

Next stop: a reissue of Claude Autant-Lara's cult 1949 adaptation of the Feydeau farce Occuppe-toi d'Amélie, starring the scrumptious Danielle Darrieux, and François Ozon's new Ricky.

Low-cost travels

Going from Paris to Corsica to visit my family, I had my first experience with a Euro low-cost airline, Easy Jet. The flight was almost six hours late but everybody waited in relative calm, a new concept in France. This of course had everything to do with the fact that said flight was more than a third cheaper than the same one on Air France, which until recently had a de facto monopoly on flights from the continent to Corsica. The thing is, it is harder to feel angry when you bought a cheap ticket; the anger was also diffused by the fact that there was nobody from Easy Jet on site, only Charles de Gaulle airport employees assigned to Easy Jet, and they had barely more of a clue than we did. Rage with no specific target is just a waste of time, as we all discovered.

Never mind: I eventually made it to the island, where I discovered snow-capped mountains and a cold wave. All the more reason to stay inside and watch the world championship in slalom, where a Frenchman got silver. Needless to say, Alpine skiing doesn't really shake TV ratings back in the U.S., whereas here it's quite popular.

Where are you from?

The least you can say about snowbirds is that they love to chat, and the first thing they ask is, "Where are you from?" I guess when you're in Florida, or at least this part of Florida, so few people are local that this is a natural question. In two days we've met people from Ontario, Maine, Ohio, Ireland, New York, Michigan and Nebraska. I was seating next to the latter on a boat tour we took in Myakka State Park this afternoon. By the end, the wife was all friendly and invited me to drop by next time I was in Nebraska. "We're in the northeast part of the state, in an Indian reservation." She paused. "It's just horrible there. People don't work, kids drop out of school." Hmmm, okay then. This message not approved by the Nebraska Tourism Board.

Another thought prompted by vacationing in Florida: America really is segregated by age. The Sheila and I are 30 years younger than most people around us, a difference bigger than even at Saturday matinees on Broadway. We don't mind all that much but it can get odd. If you go to most French resorts, it's not rare to see three generations of a family vacationing together. (The past two winters, I went skiing with my mom and aunt, plus my sister and her husband, along with their young kids, and this isn't considered abnormal in the French Alps.) Such is not the case here. A vast generalization, I know, but it's just a little weird to see how this age-based division is implemented in Florida. In your early twenties you go to the party spots and get wasted, preferably before renting a jetski. In your thirties and early forties, you go out as a couple or as a young family. After that forget it: You are assumed to lose all sense of taste, and you're meant to only eat crap while pink becomes an acceptable color option for shorts. (Pink: it works for tween girls and senior citizens.) I wonder what's going to happen when the generation that's grown up on lattes and organic food nears retirement age. Granted, there is a class divide as well as one of age at work here. More on this later, as the lobby of our Venice Beach hotel isn't all that conducive to sociological musings.

Greetings from the Venetian causeway

When the Sheila and I travel, we do it in style. And so we decided to take a few days off in Venice. Not, not Venice, Italy. Not even Venice, California. We're actually in Venice, Florida, which is on something called "the Sun Coast" by the local tourism authority (ie the gulf coast roughly between Tampa and Fort Myers) and happens to be the subject of George Packer's devastating article called "The Ponzi State" in The New Yorker. It's a great if depressing read.

As readers of this blog know, I'm interested in public-transportation issues, especially when I travel. And this bit of Florida is a vivid, terrifying illustration of sprawl gone wild, where cars are necessary for just about everything. And everybody here seems to go for gas-guzzling SUVs, which doesn't help. It took us what felt like forever to drive down from Tampa to Venice on US 41, which looked more scenic than I-75 but turned out to be a traffic nightmare (on a Saturday afternoon) and an uninterrupted parade of strip malls and car dealerships with overflowing lots. This snake is biting its own tail, clearly. The only public transportation we could see consisted of the appealingly named SCAT (Sarasota County Area Transit) buses, which seem to carry only the darker-skinned people trimming hedges and working in drugstores. This all makes Los Angeles look really advanced. Packer quotes some local people who seem to realize the necessity of improving local transportation, including Tampa's mayor, but from here, the task looks positively herculean.

Venice itself is charming and actually quite walkable, so that's what we did today, saving the trip to the Smugglers' Cove Miniature Golf (which the Sheila is dreading, but nothing can keep me away from a putt-putt experience) for tomorrow.

Wave goodbye, say hello

A couple of new pieces in this week's Time Out New York: a review of Yoko Ogawa's middling novel, The Housekeeper and the Professor, and an interview with director James Gray, whose latest film, the rather wonderful Two Lovers, comes out next week. Gray was such a good talker that the web version includes outtakes from the interview. Make sure you catch him at BAM on February 10, when he'll introduce a sneak preview of Two Lovers.

As it turns out, these two articles are my last for Time Out. As some of you may know, I'm going off to the New York Post, where I'll replace Clive Barnes as chief drama critic. Big shoes to fill, I know, I know. My first review will be the revival of Guys and Dolls on March 2.

I'm taking some vacation before starting the new gig. I may do some road reports in the coming two weeks, but mostly I'm planning to catch up on my reading.

Throbbing Gristle hits NYC

A mere minutes after hearing about the gig, I was on ticketweb to buy my way into the Throbbing Gristle gig on April 16. The band is playing the Brooklyn Masonic Hall, its first NYC show since 1981. I just posted a lil announcement on the Time Out New York blog, with basic—very basic—background for those unfamiliar with TG.

While Genesis P-Orridge has had the highest profile of all four ex-TG members, I much prefer both Chris and Cosey and Coil—once the smoke surrounding P-Orridge's personal antics has cleared, the music itself just isn't very inspiring. The 1980s albums of Chris and Cosey, on the other hand, still sound great (The Essential Chris and Cosey Collection gives a good overview), while the apocalyptic visions of Coil's early output, especially 1984's Scatology and 1986's Horse Rotorvator, remain terrifying.

It's a small world after all

Young Jean Lee's exploration of the white-black dialectic, The Shipment, is the show of the moment in New York, and I'm ready to bank on it returning later this year on a stage bigger than the Kitchen's. How hyped is it? Stephen Sondheim himself braved frigid temperatures to see it Friday night, and he stoically got crushed in the lobby, like everybody else, as we were waiting to be let in. Personally I feel The Shipment is merely pretty good—it's the first seriously overrated show of the season. Hedda Gabler, on the other hand, is getting a bum rap. It's far from being as disastrous as some would have it, and Mary-Louise Parker actually gives an interesting, far from obvious performance.

Neither over- nor underhyped, Room for Cream—a live soap presented weekly by the Dyke Division of the Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf company—is your typical downtown cult hit: It's packing them in (not that La MaMa is that big) yet remains somewhat under the radar. I could see myself becoming somewhat addicted to the show's rough-hewn charms…

And the Pop Club goes on

The latest Pop Club is up on the Time Out New York site. This week, we discuss new songs by U2, Keri Hilson and Kelly Clarkson. Exciting! Still, be prepared for a shock if you click on the link to the cover of Clarkson's single.

Under the spotlight

Every week, Thibaut Estellon's instructive blog, The French Creative Connection, features a Gallic expat working in the NYC arts scene. And now my turn has come. Warning: it's not in English. At least the feline grace with which I sit in an office chair needs no translation.

Is The L Word a Republican show?

There are two kinds of televised black holes, and I was sucked into both of them lately.

The first is when you become addicted to a TV series that's been going on for a while and catch up with it on DVD: You then sink into a black hole in which you compulsively watch episode after episode, wasting entire nights and weekends. Let's just say that the Sheila and I finally discovered the current iteration of Battlestar Galactica this weekend and were sucked into it. Don't even try to ask us for dinner over the next few weeks: when we're not at the theater, we'll be home watching this space opera.

The second kind of black hole is conjured by someone whose talent doesn't match his/her ego, leading to a rather different kind of sucking. Here, let me introduce you to Ilene Chaiken, the brain (I use the term loosely) behind The L Word. I've now watched the first four episodes of the new and last season, and I can only say that Chaiken has got to be one of the most inept writers to ever be put in charge of a TV series. It's not that crazy things can't happen on soaps, but they have to have an internal logic: they couldn't happen in our world, but they can make perfect sense within one specific fictional universe—which is why I can buy Cylons bent on destroying humanity in Battlestar Galactica, but I can't even buy the girls having breakfast together on The L Word, let alone some of the most delusional plot developments (imagine highly ironic quotation marks around the previous two words) cooked up by Chaiken.

But beyond these technical problems, my core issue with the show—and one that hasn't been raised, I believe—is that its value system is screwed up to the nth degree. I would argue that underneath its libertine surface and despite paying lip service to feminist issues, The L Word is a Republican show, and that is why it feels so jarring these days.

First, the entire show feels like a gated community: Let's live among people who are identical to ourselves and shut out all the others. Throwing in a black lesbian or a deaf one doesn't change anything to the suffocating sameness that binds the characters.

Second, the precepts followed by these women—except for Kit, Tasha and Max—include crushing the "little people," lying, cheating, abusing power, consuming conspicuously, worshipping money and appearances.

Take Bette, for instance. She's adored by the fans because Jennifer Beals is hottt and she also manages to make the character more sympathetic than she actually is. But look at Bette's words and actions: In addition to being a serial cheater, she's a rather unappealing snob who treats the people she perceives as inferiors like dirt (witness her recent and repulsive outburst when she called a hospital clerk a maggot) and often abuses her position (the episode with the grad student, and worse, when she tried to fire Jodi out of spite and with no professional grounds).

Or take Tina, Bette's girlfriend. She's had a different personality every season—only Helena had more—but one thing has remained constant: she's a spoiled, judgemental bourgeoise. Just recently, she was acting all superior because Bette has a bad record when it comes to faithfulness. But Tina herself had affairs! And her mild blond exterior only camouflages rather ugly behavior, like the way she treated her lesbian friends when she lived with a man.

And of course there's Jenny. It's fine that she's a total psychopath, every show needs one. But what I find jarring is that the other characters seem to think she's merely a wacky artiste. Jenny should be the series' über-villainess, recognized as such and used as such in terms of storytelling. Instead, the last season's bad girl was club promoter Dawn Denbo—compared to Jenny, a lightweight in the evil department. So yes, I find it completely insane that supposedly sympathetic characters tolerate Jenny in their midst. Kick her out of the holy circle and fight her! That way you'd get actual stories, instead of what passes for plot on The L Word: endless processing about relationships.

United States of Joyce DiDonato

Tonight's concert was quite a festival of darkness: "Anger, scorn, and fury," "I shall die, but avenged," "Within my soul it rises," "Fierce furies"… Except Tristan and I weren't at a black-metal gig (even if that Bathory guide has put me in the mood) but at an all-Handel recital by the French ensemble Les Talens Lyriques and mezzo Joyce DiDonato.

As we waited for the evening to start, Tristan and I were mistily reminiscing about seeing DiDonato in Hercules at BAM three years ago; glancing down at the program, he gasped "Oh my god, she's going to do my favorite aria from Hercules, the one she sang face down in the dirt!"

There was no dirt at Zankel Hall, but no matter: this concert rocked so hard!

Topped by a rather voluminous blonde mane, DiDonato looked like a lioness. Which felt particularly appropriate when she unleashed "Where Shall I Fly?" This aria is just so over the top that listening to it is like going through all the emotions of watching the craziest action movie ever. It was like watching someone who loses her mind then rides a rollercoaster then swims through a river full of piranhas, then stops for a cigarette break, but right away she starts hallucinating and after that she engages in a high-speed chase with a serial killer—except it lasts four minutes and she barely moves.

But then there were the moments when DiDonato was tender and broken-hearted, the ones where she was thoughtful, the ones when she was exuberant (the second encore, "Dopo Notte" from Ariodante, brought tears of happiness to my eyes). She could do it all, sometimes in such quick succession, it was like the classical version of Toni Collette in United States of Tara. I'm pretty sure I forgot to breathe at some point.

By the way, one of the reasons I love baroque is that it combines economy when it comes to lyrics with batty excess when it comes to vocal lines and emotions. Thus you get an aria like "Crude furie," in which four lines are heatedly sung over and over for something like three and a half minutes. The word veleno alone gets stretched to endless seconds each time. (I just saw that there's a CD alluringly titled Evil Arias by G. F. Händel, which once again shows it makes total sense to dig both baroque and metal; the genres also share a taste for highly technical pyrotechnics, even if metal could learn a thing or two from baroque when it comes to lyrical economy.)

This promo video shows DiDonato explaining her approach to Handel and then killing us softly with madness. You get to see the same lovely outfit she wore tonight, plus you hear the endearing accent of dashing Talens Lyriques conductor Christophe Rousset.

Devil's horns time!

My guide to Bathory is up at eMusic. Oh what fun it was to do! I had to listen to something like 13 or 14 albums—it's all a metal-induced blur now—and I really can't say that I hated any of them, which is quite an achievement in itself. All right, so Quorthon's solo Album is pretty horrific but other than that, I was pleasantly surprised by how much Bathory's output holds up.

You may not know the hot cauldron of insanity that is Bathory if you're among those who read this blog either for the high-artsy stuff or for the textual analysis of Alphabeat lyrics. In brief, it was a Swedish one-man band (the one man being the aforementioned Quorthon) that was quite influential in the black and Viking subgenres of metal in the 1980s and 1990s. I dare hope that extreme-metal novices will enjoy my little guided tour and will feel inclined to sample some Scandi-style extremism.

Besides, how can you not love a man inspired by both Erica Jong and the Necronomicon?

Sometimes bigger is better

Over at Sunday Arts, I express my fear that we're going to see less and less of those super-expensive Euro imports I love so much. Love Théâtre du Soleil or Die Soldaten? You may not see their kind again anytime soon. Instead, brace yourself for more solo shows, two-handers and plays where the actors move the sets around.

Oh yeah, The 39 Steps is still playing on Broadway.

This year's pazz & jop poll

The results of the Village Voice's annual music poll have just come out. I'm not going to spoil anything by revealing that TV on the Radio tops the album list and M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" takes the singles crown. Needless to say, they are nowhere to be seen on my ballot—though I did vote for the no. 2 single, Estelle's "American Boy."

What surprised me, however, is the bizarrely high number of records I was the only person to vote for. I simply do not understand, for instance, why only two of us voted for Girls Aloud's Out of Control or Little Jackie's The Stoop. And it's not like many of my picks are particularly obscure either: Many topped the charts…in other countries.

Cut down those trees already

Just before intermission at The Cherry Orchard this weekend, I could see the Sheila's eyes glazing over in the semi-darkness. Yet it's not like the evening had been eventless so far: A man sitting in the middle of a row suddenly got up and left during a very quiet scene, creating quite a stir—but then he did not actually leave the theater, he just sat in an empty seat across the aisle from me. And stayed there after intermission. Then there was the gentleman holding a paper bag on his lap and rustling it absent-mindedly—and quite loudly—at regular intervals. Then there were the four people who arrived an hour late and were seated anyway, despite the fact that two of them were in the first row (which is very very close to the actors at BAM's Harvey Theater). Then there was the person who erupted in braying, quasi-hysterical laughter out of the blue.

As you can see, it was action-packed. And it wasn't too bad onstage either, so I told the Sheila she should stick with it because we were seeing a pretty good Chekhov.

I'm not the biggest Chekhov fan so it's a bit unfortunate that old Anton is hot on the New York stage right now. The Seagull flew off less than a month ago, Uncle Vanya is in previews at CSC, and Sam Mendes is having his way with Ranevskaya et al. I'm sure there's more on the horizon but honestly it depresses me a bit just to think about it.

As far as this Cherry Orchard goes, however, Mendes does a fairly decent job of balancing the drama and comedy that so bewilders directors. Aesthetically speaking it's a little too close to the Lincoln Center production of Coast of Utopia, especially when Mendes brings up a line of silently threatening representatives of the lower classes. (If only angry waiters and bank tellers could pop off at Barneys and Bouley to scare off hedge-fund managers and guilt-trip fashionistas.) But overall it's not too bad, and there's a couple of visually striking scenes, which is a couple more than in most mainstream NY productions, which seem directed by blind people.

But it's the acting that rocks. While I usually cannot stand Simon Russell Beale's hamming, he keeps it in check and delivers an affecting Lopakhin. My favorites were Sinead Cusack as Ranevskaya and Rebecca Hall as Varya. For the first time I didn't get terminally irritated and frustrated by Ranevskaya's refusal to sell her orchard: Yes, she's blithely clinging to a dying world, but Cusack made you understand why, and understanding helps keep the disdain at bay. As for Hall, her ramrod-straight posture barely disguised cracks of pain. And what a voice! Low, sexy—almost Elizabeth Marvel–ian at times. I cannot wait to see this gang in The Winter's Tale, which they will do in rep at BAM starting in February.

Gay, buff and tattooed

I'm a big fan of Radio France, the public-radio network that's like a dream version of NPR—we're talking hour-long interviews with dancers and novelists here, along with excellent investigative journalism and audio docs. I subscribe to several podcasts from France Inter and France Culture, two of the several stations under the Radio France umbrella.

Anyway, imagine my delighted surprise when I learned that Jean-Paul Cluzel, the 60-year-old, openly gay president of Radio France, had recently posed in the 2009 calendar of Parisian tattoo artist Abraxas. Cluzel is barechested and wears a Mexican wrestler's mask. (The guy on the right is Cluzel's boyfriend.) I mean, can you imagine the president of NPR posing like this?

The wit and wisdom of Alphabeat

I've listened to Alphabeat's This Is Alphabeat a lot in the past few months. In fact, it's one of the few albums I've listened to repeatedly all the way through. While the Danes' wicked way with hooks obviously is the primary appeal, I've also come to really appreciate their lyrics.

One song really encapsulates the Alphabeat style: "10,000 Nights." Disregarding the conventional verse-chorus-verse structure, the melody is plain addictive (and look at the adorably dorky dance moves in the video), but it's the lyrics that bring it all home: Such a poetic inanity—or is that inane poetry?—is rare, even in the kind of pop I love. See for yourself in this analysis of the entire song (I'll skip repeated lines):

I was not looking for arty-farty love
Hmm, arty-farty feels like a remote possibility if you're in a band like Alphabeat but okay, if you insist on stating the obvious, I'm with you. But why not artsy-fartsy instead of the awkward arty-farty? Would it have thrown off the meter? Is the gassy echo a reference to Serge Gainsbourg's cult novel Evguénie Sokolov?

I wanted someone to love completely
Someone more than weekly
We're starting to get somewhere: No pseudo-intellectual hipsters need apply, and no behaving like a Simenon character with a weekly prostitute habit.

I was looking for a decent boy
Despite visual evidence suggesting the opposite would make more sense, Stine sings this line, not Anders.

For a tender glance
For a safety dance
First meta reference to another song, ie Men Without Hats' "The Safety Dance." Alphabeat slyly suggests it learned English by listening to the radio.

The wuthering heights
And the stormy nights
This is the one-two punch that slays me every single time. It could be a Bronte reference in the first line but I don't think so, meaning we've got another pop allusion, this time to Kate Bush (which makes you revisit the first line: perhaps someone in Alphabeat would like arty-farty after all). And then we have the stormy nights. No verb, just minimalist description. Amazing.

You give me 10,000 nights of thunder
But I will give them all back to you
But why will you give them back? Don't you like the other person anymore? Also do you realize that 10,000 nights is 27 years??? These two lines are bewildering and insanely wonderful.

Cause you're so ooh, you're so aah, you're so cool
This doesn't help at all. Anders is giving back the nights—and not just any nights: nights of thunder—because the object of his affection is…cool? The way Anders grasps for words before settling down for "cool" is rather endearing.

You came like a thief in the night and stole my heart
Like a solitude erasure
Like an elevator
My three favorite lines of the year, no contest. Listening to the song, I thought Stine and Anders sang "Like a solitude eraser"—referring to the thief—but all the lyrics sites I consulted have "erasure." I'm not sure which one I prefer, though "erasure" somehow has a more definitive side to it. The lines are happy but a certain darkness creeps in. That elevator thing, however, is completely cryptic—like something out of a song those bearded indie-rock kids enjoy so much. Is this an example of catachresis? Discuss.

And I know we'd do anything for love
And it is you and me
For all eternity
Whoa, Stine's going all Tristan and Isolde on us! What happened to the arty-farty safety dance?

It feels like 10,000 nights of thunder
When I've spent one with you
A-ha! They didn't literally mean 27 years. Alphabeat is in absolute mastery of all the rhetorical tools at the disposal of a pop lyricist. (Remember the use of analogy in the "solitude erasure/elevator" combo?)

'Cause you're so ooh, you're so aah, you're so cool
You're so super-supremely ba-ba-di-oh
And one of these tools seems to be nonsense, which Stine uses to express the fact that her infatuation is so strong, it prevents her from articulating her thoughts, just like Anders and his bumbling "You're so ooh, so aah." I like the use of the mirror image, plus for some reason it all reminds me of "Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo" from Cinderella.

And baby baby you're irresistible and I'm insatiable
Yeah love is an ocean of sweet emotion
While Alphabeat is a PG band, the first line suggests Anders has needs, like all young men his age. But he immediately drops that sensitive subject and reassures us that he understands the real force to be reckoned with is love. All's well that ends well.

Magnificent obsession on DVD

My review of the Criterion edition of Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession is in this week's Time Out New York. The two-disc set also includes John M. Stahl's original version of the movie, which starred Irene Dunne. I'm a huge fan of Stahl's, who I think has gotten unfairly neglected because his dramas aren't as sarcasm-friendly to our sad contemporary audiences as Sirk's.

But perhaps his rehabilitation is under way. Later this month, Anthology Film Archives is going to screen both his and Sirk versions of When Tomorrow Comes, Magnificent Obsession and Imitation of Life. In addition to testifying to Stahl's talent in the women's movie realm, fans of Irene Dunne—which means all readers of this blog, right? right?—should mark their calendars as she also stars in Tomorrow, which doesn't seem to be on DVD.

Also on the horizon, in March Film Forum is going to show Stahl's Leave Her to Heaven, from 1945, which makes great use of Gene Tierney's perverse beauty. The scene in which she rides a horse against a grandiose Western vista, dispersing her father's ashes to the wind while Alfred Newman's score swells, is one of my favorite cinematic moments ever. Like Anthony Mann's The Furies, which mixed Western and melodrama (and which I reviewed for TONY last year), Leave Her to Heaven is a genre hybrid that borrows tropes from noir and melodrama; the two movies also share the honor of being fine examples of incest sublimation, Hollywood-style.

Another incentive to see Leave Her to Heaven is that it's a particularly flamboyant example of Technicolor. I was such a film geek as a kid that when I was around 13 or 14, my enabling parents got me a hardcover coffee-table book about Natalie Kalmus, the official Technicolor consultant in the 1930s and ’40s.

The most depressing list in the world

Okay, maybe not the most depressing one, but still… Stereogum has printed a clean, reader-friendlier version of Hype Machine's "blogger-sanctioned meta-list beast," which is as good an indicator as any of what indie kids listened to in 2008.

And what a sad, sad sight it is.

The top five albums are by Fleet Foxes, TV on the Radio, Vampire Weekend, Bon Iver and MGMT, in descending order. Just looking at these names makes me want to poke a stick in my eyes. And one in my ears too, for good measure.

There's plenty to say about the list, but I'll focus on one aspect of it: Where are the women? Out of 50 entries, seven bands (Portishead, She & Him, Crystal Castles, Beach House, Ra Ra Riot, Mates of States, the Kills) include women in prominent roles, and then there's a grand total of three female solo artists (Santogold, Lykke Li, Jenny Lewis). Just pathetic.

Seriously, what is wrong with hipsters that they can't relate to women making music? Nowadays, the indie charts are dominated by dudes with beards, whereas the Billboard Hot 100 is a lot more hospitable to women making smart, chart-friendly pop music. I guess that's okay in a way: Taylor Swift, Lady GaGa, Miley Cyrus and Rihanna are the ones laughing all the way to the bank. Still, it'd be nice if they could get the critical respect they deserve, too.

Playbill bio of the week

While it's nowhere near as brilliant as Tatiana Chernova's, the bio of director and choreographer Liu Tongbiao reads thus in its entirety in the Soul of Shaolin playbill: "The state's first-grade director, he is a director of the Shanghai People's Art Center. Under the guidance of drama master Huang Zuolin, he has dabbled in drama, film, plays, opera, tourism, art and large evening parties."

He's dabbled in tourism and large evening parties? Would William Powell play him in the American version?

Post-ap book group

You now have less than ten days to read John Wyndham's The Chrysalids before it's discussed at the next meeting of the Brooklyn post-apocalyptic book group. This will be on January 22 at Freebird Books & Goods in Red Hook. Typically for Red Hook, the convoluted directions from the subway stop include the likes of walking "until you can't go any further" to a venue located "across from the packing containers." This, of course, is perfectly appropriate to the subject at hand.

My fondness for post-apocalyptic fiction has long been in evidence on this blog, and I share it with my esteemed colleague Joshua Rothkopf. (We can often be seen huddled by a desk, discussing reissues of obscure novels and relevant new movies.) And so we were both psyched to hear about the book group. Clearly we are not the only ones who dream of the day after.

Also, to clarify: I am not particularly interested in End of Days scenarios—the religious element pretty much leaves me cold, as it does in real life. I'm also not that into the catastrophe itself, so I tend to pass on descriptions of meteors hitting Earth or plagues unleashing out of a lab.

That said, I'd definitely read a book about the last three days before nuclear armageddon, and I'd watch any movie involving Christina Hendricks in a lab coat saying, "We only have two minutes before the virus wipes out humanity." It hasn't been made? Well, what are you waiting for, Hollywood?

Becky Shaw rulz

Let me join the chorus praising Gina Gionfriddo's new play, Becky Shaw, at Second Stage. I can't even remember the last time I laughed so much at the theater, and not once did I feel my intelligence had been insulted. The show is also rather well constructed, though the plot's twists and turns, as satisfying as they are, are almost secondary compared to the fact that all the characters have more than one side, revealing a wealth of new complexities as the play progresses.

Plus let it be said again: Gionfriddo brings on the funny.

I don't know if she got her day job as a writer/producer on Law & Order because her lines are tight and snappy or if it's the L&O gig that's trained her to be tight and snappy, and theatergoers are benefiting. It's a chicken-and-egg situation, though a decision either way may be of interest to those who enroll in playwriting programs. If you're an aspiring author, is it worth getting into debt to get an MFA at Brown or should you send your résumé to Dick Wolfe?

Now the thing with Gionfriddo is that she did go to Brown before landing at L&O. I'd be curious to know how she rates what she learned at both places, and how they affected her playwriting.

Completely unrelated: I realize this blog hasn't gone metal in a while, but I'm listening to the entire Bathory oeuvre for an assignment so get ready for some blackened thoughts very soon.

This Hamlet I want to see

Apparently David Tennant is the greatest Hamlet of his generation, or so says The Guardian. Okay. Needless to say, these photos are not from the production that's taken London by storm. Rather, it is, as you might have guessed, a German staging—more specifically, one by Dilettante favorite Thomas Ostermeier.

I don't even know why I specify it's German because if you've been following international theater of the past 25 years, it's pretty obvious that it is. (The equivalent works in opera, too, as those who read La Cieca and her hilarious Regie quizzes know full well.)

I know, I know: It's so easy to make fun of those productions. And yet I often find them entrancing because they are so demented. I ran into a composer friend at a Park Slope coffee shop a couple of weeks ago, and we had the beginning (because I was running late and had to go) of an interesting conversation about this. I tend to fall in the pro-Regie camp, which holds that you can completely reenvision a play or opera, and his basic question was, If you're going to mangle something beyond recognition, why don't you come up with a new play or a new opera to begin with?

A valid concern, of course, to which I say: If we've seen Hamlet 100 times, why not make take liberties with the 101st? Granted, this does assume that the audience has seen enough Hamlets to be interested in a radical reimagining of it; I'm not sure one can make this leap about our local audiences.

Chances are we're not going to see Ostermeier's Hamlet here, unless maybe BAM does well enough with Sam Mendes's The Cherry Orchard and The Winter's Tale in the coming month, and uses part of the profits to import Hamlet for a five-day run. That to me is one of the reasons to mount this type of staging—so it can finance more commercially hazardous ones. We'll see.

Starry sky over New York

Over at Channel Thirteen's Sunday Arts blog, I wax poetic about the abundance of high-wattage stars about to descend on NYC stage this winter and spring. The real question is, Is it worth seeing Mary-Louise Parker as Hedda Gabler if the staging is the kind of blah we are used to getting from the Roundabout? And what the hell is up with the current obsession with all things Chekhovian? That gun will get used if I have to watch one more Cherry Orchard.

More Pop Club

I have to admit that my single favorite work assignment is doing the Pop Club with the fabulous Jimmy Draper and Kurt B. Reighley every other week or so. We chat about three new singles via Google Talk—I'm in New York, Jimmy in Ann Arbor and Kurt in Seattle—as we listen to the songs simultaneously; I then put up the conversation on the Time Out New York site along with the streaming tunes, so readers can see whether or not they agree with us.

The third installment of the Pop Club just came up today. Under the microscope: tunes by the Veronicas, Miranda Cosgrove and Leona Lewis.

Turning the tables on David Denby

My trashing of David Denby's Snark is in this week's Time Out New York.

Don't let the following prevent you from jumping to the full review, of course, but in brief: The New Yorker's film critic arrives five years late to the snark party, bearing flat, store-brand soda and stale potato chips. Fun!

The French boards, part 2

And now, the present…

Le Monde just ran an interesting interview with director Luc Bondy. One of the things he talks about is the difference between public and private institutions in France. Here in New York, the scene is very roughly divided in three: Broadway, Off Broadway and Off-Off Broadway houses. In Paris, you have institutions that get public subsidies and those that rely more on box-office revenues; the former is meant to present fare that's more demanding (with lower ticket prices), while the latter is meant to be more commercial (and is more expensive).

The difference can get muddy, though, as a public institution like Chaillot has often presented accessible, popular shows by directors Jérôme Deschamps and Macha Makeïeff, for instance, while private theaters can show fare that's much edgier than we get on the Off scene here.

The Swiss-born Bondy, who's worked a lot in German-speaking countries (he ran the Schaubühne in Berlin, and has been artistic director of the Vienna Festival for 20 years), says of French subsidized theater: "There's people with great potential, but the output is mediocre. First, because the French are very germanophile, they think everything that comes from Germany is great and they get very derivative. They need their own pride. It's true that it's more difficult to do theater in France than in Germany because the French are more extroverted than the German. In introverted countries, theater is the place where you're free. In extroverted countries such as France or Italy, it requires more effort to find a language." [I think he means a theatrical language here, obviously.]

Bondy on actors: "In Germany, Austria and Switzerland, actors work are hired in companies. They may be less afraid to act than French actors, because they have that safety net. But that sense of safety also sometimes makes them sure of themselves and less curious than French actors, who can get deeply involved in a project. The greatest issue in France is the ostracism between public and private theater. There are great actors working in the private sector that you'd dream of seeing in the public one. And vice versa. But the two areas are like two dogs barking at each other. It's true that when you see the price of tickets in private theaters, and those who can afford them, you don't necessarily want to work there. But without sounding populist, I find unbearable the idea that people can't go to a good boulevard play because it's too expensive. You can learn a lot from boulevard. There's a technique and actors that are marvelous. In England, they can take a tragedy by Eschylus and turn it into a play. They don't have that separation between pure and impure, which is false: a play is good or it isn't. One of the greatest conductors in the world for me was Bernstein, who led Beethoven's symphonies like no one else and wrote West Side Story. That culture is missing today."

Bondy is perceived as high-brow in France, but he's also doing quite well at the box office. Last time I was in Paris, for instance, I couldn't see his staging of Marivaux's La Seconde Surprise de l'Amour at the supposedly elite Bouffes du Nord (Peter Brook's former home, and the inspiration for BAM's Harvey Theater): it was such a big fat hit that there were no tickets to be found. When Marivaux sells out without the help of marquee-name stars, you know the director is doing something right.

And the hits keep on coming

Back in December, I raved about Our Hit Parade, a demented revue I saw at the Zipper. The brain trust behind the event—Bridget Everett, Kenny Mellman and Neal Medlyn—has now started a companion blog of the same name, which combines two of my favorite things: super-commercial pop songs and a twisted downtown sensibility.

The next edition of Our Hit Parade is at the Zipper on January 31. See you there.

The French boards, part 1

Part one of a post about French theater, ie something we rarely see in New York.

First, the past…

Reading about the recent publication of the correspondence of Gérard Philipe and his friend, actor/writer Georges Perros, I learned that even when he was a huge star in the 1940s and 1950s (think James Dean if he had been French, known equally for this theater work as for his films, and a Marx reader), Philipe's name would be listed in the middle of the casts in Jean Vilar's Théâtre National Populaire, which were organized alphabetically. The entire troupe, including him, also made the same salary. Granted, he also had an income from his screen hits, but still, I like that he was paid the same as his less famous colleagues.

I was also stunned to learn that since the troupe put on classics in repertory, Philipe could play up to four different parts in a single week—and we're talking big leads here, like the title characters in Corneille's Le Cid or Kleist's The Prince of Homburg.

Fly the friendly skies

In the current issue of Time Out New York, I interview Clove Galilee and Jenny Rogers, the brains behind Wickets, a clever adaptation of Maria Irene Fornes's play Fefu and Her Friends. Fornes has been in the news in an indirect way recently, thanks to the publication of the early diaries of Susan Sontag, with whom the playwright had an affair. A couple of excerpts, published in the Times two years ago:

November 20, 1959
"I have never been as demanding of anyone as I am of [the Cuban-American playwright Maria] I[rene Fornes]. I am jealous of everyone she sees, I hurt every minute she goes away from me. But not when I leave her, and know that she is here. My love wants to incorporate her totally, to eat her. My love is selfish. … Tonight she went from work to meet Inez at the San Remo. Ann Morrissett [journalist and playwright] was there. After, the Cedar Bar. She came home at 12:00; I was asleep. She came to bed, told me about the conversations of the evening, at 2:00 asked that the light be put out, went to sleep. I was paralyzed, mute, swollen with tears. I smoked, she slept.

December 28, 1959
Till now I have felt that the only persons I could know in depth, or really love, were duplicates or versions of my own wretched self. (My intellectual and sexual feelings have always been incestuous.) Now I know + love someone who is not like me — e.g. not a Jew, not a New York-type intellectual — without any failure of intimacy. I am always conscious of I’s foreignness, of the absence of a shared background — and I experience this as a great release.

I'm available to be U.S. Senator

Dear Governor Paterson,

I would like to express my interest in replacing Hillary Rodham Clinton in the United States Senate. I currently hold a full-time job, which I realize puts me at a disadvantage with Caroline Kennedy, but my employer is willing to grant me a sabbatical while I commute to Washington. Like Ms. Kennedy, however, I am a woman, I have never held or sought public office, I have no governing experience, and I am unwilling to disclose the state of my finances. (I shall not release my medical records so you have to trust me on this, but I am in good health.)

I am ready and able to serve my adopted state, which I've visited extensively. Just two months ago I spent four delicious days exploring the Finger Lakes region. I have also been to the Adirondacks, the Catskills and the eastern tip of Long Island. I am familiar, of course, with all five boroughs of New York City, including Staten Island; in fact, I know someone who actually works on Staten Island. I have also attended several upstate county fairs, consuming deep-fried Oreos and oohing-and-aahing at oversize farm animals.

As a resident of the cultural mecca known as Brooklyn and as Time Out New York's arts & entertainment editor, I've acquired a Rolodex bulging with artsy types; I hear candidates with built-in networks get serious consideration.

A French-American citizen, I have close ties to the immigrant community that is an essential component of the glorious mosaic known as New York State. While I refuse to reveal much of anything about my personal life, I can let on that picking me should soothe the frayed nerves of the gay community; in other words, President Obama will personally thank you for a choice that will ensure everlasting support from those squawky homosexuals, thus favoring your own re-election campaign.

As New York Senator, I realize my job would not be to govern, but rather to divert much-needed federal funds to worthy constituencies, which in our current time of crisis would include not only hedge-fund managers, but also real-estate developers and victims of investment Ponzi schemes. I would also propose that America’s Big Three automakers move their corporate headquarters to Schenectady as part of any industry restructuring; there’s got to be some bailout dollars there.

Your naming me U.S. Senator would send a clear message that as Governor, you are not afraid of putting "regular folks" first, and that in New York, anybody can live the American Dream to the fullest.

Finally, let me assure you that this is not a prank: If you call on me, I will be honored to serve.

Sincerely,

Elisabeth Vincentelli
Candidate to the U.S. Senate

Give Katy Perry a break

Lots of gay women have been really riled up by Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl." The main beef: Perry kissed a girl and liked it, but then she went on to say "I hope my boyfriend don't mind it."

Hold the presses: Katy Perry's not a real lesbian—she sings about hetero titillation!

And she stole the title of a song by Jill Sobule, who's a real bisexual!

And the dudes at Out magazine made her their Musician of the Year! Even though she isn't out ’cause she isn't gay!

And…and…and…those greedy sell-outs at the Dinah Shore made Perry their headliner over Indigo Girls for the ’09 edition of their annual orgy!!!

Can I possibly be the only lesbionic gal who'd rather see Katy Perry than Indigo Girls? The only one who'd trade the entire k.d. lang catalogue for "I Kissed a Girl"? (Okay, maybe "I Kissed a Girl" + "Hot ’n’ Cold," its even better follow-up.) Is it so wrong to want to trade earnestly strummed guitars for the magic of pop music, which is about style, fun, flirtation and yes, manipulation? Sometimes I really despair of my sisters' ability not so much to take a joke as to understand how power works. Frankly if Katy Perry wants to kiss a girl even though she has a boyfriend, we ladies should take advantage. So Katy won't show up the next day with a U-Haul—and that's a bad thing how?

(Also: girls' lips taste better with cherry chapstick than Karma Apple 95% Organic Lip Balm.)

In the meantime—and what really prompted this belated post—here is my new fave Perry-related moment: "I Kissed a Girl" + Britney Spears's "If U Seek Amy" = "If You Kissed Amy." Enjoy.

About Jon Raymond

My review of Jon Raymond's new collection, Livability, is in Time Out New York.

Raymond is best-known for adapting two of his own stories with director Kelly Reichardt for the movies Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy. I didn't have the space to expand on this thought in the review, but Raymond frequently reminded me of Adrian Tomine at his worst—when he tries to spin meaning out of nothingness.